Introducing Boundless Entertainment, a Scopely Studio!
A message from Amir Rahimi, President, Games:
Just over a year has passed since our studio, formerly known as FoxNext Games LA, and its outstanding talent behind the beloved game MARVEL Strike Force joined Scopely. Today, we’re proud to reintroduce our studio team as Boundless Entertainment, a Scopely Studio.
From major milestones to impressive feature releases, there’s been a lot to celebrate over the last year. And now that we’ve passed the one year mark, we want to take a moment to acknowledge the momentous growth that MARVEL Strike Force (MSF) has experienced.
With a rich universe of stories and characters captivating millions of passionate fans around the world, MSF has become an even more impressive and engaging game since it launched in 2018. The game has cultivated an extremely loyal player base who continue to play, interact, and invest in the experience every day. In its first year (2018), the game generated $150M+ in revenue and in 2019, $180M+ in revenue. And since joining Scopely, the Boundless Entertainment team has been empowered to grow and improve the game like never before.
Over the last year MSF has thrived -- achieving 70% growth in total revenue and all-time highs on all audience metrics. The game generated approximately $300M in revenue in 2020, with 70% of users playing seven days in a row, averaging two or more hours in-game each day. Players are also going head-to-head more often, with a 38% increase in battles played from 2019 to 2020. That’s just one of the reasons it was named by App Annie as the top-five most engaging core strategy game by a U.S. publisher. Sensor Tower has also spotlighted the game’s success, naming MSF the #1 RPG in the U.S. by consumer spend.
“This past year, MARVEL Strike Force has thrived -- experiencing 70% growth in total revenue with players going head-to-head more often, with a 38% increase in battles played from 2019 to 2020.”
This growth has been driven by the world-class development team at Boundless who are committed to putting on the best possible show every day for their extremely passionate community. In 2020, the MSF team managed to drive lapse rates to all-time lows by releasing bold new features like real-time combat, dozens of exciting new characters, and running hundreds of compelling in-game events. The team’s fearless approach to continuing to evolve the game was also recently recognized by Game Refinery, awarding MSF the “Biggest Evolver” of 2021 for their Mobile GameDev Awards.
The impressive growth MSF experienced in 2020 was enabled and accelerated by Scopely’s unique studio ecosystem model. Since joining Scopely I’m proud (and more than a little relieved) to report that the unification of our two companies and cultures has been very successful. Scopely’s studio ecosystem model is uniquely designed to bring both sides of the game-making house (development and publishing) together as one team while encouraging creative and cultural freedom -- empowering leaders like myself to drive the business as they see fit. We’ve managed to preserve everything about our culture, workflows, and identity that we’ve lovingly built and refined over the past two decades (across six different companies!) and now have the benefit of Scopely’s world-class technology platform and operating infrastructure.
“The impressive growth was enabled and accelerated by Scopely’s unique studio ecosystem model. The unification of our two companies and cultures has been very successful.”
The introduction of Scopely's technology platform and user acquisition expertise (not to mention their willingness and ability to invest in growing MSF) has driven major improvements to the user acquisition metrics of the game and has helped the team significantly grow the MSF audience throughout 2020.
“The introduction of Scopely’s world-class proprietary technology platform and user acquisition expertise has driven major improvements to the game and helped significantly grow the MSF audience.”
Following the acquisition, our customer service and community teams also joined Scopely’s central teams and have since helped increase our overall community reach and engagement across existing social channels as well as introducing new channels for real-time connection like Discord. This integration has deepened our relationships with our players and allowed us to receive and respond to community feedback more dynamically. As part of Scopely, we are also fortunate to tap into one of the most powerful recruiting pipelines in the industry. We've been amazed by the level of talent that we've been able to attract since joining the company. Going forward, we’re proud to be contributing to this ecosystem to help push the Scopely operating system to new heights.
As MSF nears the third anniversary of its global launch, we’re more excited than ever about the game’s future. With an impressive roadmap full of bold, innovative features aimed at evolving the game in exciting ways, and now with the full weight of Scopely’s tech platform, publishing, and central teams behind us, 2021 is shaping up to be the game's biggest year yet.
To all who have had an impact on this game, thank you for staying with us on this adventure. This first year was just the beginning for Boundless Entertainment and Scopely, and we are committed to keep raising the bar on MSF and we look forward with great excitement to the future.