Netflix is on the offensive promoting its games offering right now. It was one of very few mobile-first companies that had any sort of presence during the various summer showcases this year, and in the last few weeks Netflix execs have been talking about games to the likes of The Washington Post, The Verge, and yes, even mobilegamer.biz.
And as we’ve reported previously, estimates suggest those GTA games – rumoured to have cost Netflix up to $50m – have racked up over 30m downloads since launch in December 2023.
But there are still serious questions being asked about the streaming giant’s games push. Mainly: where is the money coming from? It has now spent a fortune getting a foothold in the games business, and Netflix bosses will surely want to see some sort of return on this massive investment.
It also doesn’t look good that the games division is currently without a permanent figurehead, with boss Mike Verdu moving aside to form a “games innovation group” at the streaming firm.
Amid all that comes one of the first games developed especially for Netflix by one of the four studios it has acquired to date, Spry Fox. (The others: Next Games, Boss Fight Entertainment and Night School Studio. It has also established its own new studios in Helsinki and LA).
Spry Fox is the maker of what is effectively the original merge game, Triple Town – more on that later. It also created word puzzler Alphabear and Animal Crossing-like life sim Cozy Grove, which was an Apple Arcade game, once upon a time, before Netflix acquired the outfit.
A Cozy Grove sequel, subtitled Camp Spirit, dropped on Netflix this week, so we got the chance to ask Spry Fox cofounder and studio director David Edery a few questions over email.
Firstly, we asked what is considered success for a Netflix Games release – are there download or engagement targets Spry Fox needs to meet? The answer appears to be no.
“For us, success means that we make lots of people happy and ideally, we also find ways to help them feel more empathy for others,” says Edery. “As was the case with the original Cozy Grove, we’ve designed Camp Spirit to be a game that becomes a cozy, undemanding part of your regular routine over a period of many months and possibly even years.”
“A lot has changed in the games industry since the first Cozy Grove came out, so we feel lucky to not only be thriving as a studio, but also to be able to make this game without any compromises like ads or in-app purchases, and to be able to give it to 270m+ members as part of Netflix.”
Edery also says that since becoming part of Netflix, “very little has changed” in terms of the game development process, but it now has Netflix’s support with “certain operational burdens” like finance, legal and accounting.
And to promote its games, Spry Fox can lean on Netflix’s existing marketing and PR teams, says Edery.
“It is a huge bonus for us after over a decade of trying to promote our games ourselves – usually with the help of no more than a couple contractors and on an extremely limited budget,” he tells us. “Suddenly we have experts who we trust and who have way more experience than we do at getting the word out.”
This includes being part of this summer’s Day of the Devs selection, and being present at Summer Game Fest’s Play Days event, alongside several other Netflix developers. “Being on Netflix gives us such a major advantage in terms of exposure,” says Edery. “On top of that, coming from the indie world, we’re so excited to be able to tap into Netflix resources and get support we’ve never had before.”
Its new owner has also given the studio plenty of time and space to make the game it wants to make, says Edery, who suggests there are very few targets to meet or boxes to tick at Netflix Games.
“In all honesty, being part of Netflix has been a huge relief for us,” he continues. “With everything the industry is going through, Netflix has given Spry Fox more support and encouragement than we’ve ever experienced before. We now have the resources to make the games we want to make, on the timetable we want to make them, with very few compromises.”
“This means so much to us because over the years, we never stopped struggling with how to ethically monetise our mobile games while also surviving as a studio. It was always a painful, time-consuming process that ate up a shockingly large percentage of our development time and energy.”
“Now we can put all that energy into simply making our games as good as they can be. If you’ve never made a free-to-play mobile game before, you cannot imagine how wonderful this feels for us. If it weren’t for Netflix, Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit would probably not exist.”
With Cozy Grove: Spirit Camp out the door, Spry Fox will continue to support the title with new content drops and updates for the foreseeable future, while also continuing to work on another title it has been making.
“For over a decade now, Spry Fox has had two development teams working in parallel,” says Edery. “That is still the case. Our second team is working on a large unannounced cozy project that I look forward to telling you more about in the future.”
And what about its breakthrough game, Triple Town? It is, effectively, the title that pioneered the merge genre, but a quick look at the App Store tells us that while it is still available, it has not been updated for seven years.
“We’re not currently working on bringing Triple Town to Netflix,” he adds. “But this is something I have discussed repeatedly with the rest of the studio. We all want to make it happen at some point!”
