Ninja Trick Interview: Looking Into The Ninja Scene
Questions by Vincent Haoson, OnRPG Journalist
Answered by: Toshimichi Namba, CEO of CyberAgent America
OnRPG: How has the game been since its commercial release late last year?
First of all, I would like to thank you to all the customers / players that been supporting NinjaTrick over a year. It was our first title in United State and there was lot of challenges and trials. We have learned a lot from players opinions and we want to keep growing it with our players. Recently, we have launched ComicWorld, the virtual world community service. Hoping to grow this as a central(hub) community for NinjaTrick and upcoming game titles.
OnRPG: How’s the player support of the game?
Since the game is PvP, player is everything for us.
OnRPG: What would you say is Ninja Trick’s advantage against the competition?
This is hard question. We are still seeking what will be the advantage. One thing I can say for sure is, its browser base and easy and quick to play, compared to huge MMORPGs.
OnRPG: What’s the main feature of Ninja Trick that attracts players?
I would say casualness. Easy to play, fast pace and quick game, but also has a depth requiring strategies and techniques.
OnRPG: Where did you get the idea to include the new gacha outfit, ninja assassin to the outfits in the game?
All of our staff has grown up in Japan. Anime/Manga is something we are always familiar with, and usually idea comes from what we were addicted in the past.
OnRPG: What’s the target amount of clothes you plan on releasing in the game?
We will try to release outfits in a weekly basis.
OnRPG: With the game being updated on a weekly basis, how do you measure what needs to be updated?
We look in to three metrics, player’s activeness, virality and monetization. First we need to have players that have fun playing the game and keep coming back, second as a facebook application virality is another consideration and last monetization is also needed for us to keep running the business. We look those metrics and decide the priority of updates.
OnRPG: It seems that you have been releasing a lot of Gacha outfits lately, are you worried it will affect the game balance between those who play for free and those who pay?
Player can earn some status items by playing daily gacha(free), which is balancing the paying user and non-paying users.
OnRPG: Is the game’s business model more attuned to income garnering or to more balanced gameplay?
Balanced Game play is most important but I understand this question is always a big theme for PvP games.
OnRPG: There have been comments within your site that your customer support is not replying to requests, what’s your say about it?
My apologies. As a content distributer we understand this shouldn’t have happened. Currently, I myself been taking action to this situation and should be able to improve it in next month.
OnRPG: Can you elaborate on the reason why you closed the game’s forum and when are you planning to reopen the forum
I don’t want to write an excuse, will make sure to improve the environment and proof that we are stepping in to this situation and taking it seriously.
OnRPG: What’s in store for players for the succeeding months?
We are adding more community features around ComicWorld and NinjaTrick.
OnRPG: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions!
Thank you very much!
