GAMES

Nordeus: Beyond football

What is the next big thing for Nordeus? Time to tee off!

In June 2021, Nordeus became part of Take-Two in whom we found not just a reliable business partner, but also a company that nurtures the same values and culture. In 2022, Zynga became part of Take-Two and with that the team has gotten bigger and stronger. We could not be prouder to be in the company of such gaming giants, and to have our game – Top Eleven – standing shoulder to shoulder with some of the best games in the industry – GTA, NBA 2K, Red Dead Redemption, Farmville, Toon Blast and many others.

2023 in review

Let’s take a quick look at the fun of 2023 before we head into 2024. 

In 2023, Nordeus and Top Eleven celebrated their 13th anniversary – a rare feat in the mobile games industry. Our flagship title counts more than 300 million registered users, and an amazing ambassador – football legend José Mourinho. 

Our team has done amazing things with Top Eleven in the past year, such as introducing the highly anticipated Season in Review feature, and a new challenge type – Proving Grounds. Live events and amusing mini-games were key to keeping our players engaged throughout the 28-day Top Eleven season, and we introduced several throughout the year. The new era of Top Eleven started in 2022 when we introduced our most requested community feature – 3D live matches, and we took them to the next level with the 2024 release. Top Eleven 2024 offered players an enhanced Live Match experience with new animations, different camera angles, new hyper-realistic stadium experiences, night scenes, and dynamic crowds.

With all that we’ve learned with Top Eleven over the years, while keeping it a leader in the category, we asked ourselves how we could help other games reach new heights even after years on the market. That is exactly our mission with Golf Rival, which we recently added to the Nordeus portfolio, as part of the Zynga label. 

This project gives us the opportunity to expand our expertise and apply our knowledge of running live mobile sports titles successfully to Golf Rival and make it a “forever franchise” game, capable of providing an evergreen and fun experience for players everywhere for years to come. 

What is next?

Golf Rival is a PvP golf game that has been around for 6 years and has reached amazing milestones (e.g. more than 60 million registered users) and celebrated success from its beginnings in Beijing. 

Creating forever franchises is not an easy job. We’ve explored a lot over the years, prototyping many different concepts, building epic worlds and unlocking incredible free kicks through Heroic and Golden Boot – all of which helped push us forward. 

Keeping all of this in mind, we are approaching Golf Rival holistically – helping with knowledge sharing and driving the strategy in every area of game development, from user research to engineering, live ops, product management, game design and marketing. To maximize the collaboration and knowledge sharing between Belgrade and Beijing, we have formed a Golf Rival team here in our Nordeus Belgrade office. 

2023 was a whirlwind as we stepped onto the first tee on Golf Rival with enthusiasm and excitement, and we’re already seeing results. We focused on expanding the player experience with new features and live ops events that have driven lots of engagement in-game. We have optimized the flow and made important changes to the structure to drive long-term success. And of course, we’ve established new ways of working and sharing knowledge with our colleagues in Beijing to bring all of our strengths to the forefront of our collaboration.

With the fast delivery and focused work from the Beijing team combined with the high-quality output we bring to our games in Belgrade, we are confident that Golf Rival will reach new heights in 2024. 

While we strive to level up experiences for Top Eleven players, we are determined to repeat this success with Golf Rival and new games.

2024 is going to be an exciting year, and we cannot wait to share our successes and learnings with all of you.