Grow with Unity: How Unity helped fuel Black Drive Studio’s growth

We sat down with Mike Nightingale, CEO and founder of Black Drive Studio, an indie studio based in Ukraine, to discuss his journey from car enthusiast to building racing simulator games that have driven over 5 million downloads on Google Play.

Here's what Mike shared about using Unity to turn his passion for cars and games into a thriving business.

Q: Tell us about your company and how you got started in game development.

Mike: We're a tight-knit company of about 10 people focused on mobile games for Android. We've been using Unity for all our games over the past 5-6 years. I've always been passionate about cars and loved everything car-related. Back when we started, we created some small car-related projects on the Unity Asset Store and decided to create a simple game to promote on Google Play.

We ended up making about ten car games - parking simulators and driving games where you can drive around the city and complete levels. When we saw that people were interested, we kept working on it. Now we have developers, designers, and user acquisition managers on our team, and some of our racing simulator games have millions of downloads on Google Play.

Q: What drew you to Unity as your game engine?

Mike: We actually tried a competitor about 8 years ago, but there weren't enough materials online about how to work with them, and they didn't have many assets to choose from. Unity had much better resources and community support.

Also, Google Play works really well with Unity. You can integrate many SDKs easily, and Unity offers great tools for both development and marketing. When I started, I was working with Unity in 2017, and it was clear that Unity was the most suitable engine for mobile game development.

Q: What's your approach to monetization and user acquisition?

Mike: We use Unity LevelPlay for mediation. We've tried them all, and Unity LevelPlay is the easiest to use for us. While some other solutions might be simpler, if you know how to work with mediation properly, Unity LevelPlay is better.

For user acquisition, we love Unity Ads' services because you can use money from monetization directly for our user acquisition campaigns. Other services don't offer this option.

Our strategy is simple: you have to use ROAS (return on ad spend) campaigns. You can't work only with CPI (cost per install) campaigns alone anymore - the costs are just too high.

Q: How do you balance monetization with player experience?

Mike: We do a lot of beta testing. The key is finding the right balance - we want to generate as much revenue as possible, but we also need to offer a good user experience. For us, the sweet spot is about one ad per 90 seconds of gameplay. We use all types of ads - interstitials, rewarded, and banners - and test different placements to see what works best.

Q: What was your biggest lesson learned from your first game?

Mike: My first game was actually a Minecraft mod that was eventually terminated. The biggest lesson I learned is that you have to work hard to achieve success - you can't just copy someone else's project.

But more importantly, I learned that success isn't just about the game itself - it's about the community you build. You need to talk with many people, research on YouTube, visit forums and groups. And never think you're the best in your field - there's always room to learn and improve.

Q: What's the most frustrating part about growing a game?

Mike: The most annoying thing is when you develop something for a long time and then see that nobody likes it. For example, in the beginning, we tried to make difficult levels and complex mechanics for users. But we discovered that people weren't interested in that - they wanted fun, and for them, fun meant having many different cars they could drive.

The landscape has changed too. Five years ago, it was hard to develop a game but easy to promote it. Now it's easy to develop a game but much harder to achieve marketing success.

Also, working within platform and OS policies can be frustrating because they can be updated at any time, and you have to adapt.

Q: What's your ultimate goal as a studio?

Mike: Our goal is to focus on many projects right now, because what people are interested in changes from year to year. I believe you should work on many projects and have the ability to learn fast and execute quickly.

Success for me would be when the studio can work like an organism - when it can be automated and work without me. Different departments should function independently. As for personal goals, I'd love to reach 100 million active users someday.

Q: Any advice for other mid-sized studios looking to grow their games?

Mike: Here's the most important thing: don't make a game that you like - make something that everyone will like. It's easy to make a game nowadays, but the challenge is understanding what players actually want, not what you think they want.

Do lots of research, play other games, follow forums and YouTube channels. And remember - the game development part might be easier now, but the marketing and finding your audience is much harder than it used to be.