Africa: The Next Frontier in Mobile Gaming - Mahmoud El-Azzeh, Carry1st.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] so next up we have Mahmoud Eliza and she's going to be talking about Africa the next Frontier in Mobile gaming so yeah give a big round of applause I'll take it [Applause] okay well first of all thank you all for uh attending today appreciate you coming to my talk so I wanted to start with a little bit about myself uh so me I'm a mood as you just said I've been doing product management for 15 years I've been doing it so long it wasn't even called product management back then it was called something else I previously worked for

companies like the Zone which is a sports streaming company and ESL Facebook group so I've spent a little time in the sort of Esports space as well I'm based in London and currently I'm playing Marvel slap Marvel snap sorry and Mancala Adventures so today I'm here to talk to you about uh the African games industry of course and one thing that I think most of you probably know already is that games are a really big business of course uh generally speaking when we compare it to Industries like uh TV movies music combined games is bigger than that I think what's also interesting as well is if you look at the demographics of the users or players we should say um is strongly female actually I was in a talk earlier today where they're talking about diversity of players and it's important to recognize and acknowledge that but with Africa what you might not know is uh now it's positioned to be a major player in the mobile game space in fact

what we have at the moment I think there's some animations here nope no animations okay let's go back it's weird the images didn't come up that's okay I'm gonna keep going it has over a billion people uh under the age of 40 and some of the fastest growing uh economies as far as mobile game is concerned so even if you look at the numbers here 1.1 billion million uh 1.1 billion Millennials and gen Z we're talking about 300 million plus mobile Gamers again you compare that to other regions like Europe or North America that's huge uh and um the next slide is really interesting because what it tells you about is um what is the monetization potential actually so when you combine all of these factors together what you're seeing is a demand for content in this this data was taken from well it's not called Apple anymore so apologies uh only tracks for African countries and all four of them featuring the top seven fastest growing GEOS by installs over

the last 12 months and they're the African which is which is crazy um and when you look at monetization WISE compare it to countries like India and Pakistan actually it's outperforming them so certainly if you look at the projections here we're talking about 3.1 X growth between 2015 to 2024 I'm talking about 7.3 X growth as far as revenue is concerned between those similar years is also something else um we've seen this story before uh actually it's got a lot of comparison I think a lot of similarities to Southeast Asia back in the 2010s um generally speaking what we're doing is we're taking the the Pareto law the 80 20 law we're looking at the top eight countries in the African continent and when you compare it with sea very very similar population similar the combined GDP is similar except the smartphone penetration is better so that's something to be aware of and also there's more access to things like bank accounts and alternative payments where

generally speaking we're talking about low penetration as far as card is concerned so again very similar challenges that we saw over a decade ago it's happened again so that means we should know how to solve it right what does that also mean in terms of our futures that of course uh we we know how southeast Asia is today in terms of the revenues we're talking about you know one of the biggest markets of course and that in theory bodes well for Africa if we follow the same Journey atex our market today there you go there's the animation um however when it comes to Africa things that you should know about are there are some challenges of course and these are the challenges that I wanted to talk about today to share with you and sort of give our perspective certainly from a technical point of view um there are device constraints of course and tend not to have the latest mobile phone models although you know speaking to African Gamers specifically that doesn't stop them from playing AAA Mobile game titles at all doesn't stop them

um slow connections again depending on your region is is an interesting issue but generally they find ways round of it around it and there may be a data sensitivity um thing to consider as well but again generally speaking as I mentioned earlier the the right strategy is just go after the the top eight that's where you're going to get majority of your uh of your uh bang for your buck from and lastly I think a big challenge is about inaccessible payments so if you're familiar with app stores and the kind of payment methods they offer of course that doesn't really match up with our player demographic so it's not a lack of willingness to pay it's the lack of ability to pay that's something completely different another thing I think that's worth calling out is the median game file size so there is a let's say historic concern when it comes to mobile game studio is about how big can my game be in order to be successful the reality is um you know of course the what the chart is telling you is that it's trending upwards and this is data that only goes up to 2020 so of course it's going to be going higher than that but the communities that we formed at carry first

specifically um as I said they're they're called M players they're uh pubg mobile players they're not they're not actually prevented from playing these games they're finding ways I think also as far as mobile data coverage is concerned I think this is interesting to know despite what most people think Africa generally has access to Internet and data so they do play online with their friends this does happen and as I mentioned they're able to play some of those AAA Mobile games um but you know it's it's only going to get better in the next five to ten years so that's why it makes sense to really look at this region I've been in a couple of talks today where they're talking about how do we find new revenue streams how do we find ways to expand our player base well this is a great place to look one thing I also thought would be interesting to share is use a sentiment so um we I picked two different slices here on the left side was a few reactions to uh Call of Duty mobile launching servers in South Africa and I think the things to pick out here which are really interesting so there are

certainly positive uh responses to that you know the players are happy to see that they're being recognized but there's also frustration there's one user in particular who says why is there no menu server for example there's also talk about why just South Africa and not for example Nigeria or Ghana where you have these really uh passionate uh Gamers there uh we also asked our own gamer communities about how they felt do they feel acknowledged by the games industry do they feel seen and the general feeling is not um and the funny thing is it's not that it would take that much to feel that way just a little bit more a little bit more of an effort a little bit more acknowledgment a little bit more feet on the ground we'd say uh so yeah that's that's really interesting it's something to to be aware of so in terms of uh advice and what I would offer to you and certainly come and speak to me I'm floating around tonight so feel free to stop me um there is potential there there is opportunity there find and engage your

African gaming communities listen to them um because they're a lot they are exactly the same as Gamers all around the world they have the same needs and same desires you've got to understand what their friction points are so it really depends for example it could be content that they want they want more specific content for their region it could be payments is the specific friction so they're the contents there but they can't pay for it again not because of a lack of willingness to spider lack of accessibility to and then there's generally is your game even there in a localized version for example yeah do you have servers there that's something to consider uh one thing that we found very effective is hosting events locally so we had uh we had a couple of uh events gamer focused events this year called thirsty uh first of all I should say and uh that was great to meet The Gamers and really listen to them and uh hear what what's on their mind about you know how we can change the games industry and prove them another piece of advice leverage Partners who have feet on the ground who

have know-how who have Insight they can provide to you and uh one thing also I think is really important is don't be late to the party start the work now and you know it'll pay dividends so let me tell you about my company so uh Carey first um is uh basically Africa's leading publisher mobile games um we believe that Africa is certainly the next Frontier for for growth as far as mobile game developers and Publishers are concerned and we partner with some of the biggest Publishers in the world um as a full Stack mobile publisher we activate along three key pillars for our partners that's user acquisition monetization and live Ops and Community when it comes to UA we're managing and funding localized UA campaigns that resonate with the audience and we leveraging our knowledge of Gamers to really set things that will that will work monetization wise again a lot of players don't have access to the typical payment rails that you get from App Stores so we

find a way to to solve that by providing our API payment Gateway that offers uh hundreds of local payment methods and uh certainly uh integration support whether that's for you your own store for example or for even our own carry first store as well and then lastly we certainly provide liveops and Community Support too I just want to say good excuse me sorry uh sorry one second hello hi could you decrease the text size on the thanks so when we work with Partners we usually go one of two routes one is full stack publishing and the whole package covers everything on the prior slide that I mentioned before and pay first which is just monetization so if you're looking to just have the payment rails there so that you're giving African Gamers the actual accessibility to purchase content then we can effectively do that for you

and what we've seen several times before is we've 3x if not 5xed revenues uh when you publish in Africa with us here's a snapshot of some of the partners and projects that we've worked on um I think you know I won't cover it all in too much detail feel free to take a picture if you like but some of the more interesting stories certainly we partnered with Call of Duty mobile and we were very successful there we seven next their active users um which is the highest in the history of the game uh we also have our own tribe Community which has about 400 000 African gamers in there uh and that's growing all the time and very recently you might have seen in sort of games industry news articles we published with uh sorry we've partnered with Riot to launch local servers in South Africa for valorent which is very very exciting we've seen a lot of positive uh response on social media and

certainly that's not the end of it we will be doing further Integrations with their shop so that will be allowing their African Gamers to purchase their content using our payment rails and yeah I'm ending a little early I think I don't know if that animation is going to come up there we go okay so that's the end of my talk thank you so much for uh attending today appreciate your time thank you [Applause] right I think we've got time for questions so uh but thank you very much for that talk really appreciate it uh does anyone have any questions otherwise I'm gonna have to ask um I had a question about uh so say mobile game ad Revenue so is that a good opportunity in Africa and how does that compare to perhaps in-app purchases for example yeah it's a it's a good question I think as far as uh ad revenue is concerned um it really depends on on the

I'd say the country probably is one of the things to look at um generally speaking from my experience I don't know if there's a lot of conversion there compared to in-app purchases um The Gamers I've talked to care more about buying content rather than ads per se which again may surprise some people in the room um but it's not to say you shouldn't have a admin strategy I mean you should as a supplementary thing I still think it's just like every other cool gamer mobile Gamers you monetize through IAP uh oh we do have a question uh sorry if I missed you before about that we just don't know about because they haven't like gotten into the European market uh there are a few uh I I can't uh recall them off the top of my head uh at the moment I would say it's not as big

as other markets I think that's still a very um early stage area as far as games industry is concerned for Africa there's only I think I would say a handful of Studios right now but um yeah every week I'm reading news articles about new ones popping up um and I'm certainly I even saw one earlier today so yeah I would say it's again watch this space it's yeah not a lack of willingness it's again accessibility is part of the challenge any other questions I guess one another quick one is I guess kind of following on to that are we seeing kind of a lot of investment about like government level into into the local games industry so obviously that's individual countries doing that but are we seeing more of that happening is it being taken more seriously or is there work to do there yeah again um not trying to fly the flag too much for my company but um yeah if you look at some of the partner deals that Carrie first is signing and I have you know

eyes on the ones coming up very shortly uh yeah you can see all of the major games Publishers are looking at Africa's like the next big opportunity really so it's a matter of you know one of the points I mentioned there is don't be late to the party um they've already figured that out so yeah it's a matter of join us and we'll help you if you want uh uh but yeah it's definitely moving in that direction okay great and I think yeah there's no more then I think we're done for that so again thank you very much a big round of applause thank you everybody [Applause] foreign