An indie survival guide to self-publishing in the mobile free-to-play world

[Music] sorry about that so to get started who am i a first I've been dating for more than 12 years I started out in town gaming the relations and business development also involved marketing campaigns gratitude therefore gain event was the head of derp elations at the moment for congregate the box presence of arcade games USA also a free-to-play games publisher on mobile and browser I worked on many hits mobile free-to-play games on such as quota heroes podcast and Game of Thrones ascent and now I founded DC games Consulting LLC which is a boutique consulting consulting consultancy helping developers and publishers by providing publishing services such as publishing strategies IP licensing business development app store featuring and so forth so install

by laying kind of groundwork and give summary of the mobile landscape as many of you know free-to-play is the dominant business model on mobile with every player gets dominating the top grossing charts and these are usually dominated by big companies also and there's very little movement you know now then compared to a few years ago and there's more movement and less incumbency and also mobile users acquisition cost keep on increasing this is the latest chart from pictures did mine demand-side platform index which showing that iOS it's the highest I've ever been surpassing seven and a half dollars as of April this year well for Android it has come down but you know it's still you know pretty high and when you know your cost born starter CPI is so so high it makes the third-party publishing model really challenging because if

you're splitting revenue between a developer and a publisher you know it's hard to do profitable user acquisition at scale and in the case of the publish doing a recoupable marketing in which are deducting marketing costs before revenue share this sometimes means that the developer is getting little-to-no revenue share because it takes a while for the game to recoup the cost of marketing sometimes or months as we all know absolute featuring is the holy grail you know we all want to get them and they can be incredibly powerful note here are some of the apps or features that we see when I was responsible for apps or featuring or apps or relations at congregate and arcade games now they range from small to medium to large type of features and in general some of the numbers that you associate with these are if you have a minor feature you're

going to be installed in the tens of thousands - feature being towards the end of new games we love best new games and new + updated games medium sized features you're going to see organic traffic in the low six figures that's nurtured in the middle of the pack and then a major feature if you're near one of the top four five slots then you're going to see in the mid six figures if you have a big banner or a dress choice and they've been high six figures or even breaking to seven figures there's a big range here depending on how many countries you get featured in what languages your local life in how good your icon screenshots and so forth are and all the k-factor of your game how viral your game is but in general I'll say these are the ranges a whole troop of this type of featuring elite in my experience you know when I was a congregated I managed to get 15 out of 16 games featured and at our to 6 out of 6 so in general these numbers held true for

those features well everyone want to get an apps or feature it is incredibly hard to get them and here's some numbers to show you how to paint a picture so there are more than three milling apps and the iOS App Store right now and almost 800,000 of them are games and they're more than 3000 games coming out each week and this number changes throughout the European Cupid definitely see way more games coming out because that's when everyone's launched their game in time for Christmas but they're only about 16 slots to promote new games by the App Store so it's definitely a very very small percentage so even if your game is good is you know you're talking to the App Store they may not necessarily feature you even though everyone thinks that they have a good shop because it is just so much competition so now that we have talked about the mobile landscape and how challenging it is you know let's

talk about the postal concepts of publishing versus publishing and you know if you're making a game now what are some of the questions you should be asking yourself and asking your publisher so to sort of you know in general publisher can help you by letting you focus on the game development solve or they hand all the distribution and publishing responsibilities so typically what a publisher can do for you is the following now all can do this but this is a list of the general or give so they can handle marketing creatives this is not just for us but also for the app store page so you know icon screenshots video trailers video ads keywords for ASO and also a/b test them pages acquisition of course after relations and featuring for launch and updates PR media outreach through expertise and analytics customer service

and committee management folks in your QA testing localization and localization QA which is q it specifically for localization and this is very important for some developers know if you need it some developers or some publishers can also provide tip about plans or advances on royalty so you can finish the game not all developers do this but some do and then also marking guarantees and then lastly licensing IP or branch use within your day I'm going to give people a couple seconds take pictures I'll be happy to send out the this presentation for people that are interested so you know you don't have to take a picture of B slide so if you know you spent a lot of time you know money sweat and tears making a game and you're talking to a

publisher or multiple publishers on about publishing what are some of the questions you should be asking the publishers so to battle your publisher first of all all your goals and interests align for example if you are very much against offer walls but your publishers sees a great deal of the revenue come from opera walls that's something you guys need to discuss and get aligned as we can get on the same page before you decide to work together rather to find out way down the line are they putting some skin behind the game no you have taken a time to develop this game are they also investing in the game assuming that risk with some of the stuff that we measure before development funds marketing guarantees and so forth is there potential for a long-term partnership this can be in a form of publishing more than one game strategic investments or acquisitions do they have a track record of success when it comes to mobile crew to play games do they have the right a culture a track record

that leads to repeat what I call repeated developers or repeat customers developers coming back pub to publish a second or third game with them that's a very good sign of a strong publisher that cares about the developers and forms long-term partnerships do they have the right talent and specifically who will be working in your game as the producer at the project manager as the marketing person do the Hat 1st and 3rd party games this is a very important question to ask because you know if you have a publisher with first party games in which they get 100% of revenue and then a third party game in which they only get 50% of revenue there might be a conflict of interest when it comes to you know allocating resources and people lastly is are their audience and portfolio good fit for your game if all they have ever done is capital gains and their audience is female then your midco

hard core fantasy sci-fi games probably not going to a good fit for them and if you want to sell publish some of the question students should be asking yourself for example what are the goals that you have with your game on your studio so there's your tent is your team understand free-to-play do you know how to develop a soft launch global launch either raids and do this requisition for a free-to-play game give the right talent for that do you have enough capital to do that especially because soft launch for free-to-play game from more complex economies takes longer than people usually think also do you plan on doing you way for your game if you're not planning to do your the game or your game is on the more casual side with very little monta ssin then it's one it's something that publishers are generally not interested in as much and

to something that won't have high enough LTV to do user acquisition in the first place so without user acquisition you know a lot of the benefits that a publisher brings are severely you know lessened so in general a quick chart of the pros and cons if they're self-publishing you're keeping 100% of the net revenue and 100% of control but you have to do everything yourself if you go a publisher you're giving up revenue share and control you're more chefs in the kitchen but then you have a partner hopefully a good long-term partner that will complement or augment your existing capabilities and resources so now that we've covered the pros and cons of self-publishing versus going to a publisher let's assume you are going to self publish and what are some of the best practices or publishing a game so this won't be a comprehensive less than

equivalent art all by itself but I just quickly go through some best practices so when you first do a soft launch of you want to choose carefully what countries you launch in and the Royal schedule typically the regions that we see soft watches are in Southeast Asia because you know these countries you can see very very low CPI is less than $1 in which you can get very large number of installs relatively quickly and cheaply this is because countries like Indonesia have a population of 250 million people and are the fourth largest country by population so there are a lot of people there that use phones that remain computing device when your cell phone sure it's best for stability and compatibility testing because special lower end devices which dominate in these countries it is not for a be testing or getting a good measure of your metrics because you know the users are going to throw off the numbers there

your lower quality that don't tend to monetize very well or at all and then we have the Scandinavian countries so these are the countries that have kind of replaced the traditional Canada Australia New Zealand countries because the players for the most part speak English and resemble you know Canadian US and Australian players are much cheaper to acquire compared to you know the candidate Canadians feeling players so it's a good good for AV testing in game features you're optimizing your game and so forth also your marketing creatives and app store page creatives like your icons and so forth and then lastly we have Canadian Canada Australia New Zealand which everyone knows resembles us players the most are all also the most expensive and when you soft-launched you want to make sure that you're a/b testing and

optimizing in-game features or tutorial first-time user experience to make sure it's a good strong bundle and player onboarding experience when the test your in-game analytics and app ACTRA bution platforms if you have them integrated an a/b test or App Store page and marketing creatives like icon app name subtitle screenshots videos copy keywords now that what talked about that on the job into some best practices for improving retention in your game so this will be a very quick list just because this could be an entire presentation by itself also so when it comes to improving retention in the short term your first few sessions and first few days the mechanics and features that we see help improve retention typically our daily logging rewards or monthly check-in calendar like we see here from capped items to quest systems minigames

or looking wheel that spin every day or a few hours delete events and challenges and daily limit the time events so these are events occur during a time in the days for example every day 6 to 7 p.m. you have double XE power hour these are best to schedule during times when people are most likely to play and have downtime so during lunch time and also right after work when people may be on the bus community or just getting home I want to relax and they prolong the term retention we have achievements and rewards multiple futures PvP co-op so for clients in particular leaderboards limit time events seasonal events and also features that are specifically for other players they're unlocked later on now that we'll talk about retention let's talk about monetization really quickly as well so

the most important screen for monetization is your shop so you want to make sure that you have a very clean and polished UI for the shop for the hard currency screen make sure you have all items viewable and what single page without the need for scrolling this makes it easier for people to compare packages and do comparative shopping you're going to clearly call all the bonuses for the bigger packages that instead of license pipe your packages and call the most popular and best bills and lastly if you have a more complex economy which we have a lot of different items and consumables heroes armor and so for you can break number break them up into different categories and tabs here a couple screenshots on the left is from agario the bite is craft club which are very clean UI and this is going to be a lot of text but usually when you are talking about increasing bio conversion and average revenue per paying user here are some of

the mechanic services that can help drive this of course first-time buyer packages additional bundles after the first purchase target offers based on user behavior the time limit offers a bundled and IP specifically tied to events and holidays our currency their leaders and subscriptions which I will explain later on and then items participants pacifically for older players and as always you want to make sure you're a beep espies to determine the best pricing but time to introduce them compare one bundle or just another and see what leads to note - version allows a RPP you so if we deploy we all know that minimizing friction will increase retention moderation and here's a real world of non-gaming example in which you know makes it easier for people to calculate the total for at a restaurant

so how do you do this in a game so you dealt with a shop or buyer tutorial so start out by giving the players some hard currency when they begin playing the game and then take them to the shop walk them through a purchase a pre introductory purchase and then like that the players understand the process of purchasing know where the shop is and then understand the benefits of buying so it's kind of like getting free samples at Costco if you like that you'll go back for more here's an example from the game almost a hero which is a clicker game and in the first screen you when you reach stage 21 your Lockhard currency then mr. tutorial here tells you that your unlock gems and you'll show you where to spend them so he takes you to the shop or you can get a free chest and then you get some great loot out of that and I'll mention hard currency subscriptions or degree trips before this is when players spend and exit no

in this example seven dollars for no basically one time earning of 500 gems and then 70 gems or everyday after that for a total of you know six to eight hundred which is a substantial discount this is a good monetization mechanic because one it could potentially help increase retention since people have reasons to come back every day and then it converts them because you're offering a good discount for purchasing there's also gamifying the buying experience with Chinese fellow VIP buyers system so it's when players spending the game the earn points at the earn points they unlock peers with peers higher tiers come better perks and rewards so it's kind of think about the hotel airline casino VIP systems kind of modeled after that there's one big risk here is that no in main menu look like a greedy

developer that has a pay to one game so it's not for everyone and also its most suited for games more deeper at complex economies quick tip about notifications don't ask players to opt-in for notifications when you first launch the app instead after later in the first or second session especially when you introduce some sort of mechanic in which will be valuable friend to be notified so if you get we're giving out free chat for pre-glued after four hours you know that's when you can ask them so in this example from Trailer Park Boys you get breached up every four hours so they say you know if you want to be notified you know you can and then you can open there and then you can usually see higher rate of people up in here and here we have another example from Wiz Khalifa sweet forum to games have been playing a lot in which there's a countdown and then you can tell the

game to notify you we're out by opening for notifications when the timer runs out so then lastly add mala Titian this is something I helped a lot of my developers with bushwalk because it could be a substantial amount of revenue consider adding your water video to increase your LTV this is especially good for for games with high retention but low moderation so you're going to integrate a mediation platform multiple ad networks have a lot of flexibility and then negotiate better deals with them when you're integrating ads especially reward videos integrate them into the game play into the actual core loop a regularly repeating screen so there it shows up there is good prominence surfacing and have multiple placements as well offer meaningful meaningful rewards be careful not to offer rewards are too meaningful or that could cannibalize your in-app purchases

one way to do that is you can offer something that can only be received through watching an ad like this example here from office space either profits or incorporate adding a new content or linear time events limited pre-caching or videos of some ad networks when their SDKs are initialized precache videos and there's some that can precast like 10 to 12 videos so if your players playing the game where the error it's going to really eat up their data allowance avoid long ads on your pickup no paper add fur or dark 15 to 30 seconds long and avoid at that ask the user to answer a question before they see an ad and that's it [Music]