An overview of the LATAM games market in 2016

[Music] yeah here we go hello everybody um so I've been in this room for a while now and you guys don't really talk first thing we do so please shake up move up you can come forward I smell nice I shower Brazilians shower twice a day so you can come closer if you want I don't want a feel lonely I recently moved to Stockholm and I know I'm gonna freeze so more people the better so that it doesn't go cold all right um and another thing you're one of my good friends the evangelist for default yeah Oh like over there he gave me some things like souvenirs to give to people the ask questions because I do want you guys to interact with me so you're gonna have to talk if you want freebies good stuff so

hello um I hope Google helped me out with these sentences because I actually don't even know how to pronounce but the hay and well why am I here in front of you talking about latin america i was born in Brazil Sao Paulo which is a quite big city do I have anybody here that has ever been to Brazil can you raise your hand all right I have very three intelligent people good job and I worked there most of my life of course but I have also moved to Mexico and I worked at a company called Square Enix over there did some publishing for the Latin American market and work with the Final Fantasy franchise as well then I kind of wanted to move around a little bit more so I moved to chili who is also in South America and worked the company there with console development alongside with Activision and Bethesda I'm not sure if you heard those names as well then I was a bit tired of the hot and

cool people and dancing skills I moved to Germany which doesn't have that but I worked there for a little bit with RPGs and mobile free to play and now I have joined King in Stockholm to do a little bit of the same so that's why I'm here because i've been working in three different countries i work with a lot of people i work with argentina so on so forth and to give you some insights about latin america where is exactly that what countries do we have so can you help me which countries do we have there please say Brazil first all right thank you guys Brazil yes any other countries you can remember Argentina what else bolivia okay okay more okay big one that Trump doesn't like Mexico okay so yeah Mexico we have Argentina we have chili we have Colombia we have Peru and we have many more like

Bolivia Guatemala so and so forth but I put the sixth over there because they are the most important markets in mobile games they actually the one that play the most consumed the most and access the internet the most which is super important right for us okay so that means that in Latin America we have these many people online they have access to the Internet they're they're basically daily and yeah they could be actually playing your product right now hopefully they're playing mind but it's a lot of people right it's a lot of people that have access to the Internet and if you think about it they can generate revenue I think on the panel early on I talked about they asked me ok what is it like you know there and publishing and everything and yes it's not as advanced as it is in Europe or as advanced as it is in North America because of infrastructure and technology but if you think about if these many

people are online today imagine tomorrow and the day after and the day after talk about certain numbers because I know that people like numbers right last year last year this is one ear this was the amount of money that revenue from gaming in South America so it feels like I've been a lot of money anybody interested in having that in your pocket nobody wants money you want money yeah meet you I would like to have a piece of that right what we can share it great yeah you buy me dinner then this is how many gamers we have in all platforms which I also think I mean from that number how many people are actually playing it it's like sounds considerable I also would like to have this number of people playing my game and from 2014 2 2015 there was a twenty percent increase in year-over-year and this data most of it i got from our beautiful friends and

new zoo so everything is open there a check it out there awesome i'm not they're not paying me for this but yeah they're awesome cool what i want to do is cuz i don't have that much time and i've been talking about latin america for some time now in different talks i want to give you some keywords specific i don't want to tell you how to bring your game to Latin America because frankly I left Brazil three years ago and I'm not the expert I'm learning with you guys but as from a person that's there and goes there constantly I want to share some keywords that might help you get what you need over there sounds good sounds good Thanks I wear contacts anyway so I can't really see if you guys are nodding alright first keyword payment methods so here's the fun fact right living in Germany I remember the day I arrived in Europe it was my first time in Europe ever last year I was like how I got him so fast I'm gonna live in Europe and I got there

and I sought the everything would be super technological and everything would be like you know credit cards Apple pay finally Apple pay no they use cash basically but when I moved to Stockholm yes everything on credit card i used to go to places that wouldn't take cash couldn't pay with the bill which is completely the opposite where I come from so if we talk about credit card not everybody has that of course more and more in cities like South Paulo cities like mexico city where the big chunk of population is they do have it but it taxes the interest and all drapes are insane so that's not the most common thing for people to use and that's super important if you're making games in which you will actually want to make money out of it do not solely base yourself on that if you only go with a credit card you are leaving a huge part of the population outside you're not even giving them the chance of spending money in your game and this is a portuguese word and it's called boleto

bancario and that means that is the biggest payment method in brazil it's like this you make a purchase you receive on your email or by mail this piece of paper with the code and then you go somewhere at the bank or some shops and then you pay for it and then you get your bonus or your items or everything later on this helps because a lot of people like I said don't have credit card and but they have money in their account and they want to be able to purchase and this is a cheaper way of doing it so if you ever want to go there research this term it can get you and it can help you broughton up your monetization you there all right exchange rate so here's something also funny and I learned that a lot so like I said I work with the Final Fantasy franchise have you played it yeesh I never finished one to say that but I worked with it and we were

studying at how to bring a final fantasy for to mobile Brazil right and as you know um Final Fantasy games are quite expensive in the app store I don't know if I ever looked at it it's not 199 or point 99 right but there was this problem why wasn't anybody Latin America buying the game what was wrong with it well if you multiply one dollar or one arrow to the cloaca currency it's not that cheap so you need to have a study on the exchange rate i'll actually what actually a dollar is worth there it's much more than a cup of coffee it's much more than so it's very expensive and what we did we try to run an experiment we lower the cost it said okay let's see how many can we sell leaving the game a little bit cheaper for this period of time and it doubled what we thought our predictions were doubled because it was actually then accessible it wasn't that expensive of course right if you think

about what do you want to play I want to buy something on my phone it's so expensive is it gonna be worse than am I gonna play no maybe I want to buy something for my console because piracy has gone down and now I actually preferred that so if you're bringing your app or for bringing in that purchases and things about their look at the exchange rate and the value of things because your game may not be making money because it's just too expensive fees and taxes yes and there's somebody asked it before you know you need to be aware yes there's a lot of taxes there's a lot of fees in Brazil they're not that many in Chile for instance and that's why there are some interesting companies over there like before that Bethesda was doing business when I was in Chile and they were we were developing together so you need to look at the different countries and see what's the difference between fees and taxes because maybe you want to publish in one area don't want to publish it now they want a soft launch you an area when they're doing another one cool cool Sabrina yay okay second thing

digital habits right and that's a very interesting thing because i had the i went back to brazil this year to visit family and I was used to going to the Metro in Stockholm or are in Germany or even like in London and people are on their phones and they're like checking their Facebook feed and then they instantly change to a mid court title or something like that or candy crush but most of the people were like playing heavily now Pokemon go everybody's doing that and then when I went back to Brazil I was like oh I wonder what they do right it's absolutely the same so first things first social media do you know which country it has more users online actively daily on facebook in the world yes good job otherwise I would never have asked discussion here come on guys yes Brazil actually very social Mexicans very social so they are constantly on

social media doesn't mean only Facebook means Instagram means Twitter mean snapchat I don't know if any of you has seen what Brazilians can't make things go viral very easily the Olympics I think it was a kind of a massive success online of course now we have more resources but the number of people talking about it it was great it was huge so that's one thing for you to think because the consequence of that is this social games we want to play together we want to play together and I thought it was great in the morning there was a panel about or somebody was talking about VR and they said oh yeah but if you put the VR is an isolation experience because then you're alone right I think for for us or at least for most of the Latin that would be a deal breaker we do want to send the extra life we need your troops and so on so forth so

if you need to look at social games doesn't mean they're casual but it means that you play together or even better against the pleasure of defeating an Argentinian there is no any argentineans here good because there's no price on that and I don't know if you have that but for us it's just delicious and let's talk about web and mobile so there's this thing in Brazil we have a lot of carriers and if you buy for carrier a for example you can make this plan in which you do not pay to send text messages or calls to that same carrier and vice versa right so what happens people have two phones or three phones because their work people have this carrier their friends have the other carrier and their crush have the other carrier so they actually have more than one phone which is crazy but

social media is more accessed by their phones than by the internet the by actually the computer you're sitting down a desktop however they play a lot of web games it's much easier for for latins to play a web then downloading everything because of piracy as well so it's really hard companies are closing down they do play on web sometimes during work guilty I work with this so i can and then Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is super important right now it's changing I've been to Mexico also and they have actually a lot of Wi-Fi hotspots and I was surprised i could spend a month my first months without a phone line yes visa issues but without a phone line and survive only with the Wi-Fi I didn't even have Wi-Fi at home but I could have it at every single cafe any starbucks or any other coffee in the place they have Wi-Fi and that's where most people will connect because data is

so expensive if you make a game that you need to be connected 24 7 that is gonna cost at the end and people are going to churn because it's super expensive it's gonna their data plan is going to go and they need to play on Wi-Fi that's why games like pokemon go go really viral and then there's a really a big journey happening at least in Latin America because they can't be connected all the time and you have to walk around and well I rather saved my data for my facebook or my whatsapp make sense all right you guys are actually talking I feel flattered thank you guys really okay localization which yeah should be obvious but it isn't so here's my experience does anybody know what this word means yeah okay you want to okay I'll talk about it so funny fact right I lived about a year and a half in Mexico when I was at square enix and because they had the office there and i really like tacos

and i learned how to speak spanish because it's all the same right very wrong i moved to cheel it so we're suit we're not talking about coming to Europe right I moved to Chile and I got there and you know I did one of the interviews in Spanish and I was super nervous and then I got there was like yeah no I can totally work in Spanish I didn't understand anything they were saying these is actually the same word it means like bro dude or something english is not my language uh but that's important because if you localize something and you bring from Spanish from Spain it could be a lot of things that they just will be like nah this is not for me even if you Mexican eyes your app or your game and you go to Argentina and Chile they will still say this is not for me that's why it's super important if you're targeting know your language know who you're talking to

please I don't speak Spanish I do because I lived there but I speak Portuguese and no it's not the same from Portuguese from Portugal I still have a hard time when they come and talk to me and then you know when you feel embarrassed that you don't understand and you're like him because we speak the same language but it's different if you bring your game localize you hire those big companies hell yeah we do all markets and you bring from Portuguese from Portugal you will lose a big chunk first because we will make fun of it but like you don't know what you're talking to second because it's not interesting and besides there's all the culture on it Latin America is so much more than beach soccer and women this is very offensive for us don't go there like this i don't even I didn't even live in a city with the beach believe it or not so taking consideration what are they talking what are they consuming what are they looking at it's the same movies

they're playing clash of clans they're playing clash Royale they are playing candy crush it's the same things but when a different approach much more social if you look at any charts you will see it could be a penny it could be anything you will see that apps that are most downloadable of course facebook spotify music is super important over there so look at the culture the way it is and then community um you go guys know League of Legends you get her get a present yeah so do you know how many people actually go to the stadium in Brazil to see the tournament hundreds oh it's hundreds of thousands it's like it's like a you know there's a big stadium called Maracana that's in Rio that's where the world cup final was in they do it there so you have an idea and it's all about the sense of

community if you create your facebook page and you talk to them they will reply if you have your Twitter they will talk to you because that's what they want they want to feel connected it's all about social getting more people maybe the next stock must be very interesting okay so um I want to open up for questions because I have things and I want to say kiitos is that it kiitos yes cool and so please questions clap maybe [Applause] sorry I'm Brazilian I've just so much enjoyed this culture clash I could watch this for hours but um no it's cool so do you have have questions come on have a question you've got fish she's got things to give out here this is christian you have a comment

yeah all right so sure okay so you went to the Brazilians will it be social and the AR headsets really kind of disengaged that social aspect yeah but do you not find that when your eyes are on your page on your phone anyway you're kind of engaged in that handset so putting a headset on and being immersed in the actual game is just the same as bending your head down and looking down at your phone so it doesn't your take I'm I'm not defending it on no ya go I'm just wanted to kind of question it is still social you know in my yeah i think a depends on the game right if i put a headset and I playing by myself or am I playing by myself on my phone doesn't really matter but it depends how what your game does if you put a headset on and you're playing something with other people that's brilliant that's it and besides there's a lot of people using a VR in Brazil there's a there's a big community they actually have a conference happening

right now free for all entrance of VR in Sao Paulo and it's amazing because it's a super huge trend however a will churn if it's not that Social Committee social inside the game yeah and that makes one recent ruling it you know yeah so that makes me that's perfect what I'm saying is single player games might not make as much money as cooperative or multiplayer games thank you no problem cool one more question this is gifts it's very quick I like it yeah yeah you know the train all the audience and in Latin America of the countries that you've lived in and worked in yeah how acceptable is it for adult population to play games very acceptable so this morning I gave an example my dad is I'm not gonna say his age but my dad cuz then reveals mine he's a huge game addict he plays more to me right literally more to me my mom plays a lot as well different games but it the

amount of people that actually I know this but I the amount of people to actually place candy crush over there it's huge and they're all over let's say older population and it's a huge market it's a huge one so we learned those that men in their mid-40s play play games us cool okay um if you wanna get more cool stuff I'll happen I thought I'd does your wife right I'm what I've read sabrine will be the outside answer questions and should be very bubbly and and electro but beer later time will go a bit later so thank you very much screen that's brilliant [Applause] [Music] you