Azur Games' Head of Publishing Sergey Marcinkiewicz on Vietnamese Mobile Gaming Ecosystem

Hello everyone. We are here at Think Games at Google Apps Summit and we are now here with Sergey Martin Kevich from Azor games head of publishing. We will talk about lots of good things and we start with very easy questions. Why are you here Sergey? I'm here to share our experience working with Google ecosystem to find publishing opportunities and strategic partnership opportunities with representatives of Vietnamese market. We see that the Vietnamese market is growing. We love it. We have so many wonderful games from there and a lot of opportunities to explore. That's why like I do combination of things. Uh
yeah, sounds cool. And you know like we actually here everywhere after Turkey and China Vietnamese mobile gaming scene has been booming. What is your take beyond that like uh what is unique? We

can go for genre studios you go for it.
I would say the pace of development you said booming. I would add rapidly booming even [laughter] rapidly. No, the unique input of developers in puzzle genre is amazing. I mean, what Vietnamese developers built in the genre, they actually created the whole new niche that all the other world try to fit right now. But it is already uh not taken fully, but it was initiated there. And uh now it's funny to see how all the rest of the world trying to fit the market and now they try to copy uh games that were originally created here. It is amazing because the production value of these titles, the pace of development of these titles absolutely astonishing. It is amazing.

Yeah. So true actually. you know like it's like last year we were telling Vietnamese is seen as you know emerging market and then it evolved into big emerging market and it's happening right now and uh it's also like cool to see that you are closely working with all of them and I actually would like to also talk about you know why you are here from the Google aspect too like especially here we hear a lot about Google ads like ad mob what is your take on that
we are right now testing uh products all together within Google ecosystem I mean uh ad mo mediation plus Google ad site we have some cool success stories that I'm going to speak about today
and uh like we are partners of Google and we explore new opportunities together so yeah from this perspective of you I'm because of that things to share our experience when working on wellestablished marketing pipeline games within new for us uh Google ads

ecosystem. Yeah.
Yeah. Well uh I would also like to you know kind of leverage it to global mobile gaming scene because like we even don't need to question how big how great other games is doing. But uh the question would be you are partnering up with like Vietnamese Turkish uh lots of studios. So what would be your takeaway the learnings from this year and even leveraging it to next year? What is happening globally?
Globally happening shift in game production. No more simple prototypes because all the markets oversaturated the genres and I see wonderful as for me shift and making the games uh much more difficult uh richer deeper. I mean we see how often uh developers in mobile inspired by PC games and we see more and

more rog light tower defense survival arenas a lot of titles inspired by PC titles and uh uh actually there are some cool games uh by Vietnamese developers. For example, it was a title called Thronefall from PC. And there is a Vietnamese studio that made a very wonderful title, Nightfall or Night Attack. Sorry, maybe I don't remember it correctly. To tell the truth, it is inspired so hard by PC title. Actually, I love more mobile version than PC. It is crazy. And vice versa, I see how for example recent hit on Steam game called Bald Pit. It is actually pinball
that was made by Abby long ago and this is literally pinball. I mean
I love how the games in mobile becoming uh deeper and richer. Yeah, it's all about the challenges as well. The development now takes uh so much time.

User acquisition takes as well uh more time and uh ROS optimization now less than 3 months you will never see it. uh like you have to go deep with the content delivery with mechanics progression because you have to target people that will play your game more than 3 months. It is the difference uh that we have to deal with in comparison with what was on the market 5 years ago for example
100% hyper casual golden era isn't gold anymore. Many people from like small mid studios even also new uh indie developers are also watching this. Ozo games is a big publisher. What would be your advice or anything that you would like to share with them?
Main advice production value. Production value your point of growth is to do better than other can do. It is like quite simple thing but at the same time

it needs you to go so deep into development and to create something unique to think about user experience first like think not instead of player but about the player about his uh experience why he shall play your game. This question now is very actual. 5 years ago it was not so actual because user acquisition was very easy. Now it's more difficult. And now the more unique things you have, even if you take well-known mechanics, please try to add at least something unique. Even if it's crazy, you will have more chances. And yeah, build prototype that already can be called game. Unfortunately, it will take few more months, but chances will increase as well.
So, which means uh you are not paying 10,000 prototype fee for random runner game developed in one day, right?
Yeah, sure. No more things [laughter] like that unfortunately. But uh there

are new models appearing on the market. The market uh is adapting, evolving and more strategic partnerships appear. try to stay positive about the way you make games, about the way you talk to publishers and uh everything will be all right. Thanks a lot. Today we hosted Sergey Martin Kevich from Azour Games, head of publishing. He actually replies to LinkedIn messages. So definitely try go ahead. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thanks Google.