Chinese mobile gamers want pay-to-win says localisation expert

good afternoon everyone it is a great pleasure to be here at pocket gmer actually this is my first time to be here and I learned many things already and visited great companies like super saan and Ros ravio and also met some great people and great teams here and you know just very happy to here to be here and um and we also plan to be uh to have Handover for tomorrow morning so it is actually one of the best event that I've attended uh my name is Jenny Chen I'm from spal gum um it is a publishing partner based in San Francisco and we are focusing on finding Western games for China Market uh uh we know a little bit about game design and development and we do spend most of time studying China market and think about how can we help our partners to be successful in China and what types of game will be popular next what's the trends and how to uh help an already popular game to be more profitable in China um they're happy to

be here to share a few things about China and I think uh William did a great job sharing those great datas about China and I think most of the data that I'm going to go cover Through have a a slight difference because all the data sources are um all over the places so I apologize for that first and hopefully the information I'm going to share with you guys is going to be very helpful forward this one well oops well I'm a game lover and my favorite game game is my sweep sweeper and maybe someone can turn this game into a mobile game um two years ago very few Western developers had interest in China um is um you know simply because it is small and today we are become the number three in terms of Revenue by Apple and we are about to be the number two uh with $3 billion doll revenue for for for this year and today we have 300 million to 700 million smartphone users um that the

the Gap is based between um a US data source versus Chinese data source so um it's a big gap and we don't know who to believe um however both data source agreed that 92% of the smartphone users play games so that's a good news so on average we have more than 100 new games um coming up on the market on monthly basis so it has become a very crowded market so China today is a very um sweet spot of massive growing stage so with a three billion market cap uh expected for 2014 there is a 175% increase compared to last year so roughly 30% coming from the iOS and six 70% coming from Android and it's exact it's almost exactly opposite from the US Market Western Market versus IOS and Android maybe because we are on the upper side of the globe

um as we all know 3 billion is highly fragmented into um U between IOS and Android um uh William already shared this data so I'm going to sort of quickly bypass through it so the other 50% 1 billion Market are mainly from uh 200 different fragmented Android channels and some of the CH those channels are U mainly u based in um tier three and tier four cities so some um we will say that um some of um those uh platforms are consolidating through um merg and Acquisitions and the other um 50% is difficult to consolidate because geographically it's also spread out and every different uh little different channels have their own uh target audience so therefore it is equally important to cover those areas which is the lower um 50% 1 billion Market there um today um um according to the

data I found on the on the inter internet 60% of income come uh 60% income for mobile games comes from tier one and tier 2 cities and 40% come from tier three and tier four cities and uh half of those users use mobile carriers to download and play games half of them uh use Wi-Fi so mobile service mobile carrier service is more expensive in China than compared to Western World so the size of the game is quite critical because if the download size is too big you you know it might be too expensive for some users to download um so but with 4G coming up soon um you know we are of course that the high-end Market is expected to um to um to have um you know um higher quality games you in terms gameplay and quality and also um special effects and Etc and uh so um new Innovative game plays or more hot craw I think will be very important for uh those high-end Market

um some very simple data so average of 2 to% 2 to 3% of user actually pay for the game and the average monthly spent is about $38 to $40 so um those are some of the games that we listed you know uh make make the most money you know from hardcores and mcores and also um casual games I think those titles are very familiar so I'm not going to go through details um there's uh talking data um uh analyzing last year 70% of the all mobile games Revenue were drived from uh card battling RPG and mm RPG games um and the the rest comes from uh casual games and um the others

um so in general you know that's pretty much all the good great news about Chinese market it's huge and with a lot of opportunities and next I'm not I'm going to talk about a little bit about not so good news um first of all in China you need a permit to um almost for everything so mobile game will be highly regulated in the near future and the government is already still asking for um profitable companies to apply for permits and uh localization you know I think um a lot of the um the speakers before me already shared you know how difficult it could be you know um typically Chinese um players um would prefer pay to win so if they have paid and still haven't win the game I think it will be a big problem for them um you know aside from that and also I think Asians have uh different uh color uh recognation system than Western peoples cuz our eyes are brown so most Asian game popular Asian games that you guys see have has like higher you know color

concentrations and stuff and Etc so localization could be a little bit challenging um Payment Solutions we do have lot of Payment Solutions you know um aside from PayPal online banking and prepaid and such we also have payment through carriers um I think it's easy to imagine because we have very highly fragmented um androy Market um the next problem that we going to you know run are you're going to run into is probably copyright it's probably one of the best problem you're going to run into because at least your game is popular um with um two uh 1.35 billion population is that right and in um I 30 40 uh different provinces and uh Province and uh hundreds of city um I think it is it it it could be quite difficult to do um you know marketing events especially live

Ops you know it needs to be quite frequent and relatively to Chinese holidays to be able to have effective marketing plan marketings um customer service um I've never done customer service myself but IM imagine like hundred thousands of daily active users you know it it should not be too easy and must be a lot of fun um uh well Billings you know based on many Payment Solutions you know SDK is probably one of the easiest problems to solve um but collecting money sometimes could be pay in the ass you know sometimes it will take few months and certainly we don't want people to take advantage of that so um given all those issues here um I'm not here to discourage you but to address um that China has many great opportunities and it is not very difficult to fit into the market if you find the right

partner um so what are the key factors to be successful in China and um if you're successful already elsewhere and how to continue the successful experience in China and um um it's a very good question that been asking for myself and also asking my partners and um um yeah you know for us you know um it's been you know we've been struggling and discuss about this because there are hundreds of great looking fun play to game and great great games um in the Western Market and only very few of them are actually successful in making money in China so um you know there's a lot of case studies that we we went debate and you know um against each other in my teams and talk about you know what are the um the ones that's more successful than the others is it a localization is

it the game itself you know there are games that's been very successful in China with very minimum localizations I think we all know what are those games and there are games that you we we did massive localizations you know aside from the logo there's nothing about the game is same for for the China market so um you probably have the same questions as we do and of course I can't give the answer so easily but I'm going to share um um a story that what we did in China f for our uh developers here in Finland so it's um The Angry Birds um story you know we are we have been very fortunate to work with ravio um given that we were chosen among other 200 Publishers in China and uh ravio as we all know did self-publishing globally and we are their own um the only uh partner um in China publishing their games on Android Bas uh on Android

platform um so um uh what we did for for them aside from uh we help their team localize the game uh we sent our team actually to Finland to help them to uh to localize the game um from premium to almost freet to-play game and given that we have a proven track record of um past experience working with uh zombies um for the past two years and uh things we are a public company so we have the Vantage being transparent and also we are not a platform or um uh a um you know bind it with any channel so we are in neutral in Mobile in different mobile channels and uh we um cross marketing uh to promote the birds um with a number one uh TV show where you can see um on the screen um this uh last year

and uh uh I think what we achieved is um is is quite good because the one of the main reason for RV to come work with us because they they don't have problem with number of downloads um but um not as the the the earning is not as expected so um um having partner with us uh we have achieved um 100 million downloads on the first month relaunched this game and one single Day promotion downloads was 14 million and right now on average it's about 1.7 million to two 2 million a month and uh we did this for birds and uh we also helped um pop cap with planet with zombie uh one and two um in China so for zombies um I don't think I have the slides here because we are in Finland but the the result is quite um impressive we have 15 months continual

growth for the game and um um you know if I remember correctly the um monthly revenue is about around five to five five to six million right now um so just a little bit about um who are we um we are a listed company in China with more than 2,000 employees across the country in 27 different provinces and uh we have been working with mobile carriers for over 10 years um because we were sort of in um the short messaging business and it sort of slowed down so we stepp into Mobile about two and a half years ago and um uh we have you know um we have and some uh know PvZ ones uh those 10 are the um well-known Western games that we published you know for pop cap P birds and bad piggy and also we published some RPG traditional Chinese RPG games as well and um the performance

is all pretty good and uh the lower portion is just um some of the carers and partner U channels that we be we work with um so that's pretty much about everything and I we supposed to have a conclusion but um it's such a huge market and so much opportunities I really don't know what to conclude um but uh um I think the best message will be that we will be here for another few hours so if you have interest um maybe you know more questions just feel feel free to drop by our booth and talk to us thank you [Applause]