Culturalisation & Context in Designing and Publishing Mobile Games

[Music] hi guys all welcome first of all I just want to say that I won't have any gift for you I didn't so I'm gonna serve anything out I mean just compared to the previous keynote so I just want to say that I'm gonna talk about some topic which is a bit opposite of what Aaron was speaking which is how to optimize your game in the overseas market it's more and consolation is one of the one of the topic about this actually this keynote is more relevant for is it coming it's a more element for developers from mainland China and also

like Hong Kong and and asian asian territory Korea Japan and also some European companies publishers who would like to optimize their game cultural eyes they came to local markets so like personally I'm coming from an expansion background the growth background where we were focusing on local markets worldwide and I'm at usual some of you guys might know about user already we are quite big actually in in terms of international expansion as you can see we have more than like 11 offices around the world and seven or seven different countries and then we already like localized games cultural eyes games to overseas markets and just give you an idea like who we are shortly and then they already launched more than 40 games and web and mobile so if you

see the markets which are interesting so I just want to say that I'm gonna go through like very high level details in case you have like specific questions you can always send me an email or talk to me later so in terms of the high level topics you all know that you know that which kind of markets are and are as has the highest potential so I mean as you can see like the you know like the Asia Pacific is the the biggest market but we're gonna more talk about European market and the mana market Middle East in Turkey and also Latin America and which is also an kind of one of the key localization market that I would I would list so if you see like the potential market in terms of culturalization you have we have like a like a huge market

which is Europe which is two hundred eighty million players potential and then you have like South Asia and Russia has individual markets these these markets specifically are the keys for expansion into other territories I know all you guys have games in the Asian territory which are doing well but most most of the time what Asian developers are European developers make think that localizing the game is enough for for entering a market so what I think is actually nowadays the trend is in the culturalization I mean some Chinese developers are doing extremely well I'm gonna present you in the right next lights but consultation you casual eyes your game to these markets would give you a big chance especially like I

listed the potential markets with their player and market size ranking the first one is the Middle East market which is which is very interesting because it is a lot of young population as you can see it has a huge mobile penetration especially in mobile mobile games and then you have countries like Saudi Arabia UAE and Qatar where you can reach lots of whales like big heavy pay users and cauterizing your game to this market would give you a lot of chance to increase your revenues and reach more user base and also Asia is quite important as you know that Indonesia and Thailand and all like you know manager Philippines they are an increasing trend and investing something and local local content will give you a lot of chance in the future to talk to get high revenues

and higher positioning in this market Russia in Europe is also quite interesting Russia is unique because you need to also you know have the right localization and culturalization to enter the Russian market this is not like easy just localized Russian is not enough so you need to you need to have a proper understanding of the market if you wanna enter this market and in terms of Europe you can I can say that Germany is one of the biggest market that you can target in terms of localizing your content also France is quite important I'm Italy Spain is not there yet it's coming but Germany and France are the key key to markets so I mean just to talk about the definition of culturalization it's more like rethinking creative choices by learning and adapting your content to other regions environment so which means

I mean car to station doesn't mean like localization or you know just hiring some customer service guys on the on the on the local office it's more like changing everything from from from game UI to game design also like the monetization part so so just to give you some examples from our site and some other competitor games so if you can see that I mean this is one of the case we did with legacy of discards which was a global success and we made a Middle East version of it so as you can see like we changed everything like from the design to you know the events schedule I mean we made like some Ramadan events and also like we added pyramids pyramids to the game which is quite famous in Egypt on the other side you can see like some like most of the Chinese companies like

they change their three Kingdom style games to the European style games and they change like the npc's UI and also like the main main screen like the home screen the the main UI so these kind of changes are the key also in terms of that was the development part in terms of marketing and publishing so you see like the catalyzing your content give you a lot of chance to reach more audience especially if you use these graphics and marketing campaigns you reach a lot of users your marketing campaigns are more profitable I mean we saw it in different cases in Latin America and Middle East so that the marketing if you use like localized marketing assets you will reach more users also in terms of App Store optimization as you can see like rise of kingdoms from Lilly so the the first M they use like different character for each app store page for example if you

go to Germany this is my app store you see like Deutschland you know like the German character and if you go to like Mexico you have a Mexican you know Latin American character so they use it very wisely to attract also the the user base within the app inside so if you just see like as a funnel you have the game itself which is catalysed fully localized and then you go to marketing parts you see like the banners in the local language and local character and once you enter the game the app store page is also localized and that's kind of like the the optimal optimal localization we call it these days so I use some best cases from the world I mean revenue Sultan is still doing a lot of revenue so they they reach 50 million dollar monthly revenue in the region just from three countries Saudi Arabia UAE and Qatar mostly so what they did is actually they took a Chinese game which was very successful they just

reached seeking it fully to the Arabic Arabic culture and then they they launched it in in the Middle East market and and they they are still like popular in the lasts last month so they they've been you can see like the revenue increase like and the the the download increase on the charts it was a huge success and it made a huge impact for for the local developer another case this game of Sutton it is very popular in different markets also it's also a really good example to show that even like localized character can be successful in different territories as well for example in Russia it is the top top grossing game even it has nothing to do with Russian Russians like this kind of content so and also like Indonesia and even like us it has a good positioning and it's also very important to see that localize it from a Chinese version which was very tricking him

style very very local local local apk and they made a big success of localizing it into market this is one of our cases we made it for Japanese market we took again like a Chinese game localized to for the Japanese market as you can see like the the downloads and revenue increase was huge as a user case as you can see and just to talk about the kpi's briefly what kind of KP as you would like to target by catalyzing your games actually the retention rate is quite important because if you have a customized version of your game the users stick more into the game so you can target like this KPIs like one seven fifteen and thirty days you can see like like a big big increase in in terms of retention rates after you cut utilize your content for the respective country and also like the in terms of marketing CTR very important

you know like the click-through rate of your marketing campaigns are higher and then you save a lot of your profitability goes higher because you use the localized characters and also like the the DRP you and all the monetization kpi's are also higher so I gave you some example after the constellation customization we had a huge increase in terms of such kpi's so just to talk about the takeaways quickly I mean it's it's kind of like the final slide so what is my suggestion like humble suggestion is like if you wanna really be successful in other territories then then in mainland China or and you're a European developer you want to expand your your game to other territories you should definitely look into regions like Middle East Latin America you know South Asia even India

is coming up and I mean to try to come up with different different strategies for different markets and content is very important nowadays for mobile games so it's gonna give you a lot of content opportunity so if you have a successful games game in China and the K peers are really good by cultural izing the game you will have a lot of more content automatically and then also I mean colonization is not like just language or translation or you know like just the custom services as I mentioned so I mean just about like the full reskin of the game so from from scratch and nowadays is not that big big big issue like before I mean we see a lot of companies can do it like in a very fast and quick manner also I would suggest definitely to use a

separate apk and this could also really help for optimizing your marketing campaigns you can get more featuring in local app stores and then you can manage your apk much much more flexible it depends on how you hope you big you're thinking to push the game but a separate apk is definitely a good good strategy and also in terms of marketing as I mentioned before just using the content from the game creating some CGI's on 3d 3d graphics is gonna help you a lot to optimize your marketing campaigns so if you have any questions I'm happy to answer otherwise you can always drop me an email yes anyone yeah well let's give him a round of applause first and I will just say does anyone have any questions if so raise your hand otherwise like I said yeah I'm sure you'll be around for anyone who has any

questions yeah thanks all yeah give another round of applause say thank you [Applause] [Music]