Experiences of Publishing in and out of Asia

[Music] you're very welcome so I'm gonna I'm gonna start this panel thank you very much you're in the West meets East Room here my name is Dave Bradley I'm the CEO of steel media the organizers of this event and the publishers of Pocket Gamer and blockchain game my job is this panel is the experiences of publishing in and out of Asia so we're gonna have a lively panel conversation here today we're still waiting for one of our panelists but I'm gonna introduce everyone else and when Bingbing shows up we'll we'll introduce her as well the the purpose of this panel is to discuss our experiences of publishing Western games in Asia and a publishing Asian Games in the West we're going to be sharing our higher than highs and lows of that experience and hopefully passing on some useful

insights to the audience I'd like to keep it practical and also draw on your personal stories and advice the gang's all here I'm haven't done the introductions yet so we'll get there so um we're gonna have some time for questions at the end I hope but I want this panel to be practical so if anything occurs is that he said that you want to chip in on please do raise your hand and maybe we can get a microphone for you and we'll keep it interactive so first of all let me introduce the panel or rather I should say get them to introduce themselves I'd like to to welcome michelle chan a game developer of soccer manager bing bing Wang from lighting a listed Chinese publisher of video games and also the subsidiary of Chinese development studio key bits you probably saw her in the growth track earlier on today also we've got my li chen from the huge $0.10 who's got particular responsibility for bringing indie games to China Alison enjoy packing mobile games publisher and aurelion from well-known international publisher Ubisoft so what

I'd like to do first of all is maybe start with you Alison then come down the line could you just introduce yourself and your company a little bit and it's and put it in context of what it is that you do yeah Alison Bayliss and from joy pack we are a mobile game publisher primarily focused on the China market so helping developers get into China and publish their games there we also have done a couple of global deals li and so expanding that way as well but we're focused on casual hyper casual games and games that really monetize through advertising in particular hi everybody I'm already in from Ubisoft so we are one of the biggest developers and publisher with a presence across more than 30 countries I'm personally the head of China and I'm in charge of both doing so we have studios in Shaheen chandu and also publishing house to bring the games and the content we are developing across all

of us to do in China afternoon everyone and a mighty chin from tensing I was over at mobile bi Li and that is from the other parts four years and by end of last year I joined Tenzin dates publishing program focused - looking indie games to publish for China thank you hi everyone I'm Michelle Chan and from soccer manager and I am the one today's liaised with Chinese publishers and ourselves basically what we do is soccer management games my name is Ben being one I'm from lating gimps which we are we start with the trainer's publisher here and they in three years we start this broader global markets oh so great thank you very much so a range of experience there and what I'd like to do

is start with Michelle and talk about soccer manager amp two there and let's talk about the reality of getting published in China it's so it's a huge market and we often talk about great what a great opportunity it is for international developers but Michelle can you kick us off by sharing what you discovered how hard was it to get your game out there into Asia thanks Dave basically we signed a contract over chinese publishers roughly about two years ago and we signed two games with them there's football clash and then there's soccer manager 18 unfortunately and football clash was stuck in the ispn shutdown football class was released in China book soccer manager 18 was stuck in a shutdown and the game was complete development but the game cannot be published in China and there's over there's about a few hundred app stores in China publishers

has chosen roughly about 20 top app stores for our game to be published in China there's different SDKs to integrate and also different book fixes it's multiple times of work comparing to the West when it's iOS when there's only iOS and Google Play another thing is time differences especially when there's seven eight hours time differences between our publishers and ourselves when we start work they finish work when we finish work their idea asleep so everything's quite time critical also one more thing is getting the money out of China because like there's eight there's sixteen percent taxes that we had to pay there's ten percent withholding tax and then a 6 percent be eighty and there's much more but I'm sure that our panelists can top it off can and can the

rest of you relate to that as well so things like time differences in the fragmentation of SDKs does anyone else have any experience of that - what was it as hard for other publishers here as as michelle has mentioned Allison what's your experience yeah definitely the time zone difference I mean we we work with developers outside of China to help them get into China and work the office in Copenhagen is kind of the interface for that so all of the legality of the contracts and things like that happen out of Copenhagen for us but then of course we have our operations team in Beijing so we really I like to say that like the moment I wake up in the morning I hit the ground running because I have a bunch of WeChat and slack messages to get going on but for us where as the publisher we really take on that that trouble I guess I'm kind of going back and forth so we like to say that we blend the best of the west and the east and that the communication happens out of Copenhagen so we try to lighten the load in our in

our business practices and anyone else or watch with an understanding of the biggest challenge with the with property insurance so for us we have two different cases so in some games which are the global build operated in China we team up with one of our studios which is developing the games so we often use mainly on production guideline and an event management we've been directly that's mainly on the console in HD side which are very heavy production games like there's six seven hundred people per games so we usually focus on a global bill but working with them on operation side for the mobile game why we do I've set up a local team which is actually taking the source code from the main developers which is already Ubisoft developers and we organize and we operate a local version for the Chinese market in China right because it's it's very simple to basically sync up the card they often use unity and like not

big in-house engine so let's say for mobile we we handle everything from the cut to the utilization of the build and the operation from China is a Shanghai Hindu and for the big project we we have the same jet like issue right right but we we basically for us I think it's a matter of business model also so on mobile we have more than three million Mau in China right on PC we have only 1 1 million ma Mobile has been a very big big drive in in China by the wall companies mainly PC and console oriented right right right actually that's let's ask another question here that's that's related to that for people here who are at our event who are unfamiliar with with the difference between the the Asian market and perhaps publishing in the West and they've got a game that they want to take to different territories how should they understand the different markets what's the difference perhaps between publishing a game in Europe and

publishing in China I'm thinking what do you what do you understand the difference to be journaling I think it's really huge difference and so that's where I know so the difficult ivory as just is parola overseas publisher so because most Chinese like compress in spirit it can education it's shorter than compare Western prayers so what you're doing there well what purpose sure you need to prepare more contents for overseas well what users are wise you really run our content super quick usually if you have three months content for your publishing in China but when you do it ourselves is running 1.5 to 2 months they will finish it so you need to prepare as many as you

can [Music] Henson I think that you know when we talk about publishing Chinese games in the West it's also very difficult because whereas still a baby when publishing games globally so and especially that when you have a game that already makes meet billions of revenue in China so when you take a look at the Western people somehow well it's bad okay you know that's the revenue we should make from that market so I have to say that is a top start when we try to launch the mcclure hardcore games in the West and I think one the most impression is that the myself of launching a game in China and in the West is completely different because when we launch a game in China which way everything in-house we do laws of user analysis and tweaked again just channel test and

when we launch again that you know the commercial launch goes back like you know celebrating those men press announcement and laws of offline events and you spend half of the marketing spend budget in the first maybe three months but in the West is completely different because in the West you start launched again spend just little UA and tweak the game until the matte shades really good and then you will start commercial launch so I think the time and the length of launching again is very different and so we're still learning from the experience by the projects I think we'll talk in a minute about the the value of having partners in the in the east and west but one thing I wanted to talk about briefly is that a year or so ago it was actually impossible to get a new game published in China right because there was a regulations when there was a freeze um how did that

affect you and has how has it affected the situation now while things is it easier to get a game launch now does anyone have any insight yeah so I couldn't talk about that because I'm I'm half agree with at that point okay I mean if you want to make business on some Apple Store steam you play playstation xbox the ban does not affect you at all it's a matter of platforms not of content actually okay so first Ubisoft all the games the last years has been released as usual okay so that means all our games are as usual localized culture alized and we are pushing in China with the PR and the marketing team locally where is getting tricky is when you want to do specific build for specific Chinese channels here you get dropped but it's it's just a part of the business so I think you can

still manage to do some revenues take some market share and also I think it helps you to just bring the good one it's before we had a tendency to put everything to the censorship why no we are picking up a bit better as a product than the main difference but yes some products been working with you guys I've been working for four we're publishing numbers since more than a year now white on the other side we also have games that had the publishing number since more than a years but we didn't release so it's I think it's it's a tricky questions but today if any developers want to reach China on PC they put it on Steam and Chinese user but go with their ally pay or ten panic again the content actually let's stay with you for a moment as an international player with them several local deal sign and how can a publishing partner really help you'll get a game get published in Asia that's that's that that's the thing if you have

a you're a developer what do they need and what can they get from working with a company like yours for us it is kind of like you were saying I think it's similar it's like turning the source code over and we run and operate it in China for developers we do the localization culturalization we put the SDKs in that are needed for tracking for social sharing for a lot of developers that's difficult because they don't speak Chinese which is why you have local teams to do that so as a publisher we handle all of that regulation really every piece of it and one of our big value propositions is for us is that you can turn the game over to us and we will run it and operate it for you so that maybe you can focus on other markets or other games or specifically on making updates for your game as opposed to kind of doing all of the operations around it that are a bit cumbersome at times

mylie you wanna chip in on that and I think it really depends how what's the developers ambitions I mean Ollie and say that you know there is a steam and for mobile there's an app store and you can actually just click when you launch it again global you just click China but if we talk about to really bring the the game to the massive all the Chinese audience working with the local partner it's very sensual so first a local Chinese partner normally like specially for Miko hardcore games we will coach you like the game so to really make the games feet which the Chinese audience like for example to make a tutorial to let the Chinese players better understand to optimise the monetization States tend to add more social features that you can play with your friends and secondly the platforms I've read I actually did a sharing about the Chinese market today morning about some App

Store stacks so if wait by download the iOS App Store versus Android current lead iOS is just 18% 1/8 and enjoy all the Android channels no Google Play they'd have 72% by downloads and if it's by revenue iOS only took around 45% and Android 55% so if you just sell published in China own I less by yourself yes you don't need to wait for the ISBN but at the meantime you are you know giving up the 55% of the revenue okay that's interesting um Michelle did you publish your game with the partner so what was your experience of working with the partner what did they bring to you that you you remember how was it how it what did you get from working with a partner how did they help you

a Chinese partners how did sorry oh and for the Chinese partners how they helped us is basically they helped us in getting the copyright also the ISBN number and since I previous mentioned that SM 18 was locked in the shutdown they was just there to wait for the ISBN to be approved and luckily it was approved for the newer iteration SM 19 which was approved this beginning of this year so currently this game is out in China and now so also is monetization helping us helping us changing features to adapt to Chinese users and localizing

like the languages etc and because some of the slums in Chinese doesn't really translate directly to English and/or English doesn't translate directly to the Chinese so basically that would be gotcha Dave I just want to add something / / what what you're saying so I'm not saying to any developer here that you you have to get off of the Android Market definitely not but what I'm saying is with iOS market you can still learn a lot about your Chinese community you can tweak your games and actually if your game is good on iOS you have more chance to get a partner on Android because platform in China if you compare to the Western platforms on mobile which are simple whereas - basically in one side about editorial based in the other side work epi drivin so so basically having a good game on iOS with KPI is a way for you to get a good deal on

Android and and I think this is why it's super important because if you don't do that when you don't have key P I and then we will tell you the game is not good for the market because you know we want to make money in all platforms and and when you will always be in a week in a weak position when you have to negotiate something well when you have your iOS out version on China you have users you have tractions you you have consumers and you you can try to say ok the game is good so know how I can bring it on Android if not you may you may wait 18 24 month one of things that's that's more my point business-driven like a quick number on that to that there are you know 250 million iOS devices in China and there are 250 million mobile phones in the United States Android and iOS so just iOS alone in China is such a huge opportunity anyway to go for and really open up that market absolutely I was reading on an

eco partners report last year that said that the revenue from Chinese mobile games is likely to rise to over 25 billion in the next five years and write exciting yeah sounds exciting right so so let's talk about what games do well in China for those in Asia and in the rest of the world can we identify different types of games that succeed in different regions for instance at the in the West I'm very familiar with battle royale games lots of free-to-play games is the same true in in Asia or free-to-play games the where the where the market is right now all come from Asia actually ok yeah do we that's the case sorry I think the to market our overall merging five years ago I mean five years ago you had very hardcore gamers in Asia with FPS with with mobile

with battle Royals in the West we were more playing casual tap game is very simple without a lot of metadata but I think when you come to a point where the user acquisition is expensive right now unit system that hook you players in retention so you can put way more monetization point and I think at the end the death of the game gonna be all the same everywhere so what could change is our direction the team but I do believe in term of Jean's or wrong which are making the most of it will be successful everywhere because the market are really getting closer to each other overall Asia is still a bit more hardcore so we have a tendency to see in our game that Asia will suck your content quicker than in the West and especially because either we play more of a grind more of a pay to access it quicker so you have to anticipate that if you have a content for three month in

the in Europe maybe it will last a month in China if you take a look at the top ten girls in chart in China actually it didn't change over the parts two to three years it's all MOBA MMORPG SLG and a racing game by tensing but it's a casual but it integrates all the multiplayer hot car features so I won't call casual and I think all ian was is right and you know we believe mobile games actually it's even the games that players play become more international and the gap between different markets narrowing and lots of Chinese developers like Tenzin and that is what they're trying to do is that then actually lots of new project they start to developing house two years ago it's developed for global audience so you can see light

identify or you know this order from Nettie's or Call of Duty from Tenzin and Activision it's or global IP or at least from the graphic side it's it's international so actually staying with you they're mighty there's some big names in that list you can just get there but what about indie developers is there a thriving market for indie games in China yes it's quite interesting that so I would say for indie games in in these tabs in China actually they a lot of people start to do on steam and because it's easy especially that you know to doing publish the mobile game on the game on Steam it's it's more easy because the channel are less recommended and those indie devs they also have the experience that you

know develop maybe from the cheapo a Studios before and it's also conscious ting to see that how the big player is like Nintendo EA Henson what net is you know everyone are looking for indie games I think for indie games I still believe in indie games that it's it's going to be thriving and of course it soon it won't be the majority of the the market because it's not easy and but I believe the innovation of the games actually come from Indy right because you brought games like companies like us to in a frog mind to China is that right yeah you were responsible for bringing the likes of us to and frog mind into my yeah so attention actually have these ace publishing program specialized working with indie games to publishing China so

one of the very well-known project it's like monument valley - and we're actually also announced that we will bring stardew valley mobile and slay this bio mobile to china and the idea behind it is that the Chinese audience they have been played MOBA RPG and as LG for four years already and the market is very consolidated and but actually lots of Chinese players they they want to play something new and those neat new stuffs you can it's very difficult that you know for now II thought Henson you can have millions of budget to develop in Dickens you know you is Beth maybe you know low revenue incomes it's very different so is it important sorry about India games I have feel like they're about one to

two years ago in China and so they I feel like a lot of India against supposed company in contention or hydron sky of Lading way we suppo India again and suppose India against to do so and also you everyone like I'm not sure it right here but most trainers pressure purpose surely no let's a new like a tap tap Prime film kind of social in prime form so and also like there's so many Indian perched like her like a communique like a public gamer here I think welcome to me now China to suppose Indian games also because more Chinese users they I kinda like a picky right now layer queries both us so they want to have more experience so I still think India game is really a huge market in China still so welcome to to do it I

think there's just one thing to clarify when we talk about Indy in China we talk about premium I think the market in the pop up because of premium business model and it's not a matter of platform is a matter of business model so China back 10 years ago for my first years in China it was impossible to set a premium content and now on PC China is a first market on premium Wow so it's a I think it's a difference so when when you pull this user we talk about 20 million user per year transferring from free-to-play to to premium when you go in premium it's very hard to get back to free-to-play sometime because you like the fact you know you're not asking your wallet every time that you can afford some some new Jean that you cannot do in free-to-play and I think it's very related to this so players since couple of years five six years so tap tap helps

a lot pocket gamers the Wii game blood there's a lot of developers that start to play these games enjoy this game also Ubisoft is in China since 30 years so we are kind of training thousands of developers making premium content and when we go back and we say well we've seven eight people I can make a great narrative games I can talk about something set it for five bucks and build up my own my own studio and and I think and now in China you have this big pool of developers in the developers because they start to understand what is a premium because we consume premium game themself which is very very new to have some questions as well from the audience but there's a there's a few things I want to cover first how important is it to vigorously localize a game is it just a matter of language or just do games have to substantially change when they're being published in different territories what do we think

Allison is that you had some insight there for the type of game that we deal with which is a very hyper casual too casual there's light localization that is needed I was talking about like don't google translate your text for example some of the things that are no-brainers maybe some changes need to happen to the characters of course there's the blood issue which does crop up actually in hyper casual even that that yeah we shouldn't be showing blood or it should be a splatter instead that came up the other day so these things it's a subtle T I think to the local culturalization really that needs to happen to be aware of does anyone else have any experience difficulty yeah I totally agree with Allison so using a professional professional translator or a person is really important as I said previously there's like slums in English or Chinese that can't be translated through Google Translate and and in terms of our games

there's few it's not only translated in all the languages and it's also localized in terms of features etc like there's couple of features like a monetization example like every single page on the game our publisher would request us to add monetization monetization monetization another thing is attached in the in-game characters in-game characters adapt to your territory so in our case and as it's a soccer management game and our publisher has the rights to Chinese Super League so they request to integrate all the players from the Chinese Super League into the game so it's more adapted to the culture and the Chinese gamers absolutely that makes sense I want to take some questions from the audience but first of all I think I'm gonna just ask you for maybe one one kind of

question from everyone here so from each of the group if you had just one piece of advice for a developer wanting to take a game publish a game in a new territory what would it be um you want to maybe start us off what if you had to boil it down to one suggestion for the four developer what do you think she was somewhere really close cultural with you all somewhere you really hate I mean when you hate someone you really know them where I'll say speak to your local games trades body and see if there's any trade mission that you can go to as previously well we went with Yuki which is the UK trades body to go to China joy as the trade mission so that's how we did it my

advice eats taught with tension yeah just teasing I would say that you know first you can't understand the market and you know talk with your friends who really work with the Chinese partner because people publisher will always say they know we're the number one publisher in China and but even I think the thing is that to really think and you know each publisher they have their pros and cons and understand that what's their pros and cons and I'm not sure that if the one who always say you know where the baths and there's only good thing we're gonna make you know make millions of revenue with you together and then disappear when there's a you know agency or just disappear when the country is not signed and maybe so talk with your friend first and really maybe come to China or China joy if you have the resource to meet the local

people and I think the first thing is that you know to understand how the market works and truth start with a partner that who can share the real story and work together with you as a developer we recommend you to treat China as a normal market so just go where there's plenty of platforms that can help you to distribute to build without any legal constraint you won't reach the world market but you would have enough part of it to get data when you have data go talk to a publisher because if you do it the other way they're gonna be very greedy and you won't have anything of it so that's my recommendation treated as a normal market but there's a specific audience in term of community and today you can reach this community without any major blocker technically we're solutions with you

know Western company like tents and Alibaba offering very simple even Amazon very simple cloud solution running in China versus billing options now with a leap a 10 pay which is easy you're not blood like before with the bling platforms the carrier which was very complicated any other platforms so it could be steam could be to top it could be a noise block actually so it could be steam it could be a iOS or it could be even directly get some user get data and when you have your data you can claim you have something and you won't be screwed by publisher we tell you you don't know the market but I do believe the community of gamers is a global and only one community so just find a way to put your games into their hands that's my recommendation I agree in terms of finding a local partner a local publisher and I always appreciate when people come to us with data and kind of

ich and you're already showing that you know a little bit about the market you know that kind of what help you need as well in that particular market so like the investors beforehand we're saying as well like target who you want to be working with do your homework of the different publishers are what the pros and cons are of working with them and and target who you want to be working with as opposed to the other way around so the fighting against spray-and-pray like they were saying on the investor panel as well when it comes to publishers - great so we have a we have about three or four minutes left I wonder if anyone in the audience has any questions gentlemen here do we have a spare mic at all if not we can steal one of your minds thank you very much oh yeah thank you for the great panel one question is there a specific or significant similarities and differences

that you see between publishers in China and publishers elsewhere let's say from capital provided for development the other terms of till the terms of the deal revenue share other things you see what are the similarities and differences what we see you know as a as a publisher in China but also kind of not because we have our Copenhagen office a lot of times a Chinese publisher is going to offer you a minimum guarantee that's something that happens quite a bit in China it's almost like a blind here's some money for development as a minimum guarantee we don't do that a joypad quite honestly because we're we have a different share of profits that comes we it's kind of like a risk profile thing that that big Chinese publishers are willing to take that on for a certain type of game whereas in the hyper casual casual space

it doesn't operate that like that globally and so we don't operate like that either yeah so every deal is different if it's a question I think you have to separate between the publisher which are also a platform and the publishers that are not a platform so when you're dealing with a publisher which is a platform basically you're gonna you have a lot of chains at your hand your games will end up only on these platforms so you usually can negotiate a bit more MGS because you're also gonna lose a part of the market that we're gonna claim you will have more marketing resources but still you're gonna lose part of the user so I think this is a difference for the rev-share it's really a case-by-case um I mean I've seen some developers only get 10% on a deal up to 70% it really depends off your name of your of your KPIs that's why once again if you have KPI you would be stronger in the negotiation point and Nadia you really have to keep in

mind when you deal with with with with Chinese market it's it's really key I drivin so so on the way you pitch and what you show it's about retention it's about China platform monetize platform are monetized through gaming so you have to think that gaming is a way to monetize the traffic while in the West it's a bit different so your KPI would be important does anyone take that all this okay let's go in it thank you very much for your question another question from the audience I see it comes I mean just go to the lady behind you and then your next play and then I think that probably all we have time for thank you so what makes joypad stand out from other West Show is publisher who are actually from China light should immobilize students at play again it's kind of the best of both worlds as we

like to say it and that we have an office in Copenhagen and an office and in Beijing all of our operations happen out of Beijing and ad monetization you a activities the technical work and all of that and for us dealing with developers outside of China the legal contracts and all of that are with our team in Copenhagen which brings some ease I think to the relationship for developers who are also based there or in the US and other western territories tell you what let's just very quickly get this gentleman's question in a little them well thank you very much for that I mean I just have to be the loss I think this question is mostly for Miley so we talked a lot about taking games into China what about taking games from China to other markets what would you say is the biggest factor to say pub partner or know for example what when would you go with a publishing partner or not arena valor for example you guys used Gerena when you could have if you wanted to

just done paid acquisition like what would you say is that the considering factors when trying to take a game outside of China and markets sorry do I understand correctly that you were talking about when Chinese company find a partner for publishing the games outside China right other factors do right right so you don't have to use a partner so in what cases would you and in what case is what you try to do it on your own I would say that both Tenzin and II's de that currently trying to publish by themselves yeah because it's it's the way like when you can see the publishing the games outside China and the the companies that you know you think that they have the capability to scale the game like you know the first coming to mind would be like Ubisoft for EA right but they don't publish third-party games so and actually when I work for an that is it's

a it's it's it's a path that you start out with Western publishers and they either don't publish the party games or they the business model that you know it's more they don't do the upfront as minimum guarantee your license fee and everything will based on the metrics but for Chinese company they will have like you know it when you compare there's a case a few years ago that you know when you compare a different offer from Western publisher and then a Japanese or Korean polish it's 50/50 rev-share offer and the 10 million USD the offer of SMG so it's very hard to make a choice so and I think that for mobile games the market is become more international especially for the Western market it's different but there's a lot

of like you know partner agency or channels they can support you but not necessary to the distribution is go safe yeah I think also to to add something maybe the difference between Ubisoft and and Netezza at ubisoft we have no choice we have to take him from lovely studio and we have no choice we have to work with a lovely publishing team well a ten-cent if a studio had decide to work with someone else not publishing we can decide to do it I think it's also about internal structure and way of working so I think in Karina's studio believe of the guarantor publishing more and I mean the studio has a strong drive while at Ubisoft even the studio think in China we cannot do the job properly it doesn't have choice he has to work with the publishing team and the other way around

the decision I'm gonna have to stop everything there I'm afraid we're out of time so I will not give a big round of applause please for our panel Allisyn early on my Lea Michele and Bingbing remember if you want to ask them any more questions please do look them up on pitch and match or join us at the party tonight which will be held upstairs so you can catch up with them then thank you very much I've been de Bradley enjoy the next panel Q thank you Dave [Music]