How to engage with Asian mobile publishers (Tencent, Gamevil, Nexon)

at the moment studios I'm just gettin money these are the guys okay get you the money so we'll talk about them um Christ one given their induction to yourself yeah i'm chris from toby dale i guess a lot of you guys may already know our company from the screen of the badge which we sponsor so actually we are the largest mobile data company in china providing analytics and mobile tracking services for both non game developers and game developers and currently we've already covered 1.8 billion Union devices accumulated they were wider so it's really good to be here and share knowledge with you guys hi I'm q me from gainesville USA campus one of the oldest mobile game companies we can come a long way with pocket gamer we started doing mobile game since the year 2000 we have around 1,200 people around the globe

within 12 different offices we published under the name gable and also come to us and then we have some top grossing titles like someone or sport which is just a small one right yeah so so I'm saying founder Aisha capital as Jeff mentioned we're an investment bank based here in London and one of the things we like to do is find really exciting fast-growing other entrepreneurs and gaming space and position them for investment from a number of these gentlemen saying on my family I work for much Chinese furniture convincing and we are that's all we were published our China working here looking for content different for us my opportunities we have a small very small you're thinking settled here I don't

think I mean that obvious rice you know come to me you curious about China where the heck you share market for personal doesn't i'm sure and i'm also working for small company which is called nexim i'm very leading mean you know person for working solo record which is and complete vessel for nestle behalf of them and well pity we are focused on like pc but we are not stupid so well you know the way how to focus on the phone so for example that combination that's the you know very successful title so far closer so when we looking for the honorable titles will be in a mac i mean the impact on the world market hopefully a garden Louie from Harlem I was actually dumped this was a pound about making it in Canada so yeah

I'll do my best we're at developer 150 people strong we 4e asian market with security rights to the brewski license we recently released magic together in puzzle quest worldwide and we have dealt with multiple Asian companies so I guess that's why I'm here it is hey it's just I'm sure Ashley how how many people are tensed up right now how many people are at next on right now ten seconds and games that's engaged testing games probably thousand sometimes talking about the active users on mobile do so we have two major platform autónoma wattages we shall walk you we're going to use acute or numbers but QV number on WeChat is 630 and mobile keep use 650 the reason I wanted

to ask that question was kind of red herring just to give you guys an idea besides the markets we're talking about what about my son what actually I had come employee why's that thing is actually like 3000 I mean totally yes and it's a in the mattress I know that data quality and that in the audience how many people in here our independent developments to be looking for money I want to make sure we're asking irrelevant questions ok so i guess i'm going to start with lui chun right now all these every one of this panel actually is based not in asia in their basement in north america a tiara and the primary market but there's still certain things when you're pitching an asian publisher that you need to be aware of one pinch Indonesian publisher whether it's for your market here or whether it's for Asia if you had to give people the three top things of advice and that will make you back clean up

would even cover show okay I'll totally something for you i would say really number one have a strategy on how you're going to develop a relationship with agent players is really important that you build a relationship they they are primarily based I mean some of these some of these people are based in north american herb is jeff's alluded to but most of their teams that ultimately decide if they're going to make an investment or work with your own publishing basis are based in asia and so there's a lot of hand-holding and a lot of time and effort that you need to spend building a relationship it's not just one person but multiple people and i think if you're willing to actually make the effort to go to Asia and meet them at conferences etc that really goes a very long way in in not only soliciting interest but getting them giving them the opportunity to really learn about you and

establishing trust so that would really be probably one of the primary things that I would say you should do and of course you know ensuring that all your documentation is plays having a great team having a great product but also very important is playing their games is that small smaller yeah my approach around that is whether you're pitching a new game or an existing game that you want to bring to the Asian market is first of all know that you don't know the fact that your game is successful was successful will be successful in North America and Europe doesn't mean much of this potential success in Asia so that's one thing and get ready to also be a bit a bit like a married couple we joint custody of a kid because the fact that you're going to them you need to help you need their help designing the gang in a way that it's going to fit for their market segmentation is a true thing so they're

going to come up with ideas that might not be your reflexes but you need to be able to trust them and I've joint custody of that beautiful baby that you create I actually just made it up what club oh god I'm going to start with you and leading the great lead in the race but some i know some of the things you look for what do you look for it in the developer than if we had also too uncommon for our KPIs so i can turn it over to grace I think you know we live in the US side and I spent I came out to the US and 2006 so I spent around 10 years learning the Western culture i think it's a it's very important for the Western players to understand what's going on in the eastern territories playing their games spending a lot of time going to the conference's over there too we have to speak the same language in order to work together I think the biggest trouble that we've

been finding is there's still a lot of lacking of understanding when it comes to free-to-play we tend to prefer to work with developers who understand free-to-play first we the thoughts that's going on within our company is like is it easier to teach Korean developers about how the Western market works or is it easier to teach the Western developers free-to-play and so we're trying on both both ends to create a global success and but it's really hard when it comes when we try to meet the Western developers who don't understand the plate so ID I would hope that as the number one priority gotta chat okay so in terms of what we're looking for publishing opportunities they stream something keeps Angie Martinez I think Chinese are

test me for 10 but in general Asian developers are very good at alertly gaming kind of songs and just taking my brain on vacations of health was very new market what is your choice domestic developers are lacking is some innovation the creativeness and you can fight so show something different what we want is a policy is where you come to New so this is just like ha Japan bugs marshes this is just like Kenny clutch but with gems or rocks or whatever don't want to see a new gameplay something that the the cuisine I'm a new number is just throughout those are two but we're very curated on our kind of wear protective of their experience so the entirety of last year thing we launched in 28 games oh so that's key to the max

650 million I mean your mobo few 637 maybe honey you reach that and that's all going to 20 how I gained four submitted a month um well our evaluation team process 6200 some games last year we're just business in our enemy you so and you know maybe a third quarter Sergey and he goes something the publishing key my appreciation to look at and that is another biggest hurdle maybe ten five percent get there and nothing goes to the mossberg the following gets very animal rare tax and just so you guys are aware for anyone here who's launched an independent game no matter what territory soft launch today of the first 100 downloads 31 won 10-7 know they they have a entire department that looks at the app stores all over the world and as souza game as

opposed to they download it and play so that's what you're competing with just so you're allowed to say word love to believe where the system that everyone actually more effective any made it sound of it yeah but we look at a lava games we have a think there are 32 people team just plays game day well I mean as we are often represent focus on free to play so as you mentioned that we when we you know deal with the opportunity we always do value that Tara listen understanding level of the free-to-play obviously but and secondly I think we do value that there are sort of you know being be yourself attitude I mean I think there are bloody battle out there in Asia because we are very fast

followers but like you know unlike Asian like Westerners they are more likely created they have kind of unique concert but sometimes when I you know whenever I miss somebody especially last year because of the success from the supercell everyone told me that this is kind of something this is very similar to class with something so whenever I need them I really feel kind of I got lot because I expect something more from them yes so that's why when I when I is somebody who delivered or offering you know something new something unique you can go matter it is like you know modernization plan or look at me fidelity it doesn't it you know I don't care but I do validate you know differentiation like uniqueness or nearness there's kind of element that we evaluate I mean this Barry oh look actually I great meeting all these one

point of a free to play because you know take China for example we know that almost all the games aren't free to download so I think for publishers when they do have the game you know comparing of games that highly every night on paid download to monetize with those games that has good in that portrayed in app purchase design they definitely loves the you know the navigate so I think a free-to-play is you know very important especially for in Chinese market and also I think for you know ok again developers because I just hurt to listen to two-way talks from you so and then at ease they said a lot about the Chinese market and I think it's very important before game developers to get to know the market before they even come down

publishers there are hundreds for child china for example there hundreds of android app stores quite complicated you need to know which are the top distribution channels and the popular game hours as well as top rows of games i think that's very important that's a point know your market is there any one of the audience that has a question that's been trying to work with an asian publisher and it's in a block that wants to ask a specific question on with advice on how to get around does anyone have any question in that area i'm not sure this we're running late how much time we have okay does anyone have any questions I just want to make sure that okay Wow and when you hear is extremely accessible so guys um I don't know one of the things I see when people come and pitch with the asian markets they don't know the publishing and they don't understand what they come in and they're

pushing their pitching a casual publisher mid-core games for the pushing of midcourt up all the shirt casual games what is the best thing that people can do to prep for me sorry I think mini obvious question to death because dancing there that their dilemma one publisher in Chinese market way to go crazy no yeah I guess just uh well you know and then no they don't know market but still there is something to be said about doing some homework so I hear some things like this game or scrape the ECP is X and X X Y Z and the LTV is ABC and therefore it will make money as long as you direct traffic good

things like that mean first of all user acquisition something that enzyme does it we become the may company because we're the same or the uni way we have a community we have our platform at our research in our system and the last thing we want to do or any other that hungry several channels want to do is have an user being traded to other platforms so not the platform that that the big ones that really matters would allow ads in their games because that would just try to induce her to somewhere else and so you ever think about if ad revenue is not a viable business model first of all and secondly you will spend money in other games to cross-promote then does your game still work so this is something the fundamental different marketing mechanisms that the concentration and it doesn't young there's a lot of things that are gonna

take for granted working with European or Western developers and channels and color shows in China how to rethink some of the basic basic assumptions so um one of the things that I want to mention is for team building come to us we only do a one build strategy so we don't separate builds / country one of the reasons why we do that so when we look at a game we try to search for games that will work globally and one of the reasons why we do that is we understand that the developers resources are very limited once you start dividing the build I think the speed of the development becomes extremely slow and the size of the team has to grow significantly and I think most of the developers can't scale that way so unless you're a developer based in China I think we tell everybody that's there's

there's going to be a lot of sacrifices that you may do but there's also a lot of advantages by doing a global one built so in in order to support that we we we support 14 different languages and we do live operations for all of those in each territory and so we gave overcome plus we try to build out the infrastructure so that you can submit one build and we can do live operations on local pieces I know that we may not be the best publisher in China you may not be the best publishing in Japan but I think equally around the world on part will will reach a pretty good status and that's that's something that I think a lot of developers come to me and say can we publish Asia through you can we publish Korea value no we don't do that

we could we only do on a global basis and we built our company around that yeah I think that's a really good point because game will come to us we love to have one built for you know to conquer them all a lot of other developers or publishers will want different things so I think that's a cute thing when you're making your game make sure to build it in a flexible way that at the end you might have a finished product but you also have that fixed ability in case you know you go with different publishers in the end so if you're building your full game don't paint yourself in a corner make sure you can release it internationally with one build but if two three four partners come in four different locations then you have the flexibility to tweet that game because a lot of the time people code in a way that the game is just that and there's no way it can change it so we can involve and that's a major loss of opportunity if you don't get one publisher for international

but I think everything's in said but with me another question fire away okay one of the things I've noticed we're working about Asian publishers is they propel you on kpi's you really really need to know not just your cave the eyes but thirds and you guys really expand on that and that's what they have really knows it's a it is more of an Eastern thing than Western thing really understanding the Cape Cod I don't see why anyone doesn't know the cave guys but if you guys can expand what's the best way to gather Kate you guys what kind of cake you guys are you tracking and what do you want to see when the public did one service provider or a developer consumer I think two major kpi's that you know they look at our of course the first thing is a our view this is number one say and the second is monthly average active users so at the

most active users so that's the number two cing if i add another one i would say the payment rate so they are or or important to matrix that you know people will look at you know the performance of the games yeah and really want one additional thing to what you go in if you don't have any cake guys you better come in with target kpi's and how you're going to reach them you know i think the number one thing for us is retention and if you don't retain eggs or is that and so yeah we ideally like for whenever we launched at titles we look at d 150 / 77 at least twenty percent I know a lot of games that targeted niche audience may have a bigger talk about drop off in

the beginning but like if it's a game that can hit the 30 ten percent i think at least that's considerable enough for us published on the art outside I think that's very important too but I think that's something that you could work together with a develop with a publisher you know a lot of the Western developers the norm might be in the 10 to 30 cent range but both of the games that's launching in Asia these days have at least innocent plus art thou so so I think I think in order to succeed in this market where the user acquisition process significantly not ever I think the games have to have very high are parked out in order to do read those on use our position and also if you're not going to waste your money you have good retention so those are the executives that I look okay before I add more I mean I cannot be any more like you know

cube because you know there are kind of two different attribute first one is like Molly Molly wife so I fully with the great but the retention is so important because it is kind of highly associated with the game attraction so the more fun the more k users out there and they will have a you know have a lot of like oil tetouan toward the game so what we believe especially for the all these days we really really you know of the teenage invasion yeah I think and that's something that you have to be very careful with everybody tracks data and if you go to an asian publish or any publisher for that matter and you take the best court you've ever end of all time and you use that as retention numbers I mean there's ways to find out so I mean it's funny cuz very discussion today about this and we're talking about magic the gathering and I did mention I

mean the first five days are awesome why because everybody who loves magic the gathering jumped on so those retention numbers are through the roof but then you have to be smart and say however the next days are slightly lower and then you share that because it's useless to lie to try to improve because in the end there's always way to extrapolate kpi's or the result of both for katie is so be honest then it's better to know you make mistakes and now to fix them then pretend you have great bi kpi's and not do anything about it I mean I would I would have if you don't have KPIs and you're not you haven't launched your game and you're not in soft launch then you have to rely on other qualitative factors so I like having an awesome team you are familiar with the people you're talking to build a relationship with them you are very keen to work with them and listen to what they have to say I think that's going to go over extremely

well and and you're honest about it is what we mentioned that you say hey well you know we got this great team race little money we your games we've seen the kind of Katie I you're tracking and we think with your assistance will hopefully make a game that satisfies which