Instant Games - The Good, the Bad and the Future

[Music] hello everyone so my name is Eleanor pollen and I'm here to talk about instant games or the new social games games inside messaging whatever you want to call this new sector I have most knowledge about Facebook instant games that joy was just presenting as well but I will touch upon the other platforms in my presentation too but first a little bit about my own background so I've been in the gaming industry for 15 years now and I found in my first game startup in 2010 and back then we were already making like social multiplayer games but in a PC and Mac platforms and we were kind of starting how to go to mobile and we realized five years ago not hey there's this messaging apps that have

arrived and we could put out games there obviously five years ago it was a bit early the market wasn't wasn't so big back then but we we met with Perino and they were a foreigner at the time because they were already running a business business with combining messaging and games and they acquired our company we spent two years building games exclusively for the Padrino platform but then almost two years ago we noticed that hey now things are starting to heat up Facebook had started their closed pizza for the instant games and we decided to find quicksave and since then we've continued to focus on building for this messaging and social platform so we've been on this like for five years now which I get to say it's fairly long comparing how many the market is the market has been growing we were anticipating that there will be more apps joining and there has been this is not a full list but there's a lot of apps offering integrated html5 games within their app and this this messaging apps are still growing in their user bases they've grown beyond

kind of traditional more traditional social media so there's growth in the usual numbers and a lot of people already there one point I want to make in the very beginning is that these high-quality games I still get the question sometimes so are you making like text adventures and I'm like ok no it doesn't mean that it's like text-based it's it's in a 5 it's full full screen it's usually portrayed but you can do landscape and html5 as if technology has evolved and matured a lot in the past ten years so you can do anything you can do even 3d if you like and you don't have to do hyper casual you can have as much meta game and gameplay and everything as you want in your titles our own portfolio is also fairly wide in the in the range of genres these are the ones I can mention there's couple of games I cannot talk about yet but it's it's something that you've had a wide range of genres we are working with partners we are small studio so it's a win-win situation when you can combine forces with somebody who

also wants to conquer this new platform okay for the platform so Facebook that's the URL to find the games and they used to be first in the messenger but probably you may not have a third tab in the messenger anymore so as to I was presenting just before me there there's the new gaming tab inside Facebook and that's where you you find the games now and let's talk about the numbers retention virality the interesting topics so I claim that you know the user acquisition and getting getting the users is easier and cheaper than than in the App Store and even though a lot of people don't don't know there's a gaming tap in Facebook like if you haven't seen the gaming tag you might not know it's there but that's not the only way to get users you also get users through friend referrals so it's important to have something social in your game and that social gameplay is it's a good way to acquire users and also if you do bait user acquisition the funnel is really

short so from the ad clicking the add takes the player straight into your game so that's a very quick and short funnel as well but then the retention is harder the same reason like if the player doesn't know there's a gaming tab if they come in from a friend post they might know that there's a gaming tablet they can go and find your game again but actually when you are working on your user acquisition you're at the same time working on your retention because those same so-so touch points will bring the player back and so that's how it's really important to have that social aspect in your game and it's also important to use that all the touch points that the toy was talking about the API is that the platform offers but this is also probably the reason why like what people have tried like let's take a game from App Store and just technically make it html5 game and try to see the numbers and if they will be the same well they won't be the same you need to start to think about how does that game is it worth while porting over because it can

it utilize this platform touch points and if there's no way to integrate those touch points and there's social aspects into your game it will not do as well in here and if you start to build a new game start with the platform in mind we are taking it as far as like thinking like okay messaging so there's just text emojis there's images animated gifs videos now there's games so what do games bring into this social context in the discussion what is the what is the value the game spring that the users will will be interested in and so these so these two metrics are like really interlinked and and work differently than in there in the app store so let's talk about certain key terminology Saucer ability is a key oMG is kind of a quiz app not even really a game but the fact that they got 100 million users in less than a month it's really

interesting because there is no mechanism in app store to get this many users this quickly I mean it just doesn't happen so having Ser ability is important and in what is important to realize is that this is all voluntary shareability if you think of the old times that the previous era of like social games or Facebook games it was a lot of forced sharing like you cannot advance unless you get five apples from your friends and it got pretty annoying pretty quickly but this is all voluntary and why are people in social media it's because they want to share things and they want to interact and they want to comment so they will share things from your gay if the content is worthwhile sharing multiplayer it's another aspect that is very well-suited for this platform and Ludo has done well a Ludo is a port game with about 15 minutes season time so it's a good example that actually like

you don't have to have a super shortest time you can do long ones as well but one thing I would advise about the multiplayer is that make it dynamic let the player play something alone as well if you force them to invite friends it's probably not going to work so well there are exceptions to the rule like words with friends and 8 ball pool are doing fine but I already think of them as exceptions that make the rule that if you have like a turn-based game that you kind of play until your friend has replied I wouldn't start with that of course multiplayer you can do it with AI pots or like stranger so so like a iPods you would you think it feels like multiplayer but even if it wasn't so there's many ways to do it and it's good thing to do just think think carefully how you do it then we have the game pots a lot of developers think they start just like okay let's just do something but I would recommend to to use it because really use it as you can have

like interactivity these are basically the push notifications where the user has to opt-in to get messages from the bot but once they do you can have much more happening there than telling the mobile app store kind of type of push notification you can have all kinds of quizzes and and content there as well penetration so there's video ads and there's in-app purchases it depends a bit on the on the messaging app like which one they emphasize more like some apps are more advanced some are more in a purchase oriented but usually they all of the the platforms can offer both of the options download size is important and this probably a reason why there are so many hyper casual games on the markets because obviously it's easier to to download your game very fast if it doesn't have that many graphical assets to begin with but you can only download

things in the beginning that you really need at the start and of course you can download more while there while the user is playing so this doesn't have to restrict you but it is really important because it will affect how many people come into your game and it will affect also the returning players if they are every time suffer from a long loading time they might not go through the trouble of coming back to your game either and of course the 5g networks are coming and when they are are out this problem will be pretty much gone anyways so there's a lot of different technologies to use we are using pixie and we've done our own you are editor on top of pixie there are others like full game engines like Coco's there's phaser it depends a bit on what type of game you are making so you should study the engines a little bit we found it most flexible to do our own editor on top of the pixie pixie one and we used fine for animations I mean and we've done our own back end with with

Amazon tools so what are the most frustrating points on this market is it's the lack of market data and I don't even they talk about our own games like we have Facebook analytics we can have our own back-end so we can do any kind of data analysis we want for our own games but because there's like no app anywhere you could go and check out like so who's the top crossing what is the top crossing what what is what there's very little an overall available data the Mau numbers of the games like in Facebook our republic and the crafts I was showing for the two games are from this game Skyfall site which seems to be correct data on the games although it's it's weird how they're English spelling on the site is very terrible like even in the screen so you can see this spelling mistake spelling mistakes but

but that's one way to to look at like so what games how the Mau is evolving over time but yeah I'm looking forward to have have like more more data points on the market let's take a brief look on the on the other apps as well who are out there so we tie this to the other one that's open for developers and here as well like finding the game first time you would usually find the game first time through friend referral or kind of searching for the game yourself like typing the game's name but then once you played it it appears in your own like mini program section so finding it again it's okay they have video ads and purchases as well and the purchases need those Chinese ISBN numbers the same as in app store so any game doing purchases needs to have that register number in

China the webview is not pure html5 but they have support for most Indians already so that shouldn't be a big big hassle technically we contact was one of the first ones after Facebook to start offering games the games are currently available only on Android they have their own virtual currency for monetization and they they curate a list of games that are available snapchat started last year there's a talk after myself so so stay here if you want to hear more I believe so so it's very popular in in the u.s. yeah they started last year they are very focused on the kind of multiplayer aspect of the games then we have line and Kakao line is the most popular one in Japan they are actively looking for original titles to have on their platform Kakao Talk is the biggest one

in Korea but they do a lot of games internally so they are not as actively looking for outside developers to do games with but you can always reach out if you if you feel like that would be that would be your platform a bit both line and Kakao it's harder to play the games here like if you are in Europe because the games work on the Japanese version of line and the Korean language version of cacao so you can't just go and kind of very easily play them yourself then there's twitch look everyone maybe have twitch on the list but I what I do twitch has html5 layer on the on their streaming service they have their own virtual currency to minimize to monetize and so they they have this mini a player then they can be games as well so I think it's quite interesting because it's also very soso platform where people are interacting with each other already in the kind of twitch chat as well then we have viber which is one of

the the newest to come on the list they're strong in Eastern Europe have following elsewhere as well and they have this kind of games channel inside their app where the games are fairly easy to find that is after you played something you can easily find that game and other games on all that kind of curated list as well but that's not all so there's there's still more and even this list is it's not like having everything there's also the hands manufacturers are having their own kind of html5 stores now and Google Earth is earth it's kind of interesting just like a cat's Carmen Sandiego that you can play on Google Earth obviously that is not the most social platform to be and so so we are looking at there at they're kind of our company is forced first concentrating on their on the most social platforms where we can utilize that that aspect inside the games and the last one I'm not sure if if that

even exists yet but I'm assuming that with 5g networks coming up there will be like we are full operating systems that well you don't have to download everything so as a recap it's a huge market it's still growing there's already a lot of futures on these apps it's quality games you can do whatever type of gameplay you want it's not only hyper casual and you can utilize new source of things to kind of help your design as well the apps are still evolving there's some of them are like recently joined so so they are and as we just saw from from Facebook they're still like a lot of new interesting features coming that the games can can utilize they're still new platforms also that that will join the kind of list of apps offering this type of new social games the kpi's work differently retention and virality are a very interlinked you need to spend some time to learn how did it work for your

game and what metric is is kind of affecting affecting what there is the crazy share ability and what are potential if you know how to use that in your game design thank you not sure if I have a couple of minutes for questions yeah I'm gonna Chuck one in a meeting and we've mentioned 5g a few times and I think so I've always been a bit of a cynic with html5 in particular not because I didn't think it was a great thing but just because of adoption and getting quality content to a place that I can discover it has always been a challenge but I seem to be getting the impression you're saying is we're trying to on the verge of that 5g giving us the chance to get bigger more rich content but also there are now stores out there with significant audiences particularly through social platforms are we at the tipping point yeah we are I mean already now you can

do quality content obviously technically you have to be a bit more savvy and some of the tools out there are more towards lei making hyper casual minigames so then now it's a it's a maybe a bit more struggle but you know as you said like 5g and the tools they're evolving it's it's happening it's a matter of time when we will have like you know big big titles there and we will have kind of a we will still we're still waiting for that kind of super mario moments that you know everyone will talk about a game and everyone will know a certain game mission based kind of problem where you tried to deliver content into a small experience you know you it's almost a streaming in some ways where you were talking about earlier right you don't have to download everything at once and I kind of almost wonder whether the streaming platform is particularly driven by 5g is gonna push that even further so I'm taking down a particular rabbit hole I shouldn't lose that any questions from sensible people yes doesn't mean in a microphone Sheehan

okay Arthur games usually exclusive to single platform or do you support does it make the soup does it make sense to support multiple platforms at the same time you you can support multiple platforms with one game there are some platforms that are are more picky or that I believe it might be my impression but but you know line wants it to be original and I believe snapchat also wants likes more original titles so they shouldn't be elsewhere not so sure or some titles might prefer you they might take your game easier if you cuss most of them correct their list so but what means original it could be a remake of the title you have oscar in theory should be supportable shouldn't ever go I mean there are differences in the API so obviously like the social API is like how do you share the share message or or even like like Facebook has has probably

the most feature that I know of like like it has very interesting if you have to use them so some platforms don't have that much to offer for the game so then you would do less of the features but so that they're supporting to do but it's always similar five we don't wind up like Java right once we're on no we're sorry bad bad vibes from my history on that note thank you so much for that thank you so you [Music]