Introducing Kwalee's New Publishing Platform - Muhammad Waqas Khan, Kwalee.

[Music] [Music] [Music] so to start this track I would like to invite Muhammad Khan to the stage from quali talking about the quali news publishing platform and how we can learn more and get better at publishing so please be give a warm welcome

thank you um hello everyone I'm Muhammad bakas and I'm here to introduce our new quality publishing platform um so today I'll be talking briefly about the MVP features that we'll be introducing but the the major part that I want to discuss is how we keep on improving the platform um and why why we actually needed this platform in the first place so let's start so this is more flashy title I know from Game Dev hell to publishing heaven but the reason that um we have been working on this platform is actually this um when I was assigned this product before that let me introduce first myself as well um I belong to primarily Tech heavy background so I I majorly work in creating different technical products so this is the first gaming product that I've been working on so I'm going to introduce you why I did the discovery

and how I did the discovery as well so let's start with the question um before starting any product I as a product manager need inspiration to to to create this product I mean why are we investing resources time and and eventually money as well I mean what's the need to actually create this platform so whilst doing the product Discovery I realized um that the game development specifically mobile development has been changing um for the good and for the bad both um and the one thing that really baffled me is that it's still changing no one still knows what's what's happening I mean people are trying different things uh trying different solutions but no one actually knows what's happening and what's going to stick um so the one term that I got really frequently is the hybrid games um I don't want to get in detail we have a lot of sessions of what's happening with the mobile development but this hybrid games is where you have to create a bit

more you know immersive game plays you have to keep the player in the game and bring the player back when they leave the game as well so this is where um I got the idea that if the problem statement is not still clear if we still don't know what we need to do to make successful Gams because as I said it's still changing creating an automated platform for all the tools it's it's not practical because if the problem statement is still not clear and we short list like 10 different tools and we create the automated layer it just doesn't make sense so what I wanted is to create a platform where we need to build a space for Learning and make your games better that's as simple as that so you need to learn you need to make your games better if it doesn't work you need to keep on learning that's that's the entire problem statement that I figured out in making the inspiration for creating this platform so um in terms of inspiration as I was talking about about um the one

thing again that I wanted to to encourage is having normal conversations normal communication through the platform so K is a developer as well so I had some interviews inside my team as well and I realized that um small developers or small Studios or indd developers they might not have the resources enough um but they don't still have enough idea to actually ask you the question so the platform that I will disc discuss later on you will find that there are very simple communication platforms where you can just raise any questions and the relevant team from qu actually will answer so moving ahead what would your perfect game publishing experience look like I mean this is a very very vague question a very hazy area very gray area I know but we still need to have some problems otherwise having a solution without a problem doesn't make sense so when I was creating the problem the first thing sorry the platform the first thing that I wanted the platform to solve is that

it has to be intuitive um you you shouldn't need to have like of 200 Page guide to use the platform the platform should be absolutely straightforward it has to be data driven so creating a hybrid game um you need to have your your data plans absolutely sorted so any decision you're making if your progression is not data driven you're you're bound to fail so what we are planning is and we we have introduced in the m VP as well is very clear and streamlined data pipelines through the SDK which you'll eventually see in the features as well uh it has to be zero cost I mean uh eventually you're going to spend a lot of money on your game development so your publishing at least should be zero cost I know it's it's still very controversial thing I want to go into detail but it has to be zero cost it has to be fast very simple problems it has to be fast I mean no one should beat you to Market and you're stuck in a loop of

extremely complicated platform so it has to be fast I mean uh the way simple saying um in marketing like less is more so that's I want to follow key kpi data so I'm I'm a very firm follower of U creating your decisions based on your kpi qualification measures so your kpis are basically your checkpoints if your game or your feature reaches to a certain checkpoint and if you're not fulfilling certain kpis you either has to change the course of action change direction but the platform should be able to track these kpis very very efficiently easy access to tools so um I'm I'm quite sure that we as one platform cannot provide you all the solutions but there are so many different resources that we can provide as an ecosystem and that's where I want to build the entire pitch around that it shouldn't be just just a platform where

K is saying that oh we know everything and we'll help you along the way no it has to be an ecosystem where we are open to not just force you to use what qual is providing there are so many amazing resources out there that we will plug in and we will proudly show them that this is kali's ecosystem but it's something that we have not built and we are very proud of that we will use different I've been this confence has been um very productive for me in that segment and potentially K will be releasing a few strategic Partnerships fairly soon game Trend insights this is um a very like basic thing that if you're not following the category that you're working on what's happening in the market for that obviously you're not doing something right so the problems are there the why is clear the what is clear um and when I figured out that how much time it would take me to create the platform it was somewhere around 3 to 5 years uh which

um I mean I could pitch that but I would be fired in like 5 minutes so the I had to create the MVP right I had to tell my my boss as well that you know there will be a platform in the next one year right but even better than one year what I wanted to do is to do a very quick six months launch so I joined Kali it's been 6 months and in next month end of next month hopefully U coming from Tech giving a date is frightening for me so that's why I'm saying end of February it can be the last year of February it will be the last day of February so um so um I wanted to do an MVP and I want in the next four or five slides I'm going to walk you through few features a high level features of what the platform will be doing and I love ux so it needs to look good so onboarding is very seamless it's just one click so you can be onboarded on the platform by just

connecting your Google account and the good thing which you'll see in one second is you can white label your platform it's your platform upload your studio logo upload your themes and just make the platform your own it's a small thing but for me it matters really that the platform that you should be using dayto day should look like something that you're using once you're on boarded if you have a small Studio five people you can invite people to your studio by just uh using the role based Access Control feature you can assign them specific permissions that you can only see specific sections of the platform you can also assign them specific games that they can see so that if they are working on only two games they don't need to see all your portfolio right the next thing is obviously this is what we here for games right so this is where they can submit their games it's a three-step process of submitting game the first one is a simple form where you create your uh you add your name your short intro if the apps are already on

the iOS or Play Store you can add the link no fine just give us a few gameplay videos and the second step is qual SDK qual SDK is for the MVP this is the light version of D SDK which is completely automated to integrate um it's there's documentation available it's going to take you 15 20 minutes at Max to install qual SDK as soon as you do that you'll start receiving real time uh dashboard analytics in the dashboard analytics section you'll see real time data coming through the platform there will be kpis surrounding that as well but as I said it's not just qu dictating what you should use it's an ecosystem so if you don't have qual SDK if you don't need qual SDK and you're like I'm already using another platform fine there's literally um a line saying in the game submission form that if you are using any other platform just provide us the data that you have already collected

and don't need to install quad SDK that's why the only thing you need to submit your game is just your game title a few gameplay videos and that's it that's your game submitted we don't need we we are not forcing you to install qu SDK that's very important for me but if you do decide to install quar SDK and as I said it's completely automated there's a validation mechanism so you just click on the third step that validate my SDK in real time is going to look through your source code it's going to see that if the SDK is properly initialized it's going to notify you in real time that yes s SDK is officially been integrated and it's working absolutely fine so next thing is very simple but it will be very effective the reason for that as a product manager I get inspiration from very simple things so uh my wife says that no problem is complex or complicated enough that cannot be solved by a simple conversation and this is is this going to be the proof because this

is very simple if you have any problems like you might be sitting um and having uh a bug in line number 496 in your source code just take a screenshot write some details select the relevant category and this will in real time notify qual relevant team and they're going to solve your problem they're going to schedule call if it's not solvable on just messages and as simple as that it's just a conversation communication if you have anything to discuss about the platform if you need to receive feedback on your game this PL this specific feature is going to help you do that as well um so initially you heard me saying we want to learn and make platform better your games better this is a section where you'll find the resources so I've personally recorded videos for this section where I'll be explaining how the features work um but that's just one part the second part is K is actually working on creating a complete tutorial system here you'll have a section called quali Academy where

you'll see interactive videos of how to do certain things and we'll keep on updating this uh knowledge base every week every month and if you don't find something that you you want to see in the knowledge base discussion forum as I said it's there for you just open the ticket and you'll have it the next thing is just some secondary features there are more features to the platform but just as a secondary feature file management this is a very effective section where if you want to manage all your files using a simple file explorer so we have created an interface just like Windows as soon as you create a game an automated folder will be generated you can keep your files you can keep your game design documents your contracts your game bills anything and everything will be maintained here it's provided with a uh restricted storage so that they are not spammed but if you don't find this storage enough discussion forum is there for you to open the tickets um so creating the MVP be as challenging as it was it was not enough

so um I was asking to myself like how do we keep adding relevant feature and I went to my senior again and the time frame that it comes out was again somewhere around 2 to 3 years um but what I mean we need to create a solution right but we need to keep discussing the problem as well so in order to do that I wanted to do something um out of the box like having a hybrid road map this is where uh so what we are working our team is working is to create an interface and every release that we'll make it has to be quarterly we're not going to take one year or two year to create more iterations so it will be quarterly every 3 months we are planning to release something so this hybrid road map will ask like the real developers who are actually facing the problem uh or small Studios they can pitch the feature and our our team is going to evaluate whether it's like technical Ally implementable if it's feasible for us to

do and every quarterly release that we will have we have especially dedicated a time for anything that comes from here if the developers requests is accepted I mean we will obviously acknowledge them we're going to tell them and they will officially be rewarded as well so um this which as I said I think it's just my thought because I said the problem is still not clear we still don't know what the problem why we are still in a clutch I mean there was a time where you could create a game and with very simple mechanics and it's going to live for a week or two it's going to earn you a quick bug but what's happening right now so I believe that this section is somehow can basically solve your problems so what we are launching as the MVP is core game analytics which is Real Time with qual SDK we are announcing developer to qu communication there's a

dedicated team assigned to this platform not just your basic customer support that we haveed your request no there's like real team engineering QA creative uh and every relevant team that you can think of it's sitting behind this developer quality communication training and coaching material we also launching as I said Central game management for your feedbacks for your game submissions um and you can also there's a button in the in the games man agement request feedback which will actually trigger notification to uh the the game team which is like mobile publishing team and they can actually provide feedback in real time as well files and feedback management Portal guide of howt notifications and alerts and quality support this is basically just the six months plan that I pitched my seniors and glad that they accepted and we're launching that in February potentially in the last minute of February February end hopefully but we keep on improving

that and that's where your phase one will be coming June 2024 um hopefully uh we want to introduce some qualification scenarios to keep on tightening the kpis again we want to create events management whether it's like default or custom so that you can track data is going to be Game Changer if you want to solve this problem so that's where your data driven methodology is going to come in place game management from the public so we we want to keep on working on our team as well it's not just the the developers we need to keep on improving how we can contribute and in the game as well so we keep on adding more automated features um like campaign management or many more features to update that and that chunk that I was talking about that's the interactive backlog focus groups or bugs this is where anything coming from the actual source of problem is being taken care of then phase two hopefully in October you have so I'm I'm a fan of stack

Overflow I don't know if you know or not so stack Overflow is just where you discuss bugs and issues um I wanted to create something like that we can we can have a conversation about problems anyone can put a problem and any person from the other part of the world can actually solve them so that's the games Community we want to introduce different tests through the system as well so creative test marketability test and interactive backlog as we discussed phase three hopefully we want to put something we want to start talking about finance and billing through the platform as well which is very very important topic we want to do a test through the system want to create a market Watcher something like CET Tower we we having a conversation with them as well and again interactive backlog um as I said um launching a platform was not that difficult to be honest I feel the the road the direction you see of the road is is very very difficult and that's where um we want to

create an ecosystem we just don't want um Kali to be a standalone provider of solutions because we cannot solve every problem and we we understand that but qual is also developers so I've had several interviews with quali u developers as well and I realized that they're going through the same problem so that interactive backlog is something that they will be working with as well but um as I said this platform needs to be for the developers and should be by the developers as well that's basically um it for the presentation um still have time but um there's one before going to questions I have one post credit scene so uh kie is uh introducing like this game master Summit it's like a one day digital conference um I was asked to add that as a last slide um I was forced to do that so it's going

to be hosted on 21st of February it's a one-day digital conference uh we're having discussion from every uh Market person that we could find we are screaming everyone to join um they're there they're many panel discussions there are different speakers from industry talking about different burning questions um all of that um it's going to cost you just it's it's free of cost there's there's no fee to join to be honest it's just a digital conference um and back to the questions I'm still have one and a half minute I'm sorry if this is a stupid question but um how will players actually access the game will it be through um like the I store and and Google or will it be through an app that

qu has uh sorry can you can you can you clarify how do you access games as in like with qu being the publisher will the games still be on iOS and Google Play store okay yes so what's in it for you like are you going to take a revenue share or um so um the idea is that um we want them to join the platform we want them to use the resources want them to use the ecosystem and if they think that they want to pitch this game to qual there's another section where they can just pitch their game to us we'll evaluate the game and eventually if it qualifies the kpis that we are looking for we're going to sign it but if it doesn't become better they still keep on learning through the platform so until they are ready to be uh to to be joining a publisher they can keep on using the portal we'll keep on adding learning resources so they can become better that's the idea

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