Keys for success in hypercasual and messenger games

[Music] alright hello everyone thanks very much for attending this so we're gonna talk about hyper casual and messaging apps to my favorite topics I think in the industry at the moment particularly chat up gaming which I think could be pretty big but that's really a question for all of you lot so first things first could you all please introduce yourselves and the companies you represent yeah I'm sure hey I'm an extender crew I'm CEO and founder of soft games we're one of the yeah the top five developers on messenger we have I think like 75 80 games live there a lot of hyper casual games but also more I'd say like deeper social games like cookie crush or solitaire story for example we're into html5 since was 2012 so a long long time we shared the same history with Lawrence as well we have developed over 500 yeah

a lot of love history and html5 hi everyone my name is Bojana Reza I'm CEO and co-founder of gamey game is a battle gaming Network we connect friends across series of gaming challenges battle challenges as an independent gaming platform and we also connect our games across chat apps to make it playable and shareable with friends there we have about 70 games life and we are more in data business than we ever thought as we watch out the billions of game plays across platforms across the games and they're trying to see what the patterns actually are okay hi everyone my name is Alena open and I'm the CEO and co-founder quicksave we are a local company here in Helsinki only have one and a half years old but the company was founded to work on the chat messaging gaming our team has experience already from before this company our previous

studio was acquired by a chat app called Padrino and we worked there for two years to build games for them and last year we found it quicksave we saw the market is is kind of appearing to be had to be a big and and it's very interesting to see how the market is now kind of finally growing to be that what we've envisioned it to be for like four four years already on the three years something so it's quite exciting times and even though the track is called hyper casual we're actually now going towards and making some mythical games so there's gonna be some challenge on the topic here everybody my name is Flip Command I'm a CEO and founder of blacksmith like games where a national Firefox game their studio which we already walk with html5 for around five years so at the moment we're the exclusive partner off and top social happens us I finally enter the first developers full moon also the Russia's

biggest social network contact on the new platform for contacted our games right now I've ever seen a new ways to enters a new markets / fellow Asian Asian ones hi my name is Valentin I'm running small video game consultancy called game wizards I have a history in Russian game deaf industry mostly on the publishing side of the business but I also run an indie development studio I just opened at a new slot in Riga just to do hyper casual games and I have a company it means that doing casual games for last 7 years ok great thanks so I guess the first just obvious question is just how big right now and can it be chat up gaming so we've got a Facebook interesting games we've got WeChat doing something cool doing something and in a snapchat as allegedly working on their own platform so right

now is it a profitable business and what's it gonna be like compared to mobile in a few years so yes we just heard from Lawrence as well there are games individual games that are profitable now but definitely probably the people here agree with me that you know the aim is now not such to make top games in the market but also to crota market and there's potential for the markets to do seriously Pro from word leads now like how much money is moving there when you consider a new gaming platform there's always a certain time that you know the right genre is the right types of games appear and when you get the first kind of breakthrough hits then no I don't think we've seen like breakthrough hit game yet on the chat again that's my my take on it this may be commenting on the opportunity from a little bit of a different angle so we have we have seen from the

previous two presentations that what is actually happening and I know we all realize is that we have we have two major source we have App Store and Google Play and within those stores that here are sitting major huge other potentially source right like messenger like WeChat that are gateways of discovery of content and this is something that's happening more and more and we have not seen that before that we have this like two layers of discovery so that's a situation now where we have a store and within that story we have super apps that are now offering games and more and more content so looking at this opportunity of the situation how long this can be and when is the moment when these super apps will actually become more powerful than the store since themselves this is the moment when the opportunity gets really big well the opportunity yes it was said before it's really big but it need to mention that the Facebook in some games may seem a bit crowded already but don't but don't

get upset because there are also many other platforms which are opening you as new power based gaming solutions and Facebook note is not only one of course it's a primal everyone and it's one of the most in one the plot on which offer small most rich fishes and so on has a really huge user base but there are also need new solutions for example which some something like local social networks like contact like China's WeChat like mentioned before that japanese line and so on so the opportunities are truly a big right now it's just an area that you have to get in on right now can you can you weights you know is it going to be the big players they're doing it now they're gonna be the big players at the end when it starts maturing as a platform I mean it's always good to be the first one definitely but I think history has shown

that it's not I mean like even if you start right now I'm gonna look back to super cell right there haven't been there before but they had a lot of experience actually basically like you know that so we've been going off down to partners we've been able to launch like three games at the beginning and like the first year 2017 we were basically like trying around like tons of stuff we had no idea what could work what we worked at the end of the day so I think it's always good to you know even if you don't have a clear vision like I had that's the game that's the thing what will work at the end of day I think it's always good to just just give it a start at least to fail several times that you understand okay that's not working at the end of day and then use this kind of know-how to make the to build on the next big hit actually at the end of the day I think like a lot of basically all of the people who are sitting here the panel I had this kind of same situation same worm it the same experience at say over the last couple of months and years and so yeah definitely I mean like it's not for sure but you have to be the first

one but it's better to be and then kind of the same kind of question but the hyper casual why is that become so popular now well there can be some not arisen because then there are well I think is cute purple because us it was open it by ketchup actually back around two or three four five years ago so we can see that those type okay of this type of games which are small which quite simply about in design and gameplay there they get popular because because users on mobile are focusing more on the actual game plays and on graphic on multiplayer aired meta gameplay they need just simple games but this market is also good really crowded

because it's a big opportunity but now it has a rebound while on html5 platforms so I think that the key popular here is that people can easily share these games also they can easily start playing actually it's like they say it's easy to learn and hot mustard so today's games has a lot of viral potential that's why they have a popular I think that's the hyper casual is growing because Mobile is growing and the people are moving from websites where they used to play very simple games and from you know freedom flash for example to to mobile and the the cost of acquisition is dropped significantly last year it's a it's an effective scale and I actually these I'm some effects from the different auctioning system so you can easily attract millions of players into your

new title and this model is scalable in and it's very easy for publishers to make money on hyper casual games so that's why they promote in it it was with a super short sessions like 30 seconds to 2 minutes it's very easy to new players to start doing this and the aggressively targeted through social media channels like I did on Instagram or Facebook and that's it this market attracts a new audience sometimes it's just if the first game they the somebody will ever play will be hyper casual game if I can twist your question a little bit and and likewise hyper casual is so strong in investor that little twist on that but I think one reason for that is that they are kind of fast to make it's easy to start with that and technically it's you have to have a lightweight download for example for

their for the instant games you need to download it in seconds so to make a hyper castle game for that it's it's kind of something easy to start with and I do think the messaging market will see like more actually mid core and longer gameplays once once companies have have kind of got cut down to to making them and they've had their time to to mature and and and get out there does that mean this could be a city question for me but does that mean the technology has to improve for instant games if you're gonna look at more mid core maybe even hardcore games well yeah I mean if you if you do that like like we've built some of our own tech to be able to do that kind of things cuz you need to run your own back-end and you need to be downloading things on the fly while the person is playing so but there's nothing preventing you to do that and I don't think what you find is actually better at the moment the hyper casual on instagrams or more slightly more complex

games own opinion here but the I mean both work I mean it's a platform that can have a lot of different genres and gameplay sewn on it so when we're talking about chatter gaming what are some of the key design considerations that you have to take into account because it's quite a unique platform compared to mobile you're getting chat games watch as a key for success and in game design you mean okay I prefer actually to divide the instant games term into two categories first one is like the original Facebook instant games which are in fact tied to chat so you need to invite another player where chat and start playing together but there are also another platforms which are more like traditional game portals or game categories more like App Store look for example I don't know contact there are

games where you can choose a game where menu and play a single game single-mode single-player mode actually and which is the main focus of the game so the instant games are focused on multiplayer and the second category direct games more complex called is focused on single player but in both cases you have to get a good role to factor and the good retention factor so since most of portals are connected to social networks you need to use the social networks feature set which allows you to share the games as friends which even give lesson gift for inviting friends or for sharing is a game content on their newsfeed and so on so right now there is one of the keys factor because I can say on how actually the paid user acquisition will pay off because there are not so many cases nowadays in this

field so so only proven fact is the world in the using severalty in your games anyone else wanna jumping on some key design that game design considerations yeah yeah definitely you need to have there the kind of social who've seen their social social features and and the platforms like games they are offering these tools for you to use you just have to take them and and kind of use them as well and we're looking a lot on kind of height to how to integrate with the chats to kind of kind of have it almost a game play where where something is happening with the bots and something's happening with the game and they're trying to integrate well with the platform that's that's definitely something you can do and Anya I also think it's a lot about it's a big balancing game on the on the chat

platform site and on the among the game developers themselves because think about like why you open a messaging app you probably don't open it for games most of the time you open it for various different things to talk to your family your colleagues to solve maybe even business and maybe you also play games in there so the context is not only for gaming we're not talking about messengers for gamers only so the balancing game is really into on the on the chat pod from site to give enough discoverability for games to enhance the social features because yes we have all seen the data when people play with friends everything is better they play much more games they have a better retention everything but at the same time if you push that too hard it's going to hurt the chat platform over a long period of time because people will see all the spammy messages like friend request this act - in order to get to a second level but like the balancing game is really important because if the chat platform cuts that too strong game developers will be frustrated there

is no virality but if they got that to lose they're going to destroy it over a long period of time so the balancing is very important it's very delicate and I think there's still way to go in most of the platforms we've seen but balancing is important for the platform if you're developer you just need to pursue this opportunity to use you just just just just spam everyone it's possible just because because next thing but we that may happen is it's going to happen that the same thing that happened with a facebook they moved you know the opportunity to spam users to a special you know game feed where nobody notices what what I mean you cannot you're not able to acquire any users right now is it is the only chance for developers on an instant game platforms just just spam other users just to grow your audience if you have a great game just just I think that's very very tricky and would

might be and a very short term because if there was a feature that would allow games to go super violence then everybody maybe in short term it makes a developer happy but in the long term and I like Facebook can probably tell us themselves but there will be a product manager looking at what's going on they would cut that feature and the whole industry would go down because of that right so the balance is really important for a long term if you investing in a platform with your games and your resources and everything you want that platform to thrive okay that's competition right I must say I did find these very annoying back in the back in the heyday of facebook notifications however the two examples I think of in my head are candy crush and farmville which did alright believe me hyper casual games nowadays are more annoying one thing I think we're saying there is that it's sooo basic games a comfort do they need to be made to just be you constantly have to go back whether it's you're playing one

constant game with your friends or like it's got to encourage you to come back and play that same game again you can't it can't be like a finite experience if it's built in the chatter or am I completely wrong sorry I I the way I'm putting it is Xena the chat up gaming is always with leaderboard so you've always got there's always gonna be a reason to come back to that game there's no games like on mobile where you might have a premium experience where you just play and that's it I mean the players do go to try several games but I I believe in the very very beginning of the market there was kind of an idea that people are gonna go like in and out of games a lot but they actually don't do it as much as as people thought in the beginning they tend to stick with the games that they like of course you know it's still how they the game games are

displayed to you like for example there's the recently played and everything now instant games that that kind of creates a little bit unlike what what do you if you if you like something you you probably you know would play it again at least you would play it longer than then no you would play that one session you would play that game you wouldn't go like instant like okay and and that's that's actually good for the developer if if there is a tendency for people to to to like games and I wish there was actually more this kind of a rating like users could flag their favorite games or rate them better and have that kind of a friend rated game game suggestions and these kind of things I think the platforms are still working with but but yeah even even though not even a hyper castle game some of them we see kind of sticking on there on the top 10 list for for a long time

so certain hyper casual games seem to be more sticky than others so so I think it was like when you look back now like two years almost behind us it's a and still there like a lot of evergreens it's a on the platform in there like since the beginning and they've been played by millions and millions of people all the time so I think it's something what also developers from the app space can bring over to the messenger game space and a lot of method again developers I had to learn before is that it's not like all about okay just launching a lot of games all the day but at the same time you always have to care about your games as well right so ya always have to deliver them fresh new content so that the users do have a reason to come back so if it's only about okay hey lunch marry a hyper casual game and then I forgot about it probably nothing will happen I probably just like a little know jump up and then goes down again so I think yeah as long as developers caring about that part and so I don't because with a chess or

gaming what's the best way to make money on those platforms now is it ad based or now you can do in app purchases or instant games is it in app purchases I'm talking about right now so basically all major majority of revenues coming from ads clearly because they today we're coming from the app that space let's say before so like the games we've built over the last couple of years have been clearly device for advertisement but we see now a shift towards in-app purchase and we are pushing hardly to go into in-app purchase because you definitely make more money with interpret race but it's something what we as our you know like hmm five for a casual developer has to learn but first but yeah but at the end of the day you know it's have a higher value per user have a higher lifetime values so you can invest more into user acquisition and so

on and so on you can now grow the user base then a bit I'm organically so I think it's it's very important actually if the platform you are launching for on is offering options like for example about as videos it's the best it's the best community to use this kind of art because it's very free it's if it's really well for hypocrite shell games for example when you game have a short session for example you lose in like five or ten seconds and then play again then you can give an option to continue a game with watching Roddick we do it's this model was true wasn't amended countless times in native mobile games actually but I really see this in instant mode in institutional five games so it's a good point but if you are looking for a game with big lifetime value which is not so he hyper casual but who has speaking about habit but anyway for games with with big lifetime

well in-app purchases are a good solution to but there are some problems with in-app purchases almost buttons right now because of the payment options it's a very difficult topic to discuss to discuss in a quick way so by the unit to try it yourself so I come back to you how the casual games is your ability to there and we talked about some design considerations for chats out gaming and was always some crossover but what some key design considerations when you're building a hyper casual game in terms of what you know it's got to be simple but there's that was talked earlier you know is it gonna be one touch if it's gonna be that simple like it's it's it should be sticking yeah that's for sure and that's that's um why why the requirements

from from hyper casual publishers and mostly about the first day or attention to send their attention the core gameplay should be the driver of repetitive sessions so it's a balance of the session land it should be short and and the number of sessions per day and the people should return to the game without that reality factor without the the social features okay the the competitive games now like a multiplayer games type of dot IO stuff it's it is trendy nowadays and we'll we'll see more games like that in the near future but so far people just love playing the same game over and over because they feel that feel the challenge they feel they're right right right right right number of progression I don't know right rate rate of progression it's just if you feel that you you do it doing right thing it's just it in spite of the fact it's a it's a hyper casual it's still a game and it should be great game

and in the core gameplay it's just the meta is very simple very simple and and it's will get more complicated in the nearest future besides skins will see some quests or some other type of little science for the player how to how to progress how to spend more time in a game well the formula is each alone at masa which has measured before works really well for balancing key or hyper casual games but also the good point is adding some at least soft currency I mean sophomores is the type of in-game currency which is not bought in approaches but is obtained via game actions like for collecting coins in a platform I also another type of like this some star search and adding some things you you can buy for these courses it shouldn't be it should be just the creative not changes a gameplay an actual way as a simple example is skins

for the player to orbit rounds these options of skins should be early variables for example like background for one of our games we did for like 100 of the player skins but it paid really well so because plates like to unlock and unlock new and use skins especially if they can see which which is gonna be in interests and it keeps their attention actually they like to collect coins to obtain the new and you and you and set cycle repeats so it's a good option to start with we have seen one one interesting thing that that would be like on top what you said I do agree with that completely one one thing that I find interesting is that we played with a frustration level let's say something dad like how hard you can make the game or how easy so we played on with that on one game and we were

watching how shareability changes shareability me laugh many people challenge each other so on the competition play what is the shareability change with the frustration level changes and interesting enough or you will probably guess if you increase the frustration level so it's harder to progress at a certain point the share ability of the game increased a lot it did hurt the longer term retention of the game so it comes back to setting up what you expect the game to do so there seems to be a relationship with pain the higher frustration level and higher share ability but long term retention so based on what you expect the game to do this is something that we play with there is no need to punish the player with wizard was it difficult gameplay because you already punished in him was forced adds see you monetize in through ads you have a two minute session and then it showing him 30 seconds of video which is which is force you cannot skip it until well

maybe maybe 10 seconds later so the thing is you have to treat your player as as a precious you know acid you you have to love him because you're really punishing him the same time make any money on him just want to make one comment also on some of the things just being said I think actually a hyper casual I mean it's very trendy term now but I don't think it's anything new it's been around for for for a long time I mean let's all think about flappy bird you know it's very high frustration level I think flappy birds the probably the mother of all hyper casual games but no one called it hyper casual games then I think just the reason that a couple of companies now like to Voodoo's who are very successful and make hundreds of millions of revenues suddenly we have this category but I think in itself it's nothing new I

think it has been there forever I feel like it's becoming a is become a slightly bigger thing now even though flappy bird was monetize this way back through advertisement being a lot easier for developers to use now on mobile but now the term hype internationals kind of grown out of that as well it was interesting to talk about shareability so with hyper casual games it's how do you how do you build these massive audiences that they inevitably need is it can you do it organically or is it really pages requisition and then hopefully when you've got a big enough audience you can advertise your own games within that network they'll be the audience in hyper casual apps yes it's mostly acquisition it's the user acquisition it's just you need to test your creatives you need to test everything on a page like a so saying to lower acquisition costs and but now it's

it's possible to to acquire Taiwan users from 10 to 20 cents per pad so if you're a small developer if you're small 0 you're gonna get into this it's kind of tricky when when I see the game like a rise up and I don't know 85 million installs this year I'm not sure it's just a you know just a fate and and somebody or maybe god blessing or or maybe featuring helped this developer to go I still fact that maybe some some casino group stays behind the the man and invested heavily with the user acquisition team because it's it's easier to for lunch publishers with experience in in acquisition to do so and it's possible you can you can purchase hundreds of millions of users literally and using the your you know your data you gather it you just you if you acquired users into a den or hundred games you're really profiling them it's it's

gonna be cheaper view every next usually user gonna be you know it's like a cost of free engagement it's gonna be fraction of the cost of for the acquiring a new user so that's why it's gonna be a economy of big game of big publishers of hyper casual games pretty soon you are definitely an honor broker so it's but but it's for the messaging part of that it's it's just kind of coming only it's it's really early days that this company is kind of starting out testing it but but it's really more organic currently and yeah you can obviously in the chat there's possibilities to to build in virality or or have this but it's obviously you you need to try out different things and and there's no one formula yet that we would

see that you know exactly if you do I mean of course everyone would do it if there was one and we'll we will see how it how it will form like the market but now it's it's I would say and messenger it's it's kind of cheaper to acquire your first initial user base because you don't you don't have to pay for it I does anyone else have any questions they'd like to ask you for about messenger apps or casual yes I'd like specifically relating to messenger games like to what extent have you've been relying or like if at all on featuring from Facebook and as I start anything that that gave you like a big impact so a bigger lift or did you succeed without it well I guess kind of like I said this there is organic

possibilities so so that is you know what when you launch a game you get certain position and you know that they would measure like how I mean of course it's in Facebook's interest also too if your game has good retention if it's appealing the usual state it's in their interest to kind of give you more opposition on the list so that there is a there is some organic discovery in that sense from the path from anyone else I mean like I think it's the same back in the App Store I mean you should never ever count with a featuring from Apple or Google that in every day I mean like what you should do definitely the beginning is just focus on day 1 retention the game has good day 1 retention it will basically grow automatically some kind of and then if you lucky then Facebook probably will find it and will feature you but you should not start with like okay hey let's play the game which will be or let's try to get a contact you Facebook that I get featured with my game because

they will not do it as long as your game is not showing the good kpi's but yes to answer the question featuring helps you to boost the user face definitely as always there any other questions Reena from play space I have a question if because we we touched you you guys did touch a little bit on the design considerations and for a developer who would like to step into the market right now and bring the game to instant messenger is the core mechanics that is sticky enough or is it the time when you have to think about specific retention fee or just having the you know sticking mechanics it's alright I would definitely do both have a stinky mechanic have something in the medical be a game changer or not really I would

say game changer would need to consider what the platform offers for the retention as well if you if you are using the pot messaging whether you are very spammy or or not you really don't know what it is you sent but you should definitely do it anyways I do not suggest to spam heavily I just sorry just do not avoid the the chance to grow your audience use those any other questions I have I have one more which is what what do you think the right balance is for platform holders of the revenue share they take when it comes to messenger games so we recently we had Facebook instant games taking their own 30% on Android now they cut that completely which Facebook could do but what do you think is the right balance for developers and platform holders I think it was a good good move

for Facebook to cut this interface sorry no I can explain why it's better because like I think the the ecosystem of messaging games is so early there doesn't make sense to to to to earn at the very very early days some money I think Facebook will earn at some point when did you paid user acquisition or they are doing I think they're in a lot of money with the advertisement already what is the fair catch it's very hard to answer always I think like record is like the the 30 seventies is better than what I know from the good old java games times where it was when you got lucky 50/50 but normally was 70 for the operator and 30 for you as a developer so a thing like this move is already a better move in direction at the everyday when you look what what kind of costs these kind of platforms have at their hands and what kind of costs that the other side the developers have and not the

risks they take and so on and so on Aura Sphere is at 10:10 90 20 ATM I don't know but I think 30 70 or 70 30 more where you want to see it is it's it's it's it's fair than everything else what I've seen in the past that I like this I think the ideal case scenario is that game developers make a lot of money through monetization and they spend it for user acquisition part of it so and everybody's happy just wanted to add that yes 30 to 70 77230 it sounds better than like 55 to 45 in info contacted the Derek James I mean in the Russian developers are still happy to to make money on this huge audience they have in Russia but speaking of the fair Raven share it's gonna be moving to 80/20 like the icing the same process is going on the mobile platforms we will see that

the shares will be changing as soon as large companies like it's off topic but companies like epic when the launching their heat titles on platforms on an alternate platforms without using Google Play Store they just trying to to you know to save some money and to take control over their audience and that thing will will will change the balance probably something it would it will lead to I didn't have special agreements with the larger publishers or maybe as with a subscription model it will change the ratio to 8020 I think that's time up so thanks very much for the panelists for answering the questions so if you give a round of applause [Applause] [Music]