Learn the key fundamentals to social casino game design, monetisation and marketing

[Music] and okay so my name is Matt Beck and we do and I'm the vice president of strategy at Mercker strategy is a kind of combination of a few things licensing user acquisition some data science we and some kind of in-game optimization and I've been with Moka about a year and where I come from previously was hard a Vegas product man is another social casino company so I've been around the casino space around 10 years and if you know me one of the things that I really enjoy is actually gambling and I think it's really important that whatever industry you're in it's very important you actually enjoy the core game experience so here's some basic steps about murca and

actually might touch on Ron's whale commentary so casino in like the way on this score it's kind of off the chart we're searching for this handful of people that pay and generally pay quite a lot and in terms of their ability to move between competition and we find most of our players are quite promiscuous meaning they will have played a lot of our competitors games but they generally will pay in a handful of them only and their favorites they're ones that they generally pay the most with so we actually identified based on Ron's talk which was you know the social casino space is really heavily elderly female whale driven and what this means is this is underserved segment of the market for younger more male participants so our top game appears scatter slots was and still is our biggest title and really our way of breaking through into the social casino market which is pretty heavily fixed

there hasn't been a whole lot of new entrants in the last few years and so what we did is we thought okay what mechanics that would resonate with a core slot player and then try to make those a little more male focus and a little younger focus than the traditional slots game so you can see you've got to map you you know you're racing your friends and then each of the the levels you're actually achieving a mission or a quest rather than just playing slots and then the more you bet be high the more you progress you actually have specific achievements and what we saw is this was clearly an underserved segment of the market so it's not just a phenomenon for social casino I think it's for any mature industry where people are solely focused on one set of demographics or one set of players and your ability to innovate is really really important and this is what will end up making you successful our

second game where our second largest game infinity slots is also you know what we believe is innovative in terms of the mechanic to progress but it is your more traditional social casino player than your top game scaler slots for those who don't know about the industry people often like oh you know people really playing slots online just for fun I can - I personally play slots online for fun it's a bit it's a bit of a stigma attached to it similar to a lot of casual games you can see it's a significantly sized industry I think four and a half billion five billion dollars in total and it's dominated by a handful of parties that you can see on the right-hand side it's large it's still growing you can see it started on Facebook its transition to mobile but it is a very very competitive space so the only way to stand out is to an event so this I took was the the kind of top 20 or so slot apps so I took our Big O I

took out poker and what you can see it's a bit of a mess everything's a little bit different but we can see there's certain themes that resonate so the red these are people who manufacture slot machines put them on the floor and then take that exact same content and put it onto your mobile device to play so I GT aristocrat scientific games WMS it's quite obvious the strategy that they're at the point they're making great slot content for the floor and now they're moving into the mobile space so when you're competing with these people you're not only competing with a back catalogue of slot titles so myself I've been playing no more chili for 10 15 years already and you're competing with you know hundreds of million dollars of investment in designing the best slots for the physical machine so these are fierce competitors your casino IP so these are the zingers of the world and they identify that there's a difference in in licensing between the slot floor

and the mobile space so Wizard of Oz is owned by one party on the slot forum and a different party on mobile so this is leveraging similar pent-up demand for those titles that the manufacturers producing you've then got Yuka co-operators seizes MGM who have a belief of their player base in a user base will be more valuable and than just buying users directly so they've entered the space and in the green space is the most difficult which is you're just developing content for the mobile space specifically one of the things here you'll notice the slot of mania ceases or ceases not anymore a few others House of fun these are all owned by one large Vegas slots all owned by one large competitive play ticker which sold for four and a half billion dollars I think lost you so this is the space the green is really difficult but you have to understand that your can who you're

competing with and why so for us to go head-on with one of these very large companies it's very difficult this is why focusing on a specific subset made sense for us so this is how we kind of think about our portfolio is okay let's design a product for a specific segment rather than just trying to copy what else is going on in the market so you've got scatter slots a more advanced players slightly younger more male the graphics are a little bit darker the achievements are a little bit more specific dishes and this is designed specifically for that player you can see infinity slices your more traditional casino simulator which has that older female focused and then where you go to that new game here slots error which is actually very similar this gutter slots except it's targeting your advanced younger female player so this is our way of differentiating from the guys who are just producing an application to try to you know peel across all different

subsets of players and polka we just launched a month maybe a month ago it's a twist on your traditional poke again so it's definitely worth checking out this focus of segmenting our users it not only applies to the game but it actually also applies to our ads the West serving right so if I'm a stray lien older male I will be targeted with a different creative than a American younger female right so we think about this not just in the application but also in the ad creative the events that we're running everything is specifically designed for this player so this was scatter slots are kind of a quest based mechanic achievement based mechanic and like any really competitive industry what we saw is a lot of people replicate

similar features inside of the game so the back of our kind of ideas of that this is and replicas of our original concept and this is something you've just got to deal with in the in the mobile space if you have a successful product you will have replications of it so there's things you can do to protect yourself in terms of the App Store in terms of the platforms etc but there's really one way of competing and it's just continuing to focus on your player and the product and just continue to innovate so okay the the metagame is starting to get replicated let's focus on just building the best slot machine as possible as an example this is a good idea of instead of just focusing on a specific innovation is is broaden out everything and that becomes a lot more difficult to replicate and so you can hear you've seen these type of graphics you wouldn't see these these cover what dark more gothic graphics in your

traditional slot machines this is quite unique so then for us the kind of natural transition was okay and this is working for slots you know can we make this work for poker so here's a new poker game we actually played a physical version of this where someone had to have achievements and quests but effectively the same concept where instead of just playing poker for fun you're playing to achieve specific missions it becomes quite complicated when you know I'm a level four playing I just need to play ten hands versus someone to level ten and they need to win to flush this is the kind of innovation that we're trying to bring to market that was really nice and quick is there any questions yeah we having a whole ten

minutes more I mean I think personally it's it's a fascinating kind of area because social casino blurs the boundary between different psychologies of game design I would argue you tell me because I'm not a gambler I totally understand why it's appealing but I'm one of those guys that doesn't like gambling because I like to be in control I like running gambling services because house always wins and because it for me that comes down to the psychology of the motivator that where they the joy is found you know I think for gambling and tell me if you think I'm wrong but there's this moment between the result being in and me understanding from won or lost yeah and there's come on an adrenaline rush kind of like response to that and that doesn't diminish over time that's something which if you love that you really love that and you don't to get that moment again a casino with real money does that because does something at risk why does because social casino works when that risk isn't as apparent in like

a mobile context I think it does but I'd love to know what you think is or even to that I think the first part 100% true so the idea of a slow machine is it's going to you're going to lose run this it's a game that's rigged against your favor so you the sounds the animations everything is designed for making you feel happy even though you know you are losing off to be simulating in great ways yeah I think if you just think that they're only chasing that win not the entertainment that's the disconnect so that most social casino companies think people really enjoy this feature this event they're actually okay with playing it without money at a much lower cost I think it's a very common misconception in social casino that you can fake this experience a lot of you know the scattered slots as a mechanic there was a lot of failed attempts at trying to

innovate in social casinos so I think even thing you had a slot machine weather an endless-runner on the top as a slot player mr. this is kind of just distracting this is not enhancing my experience it's just creating a distraction so making sure you have a meta game feature that that overlaps well with the slot experience is really important one other I guess point of reference is if you read any of the app pages reviews you'll see that slot players believe the machine is rigged like this machine is rigged it took my money this is very very common and the answer is it actually it is rigged it you know you are going to lose long term this is the you know how a slot machine was so and a lot of social casino companies think one of the ways I could fake this is by generating a really positive experience for my users when they first enter the funnel so I install the game and now I hit a big win if you give justice to their complaint that

this is fake this is not what the core play redacted for now so it's because I remember well aunch the mobile gambling service in 2006 or 3 and in the UK and that whole kind of percentage of power which is part of the fixed Hobbs rules that UK was running at the time I think still so that was the key part of it and the payout was an absolutely essential aspect of the experience and the feel of that a lot of the experience casino got new in straightway what the payout would be percentage-wise yeah ok so and they tended to vit with sort of 98 96 percent pal confirmed slots we had on our server yeah at the time it's a long time what go by the ways like Java days so you know don't look at me for any you know really useful information you know so a month level is that still the case though is they are they still looking for that and right I'm trying to understand the slot or is it now the meta game is much more interesting a lot part of the year one of those popular slots in America is a game called Buffalo in my former company

and and there's different variations of Buffalo depending on where you're playing so if you play Buffalo on Las Vegas Strip you'll have a lower odds than you would on the office trip properties and example so yes I mean the advanced player mechanic is also applied to specific slot designs so not just return to player but like volatility hit rate what the feature looks like what the graphics look like when people are spending an exorbitant amount of time and energy trying to craft the slot machine it works really well even the best slot designer in the world would probably have like a 10% afraid many had release hundred games and ten of them may be successful and it'll be the best so it's very if you knew how to tap that in that winning feeling and every time you would be very welcome and imagine and the fact that Oakley we're all getting this is that you know we look at slots we think Isis locked inside actually best for the case it's incredibly complicated to get

the new audited a bit like trying to make the best map match three it's not longer just making a match three anymore it's actually making sure that we got every single finesse of every single mechanic element not just short term but long term as well I'm helping a lot the questions so I want to check if those other questions in the room oh good question over here with a mic just a quick question very good presentation so the way you classify different like different type of developers so the traditional slot machine manufacturer they are trying to put their existing IP the optimal bar right so but what about in general do you think like when you design the slot machine mobile game is it targeting the gamblers for what to just like have a alternative or you try to actually grab those who don't want to pay like or your deadlock gambler but they just want to have experience good but in general I think if slot machine doesn't have much of a big play so I just want to be understand it's a it's like a common

debate is that the exact same player that goes to a casino and plays these games or is it you know some a different subset of the audience I think for sure given the fact that the top titles are casino titles these people at least familiar with these titles whether it's 100 percent overlap I'm not sure it's very common for someone to not be able to get to a casino it's too far it's not in their state etc this is a very common subset so I'd say for sure there's a subject that knows the games and just can't access it or they prefer it at home versus in in the casino I had a similar conversation with Rafa he was a guy who set up plumby you know he's no longer there but is he said summerlee that it's it's not just the casino guys but the familiarity with casino is the key with the key for him I don't know if I can't go back but if you think also there's some tension between the casino operator in terms of Caesars and my

Vegas etc and the manufacturers because these are actually customer and vendor rights so they sell that box into that customer so there is some different opinions on like what the exact overlap is I just asked one who put forward prison so you mentioned about the four billion dollars by Mark catenary so is the majority of the players feel gamblers or do you think essentially there are fifty fifty percent one side is pretty high I'd say like if those people could play for real money at home they would be playing for real money at home it's just that they can't we have done the question here well we do city recording so otherwise I'll have to repeat the question which is fine so I'm not going away so thank you what's the average LTV that you're seeing with casual gaming are not advocating the Carroll negating yeah we don't we don't give it it's it's a niche industry and and

you're DEA use versus and I think I'm like candy crush would be significantly smaller so you imagine it it's much smaller user base but much higher monetization and that's why it's quite a hot area for advertising because you're searching for these specific whales in a very niche industry and then you have the hotbed very very high in terms of buy a lot of impressions in a competitive market so if it's high it's higher than it's actually probably the highest in mobile gaming we have one on a point for - I'd say and others interesting you noticed about how a submachine on the strip would have worse as the ones that would be to be off the strip your pen depends on a specific state and regular men is a it's very complicated but yes it can be are you building any Eddie's of regional differences into apps but you know

broken down by perhaps different types of users migrate different odds people who didn't place like it it's an odds how's that and playing out a little bit not not so much is the majority of the market in social you know is us at least eighty percent the other twenty fifteen percent is probably Australians so it's they're very similar type of player I think when you start getting to the Asian market Japan these are very distinct markets where the content has to be completely separated and we also maintain two random map in the slot machines in terms of we don't adapt it to the users experience and for that reason I explained that it's a it's a poor user experience if you're actually making it true that it's read you know I mean that they can't play because they've won too much each spin should be random cool and that note well thank you very much else great thanks

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