Multiplayer to Maximize Creativity & Revenue - Mark Val, Photon

[Music] [Music] [Music] so we're GNA now uh get Mark Val to come up and talk to us Mark is obviously from Photon uh he is going to talk to us about multiplayer to maximize creativity and revenue so while people are coming in and out I can introduce myself so I'm Mark vals I'm head of growth at phon engine so you might know us for building

awesome product for you guys to build multiplayer games but we also make games um you might have heard of a game called stumble guys uh which we released a few years ago um and of course we also co-developing with uh other Studios out there so we're not only doing products but we're also Endz on into building games um so let me go straight to what we're going to talk about today uh so uh I'm first going to start with charts just to uh show you what's going on in term of multiplayer and then we're going to dive in why is multiplayer so good and why is it so important for everyone here in the room and then how to get started uh for you guys so let's start at the beginning so first like the overall industry is doing very well um so if you're not aware yet there's more than a thousand gaming Studios making mobile games is making more than 10 million a year uh so that's a lot different than 5 years ago when it was more like a million now it's 10 so um uh

but one thing we're going to see through this presentation is that most of these games are actually multiplayer games um so as we dive a little bit deeper oh what's going on with the pixelization that's quite intense all right um so anyway so this is the top game so we have downloads consumer span and Mau and if we apply the multiplayer filter were left with only multiplayer games so as you can see on the right the most popular games in term of uh monthly active players are multiplayer games including stumble guys which is number eight yeah and um um and as we uh move more to downloads like people will say well multiplayer games why would it be in the download as well well actually we are up there uh so it's not true that if you have like millions of downloads that you should be careful regarding how uh to manage your game and if we dive in a little bit deeper and we look at every subcategories I'm sorry cannot read very well but you're going going to see that

pretty much the number one games in every single category has some RPG in it and RPG obviously comes from multiplayer comes from being um imp impersonating someone or being part of a group and participating socially with others uh again with the the uh multiplayer filter we can see that there's some opportunities there right away some of these number one games are still not multiplayer they do have uh your friends your social life you can some some of them a chat but what I consider a multiplayer game is real-time gameplay um So eventually I can already predict that in three to four years all these games that doesn't have multiplayer will be gone it will be something that really put people in real time that's going to replace them uh and that's something we have seen every year that chart like five years ago it was one and now it is more and more and more and more and um so if we look at the launch cycle so we can see that hyper casual games are sort of like gone right but what we can see though is that the RPG bar is getting a

little bit bigger right with time uh so we can see that there's more multiplayer games coming but there's still none enough so we need more multiplayer games to satisfy what the players actually want um and some key Milestone that are very important for you to know regarding like mobile is that the world is getting extremely connected right so in 5 years from now we're going to have 90% of the planet with a smartphone and about like 60% of the planet we can go on internet from anywhere right so it means it's mobile is super rip for multiplayer we've proved it with stumble guys so there's no reason why you guys don't do 32 player games at 60 her on a mobile phone it's entirely doable you can use your product Photon Quantum to help you for that and um you can go way ahead but I'll talk more about this later so again one last time so multiplayer filter uh but now we're talking about like the

middle column um so what you don't know because we don't see very well it's paid apps right so you can see like the top we have Minecraft and whatnot those are paid games that you have to install but then after that there's like nothing right and if we go on the top grossing again on the right those are multiplayer games but if you take the number one paid app which is Minecraft you're going to find it at number 98 right all the way down right even if it's at the top of paid so paid is super you know um uh ready to have some good multiplayer games so I encourage you to go in that direction um and obviously uh if you look at steam well you know it's completely the uh the opposite where you have like big games that are very successful people are not afraid to pay for it so that's the new games for the year and we can seal the ones with the hearts of of course those are multiplayer games and if we go dive a little bit deeper and we look at all the games that are in Steam well everything that is not darken are all multiplayer

games so again multiplayer is leading the charts so if you want success well you have to proof right so you have to create an environment that is prone for the players to talk to each other engage find friends create new goals and and have this habit form in uh uh to come back and see your friends and actually predict what's going to happen and help everyone so um definitely you know you have to consider it both for console switch and whatnot it's the same as well um so PP quiz all right so I have a I have a questions for you all okay what is the worst thing you can do to a human today right that's a that's a tricky question right right no one has answer well take away that go for it let's go to prison right okay so you know there a if you do

something bad I'm going to put you in prison right so what happened in prison you cannot do much right you're sort of stuck there but there's something even worse than going to prison it's to go in isolation right so when you are doing something very bad they put you in isolation we could have thought of many other things right but isolation is the worst thing you can do to a human it plays with your head it's you know you're sort of lost and why is that why is it that you know we we don't like that like you know we put a plant it's might be happy right but anyway is because of the prefrontal cortex so um in short what it is is that to with our Evolution for many millions of years in the past 100,000 years not that far away our prefrontal cortex started to develop and what is that in short it's everything that is our social skills and why the evolution went that way it's it's because when we cooperate life is

easier right so it's a reflex it's inside of us every time we help each other we have dopamine going up every time we compete every time we cooperate we have dopamine coming up so it's key so doing being with others sharing and caring is essential to every single human so that's why multiplayer at the core is very important because in our self we want that so it's natural to put this in games obviously so not too long ago we were a little bit everyone in isolation we all had Co right the way of life of everyone changed and all of a sudden we had this huge up pick at least for us uh regarding the usage of our apps and products and whatnot because everyone wanted to mingle together so it's extremely natural for everyone to uh to try to find a way to move forward and meet others and um and then we have like

super awesome uh stats that that that got proven correct which is that um um since then there's multiple reports that went on multiple research regarding like do people like to play together well in fact this is now core of the western society and obviously also in Asia um now 80% of the players want to play with others so there's no point to make a single play player game almost you can make a single player game but you need to see others somewhere you know because it gives you the sensation we just talked about earlier um so and then if we look at you know outside of games now we have like 48% of the people under 42 that do the majority of their social skill uh Communication online now people doesn't meet anymore right they don't necessarily go to the restaurant hey let's go and have a talk no let's just this you know face chat or let's meet in

that social platform I'm going to tell you what I'm doing tonight and going to talk about this so obviously like you have to think that when you have a game people wants to share what they're doing in that game to be able to uh uh to to be satisfied with their social uh people around them and um so that said you know like I could say well multipl call success right well not exactly right obviously that would be super magic to just take multiplayer and slap it on a game and say yeah I'm going to be successful but that's not the case uh it happens that multiplayer game is actually very hard and if you look at RPG you know there's a lot of things you can think about right so there's no perfect template there's no such thing as okay this is the way right of course we can give you tips and tricks on how to go under the right direction every game play every crowd every culture everything is different we have to adapt there's Trends lines that that you have to follow to make sure that people like

what you're doing but in short you know there's no perfect template uh but um that said you know you can have like the best game in the world with the most budget and graphic and perfect networking and all these things and have a really beautiful game and um now we can see like OverWatch one versus OverWatch 2 and you can see there's not that many difference between the two right um so uh so the the the the Developers blizzard make a a lot of announcement regarding new updates new things they're going to integrate in the end they didn't do any of that so what happened when they launched the game even with a perfect game perfect game play Perfect networking well you know like the community was just not happy because blizzard did not listen to the community so we heard about it in the track earlier regarding live game Operation like Community is pretty much onethird of the your decisions so you have to

take the community listen to it and and you have to consider the community as you know someone who's part of your board seat right uh because if you don't listen to them you know they're going to slap you in the face and um and that's pretty much what I'm saying here with great power comes with the absolute certainty to kick some ass so when you have a community obviously and you don't listen to them they're going to come with pitchfork and uh fire and throw it at you but if you start to communicate with them you have a higher chance to be able to uh maintain that fire and actually come with an update actually um the community very much enjoy um so let's dive a little bit more in different sectors so AI um so we hear about it like in multiple ways actually AI is is very important for multiplayer uh for example one of our product so that's Photon Quantum comes with Bots out of the box right so what does that mean is that when we launched stumble

guys we had barely any traffic right but when you make a multiplayer game and you need players and there's no player you have to fake that player and that's extremely important at the beginning of a game especially when you don't have any marketing at all you want people to experience the game so AI but you need that if you don't have butts to start your game there's a very high chance there's so many launch like there's so many games that I saw in the past 5 years that super nice game everything very beautiful and then you start the game wow cool again join a room and then you wait and then you see people join get out join get out and then after four or five minutes you're like okay what I'm doing here right and in the end you don't manage to experience the game so that's why butts are important you can fake those players and as you dive into matchmaking and how to use machine learning and other areas regarding how to understand the behaviors of your player what are they doing in the game

you can actually create mats that are perfect where people really enjoy because you need this balance of players that wins but also need to lose if you win all the time is the same as losing all the time so you need to balance these things very well so that the match are perfect uh and obviously tasks for NPCs and what's going on right now is the multimodality which means that um there are some games now you might have he of some mods maybe in little company and others um which we're going to see in a bit but in short is that we can take now the voice of the player mimic that voice put it on top of a NPC and um and and and really give life inside of the game and um um it push this um this cooperation between Bots and players to really another level and um and obviously like we can say well you know like at least for myself I can say that AI helps me in various ways to go faster in both development

production and whatnot but when I speak to artcore developers they say well all of that is rubbish it doesn't help me very much but anyway when you look at how to start a game and prototype and whatnot like AI is really crucial for you to uh to consider um and then let's dive into another subject voice and chat so um we use voice in games here all right beautiful so we have about 3/4 of the room um so let's hear some voice so in the back we are going to have some sound here um so that's little company which I've just talked about no we have gotten quite far in here and haven't really found a whole lot what's this way oh gift box Zach there's a gift box over here there's something [Applause] here okay that's what happened here right so

the scream oh my God all right so so what happened here right so fear is part of us right the same as what I was talking earlier regarding social uh when you into an Ambience where you know you hear others you don't know much what is happening right away you're on your computer on your phone I don't know you're already shaking and you don't you know and you don't do much you just and then when you are with others like this and you cooperate voice is essential if you play this game single player forget about it you're probably going to have a bad time you're going to be like man look at the graphic uh look at the animation the w die okay this is rubbish you put voice multiplayer and all of a sudden you're like okay I'm part of experience and now like this game has more than 50,000 players all the time playing the game I think now they even at 80,000 which is like you know super

super good and that's very good from a Indie team right it's just one guy building a game launching it but you do it properly and if you look in VR there's another game called phasmophobia you have to play these games they you know quality wise visual it's really substandard right should I say uh but when you play it because of voice there's like this mingle that is happening and that push you forward but you have to be careful with voice here's another one here's level let's go like I don't have to put the password in this time and I joined in right through there's a kid was dead and then he start dragging his [Music] body what is going on what the hell you guys stop it what the stop it stop dragging me so obviously voice can be used at many flavors right and we don't necess want that in in the game so you have to

be able to not only being able to squel their swearing squel when people try to you know um get you out of the game to do something else and um uh obviously there's kids that are playing in there in these games and we have to take care of them so voice actually adds a big layer of responsibility and that's something you really have to consider before moving forward in those Direction what I would suggest is that if you want to make like tip steps toward voice is that you first start with white labeling bubbles which is like I want to say I'm getting attack and just press a button it says I'm getting ATT attack a bit like how Apex is doing on others then you can add voice or or chat and later voice but essentially you need to have like some some ways to flag the players that are not behaving properly being able to block other players block group of players you so you need to give these tools to the player so that they can actually um have fun and um it's very

essential so if we move on a little bit so yeah so um like I just said it's very important to have uh security or what not and if you want to implement voice of or chat obviously we have this so us at Photon we care very much so we have a community shift for chat which is going to filter all these things and then soon enough we're going to have talkx mod and others uh service that are Plug and Play so that you don't have to think about it you just you know press a button check mark Mar all of this is done and you can move forward so that said well when you um uh want to have success uh with your game it's really important you think about the players but also streamers um so for example for us at stumo guys uh we we we considered that factor of streamers and it really really really help us a lot so um uh why is it so uh for those who are not aware what is stumble guys it's more or less like an elimination game so you start 32 players and then you have 16 players and eight

and then you have a winner and uh as part of the game there's tournaments and um so we build our own SAS service tournaments that everyone here can use today but what we what we did which was great is that we gave the keys to create tournaments to the streamers so then the streamers after that were able to uh create their own tournaments tell their Community hey come next Friday we're going to have a super nice tournament and then those tournament had 60,000 80,000 people coming and playing and that was really helpful to to have this hockey stick as part of stumo guys uh without any ads all of a sudden we had millions of people playing so you have to understand the behaviors of your player you have to understand the behaviors of your streamer you have to empower them to be uh in control and being able to create uh good content so um yeah it's all about habit design right um so um before uh we had

the liop track so essentially like the core of liveops is to create habits and those habits can be both for the players and outside of the game as well those habits that you have to to create for those creators um so that they know that they're going to be able to plan ahead and actually have this cycle of life where they create content for themsel or for their group or for their Clan but also outside of the game so that they are able to attract like proper players so um a bunch of tips uh both those are more related to monetization uh but in short like you have to consider these points to be able to start to monetize properly because in the end yes you have a multiplayer game yes you have people are enjoying it but you want to pay the bills um so you can uh definitely um you have to consider all these points and it's still true today that if you translate your game in six languages uh French English German

and whatnot um you're going to reach about 80% of the players out there so do these things and that's the and and you're going to be able to move uh forward um wow phon yeah sorry I was loud a bit um so um so phon right um so our goal is to make multiplayer simple right so that you guys doesn't have to think about latency that we just heard about uh so that it's abstracted for you all of guys so that you can actually concentrate in building a good game and when I say abstracted it's abstracted in so many layers so it can be client side prediction the lag compensation that we've heard about earlier which are more technical terms well those are pretty much like embedded in the tool so that you don't have to think about these things very much and you can just move forward and um and and build a good game and um so um uh so we came up to the year years we what we call the the quadrant so the quadrant is the four

topology SL architecture that you can uh pretty much build any kind of games right so serers side games um or or physic games um so just to clarify a little bit so everything that is in blue is called States transfer which is like snapshot are sent to uh to the players and on the top right is something that uh people doesn't know very much it's called determinism uh which is based on physics so for example if I have well I have this remote here but if but you know that if I open my hand it's going to fall down right so the only thing you need to do or to know is the input of me you know re uh opening my hand and it will fall down so that's more or less how the principle of determinism Works which means that we've heard about like kicking a ball well that's the same thing which is that if the engine uh if the physic engine is part of the networking scenario you're going to save a lot of time regarding the the transfer the bandwidth and all these elements but also it's going to be much easier for

you to build your game because in the end you just have to build a single player game and it's multiplayer by default right so uh these engines will get you very very very very far and um so yeah Quantum exactly so that's what I just talk about um so that's a bit more in deep so what it is in short is that um for example in unity uh you have the simulation so all of this simulation is based in Quantum and it's very optimized it runs on switch very well at 60 frame per second and um um but then if you look at Unity the only thing Unity does there is the renderer and that's it so you end up with the engine as extremely performant that can run pretty much uh anywhere and um to make it easy for you so sorry you don't see it on the left here uh but we do many samples so our goal is to give you the best practice right to get you started so if you are making your first person shooter or Battle Royale game or if you're making like a racing game or a platformer uh we

pretty much have all these different kind of uh game game play/ mechanics uh to uh to get you started and the thing is that that's really what we have to focus on for you guys so that you don't have to think about how I'm going to make this character jump right and think about this all latency and around round robin we' we've heard about earlier and um so stumble guys which I've talked about earlier it's coming from one hour our samples so we actually took one hour our sample uh build a game with it and now uh as you know it's everywhere people like it so um um so if we can do it you guys can do it too right and that was a small team by the way that was three three four people working on the game launching it and supporting the game for a year before scopely uh took it and uh so that's made in Quantum so uh so U as you can see here we have whe we have like shooting and all these things so that's part of the samples we

have like so many mechanics that are put in one to get you started and go faster and here's another one of our simple which is more recent so this one is called uh simple FPS so it's really the the bare minimal of how to make a first person shoulder again it comes with all the best practices and if you want to go like one level higher then we have VR 200 so that's 200 players put in one you can fly you can uh drop guns you can there's leaderboards and all these things that is part of it and um uh V r200 will get you like very far regarding like triaa type of mechanics there's so many goodies that you can find in those and they are available for free for want to use today so that you are able to build super awesome picka games um so um um yeah it's time for you to level up right um the old point is that you know like we saw earlier there's a bunch of um sectors and field

that still needs to be filled with multiplayer games and um I wish you all good luck toward those Direction because they're very up for grab it's like linging through they just there to be dist Dro and move forward um so that um so that said we have like a few uh uh uh devices that are coming there's the obviously division that just show out um so we are also working with those we have multiple games on vard as working very well um uh including rec room the chat and others and um um and um we believe that in the future more and more uh devices will spread out and mobile will slowly go in that direction so uh that said uh to get you started you know books is always interesting all these books covers different subject um to really be able to dive in the subject I just talk about today uh some are extremely important to to to look at

just to understand the brain and the habits and uh so that you can obviously you need a good game play but once you have this okay fine but if you want to go a bit deeper people monetize more more retention virality how to use propaganda techniques to make a message go uh with influencers um there is there's really good things to learn in there uh so yeah so um I hope you guys learn a few things today uh so we have a boot upstairs um so you're more than welcome to come and see us and um then we'll be able to share how you can do it as well thank you so much and thank you very much so thank you Mark uh is anyone got any quick questions got a question at the back there yeah that's fine keep going keep going um do you think there will ever be a real return to like uh couch co-op on like local multiplayer oh yeah it's

always there cuz I feel like it we it's kind of like we've definitely moved past that but um I feel like it's it's an evolution of that so couch Co up like you can look at the remnant too uh and also like the Gears of Wars and all these things so uh what I'm seeing now is like couch Co up yes but you can compete in your couch Co up right which means that okay I finish this level in like 4 minute 32 or a position like 50,000 in the world oh man how can I do that better and then you replay replay replay so you come back to this habit form which is more about like being a group together and try to work as a team so for example there's um um a spaceship gang that is coming shortly uh which is pretty much that where you're all in your spaceship everyone has their roles and there's a lot of coordination obviously you can do it from um being everyone to their own couch right and do it together but it's much better when you are actually all into the same screen and have the split screen and uh and work that way so will it ever go

away well the thing is that devices right now are changing a lot um as we know as we saw with the Vision Pro for example you have this 120 inch screen in front of you which is part of one device um and as this device gets a lot cheaper we might have this more personalized screen instead of having this physical screen which is shared to everyone so um will it disappear entirely I don't think so uh but will will we see less probably yeah I I'd argue that the couch cop thing is a different type of metric I mean there are Technologies which allow you to get that sensation but there's nothing like the physicality of being next to someone in person but in some ways that's what holds couch car back because at the end of the day you you're only really the game is almost Irrelevant in a couch carp experience is the connection with the people well can we recreate that well the way we need to recreate that is by using tools like Photon to make sure that we get that that that's why I like Quantum so much as you know because you get that

sensation of that determinism that means that I do things and the thing H that happens is the same for all of us so you know smashing over a brick wall in a game where the bricks fall in the same place what that matters in the sort of couch Co kind of experience if you want to try and create that but then I'm a massively single player game I like games which have lots of people there but I don't want to be bothered to talk to anybody cuz I'm old and annoying anyway on that note mark thank you very much all good stuff and we're going to move straight on to our next [Applause] group