Palringo on why mobile messaging is great for gaming

interesting topic which actually has been already touched upon earlier today is how how can you combine the kind of current messaging platform with games and wide to do it and how to do it and I'm going to go through through all that first a little bit about my own background like why am I talking about this so we founded a company called tribe studios five years ago with some other game industry veterans and during that five years we developed a technology called drama game and drama game is basically a technology for doing multiplayer storylines so group games that are asymmetric and games where you are discussing with the other players

while you are achieving your goals your individual goals or your group goals so basically it was already about kind of chat based gaming but then we just realized to go go with the messaging messaging platform approach and pairing acquired us last spring a bit over four months ago right now so that's kind of the personal background so paranoia is a group messaging app with focus on games we have more than 40 million downloads and we have over 350,000 user created groups and most of our revenue comes from games so we're very game focused platform and when talking about messaging as a platform so it's not very visible at least in in Finland many people how far it has already gone with these tap apps and messaging apps but you can already find services for shopping car sharing web surfing pretty much anything you can you can get from a

web you can already get through a messaging app and and how it works as a platform is like if you think of a facebook on a PC and Mac environment and you make a facebook game you don't say that you're making a PC or Mac game but you're making game for the facebook platform so it's the same way with messaging apps that you don't necessarily go from mobile you might go for there for the messaging platform and and that's that is actually reshaping now how people are experiencing the intro it because it used to be all prouder but but today alas Eric Stafford was saying as well on mobile people don't spend so much time in the browser but they spent that time on on messaging and all the social apps so that's the way how they now are using and and discovering content so more recent why'd you come along why this is exciting so one thing is is that at least for now there is less games on the cells so if you compare with the App Store and you have

some 500 plus apps per day or whatever is there is the current figure the competition is very hard and at least for now there's this less competition for the users on the message inside and then of course if you are building a social or a multiplayer game you can tap into the existing networks you may not have that kind of empathy lapiz don't remember where the players are wondering like who do I play with because they they already have their friends there's already networks there and those same networks and groups can also be a platform where you can discuss with the community so it's very important to kind of have that two-way conversation and see what your players really think about your games & and because they are in this messaging platforms that it's a one platform to have that discussion with them and share that community with them if you go so far as to include chat as a component in your game that becomes kind

of a user-generated content component that actually increases the lifespan of your game because users don't come to the game anymore just because of the game but they also come for the other users and the chat so that's something that can increase the retention and then last but not least users are baying money actually for the content delivered through chat apps so there are already ways to monetize so how to do it at photo the first method of doing this is stacy's one in having a community presence in in that chat app for example in palringo we already have a lot of groups where people are discussing games and there are clients that are discussing when do they have the next raid or or world it kind of gameplay strategies and of course you can also be there as a marketing vehicle you can have branded emoticons or automated specs so when people are expressing emotions they are expressing

them with your characters or images then the second way to come combine the game with the with the chat app is called the most well-known so that the tat add functions is kind of a marketing platform and the platform links to the game and the game links the platform but they can also be closer ties here's an example from our game icy tower which when you go into the gameplay and you start playing and you get an achievement you can see the achievement flying there in the in the game but then the achievement is also visible in the chat app so to this kind of an extra extra link back to the app and if we go even even deeper with this kind of linking the games and the chat you obviously can have a chat inside the game a lot of games actually quite naturally have this like clan chats in the game and I said this this can increase the engagement

and retention because people come back to the game because they don't want to let down their clan like they might be already bit tired of playing but hey my my my friends need me and what's quite exciting we are actually going to release again where this chat inside the game is also a chat group inside palringo app so that's one more way to kind of deepen the link to that the platform that you are already on then the last third method is is having a game inside the chat and this is something I'm quite excited about our Helsinki offices is currently working with these these types of games so you can have a single player game which is like a hangman maybe a math game or a scramble where you can actually play it inside the group but then people can also join in when it becomes a more

competitive kind of a pvp hangman like who who actually gets the word right but then you can also have multiplayer games that require that to be more people like what we have number detectives teamwork with stone will a function for just one person and then the third type here is the group versus group games like in this case there's this monster but where each group kind of has collectively a monster and then that monster can attack the other groups groups monsters and there's this group versus group mechanic and if we extend this further there's of course much andreas and more types of gameplay that are still kind of emerging we can have a symmetric group games we can have our bt's adventure games a lot of board games are very suitable for this type of in chat gaming because they're it's natural that you have the rules and you have the gameplay mechanics but you're also chatting with other players that's happened that happens also when you are sitting around the table and then interactive fiction and a lot of this of course respected to

to what I was talking about our earlier technology in there in the background so that helps us to develop some of these so yeah so so going like the the future of where where all this is going so that obviously is already a platform and and now there's still this lot of innovation happening in the game play and the town race a lot of it is still like going back to the old multi-user dungeons or or suchlike textual adventures but it's evolving very rapidly and also if you look at the kind of history of how games have evolved in general like it started with a single person sitting in a computer and and maybe talking about it game about the game afterwards so being so so after the after the gameplay but now we are going further and further along the line of becoming more so so so so now people are foremost being social

and then the game gameplay kind of comes to the side that while they are socializing and meeting other people they are also playing games and this is kind of where the messaging apps are very good and excelling at and I think I have a bunch of time for questions still and if you want to come and kind of meet us you can you can come the crew PG see that I that I test formed up today to Paula Ringo but also i'm quite happy to ask any questions about anything relating hey um do you know if other messaging apps like what's up and facebook Messenger are they looking into this having games inside the chat also or is this something that you guys are only doing now or what is this sort of emerging everywhere at this moment or I was happening it's still pretty rare it's more more linking the games with whatsapp is not doing that either whatsapp is doing nothing with

game so we are all about games but but yeah there are some others that of what should I mention so I'm like I think tango has a call like you can play darts with someone while you are calling with them it's a voice call so this differential you can have boys call tech chuckles so so there's there's some things are happening elsewhere as well yeah