Panel: Direct to Consumer in 2024 - How to Create Powerful Web Store Experiences.

[Music] [Music] [Music] so now we're on to our next session and I believe we have a panel now another panel so uh I would like to welcome to the stage to talk about how to create powerful Web Store experiences direct to consumer in 2024 uh we have a panel moderated by Sam from exola I believe with uh panelist tab from a thinking ape s from mini clip

s from tilting point and Danny from CPL so if those folks are in the room please come to the stage greetings people hello uh we got a pretty interesting panel here today I think uh we're going to start up with some quick intros and then dive into what's been going on last week which was pretty crazy and then we'll talk about web stories um so quick intros Taber sad Danny before we start uh oh Chris James is in the room 10 years Pocket Gamer everybody round of applause Chris James no stand up Chris come on get up come on 10 years 10 years 10 years okay congratulations yeah last time I was here he was moderating but he's got too big for us now you're too big for us no no I'm not I'm still here I'm still here sorry thank You tab you can now go I'm Tab and I am the CEO of a thinking ape and we make um sort of midcore games with a more casual theme on them so our biggest game is party in my dorm

and it's a college simulator that's secretly uh a 4X game and that's sort of our uh our Niche uh I'm sad from mini clip um upset that the other sad wasn't here not being on a panel with two sads um mini clip um we've been around for 21 years browser games then started in Mobile um aable pool we acquired cybo two years ago so Subway Surfers and then I guess the other game which is not much of a secret now but triple match 3D published under boom boox I think everybody knows that's us at this point now we were trying to be clever um yeah clearly not um so yes that's us Danny Moy uh Chief strategy officer at cplay uh we're predominantly Social Casino right now um we've been trying to expand uh lightly I guess into the Casual space uh via IAA games

um that's yeah that's who we are great and I'm I'm Sam gaglani on the EVP of uh Global business development at exola and I'm happy to call three of these companies our partners and uh thank you guys so much for coming today I know it's a busy day for you all so I appreciate it so um I think we do we probably should talk about all the craziness that happened last week and all the swirl about Apple and epic and what happened and you know all the gray areas that seem to be been created I think for me the key takeaway was they're still going to charge you for steering people uh inside of the app to a store uh and that's going to be 27% um and I think the key takeaway that I got was it just gives you more of a reason to build a really unique and Powerful Web Store experience um for you guys I'm very curious to see what you think about what happened last week and if that will be basically a repeat of what's going to happen in March for uh

the digital markets act anyone can go first sad um yeah I mean like look it's it's uh it's an interesting time um I just don't know how censored I need to be as we talked about I get it yep y um but I think look it everybody needs to have a web store now I think that's that's just happening um clearly the platforms are taking an AG aggessive stance against um what the regulatory environment is but I think at the end of the day all of us are on this stage and obviously we partner with exola um many of us are starting to see significant Revenue come through our web stores now and that's Y without doing any of the things that if the dma you know comes into force and we understand how some of these policies are are being

constructed we don't really push anybody into our web store at the moment you know say for a you know a few things that we've done in the past because obviously mini clip comes from a web background I think maybe you guys did to some social games no not not not not as much um so so for us there was always that kind of history of people paying and we actually had some users who were still kind of using the web version as well so that that kind of helped um and you know I'm I think we're all safe to say some of our games have 30% of their revenues going through web store now yep you know I think that's pretty common for all of that right yeah well on our side we we just we're still like testing optimizing ramping so we're probably not as high as a percentage as you just quoted um like you know so one I agree with you so this year and going forward web stores and direct to Consumer experiences are going to become increasingly more important um now it's about okay how do you at least for how we think about it how do we expose our

players to it right um obviously without you know without explicitly like violating policies um but for us it's really about focusing on the player experience has always been like that like you know the ones that you're going to initially expose that web store experience is people that already play and pay your pay in your game so it's already working today so our mindset is like look it's not broken so don't you know create too much friction and don't cause something you know artificial that's just not natural for the player like today they're already like paying i' rather get that dollar today than not you know and then creating some friction and potentially not getting that dollar from that payment uh from that player right so we're really meticulous and methodical about okay how do we expose it to the player and then giving them the right experience so that they feel comfortable they feel safe and they feel that you know at the end of the day there's added value right um until we figure out how to do things exactly inside the app there is going to be a little bit of friction but you know from a player persp perspective they just

need to understand like Hey by me going even through a little bit of player friction that there's True Value um you know for them any any opinion yeah so I think on the topic of you know Apple and Google um is this being recorded yes yes um yeah I think you should uh never jeopardize your relationship with Apple and Google um however uh the way that we approach it is we kind of think about how do we create a connection with our customer um you know they find us through the app through the app stores but really we have people who've been playing our games for 10 15 years and we want to create connections with them so that um no matter what happens they're our customer and so that's our goal is to find ways to service the customer however they want to be serviced some people um maybe are playing on multiple devices they might be playing across multiple stores they might have 10 accounts and you want to figure out how to give them the best experience possible and some of them you know live in other countries where payment profile files are different and and so it's all

all about connecting to your customer and we have this pillar at our studio which is anybody who becomes a customer we should try to make them a customer for life and so we're trying to create um you know these direct connections with the customer so that they stick around only a small percentage of your users is going to convert to an IP and so you should be building those connections and and yeah that's how I think about it you okay so do you want us do you want us to be a bit like like real about What's happen let's be real okay so right I don't know here we go let's go all right so who here thinks and this is no bad against anybody who works it because let's be honest all of our Apple account managers are great right absolutely right no no but they are they're great people they really you know they've really tried to to help us as an ecosystem but at the same time it's always been clear to me that Apple doesn't really care about games that's my view who else believes that's the case one two not enough of you clearly so all right some a lot of

Apple arcade money in here then clearly so um so I I think Apple hasn't really worried about games but what's happened through epic you know going through you know basically flying the flag for developers on this this thing what I think we've established is and what they've probably established is oh wow well actually a lot of this Revenue comes from from this category yeah right and they'll point to I know apple apple say oh well we have a games tab on the App Store and it's like we have the today thing and all that stuff but okay 3 four years ago was organ Organics higher or lower than it is today for everybody higher four years ago right so Organics have gone off so okay so the stores not really helped us in terms of that which is actually what they're what they're really there for right that was the value exchange value that was the value prop yeah and I think you know exola having worked with you guys from the web days for for many years I think what Tim was showing at epic

was yeah but this is Payment Processing now pure it's pure payment processing and that's why you know EXO is on our lanyards right because that's what's happening right the customer experience and that's why the web shop experience that we're all going to create and how we want to engage our communities becomes really important yeah the payment processing you guys have handled that for the last I mean what 15 20 years we working together almost long time long time right so what are the platforms doing in in particular Apple to really add the value there right well you talk about friction Apple pay is a separate API to the App Store you guys could already dig into that right so again that's even more Payment Processing so you know I do have sympathy for Google I think Google does a much better job in adding value in helping us and I think they've got much more robust developer tools and they've had much more engagement um with us than others and I think you know when that was how how they applied the ruling

I'm just saying oh it's 27% all that stuff it just felt like they weren't really trying to engage again and they're just trying to protect that wall Garden again and I think that's where ultimately we will see this get more difficult as time goes on so I don't know how the policies will change that's the issue I I agree and I I want to let Danny and yourself way in but I totally agree with you I think that 27% is going to stick around for a while they're going to make it incredibly hard to you know go lower and it just points to the fact that if you're going to try and monetize outside of those stores you need a powerful Web Store um and I think everyone understands that but it's now about understanding what that means to create a powerful Web Store how to behaviorally train users to go there and then retain them in that ecosystem and you guys have done a really good job at that um but I do want to let you guys weigh in on what sad just said if you want to

being recorded right Wade waade carefully I mean I think he kind of said it all I don't I don't I don't want to so you agree just saying yeah maybe gu see they're like the it's like the Illuminati they don't even here everywhere they're in my pocket I'm sure Johnny's in the back somewhere I mean like I agree with everything that sad has said it's like you know historically you know there were probably a lot of reasons why you can justify that 30% right um like sad said a lot of it came from that distribution and and that marketing right helping you get in front of the players like but that just that's just not as abundant right we all know right like the whole organic and the featuring and all that just it's just not there and it's also not as effective and then effectively they're just providing a um they're a payment processor right at the end of the day right so you know any business person is going to sit there and be like it should it cost me 30% you know you know just to help me process like a payment yeah um so that's just a

reality and I think it comes down to I don't know you know I think maybe there's always been a debate on who actually owns the customer right you know at the end of the day we as games right we work hard and we pay a lot of money right to acquire that customer right we want to be able to have access to that customer and communicate to that customer as much as possible right and you know introduce them to like new ways to potentially play the game more engaging ways and even like new ways to to pay right so I think it a lot of it's going to come down to that debate like who actually owns the customer like do does Apple actually really own the customer or do we like own the customer is it like joint but you know for game developers we always feel like hey we own the customer we work hard just to like I said not only to acquire but to maintain right like we also have this philosophy it's all about player retention and also payer retention right like we try to retain them for life just like you guys do so you know we we're out there like fighting and battling

we're going to have to find you know different creative ways to continue to engage that player communicate with that player and figure out how to you know prolong their prolong their you know activity within our ecosystem I think the thing that confuses me is I don't know what the end game is for for Apple here like I don't that's what I don't understand that's what I find frustrating is not that they want to have control over their own ecosystem that makes sense I just don't other than battling epic because for whatever reason I don't see what their endgame is here for making developers um want to be on the platform and something you know I don't want to say too much about bad about Apple obviously but um I was really alarmed that they actually published a puzzle game in the App Store so they have a puzzle game in news and they're self-publishing it and that was pretty alarming to me and as a developer I see that and I see this ruling and I have yeah a lot of frustrations and questions about the relationship and it's difficult to know what the endgame is and and you know you have your Apple

rep and you work with them on a specific set of of goals within the App Store but overall I don't know oh I'm supposed to pick up my kid from school yeah there go that's Apple calling you that's Apple you've been rejected yeah Reed rejected that fast that next bill that next admission is not passing oops so s did you want to say something I thought no I was just like I think the they're vertical right so when they publish the puzzle game and they do all that stuff we've seen we've seen how that goes um you know it's the same with content they have Apple TV plus right as well so correct I think that I think that is where they will go but they also they know that they can't make the experiences we make as well yeah I think what is interesting though is it's very interesting that whenever you're trying to launch a new platform you know they got the the visor coming right yeah they're going to lean on games they're going to lean on that to be the they need content and I think it's it's it is going to be

interesting how they try and engage with developer Community Push Pull relationship right now I mean they I mean they've done some stuff which we've looked at where they've support certain developers and doing some things but then not other developers on other things and it's I mean I mean if I was in the Social Casino Spate I've been frustrated with all platforms for a long time because they've just you know they've not supported you guys for years but still taking the revenue shares uh for you know from now until and actually that's just changed recently hasn't it and that's interesting in terms of RNG on Google right you mean terms of what they're making available for developers and Publishers yeah uh yeah so I mean yeah I would say traditionally you know Social Casino is probably overlooked category or genre by the platforms um but it's got It's improved over the last couple years you know as you if you explain to them like how the industry like works the type of games you know at least in my opinion opinion they start to realize it's you know it's like any

other free-to-play game right it starts with that simple core Loop um and then you try to monetize around it with with some type of meta and liveops and that's what's going to drive the the monetization and the revenue so it's just like any other game that's out there you know and then you know it's it's not for me to decide you know it's someone's like personal opinion whether or not it mimics like you know real money you know gambling or or real money gaming or it simulates that but you know that's that's not a conversation for here or there um but yeah like for a long time it's it's like you talk about like the support that developers used to get like I'm pretty sure Social Casino did not get that at all right like zero right so it's even more of a um of more of a a battle and a war out there you know for Social Casino when we go and acquire and and reacquire and retarget like players right so again you you spend a lot of not only money on it but a lot of hard work and effort and we're going you know know we have to in order to stay competitive we have to do

everything that we can to try to figure out how to retain that player you know in the ecosystem yeah so what I what I'm hearing in the kind of the general sense I've been getting like this week and last week was that Apple's going to definitely hold the line there's a big sense of frustration among game developers and uh Publishers about creating these incredible games yet giving away a big chunk of it away and that's where I think these web shops have become a really powerful tool to shift players out of those marketplaces and onto a store you own create and you know can retain those players for a long time so and we we only have 14 minutes so I want to talk about like because you've done a really good job with a creating a web store what were like the big challenges a of setting it up understanding how not to blow up your economy and then once it's set up making those players come back again and again and again because because the one thing I've noticed with web shop sometimes is

some of some of the approach has been it's just a topup page and it's stale and it just stays there and you don't get a lot of people coming back to it so it be it almost becomes like this living organism that you kind of have to feed and tend to so I'm curious like what you were faced with because your your experience I think is going to be different from what your experience is and your experience was yeah so I think um for us we already had an email login system oh wow okay so we are a little bit ahead of the game because we could already connect with our customers directly um but it certainly made it more important and we spent some time making that system even better um and so what we really focused on is once we have that connection with them how do we service the customer in the best way possible and whether that's through um the Apple App Store or through the Google Play store or through an exola web shop we want to make sure that the customer has as many opportunities to convert as possible at the price points that they want for the goods that they want and once you have that sort of set up and you get a good relationship with

your customer you can sort of find ways to um make it relevant to them to go to uh to a web store and what we actually see is some people who shop on on exoa will also shop on the Apple App Store yeah it does it's not it's not exclus it's not cannibalizing it and we see a really good um live Ops um venue for that so we do a ton of live Ops around the web shop but we do that with all of our iips and we treat them a little bit differently but the the fun fals are still the same got it so to draw someone in are you creating an expected value on that store that's significantly better than that they would see on Apple or Google uh not necessarily so you have to be careful um how you do those sales because you don't want people to you know get too much uh stuff and wreck your economy so you still have to be careful like what you're offering um but we do offer um like a reward point system like a loyalty yeah we have a loyalty program on the web shop and um and then we sell some Goods that um you

know players want in different like formats and different price points is a big thing players want higher price points than they can get and then um you can also service customers directly and and work with them to find interesting you know what they want in the web shop and you can publish much more quickly so you have an ongoing dialogue with them you have a really strong Community where you're talking to them constantly ex yeah and and I think because our games are sort of structured around there like deep emerging gameplay where people are playing the games for a really long time we've already built that habit with them like we're going to service you and we're going to give you the things that you want and we have a good dialogue we have a VIP manager that just focuses on people for who want to talk to us about what they want to purchase and and that works really well for us so the other question I get a lot and thank you for that is well I've got this web shop up and running how many more resources do I have to allocate like I'm a small Dev do I have to hire a whole new team or are you just adding an additional workflow like that's a big question I know you asked it too when we were signing you up once it was built it was just an additional workflow okay yeah and we run it all we run it all through the same um

the same back end okay yeah it's pretty much the same and sod for you guys when you yeah I mean uh I don't want to have to build a web shop I'd rather not build a web Shop but you kind of you kind of have to well it's it's kind of similar to tab was saying we've had a mini clip login since the the web days so we've kind of carried that over and there's still a lot of users who would prefer that over some of the other platforms so we've we've we've maintained in that um I think we're still learning what's the optimal way I think everybody thinks it's going to be give additional value but that's not that's not enough you know that's that's not enough if if you think it's just like you know pop-up page web web shop oh I'm just going to give a discount on the other tiers you that just doesn't work there there's no real point in doing that I would yeah discount versus value then there's a big difference there I think value added bundles versus just cheapening the product that's the right right that's the fine line you have to draw and when

we talk about bundles that have value I think and this is something you guys have done a really good job at is creating a bundle that maybe there's something in game that you could get but now you can just buy it outright now you're giving them a value ad and from a Social Casino perspective how have you guys because I know you've started very incremental and very slow and you're testing it yeah so I would say two quick learnings is one is it's not a one size that fits all okay so there's there has to be some level of personalization and customization that's how games work today already our games most of our games here I think um except for your newer game um is you know you have a you have a pretty mature user base right and there and and you develop a lot of segments within that user base and each segment has a different play Behavior different pay behavior and they have different economies behind it right so that's kind of the second Learning lesson like hey because coms from the first one the one size is not going to fit all and then over time we're just

going to have to customize you know what we're showing you know based on that segment and in their behavior so for some segments you know I think I think probably for the most part what we're seeing the early data is that you can't just do like a a straight discount like it may work early on but the novelty of that will start to wear off um and then also you have a potential like tailor said you could wreck the economy on on some on some segments so you know what we've learned is that it's got to some type of value ad and then the value ad you know comes you know it could be in the form of bundles or maybe some other thing that you can't necessarily like pay or earn inside the game um but you could do it from here and then you can bring it back into the game so again there's just a lot of we're early on that's one but two there's just data that's constantly coming in and just like you know that's how for you to play mobile games work right data comes in every week or every month and you just have to continue to iterate um to find that you know right balance and even when when you find that right balance guess what it could potentially change

the next month right so you're kind of back to like iterating to see what works the best thank you so the other big question I get is the how do you overcome the friction of getting those users into the funnel they're having to enter new payment information sometimes uh or they're scared to go to that site are you guys using no you're not seeing that they're not scared they're not SC I get that some people buy stuff all over the internet all the time time it's 2024 come on so I think it's more casual we push on exola right like yeah yeah you you have those credentials right don't don't make them type him in again well it's I I've notice when it's more of a casual game if it's like a child having to go to the parent and say hey I want to buy this thing it's not an iOS is there and it doesn't sound like you have to deal with that sometimes we get that where someone's like I don't know what this charge is and it's like your kid bought some stuff on Exel we we try not to like kids buy stuff so the first thing but it happens but like it's not a problem it's not a big problem no no but it but it is different between casual and you know more core different

Dem definitely different demo and there's definitely different I think casual you know I think that it's single digit nearing double digit percentage of Revenue at the moment is what You' expect from casual because of these issues y um but I think on core you can get 30% up in terms of the revenues you can generate I agree so that I think that's just the Perpetual trying to get over the hurdle you guys have to build a better product for that and we have to build better web shop EXP that I me casual it's you still need to figure it out because I think when you talk about how do you get users into this stuff you leverage your Discord channels you leverage your WhatsApp channels telegram channels that's the way to to really do that and if you haven't done that then that's also when you build web shop you are building Community that's the whole point it's that direct to Consumer thank you so th this really goes back to how do I communicate to that user that the shop exists without violating guidelines so what's funny is we all thought we would direct to Consumer by going through Apple and Google when you do your own

web shop you're like oh no we now really direct to Consumer that's the difference yes and so have you guys and I know you've been pretty good I it sounds like you have a really strong Community you already had access to them but if you're not that Savvy or you don't have that how would you counsel someone are we locked out I think in that our players just talk about where they're talking they're like Community right yeah there a really strong Community we have chat in game so like that's really useful we have an email list and we've been collecting emails for a decade so that made it easier but I mean I don't know what I would say to somebody that's not doing do that first yeah get an email login like you need to own your relationship with your customer going forward that's just the table St absolutely I don't know for casual like I don't make casual games so I can't speak but I agree with you like if I if I if I step back like say 10 years ago and before we knew this or if we knew this was all coming um to sort of ahead I would say develop as many direct touch points as you can with your customers right so for the longest time like you

know we were we basically had guest accounts and relied on Facebook login right and you know how you know the the the connect rates on Facebook login has been you know dwindling for like years so we kind of like fell behind like okay now people aren't even connected like we have no direct touch point so I can go back in time it's like you know do the do the logins do your own email login or your own form of login um if you can collect like phone numbers great like definitely like email addresses because you're going to need a way to try to to contact them um like if I can go back that's one thing that you know we would probably do differently like just get if building a game right partner with someone like help shift and have like the data for your CMS your customer support and Community managers have the like purchasing data just like on everybody's dashboard that says like look someone just came into the game and they've play they spent more money today than most players spend reach out to that person directly start talking to them get their email address create a connection like like can you imagine a business where like somebody comes in and they spend $10,000 and information

yeah you don't capture their information and then you're just like well I guess we'll do some more marketing get some more of those like that's insane like no business operates like that like treat your business like it's a restaurant at this point like build customer connection but this is going back to what you just said which was we just relied on Apple and Google to do that for us and now there is this shift to an eCommerce retail mindset that I don't think a lot of Publishers and developers that are new understand right it it's second nature to somebody like me because I came from that business but now when I talk to people they're like oh we didn't think about that and these are kind of like basic tricks of the trade you would employ so you have to be creative you have to think about how am I going to get to this user and put yourself in their shoes like what would I want to see on a store to make me buy it and continually go back to it so that's the funny thing just to add to that is like they're already your player EXA that's the thing so it's it's not that that they're already you just never knew who

they were ex they're already interested in what you're doing and what you know and they want to engage with you it's just I think you do do have to be careful about how you engage but that's the thing like we all talk about Community this is your community yeah and it's just engaging them and trying to know a little bit more about them where they're comfortable that's the other thing that we should talk about as well I think we're all sizable businesses part of bigger groups yes there is legal gdpr compliance and all that stuff that everybody's talk about there is a lot of stuff that you have to do to collect some of this data and then store that data that's not trivial there's a lot of work help solve that problem but yes um uh yeah we have do two minutes okay so we have two minutes questions out there no questions I don't believe it going there has to be one question in

the audience going twice going twice oh we got [Laughter] one thank you very much hi s from World line here so I'm part of uh a company that Pro that processes card payments the question was to Sam I think you mentioned the 27% with apple is that being confirmed globally or is that specifically just in the US right now and the U as Europe Ma de yet I think you're going to find out in March what they'll do but that's going to be regarding third party payments and uh Sid loading but do you know anything about that in terms of yes yes I don't just GNA be yes I don't know if I'm allowed to say yeah okay there's there's a lot going on around that I mean but look at the end of the day I would prefer Apple and Google to win I would I I really would prefer I don't want fragmentation I don't want side loing any Sim any semblance of chance where a

user thinks twice about downloading an app is bad for our industry right and I think we're all getting excited about this but that is there going to be nefarious actors who will make that download and that install become difficult and that's not something we want we're not here to make it you know oh let's take a quick Buck by by you know making our players think this this is another thing so I think the dma is very interesting side side loading is dangerous I don't think that's something that we want to have to happen and so you do want Google and apple to win we've seen fragmentation before in China it was a really fragmented ecosystem and it wasn't helpful it only you know from the last maybe three four five six years has that fragmentation gone you don't want to start doing that I don't think it will be like that here in Europe I I agree with you but but I think I think ultimately what we want is we do actually want Google and apple to win on the security side of things we really need that on the side loading and on okay well or or do a deal on um you know

payment processing and revenue share tiers and all this kind of things that are fair and Equitable versus right the crazy number but I don't think but I think what this has shown is that doesn't mean that there still is not space for web stores because you still need to engage the community yes you still want to engage those people anyway sorry are we out of time oh sorry a round of applause please for thank you guys thank you so much thank you thank you guys thank you very much