PG Connects London 2015, the power of Wither and bye-bye Keith

hello and welcome to pocket gamer. weekly news Roundup this is for the week ending 28th of November 2014 hi I'm John Jordan so uh this week kind of I guess a quite week for news to a degree that America was on a holiday it's kind of Thanksgiving week followed by the mass crazy sales of uh of Black Friday um so um not really a a news week where stuff was kind of Leaping out at us but um kind of a few interesting interesting things I think you know kind of trend-wise May kind of come through in the future I mean a few kind of uh kind of investment kind of issues so there's a company called similar web who um isra company analytics company pretty big in terms of website analysis and looking at size of websites um and looking at kind of how um how websites are kind of gaining traffic um as an open platform obviously kind of on the on the mobile app side

we've kind of had this with companies like app Annie and diso who app an bought diso so kind of Consolidated there so app have kind of been ruling that market pretty much for the last um kind of six months or so um now similar we kind of getting into that market so they've raised this $15 million um and their whole point now is to push into into app analysis um actually I've been kind of using um having a look at how the system works pretty interesting actually so in terms of like the App Store stuff that's fairly standard you know anyone can scrape the app store or Google Play and kind of give a tell you kind of who's who's in what position and where they were like yesterday um what kind of uh similar web has has done on on web and is's doing on mobile is um has like a basically like a survey system so it's kind of surveying people it's also looking at um kind of data from um isps and so look it's kind of getting a better view of kind of where traffic is coming from so it kind of looks to see kind of how um how when people are coming to an app store what kind of uh channels they're coming through so were they just going to the

App Store and searching from the app store or were they kind of going how are they were they searching through Google or they going through direct traffic from websites or how was that kind of stuff happening obviously that's um to a degree quite you know you're kind of like taking making a survey making an estimate and then kind of scaling that up so um at the moment that some of some um obviously markets like the US market is a big marketting quite easy to um kind of estimate what's going on there some smaller markets obviously you need a bit more experience to build that up so that's kind of where they're getting this money to kind of scale that up so that'll be interesting to see I think um when people get access to that uh you can kind of get get an idea of where basically where how people are driving traffic you know is it because they got featured on the App Store is it because say like Rio they have quite strong organic traffic themselves they can point at different different things or are they just is it a more viral thing maybe like a Flappy Bird didn't really have anyone promoting it it just kind of happened um so I think that's kind of data is always good everyone says you know kind of show us the data so another source of data um and we'll be doing some stuff on that with on

pocketgamer.biz um kind of other other news um so for us um a Pocket Gamer the big thing we're scaling up for now is our Pocket Gamer connects London conference um that's happening in January next year um so that's the 13th and 14th of January in London at vinopolis which is the same venue we had it at last year so on the site now we're starting to do our speaker Spotlight so that's basically looking at people who are speaking at the show and kind of like kind of getting an idea about what kind of things they're interested in what they going to be talking about um and also you probably start to see you should see already um we're kind of talking about reasons to go to the conference and and we we talking about this week about our um kind of uh user acquisition mon monetization um and acquiring and engaging kind of users that's a specific track so there's various different tracks of Pocket Gamer we have like a like a business type track which is kind of East E West looking at how East Eastern developers are going to Western markets and Western developers going to Eastern markets and that kind of like global distrib bution

issue we have a kind of more what call kind of indie rock star track um we're looking at Indies um we have the best of British again kind of focusing on of British developers have some Ed education track having an investment track having a big Indie pitch so in this case it's a very big Indie pitch so we're going to have um I don't know 40 50 teams going into that um that's what happening over the 13th and 14th of January so definitely check that out tickets will be kind of going up at at the start of next year so um probably worth checking that out now and there's some kind of a codes floating around the internet um that you can probably get hold of and get it a bit cheaper even um so that's one thing um kind of what else was going on so there's a few kind of um interesting launches going on it's get into that time of Christmas when people are launching big games and I guess King got in a bit early not quite into December yet but um they launch Candy Crush Saga soda so kind of a kind of a a reimagining I guess um is the best way of putting it I guess it really even really a sequel to Candy Crush um Saga so it's kind of um it's like same basic matre mechanics obviously but slightly

different um kind of a kind of not really meta gameplay but kind of a what you're doing to kind of match and then how that's affecting the grid and you got kind of bubbly soda coming up from the bottom and the crazy fish are kind of eating stuff and but um you know you kind of imagine what that's going with and they were talking about um obviously fa Facebook is a really big user ACC tool for them for the industry has been pretty much for the whole of this year that's been the big change in user acquisition in 2014 um depending on on the territory you're looking at but um Facebook is basically a third of all user acquisition spending um on games is basically going through through Facebook at the moment and obviously King had its whole history of being quite a strong Facebook um developer publisher and then going to Mobile and then using the the fa the power of Facebook connect so you see where your friends are on the Saga games so they put out press release saying within day one of of Candy Crush Saga soda going live they' um the video uh kind of the they have a series of videos they're going to put out for the promotional videos and the first one got 100 million hours it was kind of

slightly Ambiguously kind of phrased but it it was seen in 100 million um Facebook feeds so not to say that 100 million people clicked on that video but in terms of it being something that they scrolled across in their feed um and the game has actually gone um maybe not through through through that reason but obviously Candy Crush being a billion dollar um franchise at the moment um the game has gone straight into the top five top grossing pretty much everywhere in the world um certainly in the US and the in the eu5 countries that we've been looking at um so that's I guess showing the power of of user aition still still there on Facebook and we kind of getting to that stage as well at Christmas and and we had it a bit with the Black Friday stuff that um Tapjoy were promoting the games that you gave you double experience if you if you uh were incentivized through the Tapjoy program that's kind of interesting for us because shows us as as journalists kind of who's spending big On promotional money that kind of means we can get to see little bit behind the scenes about which games are clearly doing well and they're not necessarily the big games they're kind of kind of some games we've heard of some games maybe a bit more obscure but clearly their Publishers are

happy to spend over the over the odd a little bit to make sure that they're kind of gaining users the rate of knots they need um and clearly the problem you kind of have when you have a successful game is you want to get as many users as you can because you know you can monetize them very well so you're happy to spend more and this is why you have this user acquisition kind of inflation because if I know I can get $2 out of every player I can get to download my game then I'm happy to spend effectively $1.99 to get those users and so you kind of have this inflation going on where kind of the lower monetizing games are price out of the market because the guys with the most monetizing games which has been the likes of kind of king and the P Dinger and and supercell they they can spend money they get more money back from their users they can then spend more and more money so the price goes up and up and up and that kind of destroys that kind of really saturates the user aition channels for everyone else which is a big problem which I'm sure we'll talk about a Pocket Gamer connects London um but a few other things as well so um kind my little kind of uh not really uh I don't know my little thing I like to do we I have my my Maven group

we have several mavens groups I have the monetizer mavens and they they kind of uh are kind of all freet to-play um game design experts um and I kind of posed them a question recently about um I didn't even know the phrase so shows I'm not a free-to-play game design I suppose but um in games like um uh face in games like Farmville where you kind of plant your crops and then if you don't come back fast enough they they they've all kind of um you can't Harvest them anymore they've all turned to dust effectively um and I was playing a game where that kind of mechanic was being used and I was quite surprised cuz that was I would call that an old school mechanic that was used in in fville one but not not fville 2o um and it seemed to be it's very frustrating and so they're kind of debating kind of this and it's of course I know now it's called wither it's the mechanic is called wither your crops are withering and it's kind of interesting so different people have different views on um whether it's a good mechanic or or some people say you're not really using it to monetize people or you can get them to come back to the game you're kind of using it to to just almost as a kind of a a maximizing um issue so people just can't

increase their their resources over and over again and to a degree obviously it's Wither in crops but in stuff like um Clash of Clans or games like that you your um your minds or your or your Mana Wells or stuff they'll they will only be a certain amount of resources over time and if you don't come back and collect them they don't wither but um it's kind of limiting how much you can get so kind of forcing that um kind of retention um and also the other point was being raised you know I was talking about daily bonuses which people are using and as as as much more intelligent people than me pointed out that the Wither and daily bonuses are not the same thing they're not the same thing at all they're kind of driving different kind of user user um kind of usage cases almost so that's kind of interesting I always like talking to people who know more than me which is pretty much everyone um I I certainly get a bit more intelligent out of it by reading their thing and that was a good monetizer Maven so check that out on the site um for wither um and I I guess I guess a s a sad point to end this week's kind of digest so um after eight years of working with pocket gamerr um onetime editor and contributing Ed at the moment

Keith Andrew has um has left to uh to try other things so doing a bit bit of Journalism and a bit of PR and you know kind of uh finding finding these other things than writing for Pocket Gamer Biz all the time which is you know sad a little tear in our eye but um but uh yeah good Lu good luck to Keith in in what he does and maybe we'll uh persuade him to write for us again in the future so that's all the news this week uh catch you next week