Porting Successful PC Indie Titles to Mobile - Lakhvir Takhar, Robot Teddy

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] next up we moved along pretty quick today so next up we've got a lack of it taka from robot teddy with a talk on porting successful PC Indie titles to mobile hi good morning everyone I hope everyone's doing quite well today I know we've obviously probably had quite a late evening yesterday um but it's good to see your full house very happy to be here at Helsinki again I had a wonderful opportunity to speak here last week last year so I'm very glad to be back and uh happy to see you all um so yes as you can see my name is I work at robot teddy uh we are a

consultancy company which will help put your game out if it's from a self-publishing standpoint if you guys want help on release management Business Development we can come in and step in and help out in any capacity um just a bit of my background so I spent a huge amount of my time working in the Indie space I've been very lucky to work with some incredible people two people main companies I'd like to fall back on our team 17 and Green Man Gaming uh the wonderful opportunity to be able to uh work with so many different Indie titles in the market when working with Green Man Gaming as they were a publisher as well and then Team 17 I'm sure you guys are all pretty aware of is that they had a huge list of side tools so I've been very lucky to work with photo realistic side tools 8-bit pixel games uh being able to work on multiplayer casual family friendly and obviously the most important one while we're here today is mobile uh and then one of my most recent projects I worked on uh here at robot teddy uh was the wonderful hit uh vampire survivors vampire survivors was obviously a huge

hit for us and last year we actually dropped the game onto mobile as well with some huge success so just moving on uh some some things to identify when working with Indie titles is to be be aware of what what you're searching for so some examples here I've given up are the idea of your new releases and top sellers on Steam that's always the best place to start you can see when your games are doing incredibly well there could be potentially an idea to then get the game onto mobile you can obviously self-publish it yourself you can obviously lean to other people and get their their their specialties um as I mentioned earlier vampire survivors obviously launched onto mobile we got one million um downloads I believe in a week um yeah go for it yeah can you hear me okay

I had a feeling that was gonna happen I could keep hearing my own voice too much um but yes to the point I was trying to make launched with a million downloads in the first year uh after that we then obviously went on to then help put the game onto Apple arcade Apple arcade was a huge success for us as you can imagine thinking about stores thinking about the Google pay pass or a massive massive boost for anyone in in this industry you can get so many benefits from Apple arcade and Google Play and then obviously just moving forward uh in regards to picking out your game you do need to think of a few things right the Asia Market is a massive place to think about uh you want to be thinking about if you need any uiu exchanges s asset changes there's a lot to be thinking about it's not just as easy as supporting the game you may want to make a unique mobile version as well so as the current trend of things happening today I think everyone's going to be pulling out a lot of graphs for you guys a lot of information and a lot of detail I've tried to keep it a bit simple and just explain to you guys how popular the video games Market is for

mobiles there is they are estimating it we've launched up to four billion dollars next year as a valuation for the industry uh 57 of the game of the games that we play on mobile or via Android which is always quite interesting I think and then another 57 I believe from what I remember is mainly puzzle games you can tell there is a huge Market there uh 50 I think it was 52 of the games are all sold in Asia as well um I've mentioned Asia a few times because I do feel like there's a big Market there you do need to be thinking about putting out your titles into Asia as well um some further things you need to think about when pushing out your game as you can understand as a earlier I mentioned Google Play and apple arcade they have numerous sources of help on their website they have it for the places of um workflow documents they will support you as much as possible they are pretty easy to work with as well they are the most people I have as my contacts are Google and apple are incredible people

and they'll always look to support you I've mentioned a few things here as well about uh the paid idea of a game as well uh obviously a huge Market is the free-to-play market paid games and then you have obviously the idea of freemium as well which could be uh you bit by you purchase the game for free but then you buy that whole game once once you actually download it so it's sort of like a free trial gameplay demo but obviously something like this can work in your favor um obviously going back to Asia as an example you will need to put your game out as free and then make your money through ads as you can tell the hyper casual Market succeeds in that very well from an advertising standpoint as well so just moving on from some of my other points here as well there is so many other things you need to keep in mind as well QA testing you don't want your game to be buggy when you launch onto mobile you want to keep in mind your age rating as well uh if you aren't aware you must have your mobile credentials being your credit card details or your debit card details in your Google account or your Apple account to be able to purchase so

you're either going to be going from apparent to get the money or obviously if you're you're an adult yourself then you have to use that money to then download the app and then so finally where will you be Distributing the game uh I mentioned obviously like I said the power of Asia and then you've got the America sides as well uh this will then lean on to how many how well the game has been localized as well you do need to keep in mind most people who will play your game depending on the localization a lot of players will just ignore your game if the game hasn't been localized properly so this wonderful topic of Asia I've been speaking about so much today uh I believe like I said it's a huge part of what you need to be doing the Asian market is a massive massive Market you will have so many people from so many different parts of Asia playing your games China and Japan are probably two of the biggest ones you need to keep in mind uh with that in mind as well you need to then do need to think about the contracts and how to work with uh companies in Asia it's not as easy as said um you will have to obviously think about having somebody to review your

contracts these are very large contracts usually and you'll want to make sure that there aren't little things like snags of where perhaps say you miss a port or a time or any sort of Dev equipment you may get fined for that I remember a Infamous story when we were working with bringing uh worms to Asia onto mobile and they turn around and they said to us that we would need to remove a huge amount of the game because of how violent it was I didn't believe worms would be completely violent in my mind and then secondly is the contracts we were being sent were in Chinese so we had to localize the contracts make sure that they there wasn't any sort of hidden information or anything that could catch us out and with that in mind then we then found a brilliant company to work with and get this over the line so once again this huge topic of Asia as well that I mentioned a few times ISBN approvals ISBN approvals are a incredibly tenuous tasks to get done right it's not going to happen overnight some ISBN approvals can take up to two years uh

there was a major major freeze a couple of years ago as well um having being aware of how important this is to putting your game out in Asia is is highest of priority right working with China you have to work with somebody who is a chinese-born publisher they will work with you um some like I mentioned off the top of my head which I've worked with previously before east to west said play Billy Billy these guys are great people to work with they will obviously have huge amount of insights into the area they will explain to you and what needs to be done I mentioned earlier the difficulties of um getting the assets removed for worms we had to we were being informed we couldn't have skulls there couldn't be certain weapons involved some things just didn't translate into the appropriate English as well so obviously that goes back to what I mentioned earlier about localization there's a huge amount that needs to be done as you can see on my slides here I've just sort of bullet pointed how long this could take taking what needs to be done when you are working with Asia the person that you will have as your as your

contact is probably going to be the most important person in your workflow and when trying to put out the game So speaking of the game itself then when you have got it onto the Mobile store there is a lot of things you've got to keep in mind it's like working with steam you're going to have your tags you're going to need to have gameplay videos you're going to need to trailers if you can constantly update this and get it into the perfect algorithm for both Google and uh and and apple you would have the opportunity to have your game as an editor's Choice you'd be able to be able to put it up at the top of the list it will get pushed out to you on notifications sometimes as well you have that opportunity usually they'll have a website and newsletters to be a part of to help push your game further as well another thing to keep in mind as well and something I haven't mentioned much at all today is the idea of other stores as well I'm sure we all have different devices here today you'll have the Samsung store you have the Huawei store you have so many other stores and they can help as well but as as a um as a preference I would say they'll always try to push for Google and apple try to

have both going I wouldn't say there's no no problem having both subscript subscriptions and stores each both offer different values uh both subscriptions remove ads from your games as well because obviously as a part of being on the Apple arcade or Google papos remember you would have the opportunity to play all these games completely free monthly purchase of I believe and it's about 14 or 14 pounds monthly depending on where you are in the world right so there is a huge amount to gain by working on both storefronts so moving on uh another thing that's been mentioned a lot today is the the game itself and the in-app purchases uh being able to keep these things in mind loot boxes in-app currencies uh something I was informed of and I thought was quite an interesting thing as well is this conversation or having an offline an online game if you have your game completely Offline that is still a big seller a lot of people appreciate that as somebody from London who sits on the train and never gets connection to have a mobile game that

actually works offline is always helpful and then keeping that in mind as well not every country will have the same sort of data plans we have right recently I'm very much uh I've been speaking to a colleague of mine from Brazil and he was telling me how it's completely different situation Brazil some people are paying stupid amount of money for data and that's just going to be non-existent for you then so you do need to keep that in mind when you're thinking about your different variations obviously I mentioned loot box earlier as well I think we all know the topic of loot boxes pretty well it's being discussed heavily all the time a lot of games probably suffer because of how pushed they are for microtransactions I was reading this morning about the new MBA franchise they've just been putting out a game onto onto PC and mobile biggest heaviest criticism was micro transactions and that's a bit of a shame because people then won't look past your game when they're just seeing straight away getting pushed with things to buy you need to think about your game and I mentioned this earlier with vampire survivors for example we have the DLCs there even when we put out the

survivalists on Apple arcade we made a completely different version of the game it wasn't just a straight Port so you could have it to make it a bit more user-friendly when it comes to these sort of things so just a bit of a conclusion point on everything I've discussed today um the mobile the mobile space is definitely something to keep in mind I've met like I mentioned earlier I'm interested a few times about the Asia Market the Asian market is definitely something to keep in mind for you to play versus Premium versus freemium these are all things you must keep in mind as well a lot of people are are going to think about your game in various topics is it worth just pushing out different versions of it as well some people may appreciate that as well I've mentioned about localization your game needs to be localized when you're pushing it out into different countries and then obviously qaing it the last thing you need is playing the game for what five minutes in the crashes we don't want any of that another for another I I always comes to mind is when I was working at Team 17 we unfortunately had a game that had a one hour tutorial so that didn't help did it

as other people sort of fell off within the first hour but then we changed it looked into the comments looked into the reviews and it's become incredibly successful now on the in the mobile base I mentioned obviously both pushing Google and apple they are as important as each other I mentioned obviously the other stores as well you've got the Samsung stores there you've got the Huawei stores there they are all good things to be in they'll all have their own benefits being push notifications uh you'll be able to have the ability to be on both like I said Apple play um Apple Play Google Play and apple arcades uh moving on as well the consideration of who you're targeting as well I've met as I mentioned obviously the Asian market it might not just be your Market it might not be it might not be a popular game market for your title as I mentioned it depends on the genre as well you might want to just thinking about making a strong game for uh in within the US the Latin markets obviously another one to keep in mind as well and obviously with Europe there's there's a huge amount to be made uh when putting your game out into into the mobile space um and to that point as well not all

games will succeed on mobile I think a lot of people have thought of the mobile space just being a copy paste you can just put your game onto PC and onto mobile and they'll do incredibly well that's not always the case because I think some games from a PC standpoint just don't very relate well onto the mobile you'll have to keep in mind the interface obviously you're now going from away from a controller on a keyboard to now you're actually using physical but uh sorry interface buttons on your mobile does that make sense for the game does it play well in that capacity as well and then finally just to mention as well is the idea of working uh in-house or with a partner I mentioned obviously going to back to Asia you will need somebody to help you out there because they will be your boots on the ground to sort of make sure everything goes well uh here in in Europe or in America you might be able to do it yourself it can be a quite a strenuous task I must admit but you get it done you can obviously cut the costs without going to a partner but then there are incredible Partners in this space I would like to give a massive shout out to a lot of people

here today and the games industry is in general we do like to help each other out there are some incredibly strong Partners you can think of of just going out and asking them at least getting some help that's always something good to keep in mind so as I mentioned just to conclude everything I was working to see it to you Dave to about is that the mobile space is incredibly important for whatever you're going to do next with your game you can have uh body systems over there you can obviously gain a huge new community and a lot of the stuff that we do today today's live is through mobile so your game will could potentially even gain further traction through social media and mobile versions of the game and that was it for today thank you very much it's been an absolute pleasure to speaking with you all today and uh have a lovely uh Pocket Gamer [Applause] yeah thank you thank you very much we've got a couple minutes for questions if anyone would like to ask uh anything

we're all still feeling oh there we go we got we've got a question I wanted to ask about like you mentioned this about like monetization on mobile and it is very different if you have a premium PC game you want to take it to mobile like how do you handle this maybe like reluctance in with PC players like this like maybe kind of looking down on like this type of monetization ads and in-app purchases like how do you handle the community in that case do you handle it at all like do you experience like negative comments around taking the games to mobile and changing the monetization um it's a good question I think obviously you were funny enough we will get people who will comment on the steam game they'll be like there's a crap version of it on mobile or something like that right I think you probably need to firstly just divide the two communities the mobile market is completely different to the console Market um I mentioned vampire survivors earlier

we more or less ported the exact same game over we didn't feel like it needed to have changes that is as a premium game as well is is currently now valued within less than five dollars so we're more than happy then put it for free on mobile right so to to your question I think you've got to be careful of what what the game is itself it's a very heavily strong based on the gameplay itself is that the key Market puller is that why it's done so well on PC then try not to to diverge that but then if you feel like the game can be supported with say a season pass or subscription then you can start leaning into that and I think one thing I haven't mentioned as well in my in my presentation right was that launching the game is half the battle the post launch is the most important thing on mobile I think when you're working from going from PC to uh to mobile with PC and console you can maybe put out your first DLC in a couple of months with mobile you want to be having that constant change and updating keeping the community going um and that will be based on say going back to your question about the monetization you could potentially then

start reeling in the idea of bringing in I don't know a skip of uh payment or something like that obviously you've seen it with the the strong titles like SimCity Builders you'll be able to like buy a currency and that will skip the entire process those small mechanics might be something to keep in mind when putting the game into mobile great thank you uh I think we're about time but unless there's one one more quick question can't see any hands I think I think we're good all right yeah thank you very much another big round of applause thank you very much everyone thank you so much [Music]