Rovio and ZeptoLab talk at PG Connects Bangalore 2015

okay so to kick things off um I'm I'm really Delight to invite the stage a personal friend and one of the true Visionaries of our industry um and he's going to sh share his high level Vision see I've done there so clever um so please welcome to Stage Rio's Mighty Eagle himself Peter vest backa yeah hey thanks Chris so it's really great to be here it's been like many years since I was in India last time and things definitely changed so uh everybody has a smartphone or actually not everybody yet but I mean there's more than 100 million and somebody told me that there's going to be 100 million more this year so it's uh you know always good number but hey one thing uh what I wanted to do actually which is like uh little bit like in the spirit of this event uh share actually a video that uh uh we created or actually launched like last week so if you could come like Play that video and I'll explain like why I wanted to show it after that

[Music] when I was young I never needed anyone making love was just a fun those days are gone [Music] living alone I think of all the friends I've known when I dial the telephone nobody's [Music] home oh by my

don't want to be all by my myself anymore long by myself myself don't want to live all by myself myself anymore [Music] yeah thanks so yeah so not a sales but yeah of course you can download and like play the party mode that's like fine 130 million downloads for angur go already so uh I think uh Oscar from our Stockholm Studio tweeted that it's bigger than all the Mario games combined since 1992 so it's not too bad for a yeah for a game that's been out uh roughly a year so um you know it's a good start what the reason why I want want to show this is that uh we're not

alone and and uh I mean this uh event is a great example of that that we have like a few hundred people here in this room but uh it used to be a pretty lonely business because if you go back to kind like uh 2003 when roio got started and that's also you know around the time or actually maybe couple years before when I met uh IL that you a lot of you guys know who runs supercell nowadays and he had just started uh uh sua so this little game studio with two of his friends in in Helsinki and and in 2003 was pretty lonely business and and you know when you told people that oh we're making mobile games it was like uh right you know like what is that because that was when you had you know the first phones with like the Java on them and black and white screens and yeah you know you had snake and stuff so uh it wasn't kind like a massively popular business and and the world has has definitely changed

but uh I I think that it's it's really great to see that and and kind having been around when you know it was still you know like cool that you could demo that hey check this out I can send a message to you you know like you know stuff like that or or you know like when the first ringtones and that rington started um started I I was actually that was like before roia I was working for HP and I remember when uh uh was pitching that to an operator in Austria and I was told that yeah you know like this might be like AIG thing in Finland but it's never going to work in Austria and then I said okay fine you know I'll just give you the servers and everything you know and you can kind like test this and this was just before Christmas uh that year I remember it must have been like uh 99 2000 like super early days anyway and so we gave them the servers we gave them everything to kind of get into the ringtone business and we said okay like we'll give you this for free but we'll you know share we'll take half and uh it paid for itself because I was like over Christmas in like 20 days or something so it's like like a pretty

good deal for for HP at the time and yeah it turned out that ringtones were you know kind of like a pretty good business worth a few billion then over the time but yeah anyway so um if you now look at our business I mean we're definitely not alone and and uh there's quite a few people making games and I think what is really good about events like this is that uh it's great to get together you know share experiences and look at where we're at and on the roio side we've always been happy to share kind like what we're up to and and you know uh if you if you want to know something you know just ask uh no problem and I think that's what's great about this uh Community as well that uh it's uh it's very very open very operative uh but then you know okay this high level view so um uh okay already mentioned that there's going to be a few more smartphones here in India this year and okay 100 million this year is is uh you know it's pretty good but uh if you look at China 100 million smartphones every quarter new ones

that's pretty big but uh to put things in perspective uh you know if you then look at the global picture there are like lots of interesting stats uh just the Apple App Store is bigger than the Hollywood box office you know all Hollywood movies combined and that's just Apple I'm sure you heard about Google play that's pretty big as well so uh our industry is not uh exactly like a tiny one anymore uh so uh you know we grown up uh then another very interesting kind like piece of uh statistic that I I personally love talking to the music industry and all of these guys that the biggest song of 2013 made as much money in two years as the biggest mobile game does in 5 days or four days it's like you know Up For Debate so that also puts the things in perspective that yeah I mean the music

industry is pretty big and you know like uh people listen to music and you we have the spotifi and iTunes and like all of those guys but uh again uh uh you know it's interesting but two years versus like four five days it really kind of puts things in in uh in perspective so uh our business is not tiny okay then uh if you look at some of the things that we've done with Angry Birds so of course at roio uh we are making games and I mean we're releasing more games this year than last year and uh you know we're uh doing pretty well in that uh we had 600 million downloads for angry burst games last year and uh our total now for angry bur is 2.8 billion so uh you know we're getting there but there are of course 7 billion people on the planet so we're kind of like far from where we need to be but not all of them have smartphones yet so you know we kind of need to kind like wait for that to happen but uh I think

that it's it's also a uh an interesting example of the kind of like the reach the scale okay I mentioned you know like Angry birst go that you saw there in the video 130 million more than all Mario games uh like in the history of Mario you know combined uh and uh you know it's just not you know okay to brag that okay we have more than anybody else but but what what is very interesting is that you can now do these kind of things you can reach this kind of scale so it's a little bit that you know if we can do it you can do it and I mean now with India we have you know Indonesia of course China already like huge so the market is getting bigger and bigger but it doesn't mean that it's getting any easier so one other interesting thing uh it took something like 9 years to reach 700 titles on Nintendo you know a thresholder like Nintendo various devices the Wiis and uh ness's and DS's and all of that so it took took while uh you know um 9 years

to 700 titles uh then of course if you know the stats on the App Store side it takes something like 72 hours to you know add another 900 titles on the game side so it's like a bit crowded so for every Angry burst there are many not so angry birs not so successful games many of those games are actually super good but the problem is that nobody knows about them and you know being a marketing guy uh always uh telling everybody that if you're serious about making games you need to be pretty serious about your marketing as well so it's not good enough to just make great games but I mean this is you know true in any industry that you know like uh it's not good enough to make a great movie you have to have great marketing to go along as well it's super super important and uh if you look at what we're doing at roio and what we've done with angry Bir I mean this is now our sixth year of angry birst angry birst came out 11th of December 2009 so a

while ago and uh uh I I think that uh again it's uh very short time you know six years if you look at kind of like the lifetime of our brand I mean our friends at San Rio they've been doing uh Hello Kitty for like 40 years or this year like 31st and uh Mario has been around for almost 30 years and then uh you know Disney there's that Mouse character that we all know n 19 28 and Mickey Mouse still going strong so Angry Birds is really kind just a baby when it comes to like brand but because of digital distribution you know the massive amounts of uh smartphones and tablets and all of that you can bring you can build brand you can build awareness much much faster so uh what we done in six years is uh uh is that we built a brand that is now known by pretty much n out

of 10 people on the planet 93% of the Chinese population 91% here in India n out of 10 Americans know the brand so uh quite a few people know the brand and that's also if you look at uh the numbers I mention download side 600 million downloads of our games last year without any paid user acquisition so it's all part of brand so uh I think that's also like pretty interesting and uh and we really believe that where our industry is going and it and this is you know again for any any Market any developed Market if you look at movies look at anything in entertainment uh you know these things all brands matter super super important and if you don't have a brand yeah then you might have to spend hundreds of Millions on Advertising TV outdoor etc

etc so it's it's a very different approach uh to building brand than than let's say some of the other players so so uh we always been very proud at roia doing things differently so again like in this room it's pretty easy to spot who works for robio you know so it's me and those two guys there ATI and anurag so we we we like doing things that stand out but it's all about the brand and you know when we really a new game people know the brand they'll download it maybe you know like you don't like it and you don't keep the game but at least you know we get we get there so that's something that's uh very very important to kind like stand out in the crowd of all of those other titles as I mentioned you know the 900 or so that hit the App Store every every 72 hours uh then uh we don't view ourselves as a games company of course we're very proud of the games that we're doing and that's

like at the core of our business but we also uh use the brand to launch into consumer products so uh been doing uh pretty well on that side so we have tens of thousands of angry Bir branded products out there you know so the hoodies and you know the iPad covers and you know there there's a lot of uh lot of stuff uh of course the toys tens of millions of uh angry Bir Splash toys so uh things you can do when you have a brand and uh yeah we're also uh you know on the consumer products or let's say the physical product side also building Parks so we have now uh Angry birst activity parks on most continents super popular so there are not like theme parks you know big uh things like Disneyland uh not these like once in a lifetime experiences but we really want to build uh experiences that are lifestyle so you can go to our Parks I mean if not every day uh they're in your neighborhood you

can go there like every week and it's always a great experience and you don't stand in line for two hours you actually go there and you're part of the activity like immediately so again doing things differently from some of the other guys out there and there's the movie so next year 20th of May the angry birs movie is coming out and uh that's something that we're also of course super excited about um but but it's just a movie so it's one part one piece of uh building uh This Global brand and the way we look at Angry birs the brand we're not building the brand like some games are built for like 100 days and then you do the next we're building angry birs for 100 years you know to start with then we'll look at like the next 100 years but taking a very very longterm view everything we does our animations you know it's not just the movie with our animated shorts

Tunes TV that we have in all of our games we have now uh over 5 billion views in uh in um about two years so uh again reaching a lot of people with our brand with our content and yeah next year is the first movie and then we'll see when when we when we do the next one but it's it's a very important part of building building the brand so uh when you look at roia and look at angry birst today uh we're really in the business of building uh Angry Birds branded experiences in all forms and shapes for our fans our business is actually super simple it's all about you know fans and brand and then we kind of keep those two things in mind and and uh when we do that hopefully we we then kind like uh you know know what we're doing and and uh create uh great great experience for our fans and and uh make some money as well but uh as we are in the business of interactive entertainment I thought I'll

you know like open up for questions because uh you know chis and those who know me know that I can stand up here and talk for like hours and hours and I'm not going to bore you with with that so uh sure you have some uh some questions and comments so you know should sorry we've got a roaming mic so before while that's going around I'm going to ask you one quick question myself um so obviously You' built a pretty good brand it's a good start you got n out of 10 people now it's pretty it's not bad it's not bad Stu people starting out don't have the benefit of you know several billion installs so what what what would be your you're very good at Brad I know you've worked in other companies and other events and you've very what be your top tips for developers and Publishers starting out you know in terms of building a brand their own brand what would you suggest yeah I think I think that it's it's like in any market and and I think it's it's particularly true in games uh today but uh it's it's kind

like anywhere you go that it's not like there's a shortage of games or shortage of product shortage of services and and when you have that uh I think it's super important that you stand out you know like at every level so that uh you know why should I download this game over this other game and I think that then you really have to think about like how why is it you know different how does it stand out maybe you know it's a red icon you know red bird or something like that so that it kind of jumps at you and you immediately recognize that so really thinking about like how do you stand out and then I think one one thing that is also uh very very important uh you know and and this is not just for brand but in any anything you do that you then you really have to kind like you have to live the brand you have to believe in what you do and actually this this one one thing that uh always like to ask a question from you guys so uh who here uh

you know now being here in India there's like lots of talent lots of games being made here so uh just a question to you know you guys making games so who here feel the next Angry Birds hands up come on yeah come on there you go excellent but but this is the thing this is the thing I always ask this and then you know like hey what the I mean why don't I see all hands going up are you like even serious about making games of course you know you have to believe that you'll make the next Angry Words okay so so yeah okay okay so um so what what then uh okay so let me let me let me rephrase the question so then so who is going to make the next um uh Candy Crush so if that's like more your cup of tea but I was you know still talking

like uh yeah anyway let's not even go there but if you into like match three I mean that's fine as well we're also coming out with some amazing match three games like Angry birs fight real time match three battle game coming out real yeah anyway so where's the Sal so so no so build but but it's super important I mean that this is something that you know again that there is kind like no reason you really have to take that kind of approach you have to have that ambition I mean nobody believed me when I said okay we're going to have $100 million for Angry Birds that's when we had like two or three million which was also like a good start nobody believed me because that was something that hadn't been done before now you know like there's lots of people that oh 100 million 200 so on you know and people who have more than a billion Downs it's not like unheard of but at that time I was told that oh you know Tetris is the only game that's ever gotten to 100 million copies it took them 20 years no way you're going to get a 100 million

Downs for Angry Birds EA told me that sing you know all of those guys and and I think this is really important that you have to believe that you know you're going to build the next one and okay you don't have to build the next angry Bir I'm fine yeah all right that's really good so what are the questions we got got time for a couple questions chat there the check Shir thank you very much uh on the flight ATI told me uh the gentleman over here he told me that for example you can also be the Giants on Whose shoulder other developers can stand on so which means you also co-produce so for example if there are other developers who can pitch across to you and Ro you will take the trouble of taking to the market get the muscle behind and uh yeah so so so one one thing uh that's actually very important point so we don't um make all the game games animations all the products obviously ourselves so we work

with partners and we always had this approach we want to be the best possible partner you know for our partners whoever they might be it's very very important uh and I mean also to going back to the video that I showed that it's it's really about doing stuff together and uh great example of that uh we're about to launch Angry bur fight it's our first game that we made in Japan you know for Japan and the world and uh we've been working with a company called ketu on that one and uh I I think that it's it's very very important I mean obviously I'm not Japanese I'm not Indian so what do I know uh so we need to work with local people who can like understand the market and it was very interesting I was in Tokyo last week and uh we had P kind our CEOs on on stage and then tanak kasan who is the founder of G and it was very interesting kind different in perspective so donak caran was saying that okay they don't think

that they can you know like make games in Japan and take them to the world they much rather go to you know the US bua Studio make the games there uh while our approach was that uh we really really believe that we can work with the studios in Japan like we're working with kiteretsu make great games for Japan but then also leveraging the brand of Angry Birds and like our experience our Global presence uh to take that to the world and I think you know like if you look at now India Lots great talent obviously and uh you know we are always very very open to work with local developers you know on Angry birst games or you know totally different games and we also have our Roo Stars program where we publish games like Juice Cubes plunder Pirates uh Jolly jam and and so on so we're publishing a handful of games like every year and again leveraging kind our reach our presence uh so uh again again uh you know very very happy to to talk

about that and I think that it's kind of goes very well with the theme here that you know good to bring people together and and work on on these things not alone but but but together so yeah so we one more question what one just thought for me to throw out there Angry Birds red ball don't know has anybody got a thought there it's a relatively popular sport in this country throw it out there if I don't see angry birs cricket in a couple years I'll be upset yeah and somebody somebody told me that this like cricket thing is apparently pretty big here in India got one more question this young lady there uh hi I'm Anila from 99 games I had a quick question for you uh Angry Birds has been there as a game for a very long time and we just wanted to know when did you stop looking at Angry Birds as a game but started looking at it as a brand uh I think that uh again if you look at roio uh so roio got started uh in 2003 and then okay we made 51 games before Angry Bird so we uh kind of like learned the hard way you know

that okay it's not so much fun making games for others so we we you know tried that and work for higher you know not so much fun uh not a good business definitely so almost kill the company but uh but I think that also so so because of that background uh working with uh you know big IP owners and and making games for them so you kind like start to understand where you want to be so so uh it's really uh uh I think that's that's kind of like important to know that we're kind of coming from that experience and looking at uh where do we want to be when we grow up and uh and then if you look at also the history of angry Bir I mean how the game got started so yasa or yako also one of our game designers um he was uh pitching this kind like new game idea and uh nobody really got like the game and the mechanic and you know like all of that but everybody fell in love with the characters you know so and the kind the outcome there was that oh we have to build a game around those birds so the the game got started not with kind of

like the kind like prototype of a game play mechanic or something like that but it really started with the characters and then we built the game around that so we started with the birds then you know the pigs happened the slingshot was added very late so I think that it's um a little bit also on how kind the whole game got started that it was about the characters and that's why I always you know mention Hello Kitty Mickey Mouse Mario all you know great examples of character driven Brands character driven franchises so so you know to answer a question I think that we started thinking about brand thinking about characters super early uh but then also um uh I think that uh you can't plan these things that okay you know you we we start by saying that okay let's make a game and then you know we'll build these parks and we'll do all of these things and I still remember when people asked me that okay that you know like uh how many angry Bir theme parks will there be and it's like uh uh not really like thinking about that you know and and then uh uh the same thing with like

toys and like all the consumer products that there was something that uh we kind of like got into that and then uh we saw like massive Traction in the toys sold out immediately and then we kind like realize that hey we're on to something here so so I think that that's also part of this that uh you can't have uh and I and I'm not like a big believer in like planning everything kind like carefully you really have to um you have to be very like agile and and you have to be very uh good at um reacting to to the outside world so so uh uh you know uh it's one of these things that uh can't plan everything and and just kind of go with the flow a little bit and and I think that we've been kind like reasonably good at at at doing that on on the Ria side but we're you know every day we're we're uh learning new things so cool all right that's fantastic can just do a quick we're doing selfie give a round of applause please for

Peter fantastic thank you very much Peter V toaca um so we've got uh a representative of another mobile games Legend up next uh who I'm really proud to watched grow from a a small Twan Indie Studio into another kind of globally recognized brand so to share the secrets of their success uh please welcome zepto Labs Misha L is that right L Island yes you're right there hey yeah uh clicker sorry I'm sorry is there a clicker clicker clicker clicker is coming you got clicker okay thank you

there we go oh sorry too far okay um hi everyone um I wanted to talk to you about uh today um about the story of our company and and why I think it's relevant is because uh there are very many Indie developers in the studio uh in the in the audience here zop really started um as an India Company really I mean we're two brothers were making games in their apartment uh like it's supposed to be and uh the game that they made was called Cut the Rope right and cut R came out in October 2010 became number one heat success uh on iOS uh remind you that it was a time when when only paid model was available right so 99 Cents was the name of the gamers um previous speakers um set set the trend um so we got 40 million stalls in the first year and um we sat down and

started thinking about what we do about um the success what do we want to build the company um and we looked at the various things around us to uh identify and figure out what would be our DNA as a company and we wanted to certainly make new games that was in our blood we said look okay games is something we want to do so what kind of games I want to do um if you think at the at the at the market uh really from a Global Perspective you have kind of three three different um approaches I mean one of them I would call popular genres right something that already is known uh some people call call it cloning i' call it uh finding um success sweet spots and where others also found success we figured that this requires a really fast execution uh which Russian developers

are just not good for I mean it's a cultural thing so that was out of the question plus we didn't want to do that really um second was licensing you know Hollywood pop culture various games that that that that showed up because they uh find a good license or really work with pop culture in the way that that that makes people click again we are located in Russia so it's difficult for us to a uh work with Hollywood and B really understand what's popular and what was going to be trendy U to really catch it same goes about pop culture right as much as we would like to make a great trivia game or something we just probably can't it's we don't have um the same knowledge as people have that grew up in in a culture right it's very simple so basically original games was the number one uh choice for us and we decided to do this and also we immediately understood that education is

really important because if you don't really learn uh you're not going to succeed it's it's it's flat flat simple so we decided to um attract different people from uh technology always works um we decided to that we really can't attract the top talent from all all over the world right because we're like eight in Moscow Moscow is expensive horrible weather and people don't want to really want to move there right so um that means we need to grow our own people right grow their competences so we started bringing really Advanced knowledge into the company by um asking certain people from the industry come and give us lectures and workshops and so on so on so forth plus we um obviously sponsor a bunch of events and and uh educational programs for for employees we really drained all the resources of the company to create this game right so so so in 2012 company almost you know had a lot of problems because

because of the fact that that we couldn't really make several games at the same time right it's just we couldn't figure out the proper way to do this so so our project managers were really draining resources from people and and um we focused on making this game and releasing it um at the time when we were releasing the game we understood that the paid model was already dead I mean not dead dead but dying slowly uh and we we at this point we realized that while we found really interesting gameplay we did not have game that would monetize right I mean we only had a chance to sell the game for 99 cents which then we did we we did it um decided to release it on Christmas because really uh in my view it's the only time to release a pay title is Christmas because that's when people really go to App Store when they get new devices anyway it worked it was really successful um you know created really positive fari but at the same time it wasn't obviously you know big hit for us so we uh done our homework and we

decided to figure out what was wrong with our approach and we said look in order for us to innovate really we need to create many many projects at the same time it's no longer in use how you do that right I mean many people have told told developers how you basically have a funnel you put a lot of ideas in and you shoot them along the way so we decided to take this Approach at the same time that approach allowed us to make really small teams like two three people basically in the developers within the company startups within the company to work on the various projects and the same time cut drop 2 was created uh which again we we innovated in in in that we decided the number two was a proper addition so we you know did really well with that game and it's continue to grow because again we we're in Russia right and and in Russia we don't really have very many good MBA schools or people that have great experience running things right because if you want to have a project team you really need

to have a mini CEO whatever you call them general manager somebody responsible for everything well guess what like in Russia or in China uh same way if if you find somebody like that they usually have their own company because there's so many opportunities right so really good you you go and you run run business yourself so we decided to split responsibilities between game designer and a product manager and a project manager so kind of thre thread of people people running the gaming projects uh was our answer to lack of you know good General management obviously we created regular pictures brainstorms we have um contest Journal where people submit ideas they win they win prizes iPads and so on so forth to final all those ideas in So at the end um this is what it looks like about 120 prototypes not prototypes but Concepts like simple simple small Concepts 50 go into prototype stage in various stages of development you know

they get killed uh five projects out of 50 go to soft lunch right so we launched soft launched five projects and we released one so far uh it's called King of THS it was released on iOS February 12th and I wanted to tell you about how we actually look at the process of developing games now based on King of FS um so first soft lunch first first iteration um you see the numbers right I mean we it looked horrible retention was horrible everything was horrible it was a multiplayer game and 60% of people haven't found multiplayer even though the bottom multiplayer was right there 60% of people we had we had uh somebody reviewed you know video uh you know sh shut the video on YouTube let's play video for 30 minutes and missed the multiplayer button amazing right anyway uh went forward we started making different uh additions to the game so

basically we launched something that was really really not a ready game I mean the graphics were not there you know the lots of things weren't there we were working monetization along the way because there was just no recipe out there right I mean how do you make a game where you combine a platformer and and a big multiplayer game how do you do this right I mean what kind of monetization model do you have to do have so anyway all of this was experimenting but we now we're experimenting on life people so we added um several features um killed some in our game f used to die they no longer di anyway and at the fourth iteration of soft lunch and obviously different horts we found sweet spot we found L TV that that we could that we could run with I mean we set ourselves a very simple bar um what will it take for us to release a game right and we said okay

LTV has to be this retention has to be that if it happens we we're going to go we going to go to Global lunch so that's exactly what happened um we also decided that we want to look at different markets obviously I mean and it's it's no no secret that China Japan Korea sorry mistake uh and and India are markets that have their different rules right so first we decide okay we can't take all the markets at the same time so let's start with China so with China U we have a local partner called yoda one so we really could develop the game with them as we went along so our game was developing at the latest stages of soft lunch we gave the code to them so made the different versions of the game um as you can see results were pretty good um in China just iOS one first week we got almost the same amount of downloads as we got in the entire world which is

pretty scary if you think about it but hey it's um it's China it's a big Market we as you can see the game look different uh looks different so the Chinese version at the top you know uh the world version at the bottom and and as thing go as things go along it will look even more different I mean things will change some of the interactions in China will be different from from interactions in in the rest of the world um simply because there are lots of cultural differences that you have to think about so we think the same obviously about Japan Japan is a incredibly difficult Market to crack it's been said so many times if you're not Japanese you know you come to me and you say I have a great game for Japan I don't know where you got it from have no idea um but anyway then we the kingle F on Android we we gave two weeks delay because you know we released on iOS first in two weeks we got um we released Android this time without China because

we learned so much in iOS launch that we decided the Android will be postponed to where when we get the game to to a better station anyway so um Android again just some data for you surprising places where you get the most downloads you know that's interesting um especially given the fact that we had absolutely zero Market budget I mean well we spent a little bit on PR obviously but the way the way we really have done it is is we started working with communities of people uh even before the game launched uh we started supporting Community from from the very very beginning because the minute the minute the game launched we had like 200 tickets in in in our support system and by the time uh the game made it for Thursday we had even more so we had to work on those but the most important thing I want to tell you here is

that today Global release is really soft lunch I mean if you're making something new uh you will never understand your real potential until you lunch for the global audience or for big Guardians because soft lunch is great but once you launch to the entire world I mean all of the sudden get people telling you a lot of things right get data that you otherwise would never receive um and so looking at this data we immediately made one update right I mean we said okay those are the things that are really wrong with the game Let's update them people found some bugs that we couldn't found and and they called called them super jumps in our game you can jump off the walls and and that was actually bug but people found it and that was a feature and there's some small portion of Hardcore community that was really disappointed when we removed that bug so it's working with with with with those people but the most important thing here also is that there are about 6 months worth of features that we want to put in a game

before we launch so we decided that we're not going to do this we decided that those six months will be chopped into one month intervals and we're just going to do regular updates for people because that way will make a game better right simple as that I mean we have now 10 million people that played the game downloaded you know obviously a lot less is left but but it's you know you get the idea so to some arize what I have said here is that if you want to innovate and that's our recipe right you want to innovate you want to make new games that have potential to be you know the next whatever the next something new then um our approach is very simple um as many ideas as possible no idea is crazy I mean seriously like king of FS came out of conour game Parkour game Sorry so we were thinking about Parkour game and that's how King of f came alive go figure right um soft lunch as soon as

possible don't wait I mean MVP from Minal viable product really applies in games now even more than before because if you g game has something in it right people will play it and you will have retention retention is number one approach if the game doesn't have it I mean you'll see it with bad graphics with great graphics it doesn't matter really that much so think of how you can launch the game as soon as humanly possible and learn analytics you know it's been said by many people enough but but data data data data always look at the data and learn from experiences from other people there are many blogs me people tweet there are good ideas you can get there um and obviously you know there's always a little bit of luck as the numbers of new games that enter app stores get really huge you have to be a little bit lucky as always any how um and what else are we doing as Zab

um so free to play is not the only way to make money I mean paid games still make money I mean we we we entered uh to grossing uh in in us and in 77 countries with um cut drop 2 as a paid title I mean again it's a big brand and and it's and it's and it's difficult to to to replicate but again way it works I mean we released myom n which is a Simulator game for $5 we removed all advertising all in apps everything from it because for kids and people love this idea I mean they're like okay great $5 you can only do it on Apple you can't really do it on Android just you know but you can make money that way advertising is huge I mean uh 100% of our advertising re advertising inventory in the United States is sold Direct by direct Partners so we don't sell to to networks so and that's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger every day networks are getting better results I mean advertising is going to be a big business it's already a big business but

it's getting even bigger and obviously because we have traffic and because we learned everything that we learned we decided that we go into publishing as well right I mean we do it in a very soft manner we don't have um big uh division uh that that is assigned to that but if you get if you send a review if you send a mail to review zal up with your game um it gets reviewed by our top people and you get response back that's that's our promise we don't promise anything else but we can promise that as long as it's not complete nonsense right just just so we just so we're clear okay so that's what I wanted to tell you today uh any questions that was that was really really uh deep lots of practical information I think it's really useful we've got time for kind of one question we we're we're a bit behind but as any they got a specific question they'd like to ask yes gentleman the blue shirt here comes the

mic hi uh can you tell us about your soft launch how do you do you know what's the process of a soft launch actually so you know I saw that you do multiple soft launch right uh yeah it's it's it's fairly simple you pick you pick certain territory and you call a game I mean you launch your game just in that territory we do it exclusive I mean we do it mostly on iOS because it's it's easier to control but on Android you can do it faster because every time you don't have to wait review for Apple testing right in our case we actually called even called the game differently uh so is it is it called differently when you do a soft LA because once you do it and the reviews and you know it it you need to carry it Forward right so how so do you do it with a pseudo name uh we we did it we did it in Canada uh and and the way the way we did we we call the game difference it was called thevs and we tried to Canal that it was us yeah just just so we don't get uh you

know unneeded data from from the industry right so that way you get the clear data sample and then all we did we just bought a little bit of traffic on Facebook we did not do anything no promotion like that right so it never entered any charts or anything along those lines that was really below we spent few hundred maybe few thousand total just to buy you know few thousand users we looked at their numbers uh every time we made a Game Change we bought a little bit more users so what's the Benchmark for traffic so you think 5,000 users is good enough 10,000 users is good enough for uh for doing the soft launch or you look at a bigger bigger data bigger user base to do a soft launch so so so why do you cut off after how many users I'm sorry after how many users do you cut off so do you do you say that you need uh 10,000 users to do a soft launch nothing no you don't I mean I mean in our case we we picked 2,000 okay because few thousand you know 10,000 100,000 is not going to give you

big difference in data Millions will give you big difference okay in data so yeah I mean soft lunches you can do it with hundred of people doesn't matter look if you like and you look at retention it's fairly simple if a game is not designed for retention find some interesting different model to monetize it but but but you know you have to look at retention retention is not there it's not there okay on old people on new people all right this going have one super quick question that's very good answer won't very quick yeah how do you do testing on iOS Android it's pretty easy you make a Google group you release it across on iOS Apple Max to what have about 99 people per year to add and test it so how do you how do you test it for example you think 2, people and you're looking at iOS first how do you test and how do you check the results I mean what are your parameters to say boom good to go okay um that's not a great question okay I'll try to explain in very very simple stage you you open up your Apple developer tools you submit

your game to Apple you just pick one country or two countries that's it there's no difference that's that's soft lunch I mean it takes some time for for for Apple to test your app the difference with Android and Apple is that time that's it then you know how do you look at data I mean how do you buy users well you go buy ads on Facebook or somewhere else you want to buy them doesn't matter right I mean you tell your friends to download the game you get certain amount of users you have internal analytics which you know can be very very complex in our case but it can be very simple and you look at retention and if your retention parameters I no we said look we need 45% first day uh and we hit it in the third iteration I think of soft lunch or fourth so and then it went up from there uh so we decided that for our game 45% would be good because you know we looked at M core games and their percentages and you know basically internet information available readily

on the internet and that's where we got our number from that's it fantastic I'm sorry I'm we've got to keep on but you can grab him afterwards we can do a quick selfie Round of Applause please loads of amazing data there so definitely gra help with me sh and get some more information um next up we've got a panel it's lovely chairs and and to um I'd like to hand back to uh Reliance game SI Manish who's going to run a panel looking at The Gatekeepers of the app stores so great guys I have a really nice panel here U the most s after people on on the globe which you will find for the game developer as far they concerned uh the the the quate would have been complete with apple also here but I guess um they don't they they don't want to be on the stage I'm sure they are in the conference Chris would would tell you how the ways to identify them and you can catch hold of Apple guys but here is um we have Google Amazon and windows uh our developer as developer I can tell you uh that the

starting point is uh how to really get your game showcase on App Stores what we're going to quickly talk about is the India opportunity and the global opportunity sitting in India how do we kind of Leverage that and without much ad doubt I will request my panelist to just quickly tell the company so that people know whom to chase after this P yeah and then we will kind of get into the discussion wonderful uh s from Microsoft and uh yes said you can absolutely talk to me uh after the session as well in terms of anything on Windows I'll be the point of con going forward hello Michael Hines I'm here from Seattle in the Amazon app store I'll be here today and tomorrow look forward to meeting you hi everyone I'm Kunal from Google Play I run Partnerships for India southeast Asia and Australia happy to chat up with you during this session as well as later thanks perfect thank you guys I I I have yeah so there are two ways I can do this I have some questions but I'm sure all these questions will be common what you're going to ask so do you want to start with a

Q&A what what do you suggest we start okay guys so my job is very easy I have to just ask questions yeah so uh couple of things which are as a developer on on on everybody's mind uh how do I really start to reach out to you guys how do I even showcase my game I'm saying that's a first point if you if just quick perspective on what what is your suggestion what's the best way on as an India developer how can I really reach out to you guys um I'll go ahead and take a shot at that on the developer.amazon.com welcome developer portal um beneath uh the pages there's always a contact us link and I have the Good Fortune of sitting in the same floor as the real human beings who actually read all of those messages now you don't always get a real human being responding to you particularly if the message is not

really appropriate or it doesn't have an actionable item but real human beings actually do read that and that's the best way to get in touch with us because they know how to send it to the right place but yeah sure so I think uh a good starting point is um developer.android.com I think that gives you all the right instructions um the site is hopefully uh well aligned to what you're looking for so typically it has various sections on designing an app developing Distributing and monetizing uh and it all it has all the right links to for example the developer console which you can use to actually create an account and start publishing so developer.android.com is the go to Resource to begin with yep wonderful um on the Windows side it's Dev windows.com um as a company we are going through transformation so you would see lot of uh you know unification happening on Windows as a platform with Windows phone and windows a desktop so so Dev windows.com in the onetop shop uh it's a platform convergence story right now so you would see uh uh resources available

for any platform across the board in terms of form factors but Windows phone or Windows desktop the say and uh that's onetop shop so be Windows 7 Windows 8.1 it's on Stop Shop D windows.com so what I what do I do I've done all this which you guys have told and I'm not heard you not what I've not heard from from the real person sitting there I've done all this which you have told me contacted put uploaded and and all that stuff is there is there any recourse which I can have after that or it's a loss case for me so look I think it really starts with uh with with the ability the the Go the whole platform which is developer or android.com as well as the developer console are designed to make sure that you have the right set of tools templates U self-service solutions to even start publishing and there are there are opportunities for you to actually flag off escalate issues if you have any so there are forms for example if you if you're facing any any issues around say a policy question right or a policy violation or you think that there

is a question that you have around IP you can flag that off to us and somebody will certainly get back to you um so so I think I think like I said most of the tools are already available through the developer conso for you to to flag off what are U moving on to the next one if as what are the kind of things which you have seen on your respective platforms which really lead to engagement uh and monetization what are the comfort couple of best practices if you could really kind of if there are any yeah no there are I think I think there's a lot of work which has happened I can clearly speak uh from the standpoint of Google Play here uh if you look at specific best practices I think there are lots to look at specifically around the way that the game has been designed uh and promoted so I think if I if I broadly look at the key buckets right any any developer any any sort of publisher is really looking at Three core areas where they need help uh the help around actually creating the the game and making sure that the right specs and quality aspects are being adhered to

that moves on from creating the game to actually Distributing it so that's where Google Play comes in and making sure that you have the right opportunity to publish in the markets that you have at the right prices that you want and then moving on to engagement now engagement specifically is a big area I'm sure all of you have have heard enough about the fact that really success lies in in making sure that users are coming back and playing again and and that opens up and unlocks the whole monetization opportunity for you right so I think on that specifically there are a bunch of things that you could do for example making sure that you are using tools such as Google Play game services to have things like achievements leaderboards Etc uh so that your users remain engaged uh making sure that you are using the right set of icons uh description uh just simple things like assets videos that you're using to actually promote the game uh so those are very very interesting and simple things that you can do to make sure that people keep on coming back uh sorry is there some kind of a diary or a Google Play best practices something which you guys have or You' yeah absolutely so

very recently we launched something called uh the secrets to success on Google Play so no longer a secret uh the the booklets are actually available at the booth here as well so in case you haven't picked up your copy please do that uh whenever you get some time it's a pretty interesting compilation of of the the the core things that you should look out for while developing designing and distributing your game uh and and getting and getting users to engage and monetize so I would strongly encourage that you look at that uh guide that's great Mike what we found is that applications need to um have three things to be a minimum viable product one that will actually survive in the marketplace and put food on your table they need to have a really good game Loop uh you touched on quality fun to play those are all really critical things two they need to have a good monetization Loop you need to decide if you're building a game in India for the rest of the world or in India for India because you may make different choices in your monetization options in your monetization Loop and

then the third thing was to the question you asked earlier which is around engagement uh and user and and and getting users in uh there are three things I've noticed that make the absolute biggest difference in the games that do well on the Amazon app store first regular content updates is really super important without that even a super popular game like monuments um you guys have seen that I think uh can really take a nose dive without really good regular content updates two you got to add social to your game even if it's as simple as um a a silly leader board or an achievements board that you can share on Facebook you got to add social to keep people bragging and talking about your game to start acting as advocates for your game and bringing other people in the third thing is absolutely brilliant it's combining number one and number two and and getting user generated content into your game think Minecraft or Trivia Crack and

that really amps up engagement because now people have a stake in your game they have a vested interest in what you're doing and that's really going to nail that that acquisition and user retention third of a minimum viable product wonderful I think if there's a checklist I think gentleman have spoken about eight of them um uh one thing which stands out for us um you know uh from from Windows is know differentiation uh quality is there for sure but the end of the day you have to embrace the local tenants of the platform I think that what would drive much more engagement in terms of that form factor uh quality is is again very subjective you know end of the day one thing I can say openly here is if you have a quality game come to us we'll help you know make it popular that's something which you can watch any day but end of to it's about quality and embracing the local disant of the platform that would probably take you further can you elaborate on that further what do you mean yeah for example if you look at windows I can talk about Windows and I can talk about other platforms also but but um there are certain ways in which users use that particular operating system right for example if it's social uh if it's an app

bar for that matter and one PL comes from the top it comes in the bottom of the platform now end of the day if you are trying to make sure it's it's a seamless experience or same experience across all the platforms users users tend to not to not us tend to forget that feature and probably you would not get any usage of that feature because it's not position the right place because it's in a different place or different platform and on on this platform you you you assuming that users will discover that discover is a bigger challenge there and hence you have to embrace local design tenants local design philosophies and and that would probably stand out taking sorry you want to say yeah just just to uh just to add on to the Quality aspect and the localization I think one thing which is extremely critical I think no matter how many games and apps sort of start appearing whether it's million to million the fact is a Relentless focus on quality is something which is which is absolutely the need of the r and for that specifically there are two things that I want to call out uh I think there was a discussion brief discussion about beta testing and sort of soft launches and all of that I think that is super critical um there are tools available

right now to make sure that you that you are able to test your games uh with with within a closed group get some early feedback get reports on crashes etc etc to make sure that before you actually scale up and roll out uh the the risk of failure gets minimized the other important thing is something known as stage rollouts for example so whenever you have new updates coming up rather than launching to everybody at the same time you can look at targeting a progressively higher percentage of your existing user base through stage rollouts and that again minimizes the risk of failure get helps you get seek feedback very quickly early on and and therefore helps you localize and improve quality as well so those are two important things that I that I definitely wanted to stress about yeah in fact just on that note our effort is when when when you said you know you have to look at there is definitely volume in in in in Google honestly that's something which is phenomenal so our effort is when you release released for all one in one shot is is be arush so just just to know uh uh it is a j not

just wanted to pass on that comment um I want to ask you guys a quick question really fast how many of you guys use AB testing in your games currently okay a handful that's actually good that's more the last group I talked to AB testing is super important particularly if you've got analytics that measure things like level abandonment so there's level completion there's you know complete can be a pass or a fail and then there's level abandon often times level abandoning can be a problem that's going to result in losing users and you're going to have acquisition problems and retention problems AB testing can be used to change the difficulty or other levers you have in your game and you can maximize that you can use AB testing to optimize for level completes and if you can optimize for level complete and new level starts you're on a really good track to optimizing your user retention but you got to be using the right tools um you know certainly Google Amazon and I think Microsoft all have uh access to

free AB testing apis that you can Implement as a matter of fact you guys right now before the day is over can take about two hours and Implement an AB test that will test different buttons different text on a on a purchase button for example you guys could do that before you leave today there's no reason not to yep thank you um siip your point um in terms of o and Os specific thing and platform specific thing one of the common thing which I hear from my fellow developer Community is difficulty of porting to Windows okay U and that's why that's one of the kind of barrier for people to really kind of even if they're creating games on Unity or cockos or they are really shy of doing it do you do you think that's the that's a reality or it's a myth and if yeah I I think it it was reality till 12 months back uh not anymore uh we definitely accept the fact that earlier there was no unit didn't support Windows for a long time and and Jan last year is when the

support started and I think since then we've seen a lot of popular games imported to Windows seamlessly and from portable standpoint in fact uh on Microsoft we have this philosophy called unic Windows apps unal apps which which is supposed to be running across multi form factors irrespective of whether it's IOS and Android now un support unal Windows apps that way there's absolute support on the platform for Unity and and other players as well so today uh it's it's it's it's it's reality in terms of you can absolutely port for Windows seamlessly without any problem okay great Mike a question for you uh any Android game can it really seamlessly get on Amazon I'm sorry repeat the question any game which has been made for Google Play can it be vorted or launched on the Amazon app store uh just about as a matter of fact 70% 75% of the apps uh made for Google Play When submitted to the Amazon app store just worked with no additional developer effort required the one thing we don't do is support Google play apis so um we do a pretty

good job of mirroring um say Maps version one but we don't have the Geo fencing in um uh Google Play's uh Maps version two so if your game relies on Geo fencing it's not going to work for inap purchasing we have uh an Amazon inap purchasing API that's pretty easy to swap with Google's in app purchasing API um other than that everything else just works wow so essentially if I'm a developer making games for Google Play I could really put it on Amazon and unlock my value um all you have to do is take your Google Play apk drag and drop it over to a testing tool on developer.amazon.com welcome and it'll tell you if it's ready to go or if it's not ready to go it'll tell you what you need to change in order to make it ready um usually you can get it done in less than two days uh if there is anything wrong right Kur a question for you uh what will be your advice for the developer to really look at a game from an India point of view now or India and Global or only Global what would your two sents would be on

that so great question so I think there are two things that we need to look out for now whether you're developing for users in India or or users outside I think one thing remains constant the constant there is quality and and making sure that you're using the right set of best practices that we spoke about beta testing stage rollouts U quality of the icon quality of the description keywords all of those things so those those stay those are golden rules wherever you right the other big part is really around localization right so I think if it's very very important to get the local nuances right so for example if you are a developer building uh games for say the Japanese market right uh you know that the Japanese uh users love dragons and all of that so so so if if you see the the app stores if if you see the the stores in Japan clearly you'll see a huge spike in terms of the number of icons which have dragons those sorts of characters contrast that to a place like Korea where they love cute characters right and and and contrast that to the US where it's a combination

so so I think it's it's very important for for you as a developer to understand the local flavor um and sort of customize that if you're developing for Southeast Asia for for for that matter and looking at a market like Indonesia they love football they have a deep sense of community everything that they do there is very Community Driven so the the app the app quality description videos all of that need to sort of canote that that aspect of your are the examples of games which have transcended geographies and have been successful across without the sensibilities of art sensibilities being changing so dramatically across the no I I think glue did a good job I think I think they did a pretty good job of using different sort of Graphics uh icons descriptions for different markets that they actually operated in so that's a pretty good interesting example to look at even Leo Fortune I think big Global name I think they they've done a pretty good job of localizing um two different markets so I think that localization is critical and getting that cultural Nuance right is something that we need to look out from

Mike your perspective um amazing offers a global opportunity um in a in a much much larger scale compared to India or it's like equal opportunity for a developer what what's the scene so a developer in India can choose to make a a market available globally we're available in 236 countries and territories worldwide or you can make an app specifically for India uh one of the things that I would add um to what you've just said is to make sure that you thought about the the regional monetization opportunities for example in Europe and in North America almost everybody has a credit card connected to their App Store account and in app purchases are really very seamless that way not so much in a lot of the Asian markets you may want to address or in the Indian market where carrier billing is considerably more um prevalent with carrier billing uh certainly Google and Amazon have had their challenges getting carrier billing up and running so if you're developing an application that you want to start monetizing in India

today start thinking about using ads as a primary method of monetization so one you do need to be regionally appropriate in the game that you've designed and to use your interface but also in the monetization loop and monetization strategy I think that's a great point because whatever reasons you guys whenever you guys will get a carrier building and there'll be a manner from heaven for developers on your app stores till that time I think um having as a core Loop is the solution and I think that's what we are kind of figuring out in India and developers have to do I'm confident saying that we're both working really hard on that I've been hearing that and I want to want to get that time s what's your perspective on Windows what's the opportunity globally and in India yeah I think just to um te off from where where Mike spoke about operative building I think with in India we've done it with idea and after which we've seen significant updates you know increase in terms of transactions because that's easy for anybody to know purchase games um and and opportunity absolutely if you look at today uh know first of all you know I have to acknowledge the fact that

as a company as a platform there's a little bit of struggle in terms of hey you know how can we get the share right so one is value versus volume and and that's where trying to strike a balance there is a player which is absolutely on the high volume there is a player in terms of value and and V Stu can be in terms of struck know balance between Val volume uh I would say with Windows 10 uh I can answer the question in terms of the current market but probably it's it's it's it's more relevant exciting in terms of when Windows hits the road which is few months away you would probably see an opportunity in terms of build once and run across multiple form factors right from Windows phone to Windows 8 desktops I would say Windows 10 to Xbox and any other form factors that that hits the road so uh opportunities absolutely today you know if you look at mobile operating building itself uh we're in about uh you know 42 countries with 80 mobile operators uh know that's the type we have uh after which you've seen literally you know 8X in and and and usage in terms of transaction on a monthly basis very ni um so I would say we're in the right direction I think all of us want to

absolutely get there in terms of making sure it's seem seamless for anybody to purchase games uh our effort is on and uh all I can say is you know EXA times ahead one of the things Microsoft has done that I really like is what you're doing with developer studio and partners like zamon uh using zamra and a developer Studio I can use C I can use Java I can write in whatever language I want want I can get an APK spit out for Android I can get um uh an apple binary I can then of course I can submit to all of the Windows 10 devices so using development St I don't work for Microsoft by the way I work for Amazon um using using developer studio and zamon um you really can start to develop for everything so it's going to you know it's going to be something that Unity people um uh can take another look at too I can see you can never take a Microsoft out of xosoft yeah so great guys um last last question you you have seen India market very closely you have seen what is going to what what kind of games genres is there any kind of two

three geners which come to your mind which typically Indian consumers love for high engagement which uh which which which you want to kind of talk about from your own analysis of games which have done very well in India um honestly Cricket is one I think gaming right so uh one one Trend I've seen recent past is they're gamifying everything it's not about hey it's a great but even if you have to teach children you know ABCD they gamifying that that's something which is working really well and number two localization right in terms of my mother is a big you know game freak but she says Hey when where can I see a game in Canada which is a local language um I would say I think it's a great Point yeah so I would say that's that's where uh big bucks are there I guess in terms of you know how we can monze in a big way opportunity exist the question of hey are we assessing the market in the right way can we reach out to uh not just 2025 in age group wherein they they're game freaks even 10year olds but how about the larger group wherein smartphones are

used being used by 45 years and old know plus people in a bigger way how do we reach to 5 to 65 exactly absolutely that's the and across the pops right I cross I think that's a great Point Mike do you want to kind of um I'll let you go first all right so from a c from a category standpoint I think um uh casual games and and education basis so she just said about learning and and education games I think they are they have a pretty bright future uh and from a device standpoint I think it's still early days but we are pretty bullish on um on some of the newer form factors so I think Android TV uh as well as um of course tablets are are already growing uh and to a certain extent even variables I think there'll be a lot of opportunity which will come up and all these other different form factors going forward in India so watch out for that that's a good one that's a great great perspective education absolutely uh if you're building games for India your Market spends more on education than any other country that I'm aware of at uh

education spending is higher than healthc care spending in a lot of tier one cities it's really surprising when you when you take a look at that so education apps are huge also are media apps apps that stream media from around the country that stream sporting events and that's I think why one one of the reasons that we're both seeing uh things like um uh chomecast and and Amazon TV uh really kind of pick up on those different form factors because that video that media consumption is a is a big component of the market sure um with that I would like to ask questions from the audience yes I can see your hand I just want to see if there is any other hand yeah no bias we just want to look at some guys yes there can you have the mic please one than okay fantastic yeah I'll come back the back

after hello uh can you tell us some best practices for surfacing our new game on the stores like what do you feel I I knew that question is going to come and you got stuck with mik I got to go first yeah so I think I think look the best some of the best practices are pretty simple straightforward um getting the store listing right is extremely critical right and and that store listing has a number of different components that you need to watch out for so the kind of icons you're using the description uh making sure that you're not spamming the user with multiple keywords uh making sure that you have a Relentless focus on monitoring ratings and reviews and then you're responding to those ratings and reviews so I think these are some of the important signals that we take into account for making for surfacing the right content uh so I think it's extremely important to do that um the other important thing uh specifically from a discoverability standpoint is engagement um broadly speaking there are four important signals that you need to

look at which the algorithms uh clearly for play definity look at as far as uh surfacing content is concerned one is number of installs so that's important number of uninstalls is equally important right so I think it's very important to make sure that people are actually finding that content relevant and they are engaged with it and they're not just sort of downloading and uninstalling cuz that sort of goes against you uh the other big piece is actually ratings and reviews so like I said making sure that through the console you are relentlessly reviewing and responding to users and taking action um will definitely help your cause so I think the asset best practices which are around icon description keywords all of that along with the constant user engagement along some of the principles that I just mentioned will really help um I'll tell you a personal experience um I wrote a over the weekend uh sometime time ago I wrote just a simple little quotes app and I would have loved to have responded to user questions and and reviews except I

didn't get any as a matter of fact I didn't get any downloads at all from my own store with my little quote app um now granted I didn't do any thought about marketing or keywords and it turns out my quot app which was about early American history and there are a lot of like George Washington um um Adams quotes in there so what I did was I added keywords for Thomas Jefferson Washington John Adams so that when people were looking for those kinds of American History things my quotes app would show up uh based on the keywords that I put in my product description that got a lot of downloads even more when I went to Twitter and did hashtag founding fathers and told everyone at that hashtag Hey I've got this great new quotes app that has a lot of stuff that you might be interested in now I'm making about $10 a month on this stupid little app I wrote over the weekend and I'm starting to get reviews and he could not be more right absolutely engage the people who are taking the time to review

and write comments about your product these are people who have invested in your product and making it better not engaging with them is telling them you don't care about them you can turn these people into your Advocates you can turn players into fans simply by acknowledging that they've got good points and telling them what you can do or or telling them you've addressed some of their problems great great suggestion add on yeah U I think um the gentle who spoke in the previous session uh I think he's yeah he spoke about uh you know soft launch right I think if you want to surface up your app I think I've not seen many do soft launch in India right in terms of you know be preview or or trying to understand or or as all the points you guys mentioned and then do a big bang launch I think that's something which would probably definitely make a difference in terms of surfacing up your app in a big way yeah I think last question guys at the back sorry yeah no I I think uh the beta testing is a pretty pretty interesting similar similar to a soft launch right where you're identifying the key sets of users and it's very important to get that group right guys so again making sure

that you have representation from different handset types different markets different bandwidth that people are actually using those phones on so it's very important to get that initial set of beta testers right and and so I would strongly encourage you to spend some time uh investing in some time in in in building that right user base for beta testing uh so that you get the right quality feedback so it's I think that's that's time well spent yeah last question and these guys are here so yeah uh hial my I'm AA from froy games my question is about price points is Google Play looking to reduce a minimum price point for India because what we would like is you know if I go out and buy a cup of tea I spend 5 10 Rupees I want a guy who can afford to buy a cup of tea to be able to spend that money and play for another 10 days or 5 hours good question good question AA so that is something which which which is constantly under review uh and that is also being reviewed in relation to the

number of uh forms of payment that we currently have right so so the two need to be looked at in conjunction with each other and and uh uh there is there is some progress that we're now trying to make finally with with things like gift cards and with with with carrier billing uh so hopefully we will have we will have uh good news soon but yes like I said those two things are being viewed in in conjunction so will we see it in 2015 2016 or let's hope let's hope don't push that's that's a wrong one you got the answer you wanted thank okay guys thank you very much these gentlemen are here uh sorry you can catch him s is giving me very dirty looks so okay I'm scared yeah so time out for us thank you very much and thank you guys thank you really really