Session: How Cross-Platform Publishing Is The Next Frontier For Game Growth.

So, next up we have the sponsors for this track, uh, Rabia and Raphael from Crazy Games on how crossplatform publishing is the next frontier for game growth.
Well, um, before we start, actually, I just, um, I mean, Crazy Games has been a sponsor um, from the browse breakthrough track for 3 years now. Um, we're very happy to um, to do that and we will continue to do so. Um, I think it's important that the web has a space um, to have this conversations happening. So it's really cool to see how the industry

has been changing the past couple of years. Um we see just a presentation from Reddit. Um but there's other big guys um doing stuff. Discord recently as well. U we know that Microsoft is also um investing quite a lot on the space. So um and I think that's that's kind of a little bit what our talk is is is heading. Um I think that there's a lot of opportunity for for developers. Um I think the web um there was a conversation I think my talk a couple of years back was like the web is not dead and it's really not. It's actually alive and growing. Um do you have the proper direction to to move?
Oh okay. Yeah. And um and yeah so so basically we are crazy games right? Um we've been in the space for more than a decade. Um and we work with I would say with the majority of people um Yeah, maybe maybe is this one
right? So

I mean this is a shift that is going to affect everyone because uh this is crossro promotion this is extra traffic for everyone and it is free and nowadays we are seeing the change everywhere and we are going to focus on how to use web as a growth strategy.
Yeah, exactly. So just let me just introduce myself. I'm Rafael. I'm the VP of partnerships at Crazy Games. Um we um we we are a team of I think nine people here. So which also shows how much we we've been growing as a platform as a whole. And together with me I have a
he is my boss. So you are free to come to our booth and give compliments
because what I do at Crazy Games is mainly selecting the premium games that are going to the platform. So I am your person if you want to publish on crazy games later down the line.
Yeah. Um cool. So let's start. Mhm. I mean nowadays so I will ask some questions to Rafa to answer. Nowadays uh crazy games we have reached around 50 million monthly active users mainly in

tier one countries. What does it say about the web evolution?
Yeah I I think like the one of the main reasons why the web is growing in crazy games is going is the quality of the game. Um obviously at the platform level um we we add new features for retention so on but definitely the quality of the content has been has been increasing right that's why we're here over the years talking to to a lot of developers and tell them about this opportunity um I think the web brings some really cool stuff which is like it's very highly accessible right you click on the link and you're playing it for multiplayer games I mean I can't imagine anything better than that and easier so you're really playing together within a second um and and I think like you know what we're seeing with the quality of content as well is like a lot of positive ratings and a lot of people actually coming back. So what's before used to be I would say one of the the major issues on the web retention we're seeing like some really great retention happening across the and with that um I think

that's that's what what we what we realize as well um that you know this the journey can start on the web but we have the opportunity actually to um expand the reach uh with all the activities that we're doing. So we right now we're working in a in a three-point ecosystem. Um we have the crazygames.com the one you know with 50 million monthly active users mostly based in in the US. Um but we also release like a crazy mega app. Um and basically this app it's crazy games in a in a native form. Um we'll be adding more features. Uh we have our app team as well. But I think that we have the opportunity here the potential to be like a top 100 app. Um and that's what we're seeing as well. Great engagements, very good monetization. So by default, if you join us um on the on the the com part where we collect data, you have the opportunity to to reach a lot of users with our user acquisition money. Um and

from that also being available on this on this app that we're growing. And addition to that, we also build now the crazy games publishing team. Well, this is very exciting for me because I'm originally from mobile publishing and the way we see uh this publishing platform is not to uh I mean crazy games or web in general, it is not to replace mobile publishing. It is as a support. So right now we allow developers to use their game links in the description for their app and for cross promotion. But what we do on the crazy games publishing it is basically we are supporting all the UA and all the knowhow that you might be looking for. But the difference is also that the games are already published on web. So you already have the game played by millions of users. So you have the certain data already. So we can use this data to optimize and better UA better uh AB testing and better LTV in the long process. So it's all in one.

Yeah. And if you work if you work with if you have a game on crazy games, you see we've been adding a bunch of cool features like benchmarks. So you see where how your game compare versus other similar games in the similar gen and we adding more and more new features which actually give you more data um which can help you be more successful across this whole spectrum, right? Um so that's why we're we were our vision for crazy game is really to become like a crossplatform like which we are already but definitely expanding to um these two new verticles. [snorts] Um and I think what really drives the industry is actually growth right um and we see information from one side that you know things are are hard to hard to um to find growth but we see a completely different path from the web. the web has been growing like crazy. Crazy games is growing like every month more and more because of the of the quality of the games and also um you know all those all those new things that we we keep adding. So just to give you guys a little um some of some of

pointers, right? So there's studies showing that the market is growing um and it's growing quite rapidly as well. We see um just before here we're having um a presentation from Reddit. Um but we see that there is definitely multiple opportunities for you on the web with one the same game basically right you can go to crazy games you can be on YouTube we chat there's telegram there Facebook game a yandex and zoom right so there's definitely a lot of audiences in different markets um and u you know I think we're very well positioned as well especially for for for the US um if you are excuse me if you are a school kids like in the US or between 12 to to 20 25 years old, the likelihood of you knowing crazy games is very very high and that's something that we're pushing um you know the our branding and try to be you know um a top of- mind brand for for those uh for those users but we also seeing growth across different um demographics

um and then I think the latest number that I thought was quite interesting is that um you know there was a study um conduct recently that where they're tracking the the amount of games um and it's really like the amount of games coming to the web now it's exploding right so we're in comparison to what we had previously we also see this um we also made much easier for developers to collect data early on their game um so if you have a game you don't even need to integrate the SDK you can just put the game there you got you're going to get some KPIs and then you can see if it's worth for you to continue to um to develop or not
I mean just to give you an idea is that the number of games that are submitted on crazy games compared to last year it has grown three times. It's a good problem to have for us but
it's also good for the users right so they they really and and we work more and more towards data so if you get traction on crazy games is worth investing in keeping like a live operation happening so and if it doesn't get traction then well you just move on

to your next project um so some some information about the users as well um in general like we I think there's I think there's a misconception in in in the industry some sometimes that you think web games are like casual games, but actually we're seeing um you know more deeper games um actually finding success especially related to monetization within purchase and things like that. Um but definitely you also have opportunity like you know for games more this evergreen games for like where senior people want to play like something like solitaire um and they find as those very accessible on the web as well. Um and we see this being translated as well into the user growth um and engagement we see across the across the board.
Yeah. Especially for niche niche games. Imagine that there are millions of users. So the games that are played by a few million users and they play only one or two games for hours every week. Uh the game monetized really well and it is

free user acquisition for you.
Yeah, exactly. So we're just a slide. I think we have to go a bit faster actually. Um so just some misconception and what we're really seeing user data right so it's not only for casual games you can actually have deeper games there the monetization is getting more and more mature with ads in a purchase their games doing subscriptions um and then there is also the technology which is actually evolving. So one point here why you know the web is actually winning um is because it's easily accessible um it's easier for you to to to actually publish this in multiple plat platform you have this user acquisition that's sorted by different platforms as Reddit mentioned they also have their own community so you should be leveraging that and not you know spending money on on on user acquisition um you also have this viral potential of growth so we see this some titles they are able to get tens of millions of users within you a very short amount of time and I think this is this is also the power of the web people can easily share um what

they're playing it and uh and I think because of the quality of the games being increased as well this is happening more and more so and I think like just to advance why this is also happening is just because the evolution of technology um I think like we we we work with most of the of those game engines um you know we we see like a definitely is into games made with Unity 6. They're high performant on the browser. Um we are you know we have great conversations with Godo game maker construct um and andos. So we see that the all of those game engines they actually investing right now into you know getting better web builds coming out of every single game because the interest is also there. So you know um and this is data that we never shared before but that's like from the from the we released about 900 games uh last year. Um we still have a majority of the games made with Unity. Uh but we start we start seeing growth across with

different game engines right um construct being still a very popular game engine default godo also coming along and Kokos as well um and uh I mean we we really work um into building new documentation for Unity um and building plugins that that can help you reduce the game size um because we know that a lot of the developers actually like to use Unity as well. So, but these days I think we we have great Unity games that are very high performant on crazy games. Um, and it's nice to see that as well because a lot of you actually work with Unity, right? Um, and together with that, it comes like something that I'm I'm really bullish about it, which is WebGPU. We start seeing more and more of those projects um, you know, coming. Um I think we it's still definitely not where where this state where I would like the industry to be because um you know it's those are deeper more complex games but we start seeing like games that uh we use wgpu like this project prismatic which is like a console

quality game that's released on the web. So you can actually click on the link and play like a nearly like aa kind of game which I think is super cool and this is what we we're heading. I think in the next couple of years we start seeing more and more of those really gorgeous games coming and being accessible with just one click. Um so I think that's another part which is I wanted to highlight if you join the web today it's really that you know you you work on your distribution. Um there's multiple people that you should be talking to. They all here there's different platforms here. Um you should be talking to them. Um and uh because what is changing right now is the way that people actually discover the games. Um and and this I think that the main point about this talk is actually uh just to to to tell you the shift that that we're seeing that it's not anymore about publishing your game on the on mobile or in particular place. You know these days the game is actually finding the players. So you definitely should be as many many places where where you

could um and and I think that's uh that's something that crazy games for instance can provide right. um we instant access that you share the users open up and see the same game and is not behind like you know uh I would say uh some some map stores or something like that. Um yeah, so and going back I mean I think this slide got a little gy cut but like we announced like um Q4 last year like we we did a partnership with with Perplexi AI for for the new browser comet. Um and I think that's that that has to do a lot with like how people are discovering their games as well where you know we use CHPG or whatever all the time for recommendations in our in our daily life and we start seeing more and more this happening as well um with this AI tools. So the web is accessible via their browser for instance. So you can easily just click on the link ask what type of game should I be playing based on my profile. So we're moving towards this aentic kind of a era and and

definitely the web is where this is starting. So which I think it's nice when we think about use of AI into into our daily lives. Um I think that uh it's it's cool to to see like that first the web is actually being served.
Yeah. I mean for me personally when I'm doing any shopping I'm searching on AI nowadays like I need something like this blah blah and users are doing the same for the games and they ask for the specific games and they can play directly a crazy game uh game on comet on the web. So it's quite exciting
and then you also have this added layer which I think is super cool. So you have like game plays of the videos like added to what what you're actually playing it. Um and there's a bunch of of of other stuff that uh comes together with you know even helping yourself solve some puzzles if you get stuck and and things like that. So I just want this talk is a bunch of recollections of thoughts of

things that we're seeing it. Um, so I just want to share some knowledge uh that we're seeing from um from from developers that are working with crazy games, right? So they're still working with the app stores. So it's not like that the web is replacing them, but they are understanding that, you know, web can be a crucial part of their strategy. Um, and there's platforms that can help you understand, you know, the potential of your game through different communities. um you are you you will be um assuming you're working with multiple platforms you will be in different storefronts um which means more visibility for your brand for for uh for your for your communities and you know these days for multiplayer games it's crucial that your game is populated and thing and and this and the web can help you populate your game um and uh and and keep your community thriving right [snorts] and again distribution it's key these days um I think it's It's it's really um what I would actually u focusing if I were making a game make

sure that you know I leverage all the platforms there are there and and and and understand if those communities actually um are suitable for my game.
Yeah. I mean it's also quite democratic because uh right now if you want to launch a game on mobile you need to have a budget to do to do UA you need to have a team to manage all the relationship with the publishers with the platforms etc. But uh the web is basically you develop one game and you distribute it everywhere. Doesn't matter what old you are and how many how much money you have basically. And it shows in our games as well because some of the maybe like three of our top 10 games they are made by uh users that are kids actually.
Yeah. Well, we have that is also I think it's a phenomenal thing that we start seeing like young founders like you know people that are younger than 22 23 years old and they're building companies. They're hiring people um and they're finding success on the web um just

because they made a cool game and they have the support of a platform like like crazy games. Um so yeah monetization wise I think then the panel will be about monetization we can touch more base about it but we definitely see like a high increase of adoption of inapp purchase. Um we see growth across different demographics. So it's not just kids playing it. We we also see like you know this 35 plus which have a credit card and will be spending money on on on in a purchase and and we also what we're are looking for as a platform as well is this deeper kind of experience that you know can re-engage the the user multiple times and not not necessarily like um the more casual games. Some some tips um just I have 30 seconds so just walk you guys through quickly. Game size is still very important. There's a bunch of talks um you can search for it how important that is. You really um you really want to get the user quick to your game. Um you know there's we spoke about the game engines. I think we've pretty much covered that understand the web and and

the players and really um leverage all the platforms that are out there. I think that's pretty much it.
If you have any questions we are in the first floor G13. So come come stop by.
Thank you so much. Thank you. [applause]