So you think you're global?

[Music] [Music] Hamill so I'd like to welcome to the to the stage please a a group of people the moderator will be Pascale Clary say if he's sir is it if he's here please and then we've also got Donetsk in back to the stage from from G star Jefferson valadares Lowry Yahveh Leto and the Sabrina Carmona are gonna take part hello [Music] check hello everybody I'm Pascal eclairisse and I will be moderating this great panel about so you

think your global we've just watched a few Tolls about Middle East market about the Korean market the premise is now taking a look at the world the premise is that we are all available globally through the App Store and Google Play to what 170 plus countries and from what different position in the world it may be at some point that with the millions of downloads coming in we start looking like we are global hits or global brands like Angry Birds or clash might be and I thought well if global is an aggregation of locals then are we really local hits in all these continents that we are available to and to talk about that today we have quite a multicultural panel maybe you can only introduce you starting with Sabrina who comes from Brazil and lives in Sweden hi how are

you guys okay they are alive and well I hope you're not super hungry we'll try to make this entertaining so like you said I'm Sabrina I'm a producer a king in Stockholm office I am from there you go I am from Sao Paulo Brazil I lived in Mexico City I lived in Santiago in Chile I lived in Hamburg in Germany I worked square enix asian I worked a behavior Canadian worked in a German company now work at a Swedish company that has offices all over the world so been around a little bit and I'll be happy to share my experiences hello my name is Laurie I'm CEO and co-founder of flight near alerting your studio started about two years ago with Peter vest arbok and Nicholas health and Laura country and we've set out with the goal to make learning games that would be as much fun to play as the best games in the world our first game Big Bang legends

we started soft launching a little more than half a year a year ago wanted to start with something easy to learn so we started with particle physics teen with CERN Institution in Geneva and we've now officially launched it in three countries and it's been like the number one educational game in all three and in Finland actually was the most downloaded game for the whole launch week which was kind of nice I think the first time ever in the history of learning games so getting to a good start hi my name is Donna's Kim I'm CEO of the advanced cybernetic tainment which is located in Germany near Frankfurt and then I've been living in Germany for 25 years and then I'm right now that doing the some investment on a gaming studio and in some startups and and also the bridging role between the Korean Asian culture and the European culture as well

so I would like to you know meet more people here in the Finland because you know very impressive young developers and yeah nice to meet you hey name is Jefferson is the third name there usually have the longest name but like this guy beat me this time I'm really disappointed but I'm originally from Brazil as well which I guess a lot of people dependent did not know we have a it's multicultural but it's actually more Brazilian than anything else I did live here in Finland as well like ten years ago I used to work for do chocolate now it's super cool to be in Finland back then was just cold nobody talked about that stuff anymore but I now I live in the u.s. I lived in London as well I work for benign ANCA which is you know crazy Japanese company before that I worked for EA which is like a crazy American company working like multiple studios with studios in the Arctic Circle China Australia I think not Africa maybe there's not Antarctica

actually so I'm missing two of the continents but working on that if you guys know any studios in Antarctica let me know looking for them hello everyone thank you for visiting us my name is Tina Slav I'm from ala true and came here from Russia Meriter is one of the biggest Internet companies in Russia that consists of lots of different companies like inside and we have some expertise on having business global while it's true that most of our businesses are focusing on Russia mostly thanks to our social networks that are dominating in Russia like VK and okay we also are famous for operating games on worldwide basis like what phase or doing some businesses like alright sharing and for delivery and etc so yeah alright so we're gonna go at the world

continent by continent and exchanging views sometimes mistaken or not we're gonna start with the biggest market the biggest up market in the world and that would be Asia so earlier today done already spoke about Korea we all know about big China and how its booming over there but around it there is actually a story to tell also especially if you look at esports in thailand in vietnam in indonesia all these markets are really booming and maybe dawn you can start by giving us a summary of your opinion and then since we have we are lucky to have jefferson from bandai namco maybe you can chime in into that as well okay and currently that they're really the mobile gaming market in the asia is exploding you know mainly due to the chinese market but there is a you know some default that

they you know did they if you just do rush into the market there's so many competition and there's so many data traps on the way so it's not really easy to get into this market that's what i learned that many of the my Western friends who wants to get into the eastern market you know just to thinking that they are all the same market and you know gaming market is so in the international everybody understand everybody but actually in the business way it was not so many of them have failed not not in a good way some make a big fail some make a small fee but I think that when you want to get into the Asian market you really have to understand the culture and then I rather recommend you to visit there and and meet the people and then understand how they play what they play in what

circumstances you know they use the mobile phone and something like that I think the people in the korea-china or even between this streak China Korea Japan and even these three countries there are many different differences and then because of the differences if you bring the you know Japanese game directly to the Korea or the Korean game date directly to the China and that will fail you know so I think understand the culture is a really crucial I mean I'm right now the representing the gist are right now that that is the you know gaming exhibition and I really not only fold those brand but for your own sake that I really recommend you to visit one of these you know the game exhibition before you dare to publish anything you

know in those market yeah it's funny I mean Asia is difficult for westerns it's also difficult for other agents like so my company's from Japan obviously and we're like big in Japan if you pardon me we are a company not people know this because Namco is known in the West more for the arcade you know like the kind of stuff but like we really like the focus of the company really is on licensed IP so most of our big projects are anime products right so like Dragon Ball is our biggest game Naruto on one page there's a lot of those we do and actually a lot of our success in Asia is due to the fact that we control those licenses so in we have actually a big market in China we have enough a big office there which has been growing every year it's not the biggest like growth in revenues coming from China but you guys as you guys know it's complicated to be there so we have a big office there but we publish everything with $0.10 like we don't we don't do anything like I mean we kind of convert the games we get the games from Japan

kind of change them because they need to be completely different in China and then we release them in partnership a ten-cent Korea has like a pretty good alignment with our IP so you know a lot of our stuff works well in Korea our biggest game in Japan actually is not big anywhere else other than in Korea because they like have similar tastes and income and cultural backgrounds yeah and we kind of have spotty I mean coverage in some of the other places like Taiwan and cetera you know Gundams like pretty big in Southeast Asia some of this stuff is not so it kind of depends on in our case really follows the IP and I mean not a piece not amazing for every market but definitely in Japan like if you thinking about Japan you know trying to give the point of view of local like IP is king so like people there really want you know that thing that they you know they're big fans now in Helsinki has mummy in cafes but like the first one I went to was in Tokyo and it's an IP from Finland but you know like those guys consume it more than here probably and it did a really big IP consumers other than that if

something is like a big massive event then they'll pay attention to that too but like it's very it's very difficult market to get to because they have they're very concentrated focused so that everybody likes the hot thing and then if you're hot it's a great and if you're not like you're in trouble so it's kind of a difficult market to break into yeah I'm curious the the one thing I would love to hear particular from the Russian point of view is like you know we all know about China how difficult Anna is because you know the regulations and and all sort of things and I or keep hearings that brush is going in the same way it's getting more and more complicated to go there and like you gotta have you know local servers local presence like all those other things so I'm curious to see like what do you what you guys point of view on that yeah I thought that I think that you mentioned that it's challenging market but from a Russian point of view it's not very big difference compared to other Asian markets because also my challenge and for all of them you need like separate strategy and

working with local partners identifying the correct leads or like best relevant agencies or companies that will guide you so it I think it's not very anything special about this from our point of view as far as I know so to summarize there's a big cultural gap which might be the last frontier in this world to cross all the film tears I got a garden but there is still the cultural exchange something very interesting that anything was said is that we look at it as Asia but actually China Japan and Korea are completely different and so is Indonesia and so is Thailand which are big markets as well and that's why a lot of successful European or US companies tend to go with partners unless they have the size scope and wealth of the bandai namco then they open but even even as we went to it with partners in china so we

yeah we have you know we're big but we still I would I would see if there's one thing to take away from this yeah the local partnership is like really important even if you build your local presence used to want to have like strong partners where you go and I guess the principle of opening an office is also still to go at that cultural gap because you will hire local people who know what they're doing now going into Europe and us I guess there will be the same kind of cultural gap for example down how do you view the the Western market as a Korean well what's the market this you know definitely that the people the in the US or Asian doesn't understand the European market right and you know from between the finish and they tell you and you know we understand that there is a huge cultural gap but the people outside of the Europe doesn't understand that right I mean the day all looks the same I mean Eastern

so funny for us you know who live in Europe but they're you know outside of the Europe they don't understand their you know this kind of delicate culture things even the facial look is different but they don't recognize that you know it is so funny so I mean they you have to imagine that how difficult that is to get into the Asian market you know to you that every Asian looks the same but for Chinese Japanese or the Thai you know they all a little bit different I think different they know in a way so I mean therefore between the u.s. and the Europe is between the Donald Trump and there's somebody else you can understand you know I'm understanding you when you moved to Europe Sabrina also very surprised was it also a cultural shock coming from Brazil yes

absolutely I a first place I lived in Europe was Germany and then I moved to Sweden in my mind I was like yeah they're both cold and blonde it's gonna be the same it was absolutely different and everything right I think it goes from how you work work culture it's very different the market is different also the focus or how the company's structure themselves are also different what they're looking at or what they want to achieve is also different of course now I work at King it's a big company I think you've heard of it we have some big games and it's just them it's like you know you finally play in the big league and then you see the massiveness and all the resources that you could have so that is something that I couldn't even imagine that it would get a fraction of that at all so I think

adaptation especially when I can only speak for myself I have a lot of Brazilian friends as you can see we're everywhere so you can't scape but it's also very difficult for us to adapt into cultures that are not so sociable and you know don't get me wrong he talked about Italy and I have some Italian friends and even or my team and everything when we are still different sociable I mean it's just it's just different and we look for different things so quite quite the shock and it takes time to adapt so I lived as like I said I lived in five different countries but even moving from Brazil to Mexico it was completely different Mexico to Chile it was completely different again so there's even a different Spanish between Mexico and Chile yeah I'm sorry for the Chileans there but you do not speak Spanish I live there I can say that their only true coelom their only true

Spanish chick is Colombian Spanish far as I'm concerned that all right and Laurie actually because we just talked about how different the Italians are the French are the Germans the Finnish but you had the change to do a soft launch event in a country that nobody ever speaks about which is Slovakia can you tell us a little bit about why small countries might might also matter and there's also a cultural difference there so yeah so we are one of the soft launch countries and one of the countries that we've been doing some test marketing has been Slovakia like you said I think you know the main reason why we chose Slovakia is it has 5 million people and it starts with an S like Singapore so what what actually happened was that so Peter who's our brand breaker he was basically like talking with the

president of Slovakia and like just chatting out about this whole idea that we started this company because we want to scale this Finnish ideal of inclusivity and education and then we got access to basically to be able to communicate about what we're building to Slovakia schools and figuring that out then we visited them and we tested out the schools and it's really interesting to see that regardless of the culture where we've been testing the game we get pretty much the same effect you know regardless of language barriers or like you know even kids age these don't seem to matter that much you get this sort of like you know in go to school you play just the game and kids are just blown away by it and I think Slovakia has been really interesting because it's like on one hand like it's a pretty different pretty similar demographic to this other areas for being tested about the same size about the same sort of age demographics but at the same time it's actually you know the whole sort of East European

Slavic sort of like you know congenital blues if you may like you know it's kind of give some interesting spin to how to fit the product but I think like at the end of the day I think our experiences in having tested in quite different kinds of territories in different kinds of culture has been that I think like I think we are sort of over analyzing a little bit too much about it like you know that people like these cultural differences and how we look like and how it's all can like you know whether you can understand that certain dialect or Spanish or and it's basically superficial compared to the fact that at the end of the day we're talking about the business that's ultimately a creative business and I think deep down I feel at least like you know like territories that we've been operating in people are people you need you need to have some something like you know something that's basically nothing

short of magical to be able to touch people and when you have that it doesn't really matter what language people speak or what they look like or you know what their gross national product happens to be when I get the magic in there and get the magic just communicated to people I think that's the sort of like you know the mmm the key to moving forward a come back you come from a more of a creative background so I hear what you're saying which is more like football is a universal language and so can be gaming or music so at the product level you're trying to make something that resonates with seven billion human beings and I guess our considerations are more business in marketing how do we position that now how do we sell that great gem that has been created this being said do you think doing something with the president of a country is somewhat easier in a small nation then it would have been in the US or in Russia you don't bring putting

that easily I guess no I don't know I mean unless it's like you know crazy president of you know a country located south of Canada I don't think it really makes a difference in that particular case I think all bets are off but like in otherwise I think just communicating with people like going to all various kind of layers of like people you can get in touch with I think all boys start back to the fact that like you know when each I shake hands with people there are human beings and when you find this connection doesn't really matter what's on your business card or what kind of office office you happen to live in once again with that one small caveat if you happen to have an opossum as your hair that might make a difference so it made a good point about the creative being like you know the thing that kind of connects everything so in our case you know that's the IP so you know the IP we have you know it's usually because it's been built over the years then like

some countries like that IP and you know that's kinda like our entry into those places so you know I'll give the example dragon bar is our biggest game like so it's the same game actually the separate version in Japan and another version for the rest of the world but it's it's really the same game I think the difference where we if you watch the game on the charts of that game like it actually wasn't doing amazing at launch and only a few years later actually or maybe I'm sure years in that we started reaching the numbers we have now and I think part of that is because we started customizing the experience for each like region so and not just the game but also like the marketing so you know I don't know if you've ever seen the advertising for something Japan but it's like you know eight fonts blink like everything yelling at you and then I can we're like okay we can't really do that in the US and we had to kind of like take out you know one phone per screenshot please and then like just a single image so we had to kind of cleaned it up and then you know even the things we sell so in the US people really like power and you know talk in general terms about Dragon Ball but you know that probably applies to other things too but people will like the power of the character of

the characters like they care about what you know the numbers whereas like in in Europe people like prefer more than looks you know the card like the art made made a big difference when people going to decide obviously they look at the numbers true but you know they kind of like to look at the art so we had to kind of just like and whereas like in the US over focus on just numbers like don't don't show me the car I just want to see the number right we had to kind of adjust that on our marketing on our community messaging on the pacing of events on when we announce an event because in Japan they even just comes because everybody's playing the game anyway so we don't tell it ahead of time but in us we got to remind people like hey but events coming events alright I was here because you know there's so much stuff going on in the US that people don't pay attention and you know if you don't kind of like remember like remind him all the time then they're not gonna be there when when you want it so those are the things that even though you have this IP that connects everything you know they're all Dragon Ball fans in the end but you know we had definitely there's different like you know the styles and behaviors and things that you got to take into account for even if you happen to have the creative center that works everywhere

please I'm the regarding the you know how say the common things and the differences between the cultures that they especially the regarding the languages that the big countries like the United States or the France over Germany they don't like to speak other languages they're very lazy to listen to the other languages but whereas the smaller countries like Slovakia Finland the order some other the Netherland you know they're used to get learning the you know new languages they have to so I mean they're they don't have a barriers to the foreign languages so that that's I think there are some big differences between the big countries and the smaller countries where is there in the Asia most of the countries like a big countries like a China Korea or the Japan they are very the Western languages are very different whether is English or the you know

Japanese or the you know even between the China and then the Korea I mean that they don't speak each other's languages so they you need to communicate with them you know in their languages otherwise it's very difficult you know penetrate into the market all that you have to develop the game which doesn't need a language at all so that is the kind of strategy you have to deal with and then also regarding the Korean market especially that they know the gamers are very very demanding so they complained a lot of different details so in the if you don't you know deal with them very carefully then you make a create a lot of the anti you know fans so there is something that I've heard a lot that in Asia customer support if you don't answer within fifteen minutes your service is if I may use some French exactly and then also all you know there are so many so many so much

competitions you know so that you know if you don't do it right they just easily move to the other game so it's really difficult to succeed in in those it's game as a service as a paroxysm over there it's really a service and it's perceived at search and in between Asia and Europe you you have Russia which is also kind of a thing on his own and ignored by many although is in the top four or five top generating up markets in the world so yeah and you'd like to hear more about Russia right that was the question so at the risk of collusion can you tell us a little bit more what are we missing to enter Russia right yeah I'd love to and saying thank you for having me here so as you already said Russia is a very big country its top five market in the

world on mobile we use 80 80 million mobile phone users and it's funny that sometimes you do nothing at all and you still have a large user base coming from Russia take big companies like Rovio like seriously like I don't know outreach seven they don't invest a lot on user acquisition in Russia but Russia stands for one of top three market for them by user base just because they well they have good games and they built strong recognizable brand around seventy percent of those 80 million mobile phone users are Android so Russia is 70% around is heavily Android country and it's important to mention that less and far less I think less than 10% of them speak English so in order to be

successful in this market you have two options first is you have to create very simple game like Kazakh rope like cut rope without any like text Awards oh you have to work with like NGC so companies to localize your text because it will be hard to be successful without users understanding in your language speaking about special specialties that [Music] like like unique things there are not so many countries in the world where Facebook is not dominating for example there is a China with Richard as the main platform for everything in Russia there is a there are two main like social networks and messengers VK and ok that luckily belongs to one company that you have to to deal in order to be successful and

speaking about Russia it's important to mention that Russia is a very strong PC market with steam is dominating and it has a very strong BC eSports community that are playing a lot of sport games and a lot of companies with strong brands with for example Parkman hello Jefferson and like from Monday Anka or Sonic from Sega are doing very good in Russia as well thanks to recognizable brands speaking about like South some numbers Russia's as I mentioned top 5 on user base by user base and its top 11th by by revenue in the world with a whole game market is valued at two billion dollars last year and you see a gap

between downloads and user and revenue that's why developers rely not only on purchase but on advertising as well in this particular region and last thing to mention I think main genres are very popular in Russia it's social games mostly mastery and puzzle and mid core games like shooters like MOBAs like strategist RPG and I have a special question to Sabrina luckily we are on the same panel mastery games are very popular in Russia seriously Rovio lots of local game developers but not very it's not a strong market for King for some reason so King built has built a very strong brand and you are dominating on Easter Western markets Latin America but not in Russia I wonder what is the reason that I have no idea

because I working for about a year and three months and I do not work with the candy crush franchise or any live game I want the G games team so I can't answer that to be honest I don't know the answer Sabrina while talking about unexplored territories another big one is Brazil so you've talked about how it is to come to Europe but we tend to ignore I think all of us the Latin America opportunity and because it's it's a young continent so it's growing and it's booming can you say a few words about the opportunity over there to do business sure it's huge and I think I mean last year I was here talking about Latin America and he made four billion in video games it grew 20% year over year so it is a lot usually people in Brazil you see the carriers

they are very expensive and they have like different promotions and to have a phone is super expensive so people in Brazil have to be they have carrier and carrier B so I quoted my friends we carrier a but I use carrier B because my boss has that so they have a lot of mobile phones it's the penetration is enormous and they actually pay and consume clash royale is top candy crush's top they play every single game that most of the world place the difference is that and I really like to talk before there's a big difference between translation and localization if you come to Brazil with Portuguese from Portugal you will be trashed I don't understand that and it is just you and we feel offended by it of course you are and the thing is it's not that because we don't want to play games in English it's just that we don't have education if you think about it it's not that strong this is a miracle by the way but it's not that strong and it's not for everyone and

it's very privileged for you to learn a different language so you only imagine playing in a different language a lot of people actually learn English by playing video games a lot of the gamers but you have so much more reach if you localize the game instead of just purely translating and needless to say I think that the top genres are also like casual is very yeah more social games as well we do like to play with people and that's why some mid core pvp also has a lot of success there all right preserves generally like the number two country yeah in usage for us like most of our games Brazil is like this second-biggest not in revenue but like in usage yeah a lot of it that so we pay attention to that we obviously are a piece big in Latin America so the anime stuff is big in Latin America as well so that kind of helps but I'd stuff like to find a way to generate a revenue well we can adjust the prices we work

with Google Google if you talk to good they'll help you like to adjust your prices in a way that works for them so we kind of lower the price and round up and whatever and like there's there's a little thing that you can do to help but it's worth paying attention there because it's such a big market ever and it's funny that we've actually run out of time just at the moment we were about to talk about the fog continent which is Africa so who here has done events in Uganda raise your hand can you tell us more about that so we started a couple of development projects when they all got not one in Cambodia testing game learning in rural schools we just visited Uganda in tune and tested a bunch of games among them obviously big Bangladesh but also other learning years that we think are cool in schools where the kids had never seen a tablet or a smartphone or computer in their lives and that's one of the

reasons why I feel like you know that like you know when you get that connection going first people the cultural difference in sort of melt away because seeing these kids who had no previous understanding of even the technology that were employing to deliver these games and I have a sort of video 90 seconds after the kids got their hands on the game and they're like they're completely blown away by it and there's like two like two thousand of these kids just playing the game and shooting the atoms and they figure out the mechanism is immediately and they figure out the whole stuff and I think that's at the end of the day like I think like I think there's a huge potential especially North Africa because there's like a bunch of people who are amazing human beings who don't have the access to the same kind of tools and devices and education and possibilities we do but we have also Venetia tips that are now changing all of that and it's gonna be a huge thing when that starts to escalate and I think like it's also interesting for us in the

Western countries that we shouldn't feel too laid-back about it because I mean if we sort of get complacent those guys are actually gonna overtake us in the next you know 10 to 15 years and having seen that like firsthand the excitement in the eyes of these kids you know I'm certain that that's gonna happen soon all right I'm not sure if we have time for questions - just before we we break for lunch there any questions for our panel here's one here look I'll take my mic strainer hey Josh from Bangor I've got a question for Jefferson Sabrina about Brazil or the Latin American market in general you both sort of said that you see very high usage but very low revenues and one of the things that Bango has found is that games developers and app stores don't really realize that a lot of the boundaries there are the payment methods rather than the IP usage or

the interest in the game so they see high high usage but not high download so I think how do you guys sort of tackle the the issue of a lack of credit card payments and the lack of options for payments in the market yeah I mean like that's that's definitely one of the biggest problems like Google works a lot in there in Brazil I am cold not as much for like Google putting a lot of effort in editing or it was like all this crazy arcane like payment methods and Google's like putting them all in into Google Play so Android is the biggest user base anyway so they probably can move the needle yeah I think that the difficulty but you know obviously payment is one thing obviously you know ads is something that helps you so you know this kinda like one things we try to do there but yeah I don't know I mean if I knew the answer then we would be doing it I think we're still trying to figure it out it's like even though you know the fact I'm from there doesn't really help that much like it's a crazy place I mean we can understand the problem but it's hard to find when this when when the solution is gonna be like easier than office every night is like some more inside no I agree completely and that's

a payment message is a big deal because credit card is not just for everyone you just can't get it that easily or maybe you can but you don't we don't know how to handle our finances that well but it's there are other ways to be creative right of what you see we walk on the street there's a lot of new stands and you physically buy like cards and codes that you can put it in the game so I think it depends also how much you can invest in doing alternative ways of reaching the same and secondly it's about price points as well right and for the things being affordable and you actually feeling that you can invest because it shifted from the premium that you would just buy the game and you just play it to oh my god now I have to pay to progress what is that and now he's like oh I'm actually gonna invest on this because it's a service and I'm just gonna be playing this for a very long time so it was it took a while for the mentality to shift and I think it's

happening right now and I think there's enormous space for you know for companies to just put their games there I think King games are very successful there as well in source of revenue and and there's just there's a lot of options but it's it's what he said it's hard with payment methods and I think the advice just go there there are like events Brazil gameshow has a hundred and fifty thousand people in like two days of event so just you know it's worth going and having a look and how they behave because it's a it's a massive consumer country yeah and like I said Google Google puts a lot of time into Brazil so if you know people at Google I go talk to them too because they definitely think a lot about this because and I think they're gonna be probably the ones that they're gonna help us crack that first so yeah if you know anybody Google like they can also probably connect you with with that you know some of those answers and I think these are two very good general points

actually globally payment is a key issue because credit card is not popular in the majority of countries and if you look at China eighty percent of payments come from Alipay and Union pay so completely different mindset and this is something that the people are not going to change for you so yes gaming is a universal language but the way I pay I'm not gonna change that just because I like again and this is true for most human beings and then other things is that that is make sense internationally is how you make your partner's locally and visit these countries because indeed payment in Brazil most people tend to pay by carrier billing but you need a partner because once you get paid you also need to get the money out of Brazil and with their banking Laos that's not an equation entirely and we don't have time for that thank you very much I think we probably

better up up there so a round of applause please for Pascal dot and Jefferson Lowry Sabrina and Stannis laughing [Applause] [Music] [Music]