Social gaming trends: From casino to casual

[Music] initially this panel was gonna focus squarely on social games and I got will to a point but when it when I was playing out the questions it occurred to me increasingly that that pretty much all mobile games most about gaming generally is is social now by nature so we're going to make me go a little bit wider but to kick things off fantastic I'm goth got TV things in my hands you can't do that yeah thank you let me kick that over the electrics that'd be great so to kick things off I'm gonna allow our panelists to briefly introduce themselves very quickly just say who you are what you do and I want you to tell me as well this is a challenge and a pair for skid what what elements do you think are most important to encourage social sociality not socialism in a mobile game I'm gonna leave you Celeste with in fact so I thought you had to register so what's your tell us little

bit about yourself from what you do hello yeah okay hi hang on - Velma data in head of product to fluff games these days I'm mostly working in the earliest stages of our publishing process and basically evaluating all the game opportunities we have what do I believe are the most critical components in in social in a mobile game I guess it depends on the game but the way a communication is an important aspect I so chat anything along those lines but also they they I think the game needs to provide something for players to be social about service needs to be a game motive there okay cool that's good good answer I wish you right in the middle can't see behind the hulking frame of Sam Forrest hi my name is Aurora burg I'm a

co-founder at mega cool before Michael I was part of a dirty bit and I'm much more focused on the shift of like everyone entering mobile coming from like developing countries that have not had a piece of screen before - to become familiar with a digital world as well as all the like the growth of few miles on the mobile platform as well come on don't worry we will bring that in Sam over to you am i oh there is you can't hear me good my name's Sam Forrest I'm director of communications for karma games you guys have pretty much answered the question for me thanks very much I know you have you probably have karma games obviously

you know very picking the social kind of casino space I was doing some research from this because I got there apparently social casino is worth 3.2 billion u.s. dollars of the games industry at the moment but I think once you remove the chance to win money because well you know from the traditional poking casinos Shirley social is the core of it I mean the casino ramen it's still kind of fun I guess but it's all about social so you know what can you say talk a little bit about the kind of user behaviors and the sort of trends you see within your games absolutely I think you're looking at obviously when you're looking at social casino games and you're looking out sort of real money games there's also two very different motivate motivations to play when you're looking at real money obviously the motivation is money you gamble you win very very simple but I think when you're looking at social casino there's a lot more that actually has to be taken into consideration so again looking at the social aspects of it one of the things though we've obviously very very aware of in karma games is building up as much social

aspects as we possibly can and this can be through basically in-game messenger this can be through sending emojis this can be again just through chat you can set up your own private table for just your friends so again you're talking about the multiplayer aspect you know that's that sort of covers that area as well I think one of the big motivations I think for social casino players is is the competition is competing you know we put a lot of tournaments into our games we were the first social casino company to release multi-table tournaments and again they're hugely hugely hugely popular and it is I think maybe bragging rights as well you know you can you can go out there you say I have absolutely kicked her ass this week so again very very similar to what we're saying about the multiplayer aspect of it yeah so good that kind of segues into the next question anyway which was was really about multiplayer like when we started in the business there buddy wants do multiplayer kind of mobile games but the network the tech was not up to it wasn't a favorite for synchronous multiple

anyway wasn't just a reality you have a synchronous but but and but you know Mobile PvP really was huge in don't go too far back we I'm calling you yeah we haven't got the insurance but mobile PvP was huge in Asia a year or two ago and and it's obviously here here with a vengeance obviously we've we've got things like fortnight and pub G in one end and then you've got more casual experience like how I agario under the side so you at you say you're very interested in in PvP and this how do you see how do you see the kind of market evolving is just we more and more of this is there going to be more nuanced form service of discs of PvP a sort of emerging so I believe there are a few aspects to it I think on the one hand will will probably continue to see synchronous multiplayer games to grow mobile but also more deeper sophistication I think you mentioned fortnight dimension acharya and i think

we see more experimentation with formats so so yeah more diversity in terms of what kind of synchronous multiplayer we see on mobile but definitely once you talk about synchros multiplayer and things i four night I think communities have been a big aspect of that this games need a big community I think there are some dynamics in in place where winner takes all basically so so the big synchronous multiplayer games will drawing all the players I don't think there will be many many successful games in that you need such a big it's Tobias that to work you have a view and on yeah we did synchronous multiplayer back in 2012 and made it even work on an edge so I've been pretty oh this is easy but yeah I think from a player perspective really

just expecting there to be a synchronous multiplayer is it's gonna be there yeah like yeah with with the prefer speaker talking about number of bots and and everything I think you need to be much more sophisticated yeah on like with your BOTS and because going live I don't think you can't expect to have the user base I'm sure all to have a good experience so yeah so thinking about your feeling is that there's an expectation from four players that they're just going to be a PvP mode for phone for most games and yet okay BOTS and again AI which is another kind of trend which people talking about um so going on a little bit from that I want to kind of talk touch on on kind of eSports because that's kind of the pinnacle of the PvP experience that every is very excited about you sports always it was seems to be this this this growth market but very hots exciting but I never when you see that not the new Z numbers and never seem to be quite as

impressive as as other parts of the industry which is I'm not quite sure where it feels to me a little bit that eSports has become more of a part of the influence and you a space now is that fair or do you think there's a there's it's a bit damming the entire sports community but do you guys have any views on the eSports and where that's going so I think especially as like more hardcore title Center mobile it's primarily driven by the hardware being available to give you a good experience there I think from an eSports perspective there's not only going to be like the traditional hardcore titles that are going to be interesting to watch I think there's gonna be elements of more mid core titles that are also going to draw an audience sure okay fair enough um right part of me so I'm coughing it away from like I coughed in somewhat I did that completely wrong I sort of look to eight than confidence to Mike I'm not very well actually I mean I've been quite sick I went holiday teach me a

lesson wearing it so let's talk about something the other side of the coin a little bit talks about going ups eSports and and people thought nicety ups is what about kind of messenger games obviously that seems the pinnacle of social gaming you know you can't get more than being in a social messenger program sharing game playing with it obviously you know back in the day Zynga kind of birthed a lot of these titles together Facebook games and and you know at one point of things Inca was wasn't the majority of Facebook's revenues for quite well for quite a while and then obviously mobile came along and changed things a little bit how do you see there do you see that the new messenger platform was being the next kind of wave of social games you think that's something that's gonna you know again becomes I mean very excited about but how do you say it yeah I think I mean we've we've put a number of games out on a messenger spear on Viper on tango I think I think tango had like a million downloads I think so but done it's doing well but I think then we're looking at Facebook and when we were the first

social poker game html5 poker game to go onto their instant platform I wasn't going platform and I was vk.com as well so it's something that we're very very interested in actually looking at and it's something with it I think there's definite be more more growth as you're going through because obviously the end goal is to bring people over from these significantly huge channels I'm going them on to the mobile device as well I think I think the most important thing is making sure they're any games that you put out on those particular platforms are not dumbed down versions of of games that you have already saved on different on different platforms so make sure they're built from the ground up that they're actually giving giving the players what they want on that particular platform and it's not just a poor a poor cousin if you see what I mean so you grew that all right you have any any take on what what it is they should be designed with what what elements should be in there well I'm not like too into the whole messaging game it's fair but from from

what I see it's it's really about like how do you monetize well on that platform right to my knowledge now it's primarily a discovery or distribution channel right where you you you reached your audience through messaging games and then somewhere else yeah and then you move them to your native app I think Facebook pretty keen that that's not good in the end game and that the the would be monetization methods they're already and people are making some money already is it something that Flair are kind of looking at or doing to be honest is not anything we are doing at the moment but we are watching the space and personally I find it quite interesting as well you mention synchros multiplayer being baked in China first and then coming to the west I think a in terms of messengers games is again we are playing catch-up with Asia I mean obviously cacao online where I mean the users are thoroughly using those apps I think the opportunities there I am not sure how fast this is

going to grow okay fair enough all right so cautious on that so as this is the last kind of talk of the track we've got plenty of time we're gonna cast net a little wider and sort of look at your general trends shaping the mobile games industry now and kind of next twelve months so so you know we've talks about sort of hyper casual if we talks about half of casual we haven't sorry that was us my brain is I'm really struggling can we do that now I was just saying I was gonna say we have another talking about hyper casual in in the train for this afternoon and it things like you know it with ketchup video mini clip that kind of beforehand and continually there's been a lot of attention and this seems to be what was cited in a couple of talks today when I ask people their hottest transit said hyper casual is the thing do you think that's set to continue we think is a fad that all these super quick games or golf ball pass on people who do have kind of suggested they might be moving to a more mid core strategy even which which seems interesting considered they've made

their their fortune on on these hyper casual games so do you have a view on hyper casual I play a lot of them point em pretty much anything a lot of the games from bottle Haleh or the latest I am playing is from gun games some farm game I can't remember the name I mean it's it has grown a lot in the past year together with hardcore games I think it's interesting how the market seems to have had the most growth extremes yeah that said I do mention buddhu going more into meat correct in their surrender where a hyper castle games are actually getting more complex yeah a considering the status quo and also not as compressor as milk or hardcore but complex compared to what they were

before so you think that the hyper casual is gonna naturally kind of evolve in the same way I guess casual games did before us interesting okay i hard core it we get but it will definitely add up some more complex mechanics from the mid core space I think is and do you think it's the still space because obviously we've got developers and publishers looking opportunities there is is it is it is it to light and hyper casual now I mean there's some pretty big players of growing up pretty quickly was it still early on do you think I think it's still early on yeah I know people that are just starting in that the space and seeing some success as well so yeah cool views on this yeah I'm a big player here as well what are you playing wait what you playing on that like 2048 game by voodoo I with cards I don't actually it doesn't really have a good title and then love balls by line Studios the publishing arm of 11 so like I definitely think there's

room to grow further I've noticed that a lot of the game mechanics that are introduced in the hyper casual space is is traditional like the games have been there the gameplay have been there before but someone has been able to remove further friction and just kind of minimalize the experience yeah it's like one game mechanic and they've also been able to put different marketing behind it yeah so especially like I don't know if they love balls game actually full since you're like hyper casual or if it's casual but like that game play have been around for several years now like with with the ability to really put marketing money behind it and simplifying it further it's been become much more massive than yeah the other games before cool cool you have any views on hyper

casual yeah I mean obviously looking looking at them as much as I know of them you know see they are very very addictive tunnel style games I think the only thing that I would be concerned about is that obviously you'd be going through and once you've completed it you know why would you go back so I think looking at things like shoot tournaments and leaderboards and things along those lines I think what be quiet yeah I think because they do tend to churn I mean that the principle seems to be there's just keep throwing a lot of the wall then once turn right turn churn through it which is interesting it's an interesting viewpoint which is very different to what everybody else has been trying to do it's just to get a game that becomes a hobby because I think there's this whole thing in gaming where we've moved from browsing or grazing rather just trying lots of things to to hobbies Oh finger is that you want to interject on that is that the comment so like one thing if you look at the Buddhist success and the games that they've been launching like

they they have this mantra around like the ability to to understand the game play by just like watching someone else play like it has to be that clear and I think like it's it's a natural cause of action for these games to start thinking about like how can we add complexity to make sure that people stick around longer I think there's going to be much more around like if you want simplicity you can just like believe it at us simple but there's going to be more the backside of things where you can like get deeper into the game if they want to okay cool cool you know yeah I just check the name of the game it was Mertz farm bike run game so it's farm yeah I think it's a good example of what we are talking about if you go back and look at something like Mertz town it was super simple but you play something like Mertz farm and they already have a lot more mechanics in there there's already a lot more complexity all right I think

so pipe casual Tomsk it's a good trend it's things still get involved in but well we think we'll see a move to more more sophisticated so is less casual as an ex so completely changing topic you it blockchain we've got afternoon 2:00 o'clock we've got a blockchain gaiba connects which is a new thing we kind of started this year in back in March actually kicking off there there's a lot of hype around blockchain and crypto generally and some of its good and some of its not so good what do you think about blockchain and gaze what's your kind of take is anything you guys are looking at or experiment with I know a lot of serious games companies are you know either publicly or behind the scenes playing around with it so to be honest the thing will probably end up using blocking in finance first before who use it in the game okay I own a few little kitties so I feel like I've been playing blockchain games and I'm not sure I don't think it's possible mobile

yet to have that kind of game but I'm not an expert though but what I find interesting beyond the technology is something about innovation in design in blocking you look at crypto kitties especially in terms of a digital scarcity basically their breeding system is fantastic is so granular tears there's so much granularity in the rarity of those kitties for instance yeah and we use that we've got economic games have economies with an already with quite sophisticated economies so to have I don't think it's far too far to have you know a fixed item that's that the difference now maybe the issue with things like loot boxes Skinner box whatever you call them is that so games yeah he said that people feel they're getting mind a little bit and we're at least if you've got one sword that's yours you kind of keep hold it and you've used on blockchain no okay about you yeah a

few okay so we've we finally entered into the crypt own blockchain technologies recently actually we announced the Karma Games token which is a utility token which uses aetherium it's not an ICO or anything along those lines it's actually truth be told it's a marketing and promotional tool what we are doing is we're giving players the opportunity to buy chips the opportunity to apply tokens which can then be obviously exchanged for chips the longer they hold their tokens for the they'll get daily bonuses in exchange for holding them and I think we've worked it out that if they keep them for the full six months they get manas I think it's at 11 times the the equipment of what they put in at the beginning yeah I'm used to essentially real bored our current players and to bring a whole new set of new players in as well so at the

moment we're at close presale and that's looking interesting and then we're about to move into offices the pre-sale and then open sell after that okay cool look out for that skip away for blockchain something completely different again so AR AR and I guess a on location base we want to talk about initially because Pokemon go was a massive success then people said all no that's gonna get bored of that when it Sue's witness comes around at the over quite the opposite is continued to grow and and and to incredibly well recently next games launched a aar location-based so obviously pretty well for them as a few others either in the works are coming out do you think there's be more of these more location-based AR games and you views on AR I seems like quite social experience I'm pretty excited about the Harry Potter game yeah fine antic I think they like the fact that Pokemon

like has been out for a couple years and it took the industry a few years before they were following suit really shows that there is complexity to it but you also need a very familiar IP to go with it to reach the mass audience like I don't think the next games have like have reached the full potential yet of of where they can go yeah but yeah I think I know there's more coming but I I think it's too soon to know exactly what the place is gonna look like okay going forward come about for a fly perspective is anything you can't looked at considered so not a lot yet but we are definitely starting to see more developers pitching this kind of game to us so I would expect it to grow as well I'm especially yeah that was pokemon gold but now we can have some validation

after next game's release they walk in there and we have Jurassic world so what about Chuck go Chuck Norris go is that on the cards Never Say Never first is the next for Chuck Norris is coming character the round has kicking it in in Street near you okay do you have any you want to play on fighting on I just know it's like poker tables so one of its office she's nice she's one of the changes to the games industry is is the growth kind of female players and how how that's has always been in casuals ORS been a large female audience but I think we're seeing more and more as games get Lynch gets bigger and bigger we're seeing more and more kind of female players we're seeing more different types of games how did you how do you feel that the industry is changing or could change or what opportunities are created by a larger number of female players I won't say

gamers cuz I don't think they'd see themselves as gamers I don't look just at you that seems harsh well there's there's still the like the stereotypical gamer that I know a lot of women don't really familiarize themselves with so when I when I talked to two fellow women I still contact yeah it's still come to ask them like Oh which games do you play because they will be like oh I don't play games I have to ask specifically which games do you have installed on your phone and then be like oh yeah I have this and this and this but they don't like think of themselves as a gamer and I think that's that's still the the like the the truth for for the majority of that growth and it's been especially interesting to to follow the like the

old story based games and I think that developers working in that space are noticing that the games are being consumed differently than a lot of the like typically male games based games so there's different different things to figure out when it comes to scaling the audience as well I mean specifically first the story based type games any episodes and that sort of yeah guess again being a sort of big trend as there's been a lot of these kind of games and and and also you know dating games there's a kind of the love island game was interesting that that kind of did incredibly well yeah I think there's gonna be we're gonna see more like user-generated contents from those platforms and also multiplayer aspects because right now it's it's very much a single-player experience so you think that's the space for opportunity really because obviously there's a big audience

they don't even consider themselves gamers are consuming quite avidly and would probably want more of the same yeah it's very like non-social yeah all right now yeah fair enough nice that's true we could be steppin wait for social apps that's that's okay there's a there's a it's mentioned earlier how I'm but I'll be cursed to hear what you guys say yes sorry sorry so gone flare flare kind of thinking about games targeted at a female audience particularly not as a focus but is there or do you just think make games in who plays plays I mean we we've traditionally focus mostly on myth Cora astrati and RPG games so those are not really predominantly female audience games that's it before joining game flirting I was in poker for seven years and up basically most of the games the majority

of the audience was female yeah I PopCap made some incredible games as well um but they definitely see what you're saying in fact I believe the last numbers they saw is in the u.s. they the female players are now the majority of the gaming audience yeah um so yeah there's a huge audience there um that's opening up opportunities for new kind of games like these narrative based games okay sure how about your players you have a large female audience and well actually I mean that's the that's the thing when you're looking at of see social casino games and poker etc you know our demographics bit was around about 8020 I was he leaning towards men and we identified that as obviously as an issue within the company in that you know there is a untapped audience that we haven't actually gone after yet and so after research we found that obviously slots was a really good opportunity to actually approach the female market and so I think we've now got like four slots games with a lot of

other ones being released over the next or six or 12 months and we're seeing a great a good success I think with that and obviously a are very slow but very steady shift bringing obviously now down to I think we're aiming for like 6040 I think so yeah it's looking pretty good okay all right giving back we mentioned I think I mentioned up Levine's publishing armor though there seems to be a lot more developers or ad networks becoming kind of publishers that moment which is an interesting interesting I'm assuming with it you know some of them it's because it's as you're getting getting close to the ad impressions for you a it make make sense is that is that a desirable things it's quite hard for developers right now especially small developers to get traction so is the growth of a new wave of publishers something that's going to continue is good for the industry or is it kind of a short-term thing as people are trying to get into a sort of you a bandwagon him exactly actually did this exact transition we are started as a pelipper

and about five years ago with people to to publishing and it's not easy there's a lot to build up basically you cannot do it overnight it takes time to find the people it takes time to build all the capabilities you need as a publisher and I think at the moment as well we are prolly I don't know if I in my in the market to GS for now from now I don't think that's going to be shown for medium small size publishers basically there's a lot of consolidation happening there are going to be mergers there is going to be acquisitions and so I don't know personally I would say tough scene to get into okay fair enough I know it's okay to have to I don't think I have any really things to add to that right that's right a related issue

which is kind of trend is all make computers is alternative forms of distribution like epic have kind of come out and sort of decided to cut cut giggle apply out of the equation for distributing kind of for tonight which is interesting and do you think this is the start of a new trend of people finding other ways around the App Store's a lot of people challenging now this 30% whether that's quite a lot to take now for it for what's actually been being done with these marketplaces do you think no one's gonna speak out against the marketplaces I take that but you think there's there could be more changes in the mobile distribution space or it's like the the whole apps app store space is maturing right it's been like 10 years now and I think it's prone for innovation in itself and like up it going as drastically as going around the Google Play stores is definitely a sign that something should happen and like

they had their own issues doing that but like it's definitely the the path to you to making change and we're probably going to see the stores responding with something as they're being pressured from from alternatives right definitely okay no no further nobody wants anything else about Google or Apple fair enough it's on film it's alright on over here okay so we're going to ask last five minutes does anybody have a question for the panel about any particular trend I think you've heard earlier they want to talk about more if we just wants lunch I can see that so so to kind of bring us towards the tenth one good days I'm going to ask you what you know one or two trends either social or Jeremy in the game you think of the most the most impactful the next 12 months and it could be something we have not discussed you'd be some income so we have discussed let's go first nobody can't Sam you look you're lookink and off you go what would you would you

say what's going to shape if you were starting a company now and going right I'm gonna get on something what would be the the area all the space you'd kind of trying to latch on to I think you still is going back to obviously you know the the PvP and obviously the whole social expose event I think you know you when you're looking at any types of games now I think they must have a such a strong social element to them you know they must have player interaction you know you've got I said we've our portfolio allows anything from sort of solo play right up to obviously playing against other players never got your slots games and things like that as well but I think you know whenever we do you know tournaments and stuff like that you know it's it's busy a lot so my sort player interaction and I think that's that's what's just going to continue to drive this industry I think you know the days are someone sitting alone in their bedroom okay thank Hames is gone now you know I know I mean I've got a I've got a 12 year old son and every every sort of Sunday morning he's up playing for tonight with his mates and half the time

they're not actually playing they're just chatting away quite happily and I think it's just it's just the new way I think that the next generation around she's starting to interact with each other so yeah I think the more social limits the better so social fair enough with a social panel that makes sense yeah definitely I also see that like lately there's been a shift from like the communication like the social communication happening on the social media to happening in private messaging channels like you can debate whether discord and reddit are private messaging or if it's social media I think it falls somewhere in between but but but all these platforms where your your ability to being matched and communicated with like-minded people where your content is is relevant for them is going to be key and especially from from our our

approach mega cool like abilities to to play with friends and and having that simplified like sharing content like allowing players or friends to opt in to your experience it's gonna be key I think a lot of the trends that you're seeing from PC are gonna transition over to mobile as well yeah Big Finish I think related to the growth of synchros multiplayer is I'm going to talk a bit about monetization how I'm breaking the whole thing no but I think that cosmetics vanity items that never hurt work particularly well in the West now they are starting to make more sense and we are seeing for tonight how they monetize that basically synchros multiplayer allows people to see the stuff that you

are wearing customizing your character with so either see closer and also a few years ago we saw how gadget took basically free-to-play monetization by storm and I think now is fading out and we see these battle passes and basically anything subscription or subscription like like a battle pass an annuity mostly card whatever it is I see grows there partly also because of the App Store is too we are talking about no because they offer a better deal for subscribers after idea okay subscribe is very interesting okay cool I think I think that's it really we're through pretty much two to one o'clock so um come over and report please for our panelists thank you for hanging around [Applause] [Music]