Stories of indie mobile game success – What do they have in common?

[Music] [Music] hello thank you and glad to see it my talk so I'm will first tell who I am when why did I decide to speak on this so at fjl and enhance as a branch of FGL I'm working since 2012 as developer relations I'll have mobile game developers make their games better and our community is quite big is now four to five thousand members also I do my own mobile games since 2010 as Airport have already a 30 games released and 15 of them got one some of the contests of the portals and

I ran global Game Jam in Ukraine and Eastern Europe so if we speak about making games what can be truly in the games some people say that we should make the games which would play by ourselves some people respond that this phrase make the game which you would play by yourself it said only by the developer who is the only one to play the game which which is created by by the developer but so and there is now a skepticism towards indie developer success there is such a game developers joke like one developer says I released my indie game now that says how congratulations made many sales no not many just sold my car in my apartment so also sometimes when we look at the success stories of game developers they

are told to us after a significant amount of addition and also our community joke how unedited in this store success story could look like like I have made so many tries I pushed so hard but wasn't able to succeed and at last I invested my last money only three million dollars and now I'm successful yeah but really what my want to prove that the real in this success is possible for the so the people who want to stay independent before the release and after the release can also get significant number of installs and our task is to analyze what what do they have in common so how to use their tech techniques so our data source is a community of ab GL community of indie game bromo in facebook and russian-speaking game dev communities as i am active members of

these communities and and their developers from google play in the corner so we've run pull a case study of these games talk to the developers included our own development stories and here's what we got so if we take a typical forum discussion whether to release the game independently or go with a publisher obviously in the forum or in facebook such terms as corporation resources support context will appear as such as a lesson as game abandon sness agreed Chetan will be mentioned too so the developers some developers are Fortin give a go in with the publisher some are against this and if we look historically the cooperation with publishers started with very strong publishing role at when the market was fooled with discs then yeah they're all

decreased with digital distribution and then increased more whereas the market started becoming more saturated so what the publishers give it was discussed very many times both yesterday and at other conferences so here are the points but what do they also besides giving something to the developers they also take well they're a percentage of income but still having a 50% of something big is more than having 100 percent of something small and also they take Fame like most players will know that the space rocket game ketchup not the not the actual developer so we can often see this in the comments and I will review the games which were got to our came case study and we'll start with game deep down by rock bad

games so you see this game is about my mining robot it has zero spent for marketing and the developer spent three months to throw away bad on also good ideas before making this game so this very widespread practice to prototype early and to stop a stop pushin and unsuccessful project and what's the most important they built a better test as community and ask them to support with ranks on the release day that's all we want to keep in mind when working with our projects and this point will be proved several terms with our case study the players what is good in nowadays is that we can directly communicate with players we can answer their commands in better play market test and we can answer the commands in facebook we can involve them to some activities to the

measure which was never achievable before so and of course the developers made frequent a beat test and to define what's good what are bad practices in development another great example a great series or by rusty lag developer with whom I met at not a game in malmö and then established contacts and he was also from that golden in the era of 2012 when everyone was making flash then he moved to mobile so he made a whole series of the game so he wasn't pushing only one game but he made several games in the same janna to be able to cross-promote each of them with his own sources without the need to do publisher he runs a studio blog and updates regularly so also they provide the game walkthroughs which is very essential for puzzle puzzle success and to gain more visibility so and the game

was built such that it can catch the players attention instantly so it's like in there using the same techniques which were actually in for web games when the developer when the player could just switch the game off so you have to think very carefully to keep the players attention so one of the great stories of our community is on battle so this berserk studio they have very long experience from web games to mobile so they feel this experience and they started dragon players attention before the launch using such services for example as pre launch me and they use in various platforms then went to steam and also they started saving times integrating various service functions in using even the free enhance platform and this I can mention orbit games with tens

of million downloads which has very nice art which one Google Play in the festival and also the game was made within a limited amount of time but so the developer managed to find an idea which caught the players attention and he even didn't need to to spend money on the budget so the same can be said about bid bid blocks game which was also won Google Play in the Games Festival and he regularly updated the game of although he relied on store featuring just like the previous planets game what we can say about this this is true for many other games when the developers just use this rules build this community update the game expand experiment and I can I can help mention in a very fun game handless Millennium made by one

developer first can I go back yeah so the game you see when you have a hand and there is a backpack of dollars and they have to put your hand through the guillotines the developer from our russian-speaking game development community and from agile community so originally there was a game jam it was with the theme greed he didn't make the game for the gym but he made first a flash games and mobile version one mobile version two and his attitude is to make many little games is better than making one big game so this game has already now two or three million downloads in play market so and now to my personal experience because it would be yes saying about some others so now my to my games don't rely on getting featured but they both have 100k installs so not yet a million but they're growing and the same I first

announced announced to people the game with these features with art created threads on reddit which would prove to be very useful for marketing and an unreleased game answered every question even I use such techniques when I receive a message a review for example in Finnish then I go to Google Translate find at least how it is said thank you in Finnish I know it is ketose then I write ketose and then continue writing in English if I receive the message from someone in Germany as a danke Shoen then I continue at least to say to show the developer that I'm interesting to talk to them then I created a Facebook group that well with players the players started to join in my Facebook group yeah and so now the game has reached 100k installs and growing now I'm consulting with the players what do they want to see in my game and or working on

so what we can find what techniques we can use first we should understand that time is money if we are working as pure indie team in the sea you'll develop or team then we can either spend time or spend money if we don't spend money that let's learn how to spend our time and if wants the efficient way first let's reduce development time we should make a simple gameplay we should use a simple art style simple is dust meat looking bad simple means that all the elements are in a star in the same style style integrity but they this style in gender creed and beauty can be achieved by simple means by selecting a simple style then if we found something which expedites routine operations then we should use this also we should let the players spend their own time to promote our game I remember

when I was I'm still fond of civilization I'm still saying that number three is the best because where I started and I was writing forum post about civilization was writing encyclopedia articles so and now of what I found now players right we clear articles for my game explaining what is this and planing what are the techniques and this what should we forced in our community to get at least at a share button at least it is perhaps you can find a way to add user-generated content create a social network group it doesn't take much time of you so and you should use your time in a most efficient way for example when you have conferences you should establish meetings and get as many in fact as much feedback as possible you can use game conscious as deadlines when and to avoid being over fired when you're working on development switch the

task development promotion and get a feedback to see that you are on a right track so and don't do the same twice if you have a list of possible press for example then keep this for your next games and prepare your press cage of course so here is one of the services which was used many our community members its pre-launch me they submitted the game and like berserk studios did and they started building building community there and but often it happens that the developers just post a message in any forums like please support my game let's say in greenlight and play market on App Store but here is that typical response so I had a developer who informed of your games project read it regularly who who posted screenshots Saturday pictures who at least posted a detailed description of the game not your Berlin no then the answer is no so if you want

to ask someone to support your game then though someone should know of your game long before you you you ask you give this request so I will also analyze in the corner in Google Play market and found that the games featured in this in the corner they've rise significantly by the number of installs in the rate of installs so for example some of the games featured by in the corner did not do well a in monetary because of the flows shown there and yes but if you go truly individually your fail is not a fail but not yet success because if you are not without the publisher you still can have a decision either banned on a project or continue your work and there are some other games which we can discuss or further and sometimes it is useful to go with a publish and publish again get

edit value' and there are points which summarize what I say and I want to tell you my favorite joke which explains the key idea so the father program is working debugging something and the son comes father father I have a question so what why the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west really yes yes it happens every day yes it rises in the east and sets in the west no errors no every day it happens please don't touch anything so what my idea is a money developer they do afraid to experiment if something is working if you have some number of installs every day they are afraid to change in the game but frequent a be testing and changes to find how to satisfy your audience better if the key for appear in the success so we should use successful releases thank you very much cool that was quick your five

minutes so well just under five minutes to wear ask questions anyone ask any questions anyone now there so I will try to I think this this idea of making sure that people know about you before you're talking to and ask them stunts I think it's actually more well I would go even further they've got to actually care about you so you're not just gonna let them know and we had you know it's a trained marketing guy I had drummed into my head four letters AI da awareness interest desire action though I think is you you know you're absolutely right but I'd go further and say that actually and we know do you think that's the case I mean how do you create not just awareness but actually desire and a happen how would you say that you people would go about doing that is it a lot more effort upfront or so uh I think when we get the player a description of the game in development then they they

started building a bigger picture in their head yeah and they now I feel themselves like they're the co-authors of the game because the picture their head will is sometimes eventually will become the picture on the screen if it's not I mean this is a this is actually genuinely something I find fascinating I think it's also dangerous in a good way mmm because the idea that the player will have in their head is almost always bigger than our budgets could possibly deliver so I think setting expectations is part of that process this is a challenge and I think this is where dialogue yes dialogue becomes important important even for example we can run and what I do a structured dialogue as Paul's in Facebook group when they went to the players here what we can do and they select in this way so to keep the power on our side to keep this what we shall do yeah I'm speaking as somebody as well as

my unity role as many of you all know I'm making the game and it's Rachel Rocky Horror and we were a successful Kickstarter but what was interesting is about that is that the BT of testers we got out of that process with fans mmm-hmm so they they already knew Rocky yeah yes yes they already knew what to expect so they loved our game it was great because they saw their characters they already knew and they knew the songs and they knew that it was dancing so they were already knew so we're in soft launch I've got to deal with the fact that a lot of people in the wider world don't yes sure so nowadays as a purely indie release is possible but it should be started with with two involve players at the early stages and moving without saying hey check my indie game this trick doesn't work yes and I think yeah the wider lesson for me is that it's not just about finding you know the audience and get toward them earlier it's about

engaging them in a deep level and also realizing who you're talking to and if you're talking of a fan take their feedback with appropriate you know appropriate lens it's not always going to be the same thing as the people who don't care and let's face it most people out there who you don't get to engage with who find your game for the first time yeah don't already care yeah yes yes I do agree cool on that note thank you very much thank you [Music] [Music]