Superstar Session: What's New for Mobile Game Developers at Google Play

so next up we are delighted to welcome serena she from google play good morning serena good morning how are you this morning i'm good i'm good thank you for asking fantastic and where are you joining us from i'm joining in from berlin oh one berlin i've only been once but it's a heck of a place uh absolutely astonishing city so thank you for joining us and this morning we're going to be looking at what's new in mobile game for mobile game developers at google play is that correct that is correct so i'm going to be giving a quick recap of what we've already shared at i o and also for our recent events wonderful stuff well in your own time take it away and i'll be back to join you at the end perfect thank you so again hi everyone i'm serena she a strategic partner manager on the google play partnerships team i work with game

developers and publishers to help them grow their businesses on the google play platform so over the years we've strived to maintain android's flexibility and compatibility and at google play we've aspired to become the best destination to find apps games and digital content that bring these android devices to life with this in mind android and play have been able to create untold opportunities for millions of developers who have built driving businesses and innovative on the mobile platform thanks to the work of you and other developers google play has become a more valuable resource for people around the world last year we saw android and play reach new heights amidst a pandemic and people playing more games safely at home today we can share that android has reached 3 billion monthly active devices and play has grown to 2.5 billion monthly active users in fact last year google play drove 140 billion installations worldwide providing 300 local forms of payments 180 career carrier building options and

our gift cards now are sold in 1 million unique retail locations worldwide it is worth calling out that there is a collection of countries with remarkable growth namely brazil russia india indonesia and mexico and in these regions we've seen impressive growth with some unique behaviors for example they are over indexing on regional sports games first person shooters and mobas and while under indexing on match 3 and build and battle style games now with a host of new android devices these behaviors are driving up games spent over a year in these regions some 70 higher than the global average so these countries matter more than ever to our game developers if you have something that is similar to what i've already mentioned at your game type definitely take look to tailoring your content to these regions like through your store listing live off events or developing regional prices and strategies for in-game items as a whole we're incredibly humbled by the growth and to be a platform that

helps you achieve your game's vision and pursue success with their audience so to continue this growth we've been working on more ways to help businesses on the platform to start we actually just wrapped up this year's indie games festival one of the two long-standing programs helping indie game developers grow on google play the festival provides promotional opportunities for top quality indie titles and we're excited to have expanded the program in europe japan and south korea another is the indie game accelerator which we've also just kicked off this year providing mentorship and education to help early-stage startups set up for successful launches and growth and this year we expanded the program to more than 70 countries so to learn more about both of these programs and other resources specifically for indie game developers please visit the link that is shown here on the screen now in addition to indie game developer initiatives helping developers to build sustainable businesses is also a very core part of google play's mission we do

that by providing powerful growth tools on the google play console access to exclusive insights and engagement programs and also a robust commerce platform to name a few we're always looking for new ways to help our developers to give them an extra boost so for example this year we announced an important change to help you scale your business starting july july 1st so we've reduced the service fee google play receives when you sell digital goods or services to 15 for the first 1 million of revenue that you earn each year this reduced fee is now available to every play developer regardless of the size from startups to partners who are already on a self-sustaining path we know that some developers operate multiple accounts for their portfolio so please note that this discount will be applied to a developer's total earnings for the year across of all of the accounts that you use to publish your hours so if you haven't already had a chance to visit the page in this tab in your

play console definitely take a look at this you can now start entering these details on play console and you'll see the 15 fee applied once you've completed the enrollment so definitely check out the help center for more details about the enrollment process and also the enrollment details now let's take a look at some other new features that are now available to help drive more installs and grow your engagement and revenue to start every successful business is built on a foundation of user trust so to help you build that trust we continue to improve our policies to make sure that the ecosystem is safe for everyone now because our platform policies are constantly evolving and updating we want to keep you up to date with the latest requirements so we've definitely heard from you and our other developers that it's very important for you guys to have a central place for violation and reinforcement and to have more guidance on how to actually fix the policy issues and also to have more advanced notice about the deadlines that are coming up so we spent the last year building a new

dedicated policy and program section in the play console to help you with a more centralized place to see any policy compliance concerns and you're able to be able to see guidance on how to fix the policy issues and information on the upcoming policy changes that we're making this page will also show you if there are any enforcement against your app such as rejection removal or suspension in addition to that you'll be able to see more details and guidance regarding the the specific policy violations so for example if there is a policy issue with their store listing we'll be able to point out the specific text or image that needs to be fixed we've also recently added the ability to appeal an enforcement decision and be able to track the status directly from this page here so we also understand that not all of the policy violations are caused by your code and sometimes it can be actually caused by a third party sdk so while the sdks do play a tremendous role in our ecosystem they can add a number of challenges from performance disability

and security sdk developers do want to help but they have little visibility on how and when their sdk costs instability and they might not always have the skilled ways to inform their customers about major updates to fix major issues so what we've done is that we've added establish a direct relationship with our sdk providers to help them build better and safer sdks while also improving our guidance to sdk choices for app developers so we also took the first step last year with the eap launch of the google play sdk console we've already onboarded several large sdk providers to early access program and plan on expanding to more sdk developers out there so with the new console sdk developer can now report issues with previous versions and see useful stats and gain visibility with crash reporting at the sdk level and as an app developer play will now also be able to give you more guidance on the latest sdk updates as well as

warnings about unsupported or non-compliant versions or those with potential policy violations the goal here is to improve sdks over time and therefore apps that use them to learn more definitely check out our our talk on youtube we have a android developer page on youtube that and go ahead and search for new tools to help build safer apps on google play other than that we're continuing to invest in place core developer value proposition helping you distribute your apps and games to millions of users which is why we've developed the android app bundle by delivering smaller apps and streamlining the release process app bundles have been a foundational step forward for google play there are now over 1 million apps in production with the android app bundle helping developers decrease their app size by an average of 15 compared to using in the universal apk it's also just a simpler and more streamlined way to release your apps the app bundles are the future of publishing with google play which is why they are

required for all new apps published on google play starting august 1st this year the android app bundle makes next generation of distribution features possible play feature delivery which now powers a third of all the play store's download requests help shrink app size by allowing them to download only the code and resource that they need to run your app it also makes play asset delivery possible which replaces expansion files and allows games to cut delivery costs and dramatically reduce user wait time games using play asset delivery can use texture compression format targeting so your users are only getting the assets available to their device with no wasted space or bandwidth in response to developer feedback that we've we've received we'll also launch an optional code transparency feature for app bundles to give users cryptographic assurance that your app's code has not been modified from its original version next we're really excited to share new development to what you can do with data on the google play console

so successful apps don't necessarily have the most installs but they do have active and engaged users so engagement metrics help tell the story of what happens when the user install your app and before they churn knowing these trends can help you find patterns to prioritize future development and make strategic business decisions so we've put together a great new set of tools to help you give more context to the data you see we've taken the best of our ecosystem data and contextualized the engagement performance against your key markets so these are the new engagement metrics that are now available on play console against your benchmark comparisons you can find this in the stats page under compare to peers which is our new area for metrics that are designed specifically to help you understand how your app is performing relative to the similar apps the new compare to peers tab also contains key monetization metrics to help you determine opportunities to increase the number of users who

purchase and also to increase the amount that they are spending with you in your game with 15 new metrics and performance data from up to 250 different peer sets across 200 countries and territories console provides up to 2 million new data points a day to help you evaluate your performance we make it easy to access use and understand all of this data via a simple interface on the compare to peers tab on the stats page so if you're now someone who is regularly toying around with the play console i would definitely recommend checking out all the new peer data that we're now providing we've also made some new updates to how we can make money on play so our investment in play commerce are focused on helping you grow your businesses in three ways by increasing your ability to access customers around the world and giving you the tools to help you optimize your goal to market approach and to support your efforts to engage and retain your customers on play

our commerce platform now helps over 2 billion people have access to more than 300 local payment methods in over 70 countries and helps international cars in over 150 countries around the world in the last year alone we added 34 new local forms of payment across 30 markets and lowered the minimum price developers can set for paid apps in our purchases and subscriptions an additional of 20 markets so to help you optimize the way that you sell we're also excited to launch two new capabilities for more streamlined purchasing one is our multi-quantity purchases which enable users to buy more than one item at a time from the cart and second is the multi-line subscription that allows you to sell multiple products as a part of a single subscription we're also excited to launch the prepaid plans which allows you to offer users access to content for a fixed amount of time users can easily extend their access period any time prior to or after

the plan expires to take full advantage of all these new features as well as the rest of the monetization features that play has to offer you will need to integrate with the play building library version 4.0 as a reminder at i o 2019 we announced a two-year support window for each major version of the play building library this means that building integration support for iidl and building library versions one and two will stop at the end of this year you can learn more regarding the policies and the details from the website i'm showing here to learn more about the recent changes with major commerce platform please again go to our android developer page on youtube to check for grow your engagement and monetization on google play so just over a year ago we launched the google play pass that's another way to complement your monetization strategy giving users access to hundreds of great

apps and games without ads or iaps playpass has now expanded to over 40 markets and more than 800 games and apps and developers have on average more than doubled their play revenue across participating titles in these markets you can learn more and express interest by joining by visiting the link that is right here in 2018 we also launched the google play points program to help increase engagement for your apps and games it's free for users to join and members earn points on almost everything that they buy on google play users can then exchange these points for special and exclusive content in the top games play points is now growing rapidly in 22 countries including australia germany norway and italy with plans on expanding even further so more than 60 percent of the top game companies and over 150 developers are now active in the program and soon we'll be launching developer initiative points campaigns directly available in the play console

with so many great resources available we definitely want to make sure that you know how to make the most of them so we built a comprehensive website where resources help you learn more about the policies program and tools definitely definitely be sure to poke around on the play console itself and also to visit this link just to see all the new updates that we've made so finally whether you're about to launch your new startup or grow your existing business on play the google play academy has a wealth of relevant courses to help so definitely make sure to check those out as well i hope you've seen something new here that you find exciting and as a platform google play does not succeed unless our partners like you succeed so we definitely look forward to seeing more businesses scale to new heights and to have more further conversations with you and our developer community about more ways on how we can help you thank you for your time that was phenomenal thank you serena um

wow uh if anyone was expecting day three of the seminar was going to sort of dip a little you know i go into something of a a smooth kind of day that was a huge amount of valuable information um it was incredible i the questions have been going crazy over here so i'm just going to jump in and start asking questions from the audience if that's okay with you yeah sure i'm reading the questions that i go to great these are great questions yeah yeah there's some there's some fabulous ones so so first of all do you provide support for console developers who are looking to expand into mobile and do you have any advice for any studios looking to make that transition i think personally that has been something that i i have a very big passion on this actually i come from the play china team so there's a lot of developers that are making that transition to console and a lot of the the uh technical things and technical details i've actually just shared today are designed to help hype

fidelity games so be being able to streamline and being able to make sure that you're apk smaller your game sizes are smaller these are all uh new tools that definitely take a look at to see how that applies to your game and see if you can let us know like whether it's through these events or through support just to let us know what kind of issues in addition that you are looking into where you're uh seeing so though if i can just completely oversimplify um all the issues that console developer will go through when launching on android one is that they have to distribute to multiple uh devices for compatibility which is now something that you can more clearly see on our play console based on the different uh android device competitive compatibility and also another thing is to to say that you know well the game size is too small which are the two two android bundles and play asset delivery and place feature delivery that we pushed out to help this problem another is also pricing so we have now multiple

pricing available so the two new new pricing strategies that we're pushing now that should be a live stream and also for subscription and play paths and also ways to help you better transition to an iep model fantastic thank you um just jumping straight ahead so we have a question here from an indie developer asking if there are any funding programs he or she could apply for uh to get involved with google play um so definitely so we actually just wrapped up but definitely take a look at let me flip directly to that page because this is something that we are very very passionate about helping smaller developers and it will be a great opportunity i just realized how many slides i have it's definitely a very good opportunity to sign up for these in the in the event so one is that the indie game festival will provide you new way to spend if you do win so there's a very um um big process about filtering all the the

submissions that we uh receive from around the world and and then the ultimate winners will get promotional uh opportunity on the platform in addition to a a pretty busty uh fund for ua uh other than that is the indie games the celebrator so this is also something that you can actually sign up so these are we basically recruited both inside of google but more importantly i think outside of google external professionals who are there to either do one-on-one sessions with you or actually do like um classes master classes to help you so for indie developers out here definitely take a look at the opportunities that we have to offer wonderful and and one from another developer out there asking on google are there certain game types and genres that you notice are more popular i think perhaps trying to get a jump on the competition more popular i think this is we get this question a lot but i this is definitely something that we we go we learn hand in hand with our

developers because every time that we feel that we can actually conclude on a trend that is coming up a develop another developer where a handful developer will surprise us with a completely new trend that we need to catch on to so i went so far to say you know what are some popular games because there are just so many but i can kind of remark on the trend that we're seeing is that genre matching trend i think that is something that is a given that's been around an industry for a few years now but this is now becoming more of a norm that we're seeing but in addition to that i think what i've seen as the most successful thing to do for a developer is to really know your audience and know what you want to cater to right so if you want to actually cater to let's say a japanese audience definitely make sure that you have the dna of the japanese audience inside of the game right so as long as you have that set that will create more of a popularity rather than jumping onto a trend that maybe you're not so familiar with and i think that that's really valuable advice in general the mobile market and

you know the play market is so vast that there are niches out there for almost anything but people are looking for that that engagement it's it's authenticity you know so finding something that you're passionate about i think is is absolutely great advice so thank you for for that um and going in a slightly different direction we have we have another question do you have any advice for designing games for children and how can we distribute these effectively and this is particularly relevant to us in the uk where we have the new age-appropriate design code coming in which has fairly strict limitations on on how you gather data and what options you can have within a game aimed at the under 18s uh data has been a huge topic for sure i think a lot of people would probably really like to ask about that but we actually have been um trying to perfect more and more our design for families guidelines so definitely take a look at our design for families so if you actually take a look at all the guidelines with regards to the

advertisement that is able to be shown and also the type of games and type of restrictions for that i would definitely take a look and monetization strategy is also very important so whether you want to actually cap it at a premium game or i uh or a premium game these are also some things to consider so if you if you're able to kind of poke around with our store we will start to have more and more kind of designated places for families just to ease the navigation for a parent to look for the correct game but at the same time definitely look to our guidelines that will show you more specifics on on what to look out for when designing for a family i think that that's incredibly important because from what i'm taking away from from your uh your presentation this morning is it's a complete ecosystem you know it's not just here as a distribution platform go nuts you know you guys are providing the tools you're providing the infrastructure you really as you said quite early on it's all about creating that sustainability and creating that marketplace where you can

engage effectively with your players and and create that level of trust so um following on from that one of the questions uh and i know how this is going to sound but they're asking given some of the changes that we've seen in the apple app store should people be preparing for google to do anything remotely similar um i think one of the one of the things is that again like privacy is a very very very major topic for us and i think just looking back to our history right so developing user trust making sure that your app is safe and making sure that we're adhering to the the government guidelines and what is safe for all of our users abroad i think that would be kind of a a thing to go on in terms of how we're dealing with the recent changes are coming on with our governments fantastic thank you and one question for me is are you seeing many changes in the the types of monetization out there are you seeing

people is it still in-app purchases is it now more intensifies adverts or are we seeing more subscriptions you know you mentioned subscriptions and quite um sophisticated subscriptions which can allow multiple content uh deals within a single payment are people taking advantage of this are they really starting to sort of play with the new opportunities um i'm just going to go on like a personal round here but actually you this is the best for these kind of events right but i think we offer a lot of um um different ways of payment we offer a lot of different capabilities on our console but not all of our developers actually use them which is why i think if there's one single take away from here is definitely poke around on our play console to take advantage of all the things that we've actually built because a lot of times we'll hear all the the uh questions regarding can you actually do this can you do that um this will really help us and then we'll build it in but not a lot of people actually take

a look at the things that the new tools that we have but to answer your question iep is definitely very still very big but we also see a very good uh mix of hybrid monetization so advertising as well i think one of the interesting phenomena that i'm actually seeing is that in the past it was more separated so there's uh um iaps and there's also atomization and then it became more of okay casual games let's see how casual game developers can actually push to more of an iop model to make it sustainable and making hybrid monetization like that now it's more like okay a a midcore to hardcore game perhaps they're also now testing out ad monetization because now they're reaching out to the emerging markets or in another way like audience right now are just more familiar with admiration so there's less of a fighting against this this mode of payment but in addition to that battle passes is also getting very very popular subscription in addition to ips is also

getting very popular and of course there are additional my hydration methods are coming on as well that's fantastic i come from a development background and i know only too well that developers can be so kind of inward looking they're focused entirely on the game the mechanics the controls the progression uh that they fail to look at how they plug it into the ecosystem that they're they're putting the game out on and and where it's it's going to be seen and how it's going to be engaged with um there's an old acronym from the early days of the internet which was rtfm which basically means read the manual so i think that's going to be incredibly valuable advice and we're nearly out of time i think we've got time for another couple of questions so one question from our audience is about vr do you see this entering the google mobile market in the near future that's a that's a tough question and um i think this is i think

what i can probably blinkingly state is that um we we've had many strides on our hardware so being able to to make that compatible and i think one of the one of the ways that we do want to make sure that we're encompassing is cross-platform support so as what we've already shared previously with our stadia products a lot of things is prior maybe our next step would just be making sure that we're ahead of the game for how we can best make our players be able to access different games in different platforms if that means vr or not i think that would be something that we'll be considering for the near future fantastic well it's going to be a bright and clear future we have one final question which is about a support issue so one developer is is having um issues but i think it's so specific maybe that we can pick up on um on discord or on another channel just so we're not uh taking you know tech support in

in the session um serena that has been incredibly valuable a hugely uh useful insight into where google play is where it's going and how people can engage with you better so thank you very much indeed for your time this morning we really appreciate you and coming along getting involved and telling everybody out there exactly what google play is all about so we look forward to hearing from you again at some point in the near future thanks so much for hosting brian thank you everyone thank you very much indeed