The Sky Roller Story: How we Created More Value by not Looking for Top Ranking Charts PGCD #2

so at this point I'd like to invite Olivia from homer games up to stage to say hi Anna Hey hi how are you yeah very good thank you and you I'm good thanks it's really great to have you here opening up our incredible Indies track in the afternoon stun kicking off the final portion of our our talk so yes really later to have you weary based at the moment is fantastic so yeah so it's about that close to the same time how's the weather over there good actually we're pretty used to it but there I know it's a bit ready for the weekend I'm pretty sure it's gonna be good there we do it yeah yeah fingers crossed here it's a bit murky here as well but yeah fingers crossed everything's okay but yeah we're really looking forward to your talk and

yet like I said to everyone drop your questions into the Q&A because afterwards I'll be coming back and we'll go through some questions but for now I'll wait here while you get the screen sharing and then we'll there lead you to if you of course only if you're ready sure thank you so much for the introduction yeah actually I I definitely like copy that have any question or anything you wanna raise after the the quick presentation and we do but sky water yeah do not hesitate to write this down the shot and I try to make it quick so then we can take the time to exchange and maybe a focus on some topics that you guys believe mix make sense for where where maybe we'll have debates so no problem about it so I'll share my screen now yeah it's just perfect there we go so I will shoot up at this point and leave you to it and I'll join you back for the question and answer at the end cool thank you so much thank you okay so again everyone so today we're gonna we're gonna talk part of this

pitch that number two about one game is that that is very important for us omma games it's called the sky horror and we actually learned so many things along the way of this project that we we believed that you would make sense to share little bit our learnings and and potentially some of the secret sauce of this process and and and and this is why I'm here today so to kick start the presentation I will go to the next slide if I can yep perfect quick presentation of myself my name is Olivia I'm French i'm one of the co-founder of elegance and and basically to give a quick explanation of who we are so we're a company which is based in in paris and tools so we have now two office we are actually expanding this year we've been already having a new territory a new a new jointer the last

six months one of the big things of the company is that it's the diversity of the nationalities as you can see with the 50 employees we have 15 different nationalities and this is something that comes a lot for us and all the world as a company and what we're doing so basically we started the company two years ago now we're focusing on building mobile games basically and profit and publishing them worldwide we before now published just 17 games and that's all of them capitalized more than 200 million downloads and and we're super excited actually to have been elected one of the top ten I took every shirt this year by our friends from happen I just to quick intro about the company and and a little bit into details of what we do so as you've seen in the last slides we are doing internal developments with the internal team based in Toulouse in Paris but will do also doing since they won in the company

publishing so it's tonal development with we studio that we really count on and that we believe that the the product and the service that you're providing will add them to to grow their user base on their games and we're super happy to this place one of the names here where we've been working with since since a while some of them are French some of them are Australia and Indians work basically working with any type of nationalities and in size of studio I have to be honest most of them are our small structures or from one to let's say 15 people and and this is why we the kind of collaboration that we enjoy most because we keep having like let's say like a human relationship and we keep growing all together along the projects that were publishing today we're going to talk about one mainly which is called the Topshop games studio that is based in Australia and in that

there is actually the the the owner of the games care order and the one that we'll be working with for the publication of scale on the right side of the slide I just wanted to give like a quick explanation of the process for us anytime we're testing a new piece of content whether it's a video whether it's image whether it's a game from from basically the test to the launch I just wanted to give a quick set up about it so basically the first stage first is the soft test where this basically we're doing a bunch of tests including CTR for example or what we call internally F and V so fast market validation we were trying to assess a pieces of content which which sometimes is a game but also sometimes can be also just a video or an image and try to understand how this piece of content is attractive well of course tracking this done with all different product data such as yes CTR

conversion rate or the the quality of the view so many different things that will give us a sense of the quality but also the the marketability of this content whenever we see something that is positive or interesting through the data again we're going into the test phase where we're going to test a piece of content which is published on on the store and doing a CPI company and try to understand okay what is the CPI what is the retention day one one is the session length what is the gender speed etc etc and here we will have a better assessment of the content and we'll be able to see if there is way at some point we can promote further this game increase the user base and and through our technologies also increase the marketability and the profitability of the game overall if it's the case then we will move to the pre publishing phase preparation phase is pretty clear our company were having excitements definitely because it means that the

number of her the matrix of this game is looking good and this is why we put all our effort and bring what we call the squad the squad is a team of four people with diverse background including a game design you a creative and an or submission manager to improve the game all together along the way and to make sure that we can launch the game and make it profitable for the company and also for the partner that we're that we're working with and then the launch so now as you've seen I told you like we've launched 17 games for now invested a little bit more than two million dollars in the ua investment and this is backed up by AV technologies that help us to allocate the right dolar the right sets to the right users to make sure we can get the worst out of women and make sure that we can optimize this describing you that were getting so that was just a quick background of what we're doing we are and we're basically want to go now I will I will just go to

the next slide and explain you a little bit go into details with sky horror and move with room we have we've work with for this for this very nice and very innovative game that we publish with Eduardo which is the the the one-man developer which is part of the Topshop game studio based in Adelaide in Australia and so a lot of creative is own studio back here in a hat for go beginning of 2018-19 sorry and basically last year we've been working together and on making some prototype and and and to give you that quick numbers sky water first prototype that we'll show you later on has been done the week which is one of the I think most impressive matrix I have to drop through today and the second one which is quite heavy as well is that after several months that we publish this game sky order back in December 2018 we have now have collected in terms of installed a little

bit more than 80 million installed globally on iOS and Android devices so just a little bit of context and now I will try to extend you the limits from day one the collaboration that we have with the studios and how we work with the studios and how it's it's basically going into like a concrete example of situation with scale order one of the most I would say today a crucial part and and the most exciting one I do believe it's the iteration process especially in an industry which is getting more and more competitive I think there is many ways today that we are trying to put all the tools and all the analyzes on the table to make sure that anytime were jumping into building a new prototype unity let's say we're putting all our chance maximum perception of chance to get it at the end and this is why we're doing were clipping this ideation and creation

process in three different steps first the concept understand the concept is also understanding the the marketability of game were also like making sure that there is a mechanic awareness that we can reuse or that is like familiar to our user base in these cases when what the way we do it usually is that we have a market analytics in the in the company that helped us to understand a little bit the trends were in which direction is going and in on which basically trends we should bet and and put all our brains on to to have the most creative ideas in this case is for Sky order we've been very impressed by different type of game plays that were quite similar back in last year which was around this swipe left and right or up and down I've taken one of example which is Jenny shift from our friends from say games where was I mean one of the biggest successes were of 2018 but also

like something really interesting in term of a cannon so we started like this then we basically wanted to cross this over with other trends but also other KPIs that we were that were positive on our side and that that that would lead us to a success in term of gameplay control and maybe like a game loop one of the chain that we started as well back in the day there was also some games which have a specific view a little bit top-down which were in terms of level structure in in a way that it was like what we could segment in level so different type of sub level that would that would lead you to a progression where you can place a little bit more of he bodied videos in terms of revenue there was something that that could make way more sense and one of the example I'm going to blow to the as well it was AB Scotch from from voodoo which was also something very interesting and

that's that also that give us a little bit of inspiration to basically cross over all the data and the information that we get when we were going into this direction the last part is the aesthetic so basically depending on the team depending on the environment you can allocate different type of aesthetic for us the way we're going to do it is the most I would say flats but also the most simple as simple as possible I just brought on the right side of the other side the the example of the first development prototype that we had from Scavo to show you a little bit where we're starting from so basically if here as you can see we we have like a very simple model of swipe left and right mechanic where you just have some rollerblades that you need basically to to pass down all the obstacles that was very simple there was the first draft that we've worked on with with Eduardo and and basically that

that's that's what lead us to having a strong basis where we could work and interact further at this point this video was actually for us flagged as a video that could bring like some attraction from the users I told you tools such as FMV inside the company give us like some intermediary matrix to basically giving us like a direction whether it's positive or it's whether it's negative at the end of the day the goal of those of these FMV and those and those and methodology inside the company which are very driven we the data it's to make sure that developers in studio were working with are spending the less amount of time of developing before they have like a sign of either it's either the idea is positive whether its negative moving into the to the next part which was so we had like something that was interesting we we basically had some

green lights from the data points but also in term of juiciness and in term of concept there was something that we I mean there was exactly matching what we had in mind so then we did a little bit of tweak with with Eduardo Eduardo worked quite insanely on the design and on in the integration of some some smaller keyword and feedback inside the gameplay and on top of it I would say the two major I would say improvements or changes that we that we made was the camera angle and and the control that was a little bit improved from the first from the first prototype so it was more mostly the feeling of the swipe left and right early on in the camera it was much much signified that before that it was a basically a top-down camera angle and that we switched a little bit to like a back semi sideview which was a little bit more in the direction of what Jenni shift had done in the past

after this actually we were just having just before this the this last prototype to be a sin to test what the methodology that we have internally just leave us to guide us to some basic question that we asked ourselves whenever we want to test a prototype or know which are is it innovative is it relatable is it satisfying is it shortens or simple and and and those questions sounds really bizarre and very simple to answer but then it's all matter but like how you decompose the satisfaction how we decompose the innovation how we deeply decompose that the fact that is short and and all the things we try to decompose them and try to make sure that we can apply to this gameplay here of sky holler and I'm not sure if you've you've played this game and I really encourage you guys to do to play it as soon as you can but I think when I'm when I'm just dropping those word I think it's

completely matching what what we've been able to produce with which types of games basically the level are short there is a basically segmented level that lets you have different experiences and make sure that you have a satisfaction having a whole level complete it's pretty simple it's just right and left swipe your screen it's also super easy to play it's kind of innovative in the way that in this market we were able to actually bring you a little bit a chance that was based on the swipe left right up and down and then just apply a different theme with a different status satisfying feedbacks if you play the game today you will you will definitely see like the feedback running the vibration maybe that thing that you're getting whenever you were jumping or whenever you were passing an obstacle so all those kind of things are for me and for us at OMA the composition of really some example that that define all those words that you can set aside

so after having a pretty good results on the test files you know it's easy for me to drop you some numbers as you know there is different platforms that give you different numbers of dev of retention right session and 6 cetera et cetera I can tell you that we had definitely and higher retention right day one then then 50% on the day seven at the beginning it was not that good but we were heading toward to have something higher than that 15% on day seven what was I think the most interesting metrics were also the the gender split it's something we were looking at more and more is making sure that the audience that were targeting is not restricted to one gender to another would make sure that every any type of people can enjoy this experience so then where is the audience and the time the audience will target at the end end users this pool of end users is the biggest as possibility so moving up to

the trip finishing phase is phased so I I told you the right at the beginning that we were jumping into more squad organization where you have different brain different people that have different experiences that jump on the table and trying to put their best their best knowledge their best practices to improve the campaign I think in these cases we can go over some crazy list and and I take the supported to to actually sinks the the mikveh squad that have been working on this on this title and basically there is a huge list that that is both based on the data that we analyzed and the trillion that we analyzed inside the game with the first quarter two users but also on the other side from our creativity but also from the market standard that we will use to make sure that we can of course increase the metrics I just mentioned before I wanted to focus on to two different aspect where I believe we've been able to work and to provide

accurate value the first one is the the game field overall and you have a different I mean there is many way you can be composed again field I put I did some example here that I think the vibration the sounds the speed the effects this speed effects are all those small things even an uptick or speed effect you can decompose it on on even further sub draw or subcategories of speed effect or optics and and I think this is where the detail is really important the way you adapt the overall user experience to all those different component of game feel and I have to tell you that the vibration versus uptick it's something very added the the limit is very thin but the usage and and the right usage of the two things to reward the users it's extremely important and I want to face size the fact that the uptick and the usage of them of the poor of the uptick as you know there is different power that you can give to the user it's

really important and the feeling of the progression with this is really important to play with wearing the meta I think it's it could be something as soon as something pretty basic however the way it's used on on schedule I find it super smart as the number of collectibles that you have in there in the shop is insane I mean the character that that that is actually in the screen let's create a screenshot on the right side of the side you can change every single single disc character and and and what I appreciate the most is that items that you're getting are actually funny actually the same I would say user experience than the game you can have some crazy rollerblades crazy type of people crazy skins so those kind of things whenever you are jumping into a building a meta or on your game I would definitely recommend to add way more or actually to have like the art direction which is

matching your user experience and the overall design of your of your game to make sure that you know it's as crazy as as the game Pleiades as the gameplay is sorry so here we will see that later but I do believe that there is a huge work that has been done we said we're going to team to make sure that we have some you know sexy fancy cool and also very funny items to correct that that need us to to have people that stay well longer inside the inside your games I'm just checking the time to see the if I'm on time with with there with the conference so then we're moving to the launch so I'll make it quick body style because it's something that is far as pretty like a military execution we have here in the company price 10 people from the you a team but also 10 people from the tech team that is backing us up on some tools that help us to promote the game in every country in the world and push that in different network with different campaign as you can see like hundreds

and thousands of sub forces to make sure that were as you know as I explained at the beginning quitting the right sense to the right on the right users okay so afterwards I will just give some quick examples of basically how we used technologies to help our creative team and now at the end of the day tell them like pushing the creativity at at at at a crazy level it's just the usage of you a console view a console it's kind of a cheap console that we work with the developer on and then let's the creative team like bring some crazy concept as you can see there is one and we've been building like hundreds on that part and it's lping as you can imagine a lot on on getting the right ads and the most passionate okay then another one which is a bit funny I just wanted to show you a type of ads that that hyper casual you

can see obviously it's something that catches the eyes that is something that is potentially that will raise the curiosity of our users and then potentially improve the interest to our games just example of creativity from our creative creative and I think almost done I just wanted to also give them a little bit of information of inside the game on how we we focus our time and energy on as long as we were good with the day one the two and the three retention rate we wanted to keep a nice experience for users not only for the first week but for weeks to come and here as you can see you see the shop right at the beginning where you had only what in video two triggers some characters and then we added some legendary characters and different type of skins basically and at the end and this is something we're still improving weeks after weeks it's basically the

fact that we can add tournaments pack trains and any type any type of things that will actually bring more content to users and then let the user stay longer inside the inside the application and I do feel that those experiences lead us to have some people and some users that were super excited to to actually build their own characters put any type of rollerblades with their characters and any type of scheme so that's that's kind of exciting and by numbers were saying that those kind of things are basically putting your huge impact on on the right auction room long long-term attention right and also the inner purchased I think it's my lifestyle and I think we're we're gonna be a regal of your time there Part III and some of the of the aspect that we are really focusing on along the way when we promote the game it's everything which is rated to the ITM so the way you promote your game and the performance of the of the promotion of your game the icons for example here has

been it's one of the key components of the success of and an acquisition strategy especially for the for the asset is of a sub art and here is the type of logo to give you like a difference in terms of performances and how we manage to jump from a plus 7% of conversion and then first fourteen by moving up from different model and every testing many types of microns okay yes and and yes I'm open to any question that you guys have as you can see on the sides we have a two kind of funny character that we have now in the game and this is exactly what our users are now looking at it's basically building your own characters and then make them stay like as long as possible inside all games thank you so much open to question guys thank you thank you yeah is a fascinating talking yeah we've got we've got a little bit of time for questions

so I've got one in the system we normally find that people start asking more once the questions start going and iíve got a question as well to us but I'll start with the one from the audience which is what was your monetization strategy for the game and how much like I mean they say how much revenue were you able to generate I mean obviously you might not be able to talk numbers but I think we're looking at how successful the game is yeah no sure into two different two different unscrew the first one running the the monetization strategy so the game of you see is it's an iPod casual game so most of the time the revenue it's more like 90 95 percent of the revenue from ads and five percent from the in-app purchases this is something the IP revenue that we're trying to increase and step by step by doing documentation I was I was actually interesting and then over yawning the if we're talking about the ads itself obviously what video and the interstitial are we're trying to have a nice balance and make sure that we had more so the users can figure every what did

you do and get more content and on the other side same thing for the in-app purchases we're trying to give more experiences to annamund trains etc etc to make them actually enjoy a longer experience and then pay with their credit card to get this so that's for the first one and then over in the revenue and obviously I won't be able to give you the number but I will give you some tips to calculate the number those kind of things usually like casual games you can roughly believe that the average cost of acquisition is that safe if we take all the countries ios and android the average would be between fifteen cents to let's say thirty cents when you are doing some scale and then the revenue per user will be let's say from thirty cents to let's say seventy or eighty cents depending on your optimization I gave you actually the number of install that we got so eighty minions installed so far so I'll let you do a little bit of math and it will give you like the right number fantastic and as predicted the questions are starting

to roll in now so the next one that came up is did one person make all of this or did a team support them in adding features skins after they proposed the concept to you yeah no it's a good point so in order have been as done like everything himself he has done of yes actually I used some of course some some assets but a doddle alone as a developer worked here on this game however after we were optimizing the game and building in putting more content we actually I asked the help of an external arts person to help us building the very nice character that you can see on this type so overall I would say one person and also some extra tasks with wizard after a designer to to be the person and the characters and their and all events okay fantastic and the question from Dan in the audience who I know well hi Dan is what was the balance between

interstitials and rewarded outs yeah so I wish I could give like a exact number but I know that's by far at this number like increase from the relevant video side right at the beginning then we were I would say in term of revenue from if you focus on you revenue from ads let's say there is five to eight percent on banner and then it was mostly like 80% on interstitial and this ratio by the work done by the squad and eduardo decreased for the interstitial and we have now like average speed between every body video and interstitial so it's now it's like I would say I'll have average fantastic and then to my question since I'm gonna sneak it in selfishly I was wondering you obviously you know talked a lot about you know testing balancing looking at prototypes all that sort of stuff and as we know and I know from the big indie pitch and everything you know hyper casual is a massive market at the moment and it's becoming more and more crowded and as such whilst it's more and more

popular it can become harder and harder to stand out so you know do you find that there's any sort of key things that you guys are looking for in terms of you know saying that this game is going to work and at the same time do you think hyper casual can sustain the amount of content that is coming in at the moment yes so to your first question so I definitely believe that there is a many opportunities many room for improvements and a mini place for innovation obviously the innovation you can see it on a different way but the way I see it it's basically that when you use a game engine such as unity there is so many new things coming up in every update of this game engine that it gives you like many opportunity to actually dig into this and actually detect innovation from the game engine and then apply it to some new mechanics or potentially new gameplay so of course there is a lot of space for for for for new games new

developers many many new things coming up the only thing is I would I would recommend is making sure that straight from the beginning whenever you you start to think about an idea that you want to execute with your game engine and you want the pepper there is a different thing that you should think of is first the innovation of I mean if we're talking about the hyper casual industry the the innovation of your audio game playing of course the market or try to understand a little bit the market and where it's heading and also the definition of the application again which is like it should be something very simple very easy to understand and and and it's it sounds basic when I when I go back to to those explanation but we see like so many people like wanting to do the extra mile and and going into some too complex mechanics and and and maybe like just few days of work give us like a sense of an idea that we can test and then we'll maybe like move further and then and work further on this game if the metrics are looking good so yeah to give you a quick answer let's go back

to basic and play with the innovation that is coming along with the dimension such as unity yeah and and the second question was more about the dough markets I think is the same same on square yeah I'm very very excited about what's happening in the market I have actually an immediate will be a bit promoting Walmart here but on the market there is mini way to to innovate oh my games as shown like recently with the game there was there was including an IP in hyper casual that basically there is many new ways in this new jar that is actually two years old three years old that there is new new things that you can add in and and and ideally an IP social it's a nerve for us it's something super new and it brings like attention it brings excitement is the same thing there is it's only three years old so there is meaning if things coming up and I'm pretty sure that we will see exciting things in in one two or three years in this in this specific

category which is either cater fantastic well thank you so much for being with us I know we've got some more questions coming in but unfortunately we've hit time we've got our next speaker ready but if you do have a chance to head into discord or anything I'm sure that people will be able to discuss these sorts of things in there oh well thank you so much and to anyone who's been asking the questions if you want to head down into the discord then yeah and there'll be a transfer to ask the questions thank you so much a really fascinating talking a great way to open our air you know the final part of our incredible Indies and industry visions and values track