Trends in Asian mobile game market

that that was amazing that's a really good texture of Korea I gave ya I've seen a lot of coming social talks but I'm not I'm not I'm not caught the clear one for a while that was really fascinating wife ound I found kind of specially fascinating I wanted to see if it's a common thing is that this whole idea of of kind of enduring games and and the kind of all being about the result and the actual gameplay not unimportant but the the victory being being the pinnacle things how can I get my characters maxstep how can I win all the trophies so you see that's clearly a very strong driver in Korea is it the Japanese kind of mark is that reflected as well not so much in Japan I think PvP is not it's more about collaborative so if you look at monster strike does have it but that they really pushed on the collaborative so I don't think there's generally less of a an aggressive or

competitive nature in Japan so I think that's the distinctive to career a thing whose Japan's Japanese use a bit more than a Vegas tended a Chinese or speaking early it's no be just few like to quickly introduce yourself because yeah so my name is Josh I work on my own with larger usually around Asia mostly with larger Western developers interested in penetrating you know markets in Asia as well as some other international markets so helping them with this strategy as laws actually executing partnerships so yeah I mean I think the competitive aspect for you know Chinese market is it definitely you know quite strong as well you know you have the expectation if you spend money that you have an advantage and that's kind of the nature of it and sort of having this infinitely sort of scalable competitive aspect is where you drive a lot of the monetization where people spend well you know there's never any cop and you get basically people who

continue to spend more and more to continue to maintain the position in the leaderboard I survived miss amazing we obviously thought I understand the basic principle that but it's interesting what you're saying about they just get the game and drop the dollars before they've even played it that's kind of like that's a game developers dream no wonder you're so happy I can't believe you didn't coach people together that's against the raising um what kind of riff from that little bit we have we had a cast session before about kind of eSports and the potential of that so I'd like to come back to anger because it was it was quite Western perspective on these sports really so I'll be interesting to get the to get a perspective from other Asian markets like it feels about eSports is uh is gonna be a big mobile eSports it feels like in the West it's gonna be a big thing I'm presuming in in in Korea and Japan and China all he is a big thing is that fair to say I think it's come it's definitely coming yeah because yeah because already eSports generally is I mean Korea was

the home of eSports and all the top players who are from Korea so it's it definitely has to come here yeah I mean I think the big commercially for mobile games generally the most complex mobile games in terms of the experience and the requirement of skill are generally from Asia especially like Korea so I think inherently that aligns with kind of eSports like you know clash royale maybe deviates from that but something like van glory is more like a traditional game experience in terms of like twitch mechanics and skills so I think that's why you potentially see the dominance is interesting it's more thinking about if you're a publisher developer now if you're you're thinking about how you can come to French or eSports obviously it's a part of the appeal as a way of getting users to you know to be quietly as easier because they've completely friends and also to spend more money to scale up and become more competitive so if it can also be a great way to into the kind of Asian markets by having a eSports applicable game and maybe that's a it's a great very great boost right I

think it's a point that kind of made before the easier isn't a place it's like Europe is a pleasure exactly let be system anymore it's one less of a place anyway Europe so I think that the you know the the motivations of players are different in you know each of the three territories that we're supposedly representing I think you know to look for a one-size-fits-all solution whether it's eSports or whatever is is probably pretty hard okay the interesting thing is that if you think of especially Chinese games like traditionally they're very pay to win which is not necessary lined with like the eSports experience right which is based on skill so if you want to maximize revenue from that perspective like you actually don't want to have the skill helm and right it's more around the pay to win so it's interesting like the top eSports games to date are mostly from the West because they don't necessary have that sort of focus so those things are kind of at

odds with each other but I think the most skilled gamers potentially are from these markets right I think as a Western developer I think that's a good angle to target the Asian because like I don't think the Western people can really compete on creating more content than the Chinese can you know so what I think the user if a user-generated content form is built into the game like a clash of Clan yeah you know you're basically playing a different map all the time you know created by users or like minecraft you know so if a user generated the a spec it's built into the game I think it could it could be more snow if the chances of it being more successful in Asia gets higher is what I feel yeah all right a point age is not one poor I guess I'm addressing you will in talking about that the advantage for Western game developers and we know it's it's it's very very hard everywhere it's very competitive even in our oceans right

apparently so what is it what what else can the car Western do upper kind of played tours of it what is it that appeals in like Japan you talks about the dick jokes very popular but maybe I misunderstood don't project interesting I think I mean City for us I mean something our size and speaking to the kind of indie guys that we speak to it you know I think going in to try and create another puzzle and Dragons or monster strike is just foolhardy you know it's just you don't don't go do that I think it is you know what's your differentiating thing and you there's already a natural differentiating thing you're from a different culture and as long as you can bring that and make it accessible which I think was the point about the the cutie Palace dating game game itself was was pretty different but we just it was just inaccessible from an art point of view as long as you can remove those barriers to accessibility I think then yes use your differentiating factors because it is you know Asian developers

Chinese question no it's just they're making different things yeah they're just their focus on different things and I think that that's why you know the Western developers shouldn't try to copy that they should try and find and be true to what's different to them yeah so you should you might make it the game that you want to make that reflects your culture and then being different is what's gonna be your power basically not trying I think so you feel for us certainly for us I think so you can't say don't design don't design for yeah I think your mistake people make is that these you're going like I'm gonna make a global game and they try to make a game that will appeal to the west and Asia and they end up making a game that it feels poorly to both yeah I mean if you look at the exceptions the rule the clash of clans clash royale these experiences like you know I mean maybe the guy made is like oh I meant to do this but I think the reality is they made something like that was compelling that like if you shown it to a company in Korea or China or Korea or China they probably say this will never work because these are the things that work

this will never work so I think the reality is you I would you know focus on creating what you want to create and if it does resonate globally like awesome but I think you need to focus on the West first have success there and then potentially look at like going to Asia because I think if you try to do that sort of like but I think the reality is to like you know what you guys are doing with publishing in Japan is I think there's this trend to you know that the local companies in the market all nobility in the games at work like RPG you Miss Korea and so I think there's opportunity to do something different because I think there's been some things that I've worked in the market from the West and they're never gonna be the top 10 or top 20 grossing but doing something interesting and different you know a lot of the companies in market are very sort of focused on the same thing I also want to point out like that everybody wants to do do that overnight I think yeah maybe because you've seen so many companies doing that overnight but like I lived in the US for now ten

years and it's not overnight thing and I think it takes time you know like and I think it's it's it's a cultural product that you're selling it's just like food you know like and you you you can't go to Japan and then try to make it better sushi or them you know like so you have to you have to make burgers and then you know sell craft burgers or you have to make IPAs and then sell it into into Japan I don't think you know trying to do what the Japanese are doing is the best way to approach the market that said however it feels to me having been in this industry few years it doesn't show up sleep very young but but it feels to me that the career especially was in Japan in it so as now China or ahead of the game it feels like the Asian markets are further develops a lot of ways than the West's Marcus it leads in sophistication of monetization and the live events all right

it feels to me there's a lot more industry behind but the trends see people be forming their the merit maybe is that fair to say on my my giving you too much credit I mean the the single most successful developer is finish think that that's fine and I think a lot of the Asian the developers publishers are having trouble coming back this way it's I don't know you know it's it's strange if you go back to console area you know Japanese games where there's Mario Zelda Final Fantasy you know they had no problem getting over to the west and they were some of the best games around now the cultural barriers seem a lot stronger for some reason and so you don't see even you know even whether it is possible and dredges I think they recently said they they do hit a milestone but it's taken them a while for that to really get any traction in the US yeah no further yeah and I think that relates again creating a global game is very difficult like so you know these

games make so much money in these markets that they're actually like the top games globally but it's only from Japan or something so I mean I think in terms of maturity like I think in the depth and complexity like just generically like yes I think the games especially in Korean Japan well especially Korea like much more advanced in terms of like the systems and complexity even like casual games but I think it depends just wait how you're looking at that question when we were starting you that the conceptual stuff like Kingston's skipping stone and stuff that was all seemed to be already further ahead and then Japan with the feature phones that were further ahead of the military like Korean DNA were making so much money when everybody else was going how the hell do we make money it just feels like but maybe yeah maybe it's it's it's happening the way around so I'm asking question kind of saw related to that but um so I was talking to some friend from confiar games recently they basically launched themselves in the Chinese app store that hadn't used a partner agency yet I mean maybe they will but they were amazed by

the fact that they were like only they were just inside just outside the top hundred but the level of downloads they had was just phenomenal it's just so it they would have put them in the top five or ten in the US I was kind of going to ask a little bit about what what success looks like what can you you know you expect a little bit if you're gonna be in the top 10 or top 20 like you know roughly what you're looking at in terms of downloads or revenue that's quite hard question is not very it's gonna be different I don't know the amount of downloads in China that they got for and they were say up hundred would have been would have put them top ten the US and so in the top five in you care of Europe just like that for us China's our biggest market yeah so you know and we whether you mean to be or not sorry yeah exactly and in the end your game in all honesty I think we you know in Japan we're very strong on especially the PR side and we you know because we're I

guess DNA wise we're Japanese company yeah whereas China we do what we what we need to do in terms of obviously localization and and speaking to the Revlon Apple Apple and Google guys but but we can't this just we haven't done as much but it is by far our biggest market and I think it is just the sheer volume off of it and it's it's yeah it's it's it's strange it's not strange image 1/2 billion people know it's strange but but you say you're talking you're talking about how you shouldn't be expecting to be challenged puzzle and Dragons if you if you happy the top hundred top 50 there's a business there offered its that that is often argued against when people talk about become a Western store if you're not the top 50 then what especially I mean cuz again these are this is one country so I think if you're a Western developer you're in the West making money like if you're gonna be in a top you know 100 200 Japan like that incremental revenue is gonna be pretty substantial I think in terms of downloads is probably much lower because again like Korea Japan are much smaller markets but like the revenue per

download is gonna be like insane like just aggregated and I think I don't know if it's true but I something is like the revenue is even more skewed towards the top games in these markets so like in Korea I think you can make a million dollars a day if you're a top game and you know even if you look at net Marvel which doesn't have a lot of global presence their revenue last year was a billion dollar more than a billion dollars Joe yeah because they dominate the Korean charts you know and so yes I think yeah and you know China is also a very big market for us and I think it really depends on like how what your strategy is like if you if you're like really aiming for the top you might need to work with a partner but if you're just happy with a top hundred game I think you might end up getting a bigger portion because you're getting all of it rather than splitting with your partner yeah I mean you'll speak if you're speaking to the EA or Microsoft

and you talking to them about a in a use your strategy you're really gonna they're not gonna be happy unless they're in there yeah if you're speaking about you know five ten fifteen person Indy team who's predominately making a game for the Western market and they're seeing what else they can do for Asia my my advice always that do a few things and it's incremental yeah but just you know the lazy option is just to press the button that says Japan China Korea yeah take release in English but if you spend a little bit of time a little bit of money you can actually reap some rewards from that yeah yeah okay I was gonna ask about whether it's published it is possible to publish those Microsoft in the app store you can just take the boat but is that really gonna delivery or anything I mean it is I I mean so yeah yes some greater than zero so I mean this is the thing that that you can infinitely debate but basically you know if I build a game and you know I most likely have minimal

interests from like publishers in these markets you know obviously doing that versus nothing is going to be greater opportunity so I think with the high quality localization some of the AppStore you know localizing apps or materials like look that gives you like a decent chance to very efficiently like reach these audiences in some capacity like I think the reality is like the marketing and promotion and partnerships are gonna be out of reach for like 95% of developers so you know execute on something and that's like it can that can get you you know decent amount of additional revenue and again if you think about the perspective of like if you do like a full culturalization of your game that's gonna be incredibly expensive you might never see the ROI on that and I think that's what everyone always talks about China like you you know have to do like really in-depth culturalization which is you know you do if you really wanted a chance it like massive scale but the realities are most games the cost and time not you may never recruit them that it's just

splitting the builds itself is so expensive yeah like that's why we choose speed over that because um you're also like there's a lot of opportunity cost involved well yeah you know like you don't want you you don't want to build a second team that's as big as your first team you know that you could have been working on your second game just say yeah I mean you know Chinese Android you know you have a different SDK for every different binary for every channel so and you got to update you know every time you update so then quite a lot of work yeah and also on the Apple and Google site you know they when they feature they feature global a lot of times they feature of global Lisa - yeah yeah yeah so I just get featured easy I think a really interesting petition and come to us as well I think we mentioned before about a lot of these big companies making just money in their own markets and struggling to hit hit hit the West but I think you guys have a successful Western work to me appears I

don't know you at all P&L but yeah but you have a successful kind of westerby's you've managed to manage to transport that crisis is there any particular secret to doing that it's like persistence or I think it's a persistence I saw there's a secret don't yeah definitely don't tell us is it you I'm a terrible sprinter who you know you know we're if you look at what what type of games the Koreans are better it's all like mental games you know so long like Cole you know that clear and also golf and then like archery you know so we're like all mental stuff so you just saying you've been there long enough you're putting the hours in and that's been the kind of a different train think so okay fair enough no it's interesting I'm all it reminds me a little bit topical but nobody knows quite what's gonna happen but obviously there's this there's a thing going on in China moment which might be relatively sighs well do we think that these regulations this government regulations is going to cause sizeable sort of ruptured say it yeah or is it for you guys is it not as

much of an issue as it's being made no it's it's obviously a big concern for us I think right now I mean Android is hard we published a couple of games on Android via partners you know in the local markets but everything else you know it's a very hard market to reach right now Apple is is frictionless it's as frictionless as anywhere else and I think that the worry I have is just how much friction will come in but as one of the speaker's was saying apparently we'll find out tomorrow yeah so in interesting times when you live in interesting times being a Chinese woman yeah exactly well thank you yeah I mean I think it's a lot of speculation I mean some of the things I hear could be incredibly problematic and some people are like business as usual I think with Apple at least hopefully with Apple like the workflow will be the same maybe it'll be longer sort of time timeline to getting improved but you know it could be like very problematic

if you know you have to work with a partner and that kind of thing it just minimizes sort of people's ability to to execute on the market it's very significant these days just in case Amy's not aware I mean I'm sure you have in this space but yeah apparently well the Chinese government will be requiring some sort of approval of all mobile games or all android games I don't see it all mobile games so it's something actually did exist in the PC market there's some degree already but it's new for mobile they're going to be kind of policing them so that process could a take some time and be be expensive potentially so yeah I mean cuz it's interesting if you look at like Korea market for like social casino none of the stuff you used you are in the stores so in the iOS there is no category it doesn't exist there's no social casino in Korea because every game needs to be like reviewed and have like a licensing number and then the unholy ones in Google Play that are of these local Korean products so I mean you look at that that's like kind of the extreme end of what potentially could happen I mean

that would be quite two weeks time the way we talked about that we did different number one Google Market we go everyone all their all the local companies all your companies I don't think Apple will lose more any money I am confident with just a finish on that point I guess I am confident like China is a market where Google doesn't exist and Facebook doesn't exist you're gonna have to it and yet there is an Apple App Store so you know they have obviously worked with the government to some extent just a fact there's been open the fact that it's still there yeah so I'm you know quietly confident optimistic that there will be something something there yeah WHS only on for Apple it'd be good for Apple certainly um so we've talks about it obviously has been composited by Korea and Japan and China and and did you mention South East Side to talk about did you talk about South you say your tool no okay fine we can't was going to say that so that so from what I understand like kind of Southeast Asia at the moment is one of those different reasons obviously again

it's not one country it's it's multiple countries in there but the Vietnam and Indonesia Malaysia etc fastest-growing markets in the world or some of them in the moment in terms of angle actively yeah yeah and I think I think collectively I saw a stat that if you put them together then they would be like the fourth or fifth biggest market already and they are going like pretty correct so is is that like is that more of a blue ocean is Southeast Asia or at least kind of like her has a network I think it's more blue helpful so the problem is is that we didn't just discover that right now right so yes Malaysia guys in Korea they guys from China are all set up shop there right because yeah it's a next market to dominate and like you said it's growing incredibly fast which is great but I think again it's very fragmented you have very different sort of complexities with like hardware specs like network speeds like languages like purchasing

power for his like Singapore versus Vietnam so there's a lot of complexity but the reality is you need to address the whole thing I think to make it meaningful and I've actually heard some stories of some publishers focused on Southeast Asia that if went over PC client games and went to mobile and now actually shifting back to PC because of the revenue just in that market is not as significant as they expected it to be but I think incrementally for you know gamble come to us like yeah definitely get up your operations there you have games that will work because a lot of games from Asia and the West will work there without singing interesting thing obviously is from a cultural perspective that you know there's a lot of English speaking and it's probably a mall ein you split yeah it's a more split kind of more accessible than it is perhaps to go to China or Taiwan is already such a big market that I I would put that market on their own already yeah and then when you talk about the rest of Southeast Asia for us like Thailand and Singapore are

really big because also the other problem that that exists in Southeast Asia is there's still a lot of third party the payment is it all fully resolved and you know like once like Vietnam market is a huge gaming market but still I think around 80 percent are on different alternative payments that means it's probably hard to get the money out or it's just you need local payment but I think Google's been yeah working on that really yes oh yeah cool enough I've heard few you know some of the larger companies say that like 50 percent of their revenue comes from payment that's not from Google or Apple and so this is what they do is they in the game it's like hey like click here to go to this one you know mobile web and then you basically have a login and you can top up your account with like third-party payment so it's kind of a gray area but you know I don't I think they're trying to improve it and so

they're putting more and more direct carrier billing into it you know I think it's a matter of time I think Southeast Asia is going to be a big market and especially for Asian companies like us I think we have a huge advantage because there's a lot of cultural similarities but I think for for the Western companies also like Singapore or like Australia there's they're also like very influenced by those come like Thailand too like they're I think they're much more Western friendly than Korea Chinese yeah I mean I've been out yeah I remember where I get went to Tokyo Game Show little anecdote and take a game show it's amazing but also kind of terrifying place for if you don't speak joke okay for you speak Japanese but I find it fine there was a lot there was a lot love bearing and confusion and and it was but it's not necessary very much western friendly and then there's this haven of Southeast Asian pavilion which it was all it was all English all the time it was much much easier for us us monolingual focus it's been a tough

week do we have any questions I'm gonna couple more but you have any questions out in the audience this is three very experienced guys you know who've been working in different markets forever you know all the answers to every they have the answer to everything these people change your life if not well just make it up please these out all those questions grab him before he goes well good question on the crane games with all the top ten games being very select there are 3d rendered environments and all the 3d characters the games build size must be very large so how does that you know affect the the game so like it's like you know I mean like in the Western market yeah but what the market is it is better to be maybe less than a hundred megabytes right so

for yeah yeah but why fire you say yeah yeah I think I think in Korea it doesn't really matter I think we we ask the same question to all of our offices and a lot of them say it doesn't matter but I think the Japanese market is highly against anything over 100 megabytes because there's so many people just living off of the carrier network only is what I heard yeah and so yeah so most of the Korean companies do it that way they do additional downloads over-the-air yeah I think that thin-client thing is going away more and more you know like I see so many top games like over being over a gigabyte and yeah yeah so we're talking in the Western market I think it's definitely the large problem for the Korean developers coming to the

Western market so if you look at like some game like like blade which is a top grossing game that was a one gigabyte download it was number one grossing game in Korea you know in here when you do music acquisition you're like targeting only Wi-Fi and then you have to download again in your CPI is like 30 bucks so this is actually I think a huge issue for bringing the content over you have I think the binary size as well as like the just a network latency you have these like 12 on 12 crazy Unreal Engine 4 games so I mean I don't even necessarily answer your question so I'd say like yes it is a huge issue but I think there is movement towards just larger downloads because I know for a fact like Apple hates when you have that like hey it's like 20 megabytes and then you sit for like 30 minutes and download like one gigabyte like you'll never get featured with that kind of experience so I don't know I think as network sees improve and data becomes less of an issue hopefully the less of a problem but yeah cool I don't think

answer the question yeah that's good so are you happy with that so final sum up then I guess treating back to you or your only market that you can respect percent because we have to stereotype here but sort of overfilling piece of advice what's the most important advice you offer to her to develop publisher wanting to approach sort of Japan China and Korea one tip one one and they just did ten was that hard Jesus don't do dick jokes that would be my no I think it's just you know like I don't I think everyone on the panel says don't don't try and compete with what's out there you know with the local developers local publishers because it's just too hard stay true to what you're creating yourself yeah and then just try and lower the barriers of accessibility for the user there but you know if you if

you try and morph whatever idea you've got into I want to make this game specifically the China we don't live in China you don't know much about China no don't do that fair enough yeah I mean again I think I'm a just early on but my feet I could be built the game you want to build that will be successful in the Western market and either organically it'll become successful in these markets or you'll catch the interest of somebody that can help you but otherwise do the high-quality localization and use the self-publishing channels available to capture like some revenue in the market I mean that's gonna be the strategy for 95% of games good good answer it's um I would say travel a lot you know like there's a lot of developers who've never been to Korea and then they have sold so much high ambitions for Korea at least have to go to your local Korean barbecue place and play the Korean games

first yeah there's a lot of them that are released in the West and so like you'll you'll be indirectly influenced and then you might come up with a global idea sorry I have to say one of the things you remind me so I think the other thing to realize is that these guys are all coming here right so they are truly becoming global game companies coming from Asia and you have China in Korea so you know you need to start thinking thinking globally and have a strategy but it doesn't need to be incredibly complex but I think our market becoming more much more competitive because these guys markets are you know stru Lee red oceans and even though our market is very difficult it's still much easier right cool good answer thank you very much guys pause please for the panel