Trends in mobile game brands and branding

[Music] yeah what we're going to talk here we've got some some very experienced people have been working with brands at different types of different levels um uh and what we're going to S quickly sort of talk about some of the kind of key issues I guess that we didn't discuss before uh we've got some new arrivals that haven't been introduced so maybe maybe if you two lovely folk would like to introduce yourself I obviously know who you are but but maybe for everyone else you could tell say who you are and what you do my name is Devon Radford I work at Fox I handle mobile games we mostly have a licensing business but we're dabbling in other areas now as well you're dabbling dabbling I'm Macy Mills I work at hitson we're a mobile game developer and publisher and I run Business Development and strategy fantastic and obviously we have Dan if you from EA and and David from WG sales um so I guess I wanted to we've got a lot of different kind of uh

Brands represented here really kind of video games Sports uh I Know M you kind of work a little bit with CIA and maybe some celebrity stuff you're a bit more way that and obviously you have the odd TV and film license that you might be able to use I guess the question is can any triaa brand kind of any Big Brand convert to mobile is is any brand a good brand I guess you said David earlier you kind of suggested it probably probably wouldn't be necessarily does anyone to LEAP in on that I I just think uh there's um there's a lot of uniqueness to mobile and you have to understand how transferring any brand to mobile may find new audience or lose a lot of the audience that you were hoping to to leverage onto mobile yeah okay fair enough would you is is there any brands that we we can I I guess we're not going to name names here um but I mean you can see it for instance in what we're in kind of glues approach

they they've been very very incredibly successful with with with Kim Kardashian and then they've tried to repeat repeat the trick with with other other cbrd brands it hasn't kind of really hasn't really paid off in the same way they had Kerry Perry they had James Bond they've got the other Kardashian sisters now is there kind of a reason why you think that's happening not to criticize glue but is that just because they've they got lucky the first time or just because it's hard with celebrities I don't know I think it's not really fair to talk about this without Chris here well he was he was supposed to be here I know but no but I I it's more that not delling what they've done but is is there a reason why you know the same thing doesn't worth both times is it execution thing or is it more of a that they were kind of Lucky the first time I think no matter what you're doing whether you're doing games or other kinds of content um the content's got to fit the audience yeah uh and so you know maybe the gameplay patterns and the style of gameplay was was more suitable to Kim Kardashian's audience and you know perhaps Katy Perry's audience just likes to sing with her uh and and you know I think you have to think very hard

about that um when you're making any kind of content whether it's games or television shows or film um and you know there's going to be an audience for one thing and they'll want to interact with their their fans or the content in one way or or not in another that's a vague answer for you sure that's good that's a good answer I also think to some degree it's about how you activate that brand like you don't put a you can't just put a brand on something and then just sit back and see it be amazingly successful you have to activate that in a way that makes sense for the brand and for the audience and I think Kim did like a pretty amazing job as to have much she did push that game and uh I think if you don't do that then you don't get all the value necessarily I think it helps that her fans are kind of cultish too they'll do whatever she says so help it's cultish so the secret is to have people obey without without question I like that that's good yeah but you sorry you I could also see I mean if you see a Katy Perry concert she's followed by you know I don't know 60 million people on Twitter yeah something like that but if you see her concert she's got hundreds of screaming fans that are fainting so they seem cultish to me too so I don't

know I I don't know I don't think I know the answer but I you know yeah I'm not it's not criticism GL to it's just more of an interesting you know clearly that seems seem to be the way forward and suddenly it doesn't seem as obviously Way Forward now as it did um taken away from kind of celebrity Brands and about uh kind of game IP um obviously bethesa we kind of slight pleasantly surprised by the success I think of kind of fall I know the kind of marketing manag quite well they they weren't expecting this to be their their bigger Revenue driver it was really a marketing piece are you kind of surprised there's not been more kind of classic game IP brought after that been a few things but it's not really it's not kind of been an avalanche of of of of going game IP coming to mobile iing PC console there's a lot of gauntlets getting ACC I mean everybody's been scouring the Earth for traditional old reminiscent IP it's not a lack of or activity or trying uh there's a lot of

Licensing gauntlets there's a lot of financial gauntlets and then you have all the things that are valid in terms of um the creative effort that's a good match for it and then of course you know as as Dan mentioned the participation of the brand to help you activate it properly and really execute it well you add all that up and it's really tough to make deals happen yeah yeah and you you can't really make a game for a couple million dollars anymore you know produce it and and then publish it and have any kind of launch so you you know taking a big risk on what could potentially be a small or mediumsized hit it's it's challenging yeah yeah I'd argue that we to some extent we do it on Sports as well like we take a number of products that are HD focused or historically PC focused and turn them into mobile games uh and have done and will continue to do that so I think it goes beyond that I also think to your point it costs more to build a game and if it costs more it takes longer so I wouldn't be surprised if we actually see more of these things happening it wasn't that long ago since yeah it's just yeah take it might take a

year a while for people to copy and follow into something yeah okay um I think I guess one of the things is always interesting which i' always like to ask you when I'm on you're obviously a rights holder you're you've got some relatively big Brands and you work with independent developers or you know maybe your own own Studios to to create so how what is it that you're looking for as a kind of brand old from a partnership because you know other guys are more about creating games obiously own Brands but what is it from your side you look for for public you mean besides money besides money that was a joke that was a joke um well it's nice um you know I think it's I I I feel lucky that I get to work with all these great Brands I'm I'm a big fan of a lot of the stuff that we work with um the the first thing we look for is Passion honestly um and and fit with the content when we find Studios that are so psychotic about you know look tinyo is a

great example with Family Guy um their team was obsessed with with the show they they were they had encycloped encyclopedic knowledge um you just could tell that they were going to take care of the brand and really make it come alive on mobile and they did it so um that's the number one thing we look for and then a whole bunch of things after that yeah yeah okay no that's a good a good answer and I guess from the flip side mean David your talk was really really good and I it's really interesting the way you kind of thinking about holistically all the different aspects of a thing around a brand and and the is it the Q score is that's something I'm going to go and check out now but um so when it comes to kind of evaluating Brands how and and to to to maybe work with or part how how does that work is you you go through a process schools or something I'm not sure how far we can go it may be somewhat of a false positive think I can increasingly quantify the value of a brand um as as Devon points out there's a passion there's a you know if you if you pitch our games business

to any investor a good person are going to just walk away and to his Spas business and not interested yeah and we've gotten to the point now where we can test take metrics and improve our chances of some level of financial performance and success yeah and there's big mistakes we can avoid but there's still a hits spaced element that you just can't Factor so we're going to try as hard we can to quantify the value of a brand based on every click and behavioral score and and algorithmic approach we can but at the end of the day there is a a big element of breathing passion into the brand and be breathing passion into the consumer experience and having that payoff in an emotional connection that you can't quantify yeah and I think I think the Buy in from the brand super important too because if they're passionate about your game idea then you can work out a good deal and have a great relationship and obviously the more the brand is into

it the more marketing is involved and all of that it's just it's definitely you know just a partnership from both sides both sides being extremely into the idea and kind of Blazing forward together on it yeah I you mentioned marketing it's an interesting thing I mean it's it's it's kind of said um in a realistic way maybe cynical way that that Brands as part of you know one of the reasons that people going with Brands and desperately looking for brand is the shortcut to marketing that's the number one kind of rational I'm often told by in discussions in bars usually about is that is that really the case or is it purely about kind of getting into into into kind of audiances and cutting down your your UA costs or is that just a small component of the whole difficult question small large primary you know pick your term um it has to be because there's a financial cost both upfront there's can be a huge creative cost um in terms of your freedom and building the game you want want to build because now you've got

brand owners that um have an interest in what you're going to build in fact I should probably uh go back one question and and say it goes both ways um in a previous life this was more apparent than uh it takes so long to make games you know I've maybe got I don't know a dozen or so big brand game things behind my belt but in a previous life we worked with TV production teams uh to create a company called Go TV a bunch of video on mobile and the production teams all had very different levels of passion for putting something on mobile and so it goes both ways you have to be passionate about their brand and you have to really um take great care of it and uh breathe uh your creative juices into it but they have to be equally excited about this new frontier of opportunity and gets into the activation how are they going to help you how are they going to work with you on the creative approve things get be responsive be engaged and be helpful right so it goes both ways if

they're not entirely passionate and they see it as it's just kind of a little bit of gravy and you know as long as it's hands off for us we don't care a lot of times you can't achieve the result you're looking for yeah but I think the the UA cost getting back to that question um the economics are so high on CPI right now that that has to be your P I would just use the word primary yeah um economic benefit um certainly um these other things Factor into it but um it it's the biggest financial piece yeah and it's interesting talking about the relationship with the you know the close relationship required with the the brand or the the content which you obviously like you know EA is couldn't be more sort of into these kind of sports now you everywhere I've got another business works the Premier League a bit and I know that EA's into everything I mean it's a it's a big part of what we do and obviously for sports I I don't personally I don't believe you I think it's very difficult to be in sports without some some form of brand license or type relationship I

think and only because that's really at least in the world of swort that's what means authenticity so if you're not licensed all of a sudden you're not really true to the sport therefore in terms of going back to that world that you're trying to immerse people in it's just not authentic to the world so people can't connect with it as deeply so I think for sports it's very difficult to break through without some form of license I actually don't see it as a shortcut I think I just see it as a base requirement for auth uh for authenticity as well as just for the story and the fiction of putting together Sports property um it doesn't make things easier to your point uh David it often makes things harder in terms of the type of game you want to build um but I think it's you almost the minimum price of Entry at least in the sports cont was there was a Japanese Sports developer didn't necessarily have all the official licenses I don't I can't remember the name of them now they're quite not an exclusive exclusive yes there's a number of products throughout the world that don't have license but you you won that that's good course I'll go back to the B watch volleyball earlier side cuz that

certainly was sports brand very associated with the world of volleyball bayw watch I want to download that since I heard about um one related to that which kind of as you're saying it I kind of sprang to mind is I remember I remember at one point there were like five or six Cristiano Ronaldo uh branded games not to to out I don't his lawyers come after me but but but basically that kind of leaves another question is there kind of a danger of where in a space where like other people are competing for licenses like famously kind of Warhammer at one point had about 12 licens kind of games in production or something it's is that a kind of a danger because yeah you're using that because you want to stand out but then someone else is doing it I mean even here we've got saying I have a Warhammer license what you have a have sorry no but you have a there's a lot of really well executed or you know heavily executed Brands out there and I do think they can get watered down and that's part of your Calculus yeah so you can of watch down

that we we have a really hard time with that we obviously we've got a lot of popular brands and some big hits on mobile and a lot of interest um so we're we're paying a lot of attention to Windows and making sure we're not launching things on top of each other but we actually think that a lot of Our Brands have room to have more than one game uh in some in some select cases um as long as you're you know really differentiating and creating you know I think there's room for a Family Guy soccer game personally but Simpson series one I think it's a little bit cliche but I think the game has to be a good game which is super cliche to say that but uh like like the volleyball game I imagine was probably the best execut I'm actually going to disagree with that and you know I'm not going to name names but we can list a dozen games right now that are financially performing and they're average games we haven't mention any of them we haven't mentioned any of in this conversation already I'm sure there's not there's not one some of these brands have done such a great job of pulling a game forward and it's not a bad game but it you know it's either straight copy or

it doesn't bring any Innovation at all um it's a very safe thing but the brand has clearly um allowed it to perform above the noise I don't have any games like that no but it's not that our games aren't are speaking specifically about our big biggest hits the The Simpsons and and Family Guy they're they're not meant to be the game there's no gameplay it's it's like these are really just content aquariums if you want to use the term uh yeah but they're quite M about that quite they're riffing on the whole thing they've done yeah they are The Simpsons did um but you know in both cases their the content is done is executed so well the writing is is on point the writers from the show you know everything is is is done to the highest level of the of the brand and and people want to interact and and and play in that in that world so so yeah so I'm getting one piece of advice is kind of kind of is that if you're going to go with a brand if you're looking for part you want a brandle that's going to engage with the whole process not just sell your brand and wonder off cuz yeah without that support it's kind of hard

to to do an interesting thing like some of these questions suggest of why our team and one of one of the questions we do a lot about soft launch we was looking for the interesting thing in soft launch and what's the next cool game and Clash Ro interesting as popped up but how do you kind of soft launch a AAA like branded game it's kind of quite hard to quietly put out there this because you know wow the fans went to get a whiff of it they've got a whiff of it it's not it's not one of those things that you know you can keep even even World of Tanks we couldn't hide that soft lunch at all he was like it's out okay and uh so you can't experiment with it as much because you don't want to have a negative you know message sent to that game community at all about your brand um so it it limits what you can learn from TMR in my opinion yeah yeah we just do it uh like with Family Guy we tried to we tried to hide it um it was up on Reddit within like 20 minutes and we tried to like shut it down and then we got bad press it's like if you need to soft launch the game which now you do with free to play um you just do it and you just have to yeah and you you know

try and keep it out of the big territories and hope that you know you have a bit of Runway but at the end of the day you need you need that data Before You Go Global so depending on the game of course but yeah most of the games that we're doing now need need soft launch it's also hard when you run into scenarios where your main fans aren't where you're soft launching like if it's a very you know American brand and you're trying to soft launch in Europe and maybe they're not as interested or they're not as engaged because they just don't care about the brand so you can run into problems I guess you're not really learning yet what the brand effect going to be the whole that's that's the question I was going to ask um and again DAV you brought up earlier and and it's kind of a topic we bring up at lot of conferences is the is international nature of the uh the industry like the mobile industry you know four of the top five aren't you know Western markets it's and if you kind of cater in Southeast Asia now as well that's probably yeah is even more so do you you know Brands very few Brands kind of resonate equal in all regions so you know how how how does

that factor in your thinking you know is it just that you you you accept that you're going to just it's going to exist just in in the certain territories or I mean I'm sure for all of us we try to get the most Global brands that we can but you know there's definitely ones that are more Western based Etc but it's just you know evaluating it and making sure it makes sense for your game and AS Global as possible you know yeah yeah I I mean the way it's informed our strategy is the it's hard to publish a game in APAC uh from Seattle in our case or anywhere else that's not in APAC um there's a lot of uh local game as a service there's um Beyond just translating and truly localizing game and now there's understanding of local Brands so it's just created another reason why we need a strong partner to be successful in Asia in general and is uh going to point us to working with stronger partners and having them bring us brands that make sense to their Geographic you know expertise okay with a couple of our

sports games sorry we uh a lot of them do have some genuine kind of global appeal and what we try to do is partner with so we don't just partner with one league for example in in a soccer context we we'll partner with a number of leagues throughout the world so we can then leverage those leagues and then we use our live service engine to put content into the game that's relevant for that location so we'll focus on uh the league the performance of The League the the players the teams that are doing well at any given stage in the LA Lio versus the Premier League whatever it is um and that's where we feel that we're able to engage people at a global level but also in a way that's relevant locally and you guys are launching FIFA Iceland Edition this week right there's a we're not talking about Iceland at the moment it's still it's too raw everybody is no no no we're not so has anybody picked up brexit the brand yet that would be that be the latest that's kind of trending at the moment um I I wish we could capitalize on that yeah something come out I'm feeling some I was beted on the other vote as well as most of the world so we're all poor that's fantastic

um again like not everybody you guys you know in really the top level of Brands you kind of look in the top sports leagues massive PC Brands amazing kind of uh love TV and and film like when it comes to kind of working with with uh smaller brands or niches that maybe have kind of millions of fans rather than than billions you know is I just sounds like a stupid question but is that still sort of valuable is that still useful because obviously smaller developers and Publishers don't NE have luxury of shopping at you know at the very highest level is it still does it do you still get like an element of the success or is it so watered down it's not worth it well I think that's the beauty of mobile is you know in in the Glory Days of console licensing uh you kind of saw that going down as as development costs went went up um and mobile is beautiful because you can you can license a brand that has a small core audience that is obsessed with the brand I mean look at Adventure Time is an example of of a small brand that's made a lot of games that people love right um so I think there's an opportunity to have that's

not a small brand I love that sorry not as big as others no fair enough but yeah I think there's look I want to I want to make a home alone game I think I think that's going to be successful so anyone out there want to do that with me um apparently mcol is available for work at the moment sure is sorry I think it's just a lower barrier to entry for at least it used to be on mobile than then in the console days so yeah can do okay um yeah no it's very interesting you see a lot of players out there with yeah older brands or kind of uh yeah more Niche things it's and I I just don't know it's not clear to see how successful it is are you going to talk about the brands you're working with M you're not are you not allowed toer down shortly shortly was it when is it when is it when's your first your next one coming out month uh soft lunch next month sof lunch next month okay you want to break the news here at Park it's an opportunity you can do it we'll put on the I don't want to get in trouble okay fine um I guess uh going to a practical time what what sort of key uh bits of

advice or kind of key uh techniques or approaches would you kind of advise for for developers looking to work with Brands is there anything and any absolute dos or don'ts that that that you should regardless of the of the brand you get people okay all right uh I would say again just have the passion and you know coming in looking for you know a marketing play or you know just a brand slap is is not going to be helpful I think it's really show that you want to create something that's additive to the brand and and makes use of it and and will speak to the audience that's that's the most important thing and if people come to you all the time you're constantly getting pictures or you I mean you know I'm always at these things so yeah you are always very yeah you're think a combination I mean we're we're always out looking for for great partners and um we get a lot of pitches unsolicited as well but so so it's really Clash Royal plus Family Guy you're looking for next we are yeah yeah yeah CL plus anything how did you know that yeah I don't know I just I just genius I've been working on an idea but I guess from from from your side like

how do you how do you find it like from the developer side how did you find it yeah I think I just Echo what we were saying earlier which is just make sure that the brand is kind of all in as well and try to get as much Marketing in that contract as you can uh and as much exclusivity but it it gets hard depending on who you're working with um but I think another thing that that isn't thought about a lot is you know you're going to hopefully get a future if you have a branded IP when it comes out and then there's a lot of a lot of this going on in the IP based mobile because you're having to pay out to the brand depending on the accounting terms and the contract every 60 days or 90 days or 180 days so just taking that into consideration when you're kind of putting together your user acquisition budget that those checks are going to be going out and trying to figure out how you can kind of keep your user acquisition here or here hopefully rather than the up and down motion that we see sometimes I think one thing that we try to think about is not just is the is the brand going to be added to to the game which I think it has to be but also Brands bring communities to your

property they have engaged Community uh and those people have expectations sometimes so like Dungeon Keeper is a great example where those consumers or those players have you know some very fixed expectations of what a property for that would mean and and what they got was different to that and then you have an issue so and it's it's as true in sports and that's why we struggled a little bit for the longest time and we tried to understand now what people expect from a sports game but in a mobile context and everybody that are attached to a brand come with a preconceived expectations so trying to understand that and put something in front of them that kind of answers that but in an effective way is is pretty important you know I shared an example how I got badly outsmarted um in the a couple versions of this mobile gaming business ago and we we got smart about it and um the the biggest tip I can give anybody out there a lot of people I think in this audience are probably uh characterized as Indies and probably don't have a lot of money and can't

afford a big highrisk profile to put a bunch of um energy time and and money into a a large brand but even EA has been really smart and we forget how they went to a a fairly obscure talent in the NFL Madden and created an amazing brand out of a retired coach broadcaster that just didn't appear to be the guy you'd build an NFL franchise around and that was very creative um we went to Paramount and we asked for a 21-year-old movie that hadn't been licensed around anything called Top Gun this was a long time ago and Top Gun did exceptionally well for us all over the world this back Java Games you know hit six to go right four to go left just awful game exactly but the brand was fantastic yeah and it cost us nothing if we agreed to do Italian job which was their new movie that they were about to release and um so we took that on and and paid a royal on that we got Top Gun for free and it wanted to be fantastic

wow um on the sports side um we didn't and so I've been in the Indie mode as much as I've been in a a mode where I can talk about real sizable deals we had to be creative uh we found the most recently retired players we could that still had solid Brands their agents tell them look you got two years before nobody even remembers you right so we did s's football we did Sergey federov hockey we did Barry Bond's baseball when he was in the us over the steroids yeah and his brand was still very high but he was outside of MLB so we could talk with him directly yeah and it was a lot more efficient so there are creative ways to find brands that have untapped value or you know Great Value you can build on and I'm not saying you're going to create a Madden franchise we didn't with Sanders and federov bonds we well so alone and Home Alone any plans for for for for Roy Hudson FIFA not not nothing in me

that's but they'll take he'll take your call right now yeah he will he'll take anyone's call bless him um I'm sure the calls aren't very nice that he's taking most of the time to be frank so we've got a couple minutes left so I want to kind of throw out see if we've got any any kind of questions from the audience so there come on I know you're still you're still kind of struggling from the night before there's a question is that a question the back you just putting your arm up he's stretching his head there no oh that okay Josh's got a question I just showed up so hopefully I talk about this but uh hey how's it going so I mean I think for a lot of the tier one IPS obviously the cost structure has continued to increase I mean how do you guys see the trend for those business terms uh sort of either stabilizing I think in the sense that sometimes it's when you think about marketing costs and apple Google like sometimes the sort of uh business structure is very difficult to make any type of profit um do folks feel like things are still rising in terms of ter of the uh business terms or things are maybe stabilizing have we

reached kind of the Peak from that perspective I might offer a un a surprising positive I think the the brands are asserting themselves in the value of a Brand's ability to get organic downloads um is going up relative um and so I think there's an economic equilibrium that's kind of maintained uh the CPI costs are so high on your own with an unbranded um title and the value of App Store promotion has diminished greatly that the value of a Brand's ability to download for you is is actually higher now thank you David excuse me thank you good answer uh no we're we're keenly aware of it too I think you know our they're all overpriced our our models changed considerably we you know there was a time where we needed big MGS and high

royalties and that was kind of the only model we we we took and now we're you know we're aware of this and you know if the business doesn't work for both parties it doesn't work so um you know I think we we always try to make things uh mutually beneficial and hopefully grow the business and we want to incentivize our partners to grow the business as much as they can so uh no I don't think the cost structures are are getting out of hand I think we're we're all we're all becoming we're all becoming more enlightened about about these business businesses and and partnering with with the right teams to to make great products okay I I have one kind of final question just um I guess it's Brands going the way we we obviously had recently in the last month had two uh game Brands become major Mo motion pitches I believe you say this part of the world so angry bird done very well and and and and kind of Warcraft was very big you think this the games to the games to mainstream brand is is a something that's going to continue I'd be amazed if there's not some sort of clash related thing from superar at some point I think Activision is going to do it first right they're going to have Skylanders and then we're going to see

that's on Netflix and then we'll see um Call of Duty will be a feature film in the next couple years yeah got actually Assassin's Creed's coming out this summer is yeah that's uh this December when's World when's the world of tank yeah well we we did a a fairly last minute haphazard tie-in with Fury which was a tank game so we're we're inching down those down those paths as well yeah fair enough okay cool well um thank you much guys uh I appreciate your time and especially after a very quiet night last night so um big Go Round of Applause for our panel please thank you I'm going to let you go off enjoy your day you'd have to applaud yourself thanks guys that's [Music] brilliant