Understanding the Publishing Funnel | PGC Digital #1

without further ado I want to share my screen give me a sec guys and the idea here is to go a little bit into you know what voodoo proposes today as a publisher in hyper casual and what that means for you as the studio no matter whether you're a one or two person studio or whether you're a 20-person studio or more what we've prepared for you in terms of our proposition for 2020 is we think something that's really strong that will resonate with Studios not just from kind of a you know a tech support or a product perspective or a monetization perspective but really the full suite of services that we proposed and that we've built out over the last especially over the last year and that's kind of what I what we call the

publishing funnel so before I jump into that I just want to go back to product for a second because a lot of people turn to us whether it's on our weekly live streams that we share with our you know community of studios and devs or even the broader community they turn to us for trends and you know past trends and the trends that are upcoming and I want to talk about that because I think it has an impact on on how we operate and so as we look back you know over the last couple of years starting with maybe you know idle games two three years ago and and the fact that they came all the way up in the charts you know games like will it crush a planet Ballmer were quite successful moving on to incremental games like soccer kick or you know a host of incremental gains before boy was super successful flying arrow and stone skimming all these games that you see here the reason I'm

bringing them up is not so much to say yes there have been trends and those trends tend to come and go and you know the game plays on ro is is maybe a part of that trend as Ford to say actually the first game that are published within these trends are so powerful and really being creative you know the concept of freshness and those games themselves so will it crush and then baseball boy and then a whole dot IO in terms of the full suite of IO games and maybe rollers flat for the hyper casual puzzle games then you saw aqua park in the in the racer genre and then more recently maybe in the race runner he had push them all a simulation woodturning was a massive game and in the drawing section you had games like you know draw car which you know draw climber came in kind of in the wake of that game and was super successful as well but generally generally speaking a trend is almost

more like a game that is so successful that there that the the community of devs and studios focus on that gameplay but actually the first games to come out in those categories are super important and that's why we've decided to focus heavily on creativity on the ideation phase and on really giving Studios the tools to to effectively idea because we see this as just as important as bearing in mind trends and so this is a piece of the of the publishing pipeline or the publishing funnel that we've described and and the reason that's so crucial is that if we look at some of our games last year so I usually see roller flat you know and and by a neon play and then orbital Knights Castle wreck and in crazy kick games like dig this and bikes he'll push them all by oh hm and racket

spell and dig this you know creative duo's that produce a aquapark and flip dunk with cassette and and tapped and then and then a range of single dev games the key point of this slide is everyone can make it and we need to continue to serve single devs and duo's in a way that's different to the way we are helping and teaming up with larger studios we continue to do that but our but our publishing funnel is very much focused on all of the teams and we have different kind of commercial solutions tech solutions capabilities that we've designed internally to make sure that we are relevant to absolutely everyone in the market because everyone has a role to play everyone can publish a massive massive hit you know aquapark was in our biggest hits and you know Corin and edgar only two guys did a fantastic job on that hit last year now what does that mean for publishing in 2024 for all of you guys

out there currently we think that the key here is that you know we want to focus in on testing so you need the proper tools as a studio you need the proper support tools include everything from a dashboard which we've just completely revamped very low bugs our testing platform is super operational we have similar testing protocols but we've refined them and we've gone into deeper testing guidelines testing metrics we look at way more things than we used to you know we look obviously a retention playtime CPI as you know but we go deeper into things like you know obviously CTR CPM the way everyone everyone kind of does these days and then we look at more advanced you know analytics within GA and otherwise now you know we start

looking at retention funnels and and various things so that basically you don't have to to do that yourselves the second thing we have really focused on is making sure to enhance our launching process so we have a variety of different launch types that correspond to our understanding of your game what's best for it is it a launch where were improving the product in the next two weeks is it a launch where actually a big focus on CPI and so we'll you know involve a large marketing team on it and you know work on the playable you know on the obviously on various rush videos and creatives is it is it a launch that we actually need to scale very quickly because it shows so much that we need to get millions of downloads within a week so we've really refined and segmented the different types of launches so that each week we have various launches that are going out and they match the kind of status of your game no matter what no matter where

your game is launching fast with lower KPIs is often an advantage because it means that you can test live tests off of LTV and you can improve your game faster than you would if you were just in the testing phase we've also really revamped our product capabilities which means that you know you're not alone even with your publishing manager so the publishing team in general is heavily involved on product from they want and from day minus one in the ideation phase we also involve broader teams within the video system we have a range of internal Studios uniting in in Barcelona in London in MO Korea and so forth in Amsterdam and we we really leverage those Studios to to get learnings and to get support where we need it most on your games we also you know have strong internal games that internal teams that are devoted to launches so

it's the launch ops team they can help from anything to a/b tests to the visuals to you know how do I launched Android and optimize it as fast as possible and that not only accelerates the process most of the time it really helps with the metrics themselves and helps to get to that scaled launch phase as quickly as possible which brings me to the scaling phase and the marketing capabilities that we've revamped as well our teams are designed right now to address your games challenge if there is one at any time whether it's on the playable whether it's on the creatives or the rush videos whether it's on a certain geography like building partnerships in China we've really revamped the the process in order to make the most of your game you know holding the product equal and then finally the long term retention features and you know that product capability really starts kicking in well in the scaling phase what is the

metaphor my game how do I keep in get users engaged for you know not only days or weeks but months and we've really managed to compile a list of best practices best processes as well as internal teams to help us leverage all the potential the game and add these layers of of retention effectively to live games the final stage but probably not the least important in in studios is phases what does that mean for me ok you know what do downloads mean for me so what if my game scales well if you do just coming back on on something that the previous presenter mentioned if you do we are very much a payout focused publisher which means that we only find ourselves relevant when the payouts are large and luckily today we very much are relevant and we're able to effectively

you know give Studios the rewards that that they've deserved and which in turn enables them typically to scale and to increase the size of their studios of their teams and that's really a journey that we want to be on for the long term we want to be behind our studios and we're built for long term partnerships because of all the investment in the time that we do upfront not only from obviously that our passion for for awesome games but also our passion for the studio's we work with and you know the work that they do we tend to feel like we're part of their team and and then scaling feels like you know us getting bigger as well so just coming back to what that means in terms of our capabilities so this is more of a view of gurus capabilities and and how that integrates into your process if you look at the far left of this diagram you have kind of the idea phase so ok I want to do a game about kind of going down a

slide with water on it and competing with other people that's the idea phase and it often comes in these days with a CTR testing so you know does this idea have legs I don't want to design a full game for I'm gonna build a video that's very representative the game tested see if there's if there's legs if there is then I'm going to build out the game with a degree as you said like with a degree of certainty depending on your CTR if it's 0.3 you're gonna be spending more time than it's 0.5 percent or sorry 5% CTR you know all those things are moving parts and you know the reason we built out at you know 10 and growing publishing team just focus on product and on studios you know you know if you put everything else to the side is that all these decisions are so important and they're so kind of particular to your game to where you are that you need eyes on these decisions

that work that's what we've done same for the CPI test you know if you're if you're testing at 30 cents that's that's a great sign you know and we can we can get that lower oftentimes if you're testing at 70 cents maybe that's a kill maybe something's been overlooked in the process and we tend to check those as well but the key here is flexibility we've really improved our our ability to be flexible and pragmatic with kpi's because you know in 2019 or 2018 even more so what was you know 55 day 122 days 7 and and say 25 cents CPI has become very different today we've noticed the games that have lower kpi's I don't know take Echo Park for as an example around 48 Day 117 day 7 those are very strong metrics for sure but never would we have thought in 2018 that that kind of a game gets you the scale and the success that the game saw for

various reasons so we do look at metrics in a very pragmatic and flexible way now so the KPI is that you do reach when you're successful and I'm going to try to leave a little bit of time for for questions but the Cape you guys that you do reach are flexible so we tend to see 47 try 45 and 13th day 1 day 7 has a pretty good indication that the game will sustain scale if it's marketable that is that it's flexible you can be at 4012 for all I know or 4010 with a fantastic CPI so we look at each metric very much individually which brings us to soft launch full launch and optimization I won't go into the detail here because it gets quite granular important thing is publishing team and you're publishing manager is with you along the journey during that process marketing teams come come in after launch but are extremely involved in the in the life of the game post launch we

have co-production that's our internal Studios that help us on your games now in order to go faster in to improve retention and we have of course our launch ops team that help you in the in the launch of a game and technical integrations but also the AV testing and our live ops team that come in kind of in those long-term retention features and guidelines and meta games that that help you undergo so there really is a mix of teams involved on that every single game at Vudu then we figured out if we want to be flexible we also have to be very present what does that mean for a typical game that you might come with us well if you look at spiral roll the first idea which is on the very left here was the CTR test very basic but but quite simple and clear representation of the game gave us quite good CTR then we moved on to the first and second and third versions this is a second screenshot you see with an interesting reward system we worked on that drawing insights from other games with with the

studio himself and the publishing manager and then we brought in some more the capabilities that I've just discussed including the you know the launch ops team as well as our internal studio capabilities and this really helped us drive visual and kind of game feeling improvements in the game as well as marketability improvements and those just carried on and kind of snowballed as we went along so the features that we pushed on spiral roll were in a way a result in part of of this process why do I mention this and why is important while the pants that are tend to be multi-million dollar pants for our studios result in our teams being able to scale up and the importance of scaling up going back to that the Charter that I showed you about sample games in 2019 so we realize actually while anyone can publish a very very successful high potential game the advantage of doing so when you are a larger team is that the

likelihood of doing so relatively quickly and with abundance is higher it's the bigger you are which means that we're in a great position to support our single and duo does to scale up through these massive and well rewarded payouts so I think unless I'm mistaken that was basically it I think I want to open up yet the floor through Chris's questions and before we do so just a quick reminder don't hesitate if you're interested in hyper casual games more importantly if you have maybe a video of a first prototype ER or a game that you might have that's live please do go on our on our publishing website it's very quick we pick up requests very fast and so don't don't hesitate to to head on there fantastic thank you so much for that Alexander is really good very insightful and hopefully that's a lot of questions but we do have some more I'm

going to run through these and with fire them at you and you can condense what you can answer and still keep adding we've got five already go we've got no I mean we we can do one of them if you want really yeah but there's nothing after us now we're not angry due to the fact that come compatibility I think it means competitivity effects hyper casual publishing negatively don't you think publishing deals of paying retainers and revenue share should change yeah I say I don't we think that were saying there's publishing the publishing deals of paying retainers I'm revenue share should change I guess it's a trick question I I want to make sure I fully understand it before addressing this very competitive market so should them should the publisher develop model change and I'm not I'm not gonna care despite I'm not yes I know I think it's a it's a it's a great question thank you for worrying about our it's not all what the most important thing for us is we need to make sure that we continue as we have in 2020 by

the way to hand out multi-million dollar payout on games that that's critical for us because it means that our business model of working and we don't have to work on you know on anything else really if it's if it's just that and so you know obviously we have worked on a lot of things in order to enable that but what we've seen in the market is that yes retentions are coming down so what was 55 you know two years ago is probably now 45 let's say they won what was 22 is probably 14 15 let's say but it's more tricky than that so as I said aquapark was a massive massive success in it it was launched alongside other games that had better retention metrics and probably play time as well the fact is that scale and success and reality and a host of other factors are more complex than they were but the successes that were seeing today through flexible kpi's are just as big as they

were a year or two ago so to answer the question in the long winded way no our model is the same because our economics are the same the only thing that we've changed a little bit probably is its focus on improving our contracts kind of on a quarterly basis to make sure that the payouts are reflecting the greater skill that we're seeing in geographies like China and so we've recently included China as a part of our download bonuses for payouts so we do adjust but we think the markets getting bigger not smaller I was very very considered enhancer thank you I'll be a bit quicker just working this way this has worked for us um what kind of exclusivity do you ask for when working with developers so none I mean we are we're not about locking in studios for the simple reason that if we can't retain our philosophy

is if we if you're not staying with us you probably have a good reason for it and we don't want to interfere with that so if you're you know the only exclusivity that we exercise is essentially a right of first refusal on your prototypes so let's say that you tested something with us and it had phenomenal kpi's and we love the product we'll probably end up publishing it and we would like a first a right of first refusal on that publishing deal for a game that we've worked on together the rest is really yours to to decide what you do with the reason students come back to us is they particularly enjoy I think the publishing funnel that we just presented and you know obviously the relationships that we've built together right good answer again you mentioned your test can you explain the process and let us know what what is the CTR required so the CTR testing is something that we've rolled out and we're rolling out carefully we've tested

it over hundreds of instances in order to really correlate CTR to CPI as best as we can looking at a range of metrics what you need to remember here is CTR is available we do it's something we're rolling out carefully and sorry the second part of the question was uh sorry I almost didn't have a second I know I think it was what was what was the CGC I was needed yes once again it comes back to flexibility so if someone is saying you know you have a 5% CTR that's that's amazing your your game is a unicorn or a fantastic game um you know yes 5% is good but we've established probabilities based on the exact CPI as you're getting but also a range of other metrics which by the way will be integrated very relatively shortly into our public ash you know our publishing dashboard for all studios that work with us so the

idea is let's eliminate the noise where students don't need it what we are working on as MC analytics and data and we've built out large teams that are working on this and it's getting deployed shortly we do use CTR but it's on an ad hoc basis and today fantastic do you plan to publish word games well you tell me you know we're interested in word games we're interested in every game you know you saw the chart a second ago you saw 2048 balls on there and you know that can be considered a puzzle game for sure word games that have low CPI is I mean the key is have you found a way of making your word game hyper casual in its marketability is there a hyper casual core loop if there is then it is a hyper casual game yeah right do you think the meta game features can change retention drastically we think we haven't as a community as a hyper casual

community of publishers yet cracked the the real long term retention features on metric on meta games but we at Vudu are starting to see very positive early results once again you know all of our studios will benefit from this as soon as the results are proven we're careful to deploy and it depends on the game but we're very hopeful on that front and and we're working on drawing as many insights we can to share them as quickly as possible with the community I guess I guess what has really learned from our Cherica in the market may be talked about share is the new hybrid casual I'm just where does that tell us about where the market is hyper casual market stands today yes I think no we have we have discussed it of course arc our core competence is around hyper casual um it's the way our models work and we've been very

successful today and we continue to be we are developing as it's no secret we have developed internal casual game studios they're focusing on these types of games and then our working day in day out to discover you know where is out it how does that meet hyper casual and where is the value not only for for us as a as a studio in a sense but for voodooism as a publisher so you can be sure that you know the minute we've identified really actionable insights into casual or deep casual or how everyone call it our serotype games the the minute we've drawn those insights they go out to all of our Studios internally and so our partners because a lot of them are showing you know significant interest in the area so sign up and you'll get it you'll get a good answer to that I think within within six months okay a couple of questions now let you

go so one is you mentioned that you have some internal Studios producing occasional games isn't that more cost-effective than working with outside studios well you do work at Las Vegas a studio so I'm assuming the reason yeah it's a good question we do we do offer I'm sad for our internal teams we do not offer multi-million dollar payouts for games internally because this is a different risk profile there you know if you're if you're working for Purdue you know it's generally it's it's an awesome environment and you know you get you get paid well and so the payoffs are definitely not the same but the cost structure is different it's just it's just a bit different I'd say and and the truth is publishing has always been and will always be I think maybe maybe I'm biased but it will always be the most important part of our business you know working with so many fantastic Studios around the world that are there are so

great at what they do and you can't really scale scale creativity and innovation and that I think also comes you know to a large extent from teams that are working out there whether you're one two or five people absolutely I've got kind of like one final questions in two parts from my side I'm always being told constantly about it you know this would be the end of the year that hyper casual is yeah over a second going it's current possibly sustain itself doesn't seem to work that wage you can kind of go the opposite way so you know what's your take on that Azumi you know that's your business type of cattle I'm shipping up shop just yet so and as part of the I guess is are you seeing through them you seem to the current situation a particularly marked increase in engagement because in a way you'll you know how because again from widest audience its its again yeah so well first off I I think in terms of the current situation I hope you know everything everyone their priority for us is that everyone is kind of safer and

healthiest can be and I think you know it is a tough time for the world and for the economy and if there's no way we can say this is this is a positive thing they're in know and that's not what you're saying and for Hyper cows in particular yes it means obviously short term more engagement more downloads and that's great for hyper casual but you know midterm I think you'll see you know see PM's and monetization level off and so I think I think the impact on when hyper casual is gonna be kind of canceled out I think it'll be similar which is great I mean you know what a position to be in going into a potentially economic crisis it to be to be stable and growing so just going back to the first part of the question I think you know our user base is growing globally markets for cut becoming available like China in a way that they weren't a year ago the market and the pie is growing significantly and so an

IED recovery casual gaming is here to stay for me because it's it's not really gaming it's it's it's a very large market much larger than gamers much broader than gamers and it's a different engagement and it really you know no matter how many PS Ford's you're selling people will still be commuting to work or playing in the in the schoolyard and they'll be doing that with hyper casual games as s4 are we worried as a publisher I think there's another phenomenon you're seeing which which one we were worried about maybe a year or two ago and we've grown to learn there will always be kind of a new entrance newcomers to the market that are trying it out because they kind of see the success that other publishers have had before we've been lucky to be around for a little while and to grow into a very large actually but nimble and affective company that focuses I think

on the right things at the right time and to get that scale and therefore that kind of that firepower is is very hard to do in today's market so I think for new entrants it is a tough publishing market it's a great for for studios I think and and the second thing is you're seeing I think just coming back to the point though it was mentioned before me you're seeing some publishers coming in and looking for ad space in the top 10 charts and that's fine but as a studio it's a bit misleading because you're expecting certain payouts based on dot down the numbers that you'd saw in the past with publishers like voodoo and that you continue to see today with voodoo but then you're getting payouts where the margins are razor thin so what we're seeing is actually some studios are you know are really converting back from these alternative propositions because they realized despite massive download success for me as a studio it

doesn't really translate into large pronounced questions more praise right there's a lesser question but a comment to someone just want to thank Alex's team for being very transparent with all of these learnings especially a YouTube channel it's a great service to the industry so they love for you there and other things and the last last last question is in one or two easy one in one or two words what is the hype occasional trends on whether a developer should focus on in 2020 easiest question is this question right well I'm not sure the person was listening I think I think the trends are a mix of things there there they're usually inspirations in very powerful initial games and so I think you'll be seeing you know more more focus on the ideation phase as Studios learn that innovation and kind of you know clear but very fresh visuals

and gameplays are are always going to perform so yeah I'm not I'm not I'm not committing to too much yeah but I do say everybody what you that's what you want you want people coming yeah except exactly I think innovation and and the other thing is that if you do see a trend it tends to lot that's three months right not the whole year my time you've dropped the game you've the trends moved on right so