Unity's Mickey Maher on helping indie devs make money

my name is Mickey marker with company called unity technologies and I run sales and account management global sales account management team for the ad network unity ads yep and if the audience doesn't know unity unity is the number one game engine cross-platform game engine in the world and we are here to democratize game development and enable game developers to be successful and build the games as easily and as beautifully as possible and with the ads product unity has recently added a services sweet to their engine so services meaning cloud build analytics ads etc and what unity really wants to do is take it a step farther and not only help game developers build their games but now as we've seen making a

business out of involvement as we are so unity is here to help with that by enabling user acquisition monetization analytics so Nate and offering the services within the engine to help game developers not only build a beautiful game but succeed post building my game hmm it's interesting that you say you know that you've helped make developers you actually make games and then make a success out of games right obviously unity is a an interesting platform because it is a low barrier to entry but it's also quite high end yeah you know it's sort of democratized the creation process do you see what was the percentages are the success rates of games but how do you think people approach the developers approach your platform out to make you know a success out of their games yeah so I think it's an interesting question i think we first have to define what successfully tried success means something different for everyone I mean there are artists

indie game developers one or two men Studios who are just thrilled in a success in itself just to get a game out the door and we certainly enable those people for success and then success can be defined as having a business something that makes money something that actually enables game developers to do this is the full time job and each individual game can help fund the development in the next game so the first group we obviously helped by making developing games very easy almost anyone can do it with unity and in the second group who actually want to make a business that's where the services suite comes into play where you can look at data we can help you acquire users we can help monetize your user days and just make it easier for businesses to run and succeed anyway we're here at poker game mechanics in San Francisco and one of the tracks that we have is the indie survival goal idea and I think maybe it's a stereotype maybe it's not there is this idea that Indies are very

good at making critically successful geisha but maybe not commercially successful games do you have any tips for Indies who are looking to monetize their their products using so unity or something like that are there any like full-on practical tips yeah I mean yeah I mean I would say if you're talking about your monetization I think we're a lot of game informer's go go wrong in these or not as they take a lazy approach to minus the monetization outside of the core I a monetization so many game developers want to build this great game that's fun and just want to slap in modernization later if game developer really wants to make money and build a business and continue making games as their full-time job they really have to think of monetization potentially lean on monetization experts to help them design monetization loop in a core monetization within that game whether it be through IV ads integration

or what other you know the other monetization solutions that are out there so let's look at some trends at the moment what do you think is the most surprising key trend within the industry now I know if I could talk specifically about mobile iOS and Android I think there's a lot we're talking a lot about Indians and how hard it is for them to succeed and I think there's this common notion that it's too expensive to acquire users it's very hard for a nice to succeed on mobile on the App Store the google play store I don't necessarily I think it's hard for anyone to succeed but I see constantly week after week in new indie developers new indie games knocking off in the top three or Tom Paine charts so it seems to me if you build a good game it's being discovered it'll get featured it'll get noticed and you'll have some success so the notion of the common thought that it's impossible for any to enter the

market at succeed today I just don't I don't necessarily buy it I think there's potential on these platforms for an Indian to get the game discovered and be successful okay and finally let's look a little bit into the future where do you see how do you see ads on mobile specifically and monetization within mobile games how do you see that evolving and progressing into the future yeah it's a very interesting question i think you know we've went from incentivized install offer walls to static interstitials or display or banner ads and now the big hopping the main month is an ad monetization solution this video and video right now is the solution a game that over should go with and how do we iterate off that what's that what's the next step up off of that it's hard to say you know there are people experimenting with playable ads where they take the game skew and you a he ad with or the game within the ad

that really hasn't got that much traction yet will a contraction I don't know its up in the air and I think there is some room for more natively integrated placements for Leslie brand ads where brands really want to get into mobile gaming in a big way they're really going to want a native experience so I think there will be opportunity for game developers to sell some native space whether it's you know the side of a blimp or a billboard or a video in win the game with a TV commercial some kind of native experience that's core to the game I think will be a big opportunity in the next one to two years you