Why messaging company Palringo acquired Tribe Studios

well welcome guys to our very cozy Booth here at Nordic game I don't think it could have got more [Laughter] cramped is this your first time at Nordic game uh for me it actually happens to be yes uh for every year there's been some reason why how I I couldn't make it to this conference but it's it's nice to be here fin game yeah it's good to have you here I mean and so today is quite a big day for you guys we've got a big announcement that's just happens yeah do you want to sh us more about it yeah I guess I can kind of represent the my own company was acquired by Pingo about a year ago uh we're based in Sweden and our task was kind of to spearhead the games Initiative for clingo and today we're announcing that we're acquiring Elena's company yeah yeah so so uh until until today I've been with the tribe Studios uh which is a hinki based company uh we developed kind of a a multiplayer games where the discussions are are important part of the game play um so now we are

becoming part of the the Pingo um and and basically our responsibility will be doing games inside their uh group uh chat uh platform so cuz social gaming is is huge now we're seeing so many developers trying to integrate chat into their apps yeah it's what are some of the challenges with that I'd say the the there are a lot of challenges but I mean obviously building a a a huge scaling uh um chat environment is one thing in order to cater to big large groups with broadcast simultaneously the messages to for us we allow up to 2,500 people to communicate within the same groups so we're doing a we're both doing native games for mobile where we kind of bring in the chat the leaderboards the groups the gifting and everything to the native games the external games on mobile but we're also doing games within the chat cont context inside of the Pingo up and

that's where Elena and her team is really coming in with their expertise and their P technology actually yeah so we have technology to do like asymmetric multiplayer stories and and now we can use that kind of concentrate on the core gameplay experience and and then we can deliver games that people wouldn't expect that are possible inside the very limited environment uh but we can still create very interesting gameplay there nice because as I mean this space we've seen a lot with um line for instance and Disney's Tsum Tsum is it Tsum Tsum or samsum I never know but you know obviously made so much money they've done so well in the space have you learned any lessons from them or what they could be doing differently I'd say what we do differently is the fact that we actually allow the games to be played within the chat app itself the group messaging app so really it's about making users engage with games from directly within the chat context and

also we have a lot of Gamers that have been using our app as a kind of companion app for playing Clan games and coordinating raids discussing you know which targets to to to pick on the next time and for us the can of M say actually we should be developing the games ourselves and focusing our marketing towards the type of groups that enjoy those type of games so with that said we're going for specifically type of gam that we know our audience enjoy but we're also trying out some different stuff uh you know trying to innovate a bit ourselves as well yeah yeah and one difference for for pal Ringo is that uh with a lot of the chat apps the main uh component is that you are chatting with friends that you already know whereas in pal Ringo you can go to groups and and have discussions and meet new people um so so it's it's a bit of a different yeah I would say so a lot of people actually kind of play

text pen and paper style RPG inside of the groups already even without having a a proper game system set up they just you know kind of act it out themselves we have like simple dice bot utility that you can add to the group so you can actually roll dice within the group and and everyone see what the outcome actually is but with your team we hope to build much more advanced more asymmetrical multiplayer functionality which is something we couldn't have done it on our own well we could would have it taken much longer longer time obviously and of course yeah we've been a couple of years at that so would be like nautic game two years down the line every about so first Pingo UK company acquired a Swedish company and then next Frontier step is going to Finland I guess so who know next year potentially Russian company I don't know and then just the world yeah I guess I guess something like that Dr Evil that's what we hope that's interesting so you're you're designing games purely around this social mechanic and that is the main Fe and then you're you're working out the type of you can build from that

yeah yeah so so we have kind of the the gameplay mechanic where uh the actions between the players are actually affecting the story lines and the games so it's not kind of like just players versus the environment but it's kind of player to player Cooperative or or competing mechanics and and that's that's something that we can use very well in this kind of group environment nice and I guess a final question because this is evolving so much and it's still quite fresh really as as a technology you know we've only seen coming out in the last couple of years where do you see it going in the next year two years is is every mobile game going to have a social mechanic like this I think uh it's safe to say that what we see at least that it adds retention to games it adds the whole Community aspect to it which makes people engage more within the game really so it's a it's not an easy way to add that added retention and and user engagement but if you can get it into your game game you will benefit a lot

and that's why we are working on Pingo towards a kind of open SDK platform which is a few months down the line or potentially even 6 months or or longer than that but then we are able to to give out the two box of tools to all developers to say actually you can access the chat you can access the leaderboards the the groups the gifting the whatnots and you know that's a powerful tool to have for a developer awesome Magnus Elena thank you so much for taking time out with us thanks for having us thanks for having us yes thank you bye