Casual Connect 2013: Mobile Monetization Insights from Amazon

by Jason Chein, Director, Amazon Game Circle

·         Game Circle is a service from Amazon that provides achievements, leaderboards, and cloud save.

·         Amazon did a cohort analysis study, comparing the top 50 grossing games against the others. They found that the top 50 have higher session length per user and higher average selling prices, which lead to their higher revenue. The differences were in engagement, timeshare, and price ranges.

·         Customers who stay longer are willing to spend more. It’s about building relationships…

o    Engage customers early. 18% of customer’s value is realized on day 1.

o    Keep them in the game. 44% of repeat purchases happen within one hour after their first purchase.

o    Give them a reason to come back. 62% of revenue happens after day 7 and 35% after day 30.

Casual Connect 2013: Bite-Sized Narratives: Conveying Impactful Narrative with Emotional Hooks

by Levi Buchanan, Business Development, Chillingo

·         Summary: Use thin-slice narratives, telling story through character emotions and environments, and allowing the player to fill in the blanks themselves.

·         Cut the Rope is a true pick-up-and-play game that’s pure in storytelling. It doesn’t require a hard narrative and all the story is told through emotions and character animations.

·         The narrative should show motive, promise, raised stakes, and payoff. In Cut the Rope, Om Nom starts the level by pointing at his mouth, telling you to feed him (motive). When you cut the rope, he starts showing happiness as he’s about to get fed (promise). When the candy is next to any obstacles or danger, Om Nom shows worry (raised staked). Finally, when the candy is fed to Om Nom, he munches on the food happily (payoff). Cut the Rope tells an entire narrative in 30 seconds. Om Nom’s reactions to your actions are very emotional.

·         Where’s My Water was also effective in creating a strong character, Swampy, who recently entered Disney’s pantheon of characters. In the intro sequence, comic panels show ferocious, scary alligators and then cuts to Swampy, who’s taking a shower, showing you that he’s friendly and cheery.

·         Canabalt’s environment invokes panic. There’s a hard narrative for Canabalt that exists outside the screen, but the game itself keeps the narrative minimal and to the point.

·         Successful mobile games have very thin narratives that are also very deep.

·         Thin-slicing is the concept of decision making with only bare, immediate information. We humans are very good at thin-slicing.

·         A thin-slice narrative embraces the economics of mobile, excising unessential plot and character elements.

·         The most important things to have in a narrative are…

1.     Relevance

2.     Momentum – remove any friction into your story

3.     Voice – transfer world building through a specific and consistent voice. Voice can come from art style. Swampy, for example, was designed to look like a Disney character.

4.     Emotion – emotion is the universal language. You can tell so much story with a single expression (e.g. Wild E. Coyote’s emotions).

·         Mobile games often focus too much on guilt and pride as emotions. There are not enough range of emotions like compassion and curiosity.

Casual Connect 2013: Why the Time is Right for AAA Quality on Emerging Platforms

by Greg Richardson, CEO, Rumble Entertainment

·         Building a great core mechanic is not enough.

·         Give your employees a monthly allowance to spend on other free-to-play games to study them.

·         Word of mouth is the most important discovery tool. Rumble Entertainment buys less than 5% of its players and relies on word of mouth.

·         Touchscreen first-person shooter is difficult right now, but people’s perceptions will change when a killer app comes out. Console first-person shooter was thought to be impossible until Halo came out and changed everybody’s perceptions.

​​The Future of Mobile Gaming: A Conversation with Nickelodeon and EA

Nate Altschul from Nickelodeon talked about a bunch of HTML5 game engines and what he recommends.

• Why use HTML5? It has high reach, ease of development, avoids 30% tax, it's a Flash replacement on mobile browsers, and it offers quick iteration.
• There are a few problems with HTML5 right now though. The tech is a moving target (DOM -> Canvas -> WebGL), it's fragmented, there's few "real" games, there are no big success stories yet, and many tech challenges (audio, animations, etc.)
• There are many HTML5 game engines available today. In fact, there are more HTML5 engines than there are "real" games. When choosing an engine, you should evaluate its traction (how is its growth?), your team size, its toolchain (what IDE, visual editors, debugging tools does it use?), its features (canvas, WebAudio, physics), its reach, the languages you can code in, and its price.
• There are many deal breakers that make some HTML5 engines useless. These include no links or examples of real games developed using the engine, no multiplatform targeting, no WebAudio support, no canvas, no lazy loading, no Flash animation integration, closed source, unresponsive development team, large unoptimized sprite sheets, no language support other than Javascript, no screen scaling without affecting aspect ratio, bloated keyframe animations, no cutscenes, no object pooling, inefficient memory management, missing abstractions from browser quirks, no multiple renderers, no localization, and no embeddable entry point JS file.
• Javascript sucks for development. It has no strong typing, can't cross-compile to native code, it doesn't scale well for big complex teams, it has no compile-time error checking, no code auto-completion, no code navigation, no abstraction layer for browser differences, difficult debugging tools, and it's just plain ugly.
• Here are some HTML5 game engines that are actually recommendable because they have minimal deal breakers.
• PlayN - cross-platform engine, uses Java, optimized for Android browsers, free and open-source, uses Eclipse IDE. Gotchas - buggy Flash and iOS backend, installation and setup is a challenge, no more support from Google, GWT overhead, has about twice as many lines of code. Recommended for Java developers targeting Android.
• CreateJS - deep Adobe CS integration, supports Javascript/TypeScript/Haxe, free, uses MIT license, done by Grant Skinner (Flash expert), toolchain (Adobe Flash CS6, Zoe Spritesheet Exporter, EasleJS). Gotchas - big spritesheets, not multiplatform, no SWF export, relies on Flash's DisplayList metaphor which adds overhead. Recommended for Flash developers.
• ImpactJS - features Canvas/WebAudio/Physics, easy to put into native wrappers, uses Javascript, $100, lots of indie games but no professional games yet, has Weltmeister (visual editor), supports Ejecta (iOS wrapper). Gotchas - large animation files, limited screensize support, not open sourced. Recommended for indie developers who want to make side-scrolling platformers.
• Construct 2 - best visual editor, $390, lots of indie games, requires no programming knowledge. Gotchas - lack of fine control, hard to optimize, large animation files. Recommended for beginners with no programming experience.
• Cocos2D HTML5 - familiar API to Cocos2D, high reach (HTML5, iOS, Android), uses Javascript/Haxe, free, supported by Zynga, toolchain inludes CocosBuilder/PhysicsEditor and other Cocos2D pipeline tools. Gotchas - still early, very small community (but will grow very fast), large animation files. Recommended for Cocos2D developers.
• Spaceport.io - supports vector graphics, features over-the-air updates, reach (native iOS and Android), supports Actionscript 3, a few real games developed using this engine, toolchain (Adobe Flash CS6, FlashBuilder, FlashDevelop), very similar to Adobe AIR. Gotchas - only native support, no HTML5 browser support. Recommended for Flash and Air developers.
• Haxe - cross-platform SDK, reach includes HTML5/Flash/iOS/Android/Win8, free, language is ECMAScript (similar to AS3), the only engine that's truly multiplatform, toolchain includes IntelliJ/FlashDevelop/FDT/SublimeText, integrates Adobe CS6, uses Stencyl visual editor, can create cutscenes using Flash-like timelines, backed by Blackberry.
• Honorable mentions (good engines, but has a few deal breakers) - Tresensa, Ludei CAAT, CocoonJS, Playcraft, Turbulenz, PixilJS, LimeJS.

Aron Sagon from EA also gave a talk about games as service. I'm not really sure what the point of his talk was... outside of complaining how difficult it is to make them.

• Aron is a chief engineer who worked on Pogo, Sims 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and most recently, Simpsons: Tapped Out.
• He compares the old business model (sell shiny disks) to the new model (sell a service). The service model can be broken down into three steps: identify the user, collect money, and then deliver the experience.
• In the service model, you have to keep track of the users and what they've bought, then make sure you deliver the service to them. In the traditional model, you didn't have to track users. Once they've bought your product, your relationship with the customer is pretty much over.
• It's very, very hard to track your users. Users don't want to register new accounts and even if they do, they are unlikely to remember their account info. Even with iTunes, Apple does not provide information about who is purchasing or using your app. There is a lot of extra overhead to put in analytic and tracking data into your games.
• Building service games is very difficult. Before, you would develop the game and then ship it. Now, you often ship the game and then develop it. Development timelines can be as long as 5 years. And because of the massive volume of players, small mistakes can become big deals.
• Making a pretty game is important, making a fun game is important... but there is much, much more that goes into game development. You need to integrate monetization, virality, engineer databases, etc.

Inside Social Apps Conference 2012

The Inside Social Apps is a full-day conference that was recently held in New York. There were 8 sessions total -- 6 of which were panels, one was a fire-side chat with Facebook’s David Fischer, and one was an analytic report about mobile apps. These are the key takeaways from the conference.

There was a pretty good list of game developers and game industry people who were speakers. Among them were Davin Miyoshi (GSN Digital), Doug Scott (ngmoco), John Getze (Kixeye), Mike Lee (Happy Elements),  Robert Winkler (5^th Planet), Wilson Kriegel (OMGPOP/Zynga), Mike Foley (EA), Matthe Cullen (RocketPlay), Mathieu Nouzareth (FreshPlanet), John Spinale (Disney Interactive), Ben Liu (Pocket Gems), and Mike Sego (Gaia Interactive). These guys are all CEOs or VP of Marketing at their respective companies.

Facebook, iOS, Android: Which Platform(s) Hold the Most Opportunity in 2013?

• The #1 driver to install in the iTunes App Store is SEO.
• There are many challenges to changing platforms including the need to hire up and bring new talent, transitioning to new technologies such as Unity over Flash, going free-to-play, and fragmentation of hardware and resolutions on mobile.
• Letterpress only uses GameCenter for its social features. It arrived and quickly died, because it was really difficult to get friends on your platform. Don't put all efforts on one social platform; you need to integrate as many as possible.
• All apps are competing with each other in terms of user mindshare.
• The cost of acquisition is increasing. There is, however, a six month window in 2013 for really cheap paid acquisition.
• Microsoft is going to be a player in the space with Windows 8. Even though the technology might not be the best, history has shown that the best products never win. The most important metrics are ARPU and install base.
• iOS has more valuable users, but Android has higher aggregate users. We need to think internationally since most of the audience exist outside the United States and outside the English language.
• Games will usually kick off any platform ecosystem.
• Advice to game developers: start simple and build your app with a simple architecture. The rule of thumb is that if someone sees it and asks, "What is that?" then remove it from the game. Simplify and reduce the game to its simplest form.
• The four most important tenants of social and mobile development are install (discoverability), play (retention/engagement), share (social/virality), and pay (revenue/monetization).

Social and Mobile Game Product Design and Development

• Your business strategy should be guided by where the users are going. FreshPlanet switched to focus only on mobile development with social components. It was very difficult, but ultimately a wise decision.
• Facebook's audience is mostly only casual, but mobile also has midcore and hardcore gamers. There are more different types of audience on mobile.
• All game design is observing what's going on in the industry, but you also need to bring your own creative process into the mix. Clones don't succeed. Innovation and word of mouth is the key to getting users.
• Kongregate has real-time chat so developers get immediate feedback from their audience and it's great for clan/guild features. Facebook is lacking these features.
• The real development happens post-launch. Developer hope to have a conversation with users for months and years. Developer can't develop in a vacuum.
• 5th Planet has been in midcore genre for two and a half years. There's always room for good games and the platforms will upgrade to support richer experiences such as 3D and synchronous play.
• Zynga is declining, but Wooga and King have been increasing their user base rapidly.
• Flash was the best defacto platform for web games, but now we need AIR to develop for mobile as well. Unity is also becoming a big player in the space.
• Mobile advertising is doing really well. Free-to-play is the way to go due to its very high distribution and its constant stream of revenue from in-app purchases.
• There is a backlash against free-to-play games by gamers, and sometimes rightfully so, since some terribly designed free-to-play games just nickel and dime players. But gamers should think about it as paying for what you want and enjoy the most. This, in turn, will drive game design to build towards what people want and therefore, create a better game.
• UI on mobile is an open space to explore. There must be a better way than virtual joysticks.
• Developers need to build different experiences for tablet, mobile, and desktop.
• Facebook connected users play twice as long and are 8 times more likely to spend money.

The Future of Mobile App Discovery & Marketing

• The rising cost of user acquisition is a sign of industry evolution. Developers need to pay attention to how much they're willing to spend.
• The cost of user acquisition might flush out in the future. Apple wants to control the channel more, but TapJoy wants to help developers with incentivized discovery. Research shows that incentivized discovery has 40% returning engagement compared to organic distribution's 45% returning engagement.
• Small developers should get together and form a cross-promotion network. Gree acts like a large-scale cross-promotional network that helps small developers and do interest targeting.
• People don't know if an app is good or not since ratings are ineffective. 95% of all app ratings are an average of 3.8.
• What are some improvements that the App Store can make? 80% of people don't know what they are looking for since they don't know brands. We need an app search engine for casual users, better and more useful app descriptions, social app discovery, and more relevancy in their searches.
• There are always methods to scoot up the ranks by gaming the system to get higher search results.
• App Store icon and name of the app are very important. A/B test and evaluate all marketing materials during the beta phase to look for the highest click through rate.
• There is a very small real-estate and very small window of time to leave an impression on the user. Results tend to homogenize from a consumer perspective. A lot of developers go for similar art styles, names, characters, and mechanics to attract users.
• We need more app suggestions pushed to users and more categorical search relevancy. Searching "steampunk" only returns games with "steampunk" in the name, but not the entire genre and theme. The charts should also hide the apps that the users already own.
• Charts work for app discovery but is limited. Games crowd out non-gaming apps because they're far more popular.
• The App Store is like the grocery store. There will always be a place for marketing outside the App Store. People consume media in different ways.

Fireside Chat: Facebook's David Fisch

• Facebook wants to help with app discovery, which is currently a big problem like Web 1.0 discovery.
• Facebook really changed discovery. Friends were pushing content to you and friends were the best filters for good apps.
• Facebook wants to create value to mobile developers since mobile devices are inherently social.
• The mobile experience is much more at the moment. What you do in life happens away from your desk.
• Device fragmentation continues to grow. We need cross-device connectivity.
• Most people don't read reviews or look at ratings. We need recommendations based on what we like and what our friends like.
• SongPop has built a social app on mobile and integrated the experiences through Facebook. Logged in users are 25% more engages and also spend more money on the app.
• Facebook is a vertical platform with canvas, but also horizontal with social. Facebook is meant to be complimentary to mobile and a cross-platform social component.

Social Apps for Marketers and Brands: Maximizing Audience Engagement

• A lot has changed in the past year -- OpenGraph, Pinterest, Instagram, SoundCloud, Tumblr, foursquare. There is a re-emphasis on creating good content. The biggest change is that Facebook started rolling out mobile marketing.
• Have business goals before you start planning out your project. Monetization is a big goal this year.
• Developers can't build a small one-off app. They need to be a sustainable business and there needs to be inherent value in the app itself outside of its marketing goal. There is no point in launching an app without some paid media behind it.
• Sweepstakes, coupons, and essay contests have high participation rates, but low sharing rates. The value is to the user and they are less likely to share. Personality quizzes, however, are 5 times more likely to be shared because it allows users to display their personality.
• We need to move out of social media bubble. There are lots of other marketing channels such as e-mail.
• Some successful marketing campaigns -- write about how much you love your mom on Mother's Day, Oscar Meyer taste-imonials with Coupons.com, Washington Redskins using template gallery to build themed pages for their fans, and voting polls on Facebook and Google Plus Hangouts.
• We need templates that a community manager can put together and launch by themselves with zero budget and less than 24 hours.
• The universe of possibilities have increased but the fundamentals of marketing hasn't changed.
• LinkedIn released their API. Capture social interactions and leverage that for personalized pages.

Monetizing Social and Mobile Games

• Kixeye has been in the business of core strategy games. Their games are free-to-play, but they sell "time" and not virtual goods. They sell abilities to repair base or generate units faster.
• Make a fun game first and think about monetization later to fit the game. Monetization solves itself if you create something fun and engaging.
• The first company that innovates and finds a real estate builds the fanbase first.
• Advertisement works well with many genres, but not all.
• Monetization methods include selling impatience, gambling, betting, cosmetic items, virtual goods, premium items, virtual currency, and daily bonuses.
• Sports betting is time-based and based on real-life events, but there are challenges of downtime. You can add casino games to play during downtime.
• Authenticity and passion is what is key to success. It's hard to reach critical mass so leave publishing to publishers. 
• The future of computing is mobile with the proliferation of devices.
• It's always more valuable if you're both the developer and the publisher, because you own the IP, data, and the customers. However, it's very expensive to publish, so partner with a dedicated publisher.
• Games are a hit driven business like the record industry. All media content is hit driven.

Investing in Social and Mobile Games

• Zynga went from $12 to $2. Secondary markets have been flat or going down. Six months ago (Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, etc.) were successful but failed after they went public. The exit scenarios and evaluations for investment have changed in the last year.
• Fundraising is tough for gaming companies. Signia is one of three firms that still look at gaming deals currently.
• Supercell is making $750,000 per day with only 60 people in the company.
• Investors are looking for games with retention, engagement, and longetivity. They are looking for people who are building a business, not just an app. They need high quality free-to-play developers who are making games as a service. The three core skills for a developer to have are discoverability, marketing apparatus (acquisition, community, retention), and monetization.
• With a packaged product, you've already made your money upfront. Now you have to worry about getting people to actually play your game to monetize them.
• Kickstarter and IndieGoGo requires pre-existing fame to be successful. It's not all that interesting to the industry and will not change the ways that traditional funding happens.
• Anyone can make games now such as garage developers, but the challenge is scalability.
• Be wary of the casino space. The major players will spend money and they are ruthless about their space.

ShopTalk Volume 01: Social Meets Mobile

At IGDA roundtable discussion, NY-based game developers discussed various topics related to social games, mobile games, and the cross between the two. There was a verbal NDA among the group, so no specific analytics or company details would be shared here.

• What is a social game? This is a question that many game developers struggled with, but the ultimate consensus is that a social game is a game that lives on Facebook or has Facebook Connect. There are, in fact, many games that are actually more social than what we know as "social games" such as Johann Sebastian Joust or World of Warcraft. But developers and audience understand that we mean Facebook when we talk about social games.
• Are social games actually social? Although you are inviting friends to play and spamming friends with gift requests, there is no actual social connection. In Animal Crossing, you can create a meme that travels to a friend's town. For example, you can teach a citizen to say a bad word and that citizen might go to another town and bring along that bad word with him and spread it across town. This small bit, no matter how inane, represents a part of you and your self expression, and its migration to a friend's world makes the game inherently social.
• Although spamming friends with requests or filling up your wall with posts have no real social connection, it is still 1% social. One percent is indefinitely better than zero percent. 
• There are games where you can get someone's personality through the gameplay such as Draw Something. Some people draw stick figures, while others do elaborate art pieces to represent simple objects.
• Sometimes, just the fact that you're playing the same game as somebody else is social. You are playing alone together or having a shared experience separately. It is like going to a movie theater or studying by yourself at a library. Although there is no interaction between you and others, everyone is having a shared experience. 
• The Last Stand is a isometric 3D shooting game on Facebook. You gather resources and build shelters against the zombie horde. This is not a casual game and is aimed towards the hardcore crowd. Idle Worship is an example of a game in-between the casual and hardcore market.
• Many casual audiences think of games as they do of porn. They are shameful of them and feel guilty to play them. This is attributed to the poor stigma of games. However, many of these people still play games; they just don't want to be associated with the term. The majority don't want to be called a gamer, even though they've put more hours into playing games than their own children. One attendee compares this to people who read trashy romance novels, which by the way, has had a recent resurgence because of Kindles and the ability to hide what their reading from the public.
• Half of Facebook users play a lot of games, while the other half hate games and never want to touch a game.
• What about mobile connectivity with social games? Good idea is to not offer the same exact experiences across both platforms. Mobile app can be a companion to the social game. For example, have a MMO on your computer, but a monster/pet sim on your mobile device. You can level up and train your pet on mobile and its stats would transfer back into your main game.
• Energy as an abstract resource entered social game design as a way to limit play sessions. Generally, 20 minutes or less is a good length of a play session.
• What are the demographic differences between Facebook and mobile? Developers can gather a lot of demographic information from Facebook (gender, age, location, education, etc.), but generally, there is little to no data on mobile devices.
• According to one attendee, the more displayed your microtransaction popups are, the less likely a 18-24 year old male player would purchase. In many cases, they would downright stop playing the game. However, if they go to the store on their own accord without any prompts from the game, they would be likely to buy. On the other hand, 35+ year old females are more likely to purchase if they get those microtransaction screens, especially one at the session start when they open the game. Is it possible to get both demographics in the same game? Should get demographic data and build for your audience.
• Only 20% of people login to Facebook Connect or other networks (OpenFeint, GameCenter, Papaya) on their mobile devices. The real question is, are the 20% also the paying crowd? If they are, then only this 20% matters. It's possible there is a large overlap between the paying users and the logged in users as they are both the most engaged players.
• Facebook considers themselves as "social plumbing." They are the backbone of your social graph.
• Mobile games gets people faster and cheaper. The cost of user acquisition is much lower than on Facebook because there's no Zynga to compete with.
• What about gamification of real-life like Fitocracy? Using mobile device as a pedometer to track your running progress, which in turn gains points and levels up your avatar. It is also a social game where you compare/compete with friends' avatars. 
• There's nothing stopping big production games to be on Facebook. Gaikai (maybe OnLive too) announced that they would be bringing full-fledged production games to Facebook. The technology exists for hardcore games on Facebook, but the perception doesn't. There's a catch-22 where developers don't want to make hardcore games on Facebook because they think the audience isn't there for it, while the audience doesn't know that it exists to be clamoring for it.
• There are now many apps to let you stalk girls, sending you profile information of females in your immediate area. Many of these apps got shut down and sued, deservedly so. But this is also a warning that you need privacy and license agreements in your Mobile game. 100% of games need privacy disclosures, but only 13% of them have them. Facebook games are luckily protected by Facebook's own terms of service, but mobile devices have nothing of the sort.
• How do you handle the permanence of information and cross-platform synchronization? Should data be stored locally so that players can continue their experience even when they lose internet connectivity (on the subway train)? Should they be stored on the server so they can bring their accounts across platforms and also to prevent cheating? One solution is to just offer different experiences online and offline, and make sure to communicate that to the players. For example, when online, you can submit scores to the global leaderboard, but when offline, you can only submit to a local, personal leaderboard.