Pocket Gamer Connects London 2019 will take place on January 21st to 22nd. To give you a taste of what to expect, we'll regularly be publishing interviews with the speakers at the show.
For more details on PGC London and to book a ticket, head to the website here.
In today’s speaker spotlight, we're talking to Nanobit head of user acquisition Farhan Haq, who will be filling us in on why we should focus on Ad Whales for our UA strategy at PGCL.
After two years as a statistician, Haq moved into performance marketing and has now been there for over seven years.
PocketGamer.Biz: Could you tell us a bit about your company?
Farhan Haq: We are the biggest games developer in Croatia, and have particular success in narrative and fashion apps, particularly My Story and Hollywood Story.
What does your role entail?
I manage the full performance marketing strategy of the company, as well as three UA managers, six artists and two community managers.
Why did you want to work in the games industry?
It's the entertainment industry, and therefore it's a lot more fun than most other sectors.
What advice would you give to anyone looking to get into it?
What are you waiting for?
What are your thoughts on the industry in the last 12 months?
Hyper casual and battle royale were the biggest trends of 2018, which were vastly different from each.
People were expecting AR to be the big thing, but I think these trends caught many developers by surprise.
What significant trends do you predict in the next 12 months?
No doubt 2019 is going to be a difficult year to predict, as what happened in 2018 was not to be expected.
Certainly, we will see some new trends, but I think 2019 will be the year of the interactive games. We see this now appearing on Netflix, with even shows like Black Mirror having interactive programmes.
I believe that there will be a lot more interactive games coming out this year, and the male audience will finally be engaged by these.
How has the games industry changed since you first started?
The games industry has evolved a lot from the casual beginnings of Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. First of all five years ago, we started to see a shift to F2P games, that relied on In-App App Purchases.
The first hit of these was the Match-3 title of Candy Crush, which remains a top game now with it's large fanbase.
Now we see a lot of different types of games coming out, with hyper casual that revolves around ad generated revenue and other games which have a combo of IAP, ad revenue and subscriptions.
The industry is also much more competitive than it used to be, meaning the importance of user acquisition is far greater than it ever was.
Successful developers must have strong user acquisition teams that know when and how to scale marketing spend to effectively increase the user base of strong potential titles.
Which part of the Connects event are you most looking forward to and why?
I am most looking forward to catching up with my industry peers in London again.
Find out more about Pocket Gamer Connects London 2019 on the website.
