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MGF 2010: Mobile success is all about talking to your gamers

Community is more important than marketing

MGF 2010: Mobile success is all about talking to your gamers
The second panel talk of Mobile Games Forum was all about making games accessible and improving content discovery.

Chairman Tim Harrison kicked off by asking: What's been the impact of app stores on marketing through operator decks?

Barry O'Neill, president, Namco Bandai Networks Europe

We work through EA Mobile in Europe now. You used to be able to rely on the carrier market, but now you need to engage with consumers directly, which isn't something we had to do in the early days. And when you're dealing with porting costs and 50:50 revenue share, there's not always a lot of money left over for marketing.

Niall Fraser, co-founder, TinRaven

We're still in the situation that Apple's App Store enables us to get to market. We wouldn't have been able to work in old the operator channels. In terms of visibility, one of the most important ways is to get your game reviews by the websites.

Paul Farley, MD, Tag Games

Our attitude to marketing has changed dramatically over the past year. We didn't used to have a marketing strategy. We're now talking to individual consumers. We don't need to broadcast to millions of people. Just talking to 20 people, who will talk to 10 of their friends is great. They can take our message to a much wider audience. We can spend £4,000 to 5,000 to market our games as long as our message is consistent and the game is high quality. Sometimes you don't need any money.

Craig Dalton, veep of business development, Mplayit

You need to give your consumers the tools to talk to you and to each other. Word of mouth is the number one reason people buy things.

Barry O'Neill: I think we've moving from public relations to individual relations. Letting players compete over Facebook with Brain Exercise, meant you got a sense that you knew who these players were. Facebook is great in terms of raising the awareness of Java games. Many people don't know they can buy games on their mobile phones which is why we've linked up with Mplayit to offer a Facebook app that let them download games to their phones.

Xavier Carillo Costa, CEO, Digital Legends

We're been working with OEMs to provide launch titles to promote their flagship devices. We've done that with Samsung and Apple. You get a massive response because you can employ the machinery of the OEM and all the app market places are now trying to attractive developers. I don't think these campaigns are mass market though. They're more niche.

Q: How will the freemium model change the way you operate?

Craig Dalton: Particularly as developers move into in-app purchases, you need to have a sustained relationship with your consumers. It can't just all be about the launch of your game.

Paul Farley: We look at the success of freemium on Facebook and I think getting that to work on mobile is going to be challenge. You have to deal with it from the start of development but it won't suit every game. Our next game Astro Ranch has been built with this in mind from the start, but it's going to be stepping stone for us. We're in a transition period. Some publishers such as ngmoco have been successful but by the end of year everyone will be using the model, and we'll all be waiting for the first company to have a big success in iPhone with this model.

Q: So it's the case that it's all about the Apple App Store now?

Barry O'Neill: Google is most interesting platform in terms of the uptake of handsets but the Android Market is like walking into a half-built shopping mall. But if Google can fix the market, it will pose a challenge for Apple.

Craig Dalton: It will take a while for Google to catch up because it doesn't control the ecosystem. But I'm very bullish on the platform. There will be volume on the platform by the end of the year so developers should be preparing for Android.

Q: What about Windows Mobile?

Barry O'Neill: If it's what we've heard, in terms on the integration of services, the next version of Windows Mobile will be great in terms of allowing people to transfer gamer profiles to mobile as well as providing marketing opportunities for us.

Similarly we've haven't seen the strong integration between Facebook and iPhone games yet. We currently have a siloed mobile games business and a siloed Facebook games business. But I think there's a lot of value between the two.

Craig Dalton: It's interesting that Zynga backed away from iPhone integration, while SGN dropped its Facebook activity in terms of focusing on iPhone. It will take a skilled company to be able to handle both of these businesses.

Paul Farley: But people want to communicate and play together. Solo games are coming to an end. All games in future will have social aspects.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.