Despite being trashed talked by Big Fish CEO Paul Thelen in his keynote, the afternoon was time for G5 Entertainment CEO Vlad Suglobov to get his revenge.
"We've had 60 million downloads, 20 million on Android. That's more than Big Fish," he said.
There's a spat between the casual publishers with Big Fish highlighting its performance on iPad, while G5 is currently focused on Android.
The crux of the public argument seems to be that both companies compete to source content from the same pool of developers.
"90 percent of our revenue is from mobile and tablets. We're looking forward to a world of 10 billion connected devices," Suglobov said.
Making the switch
Talking about the development of the game Virtual City Playground - originally a paid PC download game - Suglobov highlighted the differences when taking a paid casual game and making it free-to-play on Android and iOS.
The developer slowed down construction and resource production cycles, and increased the in-game price dramatically.
"10 hours to build a house is more realistic than 10 seconds," he said.
In this way, the original 3 hours of casual gameplay was extended into a month-long experience, played across short sessions.
You need to provide the opportunity for people who don't want to spend time working out how your gameplay works to spend money to make progress, Suglobov pointed out, refering to people who spend cash on buying soft currency.
Of course, other additions were high level customisation buildings that people who want that kudos have to spend real money on.
His conclusion: "You can take a relatively unknown PC portal casual game and if you convert it well to mobile and free-to-play, you can do very well from it".
News
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.
Related Articles
Top Stories
News
11 hours, 20 minutes ago
PocketGamer.biz Podcast Week in Mobile Games E12 - Xbox's mobile games store and Unity vs. AppLovin
Feature
May 17th, 2024
New release roundup: The best new mobile games from a battle royale to a console classic remake
Feature
May 16th, 2024
Behind the scenes: How adding sandwich offers to an idle merge game boosted three metrics at once
Events
Digital Dragons | Europe | May 19th |
GamesBeat Summit 2024 | North America | May 20th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Nordic Game Spring 2024 | Nordic | May 21st |
Impact 2024 - Indie Games | May 23rd | |
Morocco Gaming Expo | Africa | May 24th |
MomoCon 2024 | North America | May 24th |
Unreal Fest Gold Coast 2024 | Australasia | May 29th |
Popular Stories
Feature
May 14th, 2024
53 top mobile games in soft launch: Squad Busters, Battle Guys: Royale, Plants vs. Zombies 3, LEGO Hill Climb Adventures, and more
Feature
May 13th, 2024
Hot Five: Dubai's new Gaming Visa, April's mobile game charts, and Xbox studio closures
Feature
May 14th, 2024