News

Advice from the PG Mixer Panel: Top tips for launching your game - with or without publishers

Smarts from Supercell, Grand Cru, NativeX etc

Advice from the PG Mixer Panel: Top tips for launching your game - with or without publishers
At the Pocket Gamer Super Mixer at Casual Connect 2013 San Francisco - sponsored by NativeX and Grand Cru - an all-star panel provided valuable insights to a packed room of mobile game developers.

Check out the photos here

Topics covered included how to launch a break-out game, what type of funding to seek, how to acquire users profitably, and the best developer resources.

The Grand unveiling

The session opened with the first live public demo of what many are calling one of the most ambitious mobile games ever made, Grand Cru's free-to-play iOS world-building game, Supernauts.

On stage were Grand Cru CEO Markus Pasula and CMO Thorbjorn Warin announcing the closing of their Series A round of $11 million led by IDinvest.


The Grand Cru crew

The duo began their presentation with a reveal of the game intro to the Minecraft-inspired physics puzzler, which features an addictive psychedelic-surf soundtrack and whimsical cartoon graphics in a 3D environment.

The game takes place in space and players travel to drowning Earth as a Supernaut to rescue it one block at a time.

The all-star panel

Following the Supernauts reveal, Warin joined the panel, which was anchored by industry luminary, Kristian Segerstrale.

Co-founder and partner of Initial Capital, he's now a board member at Supercell, and was previously head of digital at Electronic Arts, and co-founder of Playfish and Glu Mobile.


The panel: from the left: Lundberg, Segerstrale, Liu, Nicolas and Warin

Other speakers were Ben Liu, CEO of Pocket Gems, Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, GM Mobile of Perfect World, - both companies are launching third-party publishing platforms - and Erik Lundberg, VP and general manager of NativeX, the monetization gurus.

The panel was moderated by Jeff Scott, editor-in-chief, 148Apps, and Martine Paris, US events editor, Pocket Gamer.

The first question 'Was so what makes Finland so super?'

Thorbjorn Warin: Helsinki certainly does seem to be gunning for the throne as the gaming capital of the world. It's home to Supercell, Rovio, Nokia, Digital Chocolate, Remedy, Sulake, and of course Grand Cru.

The supportive Finnish culture has much to do it. By nurturing collaborative environments with small teams which have space to fail, risks can be taken and creativity is flourishing. The growing pool of talent, influx of capital from abroad, and sizable government grants, are creating the perfect storm.

Golden age for indies

With the explosion in touchscreen devices, expanding geographies, greater accessibility for a broadening demographic, and low barriers to entry, the market opportunity in mobile gaming is huge.

It's getting to the stage that everyone is a gamer, and gaming is ubiquitous, so are we in the Golden Age?

Fabien-Pierre Nicolas: Yes. This is the first generation born with an iPad in its hands. As the Angry Birds generation ages up into core, the demand for gaming experiences will increase as well.



Fabien-Pierre Nicolas and Jeff Scott

Warin: Gaming is a basic human social need. At the dawn of time there was gaming, singing and storytelling. It's an integral part of who we are, and will become part of everything we do.

Ben Liu: It's an amazing time to be a game maker! In the next 2-3 years, tablets and mobile will grow insanely. It has the largest install base, most reach, most ability to put games in front of users. The tablet will go down in history as the greatest device ever created.



Kristian Segerstrale speaks his mind

Kristian Segerstrale: Already the engagement on tablets is larger than on consoles, and as the share of gamers on consoles declines, it will only get bigger. While the large publishers are distracted with the launch of the next gen consoles, this is the time for indies to make their move.

To be published or self-publish

From there it didn't take long for a heated debate to develop over how best to get to market - DIY or with a publisher.

Segerstrale: Never before have you had so much market access through self-publishing tools. You can make a game today and get it to market very cheaply. From a marketing perspective, you don't need millions to support a game launch and get it out there.

You just need to create a great product, launch in Canada or New Zealand, demonstrate with tens of thousands of dollars you can acquire profitably, and anyone worth their salt from a financing perspective will fund the rest. The alternative is signing with a publisher who will take a share of the value you're creating in exchange for some short term services.


Ben Liu with mic

Liu: There is a distinction between developers with resources and those just starting out. If you're a smaller company, you'll want to find an audience for your product, a publisher can help you with that. It's a lot of work to integrate with all of the ad networks. If you're a team of 10, you 'll want to spend your time working on the game.

Some of the most amazing products like Temple Run were created by teams of 5-10 people. Pocket Gems started out as two people and finding our audience early was the key to our success. It has taken us over four years to create the tools and technologies to profitably acquire users using 100+ different channels and to have built a network of games which have been downloaded over 120 million times.

Launching a game in today's world is an extremely complex process and working with a publisher provides access to important resources, technology and expertise. If you're trying to break into a new market, everything depends on making a great game which is incredibly hard and requires a singular level of focus.


Who mentioned Java?

Start small, contain the scope, make something pure and fun, and iterate. It's still really possible to make something that breaks out and does really well. I don't think putting any time into figuring out the intricacies of user acquisition is the right thing to do if you have limited resources or time.

Nicolas: With $250,000 to $500,000 to get your game out there and another $30,000 to $50,000 to market in soft launch, we're already talking about a pretty substantial sum. And it's more for a core game. If you don't have rich friends, you'll want to talk to a publisher. If you're a studio that budgeted $1 million for development but forgot that it takes $2-3 million to market the game to the right users, you'll want to talk to a publisher.

Be demanding. You don't have to give a majority to a publisher, you can keep your IP. Strike a deal that is balanced in the long term. Put in the contract that they must take you to Google and Apple, and give you access to the KPIs. Ask what is your LTV methodology? How do you soft launch games? Look at the revenue share post soft launch and do the math to ensure that you are still retaining enough of the revenue stream to keep iterating on the product. If the publisher is keeping 70-80 percent, you won't be able to make a living let alone create more content for your community.

Warin: If you have a premium title then go with a publisher, so you can have a really tight team just focused on the game. If you're F2P, you should never go with a publisher, but you also can't stay as a 5-6 person indie dream team because you need to scale, you need to have different competencies not game related, you need to understand analytics and marketing and that it's not just about spending money to acquire users, it's also about talent and making them work within the team as well.

So for premium games, absolutely publishers are a good route. For F2P, absolutely not.


Lundberg has advice

Erik Lundberg: To help indies get started, there are some great tools out there including Kochava, HasOffers and Onavo. There's also the NativeX Games Task Force, a group of game experts who sit down with small developers to look at the game in the early stage and do a 45-page write-up with improvements on retention strategies, monetization, and interface design. Some companies have seen a 300 percent lift just from implementing these recommendations.

Don't kill the cat

With free-to-play all the rage, we're starting to see every game constructed in the same way, so how are developers to prevent gamer fatigue?

Segerstrale: In the 1980s, it was possible to make and sell games without a great relationship with the customer. Free-to-play is going through that right now. Some you feel are fair, you're not paying to win, you're engaged and not trapped by the system.

Then there are games where they give you a kitten, and two weeks later if you don't pay, something dreadful is going to happen to that kitten. That's not a particularly fair model. If we don't evolve then yes, gamer fatigue is likely to set in, but there is tremendous opportunity for those who venture to innovate in game design. Supernauts is actually a great example of a couple of steps forward in some aspects of gaming.

And finally

A final question - what are you most excited about?

Segerstrale: First and foremost awesome games in new categories. But I'm also interested in the rapid evolution in marketing given the rapidly increasing budgets. The biggest innovations in mobile gaming over the next year will likely be in marketing and how games are brought to market overall.

Then there is also the rise in second screens like google glass and wrist watches. Although phones and tablets are likely to be your primary screen, how game makers imagine experiences on these second screens will be fun to watch.

Lundberg: I agree that wearable devices will take over some time in the next 5 years. Looking forward to seeing how mobile is being integrated into the big shared screen. With Samsung as a leader in both mobile and television, that space is likely to become very interesting.

Also watching closely the mobile social game networks. Kakao has taken over messaging in South Korea with 90 percent penetration of population of 50 million. They built a game channel on top of that and the top games are making over $3 million in revenue a day. There's LINE in Japan, Tencent (WeChat)in China, and now Tango with its 100 million users are trying to bring social to mobile in the West.

Were you snapped?

Avery Wong Photography took great photos of the event.

Visit the Facebook gallery here to see who attended.

Upcoming events

Next up in San Francisco there's the Pocket Gamer Drink Up with Grantoo & Heyzap- on Tuesday 27 August. You can register for it free.

Also, on Thursday 26 September, there's the Pocket Gamer Mobile Mixer @ LOGIN, which you can register for free here.

It will feature the following speakers - Jim Greer, CEO of GameStop's Kongregate, Renato Iwersen, VP, Tango, and Dan Fiden, Partner, Signia Ventures.

Pocket Gamer is a media partner of LOGIN. If you're planning on attending the LOGIN conference, enjoy a 30% discount when you register with code pg30.



About the author



Martine Paris is Pocket Gamer's US Events Editor blogging and producing the industry's hottest events. She is the producer of the Pocket Gamer Mobile Mixer series in San Francisco. Follow her escapades @contentnow

Tech reporter Martine Paris covers trends across mobile, games, AR VR, wearables and IoT, the intersection of emerging tech, music, video and culture, and how to get featured, funded and monetized. You can typically find her at shows with a mic in her hand interviewing industry's leading voices. Follow her @contentnow.