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PGC Helsinki Digital: Downloads need to take "five-seconds or less" on Facebook Gaming

Quicksave Interactive CEO and co-founder Elina Arponen spoke about the benefits of developing games for social platforms

PGC Helsinki Digital: Downloads need to take "five-seconds or less" on Facebook Gaming

The first download of a social game on platforms such as Facebook Gaming needs to take "five-seconds or less" to keep retention high.

Quicksave Interactive CEO and co-founder Elina Arponen made the comment during her talk at PGC Helsinki Digital on 'Developing Games for Social Super Apps'.

"The less it is the more users you will get and also it helps with retention where returning users don't have to wait for a long time," Arponen told viewers.

"Of course, when the user is playing you can download more in the background which a lot of games do."

With 15 years of experience in the games industry, Arponen shared the major benefits of creating games for a number of the biggest social platforms in the world due to their huge audiences. Facebook, for instance, has a monthly active user base of two billion, while China's most prominent social application WeChat sees over a billion visitors per month.

"Quality games"

"It's also a good market for the players. They want quality games and to connect and be social especially during these times when there's less face-to-face connection," said Arponen.

"People like to connect digitally."

The Quicksave co-founder spoke of the high cost surrounding user acquisition and how performance marketing is more key. With this, social discovery is a major incentive for social gaming platforms. Friends can share links to games and UA is simpler by ads taking players to games in one click.

Arponen previously spoke at PGC London on the good, the bad, and the future of instant gaming.

Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki Digital is the best of our Pocket Gamer Connects conference in an online form, with an entire week of talks, meetings, and pitch events taking place from September 14th to the 18th. You can read up on all the tracks taking place throughout the week here.

Deputy Editor

Matthew Forde is the deputy editor at PocketGamer.biz and also a member of the Pocket Gamer Podcast. You can find him on Twitter @MattForde64 talking about stats, data and everything pop culture related - particularly superheroes.