Interviews with representatives of Google Play Apps and Games on the mobile gaming market in Russia
At the White Nights Moscow 2017 conference, Mobio founder Sergey Konovalov talked with representatives of Google Play - Dmitry Martynov and Roman Mardo.
In an interview discussed:
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Read the full transcript of the interview.
Sergey Konovalov, Mobio Executive Director: At the beginning of our conversation, I would like you to share your successes. Perhaps with beautiful figures, for example, how many applications are there now in Russian Google Play, how many new games will be released on Google Play per day?
Dmitry Martynov, head of Google Play Apps and Games Russia in Eastern and Central Europe: If we are talking about games, then everyone is interested only in the whole world.
Games are an international story. Applications, on the contrary, are usually local.
There are not so many applications that are made in one region and are popular all over the world. As a rule, these are social networks, instant messengers.
But games are a global theme. All game developers want to succeed not only in their own market, but around the world.
Accordingly, it is more interesting, not how many new products appear in the Russian Play Store, but how do developers feel in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Here the data is very good with us. Our region is growing very fast. In terms of growth, it looks like an Asian. For example, in Europe, our region is the fastest growing.
The number of people who have become, let's call them millionaires, that is, companies that earn more than $ 1 million per month, we have more than in the rest of Europe. Moreover, we are in absolute numbers, and in terms of growth rate, the largest. The potential of developers does not decrease, but only increases.
Market leaders are known to all. Look, for example, at the sponsors of White Nights. This is an indicator.
The largest partner in our region is Playrix. In two years he has grown many, many times. All people in the industry can see how much Playrix earns. For example, in App Annie you can see it. This is a pure example of success.
But Playrix is ​​not the only one. Behind him is a huge series of companies that have been present on this market for a long time, for example, Game Insight, as well as those who recently entered the mobile environment, such as, for example, Kefir!
There are quite a lot of companies from our region that are active and who earn well. Around around a hundred. This is a lot.
Even more than a hundred companies strive to earn a lot of money. And a thousand more on the way.
Is this exactly Russian?
Yes. But it is sometimes difficult to single out: a Russian company, not a Russian one.
Business is usually arranged so that the studios can be located in Russia, Belarus or on the territory of Ukraine.
The scheme is known to all in the industry. People organize a business where it is more profitable, but where production takes place is another matter.
But if we talk about our companies, then, as a rule, production also takes place here. That is, the potential of the developer is very large. It is very good. This is objective, this is not an invention, not an abstract thing. Everything is confirmed by numbers. Everyone can go and see: the market is transparent, all revenues are visible.
We are very pleased that we are participating in this all, that we can somehow help people here a little bit.
Roman Mardo, Google Play Games Business Development Manager Central and Eastern Europe: We are, on the whole, very creative. We have a very large number of games of those genres that were not very popular before. That is, they help us to dilute the directory, to encourage new users.
Dmitry: By the way, yes. An important point. Our developers not only know how to cunningly monetize projects. We have those who are the first to achieve success in various genres. For example, the first successful competitive games shooter appeared on our mobile. Modern Strike is one example, but you can still remember the Guns of Boom and Pixel Gun.
Their developers really felt how to make games that are popular with a large number of users. At the same time, the games are successful in terms of business and look very good. This is not just some crafts. These are serious products with synchronous online, which in itself is technologically on the mobile - not such a simple thing.
Roman: We are sure that the following hits will come from those who own similar technologies.
Unique designs are awesome. China is already suffering a little because it does not know what to copy. Already everything that could have been copied.
Dmitry: Kopipast worked at one time. Now copy-paste has become more difficult. When there is online, when there is PvP, there should be a depth of content, a certain story. You can not just take and copy. It is necessary to do almost completely from scratch, or upgrade. But when you start upgrading, tweaks are lost.
Roman: The problem of balance is always worth it.
Dmitry: Exactly. When there was an offline mode, for example, three-in-a-row, you could resort to binary copying. Now it's already hard to do.
If you look at the traditionally popular genres that our friends from Asia like (strategy, say), then for now they continue to act in this genre. We do not see, for example, competitive PvP shooters from there. Even copying attempts, in my opinion, especially not.
Roman: They are now mainly focusing on MOBA.
Dmitry: Yes. But MOBA is a slightly different format.
On the mobile platform, there are absolutely all categories of users who can play whatever they like, and everyone can find something for themselves. Our task is just to have different content. We are not focusing only on making money, for example, not looking exclusively at beautiful projects, even though this is important.
We want precisely the diversity. This is the whole ideology. This, by the way, allows a large number of indie developers to try themselves in new genres. Otherwise it would be ...
More boring.
Dmitry: It would be three companies that would capture the entire market, it would be very boring. But here the user decides.
Roman: Through experimentation with our developers, we managed to bring almost all the genres that were on other platforms to mobile devices.
I understand that this is a reflection of such a global strategy, including Google. Expansion.
Dmitry: The idea is to have a lot of different things. At the same time, we are simultaneously developing the region, our goal is to help the developer, who is located, for example, in the Eastern European region, to make his product globally successful. In this sense, we have exactly the same goals with the developers.
That mobile and cool that there are no borders, you can work around the world and interact with a global audience.
Roman: But other platforms continue to set the trend. The same PC. Suppose now you can be sure of what the next successful project on the mobile will be. The next one who makes PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS handy on mobile, will succeed right away.
Dmitry: Yes, whoever comes up with a convenient control wins. Studio Madfinger Games was one of the first to figure out how to make managing a shooter comfortable and immediately opened up a new horizon for everyone involved in such projects.
Nuances are not always obvious, but they play a big role in success.
Why is game development such a difficult business?
It requires a lot of attention to detail.
In principle, nowadays every extra second of content loading affects business. Recently there was a Performance Marketing conference (you may have heard), and your colleague Martin Loss (Google Mobile Solutions Specialist, Martin Loss) just touched on the topic of content download speed and set up some such benchmark for the industry - less than three seconds should load page in the mobile web. Google has a tool - AMP for quickly loading a page in the mobile web. Let's tell here in more detail what work is currently being done on Google Play in terms of optimizing resources, downloading content, in terms of optimizing resources precisely on the side of developers.
Dmitry: Here we must already plunge into the details. Here it is necessary to separate:
Everywhere the situation is different. In applications, the situation is more advanced. Apply to them technology Instant Apps, which allows the application to divide into small pieces almost on the fly, without downloading to the smartphone. There it’s about seconds.
It is ideologically similar to AMR, but in terms of technology, it is different.
Firstly, it requires the development of the application by the developers.
Secondly, it implies the possibility of switching to the full version download.
The main idea of ​​Instant Apps is that a person can immediately start working with the application.
I emphasize: it works only with applications. The technology is not suitable for gaming. Games, as a rule, use the graphics engine and draw everything themselves, and applications use system methods for drawing buttons and so on. Therefore, there you can optimize many things. In games it is much more difficult to optimize.
Continuing the theme of technology. Again, your colleague, Emre Dogan (Emre Dogan), head of customer service at Google, shared his vision of how machine learning affects advertising optimization. Are any algorithms used? And how are the machine learning algorithms used in the stores?
Dmitry: Here you can, of course, talk about how something is built on the side, for example, Google Play. But, in my opinion, the more interesting story is how to optimize your own business with the help of technology to a developer.
We have recently been actively discussing the topic of predicting various parameters of a business, for example, a lifetime. This is a key point for developers who are going to invest in mobile advertising or any other promotion channel: to understand how much you can spend, it is important to understand how much you can earn.
Here we are talking about the prediction of possible future profits and losses. And the industry is now awaiting solutions that will predict LTV more accurately.
When an advertising campaign is being conducted today, the developer has many questions. Should I continue to attract through the same channel? Is the price of attraction adequate? What exactly will he get at the exit? At this stage of development of marketing there is no answer to these questions.
But we are actively working on it. Here the future of all these stories.
In my opinion, the first one who will figure out how to evaluate, for example, in games, user behavior at an early stage, using different signals, calculating their business indicators based on this, automatically optimizing advertising attraction and aspects related to making the user target correctly. in the game - will achieve a giant breakthrough.
As I understand it, serious work is being done at Google Junior Labs Compains, which works in this very direction?
Dmitry: Yes. Of course.
I think that in this sense, the Universal App campaign (a type of advertising campaigns promoting mobile apps on all Google sites - editorial notes) will be more in demand. Many partners say that they work very well now.
Novel: Play Store runs on algorithms that machine learning uses.
Dmitry: By the way, yes. Also add. Those developers who carefully look at the sources of traffic, look where they are coming from, see that a lot of organic traffic comes from our site.
Why?
Because we have reference services that show content for you. When users open one page in the store, similar, similar applications are displayed next to them. This is, in fact, the result of the work of these algorithms. They are improving all the time. Often the traffic coming from these sections exceeds all other traffic.
I think many of our viewers are interested in the history of the feature. I am an indie developer or studio. Made a cool game, but no feature. To whom to go?
Dmitry: This question is a bit outdated. People overestimate the importance of the promotion received from the site.
Imagine there is a publisher. For example, a large company that publishes other people's or their games. How does she work with her studios? She doesn’t say: “I’ll keep you fit all the time.”
There is a lot going on there. Many stages pass. Consultation stage, development stage, design thinking stage, balance optimization stage. Promotion in the app store channel is the last and not the most important stage.
We concluded that it is now more important to advise all of our developers in different areas. This gives a greater effect than the feature itself.
There are several aspects that young developers need to take into account:
The first. In general, we must objectively assess our position in the global world. Any game - it competes immediately with all the games that are. Therefore, you need to do quality.
Many people think that it is enough to make a pitch. This can probably be done in a venture capital environment. We have a real business, big money involved. Here it does not pass.
Second moment. Still, you need to evaluate yourself in terms of business. You need to understand what you are in terms of business.
Dmitry, Roman, thank you for the interview.
Watch more interesting interviews on the Mobio Talks youtube channel. Subscribe to our Habra blog.
In an interview discussed:
')
- mobile games market in Russia;
- development prospects for developers;
- Google Play strategy;
- business optimization with technology;
- what genres of games will become popular;
- and much more.
Read the full transcript of the interview.
Sergey Konovalov, Mobio Executive Director: At the beginning of our conversation, I would like you to share your successes. Perhaps with beautiful figures, for example, how many applications are there now in Russian Google Play, how many new games will be released on Google Play per day?
Dmitry Martynov, head of Google Play Apps and Games Russia in Eastern and Central Europe: If we are talking about games, then everyone is interested only in the whole world.
Games are an international story. Applications, on the contrary, are usually local.
There are not so many applications that are made in one region and are popular all over the world. As a rule, these are social networks, instant messengers.
But games are a global theme. All game developers want to succeed not only in their own market, but around the world.
Accordingly, it is more interesting, not how many new products appear in the Russian Play Store, but how do developers feel in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Here the data is very good with us. Our region is growing very fast. In terms of growth, it looks like an Asian. For example, in Europe, our region is the fastest growing.
The number of people who have become, let's call them millionaires, that is, companies that earn more than $ 1 million per month, we have more than in the rest of Europe. Moreover, we are in absolute numbers, and in terms of growth rate, the largest. The potential of developers does not decrease, but only increases.
Market leaders are known to all. Look, for example, at the sponsors of White Nights. This is an indicator.
The largest partner in our region is Playrix. In two years he has grown many, many times. All people in the industry can see how much Playrix earns. For example, in App Annie you can see it. This is a pure example of success.
But Playrix is ​​not the only one. Behind him is a huge series of companies that have been present on this market for a long time, for example, Game Insight, as well as those who recently entered the mobile environment, such as, for example, Kefir!
There are quite a lot of companies from our region that are active and who earn well. Around around a hundred. This is a lot.
Even more than a hundred companies strive to earn a lot of money. And a thousand more on the way.
Is this exactly Russian?
Yes. But it is sometimes difficult to single out: a Russian company, not a Russian one.
Business is usually arranged so that the studios can be located in Russia, Belarus or on the territory of Ukraine.
The scheme is known to all in the industry. People organize a business where it is more profitable, but where production takes place is another matter.
But if we talk about our companies, then, as a rule, production also takes place here. That is, the potential of the developer is very large. It is very good. This is objective, this is not an invention, not an abstract thing. Everything is confirmed by numbers. Everyone can go and see: the market is transparent, all revenues are visible.
We are very pleased that we are participating in this all, that we can somehow help people here a little bit.
Roman Mardo, Google Play Games Business Development Manager Central and Eastern Europe: We are, on the whole, very creative. We have a very large number of games of those genres that were not very popular before. That is, they help us to dilute the directory, to encourage new users.
Dmitry: By the way, yes. An important point. Our developers not only know how to cunningly monetize projects. We have those who are the first to achieve success in various genres. For example, the first successful competitive games shooter appeared on our mobile. Modern Strike is one example, but you can still remember the Guns of Boom and Pixel Gun.
Their developers really felt how to make games that are popular with a large number of users. At the same time, the games are successful in terms of business and look very good. This is not just some crafts. These are serious products with synchronous online, which in itself is technologically on the mobile - not such a simple thing.
Roman: We are sure that the following hits will come from those who own similar technologies.
Unique designs are awesome. China is already suffering a little because it does not know what to copy. Already everything that could have been copied.
Dmitry: Kopipast worked at one time. Now copy-paste has become more difficult. When there is online, when there is PvP, there should be a depth of content, a certain story. You can not just take and copy. It is necessary to do almost completely from scratch, or upgrade. But when you start upgrading, tweaks are lost.
Roman: The problem of balance is always worth it.
Dmitry: Exactly. When there was an offline mode, for example, three-in-a-row, you could resort to binary copying. Now it's already hard to do.
If you look at the traditionally popular genres that our friends from Asia like (strategy, say), then for now they continue to act in this genre. We do not see, for example, competitive PvP shooters from there. Even copying attempts, in my opinion, especially not.
Roman: They are now mainly focusing on MOBA.
Dmitry: Yes. But MOBA is a slightly different format.
On the mobile platform, there are absolutely all categories of users who can play whatever they like, and everyone can find something for themselves. Our task is just to have different content. We are not focusing only on making money, for example, not looking exclusively at beautiful projects, even though this is important.
We want precisely the diversity. This is the whole ideology. This, by the way, allows a large number of indie developers to try themselves in new genres. Otherwise it would be ...
More boring.
Dmitry: It would be three companies that would capture the entire market, it would be very boring. But here the user decides.
Roman: Through experimentation with our developers, we managed to bring almost all the genres that were on other platforms to mobile devices.
I understand that this is a reflection of such a global strategy, including Google. Expansion.
Dmitry: The idea is to have a lot of different things. At the same time, we are simultaneously developing the region, our goal is to help the developer, who is located, for example, in the Eastern European region, to make his product globally successful. In this sense, we have exactly the same goals with the developers.
That mobile and cool that there are no borders, you can work around the world and interact with a global audience.
Roman: But other platforms continue to set the trend. The same PC. Suppose now you can be sure of what the next successful project on the mobile will be. The next one who makes PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS handy on mobile, will succeed right away.
Dmitry: Yes, whoever comes up with a convenient control wins. Studio Madfinger Games was one of the first to figure out how to make managing a shooter comfortable and immediately opened up a new horizon for everyone involved in such projects.
Nuances are not always obvious, but they play a big role in success.
Why is game development such a difficult business?
It requires a lot of attention to detail.
In principle, nowadays every extra second of content loading affects business. Recently there was a Performance Marketing conference (you may have heard), and your colleague Martin Loss (Google Mobile Solutions Specialist, Martin Loss) just touched on the topic of content download speed and set up some such benchmark for the industry - less than three seconds should load page in the mobile web. Google has a tool - AMP for quickly loading a page in the mobile web. Let's tell here in more detail what work is currently being done on Google Play in terms of optimizing resources, downloading content, in terms of optimizing resources precisely on the side of developers.
Dmitry: Here we must already plunge into the details. Here it is necessary to separate:
- native mobile games;
- non-native games (for example, web games);
- native applications;
- web page.
Everywhere the situation is different. In applications, the situation is more advanced. Apply to them technology Instant Apps, which allows the application to divide into small pieces almost on the fly, without downloading to the smartphone. There it’s about seconds.
It is ideologically similar to AMR, but in terms of technology, it is different.
Firstly, it requires the development of the application by the developers.
Secondly, it implies the possibility of switching to the full version download.
The main idea of ​​Instant Apps is that a person can immediately start working with the application.
I emphasize: it works only with applications. The technology is not suitable for gaming. Games, as a rule, use the graphics engine and draw everything themselves, and applications use system methods for drawing buttons and so on. Therefore, there you can optimize many things. In games it is much more difficult to optimize.
Continuing the theme of technology. Again, your colleague, Emre Dogan (Emre Dogan), head of customer service at Google, shared his vision of how machine learning affects advertising optimization. Are any algorithms used? And how are the machine learning algorithms used in the stores?
Dmitry: Here you can, of course, talk about how something is built on the side, for example, Google Play. But, in my opinion, the more interesting story is how to optimize your own business with the help of technology to a developer.
We have recently been actively discussing the topic of predicting various parameters of a business, for example, a lifetime. This is a key point for developers who are going to invest in mobile advertising or any other promotion channel: to understand how much you can spend, it is important to understand how much you can earn.
Here we are talking about the prediction of possible future profits and losses. And the industry is now awaiting solutions that will predict LTV more accurately.
When an advertising campaign is being conducted today, the developer has many questions. Should I continue to attract through the same channel? Is the price of attraction adequate? What exactly will he get at the exit? At this stage of development of marketing there is no answer to these questions.
But we are actively working on it. Here the future of all these stories.
In my opinion, the first one who will figure out how to evaluate, for example, in games, user behavior at an early stage, using different signals, calculating their business indicators based on this, automatically optimizing advertising attraction and aspects related to making the user target correctly. in the game - will achieve a giant breakthrough.
As I understand it, serious work is being done at Google Junior Labs Compains, which works in this very direction?
Dmitry: Yes. Of course.
I think that in this sense, the Universal App campaign (a type of advertising campaigns promoting mobile apps on all Google sites - editorial notes) will be more in demand. Many partners say that they work very well now.
Novel: Play Store runs on algorithms that machine learning uses.
Dmitry: By the way, yes. Also add. Those developers who carefully look at the sources of traffic, look where they are coming from, see that a lot of organic traffic comes from our site.
Why?
Because we have reference services that show content for you. When users open one page in the store, similar, similar applications are displayed next to them. This is, in fact, the result of the work of these algorithms. They are improving all the time. Often the traffic coming from these sections exceeds all other traffic.
I think many of our viewers are interested in the history of the feature. I am an indie developer or studio. Made a cool game, but no feature. To whom to go?
Dmitry: This question is a bit outdated. People overestimate the importance of the promotion received from the site.
Imagine there is a publisher. For example, a large company that publishes other people's or their games. How does she work with her studios? She doesn’t say: “I’ll keep you fit all the time.”
There is a lot going on there. Many stages pass. Consultation stage, development stage, design thinking stage, balance optimization stage. Promotion in the app store channel is the last and not the most important stage.
We concluded that it is now more important to advise all of our developers in different areas. This gives a greater effect than the feature itself.
There are several aspects that young developers need to take into account:
The first. In general, we must objectively assess our position in the global world. Any game - it competes immediately with all the games that are. Therefore, you need to do quality.
Many people think that it is enough to make a pitch. This can probably be done in a venture capital environment. We have a real business, big money involved. Here it does not pass.
Second moment. Still, you need to evaluate yourself in terms of business. You need to understand what you are in terms of business.
Dmitry, Roman, thank you for the interview.
Watch more interesting interviews on the Mobio Talks youtube channel. Subscribe to our Habra blog.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/343094/
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