November 24, 2017 at 12:18Interview with representatives of Google Play Apps and Games about the mobile games 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.
The interview discussed:
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 in beautiful numbers, for example, how many applications are there in the Russian Google Play now, how many new games on Google Play are released per day?
Dmitry Martynov, head of Google Play Apps and Games Russia 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, by contrast, are usually local.
There are not 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 precisely a global theme. All game developers want to succeed, not only in their home market, but around the world.
Accordingly, it is more interesting not how many new products appear in the Russian Play Store, but how developers in Russia and Eastern Europe feel.
Here the data is very good with us. Our region is growing very fast. In terms of growth, it is similar to 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 the largest in absolute numbers and in growth rate. The potential of developers does not decrease, but only increases.
Market leaders are well known. Take a look, for example, at White Nights sponsors. This is an indicator.
The largest partner in our region is Playrix. For two years he has grown many, many times. All people in the industry can see how much Playrix makes. For example, in App Annie it can be seen. This is a pure example of success.
But Playrix is not the only one. Behind it is a huge series of companies, both long-standing in this market, for example, Game Insight, and those that have recently entered the mobile environment, such as, for example, “Kefir!”.
There are a lot of companies from our region that are active, that make good money. About a hundred. This is a lot.
More than a hundred companies strive to earn a lot of money. And a thousand more are coming.
Is this exactly Russian?
Yes. But here it is sometimes difficult to distinguish: a Russian company, not a Russian one.
Businesses are usually designed so that studios can be located in Russia, Belarus, or in Ukraine.
The circuit is well known in the industry. People organize a business where it is more profitable, but where production takes place is another question.
But if we talk about our companies, then, as a rule, production also takes place with us. That is, the potential of the developer is very large. It is very good. It is objective, it is not notions, not abstract things. Everything is confirmed by numbers. Everyone can go and see: the market is transparent, all revenues are visible.
We are very glad that we are participating in this in everything, that we can somehow help people here.
Roman Mardo, Google Play Games Business Development Manager, Central and Eastern Europe: We, in general, are 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 catalog, to invite new users.
Dmitry: By the way, yes. An important point. Our developers do not just know how to cunningly monetize projects. We have those who are the first to succeed in various genres. For example, the first successful competitive games shooter on mobile appeared with us. Modern Strike is one example, but you can still recall Guns of Boom and Pixel Gun.
Their developers really felt how to make games that appeal to a large number of users. At the same time, the games are successful in terms of business and look very good. These are not just some crafts. These are serious products with synchronous online, which in itself technologically on the mobile is not such a simple thing.
Roman: We are sure that the following hits will come from those who own such technologies.
Unique designs are cool. China is already suffering a little bit because it does not know what to copy. Already everything that could be copied.
Dmitry: Copy-paste worked at one time. Now copy-paste has become more difficult to deal with. When there is online, when there is PvP, there should be a depth of content, a certain story. You can’t just grab and copy. It must be done almost completely from scratch, or modernized. But when you start to upgrade, the subtle settings are lost.
Roman: The balance is always a problem.
Dmitry: Exactly. When there was an offline mode, for example, three-in-a-row, it was possible to resort to binary copying. It’s hard to do that now.
If you look at the traditionally popular genres that our friends from Asia love (say, strategies), then so far they continue to operate in this genre. We do not see, for example, competitive PvP shooters from there. Even attempts to copy, in my opinion, are not particularly.
Roman: They now mainly focus 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 do not focus only on, for example, making money, do not look exclusively at beautiful projects, although this is important.
We want 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: There would be three companies that would capture the entire market, it would be very boring. But here the user decides.
Roman: By experimenting with our developers, we managed to bring almost all the genres that were on other platforms to mobile devices.
As I understand it, 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 developing a region, our goal is to help a developer who, for example, is in the East European region, make his product globally successful. In this sense, we have exactly the same goals with the developers.
So mobile and cool, because 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 what the next successful mobile project will be. The next person to make a convenient PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS on mobile will succeed right away.
Dmitry: Yes, whoever comes up with the first convenient control wins. Madfinger Games Studio was one of the first to come up with how to make shooter management comfortable and immediately opened a new horizon for everyone involved in such projects.
The nuances are not always obvious, but 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 a business. Recently there was a Performance Marketing conference (you may have heard), and your colleague Martin Loss, a specialist in Google’s mobile solutions at it, just touched upon the topic of content loading speed and set some benchmark for the industry - less than three seconds should load page on the mobile web. Google has a tool - AMP for fast page loading on the mobile web. Let’s tell us in more detail what kind of work is currently being done on Google Play in terms of optimizing resources, downloading content, and in terms of optimizing resources on the side of developers.
Dmitry: Here we must already dive into the details. Here it is necessary to separate:
Everywhere the situation is different. In applications, the situation is more advanced. The applicable technology is Instant Apps, which allows applications to be divided into small pieces almost on the fly, without downloading to a smartphone. There it is just about seconds.
This is ideologically similar to AMR, but from the point of view of technology, it is different.
Firstly, it requires refinement of the application by developers.
Secondly, it suggests the possibility of moving to downloading the full version.
The main idea of Instant Apps is that a person can instantly start working with the application.
I emphasize: it works only with applications. The technology is not suitable for games. Games, as a rule, use the graphics engine and draw everything themselves, while applications use systemic methods for rendering buttons and so on. Therefore, there you can optimize many things. In games, it’s much more difficult to optimize.
Continuing the topic of technology. Again, your colleague, Emre Dogan, head of Google’s customer service department, shared his vision of how machine learning affects ad optimization. Are any algorithms used? And how are machine learning algorithms used in stores?
Dmitry: Here you can, of course, talk about how something is built on the side, for example, Google Play. But, in my opinion, a more interesting story is how a developer can optimize his own business using technology.
Recently, we have been actively discussing the topic of predicting various parameters of a business, for example, lifetime. This is a key moment for developers who are going to invest in mobile advertising or some other promotion channel: in order to understand how much you can spend, it is important to understand how much you can earn.
This is about predicting future potential gains and losses. And the industry is now waiting for solutions that will more accurately predict LTV.
When an ad campaign is ongoing, the developer has a lot of questions. Should I continue to attract through the same channel? Is the price of attraction adequate? What exactly will he get on the way out? At this stage of marketing development, there is no answer to these questions.
But we are actively working on it. Here is the future of all these stories.
As I believe, the first one to come up with how to evaluate, for example, in games the user's behavior at an early stage, using different signals, calculating their business indicators on the basis of this, automatically optimizing the attraction of advertising and aspects related to correctly targeting the user in the game - will achieve a giant breakthrough.
As I understand it, serious work is being done in Google Junior Labs Compains, which works in this direction?
Dmitry: Yes. Of course.
I think that in this sense, the Universal App campaign (the type of advertising campaigns that promote mobile applications on all Google sites - editorial note) will be more in demand. Many partners say that they work very well now.
Roman: The 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 at where users come from, see that a lot of organic traffic is additionally coming from our store.
Why?
Because we have recommendation services that show content for you. When users open one page in the store, matching similar applications are shown nearby. This, in fact, is the result of the work of these algorithms. They are improving all the time. Often, traffic coming from these sections exceeds all other traffic.
I think many of our viewers are interested in the history of phishing. I am an indie developer or studio. Made a cool game, but no feature. Who to go to?
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 scamming you.”
There is a lot going on. Many stages go through. Consulting stage, development stage, design thinking stage, balance optimization stage. Promotion in the channel of the app store is the last and not the most important stage.
We came to the conclusion that it is now more important to advise all our developers in different fields. This has a greater effect than phishing itself.
There are several aspects that young developers need to consider:
First. We must generally objectively assess our position in the global world. Any game - it competes immediately with all the games that are. Therefore, you need to do it qualitatively.
Many people think that pitching is enough. You can probably do this in a venture capital environment. We have a real business, a lot of money involved. This does not work here.
Second moment. Still, you need to evaluate yourself in terms of business. You need to understand what you mean in terms of business.
Dmitry, Roman, thanks for the interview.
Watch more interesting interviews on the Mobio Talks youtube channel. Subscribe to our Habra blog.
The interview discussed:
- mobile games market in Russia;
- development prospects for developers;
- Google Play Strategy
- business optimization using 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 in beautiful numbers, for example, how many applications are there in the Russian Google Play now, how many new games on Google Play are released per day?
Dmitry Martynov, head of Google Play Apps and Games Russia 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, by contrast, are usually local.
There are not 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 precisely a global theme. All game developers want to succeed, not only in their home market, but around the world.
Accordingly, it is more interesting not how many new products appear in the Russian Play Store, but how developers in Russia and Eastern Europe feel.
Here the data is very good with us. Our region is growing very fast. In terms of growth, it is similar to 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 the largest in absolute numbers and in growth rate. The potential of developers does not decrease, but only increases.
Market leaders are well known. Take a look, for example, at White Nights sponsors. This is an indicator.
The largest partner in our region is Playrix. For two years he has grown many, many times. All people in the industry can see how much Playrix makes. For example, in App Annie it can be seen. This is a pure example of success.
But Playrix is not the only one. Behind it is a huge series of companies, both long-standing in this market, for example, Game Insight, and those that have recently entered the mobile environment, such as, for example, “Kefir!”.
There are a lot of companies from our region that are active, that make good money. About a hundred. This is a lot.
More than a hundred companies strive to earn a lot of money. And a thousand more are coming.
Is this exactly Russian?
Yes. But here it is sometimes difficult to distinguish: a Russian company, not a Russian one.
Businesses are usually designed so that studios can be located in Russia, Belarus, or in Ukraine.
The circuit is well known in the industry. People organize a business where it is more profitable, but where production takes place is another question.
But if we talk about our companies, then, as a rule, production also takes place with us. That is, the potential of the developer is very large. It is very good. It is objective, it is not notions, not abstract things. Everything is confirmed by numbers. Everyone can go and see: the market is transparent, all revenues are visible.
We are very glad that we are participating in this in everything, that we can somehow help people here.
Roman Mardo, Google Play Games Business Development Manager, Central and Eastern Europe: We, in general, are 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 catalog, to invite new users.
Dmitry: By the way, yes. An important point. Our developers do not just know how to cunningly monetize projects. We have those who are the first to succeed in various genres. For example, the first successful competitive games shooter on mobile appeared with us. Modern Strike is one example, but you can still recall Guns of Boom and Pixel Gun.
Their developers really felt how to make games that appeal to a large number of users. At the same time, the games are successful in terms of business and look very good. These are not just some crafts. These are serious products with synchronous online, which in itself technologically on the mobile is not such a simple thing.
Roman: We are sure that the following hits will come from those who own such technologies.
Unique designs are cool. China is already suffering a little bit because it does not know what to copy. Already everything that could be copied.
Dmitry: Copy-paste worked at one time. Now copy-paste has become more difficult to deal with. When there is online, when there is PvP, there should be a depth of content, a certain story. You can’t just grab and copy. It must be done almost completely from scratch, or modernized. But when you start to upgrade, the subtle settings are lost.
Roman: The balance is always a problem.
Dmitry: Exactly. When there was an offline mode, for example, three-in-a-row, it was possible to resort to binary copying. It’s hard to do that now.
If you look at the traditionally popular genres that our friends from Asia love (say, strategies), then so far they continue to operate in this genre. We do not see, for example, competitive PvP shooters from there. Even attempts to copy, in my opinion, are not particularly.
Roman: They now mainly focus 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 do not focus only on, for example, making money, do not look exclusively at beautiful projects, although this is important.
We want 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: There would be three companies that would capture the entire market, it would be very boring. But here the user decides.
Roman: By experimenting with our developers, we managed to bring almost all the genres that were on other platforms to mobile devices.
As I understand it, 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 developing a region, our goal is to help a developer who, for example, is in the East European region, make his product globally successful. In this sense, we have exactly the same goals with the developers.
So mobile and cool, because 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 what the next successful mobile project will be. The next person to make a convenient PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS on mobile will succeed right away.
Dmitry: Yes, whoever comes up with the first convenient control wins. Madfinger Games Studio was one of the first to come up with how to make shooter management comfortable and immediately opened a new horizon for everyone involved in such projects.
The nuances are not always obvious, but 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 a business. Recently there was a Performance Marketing conference (you may have heard), and your colleague Martin Loss, a specialist in Google’s mobile solutions at it, just touched upon the topic of content loading speed and set some benchmark for the industry - less than three seconds should load page on the mobile web. Google has a tool - AMP for fast page loading on the mobile web. Let’s tell us in more detail what kind of work is currently being done on Google Play in terms of optimizing resources, downloading content, and in terms of optimizing resources on the side of developers.
Dmitry: Here we must already dive into the details. Here it is necessary to separate:
- native mobile games;
- Non-native games (e.g. web games)
- native applications;
- web pages.
Everywhere the situation is different. In applications, the situation is more advanced. The applicable technology is Instant Apps, which allows applications to be divided into small pieces almost on the fly, without downloading to a smartphone. There it is just about seconds.
This is ideologically similar to AMR, but from the point of view of technology, it is different.
Firstly, it requires refinement of the application by developers.
Secondly, it suggests the possibility of moving to downloading the full version.
The main idea of Instant Apps is that a person can instantly start working with the application.
I emphasize: it works only with applications. The technology is not suitable for games. Games, as a rule, use the graphics engine and draw everything themselves, while applications use systemic methods for rendering buttons and so on. Therefore, there you can optimize many things. In games, it’s much more difficult to optimize.
Continuing the topic of technology. Again, your colleague, Emre Dogan, head of Google’s customer service department, shared his vision of how machine learning affects ad optimization. Are any algorithms used? And how are machine learning algorithms used in stores?
Dmitry: Here you can, of course, talk about how something is built on the side, for example, Google Play. But, in my opinion, a more interesting story is how a developer can optimize his own business using technology.
Recently, we have been actively discussing the topic of predicting various parameters of a business, for example, lifetime. This is a key moment for developers who are going to invest in mobile advertising or some other promotion channel: in order to understand how much you can spend, it is important to understand how much you can earn.
This is about predicting future potential gains and losses. And the industry is now waiting for solutions that will more accurately predict LTV.
When an ad campaign is ongoing, the developer has a lot of questions. Should I continue to attract through the same channel? Is the price of attraction adequate? What exactly will he get on the way out? At this stage of marketing development, there is no answer to these questions.
But we are actively working on it. Here is the future of all these stories.
As I believe, the first one to come up with how to evaluate, for example, in games the user's behavior at an early stage, using different signals, calculating their business indicators on the basis of this, automatically optimizing the attraction of advertising and aspects related to correctly targeting the user in the game - will achieve a giant breakthrough.
As I understand it, serious work is being done in Google Junior Labs Compains, which works in this direction?
Dmitry: Yes. Of course.
I think that in this sense, the Universal App campaign (the type of advertising campaigns that promote mobile applications on all Google sites - editorial note) will be more in demand. Many partners say that they work very well now.
Roman: The 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 at where users come from, see that a lot of organic traffic is additionally coming from our store.
Why?
Because we have recommendation services that show content for you. When users open one page in the store, matching similar applications are shown nearby. This, in fact, is the result of the work of these algorithms. They are improving all the time. Often, traffic coming from these sections exceeds all other traffic.
I think many of our viewers are interested in the history of phishing. I am an indie developer or studio. Made a cool game, but no feature. Who to go to?
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 scamming you.”
There is a lot going on. Many stages go through. Consulting stage, development stage, design thinking stage, balance optimization stage. Promotion in the channel of the app store is the last and not the most important stage.
We came to the conclusion that it is now more important to advise all our developers in different fields. This has a greater effect than phishing itself.
There are several aspects that young developers need to consider:
First. We must generally objectively assess our position in the global world. Any game - it competes immediately with all the games that are. Therefore, you need to do it qualitatively.
Many people think that pitching is enough. You can probably do this in a venture capital environment. We have a real business, a lot of money involved. This does not work here.
Second moment. Still, you need to evaluate yourself in terms of business. You need to understand what you mean in terms of business.
Dmitry, Roman, thanks for the interview.
Watch more interesting interviews on the Mobio Talks youtube channel. Subscribe to our Habra blog.