The digital revolution has deeply transformed the video game industry by allowing many studios to self-publish their games. But the reality and the difficulty of building a profitable "free-to-play" game is hitting a lot of studios. I will share with you some best practices that I learned while building Kobojo, one of the French leader in social gaming, and EVERYDAYiPLAY, a leading Mid-Core gaming company based in Krakow, Poland Intended audience & prerequisites: Game Designers & Marketing team to understand how distribution & game design are tightly coupled in the world of Free 2 Play Session takeaways: Practical insights to better prioritize the tasks to do before and after your launch and optimize the chance of success of your game

1. Surviving The Challenge
Of Self-Publishing
Online Games
Vincent Vergonjeanne - EVERYDAYiPLAY

2. Surviving Your First
Online Game
Vincent Vergonjeanne - EVERYDAYiPLAY

3. Co-Founder & Former CEO
5.3M€ Serie A in april 2011
Founder & CEO
Self-financed Game Studio

4. Survival Guide – 2014 Edition
• Goal: help indie developers become
sustainable studios in a cash
constrained environment.
• Non Goal: Talk about creative process,
passion & talent. You already have it 

5. Step 1 – Pick carefully your game

6. Forget “Casual”
(or find a lot of free traffic)

7. Do Gender Specific Games
(higher ROI)

8. Some Numbers
• Casual Game DARPU = $0.01 up to $0.04
• Segmented Game DARPU = $0.07 up to $1!
DARPU = Daily Average Revenue Per User

9. How do you pick your game?
• Get Revenue Data from Competition
• Understand who is your *paying* audience
• Is the market saturated?
• Which platforms (iOS, Android, Facebook)?

10. Step 2 - Don’t innovate too much

11. Iterate more than innovate
• DO
– Add a meta gameplay
– Change few elements of the core gameplay
– Add social features
• DO NOT
– Reinvent User Interface Interactions

12. Step 3 - Avoid the $1 mobile App
(Go free or go expensive)

13. $1 Apps are bad because
• They prevent a large audience to download
your game
• They require a lot of PR to create “Social
Proofing”
• You need a lot of traffic to make it profitable
• It is not a sustainable revenue source

14. Step 4 - Find a publisher
(or get featured)

15. Distribution is not magic
• Being in a store = free traffic
• You need to find traffic
– Platforms featuring
– Banner Exchange Programs
– Publisher
– Ads
• Don’t wait the last moment to figure this out!

16. Step 5 – Keep it short
(Time = Cash-burn)

17. Lean Development Rules
• Define your Minimum Viable Product
• Keep your first deliverable < 6 months
• Define a soft launch & hard launch date
• Stick to it
• Observe & Iterate

18. PyramidVille at Launch
• 4 months of
development
• Visit but no
interactions
• Content for only 2
months
• No Collections
• No Achievements
• But Pixel Perfect

19. And it was enough!
Even without all these “Key” features
the game took off organically

20. But most of the time
it doesn’t go as planned
Good example of content adjustment

21. Adapt / Pivot to survive
Kexeye understood after launch that it was a
male audience who was sticking

22. Congratulation!
You just soft launched
your game

23. Survival Guide To
Self-Publishing
#1 - Maximize retention
#2 - Maximize monetization
#3 - Maximize acquisition

24. Retention
What is it and why is it so important ?

25. Ideal retention

26. Actual retention

27. Retention Pro Tip 1
Master your
“First Time User Experience”

28. Fact: you will lose more player during
the first session than any other sessions
combined!
You need to understand where and why

29. Monitor your First Time User Funnel

30. Does the player even
reaches the game?

31. Kobojo’s first Cool 3D Social Game …
… but awfully
slow to load

32. We then made sure to have PyramidVille
loading in less than 10 seconds.

33. Other Retention Points To Monitor
- Tutorial completion
- First missions completion
- D+1 retention
- D+3 & D+7 retention

34. Retention Pro Tip 2
Plan why your players would
come back after they finish your
content

35. Interest Curve for Content Only
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Pressure to produce content
is too high, expensive and
stressful for the team
Day 1 Day 7 Day 30 Day 60

36. Salsa Class

37. Interest Curve of
Content + “Social Recognition”
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

38. Content is your ice breaker
Social Recognition is your long term
retention

39. Monetization

40. Why do people buy virtual goods?
They buy emotions

41. Why do people buy virtual stuff?
• Social recognition
• Ranking (win as much as possible – be the best)
• Help others (gifting is a powerful tool to make friends)
• Complete (Finish a goal recognized by others)
• Differentiation (ONLY if the community can see it)
• Play longer / faster
• Energy system (15 clicks per sessions)
• Pure time-gating (20min cool-down before next game)
• Economy tensions linked to time (collect enough gold to buy)
• Premium goods (gate with hard currency)

42. Don’t sell costumes
(Unless you are a MMORPG)

43. Do in-game offers!
(A lot!)

44. Questions?
Vincent Vergonjeanne
vincent@everydayiplay.com