Slides from a presentation at GDC Taipei 2013 entitled Creating International Hits from China.

1. Creating International Hits from
China
Charlie Moseley
Creative Director, Tap4Fun

2. Who am I and what is Tap4Fun?

3. About Me
• 32 year old, from Washington D.C.
• Gamer since age 5, when I fell in love
with Mario and Final Fantasy
• In China since 2005, working with
Tap4Fun since 2010
• In it for the international hit

4. About Tap4Fun
• 3 years old, from Chengdu China
• Focused only on multiplayer strategy
games
• Nearly 300 “Tappers” & one of the
highest grossing mobile developers in
China
• In the words of our CEO Kevin Yang:
“An international company based in
China, not just a Chinese company”
• Also it for the international hit

5. What This is About
• Sharing our 3+ years of experience,
and our rise to notoriety
• How to create concepts and develop
products
• How to market your games to
international audiences
• Localization, optimization, and
experimentation
• My perspective as an expat in China
• Answers to your questions

6. Some Background Info

7. Today:
500k DAU
25+ Million Users
320 Employees

8. At the beginning, in 2008:

9. Two Products
Twitbird MobileRSS

10. Then, in 2011:
We had a dream.

11. The Tap4fun Dream:
Make great online games
that connect the world.
(in other words: create international hits)

12. Product Overview
• Build, upgrade, compete with players,
and expand your power and influence
• Iterative development cycle, male-skewed
demographic
• Common SLG game themes + one or
more unique elements per product

13. Our Games
Island Empire
2011
Galaxy Empire
2011
Global Threat
2013
Galaxy Legend
2013
Spartan Wars
2012
King’s Empire
2012

14. Spartan Wars Imagery

15. Spartan Wars Video

16. Ok, so now you know
about Tap4Fun.
How do we decide what
games to develop?

17. Creating Concepts

18. Concept Creation
• Simple ideas. “Simplicity is the
ultimate sophistication” - Davinci
(1977 Apple slogan, too)
• SERIOUSLY: SIMPLE IDEAS!
• Evaluate team ability and determine
your level of risk tolerance
• Familiarity + “a hook”

19. Concept Creation
Familiar New &
Different
Sweet
Spot!

20. Concepts for International Audiences
• What ideas are understood and
appreciated by world cultures?
• What cultural bias to you bring to
your concepts? Examples: China &
Sanguo, Japan and anime, me and
prohibition era concept
• What cultural precedent is there for
your concept?

21. Liquor Empire
“Build a 1930’s underground empire and reign as!
Kingpin over your organized criminal network”

22. What is the Prohibition Era?
• Believing it was a crime
against God, in 1920 the
United States made alcohol
illegal, causing an
underground alcohol culture
to explode!
• At the same time, Mussolini
expelled thousands of
members of Italian organized
crime, who immigrated to
NYC and Chicago

23. Visual Inspiration
• Familiar mafia setting!
• Unique, old school
Prohibition Era setting!
• Alcohol-driven game
economy!
• Historical reference

24. Why didn’t it work?
Onto a concept that did work...

25. Spartan Wars Example
• Our most popular game was a
concept I pitched in Feb. 2012: a
Spartan-themed game of conquest
• The Spartan theme, with Greek
mythology, was fresh and suited the
SLG gameplay aesthetic
• Do people understand Sparta? They
do, because of one movie.

26. That Movie Is...

27. Spartan Wars Example
The movie 300 planted “the
seed” that made this theme
relatable and familiar.
!
It paved the “cultural road” to
Spartan Wars.

28. Spartan Wars Example

29. The Secret Ingredient

30. The Secret Ingredient

31. The Secret Ingredient
“The only way to do great
work is to love what you
do. If you haven’t found it
yet, keep looking.”

32. Where Concepts Go to Die
We kill a lot of concepts.
Many of them are great.
Don’t worry about it.

33. Where Concepts Go to Die
"We have this culture of celebrating failure,"
explains Paananen. "When a game does well, of
course we have a party. But when we really
screw up, for example when we need to kill a
product -- and that happens often by the way,
this year we've launched two products globally,
and killed three -- when we really screw up, we
celebrate with champagne. We organize events
that are sort of postmortems, and we can
discuss it very openly with the team, asking what
went wrong, what went right. What did we learn,
most importantly, and what are we going to do
differently next time?"
- Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen

34. Where Concepts Go to Die
Try things. Fail. Try again.
Probably, fail again. This is all a
part of the process of success.

35. Monetization
with stories!

36. First, a Disclaimer
● Our ARPU is respectable, but due to strategies like Player Cocktails and
targeting emerging markets, we aren’t industry leaders in monetization
● We’re still learning a lot. Along with basically everyone else in the industry.
● To prevent this from getting number or acronym heavy, I will explain the
situation with real-life examples

37. Zynga
● Revolutionized social gaming
● Then suffered a calamitous fall. What happened?
● Focused too heavily on metrics, monetization, and
“psyching out” players”
● Platform fell out but they failed to adapt to mobile
● Not fun. And was, in the end, financially ruinous.

38. Zynga
Lesson #1: Focusing too
much on monetization
can really hurt you.

39. Punch Quest
● “Pummel your way through dungeons full of
monsters and branching path choices”. Simple side-scroller
with brilliant design.
● Critics said…

40. Punch Quest!
Touch Arcade: 100%. “Punch Quest
needs to be on every device you
own”.
!
Gamezebo: 100%. “Fist Place
Trophy.”

41. Punch Quest
● Time: first 2 months of
release through Christmas
2012. iPhone, US.
● Lots of great press
● Phenomenal chart
performance in downloads
● Looks good, right?

42. Punch Quest
Download Ranks Grossing Ranks

43. Punch Quest
● Punch Quest gave away too much.
Pocketgamer said “Almost no one is
paying”
● Is that even a problem? Rocketcat
Games is 4 people.
● Other small F2P teams have won
every award and still monetized:

44. Punch Quest
Lesson #2: design for
monetization from the
beginning if that
matters to you.

45. Data Analysis
● “Dive into the data” to find out exactly
what’s happening
● Tap4Fun’s ocean of lost data & our
corrected path
● MathWorks’ MATLAX (Matrix Lab)
● Brian Devlin and our advanced
analytics + internal tools
● Monetization Funnel

46. Monetization Funnel

47. Monetization Funnel
Carefully check each step of the
funnel, from acquisition to LTV and
identify and fix problems. Always
improve each link of the chain.
!
Endgame = High LTV

48. Data Analysis
Lesson #3: “dive into data” &
iterate your way to successful
monetization.
!
Follow the chain and eat the
acronym soup: CPI, DAU, ARPU,
LTV.

49. Marketing Your App

50. Why is this necessary?
Island Empire vs Galaxy Legend

51. Marketing Island Empire
● Our first release, after a 4-month bootstrapped
development cycle
● Zero marketing or promotion upon release
● 10k+ organic users within the first week alone
● User acquisition costs incredibly low: Free App a
Day $10k (40k installs)
Island Empire
2011

52. Marketing Galaxy Legend
● Our sixth release, after an 18-month development
cycle
● Limited marketing and promotion upon release
● Positive initial conversion rates, high user
acquisition costs ($1.75/user on Android, $2.75 iOS)
● Tough competition and slow organic growth - user
acquisition becomes a necessity Galaxy Legend
2013

53. Marketing Becomes a Necessity
● Each niche of gaming has
varying levels of competition and
opportunity. Our niche is
crowded.
● Other crowded niches: card &
gambling games
● Proliferating third-party
marketing services worldwide
with different specialities
● Attention-deficit market
conditions lead to skyrocketing
UAC (up to $20/user in certain
regions and platforms)
● Would Clash of Clans be Clash
of Clans without marketing?
Consider the quality of CoC.

54. Marketing Spartan Wars
● Before 2012 public launch we began key
marketing tests in over a dozen markets
and collecting data: retention metrics, cost
per user, revenue data
● Identify what works, what fails, and
optimize
● Spartan Wars & Russia
● Seasonal considerations & weekends:
Christmas and holidays

55. Marketing Spartan Wars
Download Ranks

56. Developed vs Emerging Markets
● Highest value users: US, UK, Japan, Korea
● High revenue but tough competition versus
low revenue and weak competition
● Price difference between iOS and Android
platforms
● Cultural differences and finding surprises:
Island Empire and Arabic-speaking countries
"Why would you want to go into the US when
competition is so great and user acquisition
costs so much? You need an incredible
product. Most international game developers
approach emerging markets in some way,
but you really need somebody on the ground
or somebody with experience that can make
sure your translation is 100% accurate, and
secondly, someone who can identify the
marketing channels important to that
region"."In the US market you have major
companies that will help you market your
product, at a great cost. In places like the
Middle East or Southeast Asia, where do you
go? You either have to know someone with
that knowledge or learn it through trial and
error. User acquisition in SE Asia or the
Middle East might be $.50 where it's $3-5 in
the US"
- Eugene Konash, Tap4Fun Marketing

57. Localizing Your Game
● Which countries do you localize in?
● Investment & development costs
● Experimental campaigns in emerging
markets: data analysis
● Tap4Fun & Arabic: Cultural sensitivity
with Spartan Wars (Persians)
● How Tap4Fun has localized, and our
latest efforts with moderators
● The importance of support

58. Worldwide Support
● 12 localizations for Spartan Wars:
English, Spanish, German, French,
Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean,
Traditional & Simplified Chinese
● Up to 4,000+ tickets per day shared
among multi-lingual support team
● Constantly hiring language majors for
internal support team
● Why this is important: the kind of
players who create support inquiries &
support whales

59. “Player Cocktails”
● What we learned from Global Threat: placing players from the same region
together for World Chat
● What we’re doing now: creating cocktails of high and low value players from
different regions speaking the same languages. The cost advantage: filling a
server with 10k US users is expensive.
● Examples: UK & India, France & North Africa, Russia & Ukraine, UAW & Egypt
● Creating an ecosystem of “predators and prey”. Non-paying users supported
by paying users. Balancing revenue & retention.

60. “Player Cocktails”

61. In Closing
We love making friends and creating new partnerships. Say hi!
!
We also publish games and provide help with concepting,
design, development, optimization, marketing, and more.

62. We love making friends and creating new partnerships. Say hi!
We also publish games and provide help with concepting,
design, development, optimization, marketing, and more.
Charlie
email: charlie@tap4fun.com
twitter: @justcharlie