Tips for the Indie Web Game Developer moving to Mobile

About Me Chris Hughes Co-Founder, Head of Community and Product FGL.com email: chris@fgl.com skype: chris_fgl twitter: @ch00se Takeaway: Chris Hughes is awesome.

Welcome to the Indie Era - Right now, as an indie game developer, you can reach as far as you want - Many companies are focusing on indies - Many games that are popular now can be developed in a matter of months by a small team or even an individual It is cool to be indie

Welcome to the Indie Era - Don't let it slip away - if you don't expand, others (probably larger companies) will swoop in to settle the new land

Web, Mobile, or Web AND Mobile? - Still a lot of money and people on web - web/social/casual games industry is estimated to be worth ~$6.7Billion in 2013 - Web games on FGL are selling for more than ever before.

Web, Mobile, or Web AND Mobile? - But, we all know Mobile is huge

Web, Mobile, or Web AND Mobile? - Games listed on FGL selling both web and mobile licenses sell, on average, 4x higher than games just listing web - Most publishers on FGL want both web and mobile licenses

Other reasons to do both Web and Mobile - Cross promotion getting better from web to mobile (not much data on things going the other way, yet) - You can test your game on a large, easily accessible market (the web) before moving it to a large, hard to access market (mobile) - Why not?

Design with mobile in mind - Mouse only / touch screen friendly - resolution / scale - UI - These things usually do better on the web as well, anyway!

Design with business model in mind - the same model doesn't always work for both web and mobile - Do not just assume you have to use in-game purchases as your business model!!!!!

Porting an old game or building a new game - Tools: Holy cow, do you have options! *source: developereconomics.com

Finding a Publisher - Why? - Publishers are your friends - Most of them, anyway

Finding a Publisher - Traditional Mobile Publishers have a very narrow view - They want AAA content only (And that’s by their criteria) - They want to make millions per game - They want most of the innovation to happen on the business layer - They are afraid to risk money

Finding a Publisher - Current, more savvy, Mobile Publishers have a broader view - They want a mix of games - They cross promote games, and send most traffic to the top performers - They want innovation to be spread across gameplay, business, and distribution - They are willing to put money up front (they believe in the game) - Usually, they want both web and mobile rights

Miscellaneous tips - game rating - You should ask a user to rate your game after playing for a certain amount of time - Positive ratings will go up an order of magnitude if you do this right - Otherwise, most reviews are due to technical issues (and these are bad ratings)

Miscellaneous tips - cross promotion - do it Early cross-promotion, then ramp down Ongoing cross promotion with newly released games

Miscellaneous tips - pricing changes For many games, charging more (within reason) does not decrease the number of installs/purchases.

Looking forward - The lines between "web" and "mobile" are blurring - By focusing on both, you will be ahead of the game

Questions?