Best Practices for Creating and Distributing Games Cross Platform Games are going to be accessible on the screen that is most convenient at any given point. The design challenge has gone from porting between different resolutions to creating a unison game experience between completely different devices. Games will increasingly have the ability to be picked up where they were left off in the queue and continued in the comfort of the living room. Learn what King.com did to become the leader in Social Casual Games in less time than it takes to build a console game. Best Practices for Creating and Distributing Games Cross Platform

I like to start from the beginning: Hamburg allegedly got it name from the castle that was here more than 1200 years ago. It can be seen here on the city Coat of Arms. This “burg” or fort hosted the bishop and it also acted as a church. At this point in time the churches was the only place for seeing art and culture for most people. Churches keep having that central role for many years to come. From about the 1950 it started to become the cinema that was the social hub and center for conversational topics instead.

I use it to look at pictures of cats… If someone from the 1950s suddenly appeared today, what would be the most difficult thing to explain to them about life today? I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats… Today on the other hand we have information and here and now. I read this great Q&A at reddit: It asks:

My talk today is about creating and distributing games to that spans multiple chanels. Such as PC, Tables and smartphones. I will uses both BWS and CCS as examples. This picture here is a example of a marketing picture that we took for our Facebook fan page. I personaly directed these two models here playing the game. And I used to think that making games was difficult.

The agenda for this presentation can be see here. How did King go to get the #1 game on Facebook in less time then it takes to develop a triple AAA console title? I will give some background here in the Fountain of Fortune where we sort out the big fish from the small. And onwards to the Ginger bread house of game creation to finally end up at the Circus of the future and talk about where I see the trends pointing.

Daily active users (FB) 20 M 20 M 10 M 10 M Even though we have been around for a decade it was not untill the start of 2011 when we started making games for FB This is a graph on the number of Daily Active Users on Facebook according to AppData. During this period we have launched 7 games on facebook. The next important milestone is when CCS launched for mobile device. You can really see the impact on the slant of the curve. 2011 Now

In fact CCS has become so popular that it is now #1 on FB In fact CCS has become so popular that it is now #1 on FB. We celebrated that recently with this infographics. It states trivia like that the game has been played more than 100 K years when adding together the playsessions Or that more then 1 trillion candies have been crushed in the game since launch. But it also reveals one important thing that is a key to the success 69 % of the gamers are women. Not only is that rare but it is also important from a social perspective. I will come back to that.

We also revealed that the game was downloaded 10 M times in December the month after the launch. We are now recruiting heavily to continuing to meet the demand from our fans. [The king model]

3 platforms are shaping the future But first of all I want to Touch on three platforms that are changing the foundation for player out there 3 platforms are shaping the future

1. Facebook It has never been as simple to play with your friends Facebook games are reaching a large population of first time gamers The game are FREE The 2:nd platform…

2. Smart phones Is the smartphones… Steve Jobs never sat out to change games. He was never very much into game from what I understand. But the Smart phone revolution that he started with the iPhone certainly changed the landscape of gaming forever. I had been working with mobile games for almost ten years when this happened. There was no working mobile games market before this. One big factor of this change was the accessibility of the multi touch screen. The simplicity and the innovation in user interface. That is important for my talk. The third… http://jmak.tumblr.com/

3. Tablets Is tablets. In many aspects similar to smartphones but also very different. This device can be dedicated for gaming in a whole different manner. As a game developer it is important to respect this as a separate platform from smartphone. Especially because the usage pattern is different.

A portable future The growth for Smartphones and tablets are spectacular. This curve show the number of devices sold. The Red curve is PC, then blue is smartphones. And the yellow curve is tablets. It clearly shows the enormous potential of cross platform games. If you game runs seamlessly on all these devices you have a lot of potential ahead of you. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-mobile-deck-2012-3?op=1

? Play everywhere Game State Progress Casual Games fits the profile! The same game / accessable on multiple devices. This is what I am referring to when I am talking about cross platform today. Here is a exampel of Seamless play that I will be using as a case study today. BWS.

We have come to the second part! Creating cross platform games

Game creation Hit driven Risk elimination Why is creating games so fascinating? It is the ultimate manifestation of civilization Understanding how the brain works The job is a result of total integration of design, music, graphics, programming Team work & planning Small teams part of Kings success Game are an extremely hit driven business where it is important from a business perspective to eliminate risk.

150+ casual games At King.com we have an way of removing the guess work: 150 catalogue + 15 new skill games/year on king.com 12 weeks/3devs, sub $100k investment per game 11m unique testing ground surfaces best gameplay winners wrapped into proven “envelopes” for fb/mobile

Proven Game “Saga Framework” On Facebook: the ‘Saga' winners wrapped into proven “envelopes” for fb/mobile Proven Game “Saga Framework”

FB connected users are MUCH more valuable That is not strange. It is just a lot more fun and meaningful to play together with your friends. So even if we allow people to play offline completely, we try to encourage players to connect and play with others. * Retention * Engagement * Likelihood to pay

Small multi talented teams working agile Rapid prototyping/testing My five cents Small multi talented teams working agile Rapid prototyping/testing No tutorials Respect data Intuitive game controls If I was to select my 5 most important aspects of making great games it

Intuitive Controls Mouse Touch Screen Joypad One of the most difficult aspects of cross platform is changing input device. One general thing that can be said is that; the simpler the control the more easier the adaptation to new platforms Direct control is a super intuitive way of controlling a game. No layer of abstraction! If the controls are simple (like one button etc.) taking the game to another platform with another input method is much easier. YouTube: Bullfrog playing Ant Smasher

3rd part is distribution

Marketing & Branding This is one of the greatest differentiators: So how do you get people to find your game among the thousands of games out there? This is almost the holy grail in the digital marketplace. One of the most important resources a game company has is the active user base, the network of players in your games. They can be used to drive the new releases to the Famous top list. Marketing & Branding

PR Ads Word of mouth Facebook traffic Feature by Apple Cross promotion This is the top free list for iPhone. You app does not end up here by coincident. It take somewhere around 150 K download per day to get to the Top Free list. The extra downloads you get by being there makes it worth trying to make it there. As with any marketing a broad approach is better. You want to use all channels at once as being on the top list gives a lot of extra downloads. I will talk mostly about Facebook as that comes natural to King

PC: Facebook App discovery mainly viral Facebook app discovery is mainly driven by the notification system in Facebook (AppData 2012)

Mobile: App discovery driven by App Stores But on mobile the most important channel is the App Stores. Here it is not either possible to buy visibility. Nielsen Q3 2011

Over 50% of smart phone users are connected to Facebook The FB client on mobile is huge. It is a great tool for mobile App discovery. More than 500m of Facebook’s monthly users use mobile

Facebook enables cross-platform viral user acquisition Desktop to mobile Mobile to app / app store FB enables cross-platform viral user acqusition. Say that your friend is playing a x-platform game on the pc/mac. They send some coins to you. When you log to FB at your mobile device and check your notifications you see… If you do not have the app -> App Store. Othervise straight to the App. (This works the other way around as well) App to desktop

Facebook enables discoverability both on canvas and mobile Notifications News feed and Timeline 1. Facebook enables discoverability both on canvas and mobile. This is a extremely valuable source for user acquisition. Bookmark Ads

Social Light social layer Facebook is great tool for game developers It helps you identify who of your friends that is playing

The true definition of social is when people are actual doing something together. And that is the greatest potential with cross platfrom games. To remove all obstacles so that anybody who wants to can join. If three people at the table all talk about a TV-Series and you have not seen it you are much more likely to see it of course.

Fans The fact that the game works great for women is a key to make it accessible for the entire family. Many guys that have tried to introduce games to their girlfriend or mother finally have a game that they can play together. This type of user generated marketing is the “priceless”

We have reached the end of my presentation and it is time to recap…

Casual Games Cross platform Truly Social Recap Casual Games Cross platform Truly Social These games will be the dominating brand creator of this decade! Conclusion: Casual games has a brilliant future ahead. Accessibility is a key to make games into phenomenon’s Social - Truly Social is when families can talk about the game during the dinner table These games will be the dominate brand creator of this decade

Thank you for listening! tommy.palm@king.com About.me/tommy.palm