This article was written by Kate Pietrelli, Managing Director at Path Advisors, Inc.
Founded in 2008 in Helsinki, Finland, Applifier first came to the market with a “rebel alliance” approach to help the indie developer community compete with the big players for audience on Facebook. The company quickly became one of the largest cross-promotion networks on the platform, reaching over 150 million users. At the same time, the mobile apps market was growing rapidly, and Applifier shifted its entire operations focus to mobile game discovery. In 2012, Applifier launched Everyplay® Replays for mobile game replay sharing. Now with over 275 iOS games live, Everyplay is considered one of the largest and fastest growing social video services for mobile games.
Since last summer of 2013, there’s been a growing interest in mobile video sharing technology and services for the games industry. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gaming consoles launched with built-in video sharing features, and Twitch streaming video platform has attracted tens of millions of viewers to PC eSports. All the while, Everyplay has been at the center of this growing market, releasing data further validating the effect of video sharing on game discovery.
Everyplay has been growing and evolving steadily since its iOS debut in late 2012. Over six million players have joined the community, and over 2.6 million game replays have been shared to date through Everyplay with over 600,000 replays in January alone, growing monthly at a current rate of 20 percent. The Applifier team has continuously updated the Everyplay network with new games, features and user interface improvements that enhance the player experience.
As the core focus of video sharing is to improve content discoverability, Everyplay provides a suite of capabilities designed for developers to attract, engage and retain players in their mobile games. One of the most powerful ways for users to discover new content is through friends, so Everyplay enables players to record, replay and share videos instantly with just one tap in-game to social channels, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The idea is that developers can enable their biggest fans (who create and share videos) to bring in friends and build a community directly within their mobile game.
Additional notable features of the Everyplay network include the unique use of FaceCam, which enables mobile gamers to create and share highly popular “Let’s Play”-style videos to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, where gaming has become the second largest genre after music videos. Players can also leverage FaceCam video messaging to brag, celebrate, challenge and taunt their friends.
With the addition of the FaceCam features and UI improvements, Everyplay replays dramatically improve discoverability of games, with top indie games like Stair Dismount seeing up to 7.5 percent of their daily installs originate from Everyplay.
Over the past several months, Applifier has been developing Everyplay for Android devices, and announced its global availability for Android 4.1 and up, along with the most popular Android devices such as Samsung Galaxy SII, SIII, S4, Galaxy Note devices, LG Optimus devices, Nexus devices from Google, and many more.
“The common wisdom was that replay sharing would be impossible on Android 4.1, but we made it work. Everyplay for Android 4.1 and up supports even the most CPU & GPU intensive games like Dead Trigger 2. Everyplay lets developers bring replay sharing to over 60 percent of the global Android market versus only 10 percent as with competing offerings,” said Jussi Laakkonen, CEO & founder of Everyplay. “Our unique technology is the key deciding factor on why some of the world’s largest companies in mobile games choose Everyplay both on iOS and Android.”
“We just launched an update with Everyplay support for Dead Trigger 2, and the fans have really taken to it with over 18,000 replays shared in just a few days,” said Marek Rabas, CEO & Co-founder at MADFINGER Games, a.s. “We’ve been testing Everyplay’s Android version in Dead Trigger 2, and it works great. We’ll be bringing it out to our Android players very soon!”
The Everyplay development team has more in store for both developers and players. With many of the sharing features in place for iOS and Android now, next steps include optimizing the replay sharing experience to drive more discovery, more daily installs, and further building out the community of players who enjoy sharing, watching, and engaging with friends over mobile video.
Recently, Cisco said that the number of mobile users could shoot up to 5 billion by 2018 in comparison to 4.1 billion in 2013, with more than 10 billion mobile-ready devices. By 2018, it’s also expected that mobile video will account for 69 percent of all mobile data against 53 percent in 2013. The market for mobile video is clearly here - and the opportunity for game developers is to listen to their players and provide the tools that enable self expression, authentic sharing, and player engagement. These capabilities in the hands of players will significantly increase word-of-mouth and, ultimately, bottom lines.
Comments
