Make your game unkillable. - Shalev MoranClick To Tweet
Shalev Moran is Games Program Director for Print Screen Festival in Holon. He also teaches Narrative and History of Digital Games at Shenkar College of Art and Design.
“Print Screen Festival is an international festival for digital culture, and probably the most important public event around that field in Israel,” said Shalev. “I’ve been curating a games program for it since 2013. My program usually includes an exhibition of indie games centered around a particular theme, and a series of talks, screenings and performances.”
At Casual Connect Tel Aviv, Shalev described the dos and don’ts of showing your game in exhibition. “The huge mistake is exhibiting a build that’s just the full game, or whatever they currently have that’s closest to being feature-complete and content-complete,” said Shalev. “An exhibition build should be a concise, measured taste of your game, and in my talk I break this down into a bunch of guidelines.” See more in Shalev’s lecture video.
Try to find one strength that you have on top of your competition and play to your strength.Click To Tweet
“Observe your competition. Figure out what they are doing, how they position themselves and try to see if there is any edge that you have on top of them. It can be your design, it can be your art, it can be pretty much anything but try to find one strength that you have on top of your competition and play to your strength”, game consultant Adir Ron adviced in their Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2016 session on scaling games from concept to soft launch, from 0 to 1,000 or even 10,000. They also shared common pitfalls to avoid when launching a new mobile game, as well as tips and best practices.
Your users are not all the same, why treat them in the same way? - Sivan EndenClick To Tweet
Firebase is a mobile platform that helps you quickly develop high-quality apps, grow your user base, and earn more money. At the heart of Firebase is Firebase Analytics, a free and unlimited analytics solution to gain insight into your users from ad click to app usage. Firebase Analytics works with other features such as admob, so you can make smart, data-driven user-centric decisions to grow your revenues by displaying engaging ads to a global audience.
Guy Hasson is Social Gaming Consultant of Old Man Productions
What does it take for social slots games to succeed in Asia? Will the games that have succeeded in other markets also be successful there? If these are questions that you are considering or that could affect your business, you will be interested in the knowledge Guy Hasson can offer. Guy is Social Gaming Consultant of Old Man Productions; previously he worked for Playtech for three years, before becoming Playtika’s Content Manager.
As a specialist in game popularity, Guy has seen the same social slots become successful everywhere across the globe, except in Asia. To succeed in this market, the game must be transformed into something different, yet there are similarities that should be retained. Guy described this process in detail at Casual Connect Tel Aviv. He stated that using country specific themes “is not nostalgia, fantasy or escape which is what players are looking for when they play.” In other words, something can be fantasy outside of a country but is not fantasy within. You shouldn’t use Geisha for a game for China because it is not fantasy or escape. To learn more about what you need to do to take your social slots game to the market in Asia, watch the video of his full session below.
If you don't have a VIP plan in place, you're lunatics! - Amit BivasClick To Tweet
Do you know who your players are? Do you wonder how best to reach them? If so, there is no one better you could turn to than Amit Bivas, Head of Marketing at Optimove. Amit has far-reaching experience in planning, developing and executing marketing strategies for both B2B and B2C. Their skills and abilities combine the art and science of marketing, merging creativity with business acumen and benefitting from a strong background in data analytics and statistics.
Amit Bivas presenting at Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2016 in The Charles Bronfman Auditorium
Amit emphasizes that players do not respond well to generic, mass marketing. It is much more effective to manage customer relationships through knowing who your players are and what unique affinities and tendencies they have. Maintaining a long term relationship requires intelligent behavior-based communications. In this session at Casual Connect Tel Aviv, Amit described the seven most common player personas and the most effective methods of engaging with them. Amit explained, “Optimove had analyzed a massive amount of data and can recommend how to approach players from 6 different personas - varying on an axis of spenders to non-spenders; and on an axis of player stage (new - active - churned - re-engaged).” They recommend first understanding your players, then interacting and only then monetizing. To learn more, watch this video of the full session below.
Ilyon has only been on the scene since 2013, but they already have over 40 titles and are continuing to see strong user acquisition and retention growth every month among their various titles. The company, which was started by four former Israeli military officers who worked on their game projects at home, has since grown to 40 employees with an office in Israel.
Scaling growth
The company started around a simple bubble-shooter game with only one game mode which Ilyon COO Ilya Molo says had a “total respectable” 2M downloads. They then took the feedback and data they received from that game and worked on it full-time to improve it. The resulting changes led to 1000% growth in downloads and revenue. Today, the same app has more than 14M downloads.
Ilyon has continuously used this model to grow: Reinvesting in its games as it reaches new thresholds – creating new levels, hiring new designers, adding game modes and improving in-app purchases. Additionally, they create special bubble-shooter apps to take advantage of current events such as the Olympics or holidays.
The 16th Indie Prize Awards Ceremony took place at Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2016. Casual Connect is a place where developers can foster relationships with other developers, gain exposure for your professional development team and beautiful games, and learn how to succeed in the new games ecosystem. The Indie Prize Showcase was bustling with developers from around the world competing and showing off their games. Find out who won and more information about their development process.
Game design is a fine art, and video games can be created by small teams in garages along with large teams in huge office spaces. During the Game Maker track for Casual Connect Tel Aviv, some of the greatest game makers on the planet will talk about their craft. Nir Miretzky, Co-founder of TheGamers.TV and Tsahi Liberman, CTO at TapOnIt will be the first in this track at the event.
Nir and Tsahi are also Chairman at GameIS and a Content Manager at GameIS respectively, a non-profit organization designed to unite Israeli game companies. As a sponsor of the Game Maker track, GameIS hopes to facilitate connections within and without the Israeli gaming industry.
Game Development in Israel
GameIS will also be represented by Tsahi Liberman moderating the panel Sound Session – Same But Different. There, Alon Kaplan, Mojo Kid Music Producer and Composer for Games Yinon Kuperstein, and Capricia Productions CEO Arnold Nesis and NivGo CEO Niv Golan will talk about what they made when working for the same client. Related to regional issues, 87 Owner and Game Developer/Designer Suhail Habib will talk about the political and cultural issues that have helped inform their game creation in the session How Being an Israeli-Palestinian Influenced My Games.
Creating the Next-Generation
Ask a lot of gaming professionals, the AR/VR scene has the most potential to blow up over the next several years. Still, nobody quite knows what form that will take, and that’s where Mark Shovman, Head of AR UX Research at Eyeway Vision, comes in. Mark will talk about how Pokemon Go might portend to the future in AR Gamers – The Next Generation.
Whatever future for VR, Valve’s Steam will surely have an impact on it. Steam Early Access is a good way to generate revenue and feedback, but some use it incorrectly or maliciously. Tomer Barkan, CEO and Founder of Suncrash Studios will discuss the hows and whys of using the platform in Steam Early Access Done Right. Similar to Early Access for mobile is a soft launch, and consultant Adir Ron will talk about what to do when launching a mobile title for To the Stars! Scaling your Game from Concept to Soft Launch (and Beyond!).
Badge pickup at Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2016
How to Make Games for Everyone
Before games are launched in any form, most are displayed at public and private events, which brings particular problems that can be hard to account for. Shalev Moran, Games Program Director for Print Screen Festival and Steamer Salon Festival, will talk about showing off your games in these settings at the session Exhibition Mode: How to Prepare Your Game for Exhibitions. Ultimately, it’s best to convey as many features that are important to the game, including how the narrative and gameplay are woven together, something Fireberry Studio Game Artist and Developer Stav Goldstein will talk about during the session Combining World, Story and Mechanics in The Splitting.
Women are huge consumers for the mobile game industry, yet they are often underrepresented in games, something Shulamit Ferber, Game Developer at Helen Doron will talk about in the session No Need for the Pink Hair Ribbon. Also on the docket will be Amir Dori, Senior Game Designer at Matific, at the session Kids, Technology & the Future of Education where Amir will talk about using games to make education fun and Ohad Barzilay, Producer and Game Designer at Sidekick Games, will talk about what works in Asian mobile games for the west (like Gacha mechanics) in Asian vs. Western Games: Successful Gameplay and Design Elements That Makes No Sense.
Make it out to Tel Aviv
Plenty of game creators and game publishers will be in attendance for Casual Connect Tel Aviv on November 1-3, many of which will be seeking networking opportunities. Info about the Game Maker track and move can be found at TelAviv.CasualConnect.org.
When seeking knowledge on a particular subject, like social/mobile gaming, it’s best to consult with the people who have already been there and achieved success. With the Industry Insights track at Casual Connect Tel Aviv, top people in the games industry will share their knowledge about regional and global strategies, lead off by Playful Shark founder Goldy G.
Asian Insights
Sessions will get underway with Baris Ozistek, CEO of Netmarble EMEA, who will talk about some takeaways from launching products in multiple Asian markets. In the session, ‘Learning to Succeed in Asia with Netmarble Case Studies’ they’ll detail what works and what doesn’t when localizing a game in the territory.
The international Indie Prize showcase for independent developers will take place on Nov 1-3, 2016 in Tel Aviv. Sixty games from 21 countries were provided with Indie Prize scholarship by Casual Connect and will be showcased at Habima Square during three days from 9 AM to 5 PM.
An astounding 12 games from Israeli developers were chosen by Indie Prize judges to participate in the international Indie Prize showcase in Tel Aviv on Nov 1-3rd, 2016.
Game design is a fine art, and video games can be created by small teams in garages along with large teams in huge office spaces. During the Game Maker track for Casual Connect Tel Aviv, some of the greatest game makers on the planet will talk about their craft. Nir Miretzky, Co-founder of TheGamers.TV and Tsahi Liberman, CTO at TapOnIt will be the first in this track at the event.
When seeking knowledge on a particular subject, like social/mobile gaming, it’s best to consult with the people who have already been there and achieved success. With the Industry Insights track at Casual Connect Tel Aviv, top people in the games industry will share their knowledge about regional and global strategies, lead off by Playful Shark founder Goldy G.
An astounding 12 games from Israeli developers were chosen by Indie Prize judges to participate in the international Indie Prize showcase in Tel Aviv on Nov 1-3rd, 2016.
