In the gaming industry monetization is key to keeping in business and making new games. Conventional strategies include in-app purchases or ads and yet there is no single right answer for all games for a monetization strategy. Join Diana Platonova, CBO at MyTona, as she described evidence-based examples of what worked well for MyTona. In her talk, Customising for Your Audience: How Game Art Affects Monetization, at Casual Connect Asia, and see how they were able to incorporate these ideas into their game Seekers Notes. Diana advised, “Strive for excellence and never stop there. There is always something in your game that can be improved, changed or tested.” Tune in a video of the full lecture below.
An outstanding number of games from Asia are participating in Casual Connect‘s Indie Prize in Asia 2018. These games allow you to be almost anyone imaginable, from a Hollywood movie director to the owner of a virtual pet, to even a prism journeying through crystal caves. You could go anywhere your imagination can take you – a theme park, the demon realm, a developer studio, and many others, even a place to create your own world. And these games will test your skills in so many different ways and in so many different situations.
Game Title:Hollywhoot Developer: Joyseed Gametribe Platform: iOS, Android Country: Indonesia
Have you ever wanted to direct a Hollywood movie? If so you will love being in the director’s chair as you play Hollywhoot. This game offers a perfect parody of movies and TV shows using the “punniest” characters imaginable. You can achieve Primetime awards and continue raising your prestige as a director.
Hollywhoot won Comfest 9 Game of the Year and Comfest 9 Art awards. It has been featured in the App Store and globally in Google Playstore. It achieved 200K downloads in one month and was nominated for most promising game in Popcon 2017 and in IMGA SEA 2017.
Guy Charusadhirakul manages business development for Google Play in Southeast Asia, helping to grow the ecosystem of game and app developers in the region as he assists them to build successful global businesses using Google Play. Guy especially enjoys working with the creative people who are building fun, unique games, helping them reach millions of players globally and succeed with their businesses. Recently Gamesauce was able to interview Guy about his work with Google Play.
Gamesauce: Tell us about the work you do at your company. How did you come to work at your current company?
Guy Charusadhirakul: I manage business development for Google Play in Southeast Asia. Basically, that means I help grow ecosystem of game and app developers in the region and help them build successful global business with Google Play.
Try different ways, at first do as much as possible by yourself. - Kirill LazackovichClick To Tweet
How do you become a kids app developer? At Casual Connect Asia, Kirill Lazakovich shared his story about two non-developers who started creating kids apps as a side project and became successful. He shared what their secrets, vision and statistics throughout the project.
Music and sound effects are commonplace in a mobile game, but often the use of voice work is overlooked. Usual reasons include a lack of budget or experience working with voice talents. See the session video below if you want to learn about how the use of voice can bring your characters and stories to life, and if you’re taking the first steps into casting, creating a script and working with voice talents. At Casual Connect Asia, Jeremy Goh, Co-Founder of IMBA Interactive, discussed voice work, noting that “good voice work can give your game relatability and personality, as well as a source of rich feedback for your players.”
Atsuo Nakayama speaking at Casual Connect Asia 2017.
How vulnerable is the game industry in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)? Its competitors in Japan and the US have an IP business foundation. Without the same foundation, Atsuo Nakayama maintains that ASEAN will lose ground in comparison.
Atsuo is President and COO of Bushiroad Singapore where they manage its TCG, Mobile game and Anime business that derives from the IPs they own, including Vanguard, Baddy Fight and BanG Dream. They also specialize in the IP business from their previous work as Studio Head and General Manager of Bandai Namco Studios in Vancouver and Singapore.
Atsuo described the process of creating the fan base for the game IP they were making, “It took a three year effort to crystallize IP with a certified core fan base.” Clearly this is not a quick and easy thing to do. But they insist that by following Bushiroad’s procedure in creating IP, developers will realize this is just what Singapore and the ASEAN countries should be targeting. Watch this video of Atsuo’s presentation at Casual Connect Asia to learn more about the importance of IP business.
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To read more about Atsuo Nakayama including a lecture from Casual Connect Asia 2016, see this exclusive article.
As a game developer, you know the sounds in your game are crucial in so many ways. You may be using sound effects to underscore and add excitement to the action. Perhaps you have music to create moods and underscore the game world. It is no wonder music and sound effects are now commonplace in mobile games. But are you aware of what voice work can add to your game?
Sharon Kho is Co-Founder of IMBA Interactive
Sharon Kho, Co-Founder of IMBA Interactive, has the experience to guide you in exploring this underutilized area of sound for games. IMBA Interactive, a Singapore-based studio, provides audio and music solutions for video games and apps. Sharon is a music composer and sound designer whose most recent work on Mr. Catt received the Best Music and Sound Effect Award at the Bahamut ACG Awards in 2016.
At Casual Connect Asia, Sharon and another of IMBA’s founders, Jeremy Goh, gave a session aimed particularly at developers taking those first steps in working with voice talents, including casting and creating a script. In this session they described how to using voices to bring the characters and story of your game to life. When it comes to hiring an actor, Sharon advised, “You have to respect the actor who is going to put more things on the table than what is expected, because he has the talent you hired them for in the first place. So when you talk to the talent, make sure you get on the same page with them and make them comfortable, because at the end of the day… who knows, maybe your character development may come from the actor. Be open-minded to suggestions in order to get the best results.” To learn more, watch this video of the full session from Casual Connect.
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To read more about Sharon Kho’s views and to see another joint session with Gwen Guo from Casual Connect Asia 2016, see this exclusive article.
By Yi Fei Boon, Field Engineer, Unity Technologies
Innovation is often used to describe the latest and greatest in technology. Less known is the inspired community behind this, that is intrinsically motivated to propel a cycle of solving problems, discovering new solutions, developing and commercialising products, which in turn, helps companies reinvest in the next generation of technology.
Unity is a case in point. Developers face new challenges as they push the limits of technology and platforms to bring their games to life, as more dynamic game engines are, in turn, being developed to empower developers. It is during this cycle that collaborative innovation is born. Developers turn to the engine developers for aid, leading to collaborative new and unique solutions to address issues faced during development, which is then later implemented into the engine.
At the recent Casual Connect Asia held at Resorts World Sentosa Singapore, from 16 to 18 May, I spoke about how this process of collaborative innovation solves some of these problems, as well as how this drives the growth and constant improvement of Unity’s game engine. Working as Unity’s technical consultant, I have been aiding clients in optimising their programme and helping address challenges encountered while using the game engine.
Remind developers that early monetization planning goes a long way in sustaining business. - Simon TohClick To Tweet
The time for Asian-Pacific mobile app publishers to switch to programmatic methods for monetizing. As the Head of APAC Platform Sales for MoPub, Simon Toh spoke about the need for developers to take advantage of mobile programmatic to monetize risk so that they don’t miss out on differentiated demand, revenue and control user experience. Simon stated, “To grow your top line, it is important for you to find new ways to monetize more of your users preferably all of them and not be overly dependent on in-app purchases.” During his talk at Casual Connect Asia, Simon also delved into what the beneits for publishers which included a glimpse into innovative ad formats and spend trends in the APAC market. To learn more, tune in to the video below of his full session.
Game Title: Hollywhoot
Game Title: NEO Impossible Bosses
