ABOUT JAYVIAN:

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| Miniclip

| Game Changers




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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🥁 The beginnings of Jayvian’s collaboration with app platforms

 🕋 Why app platforms are considered to be black boxes

 🤗 When did app platforms become receptive of Jayvian’s communication

🎰 The criteria to qualify for a shot at getting featured on the app platforms

 📉 What has more impact while pitching? Stories or metrics

📓 How to prep app platforms for an app launch

💪🏼Is featuring on an app platform as powerful as it used to be? 

🎮How Jayvian worked with Google Play to tap into the Indian gaming market

🎭 Common mistakes made by developers when pitching their products to app platforms

👩‍🎤 How indie developers can take the first steps to establishing an association with app platforms

KEY QUOTES

Looking beyond featuring requests

There were more collaborations beyond what I normally call “featuring requests”. That  changes things in ways in which we work together. For us in particular, we don’t see either stores or any of the platforms that we work with simply as a user acquisition channel, we see them as a platform, from where we are able to get in touch with our users directly.

Why does a USP matter while building relations?

Just because you have a Christmas update doesn’t mean you’re the only person doing a Christmas update, right? Everyone else is doing this. So what makes your Christmas update more unique and more special than somebody else’s? And this is where the USP stands out whether it’s more attractive to your players and engages your users more.

When is the right time to notify app stores of a new launch?

I like to prep earlier, because it’s better for us and for them. It helps us to better align our target launch dates, what we’re trying to achieve, which countries we want to focus on. Obviously, launch dates could change as well. Nothing is carved in stone until it’s ready to go out. But you don’t want to plan too early in advance because you don’t want to say “Sorry, I have these changes and I can’t launch in time now” and that will be a nightmare. So I think it’s a balance between doing that and also being aware of when could be a suitable time.

How the Play Store encouraged Jayvian’s team to launch in India

it was also at a time where Google Play noticed that India was becoming one of their biggest markets. And so there were a lot of conversations and opportunities for us to start working together to explore and expand India as a new territory. This obviously goes beyond featuring because there were a lot of experiments that we ran, whether it’s around pricing, new modes, content, players behavior, which we then shared with Play. 

They also did a lot of research on payment channels, availability, offline marketing, which we wouldn’t ever have done ourselves

Partnerships can help expand businesses

India is just one territory. We were able to replicate this across multiple different territories. Brazil, MENA with both Apple and Google Play. Which is why I said these partnerships are very important for us because there is data that obviously we don’t have access to where they are able to guide us as to do better in these markets to sell better.

The first steps to building long lasting partnerships

Before COVID we actually met some of our best contacts through conferences. It was really random, but we bumped into people who introduced us to people and made connections. And so I would say networking in the industry certainly doesn’t harm anybody, specifically indie developers. 

What’s the right note to start off a cold call?

I think the beginning is always hard for everyone. It depends on what you say, right? When you call and reach out. Do you explain who you are? Do you share some exciting things about your games? Do you tell people why they should pay attention to you?

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Shamanth  

I’m very excited to welcome Jayvian Hong to the Mobile User Acquisition Show. Jayvian, welcome to the show.

Jayvian

Hi, everyone. So glad to be here today. Thank you for having me. It’s a great pleasure to be alongside all the other speakers already in the podcast.

Shamanth  

We’re honored to have you. We connected about a year and a half ago for a project that you run, and we’ll have you tell folks about that in a bit. Today, we’re going to talk about something that a lot of folks are curious about, but there seems to be a curtain shrouding much of this: maintaining relationships with big platforms, Apple and Google. This is something you’ve worked on for a long time and you have expertise on. 

To begin with, how did you start to develop relationships with the platforms? Obviously, everyone starts somewhere, but what would you say was the threshold after which you were able to start working very closely with them and they started to be much more receptive to your communications, because I imagine that not always easy in the very beginning.

Jayvian

Perhaps I should provide some context so people understand what it’s all coming from. I have been with Miniclip for the last seven and a half years and I would say that my working relationship with the stores, primarily App Store and Google Play, started probably in 2016- 2017, when we started to build better relationships in all ways. Like Shamanth mentioned, for some folks, it could be like a black box and it was for us in the beginning. It wasn’t easy for any developers to get in touch with people. This was not because it was a black box, but I think one thing that many people may not be aware of was, the mobile games industry is big today but back in the day, it was still relatively small. 

So the number of editors, business managers in the store was also very small. I’ve heard stories about how one app store manager has to manage over 30-50 companies. If that’s the case, each of us gets a very small slice of the person’s time. It was just a matter of time before things changed and expanded. They obviously started hiring more and we started to get better at what we did. There were more collaborations beyond what I normally call “featuring requests”. That  changes things in ways in which we work together. For us in particular, we don’t see either stores or any of the platforms that we work with simply as a user acquisition channel, we see them as a platform, from where we are able to get in touch with our users directly. 

So in the work that we do with them, it’s beyond just requesting for features, just trying to get organic users, but a lot more deeper partnerships. I like to think that it’s a two way partnership with both of them, rather than seeing them as a user acquisition channel, if that makes sense.

Shamanth  

And was there a certain number of downloads, a certain number of games at which it started to change the dynamic of the relationship with the stores, when they started to be more receptive to you?

Jayvian

With anything, scale is always good for the business. Now, that’s not to say that if you’re smaller, independent studios, you get less attention from the stores. I beg to differ because I see that the stores are now doing a lot more activities and a lot more events  for indie developers as well, who may have less of a scale. Google Play has a lot of indie mentorship programs, and a number of different programs that are catered to smaller size developers, as well as programs for larger scale developers like ourselves.

In our case, Miniclip didn’t start off on just mobile. We have had our web business for 20 years and when we moved to mobile, we obviously had the leverage. We were able to grow out on mobile in a much faster way. That scale certainly helped us to get in touch with them as well to share what we do. We also did a lot more new games back in the day. So that scale of the number of game users that we have has helped.

Shamanth  

Certainly, I think scale is a big factor. What you do is interface with your group studios and you maintain their game’s relationships with Apple and Google, for the individual group studios. So when you’re pitching to Apple and Google what are some of the criteria based on which you say, “You should hear about this particular game, feature or live ops event?” What are some of the criteria you are typically looking at?

Jayvian

I will see if the update itself is fun and relevant for the players. I think ultimately what the stores are looking for is, is this new update exciting? Not for them, but more for the players. Will players be interested in downloading the game, if they see that these are promoted? That’s the most important criteria that we’ll look at. And as games have also moved a lot into research and testing, we also look at the KPIs of the events or the updates that we have and see if that helps to move the needle. How are players reacting to it in the testing phase? This is to prove that this is something that players really enjoy and so the store should also look at these updates and help support it as well.

Shamanth

I’m also curious: when you’re talking to the platforms, you could pitch them based on stories: there are features that make for great stories and you could push them based on metrics. What do you find more impactful: stories or metrics? Or does it not matter?

Jayvian

A combination of both. We’ve always been running live ops because a lot of our games are sports games. Naturally, there are live events that are constantly happening in the background that we could certainly leverage. But at the same time, just because you have a Christmas update doesn’t mean you’re the only person doing a Christmas update, right? Everyone else is doing this. So what makes your Christmas update more unique and more special than somebody else’s? 

And this is where the USP stands out whether it’s more attractive to your players and engages your users more. I think that in itself is a story of its own as well. If you release this new feature, and you see that 30% more of your players are engaging with the feature, it could perhaps be that it’s Christmas time, or it could be that the feature itself is very strong. So I would say it’s a combination of both.

Shamanth

Obviously, getting new games featured and getting them featuring love is certainly an important part of what you do. What does the preparation process for a new game look like? How long before the game is out do you start communicating with Apple and Google? And what does communication look like leading up to the launch?

Jayvian

I think today with the help of data, everyone soft launches their game. It’s not hush hush like it used to be before. These days most companies spend at least one to three months in a soft launch where people can easily see that someone is starting a new game. We are no different today, we do soft launches as well. Sometimes, the stores say “hey, you’re soft launching this new game I see. Tell us more about it.” Sometimes we go even before soft launch and say “hey, we’re soft launching this new game that we think could be really exciting. Here’s the build, tell us what you think”. So it could go either way. 

But normally I like to prep earlier, because it’s better for us and for them. It helps us to better align our target launch dates, what we’re trying to achieve, which countries we want to focus on. Obviously, launch dates could change as well. Nothing is carved in stone until it’s ready to go out. But you don’t want to plan too early in advance because you don’t want to say “Sorry, I have these changes and I can’t launch in time now” and that will be a nightmare. So I think it’s a balance between doing that and also being aware of when could be a suitable time. From our end we try to do it as early as we can.

Shamanth

You want to launch early enough that the platforms have a heads up, but also so that you give them enough of a concrete timeline on when this is going to happen. So they can plan accordingly and you can put it into their calendars as well.

Jayvian

My biggest nightmare would be apologizing to people and saying, “Sorry, this launch can’t happen this Friday, because of multiple reasons”

Shamanth  

Speaking of featuring, the rankings are not as prominent or powerful as they used to be. I mean, I know of times when being featured would give you 100 to 500,000 installs a day. That’s just not happening now that the App Store has been redesigned in the last couple of years. So how valuable do you find featuring today, for a new game that’s launching?

Jayvian

For Miniclip, we still are seeing most of our players coming in organically. So it’s still a very important channel. First, I’ve heard the sentiment that people say featuring is less impactful than what it was before. But as I mentioned, there are two reasons, one is we still get a lot of our users organically. So any feature that we get helps to boost these organic dollars. Two, we don’t see the platforms as just install-generating channels for us, I think our relationship goes beyond that.

The immediate impact of featuring may not be as good as it was, because now we have more competitors. Now, people find out about games in many other channels, they can go to YouTube, see ads, whereas before, it wasn’t as sophisticated. So I wonder if all these other channels plus featuring is the reason why it is less impactful, not just because of the changes.

Shamanth

You said that a lot of your work goes beyond just treating the platform as a source of installs. And you said you believe in truly partnering with a platform. Are there examples that you can think of or share about how you worked with a platform in a way that wasn’t just restricted to feature?

Jayvian

Yes, Google Play, for example, we started working with in Oct 2017. It’s easy for people to say, India is one of the biggest gaming markets in the world. But back in 2017, we were one of the pioneers who identified that India was one of the countries that we really want to focus on. And when I say we really want to focus on means we’re already planning for games exclusively for Indian players, content for Indian players pricing, targeting Indian players, as well as new content, new modes for Indian players. 

At the time when we first started doing this, it was also at a time where Google Play noticed that India was becoming one of their biggest markets. And so there were a lot of conversations and opportunities for us to start working together to explore and expand India as a new territory. This obviously goes beyond featuring because there were a lot of experiments that we ran, whether it’s around pricing, new modes, content, players behavior, which we then shared with Play. 

They also did a lot of research on payment channels, availability, offline marketing, which we wouldn’t ever have done ourselves. So our partnerships had influences which we hadn’t thought about ourselves. They provided those kinds of inputs. All of these experiments take time, as you can imagine and there are a lot of tweaks that go into what’s the best pricing, how people do things, and that really opened up the conversation for a much deeper integration, what better tools can you use to run experiments etc.

Shamanth

I would argue for many game developers today, India isn’t necessarily considered a huge market. So it sounds like working with Google just opened up this what looked like a completely untapped market for you guys. And given the population size, it’s crazy. I don’t think a lot of people would expect that to come out of a partnership with a platform, but clearly you guys made that work. That’s impressive.

Jayvian

India is just one territory. We were able to replicate this across multiple different territories. Brazil, MENA with both Apple and Google Play. Which is why I said these partnerships are very important for us because there is data that obviously we don’t have access to where they are able to guide us as to do better in these markets to sell better. And I think that information is very valuable to us as well.

Shamanth

Yeah, if you succeed in India, the same playbook can work in Brazil and other geos too.

Jayvian

Featuring gets you one wave of players. But then what’s more important is how do you retain those players? What happens if nobody stays in the game after? I think that information, how to get better in long term retention and monetization are also valuable insights that we get from them as well.

Shamanth  

Google certainly has much more of a focus on retention and engagement. My understanding is that Google has more of a focus on Apple. So if they are helping you tap certain geos, they’re doing it with an eye on retention and engagement, not just installs, downloads and visibility. So I think that makes a lot of sense, too. 

I know you said these relationships are not necessarily just dependent on scale. So when app developers are pitching the platforms, either for featuring or for partnerships, what are some of the common mistakes that they make? And these could be your internal studios, or other developers that you’ve seen trying to pitch.

Jayvian

I would say, probably not highlighting what’s so special about the game. As developers, we all think what we make is the best. And I think by not telling them what is so special or unique about your game probably puts you at the back. What people want to find out is what’s special about your game that players will want to download and try it.  So I would say try and share more about what makes your game so unique. Why does it stand out? Maybe the graphic is really amazing. Maybe your players have already given you really positive feedback about it. Maybe you’re seeing it from your data? Or maybe it’s a hunch! There might be some reasons why you believe this particular game or update is better than the rest.

Shamanth 

Speaking of developers, indie developers want to continue to develop stronger relationships with platforms. What is some advice you would give to indie developers that don’t have massive scale or multiple games in their studio? What is some of the advice that you would give for them to start cultivating relationships with Apple and Google?

Jayvian

Before COVID we actually met some of our best contacts through conferences. It was really random, but we bumped into people who introduced us to people and made connections. And so I would say networking in the industry certainly doesn’t harm anybody, specifically indie developers. 

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I think the App Store and Google Play are now putting a lot more emphasis in trying to support these developers. I’m fortunate enough to participate in one of the mentorship programs that Google Play is running now, where there’s a lot of insights sharing and networking opportunities that they’re providing to indie developers in the app store. This is opening up. Before, people used to think they were a black box and nobody knows what’s going on behind the scenes. But I think they’re also opening up to become more interested in learning about developers, what we do and how they can better support us. So I think it’s much easier today than it was to try to learn about them. LinkedIn is always a good place to start. If you don’t have any contacts in the industry so far.

Shamanth  

I do know indie developers who have done cold outreach on LinkedIn and gotten responses. I know it’s possible but it’s hard. At least that’s been my impression, just start talking to a lot of people.

Jayvian

I think the beginning is always hard for everyone. It depends on what you say, right? When you call and reach out. Do you explain who you are? Do you share some exciting things about your games? Do you tell people why they should pay attention to you?

Shamanth

That initial message is critical. And you pointed out the elements that do need to be there. But I think you also alluded to the fact that in the beginning, it was not as easy for you guys, it was a process for you guys to work your way up a lot of these relationships as well. 

Jayvian this has been incredibly instructive. You’re pulling back the curtain on an area that I think a lot of folks are very curious about but it’s a talk a lot about. So thank you for sharing a lot of this with us today. This is perhaps a good place for us to wrap. But before we do that, could you tell folks how they can find out more about you and everything you do?

Jayvian

I should add that the folks that we work with, in Apple and Google – Andreas, Francesco, Tamsin and a few others, they’re all really, really nice people. You just need to get to know them. I’ve never met anyone who’s mean in those app stores. But I do certainly sympathize because I was always told that they have to manage quite a bit of companies on their plates. So we have to do our parts to help them as well. 

Please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn to get in touch, to connect and chat about all these industry stuff. We’d love to hear more about how others experience things as well.

Shamanth 

Excellent. Thank you. And would you like to tell folks about the project that you briefly alluded to earlier?

Jayvian

Yes, the reason Shamanth and I managed to connect was because he was very generous in his time, sharing a lot about starting a podcast, interviewing people when I first started Game Changers with Catherine Chew, my partner. Game Changers is a monthly webinar that features amazing women leaders in games. So we do regular interviews and panel chats with women leaders of various different backgrounds in the gaming industry, and speak with them to learn more about their journeys in the industry as well. We’re also on LinkedIn.

Shamanth

Excellent, we will certainly link to Game Changers and everything you do Jayvian. But for now, thank you for being on the Mobile User Acquisition show.

Jayvian

Thank you.

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