The Key Success for Mobile Game Developers

Editorial note’s: Industry is growing in Indonesia, including the game industry. In this Guest Post article, Narenda Wicaksono wrote his view about the key success needed by mobile game developer, completed with his experience on his relation with game developers.

Two weeks ago, I was asked by a national TV in my capacity of IT observer to answer the challenge faced by local developers to develop mobile games. Considering the limited time, I really want to share it in my short article to motivate you on who are interested to work on this game industry.

Every app store will agree that game is the most popular premium (paid) app. However, developers should not be complacent since there are many challenge should be faced.

Conservative Challenge

This challenge should be faced if you're selling your app as the main “revenue stream”. I categorize this point of view as conservative. The challenge is related to the monetization. It's because the lack of app stores providing easy payment system for their users. I talked about users in general, not only for smartphone costumers only, but all the users of mobile devices. If we see Indonesia as a country with the ideal potential market, but only some of app store provides phone credit billing system, the rest is using the credit card payment system. In fact, the credit card customers in Indonesia are only 6,5 million or about 3% out of 180 million mobile phone users in Indonesia.

So how does giants like Gameloft and Electronic Arts Mobile can be successful in Indonesia? I take those two game publishers as a case because both are conservative publishers that focuses on selling app. Their key successes are:

1. The close relationship with mobile phone vendor to provide preloaded scheme (the trial version of the game become the trial bundling on the new mobile phone). From one device, they have about 3 games. They got billions of Rupiah for a month from one device only. It should be noted that they use sms charging or in app purchase as the payment media for unlocking game app to full version.
2. Focus on popular brand or consistent with the established brand. We can see how brand on “Real Football” game has reached 12th edition or Asphalt that has reach 6th edition.
3. Focus on the Try and Buy scenario is the other key success. Instead of promoting the paid premium version (full), it is better to focus on the trial version.
4. Focus on mass market. Again, they cooperate with the mobile phone vendor to get bigger marketing support. Usually, they will follow the momentum of new product launching.

Product Orientation

The second challenge is the maturity. Since the monetizing difficulties on monetizing in mass market, many local developers focus on ordered-app to get money. Working on ordered-app is not a wrong thing. However, maturity is hard to achieve if developer is not focus on product oriented (focus on customer oriented).

I'm following the process of how Smash Mania developed by Agate Studio is evolving. Smash Mania is the first NFC game with Augmented Reality that enables users to play badminton using smartphone. Agate Studio has been doing tests to customers by holding the Smash mania in INAICTA, Indonesia Bermain, and ITB Festival. Responding to the feedbacks, Smash Mania field right now has evolved significantly. Finally, one of mobile phone vendor invests billion Rupiah in form of marketing support. They collaborate to hold badminton championship Smash mania in 6 big cities in Indonesia. This process is a priceless phase to get to maturity, which finally brings developers to develop apps that are product oriented.

Intellectual Property Rights

We have to admit that we are not living in Silicon Valley. We live in the place where intellectual property is barely appreciated. It is related to the complicated patent registration process that is actually the government's domain.

If Agate Studio now is in Silicon Valley, I believe that so many patent in Smash Mania will be easily registered. This patent right will make Agate Studio so valuable. Thus, it will make investor competing to invest, although Smash Mania hasn’t been released. Let’s stop this dream; we are not in Sillicon Valley.

Conclusion

To sell your app, for me, is the most traditional way. What can be done by developer other than selling the app is by put ads and the app itself should give high user engagement point. However, it is important that customer in Indonesian market is not really like using app that connected to internet. The more elegant way is to put the app /game as the entry point for entering costumers’ mindset. Monetizing can be obtained by selling merchandise. Let’s take Angry Birds for an example, they make costumers to buy a Mighty Eagle for 1 million rupiah to unlock the character on this game by using NFC technology.

Not living in Sillicon Valley doesn’t mean you cannot be succeeded. As developer form big market, we have “competitive advantage” if we can combine the culture and technology elements. As Agate that combine the popular sport and recent technology. You as developer should focus on the product improvement. It is not the presentation slide that will bring future for your company, it is how many customers appreciate your app.

Narenda Wicaksono is a developer who is an expert on infrastructure technology. He is Ex Most Valuable Professional and Technical Evangelist in Microsoft. He is the Founder and Mentor of Nokia Indonesia Community Enthusiasts and Indonesian NET Developer Community. Recently, he works for Nokia and focus on mobile developer mentoring in Indonesia.