Standing room only for Google’s Mobile Monetization Panel at GDC

Over 350 people attended Google’s sponsored session, “Turning Mobile Games into Money Makers,” at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco last week. Charles Yim, who manages strategic partnerships with the mobile games industry for Google, moderated the panel which included Glu Mobile's Mike Breslin, Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka and ZeptoLabs' Misha Lyalin.

Developers in the audience got to see a range of perspectives on monetizing, marketing, and distributing mobile games from the small upstart with 5 employees, Zeptolab to the publicly-traded Glu Mobile which is now 400 employees strong.  Each of these companies were building mobile games years before the iPhone and “apps” existed, so here are a few insights if you were not able to attend:

1. Start with a Great Game: It sounds simple, but Vesterbacka kept coming back to this point and the rest of the panel agreed.  Lyalin explained that building low-quality games undermines the entire industry not just the developer or the company.  One key is to create an emotional connection like with the friendly monster Om Nom in Cut the Rope; the player wants to make Om Nom happy so keeps playing.
2. Games as a Service: Breslin urged developers to think of mobile games as a service that needs to be constantly improved rather than a product that is shipped and sold.  The connectivity of a mobile device allows game developers to build an ongoing relationship with mobile gamers.  Similar to old arcade games, the goal is to have players “keep putting quarters in the machine” which is different from prepackaged console games.
3. Listen to Your Users: Lyalin believes recommendations and word of mouth are critical for success and believes in the net promoter score.  Keep a close eye on reviews and percent of users upgrading to new versions to ensure they like your content.
4. Build with Monetization in Mind: The type of game you have and relationship with your customers influences your opportunities for monetization.  You need to build the game thinking about where you might place ads or what mechanics will incentivize a player to pay for a virtual item or advanced features rather than try to go back and add these things in later.
5. Test and Iterate: Mike Breslin stressed the importance of “testing, testing, testing” to identify the optimal monetization strategy for each game.  All panelists closely measure conversions and uptake of virtual goods in addition to MAU, DAU, etc.
6. Scale Quickly: When asked what mistakes they made that other developers could learn from, Lyalin admitted that they did not scale fast enough.  He points out that it can all happen so fast on mobile.  Your game takes off and you hit your first $1 million, and it is exciting, but then you realize you need to reinvest a lot of that money back to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Looking ahead in 2011, the panelists are excited to see continued growth in mobile and new opportunities to monetize their games. Despite the limited reach of tablets today, all panelists were very bullish on the platform with Vesterbacka even predicting that they could highly marginalize consoles. Additionally, Mike Breslin reminded developers that, with the rapid growth in smartphone adoption, every 2-3 months you have an entirely new audience to attract to your game.  

For more information on Google’s products for developers visit the new Google Game Developer Central website.

Posted by Keri Kandel, Product Marketing Manager, AdMob

Standing room only for Google’s Mobile Monetization Panel at GDC
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