cafelife- developing an sns game for facebook
TRANSCRIPT
Café Life Developing a social game for Facebook
July 21th 2012
Coffee Break !
Tired? Let’s take a coffee break! I will share some
stories about how we created Café life.
Coffee Break
About the speaker
• Currently - The producer of ZingPlay.– A pioneer of Tencent Game international.
• Previously - The producer of Tencent QQGame oversea . – Design and run games in Facebook.– Used to be project manager and
programmer.
• Always - Addicted to playing games
Gemili
Introductions
• A restaurant-management game where you can bake cakes , make drinks, and decorate the shop.
Introductions
Introductions• Launched on May 2010.• MAU 2.5M+ ， Facebook rank
reached #62.• iPhone version , a simplified Chinese
version ,a Vietnam version and a Thailand version.
• First game developed by Tencent that was successful overseas Accelerated the
internationalization of Tencent's in-house development capabilities
Established a strong overseas user base
Introductions
• SNS game is burning hot in China. Because the heat of SNS, QQGame suffered .
• Facebook continue to grow, some Chinese companies were making good profit from Facebook games.
• So we decide to attempt entering this new market…
Background – why?
• Theme– Hotel （ 0 ） , Pet shop （ 0 ） , Restaurant （ at least 2 ）
• Why restaurant?– Low risk, as we know nothing about Facebook, it suitable for the
first game developed• What kind of Restaurant?
– Different from Restaurant City and Café world, we can get users..– More liked by women.
• Why baking?– Target audience -> 35- 65 housewife.– Make something different and more accurate marketing position .
Theme
• Three competitors
• Grandma's secret recipe -> Special emotion of baking.
Competitor & Inspiration
• Art research starting point on how to understand the housewives in Facebook.– How much girl-appeal do we need? – How to make the game more appealing to girls ?
Art
• Avatars: Make women like it at first glance!
Avatars
• Goal: “OMG! This is soooo cute… Check out this cupcake!”– Each cupcake tells a story… – Each cupcake has a personality…– Each cake you can buy from the store in your neighborhood.– Make the cake with the actual steps you do in real life.
Cake & Drinks
• Decoration: In a set! Cute! Real item in life.
Decoration
• Two Mistakes.– Failed to make a very strong structure.– Spend too much time in fine tuning.
Develop
• First rule: You Don’t talk during User Testing– Let them make mistakes. It’s YOUR fault, not theirs.– Get the whole team involved .
• Goal: No one gets stuck, everyone makes progress, knows what they are supposed to do… and has fun!
• When there is only one right thing players should be doing…
Users testing
• Acquisition marketing – Revenue and Reach– Five Country Tiers (based on ARPU percentiles)– Separate expenditure associated with Gender, Age buckets– Internal vs. External Advertisers – Tried everything– Revenue focused spend: Acquire users where we earn back the CPA
in <3 Months.• In first month after launch, earn-back was 2 weeks
– Reach focused spend: Most users, least money• Cross-promotion – Acquisition and Retention• Above all else – People need to love your game
– Organic/Viral critical to social gaming growth– Refine the top of the funnel – Conversion matters
Growth & Acquiring traffic
HELP!!!
• Make something users can not refuse !
• Make something players can get reward for!
Virality
• Fine tuning, lot of fine tuning.– UI , game play, Art , Data system.
• Season/holiday version.
Operation
• Great Game +• Large Potential Audience +• Originality (improves virality) +• Aggressive Marketing and Promotion +• Constant Data Informed Iteration =
• A chance at success =)
Formula for a successful social game
