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KOH KIM: Whoa, showtime.
DAN GALPIN: Exactly.
All right, so I'm Dan Galpin, and I'm a developer advocate
with Android Games.
And with--
KOH KIM: And I'm--
DAN GALPIN: With me is--
KOH KIM: With me.
Sorry, sorry.
I'm Koh Kim.
I'm part of the Google Play business development team
focused on games.
(IN UNISON): And we're here to level up your Android game!
DAN GALPIN: Oh yeah.
So thank you for joining us at the very last
session of the day here.
We'll hopefully keep you awake until the big party.
So we get a lot of questions, OK?
And let's go over those first.
You can hear actually--
I think they're rehearsing next door, that loud nose.
KOH KIM: So how I get discovered?
Is one question.
DAN GALPIN: How do I get featured?
KOH KIM: How do I get five stars?
DAN GALPIN: How do I get rid of bad ratings?
KOH KIM: How do I make users play my game?
DAN GALPIN: How do I make users buy stuff?
KOH KIM: And that a lot of questions.
DAN GALPIN: But sometimes these questions miss a
fundamental point.
And at that point, in the center of
everything, there is a user.
KOH KIM: And we like users.
I mean, they're fascinating.
DAN GALPIN: Baffling.
KOH KIM: They may be quite baffling creatures.
DAN GALPIN: So instead of trying to answer those
questions up there, we're focused on what's really
important, which is that guy.
KOH KIM: And we'll give you our not-so-secret formula.
And it's all about what the odds are, how do you make
money, or basically help you increase the probability of
getting featured on Google Play.
DAN GALPIN: Exactly.
Happy users, more users--
that's the way you're ultimately going to be
successful.
So let's start by covering what you already know.
OK, last year, we came out here-- actually Ian and I came
out here last year.
And Ian's mysteriously vanished and
been replaced by Koh.
KOH KIM: Sorry.
He was abducted by aliens, and they've performed some
experiments, and out came me.
DAN GALPIN: And we talked about something we were very
excited about, 10 things game developers should know.
And the great thing is between last year and this year, we've
actually taken those things and we've codified them.
We put them up on developer.android.com.
In fact, I could stop right here and just say click
Distribute and click App Quality.
OK?
It's super, super important, and here's why.
Because there's a lot of things game developers are
still getting wrong, and this means that our QA team has to
spend more time reviewing stuff, sending cycles back to
developers, saying, please change this or
please change that.
So an example is navigation.
We've been telling developers for years, make sure the Back
button works.
Don't put on-screen prompts on there.
But people still do it.
And not only that, if you don't support the Back button,
it leads to bad reviews.
Users say, wait.
They click, and they click, and they
click, and nothing happens.
They're like, I don't understand.
I've been trained by every other app to do this, and it
doesn't work.
And so that's very important.
There's also other buttons on the phone.
Make sure the volume controls work.
That's something some people still miss.
And also, our QA team really hates seeing that vestigial
Menu button there at the bottom.
They'll say, no, no, take it away.
And it's really, really easy to take away.
You just say, I'm going to use the latest version of Android.
And that's really cool for a lot of reasons.
One, it means you're actually testing on the latest version
of Android, which is really cool.
We like that.
And two, it actually means that that Menu
button will go away.
So get rid of it.
If you really, really want to have it there, make sure that
it has a really important function.
But you'll still have to explain to our review team why
you really need to have it there in your game.
All right, so let's go to our next topic
everyone gets wrong--
notifications.
KOH KIM: Oh, geez.
DAN GALPIN: Spammy notifications are really,
really awful.
And I'm not even going to put up an example here, because
everyone knows this.
Notifications should not be something that's an ad for
something else, OK?
Notification should be something that are
controllable by the user.
In fact, the best thing you can do is make it-- if you're
going to do a lot of notifications--
give the user precise control.
Say, you know what?
I don't want a notification between the hours
that I might be asleep.
Cool?
KOH KIM: Or when you're in an important meeting, or when--
I don't know--
sometimes, when you're on a date.
When you hear the whole bing--
DAN GALPIN: Well not, only that, a lot of notifications
say, you know what?
I'm going to play a custom sound, OK?
Well, I want my notifications from things that are really
important to play sounds, and from games actually just make
it a little bit quieter.
Otherwise, I'm going to turn them off in the OS, because
now we allow support for that.
So it actually helps you out to do this as well.
And you'll get bad reviews.
OK.
Last year, we talked about all the things that you shouldn't
ask for in terms of permissions, OK?
You are a game, OK?
You are not an operating system, and there's a really,
really good chance that you don't need to
know the user's bookmarks.
You don't need to know things like their fine location.
Unless you are a location-based game and you
need to know the user is standing right here, use
coarse location.
You shouldn't actually have to--
KOH KIM: Like call phone number?
That's kind of creepy.
DAN GALPIN: You can use Intent to call phone numbers, OK, if
you really, really need to.
You don't need a permission to actually-- why would you
directly call them, OK?
Displaying system level alerts.
Unless you absolutely need to display something on the
screen when you're not running, and you have to
justify that to our review team, you're never going to
get featured if you have some of these bad permissions.
And then finally, SMS is just awful, because you can
actually bill the user for things without them knowing it
potentially.
So don't do it.
KOH KIM: Who uses SMS anymore, really?
I use Hangouts all the time, perfectly fine.
DAN GALPIN: Right, exactly.
We've also talked in the past a lot about audio, OK?
Because audio should not play when the screen is off.
Audio should not play when you're on the Home screen.
Audio should not play when you're not in the game.
And this is really bad.
Because you're in a business meeting, and suddenly you're
giving this big presentation.
You've got your suit on, so clearly you
don't work at Google.
And suddenly, music comes out of your pants.
And your boss is like, hey, I know that he's been playing
around with some kiddie games in his spare time.
So don't do it, OK?
Our review team will catch these things.
We've actually made it a lot easier to do
this in Jelly Bean.
But unfortunately, our review team will still test on those
older devices, so you better make it work everywhere.
So again, this is a document that's right online.
I'm just going through the document and pointing out
important things to note.
StrictMode is cool.
You should test with it.
Our testers will test with it, OK?
Make sure there aren't big red flashes conspicuously
throughout your game, OK?
It means that there's a chance that you're causing the UI
thread to block.
It means that someone's not going to be able to hit a
button and have it be responsive in the
middle of your game.
It sucks.
You don't want that, OK?
Finally, your app needs to provide high-quality graphics
for different form factors, OK?
This is important, because it turns out that the devices
that our review team is most likely to be testing against
are these guys.
And they have three different form factors,
three different sizes.
And it turns out if you target these three sizes, you
actually are going to get just about every important device
that people are spending money on on Google
Play in terms of coverage.
So these are three very important classes of devices.
And if you don't have all three of these, you're going
to have to explain why your game can't run on
all three of them.
So an example would be on Nexus 10, OK?
It is a high-DPI device, OK?
A lot of older tablets weren't.
So if your text is microscopic and difficult to read and your
buttons require hands that are meant for an elf, you probably
have to go and think about how you're scaling.
All right.
And of course, if you want to get featured, you better think
about your assets.
I'm talking about the artwork that goes
along with your game.
Now we've changed things a lot in Google Play, OK?
And we'll go over that in slightly more detail.
But the important thing is that you need to have a really
great large icon, because icons are always important.
They're always the most important representation of
your brand within the device and within Google Play.
But now they're more important, because now they're
the only representation in many
versions of the Play store.
So for example, this icon here?
Great.
It says, I'm going to be throwing paper into a bucket.
I get exactly what's going on.
It's cool, right?
And that's the way it appears on a tablet.
And you can put a lot of stuff into these large icons.
I mean, look.
I've got a brand.
I've got a name.
I know exactly what's going on here.
So you actually can get quite creative with it.
It's a little different from what we were
saying a year ago.
But the best part about all of these the guidelines is in
addition to the guidelines themselves, we also give you
an actual test suite that you can go and hand to your QA.
Let me just explain.
It's not just, make sure your app does this, but it's a set
of steps to actually go and verify that your app is really
doing the right thing.
Rotate your device this way.
Click here.
Click the Home button.
Check for this state.
You can actually hand that to your QA team.
It is actually what our QA team does when we look at
every single featured application that goes into
Google Play.
So remember--
KOH KIM: So where was that again, Dan?
To find everyone.
DAN GALPIN: Oh, yes.
That's a good point.
Here, wait, why don't you say it?
It'll have more punch if you say it.
KOH KIM: Sure.
So remember, it's developer.android.com.
You go to Distribute and then App Quality.
And let me repeat this.
You should definitely canvass your QA team or check this,
because this will definitely increase your probability that
our teams will be like, hey, this is an awesome game.
We should probably take a look.
And the fact that you've actually listened to us and
implemented this in your game makes us feel really good
about ourselves.
DAN GALPIN: Well, more importantly, it means you have
a lot less work to do.
Because if you don't implement this and we love your game,
OK, we're going to have to come back to you.
And we're going to say, you have to change this
and this and this.
And then you'll say, well, I don't really want to change
that, but OK.
And then well, no, you didn't get to that one.
And then all of a sudden, a month has passed, and you
realize you could have been featured a month earlier had
you just done this stuff to begin with.
So please, look at this stuff.
It's great, and we're going to keep updating it.
All right.
KOH KIM: So assuming that you have--
DAN GALPIN: We're now at level two.
KOH KIM: Right.
We're now in level two, right?
DAN GALPIN: That was all level one, guys.
KOH KIM: So now we're in level two.
Like Dan said, he covered all the things you should be
looking at for your core app quality guidelines, such as
Back button navigation, some of the SDKs
and all that stuff.
So let's talk about doing all of that.
That seems like probably a lot of work.
So really, why should you care?
Ultimately, it's about getting kind of featured and promoted
within the Google Play store.
And I mean, it is a lot of work, but I'm sure
you guys are like--
DAN GALPIN: I mean, our editorial teams, right?
Actual people go and look at your game.
KOH KIM: They're not robots.
I mean, Google is kind of magical in the one sense, but
our store is not curated by robots.
DAN GALPIN: Not yet.
KOH KIM: Not yet anyway.
Soon, maybe.
I'm waiting for that "Star Trek" computer.
Anyway, so why should you care?
Because yes, our merchandising team does look at all these
games on a weekly basis.
And we have them all over the world.
Remember, we're a global market, so there's games that
could be promoted and featured all over the place.
So what does that mean?
So getting featured, it is actually a power
boost for your game.
So let's take an example of one game that
was released recently.
They were launched on day one.
It's pretty good.
500,000 installed.
DAN GALPIN: That's not bad.
KOH KIM: That's pretty solid for organic growth.
That's where we all want to go.
But look at what happens when it gets featured, right?
Day five.
Remember one week is a featuring period.
They went from 500K to almost 3 million by
the end of that week.
DAN GALPIN: And remember, the game developer did the most
important thing to begin with.
This was a game that was very highly rated to begin with on
Google Play.
So when we actually did the featuring period, it just
powered up their game.
If the game is looking bad and going downhill in terms of the
ratings, and we feature it, this is not what happens.
So this is about an app having great quality, and in
addition, getting a boost through featuring.
KOH KIM: Right.
Featuring doesn't help bad games, FYI.
DAN GALPIN: Not at all.
It makes it worse.
KOH KIM: Actually, your ratings will probably take a
nosedive if we feature a bad game.
DAN GALPIN: From which you will never recover.
So yeah.
So it's very important that the game is awesome.
So that's part of the reason we really put so much time and
effort into making sure users will like it.
KOH KIM: So let's talk about some other developers and
their experiences on getting featured on Google Play and
why it's important.
And so this is a developer, anonymous.
He said downloads, installs increased 10 to 20x.
That's pretty good.
I don't know how many of you played "Super Hexagon."
DAN GALPIN: Yah!
KOH KIM: Yeah, probably the hardest game alive.
I love hard games, by the way.
Anyway, their sales of their game has increased by 4x
during feature week.
And I'm sure a lot of you have known
"Sword & Sorcery," hopefully.
I'm sure we're all game developers here, right?
Maybe?
OK, so they been on sale for four months.
During feature week, 55% of revenue was made during the
feature week, which is a little scary, actually.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah.
I'm not sure that's a message I want to send to developers.
KOH KIM: I don't know if it's a message, but I mean, it
drives something.
Getting noticed by us is going to really,
really help your game.
DAN GALPIN: I mean, I think when you see that number, you
say, all right.
Perhaps there are things outside of being featured the
developer needed to do.
Because clearly, the game was awesome.
It monetized really, really well.
But it just wasn't getting eyeballs.
KOH KIM: Right.
So point proven.
It's pretty important.
But after you get featured, now what, right?
Actually, featuring is only the beginning, right?
I mean, once you get featured, it's kind of that first step
that opens doors to a lot of many other promotions.
We've talked about Editor's Choice.
That gets updated on a quarterly basis.
We've talked about some of the top developer badges.
But how do I get to that point?
I'm sure many of you are wondering about that.
So I'm going to let Dan talk about that, on how you can
actually use Google to kind of increase and kind of like
level up your distribution.
DAN GALPIN: All right.
So we made a little announcement a few hours ago.
And I've already talked about it a little bit in another
talk, but let me just go over.
In case you missed it, OK, we have now launched Play Games
platform services, which is great.
Because we now have a system for leaderboards and
achievements and real-time multiplayer and cloud services
and even an anti-piracy feature, which I'm really
excited about.
So that games that are premium titles, that are paid titles
on Google Play, can actually disable key features to people
who are not registered as users of that game.
So it's something we think is really important.
A lot of times, people think, all right.
We're actually leaning everything
towards non-premium content.
Actually, we really want to help premium content be
successful, so we've made it a very important launch portion
of Play Games platform services.
But this is only the beginning, because Play Games
platform services is actually part of Google+.
So it's got simple
authentication, which is great.
Because people actually prefer to log in through Google+ than
through a lot of other means, especially when they're
playing games, as it turns out.
Interactive posts and app activities.
Now I'm not going to go through an entire lecture on
all the ways you can plusify your game.
But the coolest thing, I think, is interactive posts,
so that's what I'm going to talk about.
So when you actually log in to Play Games services, you get
for free a Google+ enabled scope, which means you can
automatically start calling the Google+ APIs.
And this is what it could look like.
So here is our awesome game, "Nostalgic Racer."
This is a real game.
We actually use this internally to test the APIs.
And someday, hopefully, we'll release it to all of you,
because it's awesome.
And as you see, it's got a G+ Sign In button.
And you can use our graphics.
Once again, we have a whole bunch of guidelines for how
you might integrate this with your game.
And then we get this nice permission dialog, which has
tons and tons of stuff about what you're sharing.
It allows you to say, I don't want the game to know who my
friends are, or I only want the game to know who certain
friends are, and then I only want certain friends of mine
to know that I'm playing the game all sitting there.
But then, even better, we can create interactive posts.
And these are really, really cool.
Because right now, I've added a button in my game saying,
"Challenge me," OK?
And it has already gone and looked at my circles and said,
hey, these are the guys you have the most affinity with.
It's actually populated my circles for me, this
particular post for me, knowing that these are the
people that I'm most likely to be challenging.
And it's created a call to action with this really,
really cool Challenge button.
So it's targeted sharing, and it's got notification.
This is sounding very salesy, but it's really cool.
I like this stuff.
KOH KIM: It's kind of cool.
Notice he didn't challenge me, because he's
afraid I'd beat him.
DAN GALPIN: No way.
I'm challenging Todd.
Although he's really good at the game, because he actually
wrote an entire version of it.
So I'm probably going to lose.
And actually, Bruno will complete-- well, I don't know.
All right.
So in any case, this is what they end up getting
if they're in mobile.
So they end up getting this fabulous challenge right with
a call to action.
If the game isn't installed, it'll allow them to install
the game right away, OK?
It can either bring them to the store, or it can bring
them straight to the game.
And this doesn't just show up on their mobile device.
This shows up on every Google property that contains a
Google bar, right there in that box in the corner.
So this is a very, very pervasive notification, which
is why it is an interactive post.
The user actually has to decide they're
going to send this.
And we have a lot of other verbs other than challenge.
Challenge is one of the things we support.
We support things like gifting.
And these are fully interactive.
So it cannot just take you back to launching the game,
but it can actually contain data that can take you to
launch exactly into the point of the game that you want, or
actually contain metadata that could allow you to properly
gift something to someone.
So this is something that's cool.
It's on top of all of the stuff we've already done.
So remember, it takes you directly to the game, or take
you directly to Install.
So we think this can be a great way of
helping to drive installs.
All right.
Enough with Play services.
Let's talk a little bit about what's going on in YouTube.
And if you haven't already seen it, there's a really,
really cool session about YouTube and games here at
Google I/O, so you should definitely look it up on the
streaming site.
So a lot of you are already taking advantage of YouTube
for your market listings, which is cool.
Everyone should have video in their market listings for a
lot of reasons.
One is, it turns out, gamers really like video.
In these rather old statistics, we can see that
gamers actually found out when they were looking to buy a
game watching gameplay videos was the number one way they
said that they were actually looking to buy games.
Watching trailers is number two.
And then all these other things that people spent an
enormous amount of time working on are
actually much lower.
So gameplay video is really important.
And one of the cool things we've now released are ways in
which you can actually share video directly from your game,
actual gameplay video.
So we actually have an API now for game
video uploads and playback.
Again, you should really look at the YouTube stuff.
It's very, very cool.
You can see this is a game that was built with Unity that
actually allows you to upload 3D graphics from within the
game straight to YouTube.
Very, very slick.
And all the source code, I believe, is going to be
published for that if it's not already.
So think about using the YouTube APIs, OK?
This costs you nothing, OK?
Data uploads, OK?
There's an Android client library.
It allows you to make very large
video uploads to YouTube.
And of course, the Android Player API.
Because realistically, we know that when you download a game
for Google Play, the larger the game is, the fewer
downloads you're going to get.
That's just reality.
These guys, they're all on constrained networks.
They have phones with limited storage.
So why put in an enormous video at the beginning of your
game instead of just streaming it from YouTube?
So not only can you have the game on YouTube so that every
time someone plays the video within your game, you actually
get a play within YouTube, which is kind of cool, but you
don't actually have to download that video they're
only going to want to watch once.
There was a company who did this years and years ago that
made a game about fowl that were angry.
And very few developers have actually followed them, but
it's a really, really good tactic.
And strangely enough, a lot of developers would love to be as
successful as they've been.
So there's a lot more stuff to talk about this.
It's at youtube.com/dev.
Look into it.
It's very, very cool.
There's tons of other Google APIs you might want to take
advantage of, like even Hangouts APIs and +1 buttons.
You can actually do install from the web if
you're using +APIs.
.
It's very, very cool, and I encourage you to look at all
of it at developers.google.com.
All right.
KOH KIM: So the important part.
DAN GALPIN: Level three.
We made it though the first two.
KOH KIM: Yes, we made it through the first two.
So it's all about making them pay.
DAN GALPIN: Oh, I think actually
I'm doing this, right.
KOH KIM: I think you're doing this anyway.
But money is important.
DAN GALPIN: One of the questions we often get from
developers is, how do I make money on Android games?
I mean, if you're a developer, you probably wish there was an
easy command to do that.
But the truth is, it's not that simple.
To help, we've introduced In-App Billing v3.
It's easier to implement reliably.
Let's make that clear.
So here's the basic idea.
In the old version of In-App Billing, you actually had to
maintain a state machine, which you had to maintain
across a broadcast receiver and a
service and your activity.
And if you're using some game engines, oftentimes that
service was actually running something that wasn't running
your game engine, so you had to then provide logic to
connect everything back.
And if you were doing managed items--
let's say you had a premium mode of your
game you were selling--
then you also had to provide a database to store all those
managed items.
And you probably encrypted that, because you were trying
to be really careful about making sure that people can't
just easily hack into that.
And all of these things are things every
developer had to do.
But in Billing v3, we've actually simplified a lot of
these things.
So you, for example, say, I want to buy 100 elfberries.
KOH KIM: Elfberries?
DAN GALPIN: Yeah.
KOH KIM: Really?
DAN GALPIN: Hey, it's fun.
They're blue.
And Google Play responds with something like, OK.
It's a synchronous API.
It's much, much easier for people to implement.
Secondly, we now have local item pricing.
OK, this is something we should have had from the
beginning, but we have it now.
And it's really, really awesome, because you now can
actually tell your users how much you're going to charge
for an item before they actually go to the Play store.
You can have your entire catalog sitting there with all
the actual prices that they're actually going to get charged
before you actually have to go.
It's really, really cool, right?
KOH KIM: No, it's cool, because
it's actually important.
Because it doesn't revolve around America.
So you take $0.99, right?
If you look at Korea or Japan or Asia, it comes out as this
weird number, like 1,058 won.
DAN GALPIN: And you should definitely know what that
number is if you're going to have it in your game.
And you should, of course, fix it if it is a strange number.
Another thing in v3, as I mentioned, is restoring
purchases is really, really cheap.
So it used to be in the old days, the only way you could
possibly deal with a premium item would be to actually
store it along with your games database.
Now with v3, you can query Google Play as
often as you like.
And that's great, because one of the most natural times
you'd want to do that is when you launch the game or when
you come back to the game.
And this also allows you to keep track very, very easily
of where Google Play's state is.
So if they even went on another device, purchased
premium content, you can immediately sync that up to
your device.
We actually go through and sync all of that stuff in the
background across all of your devices so you don't have to.
And of course, as I mentioned before, it's easier to
implement correctly.
And here's the point.
When a customer decides to put their trust in you as the game
developer and in us as Google, this is an incredibly
important singular moment.
Because you have something very, very valuable.
It's not the $0.99 or percentage of $0.99 that
you're about to get.
It's their trust.
They gave you their physical money, and they expect to get
something in return.
I mean, nothing is more valuable to a developer then
your reputation at this point.
So imagine.
Imagine if at that magical moment, you take the user's
money and lose the purchase.
OK, let me reiterate this, because this may
not be clear, OK?
You've taken the user's money, and they've lost the purchase.
Now what does this mean?
OK.
This is not something you want to do, and we work very, very
hard in In-App Billing v3 to make sure you don't do that.
And also, as we roll out new features for developers, we're
going to be rolling all of them around In-App Billing v3.
So it's very, very important that you consider using it.
What we've seen from developers already is people
who have switched to In-App Billing v3 have seen fewer
problems with customer service, fewer cancellations.
It is absolutely working.
So please, please, please.
There is a session that has been recorded here at Google
I/O. Unfortunately, it is at the same time as this one,
otherwise I would tell you go see it.
That you should definitely go and look up on the streams.
It is a fantastic session, and it includes this joke.
KOH KIM: So we're going to talk about other ways that you
can make money on Google Play besides virtual coins and
magic swords and all this other stuff.
And that's subscriptions.
Now wait--
DAN GALPIN: Well, you can use subscriptions to buy virtual
coins and magic swords.
KOH KIM: Sure.
DAN GALPIN: OK.
Just want to make that clear.
KOH KIM: I'm just saying, instead of it being a one-time
purchase, right, what if this user is like, hey, I actually
want to keep this item?
Usually most items only last a day, right,
those experience boosters.
Now what if you can get a user to be like, hey, I want to get
this 50% experience booster til end of time?
Well, that's where your can use subscriptions as part of
your in-app purchases.
So they can actually make a big difference when done well.
And so we actually had a game developer, Glu Mobile, that
has implemented this within "Eternity Warriors 2." Now if
you see, what was very interesting is-- let's say
subscription is in blue.
In-app purchase, just like buying items
individually, is in red--
so you see, subscription revenue is actually making
more revenue than their in-app purchases.
So I'm not saying you should do this to
every one of your games.
It obviously matters.
You've got to look at your game, make sure
it's the right thing.
But I mean, it is also a viable way to not even
increase, but at least continue and maintain that
custom relationship you have with your user.
Because once they open that wallet, that's actually very,
very important.
It doesn't happen that often.
DAN GALPIN: And another to thing to consider.
I mean, a lot of the complaints that people say
about free-to-play games is that they don't feel like
they're getting enough value for purchases, and
subscriptions is a way to kind of close that gap.
For the person who is a hardcore player who knows
they're going to be playing this game a lot in the next
couple of weeks, months, years, you can actually
provide them ways of saying, look, here's a way in which we
can give you extra value for your money in the game.
And so I think it's actually a very powerful thing for people
who wouldn't normally be buying premium games but now
are actually looking at things that are premium.
KOH KIM: So it's another way to think about it.
Let's also talk about other things, other payment options.
So we, as many of you already know, we offer direct carrier
billing to a lot of our users.
They cover nearly 50% of our user base,
which is great, right?
You see all these carriers.
They all have direct carrier billing
implemented with the game.
And obviously, we're trying to expand more as we go.
So if you're interested on what the update on that is,
you can also go to this talk on making money in Google
Play, which is tomorrow.
But then we also have gift cards.
And yes, gift cards are only
available in certain countries.
I'm sorry.
We're trying to expand it.
There's many other countries that would like gift cards,
because not everyone in the world has a credit card or
direct carrier billing.
So we're working on it, but it's just to know that there
are many options available to users.
Because we care.
Users like to pay for things in different ways.
DAN GALPIN: We like to help users pay.
We do.
KOH KIM: It makes your job easier.
So level four.
Global empires.
So how many of you have traveled from outside the
United States and San Francisco to get here?
See?
A very significant portion of you.
Asia, Europe--
DAN GALPIN: This is a really big room, by the way, for you
who are watching this on the stream.
KOH KIM: And of course, everyone that's watching our
livestream right now, right?
Clearly, there's probably a good portion of them from
abroad who's not been in the thing.
Well, what's great is Android is big all
over the world, right?
And also, Google Play is available in 130 countries, so
you should probably be doing business with all of this.
So I'm actually living in Korea right now.
I'm kind of doing some Games work while in Korea.
DAN GALPIN: I thought you were here now.
KOH KIM: Yes.
I'm here now, obviously, but I'm visiting.
But in this case, actually I was in G-STAR, which is kind
of this large video game conference in Korea about in
November 2012.
And the way to think about it is 100,000 people, all gamers,
kind of like checking out what's new.
What was actually really incredible is that on the show
floor, 80%--
literally 80%.
There were some random consoles that were still
there-- but 80% of the floor was covered with mobile games.
And what are most of those games being played on?
What devices?
Well, I mean, as you've probably figured,
it's Android devices.
And what's great is because of this, Google Play is actually
growing faster than devices activated.
I don't need to remind you.
It's the 48 billion installs, and a lot of
that is actually games.
And so that's great for your business.
It's a huge opportunity, right?
What are we talking about?
So at this point last year, we didn't really talk about how
you can make money abroad or all this stuff.
But I mean, this is probably the time to think about how to
expand beyond your own market.
So for one thing is that I was talking to my Korean cousin
about a certain game, and she's was telling me
[SPEAKING KOREAN].
So you probably don't understand
that, but it's Korean.
They were kind of complaining the game was only in English,
and they'd like to play it in Korean if it was available, or
asking me if I knew the developer was going
to launch in Korean.
So what does that mean?
You actually have a larger fanbase that could be out
there, and especially since some of our fastest growing
markets are in Asia, specifically especially Japan,
Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan.
You probably should start thinking about how I should
take my game kind of globally or outside my borders.
So let's take an example of "Gun Bros 2," which is a
pretty neat game from Glu Mobile.
I mean, this is kind of like what their page looks like
from the US or any
English-speaking territory, right?
So in January, we actually launched the ability for you
to upload localized assets, so screenshots, graphics, icons,
and banners.
And you can change them by region.
So what does this mean?
Glu decided to create a Korean version of their game.
DAN GALPIN: Oh, now it looks like I'm going to blow things
up in Korean.
KOH KIM: Now imagine as a Korean user how
excited you could be.
Because this looks pretty cool, right?
Look, all the titles are Korean.
That actually says "Gun Bros 2" in Korean.
I actually think the title in Korean looks a lot better than
the English version.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, it's awesome.
I want to play the Korean version more.
There's something cooler about that.
KOH KIM: So what does this mean?
Well, if your user can understand what this game is
and what it's about, it's probably more likely they're
going to actually download and install the game.
DAN GALPIN: Probably.
KOH KIM: So is it really worth it, right?
I mean, that's a lot of languages.
DAN GALPIN: Probably?
I think it's incredibly more likely.
KOH KIM: Right.
Probably incredibly more likely, right?
And so, how much more likely?
Well, let's talk about this, right?
So we're talking about two launches from Glu Mobile.
So they've launched two games.
One was "Eternity Warriors 2," and also the next game was
"Blood & Glory Legend." They were
actually only a week apart.
They were launched in about August 2012.
So the only difference is that "Eternity Warriors 2" was
actually localized in Korean at launch.
Meanwhile, "Blood & Glory Legend 2" was only available
in English.
DAN GALPIN: The icons almost look--
You can't even tell which game is all that
different from the other.
In one, I guess they wear armor, and the other one--
KOH KIM: Has glowing eyes.
DAN GALPIN: Yeah, it's pretty close, OK?
KOH KIM: So let's check out what happened.
Obviously, a tale of two launches.
So let's talk about Glu Mobile downloads.
"Eternity Warriors 2" is the one in blue, and the "Blood &
Glory Legend" is in red.
This is for Korea.
So you can notice that the downloads for a game, because
the game was localized in Korean, was significantly
higher than the "Blood & Glory Legend." Is
that actually installs?
DAN GALPIN: Those are downloads.
That's flatlining there.
That's incredible.
KOH KIM: But yeah, downloads are great, right?
It doesn't matter if they don't pay.
DAN GALPIN: Is this in Korea then?
KOH KIM: This is just in Korea.
DAN GALPIN: Just in Korea, OK.
I'm like, I hope they got a few downloads in the rest of
the world, at least.
KOH KIM: Oh, yes.
I'm sure they did in other English-speaking territories.
But I mean, the thing is, you can get downloads, right?
That's great.
But will these users actually pay?
Well, let's look at revenue.
Yeah.
So yeah, these users will pay if the game is actually in
their local language.
DAN GALPIN: So wait.
So more users and happy users means more revenue.
KOH KIM: Yeah.
DAN GALPIN: That sounds like something we said earlier.
KOH KIM: Right.
Not-so-secret formula, guys.
You always gotta think about your user, right?
So it doesn't matter if they're in Korea, Japan,
Russia, Brazil.
I mean, it's always nice to have their game in their local
language, because then they can actually enjoy it more.
It's all about the user.
That's what we're here for.
DAN GALPIN: Absolutely.
KOH KIM: So let's talk about another developer, right?
You've probably heard enough about Glu.
We don't really care anymore.
Tell me about some other developer.
So let's talk about Gameloft, right?
So they've been enjoying the whole mobile game revenue,
making lots of money, 190% year over year growth.
By the way, data not really reflective, but just to show
you percentages.
Now they started localizing in Korean, right?
And so this is what happened.
Korea, all of a sudden, is increased to 520%, just
because they started localizing in Korean.
And now the Korean market is actually one of their
fastest-growing markets by revenue
within their portfolio.
And this is not just Gameloft either, right?
I mean, we have publishers like EA that have seen very
similar revenue growth lifts, about 30% or even higher for
some territories that don't have enough English speakers.
And tons of my other developers as well have noted
that they're just seeing a lot higher revenue, especially in
those markets, just for being in Korean,
Japanese, or all those.
So what does this mean?
Well, so localization does not equal translation.
Let me make that clear.
Localization does not equal translation.
So what does that mean?
Well, you can do translated strings, right?
That's awesome, but you've really got to think about your
game, right?
Each market is different.
Each user is different.
They're going to be to different ways of paying.
They're going to be used to different ways of gameplay,
leveling up.
DAN GALPIN: And not every game should be localized.
Look, I mean, if you're going to be talking about the great
American sport of football, you should figure out which
countries are actually going to like that.
But certainly, there's a lot of things that will translate
very, very well to a global audience.
And that's what we're seeing is that when developers take
the time to actually make their game work for a global
audience, they get paid back in spades.
OK, we're going to move quickly.
We're almost out of time here.
KOH KIM: We've got to move quickly.
Sorry, moving really quickly.
But if you want to find out more, we're going to talk
about Korea.
We'll show it later.
But we also have an awesome talk.
DAN GALPIN: We have a talk about building Android apps
for a global audience tomorrow, and a Play office
hours talk on Korea and Japan Friday afternoon, where you
get to see more Koh.
KOH KIM: More me.
So next.
Quickly, quickly.
(IN UNISON): The bonus round!
DAN GALPIN: All right.
So how many of you have visited our arcade out there
that we have out in the Sandbox?
Like four of you.
Come on, some of you must be game developers.
All right, all right, a few more.
So we've talked a lot about game controllers in the past.
We added support for standard HID controllers in Honeycomb,
and it's been gratifying to see a lot of games having some
limited support for them.
But here's the problem, OK?
I'm a gamer.
I've got "Nostalgic Racer" which, of course is my
favorite test game that we used to build
Google Play game services.
And I was excited to see that it had support for a nostalgic
controller-- woo-hoo!--
so making gamers like me happy.
OK.
What this means is that you should actually make sure
you're using defaults for all of these things in your menus,
especially the Action button.
Because we kind of screwed up, and I'll go into a bit of
detail about that.
So here's a generic controller.
This looks like a controller from any number of consoles.
In fact it turns out if you plug in an OEM Xbox or OEM PS3
controller into an Android device, it actually maps
almost exactly like this.
Not every third-party controller will work this way,
because these are actually done using Linux drivers that
have been contributed from the community.
So we actually will map both to the axis hat, which is
actually an analog axis, for some bizarre reason, in HID,
and axis-x and axis-y into D-pad events for you, which is
really, really cool.
We also map the x and y into D-pad center, which is really
cool as well.
And we map A and B both to the Back button, which kind of
sucks, because no one really thinks the A button should go
back, not even us.
So what you should really do is make sure that if you are
going to bother handling these things, make sure to handle
the A button explicitly.
That's all this entire slide was about.
All right, other common buttons.
Make them do things.
All right, now other common buttons.
Make them do things too.
And here's the final thing I want to say.
You also probably want to handle analog input, a lot of
you, because it's really important.
A lot of these games are designed around touch screens.
Analog input is important.
So we have analog axes, OK?
As it turns out, most of these axes are going
to look like this.
You actually have to be a little bit careful when you're
handling the two front triggers, because they're
going to come in on most devices, and
that's also hat switch.
Let me explain this quickly.
So if you're handling analog axes, and you want to handle
D-pad events, you actually have to make sure you handle
both D-pad events and handle the hat switch.
Because what we end up doing is bundling motion events
together, and if you say that you're handling all of them,
we'll never generate D-pad events for you anymore.
Because we're like, oh, the game's got it.
We don't need to do those legacy events for it.
So if you want to handle D-pad, you also have to handle
hat switch.
And one more thing to note on this is that if you're
handling the triggers, you actually need make sure you're
handling both RTrigger and Throttle and
LTrigger and Brake.
They will almost always be the same thing, because it turns
out that most of the drivers in the Linux kernel will
actually map everything to Throttle and Brake, no matter
what the device sends out.
And as it turns out, the HID spec mostly sends out
Throttle and Brake.
So unless you have an Xbox controller today with the
current versions, you're actually not going to get
LTrigger and RTrigger--
or a Shield device, I think, will do the same thing.
But Throttle and Brake are things you
want to handle together.
So think of these as being synonymous for now.
At least your defaults should handle them that way.
All right.
That was a lot of information in a very short time.
But there's a lot of sessions of interest you should see
here while you're here at Google I/O. These are things
that haven't happened yet.
So we have "Android As Seen On TV," which is going to have
some awesome use for game developers.
We're going to have--
KOH KIM: "Building Apps for a Global Audience," where
they're going to talk about some of the APIs, some of the
new features that was announced in keynote and how
you can implement that within your application.
DAN GALPIN: "What's New for Devs in Google Play," which
has got some super exciting stuff going on, as well as--
KOH KIM: "Getting Discovered on Google Play,' which I
actually highly recommend going to, because it talks
about how that entire magic box works.
DAN GALPIN: Finally, "Making Money on Google Play," and
then "Make Your Game More Social Codelab," which is a
codelab where you can either bring your own game, or you
can actually use our game and implement Google Play services
in your game.
And that is it.
Thank you very much.
KOH KIM: Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]