CASUAL CONNECT EUROPE
Social gaming insights
Gamesauce.biz distils valuable information from Casual Connect Europe for those who wish to thrive in the social casino industry.
E
arlier this year Casual Connect Europe was host to Playtika SVP, Elad Kushnir, who addressed the multiple challenges that the social casino market faces and how they might be overcome — including overall growth, different platforms, foreign markets and the top-heavy nature of the sector.
When asked how a company might break into such a top-heavy space,
Kushnir offered the following: “Break the rules. Bring something new to the table. … (Smaller companies) have the agility and creativity to break the rules … The big guys, we see what they’re doing, we can assume where they’re going. The small guys are much harder to see, they’re under the radar many times, and they pop out of nowhere.” Additionally, Kushnir said, a company should focus on one particular country or geographic area and own it – delivering an experience that meets the audience’s expectations.
Focusing on users
The biggest focus was on user acquisition and retention, with several industry experts weighing in on the issue. In one of the most anticipated talks of casino track, Google provided a deeper look into player behaviour when Noam Peri shared an exclusive look at the results of a 1,000-person survey conducted by Google targeting social casino players. The lecture targeted every phase of the player cycle, from discoverability and installation to monetization and retention.
One of the most surprising finds was what kept players from playing a game after they had installed it. “Nineteen percent of slots players and 43 percent of spenders say they have downloaded a game and never opened it,” Peri noted. “Why is this happening? The number one reason is time and attention. Answers like: ‘I forgot about it,’ ‘I played other games,’ ‘I had no time.’”
72 MAY 2016
Peri suggested developers remind users that they’ve downloaded their game and that issues with game adoption weren’t necessarily technical. Old Man Productions’ Guy Hasson talked about player retention and acquisition from a game mechanics standpoint, examining misconceptions about casino players and the mechanics needed to woo them — stating that players under 45 should never be a target demographic and non-slot gamification should be avoided.
Start me up
Wizits’ Yair Panet brought in the perspective of a startup developer – discussing how newcomers can succeed in the saturated social casino market. Key takeaways included constant innovation; having a clear vision; and focusing on a minimum viable product that contains all the functionality you plan to have for the product upon release, and then analyzing its performance and refining it — rather than releasing a product without full functionality and attempting to add more later.
New frontiers and classic relationships Rounding out the discussion with their own unique topics were
Scopely’s Christina Dunbar and Lucky VR’s Jeff Lande. Dunbar analyzed lessons learned working with VIPs in land-based casinos and applied them to the whales of the digital landscape — chief among those lessons was to communicate with them one-on-one as much as possible.
While Dunbar explored what
lessons can be learned from the previous iteration of casino gaming, Lande showed us what is on the horizon – diving deep into the world of virtual reality, detailing the different platforms available to developers and offering suggestions as to which ones might work best for social casino players.
If you are interested in learning more about Casual Connect,
you can check out
www.casualconnect.org. Casual Connect’s next conference takes place in Singapore 17-19 May. You can learn more about that event at
http://asia.casualconnect.org.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86