WTH! at GDS2017

I only managed to visit a few talks during the GDS 2017. We had a desk in the Indie Expo section with our game WesTurn and that was a bit busy. Nevertheless, here are my notes from one of the presentations.

The talk was WTH?! Softlaunched & Selfpublished! given by Michal Harangozo from Charged Monkey.

WTH! or What The Hen! is a funny F2P game where each competing player sends their own troops to beat the other guy.

It reminds me of a flash game I used to play back in the day called Age of War.

‘member?
Apparently, there is a Google Play version now.

There was a lot of information in the presentation. Here are some highlights:

• Being featured on the store is about contacts.
• It’s important to test new game updates with (beta)players before publishing them live.
• Take advantage of A/B testing.
• Changing the game from the ground up through a regular update can lead to players leaving.
• Matchmade.tv is great.
• Repeated video campaigns with youtubers and custom content for individual influencers (eg. their stylized faces in the game), can be one way to market your game.
• It’s difficult to repeat previous success of a youtube marketing campaign. They were working with an italian youtuber and it was very successful. Later, when they tried with different youtubers, it didn’t work. Even though they made about *60 videos. *Might have different number, forgot to write this down.
• It is impossible to time marketing campaigns with youtubers, they publish their videos when they are ready and do not care much about your deadlines.
  
• Ads pay with 45 days delay.
• WTH! had retention D1/D7/D14 of 50/20/10.
• UA strategy – to slowly acquire more and more users. There was a comparison with other title with large spike after the release and big fall off. It seems slow growth might be more manageable and sustainable.
• Overall, youtuber campaigns did not work so well for WTH! My opinion on this matter is that not many youtubers cover mobile games, meaning less people are going to see the videos.
• Key person was missing in the team – a F2P designer. This made work difficult, even though there are experienced people in the team, but they are not experts in the F2P.
• Soft launch ASAP with minimal content.
• Do not postpone important decisions.
• Try more marketing channels and find which one works for you.
• Influencer marketing brings higher retention, players are more engaged too.
• People in Philippines have low-end phones with poor hardware specs and terrible data plans. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.

WTH! had also a very cool booth 🙂

https://twitter.com/RomanLuks/status/931826712681304064

Few more posts about the GDS 2017.

And what do you think about working with influencers to market your game? How would you promote a F2P game? How would you promote a mobile game?

Share your thoughts in the comments below 🙂