Tequila Mobile's Paul Flanagan on why Java still matters, advergaming doesn't, and how its social mobile platform will compete with GREE and Mobage
The global market is broad
Key Asian players such as GREE, DeNA and Papaya are currently making the headlines when it comes to social mobile gaming platforms.
They're not the only players in the space though.
German outfit Scoreloop is working away within RIM, while Polish publisher Tequila Mobile is rolling out its Tequila Planet technology to third parties.
And following the news it's raised $1.7 million to accelerate the process, we caught up with business development manager Paul Flanagan to find out more.
PocketGamer: What specific areas will you be spending the investment on? Paul Flanagan: Top priorities are- Enhancing the platform with new social features
- Introducing a new Smart App running HTML 5 in a native app with the capability of delivering dynamic content to the user
- Enhanced business intelligence and metrics for our developer and traffic partners
- Marketing and business development
There is a lot of competition but it is a very broad market and all companies vary in their capabilities, readiness and focus on geography and platform.
From the perspective of game developers, right now we offer a proven monetisation and distribution solution that works across Java and Android in 85 countries. That is a unique solution.
This combination of capabilities, including high conversions from playing to paying (~10 percent), and placement in our network of high volume channels and portals, is compelling and allows us to compete successfully.
From a consumer point of view, can you explain how Tequila Planet works?The players discover our games in app stores or via mobile internet advertising and they can download them for free.
In fact, they can play the whole game for free; they don't have to pay us at all unless they decide to, nor do they have to navigate around advertising in the games. They can buy virtual goods to enhance the gaming experience or accelerate progress.
On the game level, players get recommendations for Tequila Planet games from the catalogue of games visible within the game, so they can extend the experience with other interesting titles using the same approach.
What do developers need to do to support Tequila Planet?There are several steps
- Go to TequilaPlanet, sign up, and get invited in by Tequila
- Download the free SDK
- Think about how virtual goods would fit into your games
- Use the Tequila Mobile manuals, Q&A and other resources on how to transform your game into an exciting free-to-play game
- Integrate code and upload to the portal
- We manage distribution, promotion and monetisation
- The money starts flowing two months after publishing the game
Our top ten grossing countries are: USA, UK, France, Russia, Germany, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Canada and Romania.
As you can imagine, we've got a lot of users in places like India, Indonesia and Vietnam but the lower price points mean the gross revenues are lower.
Do you think Java is still a viable platform for game developer?Counter intuitively we find it still is. There are three billion feature phones globally - smartphones are on the rise but they do not constitute the whole market by a long way and their feature sets (app stores, in-app purchases) are trickling down to feature phones.
Feature phone users make up more than half of our users and the monetisation metrics, based on their purchases of virtual goods and other transactions, are very similar to our smartphone users.
Most of the professional game developers still have capacity and some output in Java games but they are struggling on operators decks and their only option to go for free distribution is advergaming.
We offer a new option via Tequila Planet: transform your games into free-to-play with in-app transactions, you will make 3 to 5 times more money.
Do you have any in-game advertising solutions?We are in different business. We do not practice advergaming because it is 3-5 times less effective than the free-to-play, in-app transactions with virtual goods business model, assuming you have quality content.
Will Tequila continue making games for Tequila Planet or at some point, do you expect to just focus on the platform?The content and platform are currently very symbiotic. All the tools for handling the in-app purchases, all the reports and metrics we get, all the know-how on how to build free-to-play games we share with our partners. We could not do it if we were not a studio.
After some time we will evaluate a spin-off of our studio to a separate entity to provide it with freedom and to eliminate any possible conflict of interest between the units.
Thanks to Paul for his time.You can find out more about Tequila Planet via its website.
