[MUSIC PLAYING]
MORGAN DOLLARD: I'm really excited to be here today,
and we have an incredible lineup of products and speakers
in store for you today.
There's never been a better time to turn your passion for games
into a business.
Mobile gaming remains the fastest growing segment
of the games industry, and Android and Google Play
are at the forefront of that growth.
Google Play has the most vibrant, diverse and engaged
gaming community.
Gaming on Android is a global phenomenon,
with Google Play reaching more than 1
billion monthly active users in more than 190 countries.
Every year we see more and more developers
finding success on our platform, and over the past year,
the number of games with over 1 million installs
has increased by 50%.
That's amazing momentum, and we're incredibly
excited to see you succeed.
So as remarkable as these numbers are,
you, the games developers, are the real heroes of this story.
The contributions of developers like many of you in the room
were integral to the adoption of Android.
So let's give a round of applause for all the developers
that helped Android succeed.
[APPLAUSE]
Everything my team and teams across Google do
are inspired by you, the games developers,
and the games you make.
You are the ones that take big risks, that
are pursuing your passion for games,
for many a passion since childhood.
You eat, sleep, and breathe video games.
If you're inspired by great games, as we are,
you want to build great games.
You want to create a new style of gameplay,
find a clever hack to get the best
performance from your hardware, or make your mark on VR gaming.
Once you've built an amazing game,
you want people to discover it, and enjoy it.
For that, you need to find users, the right users,
the ones that will love your game
and make it a critical success.
Most of you in here don't do this as a hobby, though.
You have to turn your awesome game into a business
so you can keep making games.
Are you going to go free-to-play,
are you going to sell a premium game,
are you going to use in-app advertising?
There are some tough choices to make,
and every game has to find the right balance.
If you have done these things, then of course
you'll want to turn a game into an ongoing service
to deliver to players, to keep them coming
for new content, new goals, and new ways
for them to share their experience with others.
For the next few minutes, we'll show you
how we can help you, the hero of the story, be successful.
So let's talk about making great games.
Think about the games you've played,
the ones that inspired you to build games in the first place.
What's common among the best games
is that they find something new to deliver to players.
They push the boundaries of graphics and sounds
by integrating deeply with the platforms they run on.
Mobile technology is moving fast.
We now have a generation of mobile devices
that are near console quality, and you need powerful tools
to make them perform.
And Google is working to bring you
the newest and best tools to take full advantage of these
on Android.
Last week, we announced the Android N preview,
and this year we're trying to give you earlier access so you
can build and test your games with the latest
generation of Android.
Android N contains a lot of new features for users, including
improved battery life and performance,
new interactions for large screens,
improved accessibility, and some new security features.
And for game developers, we have some exciting additions
to Android N. OpenGL ES 3.2 support, which
includes great features like geometry, tessellation
changes, and ASTC compression; and also includes
new multi-window features, including support
for split screen on phones and tablets,
as well as picture-in-picture for Android TV.
For data plan constrained players,
N offers Data Saver, a foreground-only data usage
mode, and you'll also be able to take advantage
of new notification features like notification bundling
and new customization options for relevant notifications.
Your games also need to look great,
so a big part of the upcoming Android platform is Vulkan.
Vulkan is a new 3D rendering API which
we've helped to develop as a member of the industry group
Khronos, which develops open graphics standards like OpenGL
ES.
Vulkan provides explicit low-overhead GPU control
to developers.
Let's take an example of that, of Vulkan running on Android.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is our Fish Tornado running on the Android SHIELD TV.
This demo runs both on desktop and [AUDIO OUT], the same code,
the same shaders, the same C+.
The cross-platform shaders would have been much harder
with OpenGL ES.
Vulkan's render pass system enables Fish Tornado
to take advantage of multi-pass rendering
in ways you couldn't have with OpenGL ES.
[END PLAYBACK]
In January, we announced the Spatial Audio edition
to the Cardboard SDK.
Many apps create simple versions of Spatial Audio
by playing sounds from the left and right in separate speakers,
but with this SDK [AUDIO OUT], your app
can produce sound the same way humans actually hear it.
All your players need is their smartphone, their headphones,
and their Google Cardboard viewer.
Overall, the SDK allows more [AUDIO OUT]
3D specializations via modeling the physiology of your head.
This SDK update gives you the ability
to put your players in tiny spaceships, huge caverns,
with even better performance.
Graded audio like this can make for very immersive games
and virtual reality apps.
So why do you make games?
To entertain and delight your players, of course.
For that to happen, you actually need players.
Google has a number of ways for you
to find and engage with your audience.
Advertisers have long been able to control
who sees their AdWords ads, and in the coming weeks,
we'll be launching even finer options
to reach high-quality users with active user targeting
for games.
This new type of targeting for Android apps
can show active users who have spent more than 30 minutes
playing games, or played a Google Play Games
integrated game.
Game developers can show their ads to game lovers,
and combined with other types of targeting,
such as a particular game category,
they can reach a very precise audience.
Video is also a powerful way to let
users see gameplay, graphics, and features before downloading
the app.
And we've been exploring ways to give developers
more opportunities to connect with users
or view their game videos on their mobile device,
and we've discovered that over 80%
of video ad views in mobile apps on the Google Display Network
start from the devices held vertically.
Over the next few weeks, we're launching portrait video ads,
so users can see a fullscreen, immersive, portrait video
experience, without having to reorient their device.
We've seen significant improvements
in both click-throughs and conversion rates
from game developers using portrait video,
resulting in a much lower cost per install
and a larger number of downloads.
Search Trial Run Ads will be in beta soon,
and will allow users to stream apps
directly from ads on Google Search.
With this new ad format, we're making it significantly easier
for you to promote your games while giving users a chance
to try a game for up to 10 minutes
before choosing to download it directly from Google Search.
This is a great way to drive highly qualified users
to your game.
For those of you who are indie developers,
you'll be excited to hear we're adding a new way to highlight
you and your games with a new Indie Corner in the Play Store.
The Indie Corner is dedicated to highlighting
truly amazing and unique indie games that users love.
Here's how it works.
First, you have to make a great game.
Submit your game to participate in the program.
[AUDIO OUT] games are then featured
in the Indie Corner collection in the Google Play Store.
If your game gets traction with users
and achieves critical acclaim, it
can ascend and be featured in the Indie Masterpiece
[AUDIO OUT], which highlights the very best games on Google
Play.
Check it out today.
The Indie Corner collection is live on the store.
Last month, we launched gamer IDs and avatars
to give users an improved Google Play Games experience.
Users can choose their own gamer ID
and avatar, set their privacy preferences [AUDIO OUT]
automatically sign into games.
Our sign-in improvements also benefit developers.
Automatic sign-in can make it easier and faster
for players to start playing games.
In the next few months, we'll be adding Gamer Friends to Google
Play Games so that players can build connections
with their friends or gamers they interact with in-game.
So you can see some screenshots of how this will work.
You can find other players based on either our recommendations
or invite them to become friends,
manage your invitations through our Inbox,
and choose to accept or ignore requests to connect.
And you'll be able to see what games your friends are playing,
helping users discover new and amazing content
that they might not know about.
Gameplay videos are a great way to drive viral growth
for your games.
Late last year, we made it possible for users
to record their gameplay with the Google Play Games app.
Today, we're announcing that in the coming months,
players will have the option to livestream their gameplay, as
well.
We'll also be providing an API that
enables you to easily add video recording
and livestreaming to your games.
Monetizing your game is an important part of this journey.
You can, of course, monetize directly through Google Play,
by using in-app purchases, selling your premium game,
or using in-app advertising.
Today, we're launching rewarded ads via AdMob Mediation.
You can now grow your app's overall ad revenue
by adding reward-based ads from third-party providers
to your app via AdMob Mediation.
Reward-based video ads enable users
to earn in-game currency or items of value
in exchange for viewing ads.
You choose a reward amount, you experiment as often
as you like to find the optimal amount,
without having to resubmit your app to the stores for approval.
AdMob Mediates the ads, choosing the ones which
can earn you the most, and ads will come from third parties.
We have certified adapters for leading rewarded ads providers,
such as Chartboost, Vungle, AppLovin, AdColony, Fyber,
Upsight, Unity, and many more coming.
And now, I'd like to introduce Ben Frenkel, who
is a product manager for Play Games Developer Experiences.
[APPLAUSE]
BEN FRENKEL: Thank you, Morgan.
All right, so now you have a great game, a growing audience,
and hopefully, hopefully you've made some revenue.
And as much time and effort as you spent working on your game
pre-launch, it's post-launch we can
gather enough data about your users
to finish tuning your game.
That's why it's important to think about your game
as an ongoing service you can deliver to players.
You need to think about your games as a service.
And you need to do three things-- three things--
to manage your games as a service.
You need to be able to dynamically make changes
to the way your games behave, tailor and optimize
game experiences for different player segments,
and you need the tools to deeply understand
what's working and not working for your players.
Most developers that manage their games as a service
can dynamically change almost everything about the way
their games behave from their servers,
and the best at this control almost
every aspect of their game, including
their virtual good inventory, their in-game economy balance,
the difficulty of their game, and even
what promotions to run.
It's a lot of hard work to set up and manage
these types of services, and if you're not
a large studio with a dedicated server engineering team,
every single minute you spend on this type of work
takes away from the thing you're really passionate about,
which is making games.
Well, no more.
We are excited to announce that Play Games Game Parameters
Management will be launching in the coming months
to make it simple to dynamically manage the parameters that
drive your game.
With Game Parameters Management, you'll
be able to manage your virtual good inventory
and gameplay parameters, manage your different currencies,
and create time- and location-based value overrides.
The time- and location-based overrides
are particularly powerful.
Many developers that offer time-limited content,
like a new character or a weapon, still
have to manually turn on and off these promotions.
So let's say, for example, you had a promotion that
ended at 11:59 on a Sunday; you might need someone
from your team to go into the office and physically
turn off the promotion.
There's got to be a better way to do it.
And if you're running a global games business,
you want your promotions to be run at locally relevant times.
And with our time- and country-based overrides,
you'll be able to specify country-specific start and stop
times, and we'll automatically manage everything for you.
And we've been working with our partner, Concrete Software,
throughout the development of Game Parameters Management,
and they are the real heroes of the story.
They're the ones that inspired us to build the Game Parameter
Management service, because we saw the opportunity
to make it easier and faster and cheaper
and less error-prone for Concrete Software
to manage their games as a service.
And we're really fortunate today to have
Keith, the CEO of Concrete Software, in the audience.
Keith, do you want to wave your hand over there?
Excellent.
So Keith and the Concrete Software team
have run their first end-to-end promotion
using Game Parameters Management over the weekend,
and from all the reports I've heard,
it's been a tremendous success.
So let's give a round of applause for Keith
and the Concrete Software team.
[APPLAUSE]
Woo!
Go, Keith.
And in Keith's own words, Game Parameters Management
will drastically cut setup time and issues,
while allowing us to create all kinds of new promotions
we couldn't previously, and they're looking forward
to including Game Parameters Management in all
of their future games.
So last year we launched the Player Stats API,
which allowed you to create tailored game experiences
for every player segment.
We provided segment data based on percentile sessions
and spend, average session length, and so forth.
We also gave you predictions for whether or not someone is
going to spend or churn from your games.
The Player Stats API is another powerful tool for you
to run your games as a service, and it's
available for free today.
Developer Underwater Apps has a killer application
of the Player Stats API.
They integrated Player Stats into their flagship title, Tap
Ventures, and used the spend prediction signal
to determine whether or not they would show ads to users.
If a user was predicted to spend,
they didn't see any ads at all, and for users
that were not predicted to spend,
they would see ads every single time they opened up the game.
Then they ran an experiment that compared their current approach
to serving ads to the new and improved approach powered
by spend prediction, and the results speak for themselves.
Revenue from ads was 17% higher in the cohort predicted
not to spend, and not showing ads
to users that were probable to spend increased
the number of IAP transactions by 15%.
That's huge impact, and we couldn't
be more excited for them.
And we've continued to invest in new predictions
to make the Player Stats API even more powerful,
and we're excited to announce two new predictions will be
available in the coming months.
The first is a prediction of how much someone
will spend in the next 30 days, and the second
predicts the probability a user will become a high spender.
And we couldn't be more excited to see what
creative things you'll end up doing with these new tools.
At last year's GDC, we launched the first version
of Player Analytics, and we've made significant investments
in uMetrics and uReports, and most recently, we
launched the Cohorts and Funnel Reports
to help you track the impact of new game features
you've added to your game, learn where and why you are losing
users, and to understand the differences in behavior
between people who don't spend any money at all,
people who spend a little bit of money, and your big spenders.
And if you haven't had a chance to check out Player Analytics
before, you can go to the Developer Console
today and see the reports, see how they work
with one of our sample games.
And we've heard from developers that Player Analytics has had
a big impact on their business.
Developer Max Games has been using Player Analytics to help
understand where and why they are losing players
in their game Stick Wars: Legacy, and with that data,
they can focus their improvements
to most efficiently improve retention.
Max Games used the Funnel Report to identify levels
in Stick Wars with above-average churn,
and here's what Jason, their CEO, had to say.
"The Funnel Report is vital to balancing our game Stick
Wars: Legacy, and using the Play Games Funnel Report,
we were able to reduce churn in level six by 40%."
That's incredible impact.
40% more users now get to experience
the rest of the game.
And of course, since then the bottleneck has moved,
and they've identified more opportunities
to reduce churn even further.
So there you have it.
You have new tools to create the best games,
find the right audience, monetize that audience,
and grow your game as an intelligent, living service.
And remember, you are the real heroes
of the story, the developers, and all of these products
and all these people here from Google
are working for you to help make your business more successful.
So go out there, make awesome games,
and be the heroes we know you can be.
With that, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]