[MUSIC PLAYING]
ARJUN DAYAL: Hi, everyone.
Thanks for joining us today.
We're excited to talk more about the expansion
of our multi-platform product, Google Play Games on PC
and what we have in store for this year.
Our goal is to help you grow your business by easily
distributing your great games across mobile, tablets,
Chromebooks, and Windows PCs.
My name is Arjun Dayal.
And I'm the director of product for Google Play Games.
I'm joined today by Grace and John,
who will provide additional updates on our program to help
you get onboarded even faster.
Let's get started.
With Google Play Games on PC, our vision
is to make gaming across mobile and large screens
seamless and enjoyable.
And when you switch devices, your purchases and progress
transfer instantly so you never have
to worry about restarting your favorite game from scratch
on a new device.
Bringing your games to larger screens
allows you to grow your business with a valuable multi-platform
audience.
There are already over two and 1/2 billion mobile gamers
and over a billion PC gamers with more joining every day.
And our research shows significant crossover
in mobile gamers who also play games
on their PCs, which means there's already
a large, motivated audience ready to play your game on more
screens today.
And when we ask players around the world
if they would like to see their mobile games come to PCs,
the answer we hear is a resounding yes
across many of the largest markets in the world.
Why players want to see their mobile games on PCs
is for reasons you might expect including the ability
to have a more immersive gameplay experience on a larger
screen, being able to use mouse and keyboard
controls within games, multitasking with other chat
and video services while playing,
and preserving battery life on your mobile phones.
With Google Play Games, we've brought all of this
together in our new Windows desktop client.
We focused on making discovery of great games a breeze
with the launch of our new user experience.
And once you've found a game to jump into,
you're transported into an immersive large-screen
experience that makes all of your gameplay fun and exciting.
And for developers, the benefits of working with us
to bring your games to a multi-platform audience
are clear.
We're excited to help you increase
your reach, engagement, and ROI for your new and existing
games.
You'll also be able to build higher-quality games that
can be played across more Google services.
And we'll help you simplify the onboarding process
to make your cross-platform development journey easier.
As we've entered beta in our first 13 markets,
many top games and developers have joined us
with their fully-optimized games.
Our catalog now includes games which
have close to $150 billion monthly minutes of gameplay
on mobile and hundreds of millions
of active players across mobile and PC.
Some of our most recent additions include great games
like "Eversoul," "Blade Idle," "Lords Mobile," "Evony,"
and many more as we've continued to make it easier
for you to bring your titles to our platform.
And so far, we've seen strong metrics from our beta release.
On average, we've seen more engagement with a 35% increase
in playtime across both mobile and PC, more revenue
with up to a 5% increase in non-paying users
becoming payers, and more net new users
with 30% of players discovering a game they had not previously
played on mobile.
Now, I'm thrilled to give you a sneak peek of some
of the world's most popular games
that are coming to Google Play Games on PC this year.
Soon, you'll be able to experience one of the largest
Battle Royale games in the world with "Garena Free Fire."
Play a multiplayer match within "Ludo King,"
the highly-popular casual board game,
and team up with your favorite Disney and Pixar characters
to take on Epic quests in "Disney Mirrorverse."
You'll also be able to jump into a fun new slingshot adventure
with "Angry Birds 2," explore fantasy MMORPG Open
World with "MapleStory M," and join an anime equestrian
universe within "Uma Musume."
That's the sneak peek.
We're really looking forward to bringing all of these games
to very soon.
The potential for Google Play Games
to help your business grow is strong.
And we're excited to bring more developers into our program
and help you succeed.
Grace is now going to walk you through the marketing benefits
and opportunities you can unlock by bringing
your games to Google Play Games on PC today.
GRACE LIN: Thanks, Arjun.
Hi.
I'm Grace, marketing manager for Google Play Games.
I'll be diving deeper into the unique marketing
opportunities available to partners to acquire users
across mobile and PC and a preview of our expansion plans.
As Arjun mentioned, it's been an exciting journey for us.
Last year, we launched Google Play Games on PC
in open beta in 13 countries, including the US, South Korea,
Brazil, and Indonesia, with many more coming this year.
For each of these launch moments,
we brought the best of Google's marketing capabilities
to spotlight our partner's games on PC
and reach users as they discover this new way to play.
Here's just a few of the different marketing
opportunities we offer partners to drive awareness
of your titles on Google Play Games and player acquisition.
On the Google Play Store, which reaches billions of users,
we have regular prominent feature placements
on both mobile and web and game-specific notifications
to let players know your game is available on PC.
We also push Bespoke social promotions for your games
on PC on our Google Play social channels,
which have a wide audience following across Twitter,
Instagram, and Facebook.
Here's an example of a promotion we
did for the simship launch of "Sumner's War Chronicles."
In the US on mobile and PC.
Beyond those channels, partners can also
benefit from featuring on both the Google Play Games website
and directly in the desktop client.
Additionally, we have always-on performance marketing campaigns
with dedicated game banner ads to drive installs for your game
on PC.
For tentpole launch moments, we work with our partners
on custom marketing campaigns, including
videos featuring games that we promote through media, press
and social.
And at these moments, we leverage our most effective
surfaces, including the Google Search home page
to drive mass awareness and reach new potential players.
I'll share a few examples of how we
activated these different channels for our launches
last year.
In Korea and Taiwan, we had our introduction moment
with Hero videos, out of home placements,
and retail partnerships.
In the US, Canada, and Brazil, we
partnered with 11 YouTube gaming creators on fun videos
that educated gamers about Google Play Games on PC
and the games available.
Now we have a quick video that shows
more of how we brought these campaigns to life.
Let's take a look.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[ENGINE REVVING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- Scrolling with the mouse wheel, that's different.
I like it.
- It looks so good.
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[END PLAYBACK]
GRACE LIN: We can't wait to partner with you
all more on these campaigns and Evergreen marketing
opportunities this year.
And as you caught a glimpse of in the video,
we've been hearing great feedback
from users who have shared what they like about playing
mobile games on PC.
Both our players and the creators
we partnered with love the immersive experience
of playing on a bigger screen, the cross-device syncing,
and the mouse and keyboard controls, all of which
are giving them new ways to multitask and enjoy
their games.
And we've seen this love for playing
cross-platform translate into incremental business
impact for our partners.
Here's a few examples of the promising metrics we've seen.
AFK "Arena" saw a nearly 60% increase
in seven day retention for multi-platform users
compared to single-platform users.
"Evony, the King's Return" saw a 20% increase
in total monthly active users across both mobile and PC
since launching on Google Play Games and "Valor
Legends" saw more than 2x increase in average revenue
per paying user on PC.
Our goal is to drive more of this impact for you
as we raise user awareness through sustained marketing
and grow the number of users engaging with our games
in multiple ways.
We look forward to bringing these multi-platform
experiences to more players as we continue
expanding to more markets this year,
which I'm now excited to reveal will include Japan, countries
in Europe, and additional regions which we'll
share more updates on soon.
Through industry leading optimization,
we've been able to lower our CPU and GPU requirements.
And we'll continue doing so this year to further expand access.
So all gamers with a Windows 10 and up device
can play Google Play Games on PC from a starter laptop
with integrated graphics to a high-end gaming machine
with the latest graphics card.
With this expansion to new regions and more devices,
we'll continue investing heavily in marketing
and expect to unlock tens of billions
of impressions for Google Play Games this year.
Now, I'd like to invite John to share more
about the technical requirements and next steps you
can take to be part of Google Play Games on PC.
JOHN PALLETT: Thanks, Grace.
I'm John.
And I manage games and gameplay for Google Play Games on PC.
As you can see, it's been an exciting year for us.
And we've seen some incredible new cross-platform
gaming experiences emerge.
Let's dig into some technical details about what
it takes to go cross-platform.
Generally speaking, if you go from mobile to cross-platform,
there are a few things to consider.
Let's start with the basics.
You won't always have a touch screen.
And instead, you'll have a mouse and a keyboard.
This might affect how you think about controls.
Games that use only single-handed tap mechanics
are probably fine in most situations.
A mouse click can work as a tap.
And Google Play Games will translate them for you
into touch events automatically.
However, if you're relying on swiping,
that's harder with the mouse.
And pinch zoom, you'll want to think about a mouse scroll
wheel.
And if your game is two-handed, then you'll
definitely want to think about keyboard controls
since a mouse only gives you one hand.
Also, your game will probably be played on a large screen.
So you want to ensure that high-quality graphics
and textures are available.
The large screen might also affect your user interface
since you'll have more room for buttons that
would be too small on mobile.
Let's go through some interesting examples
of games which have done a good job and let's start
with mouse controls.
"Cookie Run Kingdom" is a solid example
of cross-platform gameplay.
You can see here that it uses a scroll wheel on the mouse
to zoom in and out when in the map view.
One thing to note is that adding scroll wheel support
doesn't require handling all forms of most events.
You can keep using touch events and simply add support
for mouse scroll wheel events were needed.
Another example of a game using mouse really
well is "Left to Survive" where you
can see that they're using mouse capture for a first-person
style experience.
On desktop, when you capture the mouse
the cursor disappears and you get relative coordinates
when the most moves.
This is ideal for aim-style mechanics.
And it avoids problems where the mouse cursor would otherwise
go out of the window or hit the edge of the screen.
As you can see, they've also implemented the Escape key
to toggle the main menu releasing the mouse capture.
That's important so that players don't get stuck in your game.
Switching to keyboard, "Asphalt 9"
is a good example of a game which
did a great job of converting from touch and mobile tilt
controls to keyboard controls.
They've got really great tools for teaching users
how to play the game too.
Of course, there's a whole range of things you can
do when going cross-platform.
For example "Just Dance" allows you to pair your phone
with the desktop.
Then you can play music on the desktop
while the motion sensor in the phone
picks up your dance moves.
It's a really neat example of how your desktop build
and your mobile build might actually be very different
and use the capabilities of the different platforms.
So those things are really about adjusting to different form
factors to make a game play well.
We've also had some common user requests.
For example, progress sync is so important.
It's magical to watch users launch a game they just
played on Android and pick up right where they left off.
But the opposite is also true.
When mobile users try their favorite game on PC,
many quickly try to figure out how to log in.
And then they get frustrated if they can't figure it out
or if they can't sync with their mobile game.
Another common request from users is for keyboard mapping.
Different users have different needs
for how keyboard controls work and often want to customize
which keys are used for what.
Some of you watching this have already built PC games
and may have done user interfaces for remapping.
But some of you might not have done this before
and might not know where to start.
The good news is that we have some new capabilities coming
in Google Play Games where we can
take care of remapping for you.
In this example, "Ronin, the Last Samurai"
simply handles keyboard commands like usual
and uses the Input SDK to tell us
which keys they're looking for.
We, then, take care of the remapping interface
and transparently switch keys based
on the user's preferences.
Now, this new capability is your call.
You can disable it if you want to provide your own remapping
user interface.
But the idea is to reduce the effort required
to support keyboard controls.
If you want to do it right, here's a list of things to do.
And thus, far every game in Google Play Games
is optimized for PC.
And these fully-optimized games are
eligible for the top line of marketing on the Google Play
Games platform, including participation
in regular marketing moments and featuring on our channels.
Basically, all of the amazing things that Grace mentioned
are available to fully-optimized games.
Fully-optimized games build for Native x86 64-bit architecture.
They integrate with Play Game Services version
2 for auto sign-in and sync.
They ensure there's good mouse and keyboard support, including
the Input SDK to make it easy for users
to learn the game controls.
And they optimize graphics and textures.
Having said this, we recognize that not everyone
can create a fully-optimized game for desktop on day one.
And we've been looking at how to make it easier.
On that note, let's address a primary bit of feedback
we've had from developers about how to get started more easily.
And that feedback is really a question,
can I just use my existing mobile
build to get started in Google Play Games?
Well, I'm very excited to say that we have something new
here.
And the answer is, yes.
Here at Google Game Developer Summit,
we're announcing a new partnership
with Intel who has helped us make
it possible for Google Play Games
to support ARM builds on Intel PCs.
What that means for you is that it's now
super easy to get started with your mobile
build even if it's ARM.
And in fact, this is bigger news than just using your mobile
build. it's a new, easier path to become
part of Google Play Games.
Our goal is that as long as your game plays well in desktop,
either with just a mouse or with a mouse and keyboard,
then you should be able to join Google Play Games on PC.
And to do that, there are three steps.
First, you really do want to make sure your game plays well
on desktop.
You can try out your game on a Chromebook
or use a mouse on an Android device
to see how well it plays.
We're also working on making our Google Play Games Developer
Emulator public soon, which will give you another way
to test your build on PC.
What we're talking about here is really
what we discussed at the beginning
of this technical section, making sure the game can
be played enjoyably.
If your game is tap only, then it's probably good to go.
If you've already added keyboard support for a two-handed game,
you're also probably good to go.
Once you're ready, let us know and we'll
put you on the list for acceptance testing.
The link is on your screen.
Bear in mind that we're just starting the program.
And we're scaling up over several months.
So it may take some time before you hear back.
We're starting with games that have
over 30,000 monthly active users and over a three and 1/2
star rating to ensure that users are getting games that they
really enjoy on mobile.
Longer-term, the goal is to make this available to as many game
developers as possible.
So if you indicate that you're ready now,
we can keep you updated as we scale up the program.
And that brings us to the part where we test the game.
Quality is very important to us.
And in addition to the gameplay compatibility aspects
I mentioned before, your game will be tested for stability,
visual quality, and we'll be prioritizing
games that have features like progress sync between devices.
One last thing to call out here and it's important.
While you can use an ARM build to get
started on Intel machines.
ARM code is not native to PCs which generally run x86 code.
For this reason, we'll ask you to provide an x86 version
eventually so that all PC users can get native performance.
This shouldn't block you from getting started.
And you can start with ARM.
But we do recommend making sure you
know how to create an x86 build early in the process
so that you aren't surprised later.
And really, creating an x86 build
is the first step towards fully optimizing your game for PC,
I've outlined some steps to get started.
But games which are fully-optimized
for cross-platform are eligible for all the benefits
of cross-platform marketing.
So to recap, there are now two ways
to be part of Google Play Games on PC.
On the right, if you have a mobile
build which plays well on desktop,
then you can let us know.
And this can get you started.
On the left, games which become fully-optimized
are eligible for the full range of promotional opportunities.
To wrap things up, here's what to do next.
On the left, you can see a link for getting started
on Google Play Games where you can tell us
when your mobile build is ready to go for PCs.
And on the right, you can check out other sessions
at Google Game Developer Summit.
There are some good, technical deep-dives
on some of the topics we've discussed here.
And with that, thank you.
We hope to see you soon on Google Play Games on PC.
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