GDC 2015: The secrets of Chinese mobile game social operations

Recently, KTplay, as China's largest mobile gaming social platform, gave a speech titled "Secrets of China's Largest Social/Live Ops Mobile Gaming Platform" to developers around the world at the GDC conference in the United States.

As the largest, most authoritative and most "high-end" event in the global gaming industry, GDC 2015 brings together the latest products and top-level experiences. The speech brought by KTplay not only authoritatively reveals the secrets of social operations of Chinese mobile games, but also conveys a clear message to global developers who are trying to enter the Chinese market - only by understanding social operations can you understand the Chinese market and players, and thus get a piece of the sweet pie in this huge market.

Without Facebook & Twitter, who will dominate the Chinese social media platform?

Spencer pointed out in his speech that the full life cycle operation strategy based on social platforms is the key to keeping mobile games vigorous. A successful S-level mobile game needs to have six major social factors: friends, chat, PK, achievements, gifts and geographical location. Overseas, these social factors are mostly realized based on the friend relationship chain on FaceBook. So, how do Chinese mobile games without FaceBook achieve socialization in mobile games?

The actual situation in China is that the huge base of mobile game players is divided into three parts: Weibo, QQ, and WeChat. Weibo is a social platform where you can follow friends unilaterally, and its social attributes are more inclined to interest division: for example, you will follow the stars, industry celebrities, grassroots celebrities, etc. that you are interested in; QQ is deeply integrated into the lives and work of Chinese people due to the convenience of instant messaging and its long history of development. For example, Americans are accustomed to communicating through emails, but in China, these are all placed on QQ. WeChat is more like a hybrid of Twitter and FaceBook. It not only allows instant messaging but also has the functions of sharing and payment. Its friend relationship requires both parties to request to establish it, which means that WeChat's social relationship chain is more solid than Weibo. These three are the main battlefields for mobile game social networking in China, Spencer introduced.

Improve game retention and revenue through socialization between developers and players, and between players

So how can we use socialization to improve the retention and revenue of game products in China's social environment? Spencer reminded that game developers need to know that players are already in your game, but do you understand the players' urgency to share and gain achievements? Once you create this outlet, the interaction between developers and players will create incredible results.

A game's external social operation sites include official websites, official microblogs, forums or post bars, WeChat public accounts, etc. This is a heavy operational burden for developers, and players are scattered on different platforms. What if developers gather players in the game? Spencer then demonstrated to the developers present an example of KTplay during the internal beta test.

On the first day of the launch of the "Nuannuan Around the World" community, 20,000 original topics were generated, and 330,000 original topics were generated in two months. "Nuannuan Around the World" also held a Weibo event at the time, and found that the effect of the response to this event was very different from the activities held in the community. The Sina Weibo event only had more than a thousand people responding, while the KTplay community had more than 10,000 people. So it is not difficult to see that "Nuannuan Around the World" has established good communication between players through the KTplay community, and has mobilized the enthusiasm of players in the game.

Turning stand-alone games into social games

Developers send notifications and rewards to players through in-game communities, allowing players to discuss and share within the game. At the same time, developers can also collect player feedback and guide players to pay or increase retention, turning stand-alone games into social games that allow communication.

The developer of "TD: Evil Dead" solicited suggestions for the next version of the game through the KTplay community and received over 100 responses within an hour. When the old version was updated to the new version, 80% of the players were migrated to the new version through the KTplay community in just two days, while the traditional method would have taken 2 weeks.

KTplay not only provides social functions, but also a social system

Forums, friends, battle systems, and backend operations are not separate functions. They are like raw materials. Only when the ingredients are combined can they be cooked into a delicious dish. KTplay's social SDK and operation SDK provide a one-stop social operation solution. The core goal is to help mobile games build in-game social operation systems, truly providing developers with a one-stop solution to mobile game social issues.

Chinese gamers are different from European and American gamers. They have huge differences in gaming habits. For example, European and American gamers are used to thinking and solving problems by themselves, while Chinese gamers are more willing to ask others for help and share and spread their gaming experience, so as to enjoy the most fun content of the game more quickly. It is precisely this universal characteristic that makes socialization more important for games entering the Chinese market. It can even be said that socialization is a rigid demand that Chinese gamers generally have.

So who are the developers who understand Chinese gamers the best? Without a doubt, it is those developers who understand Chinese game habits and try to make adjustments and changes in product content, social interaction and other aspects for Chinese gamers.