Growing “out” of Europe: Wooga Postmortem (GDC 2012)
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Growing “out” of Europe Postmortem of 3 years Wooga Jens Begemann (Founder & CEO)
description
Jens Begemann, CEO and founder of Wooga, will reveal how he and his team put Wooga and Berlin on the social gaming map and became the third largest social games developer worldwide. Wooga's strong and constant growth is based on sustainability, a core belief which has taught Jens and those at Wooga valuable lessons in the last three years. Condensed and from a European perspective, Jens will retrace Wooga's fast race to the top and offer an outlook for 2012, illustrating how the company will continue to expand into the emerging social mobile universe.
Transcript of Growing “out” of Europe: Wooga Postmortem (GDC 2012)
Growing “out” of Europe -‐Postmortem of 3 years Wooga-‐
Jens Begemann (Founder & CEO)
50 million ac:ve users, 70% female (age 20-‐60)
Team of 160 from >25 na:ons, in Berlin
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Vision:
Games for everyone
Typical cliché gamers
We start playing as kids
And con:nue playing our whole life
But computer games are quite male
and young (or do you believe this is real?)
They don’t play computer games
She doesn’t play tradi:onal games
7 key learning to share
2009
Brain Buddies
Started with paper drawing…
…and simple prototypes
Final Mini-‐Game – it’s only great because of all the detail
User tes:ng Every week/ 2 people -‐ Tons of insights leading to detailed changes
1st Learning:
DEDICATION TO DETAIL
VS.
Local Social Networks Facebook
Ini:al plan: only address social networks as 2 years behind Zynga, Playdom & Playfish
…then applied Frank Sinatra strategy:
“If we can make it there, we’ll make it anywhere” à Focusing fully on Facebook
July 2009: Brain Buddies Launch @FB
We tracked user growth on the the wall:
Every Morning upda:ng…
… in 4 months we ran out of wall
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Series A 2nd Learning:
FOCUS ON ONE THING
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End of virality as we know it
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February 2010: Launch Bubble Island – Adventure Mode
Engage the player with highly polished gameplay & racoon reloads
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3rd Learning:
ENGAGEMENT IS THE KEY
Strong growth, because of focus on engagement, not virality
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Farming game with a twist
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Some growth, but flahened aier 4 months We con:nued to improve: weekly releases
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A/B test: Invite BuZon
Introduc[on of missions
Garden @ Launch Garden Today
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4th Learning:
DON’T FOLLOW THE HIPPO*
(*Highest Paid Person’s Opinion)
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Series A
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2011: Slow start
We were working on a new game with a cruise ship theme…
.. and quickly had a name (trademark) etc.
Fast prototyping, e.g. with Lego
Completely in love and thought it would become a big hit!
Issues in the core game loop
Work @ a ship
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Relaxing
Issues in the core game loop
Managing a ship Exploring places
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Adding features wont fix a broken core game loop
Core game loop
Feature1 Feature2
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5th Learning:
GET THE BASICS RIGHT
How to con:nue to grow
TYPICAL game product lifecycle
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Time
MAU
Time
DESIRED game product lifecycle
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55%
40% Paid Ads
Crosslinking
Virality
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6th Learning:
SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
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Series A
Series B
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Core fanbase wanted to have it –brought us to the top posi:on
Virality cycle + Synchroniza:on across devices
Development in the smartphone industry
Carriers Pay/Download
Freemium
Single
Social App Store
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7th Learning:
SOCIAL MOBILE IS THE FUTURE
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SOCIAL mobile is the future 7
SUSTAINABLE growth 6
Get the BASICS right 5FOCUS on one thing 2
Dedica:on to DETAIL 1
ENGAGEMENT is the key 3
Don’t follow the HIPPO 4
Want to be part of this?
Career booth #1726 @Moscone West
Jens Begemann Founder & CEO Wooga
TwiZer: @begemann
wooga.com/jobs GDC booth #1726
