Who's Who: 9-kylins

What difficulties are faced by the teams of the Celestial Empire coming to the Russian market – within the framework of the “Who’s Who” cycle of the editorial office App2Top.ru told the Chinese company 9-kylins.

App2Top.ru : Hello! Please tell us about the company 9-kylins: what does it do, how long has it been on the market?

Alexander Pak, Product Development Manager: Hi! The company 9-kylins was founded in early 2009 and has been developing browser games for the first few years. Since 2013, the 9-kylins team has moved to the development of mobile games and applications for iOS/Android.

At the end of 2014, it was decided to conquer foreign markets. At the moment, games from 9-kylins are presented in the markets of China, Taiwan and South Korea. In the near future, the Company plans to enter the Russian market and further develop in the Asian markets.

App2Top.ru Q: What difficulties did 9-kylins face when switching from browser-based game development to mobile?

Wang Pengfei, Head of the Foreign Department: With the transition to the mobile market, the development environment and technological platform are changing, the process of developing and publishing games is different, their complexity increases, as well as the number of stages from development to launch and support of a game product.

Another point is related to competition in the market: the number of developers and game projects in Chinese mobile is simply huge. Also, some difficulties arose when choosing a development and promotion strategy. Which product to develop? For which platforms? Do you want to bet on Hardcore or Casual? Should I develop a game for both the Chinese and the international market at the same time? Which platforms are optimal for promotion? At the same time, the team did not always have the necessary experience: such experience can be obtained only in the process of work, often by trial and error.

App2Top.ru A couple of years ago, the West believed that it was very difficult to enter the Chinese market: a large number of app stores and a high level of piracy. How did these problems look and were solved from the inside, by Chinese developers?

Wang Pengfei: There are about 300 Android app stores on the Chinese market, while each has its own working conditions and various SDKs. Each store also has its own audience and features. Therefore, you need to have a clear idea on which of these resources to promote a game project.

When a foreign developer enters the Chinese market with his game project, there are two possible ways of development. Hire local specialists and create your own localization and promotion team in China, or find a major Chinese publisher, transferring all localization and marketing functions to him.

Piracy and copyright infringement are important issues that need to be addressed. According to statistics, there are 26 cases of copyright infringement for each mobile application. With mobile games, the situation is even more depressing. The most frequent copyright violations are games in the genre of Action / Adventure, sports and racing simulators.

Chinese mobile game developers, instead of violating copyrights and copying competitors’ games, need to create original high-quality gaming products, work more with the gaming audience, which will contribute to the development of the industry as a whole. Solving this problem requires the active participation of all market participants. At the same time, each developer must maintain and protect intellectual property rights. Government support is needed, the creation of appropriate regulations and the introduction of tougher measures for copyright infringement.

We also note several other problems of the mobile games market in China: this is a great similarity between different game projects, frequent borrowing and copying at the development stage, lack of innovation and innovations.

Art for the last game 9-kylins – “Corsairs: Sea Empire”

App2Top.ru : Now the Chinese mobile games market is one of the three largest in the world. But does this success have a negative side for Chinese developers?

Wang Pengfei: The Chinese mobile market is developing rapidly. In the App Store, China has already surpassed the United States in downloads in all categories and ranks 1st. China’s mobile games market is also growing at a rapid pace: over the past 2 years it has grown 3 times and, according to preliminary estimates, in 2015 it will reach $6.5 billion and account for more than 20% of the global market. At the same time, fierce competition is observed in the Chinese mobile games market, the cost of promotion is growing, and due to the large number of similar products, the loyalty of gamers is decreasing.

App2Top.ru Q: What audience does 9-kylins currently specialize in games for and why?

Alexander Pak: We are based on the genre preferences of gamers. Both in the Russian and Asian markets, MMO strategies and RPGs account for most of the revenue. In Russia, the core of paying users are men aged 20 to 35 years. Representatives of the fair sex spend about the same amount of time on mobile entertainment, but prefer games of several other genres. Therefore, the first 2-3 projects that we plan to release on the Russian market will be in the MMORPG genre. In addition, we plan to work in other genres, for example, action, casual, puzzles, card games.

App2Top.ru : 9-kylins is now entering the Russian market, what problems would you note, what difficulties, what are they?

Alexander Pak: This is a very interesting question. Let’s try to divide it into several parts and answer in detail:

Management and recruitment

At the initial stage, difficulties arose in forming a team to promote on the Russian market – there are few specialists in the field of mobile marketing, but we needed marketers and managers with knowledge of the Chinese language, which at the moment can be counted on the fingers.

The study of the Russian market and the formation of a marketing strategy

There is a strong lack of information on the Russian mobile games market, especially regarding statistics and KPIs. In most cases, this is classified information, and all kinds of analytics services are not always accurate. Problems also arise when conducting competitive analysis. It is not always easy to find an analogue of an Asian game project on the Russian market. In our case, we compared Corsairs with MMORPGs with slightly different mechanics and a completely different setting, because there are very few mobile games with a marine theme on the market at the moment.

Mobile product and localization

Russian and Asian gamers are very different from each other, so choosing a product to launch on the Russian market was not an easy task. These differences relate to the tastes and habits of gamers, ways of consuming mobile gaming content, as well as the practice of using the mobile Internet in general. Demographics and ways of monetization of gaming applications may also differ greatly.

Several difficult moments were associated with localization. Translating from Chinese into Russian is not easy, and context is crucial. The greatest difficulties arise when localizing the interface: what can be written in Chinese with two hieroglyphs in “great and mighty” does not always fit into an expanded sentence. The cultural aspect is also very important, it is not always clear how to translate a particular concept (or even a certain game function), because in Russian culture this concept simply does not exist. For example, ─包- dosl. “red envelope”, money that adults give to children during the celebration of the Chinese New Year, in the game “red envelope” can be presented as a New Year’s bonus for players.

Aldar Markhasayev, Foreign Market Development Manager: You can also add:

Promotion and mobile traffic

The main issue that needs to be resolved is choosing the right product promotion strategy. After choosing a strategy, it is very important to find a suitable partner for the promotion and purchase of mobile traffic. There are a lot of potential partners in the market, while the amount of traffic in Russia is limited to several main sites, and the sources of all companies are approximately the same. Prices for new traffic buyers are greatly inflated, it is almost impossible to check the quality of traffic before the campaign starts, intermediaries often mix motivated and unmotivated traffic, therefore a large amount of time and management resources is spent on finding a partner with high-quality traffic and an adequate market price.

It should also be noted that the Russian market is gaining momentum, new opportunities for development and promotion tools are emerging, price trends are changing, therefore, a close and continuous study of the mobile market is necessary for a successful campaign.

Stanislav Smolin, Media Relations Manager: Also for promotion:

Promotion and PR

The market is very oversaturated, i.e. there are a lot of media resources about mobile applications, games and gadgets, and the mobile audience of these resources is not so large. Many thematic sites have strict working conditions and pricing policy. It is not always possible to find information on the audience and demography of a particular resource. At the same time, even after conducting your own analysis of visitors to a particular site, it is difficult to attract a target audience and analyze the results of a PR campaign.

App2Top.ru Questioner: And the last question is related to your game “Corsairs”, which you are bringing to the Russian market, tell us a little about this project, why did you start expanding into the Russian market with it?

Alexander Pak: “Corsairs” is an MMORPG in the pirate sea setting of the 15th-18th centuries. The game is very social, it encourages gamers to communicate, complete tasks together, create guilds, etc. In our opinion, the game has quite an interesting combat system. In addition to RPG elements, there is an economic component in “Corsairs”, for example, the merchant fleet, the development of guilds and the struggle for the post of governor. The choice in favor of this project was influenced by several factors: an unusual setting for the Russian market, an interesting role-playing system and the commercial success of the game in the Chinese market.

Team 9-kylins

Thanks for the interview.