Miniclip: Who knows which project will be next Agar.io

Producer of the company Miniclip Andre Pais, who will be performing at White Nights Moscow 2015, answered our questions about the publishing house.

Hi! Please tell us in a nutshell, how and when did you decide to retrain from an online game publisher to a mobile publisher?

Miniclip continues to publish online games, but now we are focusing on mobile. The reason is that the gaming market has changed. The situation in the industry has changed significantly over the past few years. The growing popularity of mobile devices forced a different approach to the process of creating games, and in addition, opened these games to a completely new audience. Miniclip, like many other companies, tries not to miss the opportunities that open up.

Andre Pe
Personally, I am a fan of mobile games, and I really like that everyone is playing them around.

I think the mobile industry will continue to grow for some time, and therefore it is important for us to know exactly what the audience wants. If the situation changes in the future, then we will do the same as always – we will try to adapt and adapt to the changes.

What do you think has changed in the mobile market recently?

I believe that two things have had a strong impact on the mobile market in the last two years.

The first is platforms. Games have ceased to be associated exclusively with PCs or consoles. A huge number of mobile projects have appeared. As a result, games have become available to those who have not played them before – and there are a lot of such people! These users are significantly different from the players we are used to before. For example, they prefer short gaming sessions (1 or 2 minutes while waiting for the bus), they like simpler and more accessible games (a few years ago – who could have imagined that Candy Crush would be such a hit?). All these changes imply that games now need a completely different approach. And developers need to adapt to this.

The second point is the transition to a model in which users play for free. The shareware model not only increased the number of those who play mobile games, but also completely changed the approach to their distribution and design. Creating a full-fledged engagement loop in the game, making sure that the content is valuable to the players – these are all difficult tasks, and many companies are still trying to solve them.

The changes have led to the fact that games have become a cross between an independent product and a service, they need to constantly change and adapt – even after they hit the market.

In general, I think that all these changes have benefited the gaming industry, and that is why it has started to grow so fast. Interestingly, the industry still has a lot to develop, and much remains to be done in this area.

Many complain about the lack of original ideas in the game market. How to deal with it?

One of the features of the gaming industry is that you never know exactly how the audience will react to innovations. Therefore, in order to minimize the risk, many choose a proven approach – they work with an idea that has already brought success in the past.

Nevertheless, I believe that it is necessary to maintain a certain balance between new and proven ideas. Of course, it is important to minimize the risk, but it is equally important to release a good game that will captivate and surprise users. This Miniclip successfully applies in practice – thanks to the presence of an extensive gaming portfolio. We can afford both to spread proven ideas and to include something new in games. That is, the risk as a result is minimized, and new ideas can be put into practice and tested.

In addition, I am sure that there is no need to be afraid to capitalize on already proven ideas. The mobile gaming market is a very competitive environment, and this strategy allows you to survive.

At the beginning of the year, Tencent acquired a controlling stake in your company. How strong is the influence of a Chinese company on your business?

After Tencent invested in our company, Miniclip remained an independent company under the leadership of the existing management team. We are glad that Tencent has become our main investor.

By the way, are you going to enter the Chinese market?

At the moment we are working closely with Tencent, but we cannot share the details of this cooperation yet.

If we talk about your experience as a publisher, how exactly do you choose which game to publish?

First of all, it is very important to be guided by the main market trends. For example, I constantly monitor the top positions in the world charts in order to imagine what users are playing. Sometimes in this way it is possible to make unexpected discoveries, and then with the help of the Miniclip audience and the skills of our team – to develop success.

It should also be mentioned that it is not necessary to always concentrate only on the standard indicators of the game. It is important to pay attention to good gameplay and intuitive controls. A good example is the game Agar.io . This is a very simple game, but Miniclip still managed to see a huge potential in it. The project has become one of the biggest hits of this summer, both online and on mobile. In July, the game took first place in iOS downloads.

The team of the commercial department of Miniclip follows the principles I have described and is constantly looking for new opportunities.

Finally, the last question: many of your projects, such as On the Run, are casual games. But you also have a midcore Beast Quest. Why did you decide to release this game?

Miniclip’s audience is 200 million MAU, both among mobile players and fans of browser games. We offer a wide variety of game genres to this huge user base – from casual games to more midcore projects. Among the successful initiatives of recent times are sports multiplayer, such as 8 Ball Pool and Soccer Stars (at the moment this is my main project). But this does not mean that we are not open to new things. When a company has such a huge audience as Miniclip, it is important that the game portfolio is diverse – who knows which project will be the next Agar.io !

Thanks for the interview!

Alexander Semenov asked questionsTranslated by Irina Smirnova