Exclusive: Interview with BlackBears about SQBA

Oleg Kapitonov, the founder of the BlackBears game studio, told us about the SQBA service, which allows you to customize applications for specific users without releasing full-fledged updates in the store.

Oleg KapitonovHi!

Please tell us a little about your company, about what you used to do and why you started creating an analytical service?

The project team has been working together for quite some time. What we just did not do! We started with outsourcing the development of web applications, then mobile applications, and after the creation BlackBears.mobi they began to try themselves in mobile games.

Why did you start creating SQBA? The fact is that many of the problems we faced when developing mobile applications and games, existing services could not solve. For this reason, we have taken up their implementation ourselves. The experience of developing web applications has helped us a lot here.

What is SQBA?

SQBA is a service that allows you to configure an iOS application for specific groups of users, instantly, without releasing an update in the AppStore.

The story with the name is not as beautiful as many startups. Work on the service began more than a year ago. Initially, the focus in it was on advertising. The company that started it was called Bnet. Hence Q (Quality) B (Bnet) A (Ads). S (shared) was added when we decided to separate the product into a separate project.

Can I tell you more about the tools?

At the moment, the service is built around working with segmented users. In order to divide users into groups, we have analytics.

After segmentation, you can interact with users in three ways:

• change application settings;
• send messages (via push notifications or internal SQBA messages);
• send bonuses in the game (also using push or gift links and QR codes).

Testing is also an important tool, because with SQBA it is possible to make changes to settings, and such things, of course, must be checked and approved before deploying the version to all users of the application.

In the future, we also plan to introduce other tools: crosspromo, working with the SDK of popular social networks (segmenting users by them).

We understand that we can’t mix everything up in a heap, so we try to group the functionality into separate SDKs distributed under one brand – SQBA.

In general, we want to share all our internal developments with other developers, simplify their routine tasks.

As we understood, as the main feature of the application, despite a number of interesting tools, you still suggest considering the possibility of configuring the application for specific user groups. Starting from this: what can be changed, how far can it be possible to go in changes?

Yes, at the moment our main feature is a reconfiguration for user groups. You can change anything in the application. We provide a tool that supports versioning, there is a convenient editor if the config of your application is built in JSON format.

How deeply the settings will be integrated into the application depends on the developer. Of course, if the indicators of the heroes’ demag are overloaded in the game, SQBA will not be able to help here, but such games usually do not think about analytics or ARPU. They cost $0.99, which is how much they earn in the end.

If you can even change the cost of IAP from group to group… how honest is it? And won’t it strike a blow to the balance?

We cannot change the dollar value due to Apple’s policy, we can change the prices in in-game currency or how much of this currency you get for a fixed IAP price. This makes it possible to change prices as you like, in terms of balance and honesty — here I really like this picture:

We provide a tool and hope that it will be used for good, excessive greed can, of course, spoil everything — but this is the problem of the developer, not the service.

Is it possible to change the type of banners displayed to different groups of users? Is it possible to put specific banners?

Yes, just such an opportunity will be in the CrossPromo module. In addition, it will be possible to configure other banner display parameters, for example, not to show them in difficult game moments or to those who have already installed the advertised game.

Now the service is free. How do you plan to monetize it in the future?

The service is free, as it is not yet open. After the exits, of course, we will charge a small fee from all users of the service, most likely there will not be a free version. Only a trial period, like Basecamp.

And the last, slightly provocative question: SQBA allows you to download updated versions, bypassing consideration in the AppStore. Is it even legal? How does Apple react to this?

Apple’s policy prohibits downloading remotely executable code, as this may compromise user security. We work with resources, and it is absolutely safe and does not go against the rules. For all the time of internal use, there have been no complaints from Apple.

Thanks for the interview!

The service’s website can be found here.