Experience of launching a game on Facebook Instant Games studio GBN

Recently, Novosibirsk studio GBN launched its Smash The Bugs project on the Facebook Instant Games platform. We talked to the company about its experience with the site. In particular, they touched upon the issues of traffic, user retention and problems with advertising monetization. I answered the questions Natalia Yarovenko, head of the HTML5 direction of the studio.

Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru : Let‘s start with the most burning. What’s up with the site metrics today? Is Instant Games still capable of delivering 1 million downloads per week?

Natalia YarovenkoNatalia Yarovenko, head of HTML5 GBN: Now about 800 games have been published on the site, so the Facebook players are distributed accordingly: each next game gets a smaller “piece of the pie”.

Based on our own statistics, we can only talk about 100 thousand players a week.

The most important thing has been sorted out, now in order. Tell us a little about the team.

Yarovenko: The team that deals with the Instant direction in GBN has been developing HTML5 games for the company’s own gaming sites for several years. In general, the technology is familiar to us firsthand, the guys are experienced. We started with the development of flash games back in 2010, then switched to HTML5 games for the web and now we are working on Instant Games projects. In total, we have released about 850 flash and HTML5 games.

How and why did you decide to move to Instant Games?

Yarovenko: Instant Games are interesting for us for a number of reasons. Firstly, this is a fairly new and not yet “littered” site, there is an opportunity to occupy a vacant niche. Secondly, we already have experience in developing HTML5 games, this is our advantage. Thirdly, this is a great opportunity to attract a wide audience of social networks to our games.

How fast are the games starting today?

Yarovenko: In view of recent events with Facebook [we are talking about scandals around the leakage of user data], this is a sore point. Our first Smash The Bugs game was reviewed for more than a month. We sent it a week after the site opened, but as it turned out later, the review was suspended a couple of days before and Facebook did not accept applications at all for three weeks. And then it took them almost three more weeks to check and update all the applications that had accumulated during the downtime.

We recently sent our second Cats Grows Fat game for testing, we will be immensely glad if its apruv takes at least a week. The official review period is stated to be 3-5 days.

Cats Grows FatWhat are the restrictions on content (size, features, genre, something else)?

Yarovenko: The game should be very light — only up to 200 MB. This imposes significant limitations on the graphics. Loading the game should be instantaneous, no more than 5 seconds. The game must work in both web browsers and mobile, so it is mandatory to adapt the game to mobile devices. There must be social mechanics and an application page. We have not met any genre restrictions. But it is important to take into account the specifics of games in the messenger: the user often plays when waiting for the interlocutor’s answer, so there should be short levels, the opportunity to return the game in a certain context, fight with friends or play in groups.

I have heard that there are problems with setting up bots that spam friends. How effective and how exactly do the viral mechanisms of the social network work today?

Yarovenko: The developers really note the importunity of bots, including several failures in their work. Now restrictions have already been introduced to 5 messages in 10 days from the last game session. We haven’t used bots yet, given the roughness of the system, we don’t want to cause a negative reaction from users. Moreover, there are other successful tools: you can send alerts to players from the application page, you can share your successes with friends, you can use leaderboards both global and contextual, you can challenge friends. Fortunately, Instant Games has the ability to update the version of the game instantly, if the game has already passed the revision apruv. So you can gradually add new features to the game, without waiting a week for an apruv.

What kind of retention does the platform give?

Yarovenko: Retention depends on the quality of the game and the well-thought-out social mechanics in it, so different games may have very different indicators. Retention is considered very good in the first days up to 20%, then there is a gradual decline to 8% by the end of the first week. On average, we now have a retention of the first week of a little more than 9%.

Have you

already tried to implement monetization, what do you think about it now?

Yarovenko: It has recently become possible to earn income from inaps, we haven’t had time to try it out yet. In our first Smash The Bugs game, so far there is only advertising: reverse and between some levels. It was unexpected that in order to display ads in the game, you need to go through another separate review and get a second apruv for monetization. So for the first few days our game worked without ads — it was an unpleasant surprise.

Smash The BugsIn the conversation before the interview, you also noted that Russian companies today cannot make money on advertising in Instant Games.

Can you tell us more about this?

Yarovenko: Unfortunately, monetization opportunities are limited for developers from a number of countries. We have not found a list of countries cut off from monetization in official sources, but it is obvious that the Facebook editorial office has it. Many developers will find out that they will not be able to monetize their game at all only at the stage of adding advertising. The answer comes in the admin panel “at the moment this option is not available for you.” Facebook writes that “a high probability of fraud and low-quality content has been registered from your region, therefore, to ensure the safety of users and advertisers, access to advertising is closed.” It turns out that having done a great job of creating Instant Games, even a conscientious developer often lacks the ability to monetize. We are lucky that our team has a representative office in the States, it helped us to publish the game.

What disadvantages from the developer’s point of view do you highlight now when working with the platform?

Yarovenko: The platform is still in the process of debugging. Sometimes there are local failures: then the bots will fail, then the ads are not shown, then there is an error with the leaderboards. But we must give the Facebook team their due — they respond very quickly to emerging challenges and solve problems, actively communicate with developers and provide professional technical support. Now there is an urgent need to categorize and organize games so that the user can choose a game not from the entire global, huge list, but from his favorite category. It is quite difficult for new games to reach the top, since those titles that appeared at the very beginning at the stage of closed beta testing are securely fixed there. Additional features are needed so that novice developers can get the attention of users.

I can’t help but note that a huge plus of Instant Games is a very detailed and understandable documentation. We marked almost every page of instructions as very useful.

Thanks for the interview!