A Closer Look at the Saudi Games Market | Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh
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Delivered at Casual Connect Europe 2016 Saudi Arabia is a lucrative market for mobile games, particularly due to its high concentration of heavy spenders. There is however a dearth of data to assist both foreign and local publishers to navigate with clarity and confidence. Amir will share the latest insights to pierce the veil and offer proven strategies to help tackle this den of whales.
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A Closer Look at the Saudi Games Market | Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh
- 1. Inside the Whales Den: Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh Managing Partner Gameguise A Closer Look At the Saudi Games Market
- 2. Saudi Market Fact Sheet
- 3. Saudi Market Fact Sheet
- 4. Saudi Games Market Estimates
- 6. Mobile Gamer Survey – 1,579 completes
- 9. Male vs. Female – age groups
- 10. Male education & employment
- 11. Female education & employment
- 12. Game genres
- 13. Game genres – Males vs Females
- 14. Gaming Frequency
- 15. Gaming Frequency - Male
- 16. Gaming Frequency - Female
- 17. Game duration – Male vs Female
- 18. Influences to download and play
- 19. Download types
- 20. In-app purchases
- 21. In-app purchases – Male vs Female
- 24. Focus on new titles in 2016
- 26. On the ground facts
- 27. On the ground facts
- 28. On the ground facts
- 29. On the ground facts
- 30. Islamic content guidelines 100% require company establishment for offline events Non-sensuality Character artwork Online Artwork Offline Marketing Special reservations concerning traditions Touching Affection Maximize neutral characters Avoid ANY topic related to religion Super powers should not be connected to divinity or spirituality Marketing campaigns should be strictly segregated between the sexes Retail events should actively focus on male target groups and only passively on females Sanitised storylines Retail presence strongly recommended
- 31. No need to over-localise
- 32. No need to over-localise
Editor's Notes
- So the Saudi games market isn’t brain science to understand but it’s definitely a strange one that you should be informed on. For starters, I doubt many of you know about Saudi’s reputation for being the world’s second largest importer of Johnny Walker. Or, how about it being the number one downloader of pornography torrents? Well you didn’t hear it from me! The only place I can think of that can raise more eyebrows is Japan.
- Saudis are pretty random and peculiar in their online habits as well. They’re the second biggest market of SnapChat users in the world and have the highest ratio of views per user on YouTube. Other tech habits like Facebook and Twitter usage, however, haven’t ever taken a proper foothold and that’s partly because of the influence their cocooned brand of Islam has on their society.
- I remember seven years ago when I first landed in Dubai that credit card penetration in Saudi was less than 15%. I couldn’t believe it. It was like this country was somehow both stuck 10 years back in time while the people are carrying 3 smartphones in their pocket and cruising around in Bugattis. Credit card penetration is now hovering around 25% but still super low. In fact, half of Saudi gamers prefer to use prepaid cards.
- Here’s my breakdown of the games market based on the latest Newzoo figures. Saudi is ranked 27 in the world in terms of games revenue and has close to twice the global compound annual growth rate. Mobile games revenue, which is about 33% of the total, hit 100 million US dollars in 2015 and I project it to reach over 120 million this year.
- Unsurprisingly Apple makes two-thirds of the mobile profits even though it represents only about 40% of the market. This year, I project the App Store to hit $80 million and Google Play to reach about $40 million.
- I ran a fresh gamer study for all of you here at Amsterdam so you’re the first eyes to take a glance at these figures. About 1,500 gamers completed the survey, with a balanced gender split which we controlled in order to show you how impressive the female gamers are. As you’ll see, while they don’t exactly match their male siblings, they are heavy-spending, high-octane gamers nevertheless.
- There’s a pretty balanced distribution of age groups between 18-44 for male gamers.
- However female gamers lean heavily to younger age groups with twice as many of them being under 18 and 18 to 24 than their male counterparts.
- Here’s a slide that shows that age comparison clearer.
- The demographic gaps continue. For example, 66% of male gamers are employed and 15% are unemployed or students.
- But only 10% of female gamers are employed and 70% are unemployed or students. It’s a complete reversal between the two as if we were in the 1700s, except for the fact that about one-third of both groups hold bachelor degrees.
- Saudis like the usual top trending genres of action, adventure, casual and puzzle, particularly because they want to play what the top game developers release. This is a big theme I want to highlight. Saudis want the Ferraris of games and so they’ll always follow the same top western hits like Clash Royale, even if it’s not localized.
- You won’t be surprised to see that females prefer casual and puzzle titles and have less interest in the male-dominant genres of strategy, sports and racing. That’s pretty much universal.
- In terms of frequency, half of total gamers in Saudi play mobile games several times a day.
- If we break this down according to males.
- And compare to the female group, we’ll notice only a negligible difference across the board.
- There’s no difference in terms of duration either as 10% of both genders play at least 3 hours per day or more. They are homogenous in their degree and depth of daily mobile gameplay.
- They are mostly influenced by word of mouth and app ranking just like gamers around the world but keep a close tab on top YouTube and Instagram influencers. They can do magic so make sure you look into establishing ongoing relationships with these social channels.
- Now for the juicy stuff. Paid downloads will soon drop to the single-digit zone while pretty much everyone downloads free games. A whopping 42% pay for in-app purchases each month.
- Two-thirds pay less than less than $10 per month. 22% pay between $10-50, 11% $50-100, 4% $100-500, and a 1% killer whale group pays upwards of $1000 per month.
- Even though the revenue is less with females as you would expect, it’s still shockingly high relative to global standards. 8% of female gamers in Saudi are paying $50-100 per month, 2% $100-500, and about 1% state that they pay $500-1000. The country definitely holds true to its stereotype as a bonafide whales den.
- I also ran a B2B survey throughout the past 6 months specifically to professionals in the gaming industry that have current and future interests in the Saudi market. There’s a pretty even split between publishers and developers.
- Most of the 87 respondents were either marketers or business developers.
- When we asked if they were focusing on new titles for 2016 in Saudi, 62% said yes.
- Less than one-third ever experienced any marketing challenges and when I dug deeper, those challenges weren’t problems but more the trouble of figuring out what to do and how to do it. On the right you’ll also see a ranking I’ve added in of how they have prioritized genres from their point of view of profitability.
- The majority of marketing campaigns for mobile game hits in Saudi or the Middle East in general are usually never focused on the region. Success happens in the Sahara simply because the audience there, as I have stated before, follows popular global trends. They want the Ferraris so you don’t need to chase them for their attention. Just keep building them while optimizing visibility in the right ways.
- Whether you do well in Saudi doesn’t necessarily depend on a focus on the market at all. In fact, half of Saudis are not even using the Middle East app stores. They have it set to the US or other foreign stores, for a bunch of reasons like a less sterile content experience.
- There are exceptions like Lumba’s Tribal Rivals, but they are just that: exceptions which relate to specific conditions that made them a success and can’t be used as reliable case studies.
- Those local titles that do occasionally make it in the top 20, 15 or even the top 10, typically focus all of their attention and resources on local sites, PR, and it’s a horribly haphazard approach because their games are simply mediocre compared to foreign alternatives and no local focus is going to be able to change or compete with that fact.
- If you want and have the resources to localise so that you can optimise your metrics in Saudi then here are the guidelines. The storyboard has to be sanitised to some extent because you’re dealing with a culture that abides to the most radical form of Islam. Basically just common sense. But this isn’t exactly mandatory, at least not any more in the mobile age. What it can do is improve your KPIs for those players who do use the Middle East app stores and are more sensitive to localization.
- Gamers are like beggars, especially when you live in the non-English world. Your game, for example, doesn’t have to be translated at first. In fact, about 40% are fine playing in English. But it also depends on how content-heavy your title is. If you translate, it makes sense to see if you can orient the text boxes to RTL but the entire game UX doesn’t have to be. In terms of artwork, just try your best to make things as gender neutral as possible.
- Try to tiptoe around the topic of religion by simply adjusting the storyboard script. This is easy if you’re already localizing to Arabic. Try to work with a copywriter who is familiar with Saudi’s particular dialect and lingo. And please don’t get carried away with thinking Saudis or Middle Easterns actually want to see more deserts and dishdashes in the games they play. They most definitely don’t!
- And like I said before, half of Saudis, who in my opinion are usually of the more heavy-duty, tech-savvy, and higher-spending variety, are not even using the Middle East store so they’re already accessing non-filtered western content. This means that your marketing should also be allocated to local ad networks and preferably 100% Arabic sites because outside of games, Saudis mostly prefer non-English content. Lastly, check out local YouTube influencers like Saudi Gamer who has over a million followers and over 160 million views. Figure out how to get the attention of guys like these. Exposure there can be priceless.