Facebook's gaming environment has rapidly matured, creating a highly competitive environment with challenging economics. Understanding how to implement a multi-faced marketing strategy that complements ongoing content development is crucial to giving your game the longevity needed to produce a sizable profit. In a case study you don't want to miss, 6waves, the largest independent publisher of social games, will share key insights from one of its most successful titles.

1. Getting Big on Facebook: A Case Study
Dan Laughlin • Executive Director, Business Development

2. Agenda
6L Intro
Facebook Growth Strategies
Case Study: Mystery Manor
Q&A

3. About Me
Dan Laughlin is Executive Director, Business Development at 6waves
Lolapps (6L):
• Responsible for growing the company’s global portfolio of developer
partnerships for social and mobile.
• Previously at Microsoft Game Studios as a Lead Producer and a Senior
Business Development Manager.
• Before entering the industry, spent time at Thomson Reuters and
MarketOne International.
• Holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern
University, and a BA from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

4. About Us

5. 6L…
 A network with tens of millions of users multiple platforms
 Games from over 50 global partners
 Expanding its strategy to mobile
 Providing critical services to developers :
Distribution Marketing Localization
Hosting Game Advisory

6. Our Network Size
25 MILLION
Monthly Active Users
3.7 MILLION
Daily Active Users

7. Top Games We Have Published
6L has helped scale many games across a
range of genres
Peak 1M+ MAU Titles on Facebook:
 Ravenskye City  Animal Paradise
 Airport City  Resort World
 Zombie Island  Simply Hospital
 Baby & Me  Big Business
 Mystery Manor  Birdland
 Ravenwood Fair  Legacy of Rome
 Mall World  Spartacus: The Game
 Kingdoms of Camelot  My Fishbowl

8. Russia / Eastern Europe
The region is extremely important to 6L
 Existing 6L Partners: Game Insight, Vizor Interactive, Signus
Labs, Playrix, Drimmi, Redspell, Can’t Stop
Games, iLogos, iEvoTech, OSA
 We are seeking to expand our presence in the region and bring
more Russian games to a global audience
 6L now has full-time representation in Moscow!
 Alexey Shcherbakov, Director of Business Development

9. Facebook Growth Strategies

10. Click Exchange
Click exchanges are effective on a small scale, as growth is
bounded by the size of the game joining the exchange.
 Credits can be purchased to engage  Traffic quality should be
more actively in exchanges monitored closely

11. Self Publishing
Long-term company goals and financial strategy should
inform if self-publishing is the appropriate strategy
 Key Considerations:
1. Capital to fund expensive user acquisition
2. Headcount and mindshare for marketing
3. Time to build marketing effectiveness
4. Ability to distribute globally
5. Desire to own End Users and build a network

12. Publishing Partnerships
Publishing is an increasingly relevant model on Facebook
 Key Benefits Established:
 Network for cross-promotion
 Funds for user acquisition
 Marketing efficiency
 Localization / regional knowledge
 Studio focuses on development Starting Up:
 Key Tradeoffs
 Revenue share
 Exclusivity
 Competition versus rest of portfolio
 End User data ownership

13. Case Study: Mystery Manor

14. The Partnership
 Focusing on its strengths in game production
and Russian markets, Game Insight partnered
with 6L to grow on Facebook
 With six titles from Game Insight’s talented
developers, the partnership has yielded a
collective peak of 14M MAU on Facebook:
1. Mystery Manor (3.8M)
2. Resort World (3.5M)
3. Airport City (2.8M)
4. Big Business (2.2M)
5. Vegas (1.1M)
6. My Country (0.6M)
 Multiple titles also launched on Mixi and
Yabage social networks in Japan

15. Mystery Manor: Game Overview
For ten months 6L and Game Insight have worked closely
to evolve and grow Mystery Manor (MM):
• The first major Hidden Object release on Facebook
• Gameplay built around the free2play model
• High quality art
• Consistent content and feature updates

16. MM Pre-Launch Planning
6L Product Management worked
with MM producers to build
towards full global launch:
1. Iterate on game feature roadmap
2. Review game
flow, tutorial, virality, etc
3. Localization start
4. Hosting / Scaling plan
5. User acquisition planning
6. Facebook platform changes (e.g. early
tester of “fluid canvas”)

17. Phased User Growth
 6L has spent millions of dollars promoting Mystery Manor
 6L cross-promotion and email campaigns drive “soft
money” installs
Quality EN Test EN Full EN
Cross-sell Test Localized email
Cross-sell Paid Paid
Traffic Acquisition Campaigns
Traffic Acquisition Acquisition
SE Asia US, UK, ~$10K Spending Localized 200M+
Turkey test spend tens of ad copy / emails
Aus/NZ thousands images per
per day campaign

18. Expanding the Addressable Market
Mystery Manor in 10 languages:
 Live:
Russian, English, Chinese, Japa
nese, French, Italian, German, T
urkish
 In development:
Portuguese, Arabic, Thai
 6L manages translation and
shares costs with developers
 6L employs native speakers for
final quality assurance tests

19. Ongoing Development
Continuous development allows 6L to
sustain marketing:
 Feature Development – monetization
improvement shows impact of an
improving game
 Content Releases – Healthy retention
and revenue spikes due to predictable
content releases

20. User Acquisition
 The 6L user acquisition team employs
marketers, analysts, artists, and programmers in San Francisco
and Hong Kong.
 Internally developed tools and processeses analyze spend
efficiency and cohort performance.
 Mystery Manor Marketing:
 Continuous A/B testing
 200+ pieces of art
 25+ variations of ad copy – each in 7 current languages
 Extensive keyword targeting

21. The Results: Sustained Success

22. Mystery Manor: What Worked
1) A close relationship
2) Constant product improvement
3) Evolved targeting
4) Marketing coordinated with product updates
5) Translated content and ad copy
6) Cross-promotion and email campaigns
7) Spending big to acquire users

23. THANK YOU!
Contacts:
• Alexey.Shcherbakov@6waves.com
• BD@6waves.com