Tabarak Paracha
We talked with Taseer Mustafa, the Chief Marketing Officer at Finz Games, a leading and long-established mobile gaming studio in Pakistan. Our discussion focused on the current challenges facing Pakistani gaming studios and explored ways they can keep improving and succeeding in this expanding market.
We are one of the top game development studios from Pakistan. We have over 1.2B downloads around the world. We have developed over 20 hit games, some of which have been featured by the App Store and Play Store.
The Pakistani gaming industry is booming! There are more than 200 game studios in the country, with a workforce of over 20,000 people. The industry generates over $500 million in annual revenue and is experiencing a 30% annual growth rate.
[Tabarak from Tenjin]: Yes, it (the Pakistani Gaming industry) is indeed booming, and that is why it is really important to have this conversation today. What kind of games do you publish at Finz Games, and how long has Finz Games been around? [Taseer from Finz Games]: We have good experience in developing and publishing sports games like football simulation games, basketball simulation games. We’ve had a lot of success on both the App Store and Play Store for the sports genre. We also have a good experience in publishing PVP fighting games. And we have started developing and publishing hyper-casual and puzzle games and we’ve had success in both these genres as well.We have been in the industry for more than 7 years.
[Tabarak from Tenjin]: Wow, so probably one of the earlier gaming studios in Pakistan then. [Taseer from Finz Games]: Yes, that’s right. [Tabarak from Tenjin]: I really want to hear from your perspective, what kind of problems do you think currently exist in the Pakistani mobile gaming space? [Taseer from Finz Games]: We publish games in Pakistan, but our competitors are all around the world. They are in the USA, China, Germany, etc. Those competitors have access to the best resources, and tools. We are clearly lacking there. We don’t have access to those kinds of tools. That’s one challenge we are facing right now. And the other thing that is connected to this problem is that we need to spread awareness to people that they can pursue a career in game development. After graduating, most people try to go into web development. I think we need to spread awareness that if you want to pursue something in AI, you can still do it in the gaming industry as well.
Another issue is that when we develop a game, when we start running user-acquisition campaigns in different geos, we do the localization and culturalization. But if we are trying to run a campaign in Japan, we can change the background color to red. If we are running a campaign in India, maybe we can just display the Indian flag in the logo. This is something we are not doing right now. We should take into account the themes that would be suitable in the countries we are targeting.
These are all the issues I think we are currently facing. But in the Pakistani gaming industry, all the studios are very well connected. We are collectively trying to solve any issues we face together. And hopefully when we talk next, these won’t be the issues we will discuss. There will be something new.
[Tabarak from Tenjin]: I agree, I was just recently in Lahore and I did realize that the space is very well connected, and that was really nice to see. And I think a really important point that you have just talked about is the danger of only relying on in-app advertising (IAA) as a monetization strategy. We at Tenjin have also been observing a more hybrid model of monetization since the past couple of years. It’s a really important piece of advice so thank you for sharing that.Another thing that I’ve also noticed in the Pakistani gaming community is that a lot of developers and publishers are only relying on Google Ads for advertising, and personally I see that as problematic and I will talk about that in a second.
But I want to hear from you – when did Finz Games upgrade to start running user acquisition campaigns on different channels, and why?
[Taseer from Finz Games]: It is true that most of the Pakistani gaming studios are using Google Ads. I would like to first share the reasons for this. One reason is that Google ads has invested a lot in educating the Pakistani gaming industry on User acquisition. I think we must give gratitude to Google Ads.The other thing is that if I wanted to start a campaign on Google ads, I don’t need to spend any money to set it up. You can also use Firebase for free. Google is also a self-attributing network (SAN), and so you don’t need an MMP to use it. It’s very simple compared to other networks. That is the reason most Pakistani studios use Google Ads.
Another reason Pakistani Studios use Google Ads is because of Text ads. Text ads perform really well on Google ads. You don’t need any images, any videos, any playables, etc. You just enter the text and you can start with the campaign. It was giving good results in the past, but now the industry dynamics have changed to require video, creatives, and playable ads. Once these assets became more important, Pakistani studios were considered to also consider other ad networks to run video and playable ads. That is why they started exploring different channels.
We have been advertising on multiple user-acquisition channels for more than 3 years now. And one of the main reasons for this is that we have a great iOS portfolio, and for iOS Google Ads is not the best choice. So that is one reason we started using and exploring other channels.
[Tabarak from Tenjin]: How have the results been so far? Are you happy with the change you guys made? [Taseer from Finz Games]: The result has been very good.
We started advertising on the channels our competitors were advertising on. Before that, when we were only using Google Ads, we were missing the potential users that our competitors were targeting. When we started advertising on multiple channels, we saw really amazing results.
[Tabarak from Tenjin]: Yeah, I think that’s one big benefit of moving towards multi-channel advertising, that you are able to scale your campaigns more. But if you even look at it from another perspective, if you’re just sticking to one channel, which in the case of Pakistani mobile gaming studios is Google Ads, what do you do when it starts underperforming? I feel like Google has made so many changes to their algorithm recently and I talk to a lot of studios who are facing this problem at the moment. So what do you think about that? [Taseer from Finz Games]: It’s 100% true, if you only rely on Google Ads – you can’t scale your games. You have to explore different channels. [Tabarak from Tenjin]: That brings us to my next question, which is from your experience, what channels have been most effective, and do you have any tips for developers who are just starting out on their journey towards advertising on different channels? [Taseer from Finz Games]: It really depends on the genre. For example, if you are developing a puzzle game then Unity should be your first choice along with Applovin and Google Ads. If you are developing hyper casual or hybrid casual games it would be ironSource, Mintegral, Meta, and Google Ads.For those that are just starting out, I would say that before starting UA on all of these channels, just start with one channel along with Google Ads. Target only key regions for your games based on what your competitors are doing. Target that region with a limited budget and start UA along with Google Ads. So let’s say you start with Mintegral, you should measure the performance. If it’s giving you a good result, you can start expanding the budget. And for the future you will see that for these kind of games, this network performs well. For other games, this network performs well. So after a while you would have a good understanding of what ad network you should go with when you are publishing hyper casual games and you are targeting tier 1 countries. You will have the complete data after a couple of months. But start small scale and learn from your experience.
[Tabarak from Tenjin]: I think that’s great advice and I also want to mention that at Tenjin we release these quarterly benchmark reports. I think that’s really useful in finding out what the best ad networks and countries are.My next question to you is: Once you moved to advertising on different channels, you obviously automatically needed to add an MMP into your stack and that is where Tenjin comes into the picture. So I wanted to ask how has an MMP helped Finz Games reach their growth goals?
[Taseer from Finz Games]: A MMP is really important. Without it, we were not able to explore different channels. So we tested different channels using an MMP. Right now, we have a good understanding of if we’re publishing a puzzle game, we will publish it on this network because the network gives us a good retention for that genre of games.
All the ad networks are available on Tenjin for integration. I never faced any issue with that.
Other than that, the dashboard and reporting is very good. I could see all the data that I want to see. The pricing is also very cost-effective if you compare it to other services.
And last but not least is the support. It is very efficient and supportive. I got personalized support from Tenjin and I am very happy with it.
[Tabarak from Tenjin]: That’s really great to hear. One thing I would like to add to that, because I think it’s important for Pakistani game developers to know is that we also offer support in Urdu.For the full conversation, watch the video above.
