GDC China: Flurry's Jeferson Valadares On The U.S./China Mobile Divide

At GDC China, Jeferson Valadares, general manager of mobile analytics firm Flurry, discussed some differences between the U.S. and Chinese mobile markets. Flurry is used by some 120,000 apps around the globe, so they can actually give good worldwide data. In recent years, there's been 870 percent growth in smartphone usage and sales in China, bringing the market to number 2, beating out the UK. China and the U.S. are now the top markets in the world for smartphone games. Valadares looked at 20 successful games across iOS/Android, with about 30 million DAUs combined, and mined some data. These games cross multiple genres, business models, and development regions. One thing he noticed is that Chinese players are generally older, compared to U.S. players, which tend to be between 25-34. China has a much wider spread. Both countries lean more heavily toward female players, except on Android in China, which is very male-heavy. People play around the same times of day, following a similar curve. But for some reason, Chinese players play less at lunch time compared to the U.S. As far as in-app purchase behavior, U.S. players are over-indexing by 50% in many cases (that is to say, Americans spend 50% more than the average player in other regions). Chinese players, on the other hand, usually underspend. "It's usually 10 times less than the average," said Valadares. "It's not the case with every game. There are a few games where compared to the average, people spend more [in China] than anywhere else. ... Just because most of the time it's hard to monetize well in China, that doesn't mean it's not going to happen." If you want to succeed across both regions, "If you can find some sort of mechanics and theme that work well across the world, then add the language, that will usually mean big local audiences," he says. Localization helps extend the global factor of your game. "Localization not only helps people get into the game, but it also helps people stay in the game," he added. "It's also pretty important to make sure you make sure you update the game, over time." Many companies have released Chinese versions of their apps, then never translated or even released the updates that other regions get. China and the U.S. are markets worth investigating, Valadares says. "I don't think there's any question that they will remain the two biggest markets, as far as we can think ahead."