Mobile Publishing #2: Behind Tilting Point's $132M War Chest
Welcome to the second episode of our Mobile Publisher Series. In each of the episode we sat down with the CEO of top mobile publisher and discussed how they approach publishing, what is their company’s strategy, how do they work with developers and how do they see the future of publishing on mobile.
In case you missed the previous episode:
Mobile Publishing #1: Deconstructing Scopely's path to $1B with Scopely’s Javier Ferreira (Co-CEO)
To make sure you don’t miss on all of the 🔥content coming out in the future, please do subscribe to the Deconstructor of Fun infrequent but powerful newsletter.
In this episode, we’re joined by Samir El Agili, Tilting Point’s President and CPO
Shout out to our awesome partners: AppAnnie, Play Ventures, ironSource & GameRefinery
Tilting Point
At Tilting Point we apply a unique progressive model to free-to-play games publishing. Game developers start the journey with simple, flexible and direct deals that fit their immediate needs. Then, if there’s mutual interest on both sides, we look to deepen relationships through new projects, such as co-development.
The goal is to take live games with the biggest potential and scale them up to top 150 grossing rankings. We do that by leveraging our $132 million user acquisition fund, market leading UA technology and expert teams who understand the market and the players exceptionally well. Once we scale the game, the to bigger projects is open.
We have scaled over 65 games across the US, Europe and Asia and we’re currently scaling 22 games and partnering on 4 co-development projects.
Fresh approach to publishing
Our model - progressive publishing- has two main components:
1. Live game scaling: We work with our developer partners to identify their biggest pain points and provide immediate value. We usually start with UA funding, UA expertise and creative production but every developer is different and our goal is to always adapt and work with partners on addressing their needs. In some cases we will offer other services with clear impact, such as: ASO, ad monetization, platform featuring, or porting to new platforms.
2. Long term partnership: This is phase two of our model. We look to expand the partnership step-by-step by adding more support such as product management, design and data analysis. If all goes well, we become co-developmentpartners and create a successful trajectory for the next game right from the start. By having worked with these developers previously, we know their game engine, technical skills and gameplay expertise, hence we can build a mutual path to success and also minimize risk on both sides.
Nimble team of free-to-play experts
Over the years, we’ve built a very strong team of experts that has helped many developers scale their games. For example, the revenue of TerraGenesisgrew 10x from $70K/ month to $700K/month. In some cases we don’t just scale games, we transform developer lives and help them grow their teams and expand their capabilities.
In 2018, we opened an office in Barcelona, quickly growing our company headcount to 92 employees. Currently, Tilting Point is powered by a diverse international team of game-industry experts across 2 locations – New York and Barcelona – from 24 different countries. Our goal is to continue partnering with developers worldwide, as well as to grow our expert teams and look to open new locations in the future.
User acquisition expertise
One of the key strategic decisions we made in 2016 was to work with games that are already live. The first thing we did was to build our machine learning user acquisition technology called D.O.R.A (Dynamically Optimized Revenue Automation). It enables us to predict very accurately the impact we can make on the KPIs of games. It also helps us to perfectly align expectations with developers on what is possible.
We typically kickstart our developer relationships with UA. With our annual $132M UA fund, we enable developers to scale without dilution and risk -- so the better job we do, the more profitable both are. We also leverage our UA tech and broad market expertise to get better at identifying market trends and trending genres to ultimately help developers find their next hit and the right audience for it.
Technology and tools
We’re continuously building our live ops tools and technology sets. We built our own machine learning and AI system that has allowed for smarter, more optimized UA and we’re expanding it towards creative technology and live ops tech to improve games monetization and LTV.
We recently focused on dynamic pricing, churn prediction, engagement, bundle management and ad monetization amongst many other aspects of live games management. We look at our technology platform as the “future of publishing” and with the mindset of “if it doesn’t exist, we’ll build it.”
Market expertise and IP licensing
We’ve had the opportunity to work with numerous original titles (Food Truck Chef, The Arcana, TerraGenesis), but we also look at leveraging branded IPs when it makes sense. We evaluate that by matching IPs with target audiences and gameplay types, and run tests to define whether that IP can successfully decrease CPI and increase organic installs.
We’ve had recent successes working on IP-based games such as Star Trek Timelines and Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest, and are looking toward the launch of our three big Hollywood IPs, starting with Zombieland: Double Tapper, based on Sony Pictures’ highly popular Zombieland franchise (October 2019).
Why you should consider partnering with Tilting Point
At Tilting Point we’re constantly evolving and innovating - from growing talent, to UA expertise and new LTV technology.
At the same time, the app stores are becoming increasingly crowded with potentially great games getting buried in the sea of new releases. We’re committed to finding those hidden gems and scaling them to their full potential. An indie developer doesn’t need to have a game in the top 20 grossing, if we bring them from 1,000+ to 150, we’ve changed their fortune.
Tilting Point is a great partner for developers who have live free-to-play games and believe that their games could become even more successful. Tilting Point’s expertise and tech will put them on the path to achieve exactly that.
*If you’re interested in scaling your game you can contact us at hello@tiltingpoint.com / tiltingpoint.com
