TinyCo is a game studio that powers and monetizes hit titles such as Tiny Village and Tiny Pets. In this session they will share their best practices for developing engaging titles that work across mobile platforms. TinyCo has learned how-to scale their AWS app servers and databases to handle viral demand, and they will talk about what they learned while they were developing their gaming platform and code libraries. Additionally, TinyCo was successful marketing and monetizing their game with the Amazon Appstore and Kindle Fire, and they will explain how-to integrate with Amazon’s in-app purchasing service.

2. • Freemium Mobile Games
• We move quickly

3. • Typically have 130+ EC2 Instances running
• 20 billion requests
• 400 TB of data delivered
• 25,000 instance-hours
• 175,000,000 analytics events per day
• All of this, and it’s supported by a team of just 5 back-end
engineers

4. • Our attitude
• Our technology
• Our people

5. Happier players Better monetization
• Higher retention on Android • Higher ARPDAU on Android
• Higher engagement on Android • Higher ARPPU on Android

6. D7 retention +12% higher on Android vs. iOS for cross-
platform games
Amazon vs iOS D7 retention (for the last 3 months)

7. D7 engagement +7% higher on Android vs. iOS for
cross-platform games
Amazon vs iOS D7 engagement, average # of active days played per week (for the last 3 months)

8. Benefits Challenges
• Metrics are GREAT on Kindle • Device specific bugs
• High quality devices showcase • Design & UI considerations for
TinyCo artwork different devices
• Quick submission process enables • User acquisition
us to release to users faster
• Griffin engine allows us to deal • Lower user volumes
with device fragmentation better
• Payment flows and Prime Accts
from Amazon increase ARPU and
ARPPU

9. Tiny Village
Strategy
9

11. Low-priced Mid-priced High-priced
version version version
16%
34%
52% New Users
New Users
84%
Existing Users
66%
48% Existing Users
Existing Users

12. Higher level players spend more on items # of Paying Users 1.4X
with higher returns
Ran a limited time mini-game with premium
Avg. user spend 1.3X
features
Resulted in higher returns and happier Revenues 1.9X
players

14. Optimize User Experience
• UI optimized for different devices, screen sizes, aspect ratios
• Adapt to different frame rates
• Native performance

15. Three approaches:
Single Platform Development
Write for one platform. Release on one platform.
Multi-Platform Development
Write everything twice. Release on both platforms.
Cross-Platform Development
Write it once, Release everywhere.

16. Anatomy of a Cross Platform System:
Shared game engine
Single game code

17. Shared game engine
Single game code

18. • Powering Each Game
• All on Amazon EC2 Instances
• Static Assets

19. • We are Data Driven
• Analytics is key to understanding user behavior
• AB Testing
• Advertising

20. analytics
sophisticated system

21. • Analytics Data Pipeline
• Data comes from several places
• The whole pipeline is run on AWS

22. • Analytics
• Vertica database
• Tableau software for visualization of data
• Other AWS Technologies in use:

23. The advise I'm going to give isn't for everyone. Some
assumptions I'm making about you:

24. Correctly predicting every scenario in which you may fail
is hard.
Monitoring how your systems are currently working is
much easier than predicting how they're going to work in
some unknown future scenario

25. AWS can react quickly. That benefit is lost if you, too,
cannot act quickly.
Investment in automation is a good thing, focus on two
areas:

26. We are sincerely eager to
hear your feedback on this
presentation and on re:Invent.
Please fill out an evaluation
form when you have a
chance.