Just in time for GDC – it’s brainCloud 2.5!

Okay, truthfully this is more of a housekeeping update as we prep some bigger features for releases to come.

Speaking of housekeeping – we notice that some of you may have inadvertently created multiple company accounts. This can happen when multiple team members register for brainCloud independently, instead of inviting additional members to their account.

In hindsight, the old process was clunky.  You needed to first add the user, including picking a password for them, and then separately communicate with them their account information so that they could log in (whereupon they’d want to change their password).

You’ll be happy to know that we’ve cleaned that up.  Now you only need to enter a name and e-mail, and we’ll handle the e-mailing for you – including prompting the team member to pick their own password.  Easy peasy!

If any of you with multiple accounts would like to merge them, just hit the green Chat button and we’ll help you out.  It’s pretty simple to do, but the tools are only available to us super-users right now.

Anyway, check out the release details below – and remember, if you’re going to GDC be sure to look us up – we’d love to meet you!

Highlights

• Google Play Services Authentication added.  Great for your Android games!
• Updated Java Library.  We’ve done a major update to our Java library – you’ll find it on the Client Libs download page
• Updated Javascript Library.  We’ve updated our Javascript library – you’ll find it on the Client Libs download page.
• Updated Javascript Example.  In case you missed it, we introduced a Javascript Example Game last week – Acey Deucey!

Portal Changes

• New invite team member flow – now just type in their name and e-mail address, and brainCloud sends the invite for you.  [Yeah, we know, it always should have been that way!]
• Improved [Select Players] screen – now finding players to view and debug in Player Monitoring is easier than ever!
• (Minor) Versioning tab under Design | Core Game Info has been renamed to Platforms.

API Changes

• AuthenticateGoogle() added to the brainCloud client APIs.
• Android libs now support capturing of region, timezone and language during authentication. [Note – requires some custom client configuration – instructions coming soon!] 

Misc Fixes

• S2S Improvements – we’ve added access to more services and APIs, and squashed a few bugs!
• Google Play Purchases – we’ve streamlined our implementation to make it more compatible with 3rd party libraries (like Prime31)
• Javascript documentation – we’ve updated much of the documentation with the lastest JavaScript APIs. We still have a bit further to go – bear with us!

It’s our favourite time of the year. No, not because of the refreshing -40-degree temperatures of Canada’s Capital – though that’s swell – but rather because we can escape the cold for a week of fun in San Francisco!

So, if you’re going to be at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco March 2nd – 6th, be sure to drop by and say “Hello”.  We’d love to meet, discuss your game, get feedback on the platform — maybe even share a drink or two!

We are there for the whole week – but the easiest places to find us will be:

• Wednesday – Friday – we’ll be at Booth 2444 on the GDC Expo Floor.  We will be easy to find – we are way, way back in the far right-hand corner! Best booth in the house – ulp! 🙂
• Thursday 4pm-5pm – we’ll be in Room 302, South Hall, giving a session on Juicing F2P Revenue Using Cloud Tech – be sure to check it out!

We’re also out and about the rest of the week. Some of the events we’re attending include the Vesuvio Party on Monday Night and the Ontario Social on Thursday Night.  Drop us a note at “sales at getbraincloud.com” to meet up.

Hope to see you there!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day – brainCloud 2.4!

In this release, we’ve greatly improved our Cloud Code system.  We’ve expanded upon what can be done, and improved our documentation on how to do it.  That said, Cloud Code is a big area, and it’s difficult to anticipate every possible usage of the system.  If you have questions, just hit the green Chat button and we’ll help!

Highlights

• New Cloud Code Features!  We’ve greatly expanded our Cloud Code feature set.
  • API Hooks – cloud code scripts can now be configured to run automatically before or after (pre or post) core API methods
  • New Security – cloud code scripts must now be specifically enabled to be callable from the client – ensures that your most sensitive scripts are only invokable server-side (note – existing scripts default to client-callable)
  • Server-to-server (S2S) Scripts  – our new S2S feature allows you to call your scripts from custom servers and tools. Unlike client callable scripts, S2S scripts don’t require the context of an end-user session to run.
  • S2S Server configuration – to safeguard S2S scripts you must declare the servers that they will be called from.  Each server has it’s own secret, and you can even specify a set of ip ranges that will be used to validate requests.  The new S2S Config screen can be found in Design | Core Game Info | S2S Config.
  • S2S Explorer – Of course, you need to be able to test your S2S scripts – so we’ve added a new S2S Explorer for just that purpose.  You’ll find it at Design | Cloud Code | S2S Explorer.
  • Updated Clode Code documentation – cloud-callable APIs are now documented in the reference in the “CC” (i.e. “Cloud Code”) tabs of methods. We’ve also got more information on how scripts and the service bridges work.
• Updated Javascript Library.  We’ve updated our Javascript library – you’ll find it on the Client Libs download page.
• Updated C++ for Android Library.  Includes all the functionality present in the iOS C++ library. We’ve also upgraded our Cocos2d-x example project and tutorial to use it.  You’ll find the library in the Client Libs download page.

Portal Changes

• (New) Ability to edit player [user] entities – now not only can you view player entities, you can actually edit them straight from the portal and save the updates.  Great for debugging and user support.
• (New) Ability to edit global entities – like player entities, you can now edit and save global entities.  Note – we plan to further add the ability to create global entities from the editor in the future (think by end-of-March).
• (New) Newly added players screen – super handy during development and testing – you’ll see it when you first select Player Monitoring.  We’ll be further adding new player search features in the next release.
• (New) User Platforms – The Player Summary screen now shows what platforms a user has logged in from.

API Changes

• Javascript library now available for download
• C++ for Android library now available for download
• AuthenticateFacebook added to the brainCloud Wrapper class for Unity/C#
• New client-callable permission is configurable for cloud scripts. By default (for best security), all new cloud scripts will have client-callable set to false.

Misc Fixes

• Recent Logs screen now only selects Sys Error and App Error filters by default – App Warning and App Info messages are by default suppressed
• Server version has been added to the detailed Stack Info page of Recent Logs.  Helps to diagnose if an error might be related to a specific release of the software.
• Cloud Code APIs have now been documented
• Supported Localization languages has been expanded to 32 – go to Design | Core Game Info | Localization for the full list.
• All client libs (except Android) are now capturing region, timezone and language during authentication (useful for segments)

We’re pleased to announce the full public availability of brainCloud 2.3.0!

New features in this release include:

Highlights

• E-mail Identity improvements – you asked, we delivered – brainCloud now supports E-mail Validation for those of you using our E-mail + Password Identity Authentication.  We’ve added Forgotten Password flows as well – all customizable with your own text and branding.
• Segment Definitions – we’ve completely re-done our Segment design screens, made them simpler and more flexible, while vastly improving the underlying data structures that represent segment criteria.  This was necessary work to support new segment features to come.

Note – the new segment data structures aren’t compatible with how things were being defined in 2.2.X and previous.  As a result, we’ve disabled any previously defined Segments – apologies about that.  You’ll need to select each of your segments, quickly recreate the criteria, and save them.  Once again, apologies, but this was a one-time situation that couldn’t be helped (and it’s honestly very quick to fix).

Portal Changes

• Design | Core Game Info | E-mail Authentication – options for customizing the e-mails sent for validation and forgotten passwords.  Includes a [Test] button to send a test e-mail to validate (note that the test e-mails don’t contain the URL links)
• Design | Segments – screens have been completely redone

API Changes

• New Forgotten Password API for EmailPassword Authentication

Misc Fixes

• Fixes to Import Configuration to properly re-evaluate level caps if new XP levels have been added
• Misc fixes and performance improvements

Only one in ten mobile games succeed.

The business reality is that since 2011, Free-to-Play (F2P) games have been making more money than their Premium counterparts.

Although still essential – today’s games must be more than just fun – they must effectively employ F2P monetization to succeed.

1. Go Cross-Platform – adding platforms adds audience, which feeds players into your F2P engine. An effective Back-end makes it easier to offer the same features across diverse platforms.
2. Enable Cross-play – allowing your players to continue their play across devices encourages play when and where convenient, increasing engagement and forming habits
3. Add social competition – social competition is an excellent way to give players additional objectives in your game, increasing engagement (and virality)
4. Reduce cheating + theft – utilize server-side receipt validation to remove in-app piracy and increase your revenues.
5. Grow/Retain your VIPs –  utilize an automated promotions engine to help push players through your funnel, and retain the VIPs that you have (increasing $ spend)

* Player segment definitions (below) courtesy of Emily Greer’s presentation at Casual Connect ’12.

For more details, check out the slideshare presentation below – and while you’re at it, be sure to check out brainCloud – it’s free during development, and starts at just $25 / month once you go live!

  5 Steps to Ignite your Free-to-Play Revenue (without Advertising)  from Paul Winterhalder 

Note that this content is from a presentation that I originally gave at the Montreal International Game Summit in Nov 2014 – used with my permission. 🙂

It seems like every other day that we’re asked – “Is brainCloud only for games? Can I use it for other types of apps?”

Make no mistake about it – the brainCloud BaaS is primarily designed for games.

But this doesn’t mean that it can’t be used for apps (including IoT) as well. In fact, allowing for any type of application is key to our overall business philosophy – use as much or as little of the API as you’d like, and only pay for what you use.

We’ve worked hard to ensure that brainCloud is the best BaaS / MBaaS solution available for the development of Freemium and/or Gamification enabled apps.

Key BaaS for Apps Technical Features

The key app-related features include:

• Comprehensive Cloud data – user / global scoping, stats / entities / storage
• Flexible Identity Management – identify users via E-mail, Facebook, Google Id, etc.
• Custom Cloud Code – need brainCloud to do something special server-side – code it! (using JavaScript)
• Cross-platform Push Notifications – reach out to your user base in real time across device platforms
• Server-side Receipt Validation – increase revenues by eliminating in-app purchase piracy using server-side receipt validation
• Rich Gamification – player XP, achievements, leaderboards and more are available for when [if] you decide to add Gamification
• Easy integration – local libraries available across all device platforms (iOS, Android, WinPhone, BB10, Web, PC/Mac, etc.)
• Great designer / debugger web tools – the brainCloud design tools make it easy to set up your game, and the monitoring tools make it easy to view, debug, and even edit the data of your app as you develop

Key BaaS for Apps Business Features

The key business / product management features include:

• Centralized pricing controls – control the pricing of in-app purchases centrally
• Scheduled promotions – set up promotional pricing in advance, together with language-specific cross-platform push notifications for when sales / events start
• Auto promotions – plus, design custom auto promotions to be automatically triggered when users enter a defined user segment.  For example, a day after a user utilizes a new feature, hit them with a promotion to activate the “premium” version of it
• Cross-platform Analytics – brainCloud include built-in “just-in-time” analytics that reports on the usage and monetization of your app, across platforms
• Support Tools – the Monitoring tool makes it easy to provide field support for your user base
  
• Affordable Elastic Pricing model – brainCloud “No-Brainer” pricing is based on API usage – only pay for as much of brainCloud that you’re utilizing. Pricing starts at just $25 / month, and is completely free during development.

The Backend-as-a-Service business case

And of course, the brainCloud business case works for the BaaS for Apps model as well.

• Save development time and budget – zero developer and service costs during development!
• Save hosting / operational costs – brainCloud is much cheaper than hosting yourself, plus you don’t need dedicated IT support personnel!
• Increase revenues – brainCloud’s freemium and promotional features will increase the monetization of your app

So, the next time someone asks “Is brainCloud designed for games, or other types of apps?” – the answer is “Yes.”

We’re pleased to announce the full public availability of brainCloud 2.2.0!

New features in this release include:

API & Client Features

• Promotions can now replace products in the active store. This allows swapping in new products during a promotion that pay out extra currency etc
• C++ library now includes easier Facebook authentication using the BrainCloudWrapper class
• Cocos 2d-x example upgraded to Cocos 2d-x 3.3 which includes Facebook support from C++
• Cocos 2d-x example allows user to choose between three types of authentication now: Universal, Anonymous, and Facebook
• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal/Server Features

• Segments – Now you can target only test users to be included in a segment. This allows for segments to be more easily tested before they’re launched
• Misc fixes and improvements

“Would it make sense to cloud-enable an existing, successful, single-player mobile game?”

My gut reaction was “probably not“.  We know that the sweet spot for our Backend-as-a-Service is with social and multiplayer games, where a back-end is pretty much required. For those customers, pitching brainCloud is simply a question of Build vs. Buy.

That said, brainCloud offers a *lot* more than just multiplayer and social features – features that greatly aid in the management and monetization of any free-to-play game…  so lets dig deeper and do the full analysis.

Background

First, a bit of background on the game in question:

• It’s a freemium mobile game on iOS and Android
• The game is successful, and doing roughly 50K DAU, with about $0.02 ARPDAU
• Monetization is via in-app-purchases for speeding up the accrual of key stats and in-game currencies – progressing the meta-game
• There are no social features – no leaderboards, etc.
• The game is integrated with no cloud tech, other than analytics and some advertising – so no cloud saves, etc…
• It’s a very small team – 1-3 devs really – so time is money

So – what benefits cloud features have to offer a game like this? And do the benefits out-weigh the impact of adding the new monthly cloud service costs?

It’s easy to argue that their player base will grow and become more engaged if you add cloud saves (so players can play across devices), social leaderboards (to compete against friends), published achievements, player vs. player challenges, etc…  but it’s impossible to predict (or later prove) what the monetary impact of those incremental improvements might be…  [plus, in this case there’s an existing product and customer base – so greatly evolving the game storage and socialization strategies might be disruptive].

Instead – lets take this from a purely monetization perspective.  One of the key focuses of brainCloud is not just providing the bread-and-butter of cloud tech – but also providing a platform that allows you to really increase the monetization of free-to-play games.

So – focusing just on the freemium monetization features – what minimal integration efforts would result in maximum return for the game?

The key features I’d suggest are:

1. IAP Validation – brainCloud provides server-side receipt validation, which eliminates IAP piracy, resulting in a boost to IAP sales.  Let’s be conservative and predict a 5% boost to IAP revenue as a result.  [For some background, see this GamaSutra article regarding IAP piracy.]
2. Scheduled Promotions – brainCloud provides certralized coordination of pricing and promotions, across platforms. And brainCloud supports scheduling of promotions – and automated sending of push notifications to inform the user base of the promotions as they happen.  Sure this is stuff a product manager can coordinate manually – but when you’re a small company, you tend to focus on the new products and leave the old ones to fend for themselves.  It’s fair to expect say 2.5% boost from allowing brainCloud to do this for you.
3. Automated [Targeted] Promotions – finally, brainCloud allows you to aim targeted promotions and dynamic player segments.  This means, you can define a player segment for “VIPs that are leaving the game” – and hit them with a special promotion to get them to stay.  Given that whales are responsible for 80% of revenue for most games, extending that stay should be easily worth another 5% boost.

It would only take a week or two to add these features to the game (plus a bit of testing of course).

The Math

The game is currently bringing in about $30K USD per month (50,000 DAU x 0.02 ARPDAU x 30 days).  A 12.5% increase on the monetization results in an additional $3,750 USD per month.

But…  now there are [brainCloud] server costs – so we’ve got to factor that in.

Looking closely at brainCloud pricing, you can see that 50K users is estimated at about $1600 USD per month – which seems pretty reasonable given the benefit.

But wait, that’s assuming 100 brainCloud API calls per DAU – if the game is only using brainCloud for monetizaiton, it’s API usage will be way, way down – we’re probably talking 5-10 API calls per DAU (and that’s assuming players are playing multiple sessions a day).

Lets say it’s 10 API calls per DAU.  In a month, that would be only 10 x 50,000 x 30 = 15M calls – which is actually only $150 / month*. Talk about a bargain! 🙂

* and that’s before the early adopter discounts!

The Results

And, the moral of the story is, there’s always room for increased monetization.

Our estimates are that for a cost of 10 days of integration, plus $150 monthly for brainCloud, the developer will see a 12.5% increase in sales, which in this case is a monthly increase of almost $3600 USD per month.

Even if the increase were over-estimated by a factor of 10x it would still be worth it in the long term…

Cool.

One Final Note

This pricing analysis points out one of the greatest aspects of the brainCloud pricing model – you just pay for the amount of the service you use (in millions of API calls), not for the amount of the service that the provider fears you *might* use.

Utilizing these same features from competing platforms at 50K DAU could cost as much as $3000 / month!

We’re pleased to announce the full public availability of brainCloud 2.1.0!

New features in this release include:

API Features

• Client library version and game version verification is now working properly
• Platform constants changed for Windows Phone and Mac – removed versioning
• C++ library now easier to integrate into your project (fixed 64 bit iOS targets and upgraded jsoncpp to 1.0.0)
• C++ and C# client libraries improved to use additional enums/structures for certain method calls
• Cocos 2d-x example posted to tutorials section
• Misc fixes and improvements

Portal/Server Features

• Player monitoring – can now reset player’s segments, promotions, and associated criteria data to facilitate easier testing
• Request / Response log now includes inner status codes
• Cloud code logger object added to allow easier debugging of scripts
• Authentication exceptions now log the profile id
• Anonymous identity segment criteria now apply to users who *only* have an anonymous identity
• Automated promotions improved
• Javascript/image/page caching issues fixed
• Misc fixes and improvements

Plus we’ve refreshed the look of our Apidocs portal, and continue to add new content.

Check it out at https://docs.braincloudservers.com/learn/introduction/

As you know, we are continually measuring, tweaking and improving the performance of brainCloud.

The good news is that the latest round of platform optimizations had a greater impact than expected – meaning we can handle even more users on our servers at lower cost.

The even better news is this means, effective immediately, we’re adjusting our pricing tiers downward.

This is part of our ongoing pledge to align brainCloud pricing with our costs, to ensure we’re offering you the most cost-effective solution possible.

While delivering the good news, we thought we’d spend a moment to provide a bit more background on brainCloud’s pricing model. 

API Usage – the brainCloud Pricing Model

brainCloud pricing is based on API Usage – which is the number of API calls (requests + responses) that your app makes to our servers.

We choose API Usage because:

• Cost alignment – it aligns directly with our server costs
• Cost transparancy – the costs are calculated without hidden assuptions (e.g. average user engagement, etc.)
• Scalable by benefits – it allows customers to decide how much or how little of brainCloud to use, and pay accordingly

Of course, it does have the disadvantage that unlike DAU (Daily Active Users) or MAU (Monthy Active Users), API Usage is not a term that most developers and business people are used to talking in terms of.

Estimating API usage

Reporting API usage after-the-fact is straight forward; Estimating API usage ahead-of-time is tricky.

brainCloud API usage is dependent upon:

• the type of app or game
• how much of the brainCloud feature set you’re using
• the engagement of your game (length of play, # of sessions, etc.)

For shorthand, we can use the following formula:

Estimated # API calls = x x 30 days

So – for example, if we were estimating the montly cost of a game with:

• 100 API calls / DAU (which is about our system average)
• 5000 daily active users (average)

it would total 15M API calls per month, which would cost $150 USD.

Average API usage

The API Usage per DAU in brainCloud varies by app – but averages ~100 API Calls per DAU.

Some competitors quote an average of 200 or 300 API calls per DAU – there are 3 main reasons for this discrepancy:

1. Designed for mobile (less chatty) – Our API is optimized for mobile, and from the beginning has been designed to do more with fewer interactions.
2. They are conservatively estimating cost – for them to match up costs to revenues in their forecasts, they need to conservatively estimate how much server usage a player could cost.  It’s human nature to therefore estimate high to ensure that costs are covered.  We have no need to do this since we charge for API usage itself
3. We support lower usage scenarios – Clients are free to use as much or as little of brainCloud. Want to use brainCloud for cloud saves only?  No problem.  brainCloud monetization features only? Go nuts – and pay less because you’re utilizing our servers less!

In practice, we’ve had apps in our network use less than 10 transactions per DAU, and some use upwards of 200 API calls per DAU. We’ve not yet had an app average greater than 300 API calls per DAU.

And note, brainCloud includes tools to help you assess and optimize your API Usage – to keep your costs (and our server usage) down.  Our costs go down, and your costs go down – win:win!

Free during development

We hope this clears up any questions you may have about pricing in brainCloud.

As always, brainCloud is free during development (up to 100 users), and if you sign up before March 6th, 2015, you lock in our special Early Adopter pricing until 2016!