In praise of… Poki.com.
“The web” is so back! And there is a quiet and gentle Goliath smashing it in the background - Poki.com. Mobile devs should take note.
Can I trust you Piet? I mean - the world is full of fake news!
In case we haven’t met, I’m Pieter - the Founder & CEO of Half Moon Studios - we’re a young studio who are challenging the status quo on how to build and launch games. In the summer of 2024 we had a massive hit on TikTok called Word Quiz Live (3m MAU, all grown organically). Our latest title Ball Guys is a streamer-first mobile game - in the sense that the streamer plays the game with up to 256 people at the same time, thus serving as marketing, FTUE & re-engagement. It’s going to be epic, and I’ll share more about it in future posts.
Prior to founding Half Moon Studios, I helped run Miniclip SA for 13 years… which in its heyday (2009) had the 36th most popular website in the world. Still now, when I tell people I used to work for Miniclip their first reaction is to tell me about their favourite Miniclip game (there were 800+, but I always nod knowingly). It’s either that, or 8 Ball Pool which before being the mobile juggernaut it’s now… was a single-player web game which we ported to ”social” on Facebook… before it blew up on mobile.
And of course, there was Agar.io which we acquired three weeks after its inception from a young Brazilian genius fullstack developer called Matheus…, which we then turned into an insanely popular mobile title- and launched the “io” genre of games.
Anyway, I guess I just want you to know- I really know web.
The new Miniclip.com? Undoubtedly Poki.com.
The demise of Adobe Flash essentially euthanized most of the games we had on Miniclip.com. We were lucky: we had been first movers on the iOS Appstore (Android didn’t exist yet), and were able to focus & invest resources there, quickly reaping financial rewards. At the time our great web competitor Spil Games (now part of Azerion) kept pushing the HTML5 agenda… and slowly floundered.
And as Miniclip focused on native mobile (as opposed to HTML5), and Spil games slowly ate its own tail… space was created for others. And Poki seems to be winning the race.
Why are you telling me this?
Because mobile developers large & small need to take note. Poki.com could - and should - be considered as a big part of your product development & go-to-market strategy. Here are five good reasons:
Product testing & early MVP feedback. Poki offer their Poki Playtesting solution. They launched this in GDC 2024. Poki will push your game to up to 50 people for every playtest for free. And for each player, they provide you with user videos of each actual playtest… and how they interact with your game, mouse pointers, misclicks and all.
Great company & developer culture. I’ve gotten to know the team across all levels of the organisation. The culture is warm & welcoming. This extends to the developer community, the Discord channel is incredibly supportive… and not competitive at all.
WebGL-friendly. Poki used to be rather religious about being all about HTML5. But as internet speeds globally keep improving and as WebGL keeps getting better & smaller - they seem more open to WebGL content - opening up the doors to Unity developers. Just manage your size - try getting it as close as possible to 20mb.
90m monthly uniques. That’s a rather large global audience. For a cross-platform multiplayer game (like Ball Guys) that could provide useful player liquidity. Not only that… promotion on Poki.com is fairly meritocratic: they reward prominent placement for games with higher engagement times & monetisation. With the right game, expect 5-figure monthlies, 6-figure annual revenues. A smash hit? $7-figures. And who knows, there may even be some accidental cross-promotion to your native mobile game.
Innovation continues. I get the sense that their Playtesting solution is merely the start. For Ball Guys - our cross-platform multiplayer game, we’re going to be experimenting with their new Player Fit test which scales to 500 player tests, twice daily. Yep - twice daily! If Poki develops an in-house webstore where I can replicate my game’s IAP economy (without the 30% Android & Apple tax)... it’s golden.
Anyway, what’s stopping you from checking it out
https://developers.poki.com/
Happy to field questions or point you in the right direction.