Mastering Retention

Episode highlights:

- 0:30 How did Daniel Kammerer get into games?

- 3:26 What exactly is level design?

- 5:20 What would the level building process look like for a match 3 game like Candy Crush Saga?

- 8:11 How much should a level designer be playing the level to ensure it is correct?

- 9:28 Designing a level with procedurally generated landscapes.

- 12:57 Handcrafted design vs procedurally generated design.

- 17:37 Should level design be a server side push or should that be built into the client?

- 21:45 Testing levels before rolling them out.

- 25:24 Is BETA testing worth the possible production delay?

- 30:49 Does level design heavily rely on community input?

- 36:00 Maximizing the first time user experiences from a level design perspective.

- 42:43 Creating a better user experience by tailoring the game to your specific target audience.

- 48:15 How to keep more players around longer.

On today's episode of the Mastering Retention show, we have our first artist: Riana McKeith! She is the Art Director at TreesPlease Games and has an incredible amount of experience in game art not only in the corporate setting but also in the startup environment.

Episode notes:

• Going from a corporation to a startup
• Work between art and product team
• Art influencing KPIs
• The idea of content treadmill
• Creating quick content
• Thinking about your game in a global context
• Her retention tip

in today's episode of the Mastering Retention show, Tj’ièn Twijnstra the Game Director at Story Giant Games joins Tom to talk about how to create strong enough meaningful narrative connections in your games and how to implement gameplay into that narrative.

Episode highlights:

• How he got into games
• Narrative in casual games
• Elements that make up a good story
• Adding gameplay to the game narrative
• Target audience research
• Having a good narrative on your brand new game
• His retention tip

Follow Tj’ièn’s blog here.

In this episode of the Mastering Retention show, Mădălina Vlădău the Live Ops Manager at Ubisoft RedLynx talks to us all about LiveOps tools! From what LiveOps tools are to how should they be implemented.

Episode highlights:

• Games she’s currently testing
• What is a LiveOps tool?
• Designing user experiences
• How to prevent more errors from happening
• Commercial tools vs building your own tools
• Making your game meaningful to increase retention

On today’s episode of the Mastering Retention show, Tom talks to Keeley Bunting, the Executive Producer at Outplay Entertainment. When the episode was recorded, she was transitioning from being a lead game designer to being the executive producer at Outplay and she tells us how the transition is going and how she got there. She’s the lead on the Gordon Ramsay, Chef Blast free-to-play mobile game.

Episode highlights:

• What it means to be a lead game designer
• How to manage feedback?
• What it's like working with an IP?
• Tips for working on casual games
• If you want to become a game designer, what should you study
• Her retention tip!

In this episode of the Mastering Retention show, Hadrien Carpentier, the Game Lead at Oh BiBi joins us to talk about their game, FRAG Pro Shooter, and having an audience-first approach. He also goes over how they are doing without a game designer!

Episode highlights:

• How Hadrien got to his current position
• When should you innovate the art style of a game
• FRAG Pro Shooter and having an audience-first approach
• Game engagement
• How to stay up to date in the industry
• How his team goes about not having game designers
• The work of the community management team
• FPS trends
• His retention tip!

In today’s episode of the Mastering Retention show, Niek Tuerlings, the senior game designer at Voodoo, tells us all about the new game they are working on: Plantopia. He tells us all the things they’ve learned, how they got to where they are and what they are expecting. If you are currently designing a game, you don’t want to miss this episode!

Episode topics:

• The development process of their first game, Plantopia
• How to know when to kill a game
• What does it mean to test a game?
• What they saw on Merge Mansion and how they fixed it
• What is the right ratio of innovation
• Monetization potential on Plantopia
• What he’s learned with Plantopia
• His retention tip!

Check out Niek's blog here

In today’s episode of the Mastering Retention podcast, Alex Clark, Game Designer at Nitro Games, talks to Tom about everything mobile shooter related!

Episode highlights:

• Definition of mobile shooter
• Why do people like shooters on mobile
• What kind of audiences like shooters?
• Tom pitches Alex a mobile shooter game idea and they dissect the development process!
• First-time user experience in mobile shooter
• His retention tip!

On today’s episode of the Mastering Retention podcast, Tom talks to Benjamin Charbit the Co-Founder of DareWise about his most recent game development: Live Beyond. He and Tom talk all about the experiences he and his team are building for this game and some of the things they’ve learned and discovered in the process.

Episode notes:

• How did he develop DareWise
• The current game/experience they are developing: Live Beyond
• What type of experiences will there be in the game
• What does LiveOps look like in a social experience scenario?
• The concept of cross-platform
• His recommendation on building social experiences that go beyond the traditional mechanics
• As always… his retention tip!

Jason Schklar is the founder of UX is Fine! and has led teams and provided product, design, and UX direction both as a sought-after consultant and as a studio leader at Amazon, Big Huge Games, Disney, Microsoft, and Zynga. In today's episode, he talks about the importance of UX in game design.

Today's highlights:

• How he started UX is Fine!
• What is quantitative data and what is qualitative data?
• Comparison between the start of Instagram and games
• What is UX and how important is UX?
• Some examples where he’s seeing UX go wrong and go well
• What is a good way to take my player experience to the next level?
• His retention tip

Connect with him on LinkedIn here and follow Jason on Twitter here

https://uxisfine.com/