Mastering Retention

In the latest episode of the Mastering Retention Podcast, user experience expert Neil Edwards discusses the brilliant user experience design of Marvel Snap. Edwards is the co-founder and head of UX at a full-service design studio in the video game space.

Marvel Snap’s core gameplay is described as phenomenal, not just as an engaging, emotional, and compelling experience as a player but also as a brilliant product. Edwards notes that the game’s core has the potential to make live ops easier or harder based on its design.

This week's guest is Alvaro Duarte, VP Casual Games at Voodoo. In this episode, Alvaro reveals Voodoo's business model, unique approach to game development, and the screening process for Voodoo's games. Voodoo has a unique approach to game development, releasing games that are in a "sooner state of product" and then iterating on them after they are live. The screening process for Voodoo's games is rigorous, and they look at gameplay, retention metrics, CPI, and ROAS targets, among other things.

In this episode of the Mastering Retention Podcast, host Tom Hammond speaks with Antanina Livingston, a product manager and liveops extraordinaire! Antanina shares her insights on how to approach feature and event planning, the importance of understanding player needs, and how to manage burnout in the liveops team. She also discusses the challenges of managing burnout and the importance of understanding different cultures and languages in the gaming industry. 

Highlights:

• Antanina Livingston shares insights on how to approach feature and event planning, the importance of understanding player needs, and how to manage burnout. (0:20)
• Livingston talks about her background in business and how she transitioned to the gaming industry. (3:44)
• The importance of understanding different cultures and languages in the gaming industry is discussed. (8:47)
• Livingston shares her thoughts on how to approach feature planning and event planning in a way that maintains player retention. (13:07)
• The challenges of managing burnout in the live ops team are addressed. (19:13)

In this podcast, Tom Hammond, CEO at UserWise, and Sam Abbott, Head of Monetization at Rec Room, discuss how player segmentation can lead to stronger monetization in mobile games. They delve into the importance of understanding individual segments and creating tailored games that appeal to those segments. They also explore how to break down player behavior and analyze actions within the game to better understand and serve different segments.

In this episode of the Mastering Retention podcast, Dafna shares how LiveOps teams focus on events and promotions to engage players, drive retention, and monetize games. Successful LiveOps events are those that balance the core gameplay loop of a game while introducing new features, challenges, and rewards to keep players interested. She also highlights the importance of understanding player behavior, segmentation, and time zones in planning LiveOps events, and the need to balance creativity with return on investment.

On today’s episode we're gonna talk about the great world of LiveOps. Join Oscar Clark as we dive into the three must-haves for games as services: capturing data, configurations, and selling.

• The meaning of Games as a Service from his perspective.
• The difference between LiveOps and Games as a Service.
• The first step to starting a LiveOps campaign.
• Games as a Service and LiveOps as promises to players.
• Tips for capturing data.
• Tools for configuring oversight.
• Principles for selling free-to-play games.
• What does a LiveOps team look like?

On this week's episode of Mastering Retention, Tom is joined by Bakyt Aidaralieva (Head of Player Experience at Rovio) to discuss the many different types of tools and platforms used in the gaming industry, which tools are better than others, the importance of player feedback, and so much more!

Here are your cheat codes:

0:59 How did Bakyt Aidaralieva get into the video game industry?

8:29 What tools and platforms are needed to run a game as a service?

12:23 Lessons learned from seeking player feedback.

16:03 Discord can be a useful tool.

19:55 CRM’s in the gaming world & effective CRM tools.

24:33 Player and customer support.

26:52 The importance of player feedback & Identifying helpful player feedback.

32:35 Server back end tools.

35:05 LiveOps tools.

41:21 Analytics tools.

43:28 Best way to segment players.

46:06 How to keep more players around longer.

Founders of game studios who have "been there and done that" share their top secrets and tricks on how to start your own game studio.

On this week's episode of Mastering Retention, Tom is joined by Jesse Kroon (Game Designer at Product Madness) and Stanislav Minasov (VP of Product at AppMagic) to talk about the process of creating a new game. The guys have a detailed discussion about where to look for inspiration, how to flesh out a game concept, what all goes into making certain decisions about your game, intellectual property, and so much more!

Here are your cheat codes:

0:46 How did Jesse Kroon and Stanislav Minasov get into the video game industry?

4:12 How to conceptualize a new game idea.

10:17 Deciding which genre your game should be.

14:44 What you gain from talking to existing players.

19:01 Repurposing an existing game concept.

24:35 Finding inspiration in other types of games.

32:45 Intellectual Property.

44:21 How to keep more players around longer.

Creating a game is only half the battle - getting others to download and share your game is vital to the long term success of your game and/or studio. Acquiring users through marketing campaigns and engaging advertisements is no simple task. This week on Mastering Retention, Tom speaks with Janos Perei (Head of Growth at Voodoo) about many different forms of advertisements and marketing campaigns, their complexity, the importance of making marketing the foundation of your studio, and how UA should work hand-in-hand with LiveOps.

Here are your cheat codes:

0:42 How did Janos Perei get into the video game industry?

2:25 How to think about ad performance.

7:32 Ad efficiency.

9:54 Integrated UA Funnel.

12:38 Gameplay ads.

16:04 Misleading ads.

19:30 How not to waste ad impressions.

25:43 Multi-touch attribution.

27:54 UA and Marketing should be your foundation.

31:58 Failing to engage users.

33:47 How to get users to recommend your game to a friend.

39:30 How to keep more players around longer.