Mastering Retention

What makes a game special is not the graphics, the gameplay, or the plot … it's the people that work tirelessly behind the scenes. Having the right people in place at your studio is the difference between a smash-hit game and a forgotten one. This week on Mastering Retention, Tom speaks with Kunal Mordekar (COO at YOOZOO Games) about finding the right people, the hiring process, and how important good workplace relationships are for sustained success in the video game industry.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:57 How did Kunal Mordekar get into the video game industry?

- 4:19 The difficulties of finding and vetting potential employees.

- 9:42 When and how to test potential hires during the interview process.

- 14:08 What tests have been successful in identifying game programmers?

- 17:01 How to properly test candidates for a more artistic or creative role.

- 19:06 How to set expectations for new hires if you anticipate your new start-up changing its mission and/or goals.

- 22:00 What is a producer and what does a producer do?

- 28:13 A successful producer knows their team members.

- 31:22 How to mitigate production delays.

- 33:42 Properly rolling out your game.

- 41:48 Testing a new feature before rolling it out to everyone.

- 47:05 How to keep more people around for longer.

Some games are intended to be played over the course of several months, sometimes even years. These games demand new and exciting content - such as new quests - in order to keep players coming back.

Designing, testing, and implementing these new quests into your game requires lots of creativity and brain power that often goes unnoticed.

This week on Mastering Retention, Tom speaks with former World of Warcraft game designer, Kurt Sparkuhl (Lead Mobile Game Designer at Amazon Games), about the quest design process and making the switch from working on massive MMO’s to working on mobile gaming.

0:41 How did Kurt Sparkuhl get into the video game industry?

4:44 Does being a Quality Assurance Analyst make you a better game designer?

9:08 How to figure out what your next expansion will be.

12:54 Designing a game to be fun for all types of players.

16:13 Is there a certain moment players become hooked on your game?

22:05 Quest Design.

28:03 Deciding what is interesting and creative.

31:04 Catering to specific types of players.

33:13 Daily Quests.

39:22 How To Test Quests.

426 The differences and similarities between mobile game design and MMO design.

47:35 Does session length play a role in game design?

51:04 How to keep more players around longer.

So, your new game has taken the world by storm? What do you do next? How do you maintain momentum and how do you replicate your previous success?

This week on “Mastering Retention,” Miikka Ahonen Co-founder of Lightheart Entertainment, creator of Mr. Autofire, joins Tom to discuss building and running a company, building successful games, as well as strategies for release and, of course, retention.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:45 How Miikka Ahonen got into the video game industry

- 3:07 What it was like starting Lightheart Entertainment

- 5:40 Advice for people starting their own studio

- 8:58 The original vision for Lightheart and where it is today

- 16:40 The process of creating prototypes and where they draw inspiration from at Lightheart

- 18:33 What comes after gray box testing?

- 20:40 What are realistic build and release timelines?

- 23:34 Is there an ideal revenue breakdown for ads and IAP?

- 24:53 What mistakes do you feel like you made and what would you do differently?

- 26:55 How the company has changed after a successful game and their outlook and strategy moving forward

- 31:53 What is your approach to hiring and some lessons you’ve learned?

- 40:25 Live ops in hybrid-casual

- 53:58 Game economy design within hybrid-casual genre

- 56:19 Tips to increase player retention

If you use social media, odds are you have seen many ads for hyper-casual games. On the surface, these free-to-play games may appear simple and minimalistic, but in reality are intricate, detailed, and have the potential to generate lots of revenue.

This week on “Mastering Retention”, Christoph Sachsenhausen (Managing Director at Sunday) joins Tom to discuss the level of detail that goes into creating and marketing these games and outlines the reasons behind why they are quickly becoming one of the most popular genres in the mobile gaming space.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 1:10 How did Christoph Sachsenhausen get into the video game industry?

- 7:02 Is there a mass exodus towards Casual Games?

- 11:33 Defining the Hyper-Casual business model.

- 16:58 What makes “Sunday” stand out from other publishers?

- 21:36 How to find success as a new hyper-casual game studio?

- 27:14 What emotions should hyper-casual games be aiming to elicit from users?

- 30:35 How to come up with a new idea for a game?

- 37:54 What metrics does “Sunday” focus on?

- 41:42 Live Ops in Hyper-Casual games.

- 43:52 Multiplayer in hyper-casual games.

- 46:42 How to find a partner studio.

- 48:09 What can be learned from hyper-casual games?

- 49:59 Advertising and marketing your hyper-casual game.

- 55:12 How to keep more players around longer.

Creating a fun and engaging game is only half the battle. In order to establish your game as one of the most downloaded apps, you must create and properly utilize the many different types of advertisements. This week on “Mastering Retention”, Claire Rozain (UA Team Lead at Rovio) walks Tom through the process of implementing immersive and thoughtful ads/creatives in order to have a positive effect on user acquisition.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 2:37 How did Claire Rozain get into the video game industry?

- 4:42 Some problems Claire is currently looking to solve in the coming months.

- 6:30 Is tracking a solvable problem?

- 9:00 Time Management and work/life balance.

- 12:55 User Acquisition Creatives.

- 18:42 How to test your game in the early stages?

- 22:40 Can user acquisition control the player experience? *

- 27:20 Ads/Creatives.

- 31:58 Claire shares her “North Star” metric.

- 40:14 Ad lengths.

- 41:14 What to show in your ad. *

- 42:34 How many ad views does it take for a download?

- 44:20 Using different ads VS using the same ad over and over.

- 46:00 User Acquisition across different genres.

- 47:55 How to keep more players around longer.

Free-to-play is here to stay. For years the video game market has been saturated by free-to-play games. All facets of the gaming industry have had to adapt to this shift in the gaming landscape - as well as many other changes in the way a game economy is designed. This week on “Mastering Retention”, Rudy Saldivar (Lead Product Manager at Robin Games) joins Tom to discuss how game economists and economies have adapted to these many different shifts.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:49 How did Rudy Saldivar get started in the video game industry?

- 6:47 Robin Games

- 9:37 Game Economy within free-to-play games.

- 17:38 Solving Broken Economies

- 21:46 Balancing Economy Design

- 24:06 Navigating the massive variety in user’s playtime

- 28:21 Feature development based upon players habits and behavior.

- 31:35 How game economies affect player engagement.

- 33:05 Identifying deficiencies in your game economy.

- 36:38 Feature prioritization.

- 43:20 Properly addressing issues within your game economy.

- 44:56 Understanding your players.

- 47:19 How to keep more players around longer.

User acquisition can be achieved in many different ways. Finding the right UA method depends heavily on the goals of both your game and company. On this week’s episode of “Mastering Retention”, Matej Lancaric (User Acquisition & Marketing Consultant) joins Tom to break down some of the ways he has helped companies meet their UA goals and discuss how important brand awareness is when it comes to acquiring new users.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 1:44 How did Matej Lancaric get into the video game industry?

- 4:02 When should a studio work with a consultant like Matej?

- 5:21 The competitive nature of mobile game development.

- 11:17 How to successfully launch a mobile game in a hyper competitive marketplace.

- 16:52 Innovation in mobile game ads.

- 21:52 How large of a role does brand awareness play in players downloading your game?

- 25:50 It would be nice to see your competitors' metrics.

- 28:35 Are browser games dying?

- 30:39 What is User Acquisition?

- 34:36 Best practices for tracking your metrics.

- 36:54 Return On Ad Spend

- 42:51 When to properly use all the different types of ads.

- 45:25 The shifting landscape of mobile game marketing.

- 48:36 How to keep more players around longer.

Blockchain technology is all the buzz right now. Could that technology lead to the beginning of the next era of mobile gaming? Anil Das-Gupta (CPO, Co-Founder at First Light Games) joins Tom to discuss how despite the complexity of the integration, there are many exciting possibilities that blockchain technology could usher in.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:47 How did Anil Das-Gupta get into the video game industry?

- 7:08 Finding the right co-founders.

- 11:53 The origins of First Light Games.

- 18:16 How did First Light Games do their testing?

- 21:00 Blockchain/play-to-earn gaming.

- 27:44 The complexities of integrating NFTs into video games.

- 32:07 Long term goals for blockchain gaming.

- 38:07 User generated content

- 40:15 Launching a blockchain game

- 48:41 How to keep more players around longer.

The modern landscape of mobile gaming demands ad monetization to generate revenue for your game studio. A lot of hard work goes into not only creating ads, but every behind-closed-doors decision in regards to the very same ads. This week on the Mastering Retention Podcast, Diego Diaz Perez (Monetization Manager at WEEWOO) takes Tom behind the scenes of ad monetization.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:43 How did Diego Diaz Perez get involved in the video game industry?

- 5:41 How does ad monetization work?

- 10:53 What does the cash flow look like in mobile game advertising?

- 14:00 CPN vs CPI

- 15:47 Mediation Companies

- 21:37 Header Bidding.

- 27:26 How many ads can be shown to a player before the CPn starts to decline?

- 31:12 Rewarded video monetization.

- 35:28 How to get more ad views from your players?

- 37:11 Segmenting players based on motivations in order to increase ad viewing.

- 39:20 How to grow your ad revenue?

- 42:10 The different types of advertisements.

- 47:06 Things Diego Diaz Perez wish he knew when he got into ad monetization.

- 49:08 Ad Placement Accessibility

- 52:21 How to keep more players around longer.

Creating a company from scratch requires a ton of hard work and sacrifice. Maintaining a healthy work/life balance makes it all that more difficult, but it is doable. This week on the Mastering Retention Podcast, Tom speaks with fellow entrepreneur and business owner, Brett Nowak (CEO & Founder of Liquid and Grit), about how they have managed to find a healthy work/life balance in the midst of creating and maintaining their businesses.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:48 How did Brett Nowak get into the video game industry?

- 2:53 Nowak details the origins and purpose of his company, Liquid and Grit.

- 4:30 What does Liquid and Grit’s ideal customer look like?

- 6:36 How does “Game Refinery” differ from “Liquid and Grit”?

- 8:21 Modeling game economies.

- 9:43 Acquiring live Ops data.

- 17:02 Collecting data from surveys

- 23:34 Physiologically satisfying in-game offers.

- 28:33 A detailed conversation about starting a company, potentially selling that company, and achieving work-life balance.

- 52:47 An ideal approach to team building within a company.

- 57:47 The gap between a good developer and a great developer.

- 1:08:02 How to keep more players around longer.