Mastering Retention

The mobile gaming industry has long been a way for companies to make money off of its users. The emergence of real money gaming allows the players the opportunity to get in on the money making through skilled and/or chance based games. This week on Mastering Retention, Tom speaks with Priyank Badkul (VP of Products and Monetization at Tripledot Studios) about the emerging trends and technology behind real money gaming.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:33 How did Priyank get into the video game industry?

- 4:35 What is the Real Money Gaming?

- 7:32 Skill based vs chance based within the RMG genre.

- 9:48 Any correlation between Real Money Gaming and Block Chain Gaming ?

- 11:58 What does the current market look like for Real Money Gaming?

- 16:16 What sort of data and tools are available in the RMG industry?

- 17:49 First time user experience with real money gaming.

- 21:19 Are “boosters” allowed within Real Money Games?

- 23:36 How to successfully create new games?

- 31:25 Soft Launch Hell.

- 34:28 Building for a specific audience.

- 37:25 How to keep more players around longer.

Well designed features within your game can be the difference between an audience rejecting your game and an audience falling in love with your game. Saravanan Sankar (Game Designer at EA) has spent years working on game features and he joins Tom on this week's episode of "Mastering Retention" to share some deep insights on what works and what falls short of being a good feature for your game.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 00:27 How did Saravanan Sankar get into the video game industry?

- 4:45 Learning from a flawed feature/feature design.

- 13:47 Creating a feature with your players motivations in mind.

- 19:04 Successful alternative ways to build on a game feature.

- 22:00 Launching features as live Ops events

- 29:01 How to decide what features you should be making.

- 33:58 Retro-fitting features for your game

- 40:16 A feature that performed better than Saravanan originally thought it would.

- 41:57 Dealing with negative player feedback on features that perform well.

- 44:15 How to keep more players around longer

Coming up with a game concept is hard, but creating that game from scratch and seeing it through all the way to global launch is incredibly difficult. Annelie Biernat (Game Director at Wooga)has done exactly that. She and her team have taken their game "Switchcraft" all the way to the global launch finish line, and she sits down with Tom to share the wealth of knowledge she has gained from doing it.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:20 How long have they been working on “Switchcraft”

- 1:41 How did Annelie Biernat get into the video game industry? 

- 4:50 Coming up with a game concept and making it to global launch. 

- 9:40 Designing a game for a specific audience. 

- 13:39 The soft launch process 

- 19:51 How to properly identify and address the problems with your game. 

- 28:07 Eliciting emotions from your players. 

- 30:06 Team size for building “Switchcraft” 

- 33:43 What is “Switchcraft”? 

- 45:55 Why should you launch a Match 3 game? 

- 47:52 Biggest challenges they faced making “Switchcraft”

- 52:50 Player Feedback 

- 59:58 The importance of diversity in your game. 

- 1:05:01 How to keep more playing around longer

Data and analytics are incredibly important for the game industry, but understanding and accurately interpreting the data is key to creating and sustaining your game's success. Joni Ruotsalainen (Data Scientist at Metacore) speaks with Tom about his day-to-day role as a data scientist and illustrates how valuable a data scientist can be to any game studio.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:59 How did Joni Ruotsalainen get into the video game industry?

- 3:41 How important is it to have a data scientist at your game studio?

- 5:34 What problems should and should not be solved with data?

- 7:57 Using Data effectively.

- 14:52 Data Anomalies

- 18:00 How to utilize a data scientist effectively?

- 21:56 Good third party tools for data collection.

- 25:19 Segmentation.

- 26:53 What is a clustering algorithm?

- 29:40 Grouping players via session data.

- 36:04 Deciding what segments and how many segments you should have.

- 42:30 Segment Design.

- 46:47 Designing your Live Ops events around players schedules.

- 50:11 How to keep more playing around longer.

Video games are meant to entertain us, but they also have the incredible power to connect people from all over the world. Wouter Schrijvershof (Live Ops Manager at GamePoint) and his team at GamePoint pride themselves on creating meaningful communities within their games. Schrijvershof tells Tom that GamePoint's bingo has developed such a strong sense of community, that players are hosting games/events specifically to honor online friends that have tragically passed away. Creating that type of community isn't easy, but in this episode, Schrijvershof paints a picture of how to do exactly that.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:48 How did Wouter Schrijvershof get into the video game industry?

- 4:10 The history and background of “Game Point”

- 7:23 Many friendships were made through “Game Points” bingo.

- 10:28 Filtering out the in-game language barriers.

- 12:31 Developing strong social features to build a stronger and deeper community amongst players.

- 22:41 Understanding your audience on a deep level.

- 25:25 Surveying players.

- 29:44 A Live Op event that created angst amongst players.

- 31:44 Coming up with new ideas for LiveOps events

- 34:57 Super Fan Groups

- 36:29 How important is a smooth players experience?

- 41:42 Welcoming new players

- 43:25 User acquisition by churned players

- 44:47 How to keep more playing around longer.

Creating a successful game requires a lot more than a good idea and decent gameplay. It takes a true artist to perfect all the intricacies throughout the menus, marketing materials, and virtual stores. Kristina Miles (Lead UX Designer at Electric Square) is one of those artists. This week on the Mastering Retention Podcast, she sits down with Tom to discuss what all goes into creating a game's design that maximizes player satisfaction.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:51 How did Kristina Miles get into the video game industry?

- 2:50 Defining User Experience Design

- 6:44 Figuring out how and what about your UX Design needs to change.

- 8:56 Grouping your players through player behaviors.

- 11:54 Best way to work with a UX Designer

- 15:32 At what point in the player flow should a UX Designer be involved?

- 19:31 Why is it important to have flow screens?

- 23:40 Designing with localization in mind.

- 28:30 Buttons or Icons?

- 32:20 Planning for future features and screens.

- 35:59 How involved should a UX Designer be in LiveOps?

- 42:41 Designing for trigger points.

- 46:08 How to keep more playing around longer.

In order to effectively advertise your game, you must know your players like the back of your hand. Srikanth Peru (Director of Production & Operations at Bingo Bash) takes Tom inside the world of game operations and illustrates its ever changing nature. Learn some tricks on how to properly identify your target audience!

Here are your cheat codes:

1:30 How did Srikanth Peru get into the video game industry?

5:49 Defining LiveOps from a game operations perspective.

7:10 Understanding what a player wants?

12:18 Grouping players through metrics and data.

15:35 Segmented Player Experience.

19:50 Finding the right price point for your players.

26:00 How often should you optimize personalized offers?

33:31 Build Your Own Offer.

40:42 Stacking The Deck.

46:45 How to keep more playing around longer.

Is Blockchain Gaming the next big thing?

Khaled Alroumi (Game designer at Illuvium) thinks so! Adopting the Play-To-Earn format, Alroumi and his team are on the verge of creating an open world RPG that exists on Ethereum blockchain.

Alroumi joins Tom this week to answer some perplexing questions on blockchain gaming and play-to-earn game economies.

Here are your cheat codes:

1:19 How did Khaled Alroumi get into the video game industry?

3:43 How do you make money from “Play-To-Earn”?

9:25 Do Block Chain Transactions make a game “Play-To-Earn”?

14:32 Economy Design for Play-To-Earn games.

18:41 Reselling items within Play-To-Earn Games.

21:47 Paying Your Studio Employees through the Marketplace approach in Play-To-Earn games.

27:50 Accidentally Tanking Your Game’s Economy.

30:26 What will LiveOps look like moving forward in the Play-To-Earn genre?

32:34 Is Block Chain necessary, trendy, or both?

37:05 Can Play-To-Earn exist across all Genres of gaming?

38:37 What are the most important things to consider when starting a gaming studio?

39:41 How to keep more playing around longer.

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Joakim Hoglund (Head of Studio at FunRock) joins Tom to discuss to art of understanding your target audience, localization across cultural boundaries, and so much more!

Podcast Highlights Include:

1:29 How did Joakim Hoglund get into the video game industry?

3:54 What titles have you been working on at FunRock studios?

5:38 Catering your game to a specific population

13:04 One Server VS Segmented Servers

15:41 Localization across different cultures, languages, and demographics

20:55 How to give your target audience what they want.

33:13 What dialogue should exists between you and your target audience after a global launch?

38:35 Addressing complaints about A game through YOUR game.

43:03 Do surveys work?

46:20 How to keep more playing around longer.

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Mat Baker (Game Design Lead at Trailmix) joins Tom to discuss when to know when to pivot your game's approach, how to do so effectively, and so much more!

Here are your cheat codes:

1:18 How did Mat Baker get into the video game industry?

6:38 How did Mat start working for Trailmix and what sort of projects have they been working on?

18:47 How to identify problems in your game?

23:25 What are some indicators that appear when your game isn’t working?

27:42 What conversations led to pivoting “Love & Pies” ?

34:14 Solving the problems with their game.

37:27 What does Live Ops look like in “Love & Pies”?

40:45 What does monetization look like within the merge game genre?

43:09 Excited about the future of Trailmix.

48:05 How to keep more playing around longer.