On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Varia Vakhreeva (User Acquisitions Manager at Sheepyard) joins Tom to discuss user acquisition at every step of the game creation process and navigates listeners through the complicated world of ads and "creatives".

Podcast Highlights Include:

- 1:04 How did Varia Vakhreeva get into the video game industry?

- 4:53 User Acquisition

- 9:27 Finding Your Audience

- 12:05 What should UA look like at launch?

- 14:56 Promoting your game at soft launch.

- 21:31 Orienting Your Game To Your Audience.

- 25:16 Ad Click-Through Rate/Download Rate.

- 26:49 What does UA look like at Global Launch?

- 29:00 How to manage creatives.

- 31:39 Ad Design

- 37:41 What resources are helpful when Creating Creatives?

- 42:13 Is effective to blend Live Ops into your ads/Creatives?

- 47:22 How to keep more playing around longer.

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Mladen Dulanovic(Game Lead at Nordeus) joins Tom to discuss problem solving at all levels of production, the value of being prepared, and so much more!

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:55 How did Mladen Dulanovic get into the video game industry?

- 7:03 How to make a successful game?

- 11:44 Solving Problems In Your Game.

- 20:45 The Practical Phase

- 27:01 Pivoting Your Approach

- 31:30 The Value of Surveys

- 34:27 Preparing For Global Launch

- 38:51 Testing Your Content Treadmill

- 40:20 Live Ops Phase

- 44:34 What tools help a studio rapidly generate content?

- 46:50 How to keep more playing around longer.

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Chris Hong (Tech Lead at Metacore) joins Tom to discuss the exciting world of LiveOps and the technology and services used in the process.

Podcast Highlights Include:

- 0:43 How did Chris Hong get into the video game industry?

- 9:24 Defining LiveOps

- 11:29 Automated LiveOps

- 13:35 What efforts go into executing LiveOps

- 14:47 Potential LiveOps Errors

- 19:36 LiveOps Technology, Features, and Services

- 28:54 How should data be used for LiveOps?

- 32:27 Multiplayer Technology

- 39:57 How to keep more players around longer

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Francesco Fontana (Senior Game Designer at Savage Game Studios) joins Tom to discuss designing a game economy, limited currency, and so much more!

Cheat codes:

- 1:04 How did Francesco Fontana get started in the gaming industry?

- 3:11 Game Economy Design

- 6:13 Early Stage Prototype/Soft Launch

- 9:15 When should you give up on your game?

- 12:24 User Research and Analytic Tools

- 17:10 Creating a Shooter Game

- 19:51 Building a Game Economy for the Long Term

- 24:00 Limited Currency and Live Ops

- 35:10 The Tower Of Once

- 39:09 Advice For People Wishing To Make A Shooter Game

- 41:59 How Can Shooter Games Appeal to More Players?

- 50:56 How to keep more players around longer.

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Rimmy Spanjer (Managing Director of Games Division at Hyper Hippo Entertainment) joins Tom to continue their dive deep into the world of videogame monetization and first time player conversion.

- 1:29 Defining First time conversion

- 4:50 Differences between first time conversion and subsequent conversion events

- 8:06 Optimizing First time conversion for all players.

- 13:16 Is is worth while to segment your conversion offers?

- 15:33 What percent of players should convert ever?

- 18:07 Why is conversion so difficult?

- 20:02 Designing your monetization strategy.

- 24:12 Using psychology to help conversion.

- 29:05 Yield time for players to convert.

- 32:19 How should your players feel after spending money on your game?

- 34:34 Validating your players purchase.

- 37:09 Reconversion

- 39:28 How often should players be reconverting?

- 42:07 What presentation is best for first time conversion?

- 47:42 How does Ad monetization impact your player conversion?

- 51:01 Should purchases increase player sessions?

- 53:14 Battle Pass

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Rimmy Spanjer (Managing Director of Games Division at Hyper Hippo Entertainment) joins Tom to dive deep into the world of videogame monetization.

- 1:03 How did Rimmy Spanjer get started in the gaming industry?

- 4:06 How did Rimmy Spanjer become interested in game economy design?

- 6:17 What does “creative director” actually mean?

- 8:30 Why is monetization important?

- 12:29 The fundamental importance of monetization.

- 17:49 Monetization Design

- 20:49 Creating a monetization design that fits your target audience.

- 23:58 Where to start when designing the monetization.

- 25:45 Impacting retention with monetization.

- 28:29 Ad Capacity.

- 30:44 Why are time-limited events so successful?

- 42:33 Event Design

- 44:35 Balancing your economy.

- 46:31 Ad Monetization

- 49:17 Ad Placement

- 52:45 How to keep more players around longer.

- 1:27 What has Natalie Sieradzki career journey been like?

- 4:50 How a UX consultant would go about fixing a game.

- 10:08 How to find your peer group.

- 13:00 How to figure out what different things different players want.

- 16:45 “Magic Moment”

- 18:25 How does fantasy play into “scratching” a players “itch”

- 22:27 Is there more value in talking with the players who churned apposed to the ones that keep playing?

- 28:25 The importance of getting used emails.

- 33:34 Push Notifications

- 37:02 Market Research

- 41:20 Segmented Surveys

- 45:22 Survey Questions

- 49:45 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.

▬ Contents of this video ▬▬▬▬▬

00:00 Introductions

12:22 How you became a studio founder?

21:54 Thing that most people don’t realize about starting a studio

29:51 Crucial roles to start a studio

35:37 First hires

39:25 Raising money

46:58 Setting up a studio for a large corporation vs starting as an owner

51:15 How to convince people to join you

53:54 What is good leadership?

57:29 Prioritizing projects and tasks

59:35 A big mistake

1:02:46 Company culture

▬ Quotes ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

28:41 “Very quickly, within the first week, I realized I’m not doing game design anymore because there’s so much to do when you start a company.” – Mike Allender

38:09 “Giving away lots of equity actually can come back to you in the success of the company.” – Mike Allender

52:51 “Part of the reason that you should start with your core values and your vision and extrapolate on what that is, that you can really share that with people and get them excited about where you're going and why you're going there.” – Tom Hammond

1:02:07 “You can share the hard times as well and talk about the hard things and do your best. And if you don't manage, at least you did your best as a group.” – Sophie Vo

1:07:13 “Culture is not a list of rules, it's definitely not pages and pages of philosophy. Culture is only real when it manifests in our actions.” – Peter Pawan

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, David Molnar (Live Ops Manager at Square Enix Montreal) joins Tom to dive deep into the world of Battle Passes and In-App Purchasing, as well as a lengthy discussion on League of Legends.

- 1:01 How did David Molnar get into the gaming industry?

- 2:15 Did he play League of Legends before working on it?

- 6:25 Thoughts on League of Legends coming to Mobile

- 8:07 What was his first reaction to playing League for the first time.

- 10:52 League of Legends auto targeting

- 14:29 League of Legends matchmaking

- 20:52 Thoughts on the League of Legends Live Ops.

- 25:52 Action-Based first time user campaign

- 33:05 A lengthy and in-depth conversation about battle passes rewards and in app purchases.

- 50:38 How to keep more players around longer.

On today's episode of Mastering Retention, Pradeep Gupta (Product & Growth at Gameberry Labs) speaks with Tom about integrating social features into a mobile game and the importance of socializing in videogames.

- 1:36 How did Pradeep Gupta get into video games?

- 3:38 Why did “Ludo Star” take off?

- 10:09 Did “Ludo Star” grow organically?

- 13:54 How to balance Monetization and social.

- 16:52 Balancing Social and Monetization.

- 22:34 What does social LiveOps look like?

- 26:37 How to manage and monitor voice chat.

- 32:33 How does voice chat change the game?

- 35:19 Have people abused the voice chat feature?

- 41:42 When to know when to add social features.

- 44:18 How to keep more players around longer.