The Business of Social Games and Casino

The Business of Social Games and Casino

By Lloyd MelnickBusiness
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The Business of Social Games and Casino episodes

  • 3 Words I Hate
    Key takeaways
    • Game companies should avoid the phrase gamification, as their product is already a game and should be entertaining.
    • Whales is an insidious phrase as it describes your best customers in a derogatory way, potentially leading to treating them in a way that destroys long-term value.
    • It is misleading to use data that is directional, without statistical significance as relying on this data is like not using data at all.

      • This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/10/07/3-words-i-hate/

      6 min
    • Leading in a complex world: building a team of teams
      Key takeaways
      • The difference between complexity and complicated is central to building an organization that works in the 21st century. Things that are complicated may have many parts, but those parts are joined, one to the next, in straightforward and simple ways and are like an equation that needs to be solved. Things that are complex, such as insurgencies or the mobile gaming ecosystem, have a diverse range of connected parts that interact regularly.
      • Accept that you will have to deal with unpredicted challenges and threats. You then build an organization and systems that can adapt rather than erecting strong, specialized defenses.
      • Teams, while not always optimally efficient, are extremely adaptable. Teams overcome challenges that could never be foreseen by a single manager, their solutions often emerge as the bottom-up result of interactions, rather than from top-down orders. Your teams must then interconnect into a team of teams, rather than siloed organizations. Create an organization within which the relationships between teams resembled those between individuals on a single team.

        • This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/10/14/leading-in-a-complex-world-building-a-team-of-teams/

        24 min
      • Adjacent User Theory Shows How to Supercharge Your Game’s Growth
        Key takeaways
        • Adjacent users represent a great opportunity for growth. These are potential players (adjacent users) are aware of the product, maybe tried it, but are not engaged customers
        • You solve for these players by looking at different states of your product (i.e. registration, play, purchase) and seeing who drops off at each of these states, then understand why these potential customers are dropping off.
        • You can make your product attractive by putting yourself in the place of the adjacent user, watching them use your game or product and talking to them.

          • This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/10/21/adjacent-user-theory-shows-how-to-supercharge-your-games-growth/

          10 min
        • The keys to building a resilient business
          Key takeaways
          1. Resilience thinking is based on the concept that things change (both within and externally to your business) and to ignore or resist this change is to increase your vulnerability and forego emerging opportunities.
          2. The world is not linear, instead we operate in thresholds. Like a basin, small changes keep you in a certain range but then combine to pass over a threshold and move you into a completely different business situation. You need to understand what are the key slow variables that could end up moving you into a much worse (or better) position.
          3. Resilience thinking represents a different way of looking at the world. It’s about seeing systems, linkages, thresholds, and cycles in both what is directly important to your business and in what drives them. It is about understanding and embracing change, as opposed to striving for constancy.

            4. This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2021/01/20/the-keys-to-building-a-resilient-business/

            17 min
          4. How to become successful CEO
            Key takeaways
            • Being a great CEO or leader is very hard. CEOs and others leading business units are responsible not only for their fate but the fate of their company, having to make potentially life or death decisions.
            • To meet The Struggle of leading a company, you need to rely on teamwork, think outside the box for solutions and continuously self-reflect.
            • Great leaders must learn to be comfortable doing inherently uncomfortable things. Great CEOs have to make their unnatural job feel natural.

              • This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/11/11/how-to-become-successful-ceo/

              12 min
            • Measure yourself by your worst day
              Key takeaways
              • Assessing your performance when challenged is powerful, as it is easy to look good when everything goes according to plan and circumstances are calm.
              • Look at whether you retreat in the face of difficulty or are reassuring and bring everyone together.
              • Gaze back at your worst days and assess how you responded, how you acted towards your teammates and staff and the picks you made. Learn from these decisions so you can become the leader you want to be.

                • This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2021/01/27/measure-yourself-by-your-worst-day/

                4 min
              • Recruiting, or why you want to Coach Team USA

                Key takeaways

                1. A critical key to success is attracting the right talent to your team. This provides a competitive advantage over other companies.
                2. A key element to successful recruiting is for leadership to own and drive the process, rather than relying on HR (who are a critical component, however)
                3. The other key is proactively finding opportunities to raise your and your company’s profile to help your long-term recruiting capability, particularly speaking and writing openings.

                  4. This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/10/26/recruiting-or-why-you-want-to-coach-team-usa/

                  5 min
                4. Dealing with risk
                  Key takeaways
                  • We operate in a very volatile environment worldwide, with many external risks (Brexit, Trump’s victory, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) difficult to predict but very impactful.
                  • To succeed, you not only should look at direct risks but overall risks to the value chain that will cascade to your company.
                  • The key is to understand and plan for risks that will impact competitors, your supply chain (anything from raw materials to cloud capacity),distribution channels and customers. Good companies will be ready to not only deal with but also capitalize on external changes that they do not control.

                    • This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/11/23/dealing-with-risk/

                    10 min
                  • Great products fail, here is why

                    Key takeaways

                    • Creating a great new innovative products does not guarantee success, people have to find and try it.
                    • The first key is to build something that people will search for. If there is little innovative or differentiated products, people will not even search for a new product.
                    • If customers will not find a product via search, you need to develop cues so they will infer that the product is different and valuable to them.

                      • This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/10/05/3289/

                      7 min
                    • Optimizing failure
                      Key takeaways
                      • You need to encourage failure. Without failure, you are not pursuing enough initiatives to grow.
                      • To get the most from failures, and subsequently prompt people to launch initiatives that can fail, you must study failures carefully and learn about the market, customers and organization.
                      • You also need to circulate this information through your organization.

                        • This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2016/06/29/optimizing-failure/

                        5 min

                      About The Business of Social Games and Casino

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                      How to succeed in the mobile game space by Lloyd Melnick. Lloyd is a serial builder of businesses (senior leadership on three exits worth over $700 million), successful in big (Disney, Stars Group,…