Effective LiveOps Strategies for F2P Games
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This document discusses effective liveops strategies for games. It defines liveops as changes made to games after launch, generally without code changes, such as new items, events, or offers. Key components of liveops discussed include business intelligence, events, and offers/promotions. Good business intelligence is tied to player behavior and generates insights over time. Events can boost engagement or revenues and come in many forms. Offers should utilize player data and tools to message players effectively through various channels. The document stresses the importance of tools that allow modifying the game without needing engineers, and having capabilities like analytics, localization, targeting, and modifying game variables for events.
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Effective LiveOps Strategies for F2P Games
- 1. Effective LiveOps Strategies James Gwertzman CEO, PlayFab
- 3. Build game Build backend Launch Build tools for ops team Segment & target customers Deploy servers Business intelligence Offers & Promotions Update content Host in-game events Customer service Nowadays… Business intelligence
- 4. • Launched 3/2/12 • Shot to top 10 • Servers crashed • Offline for 168 days • Re-launched 8/17/12 • Top-grossing game for 2+ years LTD revenue: $132M Source: AppAnnie, NPD, ThinkGaming Updated more than 36 times
- 5. So, what is Live Ops anyway?
- 6. How I’m defining Live Ops ● Changes to the game after it goes live ● Generally without changing game code Live Ops • New cosmetic item • Limited time offer • Weekend event • Paid UA campaign Not Live Ops • New functional item • New crafting mechanic • New tournament mode • New viral mechanic
- 7. Live Ops depends on tools ● What can you do w/o bugging engineers? ● ‘Hacker’ mentality helpful in live ops The Live Ops Tools Continuum Writing SQL Hacking game DB Fully integrated toolset Key game params exposed
- 8. Key components of Live Ops ● Business Intelligence (analytics) ● Events ● Offers & promotions ● Store / catalog management ● Customer service ● User acquisition
- 9. Today we’ll talk about the first three: ● Business Intelligence (analytics) ● Events ● Offers & promotions
- 10. What is good BI? It’s not… • “Glamor metrics” (DAU, ARPU, etc) • Bolted on later It is… • Tied to player behavior • Insight generating • Able to show changes over time (cohorts) • Directly actionable • Open-ended
- 11. $- $200.00 $400.00 $600.00 $800.00 $1,000.00 $1,200.00 1-Feb-15 3-Feb-15 5-Feb-15 7-Feb-15 9-Feb-15 11-Feb-15 13-Feb-15 15-Feb-15 17-Feb-15 19-Feb-15 21-Feb-15 23-Feb-15 25-Feb-15 27-Feb-15 Monthly game revenue $0 $200 $400 $600 $800 $1,000 $1,200 Today's Revenue vs. Historical Average Average Cumulative Daily Revenue (Tuesday) VS. Which is more actionable?
- 12. Time to run some events
- 13. No game updates, revenue spikes are due to events only
- 14. Sample event types ● Fun – boost engagement ● Monetization – boost revenues, fix economy ● Marketing – cross promote another game ● Content – promote new update ● Tactical – wielded like a scalpel ● Blend of the above
- 15. It starts w/ a calendar KPI actuals KPI forecast
- 16. Tailoring events for your players Courtesy of Janaki Kumar and Mario Herger. Copyright: CC-Att-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported).
- 17. Name Mechanic Fiction Duration Banner Ultimate Dragon Rush Special dungeon, available only after normal dungeon “Starlight Sanctuary” is cleared. Legendary Plus difficulty, stamina cost of 99 The skies are ominous and the earth trembles beneath our feet. Behold! The legendary dragons come forth and bring you a challenge to remember. Do you have what it takes to enter their realm? Or will you kneel before their will? 2/28 (Sat), 12:00AM – 3/1 (Sun), 11:59 PM Pal Egg Event Special Pal Egg machine, each pull is 1000 Pal Points. Seven special new monsters are available, including Life Dragon, Cao Cao, and Lu Bu. They may be small, but their stature is great!! Originally just Five Elements Gods, the minis have now reached the Three Kingdoms period. 3/4 (Wed), 12:00AM – 3/10(Tues), 11:59 PM Descended Challenge Special dungeon with 15 floors, each floor with powerful enemies. No continues are allowed. Each floor gives special rewards. One Descended Dungeon, with the right team, and you think “Okay, not too bad. I can handle this.” You think you’ve won, but instead you keep going. They keep coming. Like meteors from the sky, impacting on the Earth and forcing you to run! 2/27 (Fri), 12:00AM – 3/10 (Tues), 11:59 PM Event mechanic vs. fiction
- 18. Fun event examples ● RPG where GM’s have playable characters and hang out in game ● Game emphasizes cosmetic item purchasing Hide and Seek • GM is hiding somewhere in the world • Find him/her, and win a reward Fashion Show • Post image of decked-out character on FB • Community votes • Winner gets displayed on launcher screen for a week Guild Competition • Guilds compete to capture & hold a castle • Whoever holds it the longest wins the event • Winning guild gets a rare item for all guild members
- 21. Monetization event examples ● BCG that just released a star 6-card “Death Dragon” set ● Special “Hell’s Bog” map appears rarely, and only if you equip one Limited time event • Hell’s Bog available for next 72 hours • Special Death Dragon packs on sale for 72 hours w/ 5x chance of dropping a Death Dragon card Spender rewards week • Receive gifts for spending certain amounts $50 --> 3 Premium Card Packs $100 --> 5 Death Dragon Card Packs $200 --> 5 Premium Card Packs, 5 Death Dragon Card Packs $300 --> 10 Premium Card Packs, Death Dragon 1 card $400 --> 10 Premium Card packs, Death Dragon 2 card $500 --> 10 Premium Card packs, Death Dragon 3 card
- 22. Monetization event (2) ● A game’s economy is out of whack – sources/sinks didn’t match ● Need to suck raw materials out of world ahead of a new update Crafting event • All crafting has a 3x rate of success • Certain catalyst materials are on sale High-value auction • Auction off rights to name a street in the game • Sell lottery tickets for rare aesthetic items
- 24. Content event examples ● An MMORPG releases a new dungeon and wants to build hype ● The dungeon boss releases very rare loot Triple boss drop rate • Rare loot drop rate is tripled for first week after launch
- 25. Marketing event examples ● Ninja-bee wanted to cross-promote its 3 titles by providing exclusive content for purchasing new games ● E.g., World of Keflings: ● See a unique new buildings in tech tree ● To obtain blue print, install & run Raskulls ● New building adds cute new characters
- 26. Tactical event example (1) 0 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 LTV($) Level Reached Weekly $ by level ● A MMO strategy game achieves highest rate of spend after level 10 ● Most players reach level 10 around week 5 ● Current week 5 cohort is lower L10 % than average ● Solution: targeted XP event – triple XP for week 5 cohort < L10 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 %ofplayerswhoreachedL10 Week # post install % reached L10 by weekly cohort
- 27. Tactical event example (2) ● An empire builder is getting old; new player installs are down ● Players are therefore concentrated at higher levels ● Therefore not enough competition for new players ● Solution: leveling event that cuts building times in half for levels <5; event runs unpredictably to avoid creating expectations 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Player distribution by level
- 29. Effective offers require you to have good tools ● Classic example from telecom: After MCI came up with popular Friends & Family plans, AT&T didn’t respond for 18 months ● Why? AT&T’s platform couldn’t support the change
- 30. Promotion examples: ● Featured items ● Bundled items ● Discounted items ● Limited time promotions ● Instant offers ● Shuffle around object order ● Send come back offers
- 31. Featured Items
- 33. “Lapsed user” promotions ● Send a local notification to your inactive (dead) players to bring them back! ● Day 4: No benefit ● Day 8: Small benefit ● Day 15: Medium benefit ● Day 30: Big benefit
- 34. Key technology building blocks ● Business Intelligence (BI) ● Localization ● Messaging ● Gifting / awarding ● Targeting / segmentation ● Ability to change key game variables
- 35. Good BI challenges scalability ● Most DB’s optimized for reads, not writes ● But BI is all about writes… lots of writes ● And the reads are across lots of data Game Log files Event store BI Tools Events Buffer
- 36. Localization ● Can boost revenue 30-40% ● But more than just the game… ● All events & event messaging ● All offers and promotions ● Requires rapid-turn around ● Machine translation not yet good enough
- 38. Interstitials
- 43. In-game mail
- 44. Targeting / Segmentation ● Should be able to act on all actions captured by the game
- 45. Modifying game variables for events ● Rate of XP gain ● Loot drop tables ● Energy recharge rates ● Prices
- 46. Live Ops checklist ● Can your BI tools analyze player behavior? ● Can you set up different types of events? ● Can you message to your players? ● Can you modify game variables? ● Can you create limited time offers? ● Can you grant items to players?
- 47. Special thanks to… ● CoverFire: Chris Ko & Jim Hughes ● Mike Pagano ● Matthew Smith ● Steve Taylor
- 48. Questions? Contact me: James@playfab.com @gwertz (psst… we provide solutions for LiveOps. Check out our platform at playfab.com)