Running live game events for fun and profit
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Launching a great F2P game isn’t enough these days to win. You need a great live operations strategy as well — and the tools to execute it. We’ll talk about how to build our your operations plan and then take a deep dive into one key component: in-game events.
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Running live game events for fun and profit
- 1. RUNNING LIVE GAME EVENTS FOR FUN AND PROFIT James Gwertzman, CEO
- 3. Build game Build backend Launch Build tools for ops team Segment & target customers Deploy servers Offers & Promotions Update content Host in-game events Customer service Nowadays… Business intelligence Business intelligence
- 4. 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
- 5. 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
- 6. Key components of Live Ops • Events • Business Intelligence (analytics) • Offers & promotions • Store / catalog management • Customer service • User acquisition
- 7. Key components of Live Ops • Events • Business Intelligence (analytics) • Offers & promotions • Store / catalog management • Customer service • User acquisition
- 9. No game updates, revenue spikes are due to events only
- 10. 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
- 11. It starts w/ a calendar KPI actuals KPI forecast
- 12. Tailoring events for your players Courtesy of Janaki Kumar and Mario Herger. Copyright: CC-Att-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported).
- 13. 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
- 14. 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
- 17. 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 $500 --> 10 Premium Card packs, Death Dragon 3 card
- 18. Monetization event (2) • A game’s economy is out of whack – sources/sinks didn’t match • Need to suck raw materials out of world ahead of a new update Crafting event • All crafting has a 3x rate of success • Certain catalyst materials are on sale High-value auction • Auction off rights to name a street in the game • Sell lottery tickets for rare aesthetic items
- 20. Content event examples • An MMORPG releases a new dungeon and wants to build hype • The dungeon boss releases very rare loot Triple boss drop rate • Rare loot drop rate is tripled for first week after launch
- 21. Marketing event examples • Ninja-bee wanted to cross-promote its 3 titles by providing exclusive content for purchasing new games • E.g., World of Keflings: – See a unique new buildings in tech tree – To obtain blue print, install & run Raskulls – New building adds cute new characters
- 22. Tactical event example (1) • A MMO strategy game achieves highest rate of spend after level 10 • Most players reach level 10 around week 5, but current week 5 cohort is lower L10 % than average • Solution: targeted XP event – triple XP for week 5 cohort < L10 0 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011121314151617181920 LTV($) Level Reached Weekly $ by level 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 %ofplayerswhoreachedL10 Week # post install % reached L10 by weekly cohort
- 23. 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
- 24. Key technology building blocks • Business Intelligence (BI) • Localization • Messaging • Gifting / awarding • Targeting / segmentation • Ability to change key game variables
- 25. 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
- 26. Localization • Can boost revenue 30-40% • But more than just the game… – All events & event messaging – Requires rapid-turn around • Machine translation not yet good enough
- 29. Interstitials
- 34. In-game mail
- 35. Targeting / Segmentation • Should be able to act on all actions captured by the game
- 36. Modifying game variables for events • Rate of XP gain • Loot drop tables • Energy recharge rates • Prices
- 37. Questions? Contact me: James@playfab.com @gwertz (psst… we provide solutions for Live Game Ops. Check out our platform at playfab.com)
Editor's Notes
- Before I go too deep, though, let’s start with some history. It used to be, we sold games in boxes on store shelves. Back then, there was no need for Live Ops. It didn’t exist.
- Now, however, games have becomes services, and suddenly launching the game is only the beginning. There’s all this other stuff that has to happen AFTER the game goes live – the service has to be managed.
- To me, live ops is what you do after a game goes live, typically by a dedicated LiveOps team, that can largely be done without modifying the game itself It’s a fine line, though, since you often need to change the game to support LiveOps
- a better way to think about it, perhaps, is what can you do with the tools you have to improve the performance of the game? But even this is a great area, because there’s a huge range of different tools. Everything from hacking SQL scripts and modifying the game DB directly, to a full set of “GM tools” that are purpose built for running the game. I’ve visited a lot of game companies, though, and looked at a lot of tools, and generally they suck because (a) no one wants to invest in tools until they know the game is a hit, and (b) by then it’s too late Tools are usually the bare minimum for the live ops team to get their work done, often w/ a lot of pain As a result, good live ops people have a “hacker” mentality – figure out how they can succeed w/ limited resources, being very creative
- There are several building blocks of successful live ops…
- There are several building blocks of successful live ops…
- Once you’ve figured out what you want to improve in your game, you can start to use LiveOps tools to adjust The most useful tool, as I mentioned at the start, are events Events are how you keep a game fresh and interesting, as well as the tool for making changes to your audience. They can be broad and apply to everyone, or incredibly focused and wielded like a scalpal to make fine adjustments. Disney is a master of this. At Disney World, they redress their amusement parks in keeping with whatever holiday or other seasonal theme they have going on, and adjust based on where in the world they are. This delights the customers without actually costing Disney that much.
- Here’s an example of the revenue performance of Tetris Blitz in Japan in February. There were no updates to the game that month – the huge swings in revenue performance were entirely due to live game events.
- Here’s a basic breakdown of event types… we’ll consider examples for each of these.
- A calendar with all post/coming events and updates is essential, without it you can correlate on first sight. Events for community, monetization VS update in the game (functional, patch) VS bug VS marketing stunt Track how each event performs on a scale of 10 – test every event, and re-use the ones that are the most effective Game events should be spontaneous and shouldn't follow always the same dates otherwise the players will wait for it which will diminish spendings. You have to mention general events (Halloween, Christmas) vs local events Super Bowl vs Rudby world cup. Have content for at least 3 month of gameplay after soft launch and already prepare content possibilities based on KPI validations of player types.
- But first, it’s worth noting that alll events have two components… the “fiction” of the event, and the “mechanic” of the event The mechanic is what’s actually changing The fiction is how you position it to the player The same mechanic can be positioned in many different ways – and I’d argue the fiction is more important than the mechanic
- Eternal saga, from Reality Squared Games
- Tera from En Masse Entertainment
- Events should auto balance the game economy with supply and demand while creating fun. Items and theirs relations with economy and fun (Feel of ownership, unlock higher tiers, rarity or limits) Inflation/Deflation tracking
- Gaia Online on left Lineage 2 on the right