My talk from this years GDC (the VCON event). Focusing on ways to improve item sales within mmos and games without necesssarily changing game play. There's a lot we can learn from traditional retailers!

1. Applying Retail Strategies to Item Merchandising
William Grosso

2. AGENDA
• The Merchandising Problem
• Simple Things that Make A Difference
• Recap

3. What is Merchandising Anyway?

4. Monetization is not Glamorous

5. Yo u ’ v e G o t O t h e r T h i n g s t o D o

6. T h e S h o r t Ve r s i o n
• You can make a lot of money in the free-to-play mode.
• It requires work, and thought. But it ain’t rocket surgery.
• You will need to have people on it, full-time.
• You will need to pay attention to the data.
• Most of what you need to know, you can learn by looking around.

7. AGENDA
• The Merchandising Problem
• Simple Things that Make A Difference
• Recap

8. The Importance of Gifts

9. Home Depot versus Ragnarok

10. This is How We Celebrate the Holidays

11. Bundling

12. Discounts and Supplements

13. A n d Ti e I t I n t o L o y a l t y C u r r e n c y

14. Why Not?

15. Pe rs o n a l i ze T h e
D i s co u n t

16. U s e D i ff e r e n t Ty p e s o f C o u p o n s

17. Segment the Market

18. Price Experimentation

19. AGENDA
• The Merchandising Problem
• Simple Things that Make A Difference
• Recap

20. Copy the Real World and Keep What Works

21. Basic Strategies are Obvious
• Make it easy for non-players to give gifts.
• Bundle items (and recommend the bundles).
• Adopt discounting and supplementing.
• Give away loyalty currency to reward commercial actions as well.
• Offer personalized discounts.
• Use coupons.
• Segment the market.
• Experiment with prices.

22. Measure Everything
• The basic strategies are obvious.
• Applying them to your world requires optimization.
• Make sure you have enough data.
• Make sure that you experiment.
• Make sure that you listen to the data.