Ran Shahar outlines a process for generating and prioritizing new feature ideas for a game. New ideas are generated from analyzing multiple sources, including player feedback, demographics, competitors, industry trends, and game analytics. The ideas are then prioritized based on business goals, projected performance, time to market, audience acceptance, development costs, and opportunity costs to select which ideas should be implemented first.

1. Ran Shahar ,Product Manager

2. Features Ideas Generation and
Prioritization Process
• Features ideas are generated based on analysis and
synthesis of information collected: multiple sources
can point to specific types of features
• The list of ideas is then prioritized based on the
business and operation considerations
• The ideas and prioritization is discussed with team
members for additional insights

3. Generating Ideas from Players
Generating new features ideas and prioritizing are based on
collecting and analyzing multiple information sources
Generating new features ideas from players
• Players requests and suggestions gathered from social
channels, support, surveys etc. – players can generate ideas
based on their perspective and experience of the game which
can not be generated from KPIs
• Player demographics, players player types, players game
preferences, other games played by players – alignment of
features and players preferences and motivations increases
the probability of feature success

4. Generating Ideas from Market
• Competitive intelligence: what new features
direct and indirect competition implement in
their games and industry trends in general-
keeping ahead of the competition can be a
differentiating factor and increase acquisition
and retention
• Industry news: blogs, social media and forums

5. Generating Ideas from Experts & Culture
• Experts: professional offer talks in conferences
such as GDC or Casual Connect
• Culture: sports events, viral trends,
technology trends, movies, books etc.

6. Game Analytics
• Relevant KPIs such as engagement and
monetization of current features that might be
related or KPIs that indicates issues in current
player life cycle

7. New Features Prioritizing Ideas
Prioritizing which new feature to develop requires considering
business and operation information to select which of the
ideas will be developed and implemented first
Considerations
• Business Goals vs. Projected Performance (monetization,
acquisition, etc.) the feature has to fit with the overall
business goals and strategy
• Time to Market: being ahead of the competition
• Current audience acceptance: not to alienate current
players which might lead to player leaving

8. Prioritizing Ideas: Costs
Costs Considerations
• Time required to develop the feature to avoid
blocking the development pipeline
• Resources (such as team members needed)
• Opportunity costs (what can be developed
instead) Is it possible to generate similar or better
results with different solutions