Learn about LiveOps and how PlayFab enables the LiveOps mindset for game development.

1. Introduction to LiveOps
with Azure PlayFab
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2. Today, games are huge.
There are 2 billon gamers in the world and last year, games generated over $100 billion in revenue. Games are a big
deal and the market is continuing to expand.
But games have been through a lot of change to get here.
2
AN
AGE OF
CHANGE
$
100B+
Global expansion
2B+ Gamers

3. Games have changed as connectivity has expanded
Games as Product
• Single point of sale before experience
• Dominated by premium, in home
experiences
• Large buffer between game developers
and game players
First we had games as products.
Games were a single item that was purchased before playing
Playing required special hardware, it was a big event.
created a strong emphasis on advertising and marketing to generate demand and interest in a game
before release.
Developers rarely had an opportunity to interact with players, they created games mostly in isolation and
then delivered them as static objects.
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4. Games as Product Games as a Service
• Digital distribution
• Direct relationship
between developer and
player
• Dominated by mobile and
social platforms
Games have changed as connectivity has expanded
But as connectivity increased with the advent of the internet, the nature of games changed and we got
Games as a Services.
Digital distribution created a direct purchasing relationship between devs and players
This era is dominated by social and mobile platforms that were well positioned to take advantage of
digital distribution and connection.
This era was all about acquisition of players and popularized free to play as a business model.
But we are now moving past the games as a service era and moving onto the next evolution of games.
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5. Games as Product Games as a Service Games as Community
Games have changed as connectivity has expanded
We like to call this Games as Community
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6. Games as Community
• Many touch points at every part of the player
journey
• Dominated by multi-platform experiences
• Interactivity between developers and players
Games have changed as connectivity has expanded
Because this new era of games is about games as more than services, now games are about the
community of players engaging and with them and game developers are focused on growing and
retaining communities.
Many touch points of communication between the developer and the players all along the player journey.
Dominated by multi-platform experiences, games need to meet their communities where they are and
provide deep interactions between developers and communities both in and out of the games themselves.
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7. Top grossing games worldwide
1. League of Legends
2. Honor of Kings
3. Dungeon and Fighter Online
4. CrossFire
5. Monster Strike
6. Clash Royale
7. Fate/Grand Order
8. Candy Crush Saga
9. Pokemon Go
10. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
2017 2018
1. Fortnite
2. Dungeon and Fighter Online
3. League of Legends
4. Pokemon Go
5. CrossFire
6. Honor of Kings
7. Fate/Grand Order
8. Candy Crush Saga
9. Monster Strike
10. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
This new era of games as community is already having a massive impact on the industry. Here is the list of
the top grossing games worldwide for the past two years. One of the things that stands out about these
lists is how much overlap there is.
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8. Top grossing games worldwide
1. League of Legends
2. Honor of Kings
3. Dungeon and Fighter Online
4. CrossFire
5. Monster Strike
6. Clash Royale
7. Fate/Grand Order
8. Candy Crush Saga
9. Pokemon Go
10. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
2017 2018
1. Fortnite
2. Dungeon and Fighter Online
3. League of Legends
4. Pokemon Go
5. CrossFire
6. Honor of Kings
7. Fate/Grand Order
8. Candy Crush Saga
9. Monster Strike
10. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
90% carryover
90% of the games are on both lists. These games are building and managing communities to keep them
relevant and growing year over year. They are all employing the same kind of strategy.
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9. We call that strategy LiveOps. A strategy that cares deeply about continual engagement with player communities.
You’ve probably heard this term before but what does it mean?
9
IT’S CALLED
DESIGN AND PROCESS
FOR CONTINUAL ENGAGEMENT
LIVEOPS

10. We can start by looking at the term itself. It’s the combination of two words.
Live stands for Live Games. These are games that include some sort of connected experience or persistence. This
part of the term speaks to the design and engineering of a game as well as back end and services needed to make a
game live.
The other word is operations, this speaks to the continuation of the service, it's managing the game itself over a
period of time which requires process and structure, This is really about mindset and strategy in fact LiveOps all up
is a mindset more than it is a process .
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Live Game
• Connected experience
• Requires backend services
• Design and engineering shift
Operations
• Continuous investment
• Requires process and team
• Mindset and strategy shift
LIVEOPS

11. A way of thinking
about Players
• A community of people that do more than just play
• A complex mix of players that is always changing
and evolving
• People that are primarily motivated by intrinsic needs
• Your game is a part of their lives
What is LiveOps?
First it's a way of thinking about players.
As a community of people that's complex and changing and evolving over time
People are primarily motivated by intrinsic needs like mastering new skills or developing social
connections.
And it's about thinking of your game as a part of your players lives not just one piece of entertainment for
them to consume but something that's a hobby or interest that they want to engage with all the time.
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12. LiveOps is also an approach to product design and direction, specifically an approach that is player centric.
Traditional games as product tend to be developer centric in their design.
Liveops games tend to be more player centric. It's about what the players want, what are they interested in, how
they want to see the game evolve or change.
Delivering value to players, if they invest in your game they want to see a return back that makes sense
Traditional games as product oftentimes are about attraction How do I get you interested in this game How do I get
you excited for the launch but live OPS games are about continually satisfying people overtime as their needs
change as their experience with the game changes.
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An approach to
product design
and direction
• Design is player-centric
• Focused on delivering value to the player
• Design is a series of meaningful experiences
• It’s about satisfaction, not just attraction
What is LiveOps?

13. Live OPS is also a way of using data.
This is probably the thing that you've heard the most about live ops that it's all about collecting information and
analyzing it
More specifically live OPS is a way of looking at data that's focused on experimentation.
LiveOps uses data to validate hypothesis to come up with an idea and then test it and see if it works by looking at
the behavior of your players through data and that data is often surfaced and even interacted with in real time.
This means that decisions are offered centered around analysis and provable results.
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A way of using
data
• More than just vanity metrics
• Data is surfaced and interacted with in real time
• Decisions center around analysis
• Focus on provable results
What is LiveOps?

14. And finally live OPS is a process, it's an experimentation focused process.
Live OPS process is about iteration and evolution through frequent engagement.
Content needs to be flexible, we need to build features that are modular and can operate independently so we can
take them out or put them in or make significant changes to them after the game is live.
Demands the ability to ship frequently and always be ready to ship.
LiveOPs doesn't really like waterfall process, LveOps wants to be able to do things quickly to take things to just
ready put them into the game live and then see if they work and iterate on them and make them better and better
overtime.
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An
experimentation
focused process
• Focus on iteration and evolution
• Consistent and frequent player engagement
• Always ready to ship and ship constantly.
• Modular features that can operate independently
What is LiveOps?

15. All these things that make up the live OPS approach produce games that have longer player engagement cycles.
They produce games that engage players over a longer period of time.
You get that to some extent we just live games, a live game is going to have a longer tail then a game that is
completely static. But being live is not enough, it will extend the life of your game, but not grow it over time.
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Having a Live Game is not enough
Time
PlayerEngagement

16. You also need to add operation.
You need to actively manage, grow, and engage your community over time to really unlock the potential to grow
your game.
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LiveOps is where the magic happens
Time
PlayerEngagement

17. Good news, it’s never too late.
If you have a live game you're not operating it you can start operating today and start getting some of that benefit
In fact we've had a lot of games that have followed this exact path they've launched and maybe haven't been the
best experience in the world and then they've invested the time and effort adding that operational layer adding
that iteration layer and they've just gotten better and better and better and hit their stride even years after coming
out.
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And it’s never too late to start!
Time
PlayerEngagement

18. So that’s a lot of information about live ops but we’re really here to talk about play fat so how does play fab enable
LiveOps?
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HOW DOES
PLAYFAB
ENABLE
LIVEOPS?

19. MULTIPLAYER
Build social experiences
with cross-platform play
PLAYER MGMT
Stronger, secure
relationships
COMMERCE
Sell more virtual goods,
more easily
ANALYTICS
Measure and react
in real-time
COMMUNICATION
Foster healthy player
communities
AUTOMATION
Customize experiences
with cloud-hosted logic
CONTENT
Engage players with
frequent updates
Complement your
existing infrastructure
or adopt the entire platform.
Our suite of LiveOps tools and services
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20. PlayFab is completely platform agnostic
It supports the Games as Community future of multiplatform experience
Great to have all your data in one place even if your game is on multiple platforms
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• All major platforms
• All major devices
• All major networks
• All major game engines
• All major app stores
Completely agnostic

21. Going to walk you through some of the features that play fab offers that support the basic building blocks of
LiveOps
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BUILDING BLOCKS OF
LIVEOPS
Data Content Community

22. BUILDING BLOCKS OF
LIVEOPS
Data Content Community
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23. PlayFab has dashboards, but those are really just the beginning
We have dashboards for all the basic KPIs you might want to track.
But just looking at data is not enough
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Dashboards are just the beginning

24. Using data effectively is all about learning
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USING DATA EFFECTIVELY IS
ABOUT LEARNING
⬡ Form hypothesis
⬡ Try experiments
⬡ Analyze results

25. Capture game events in
Real-Time
It starts with capturing game events in real-time
PlayStream is our event logging system. Dozens of events out of the box are tracked automatically without any
additional work from you.
You can also make custom events to hook into actions and behaviors that are unique to your game.
All of those events role in in real time as it's happening in your game we're capturing all those real time events and
you can dig into them later at your leisure or you can set up PlayFab to have rules that trigger or scripts that fire
based on those events as they happen.
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26. Targeted push
notification
campaign
Test your Ideas
Based on all of this event data I might get a couple of ideas on how we could possibly improve the situations
Maybe if we did a push notification to the players in this situation to encourage them to get an achievement.
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27. Or maybe I actually have multiple hypothesis for how I might solve this problem
I can set up at AB test or multivariate test based on segmentations that I create inside of PlayFab
I can deliver different experiences to different players and see which one of my ideas works the best
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A/B test to try
multiple tests at
the same time
Test your Ideas

28. Now that the changes is made, we can look at the event data again to understand the result.
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21,340
46,953
1,212 1,354 578 1,239
5,388 6,323 4,231 3,923 4,123
15,300
-44,257
-76,368
-12,092 -10,447
-3,043
-6,479
-17,796
-9,196
-2,229 -820 -500 -784
Acquired Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6+ Level 10+ Level 20+ Level 30+ Level 40+ Level 50+
Population Churned
Measure Results

29. PlayFab can collect data from multiple sources
All that data can be visualized and acted upon by the rules engine in PlayFab
Or it can be sent out to other, third party applications to be acted upon
When PlayStream data flows in, that event data is retained for 30 days
You can also export that data from PlayFab into a Data Warehouse and keep it and act on it longer.
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Game Client
PlayFab data pipeline
3rd Party Apps
Platforms
PlayFab
Rules
Engine
Reporting
PlayFab
Insights
PlayStream

30. So now let's talk about the next building block of live OPS, content
30
BUILDING BLOCKS OF
LIVEOPS
Data Content Community

31. BUILDING BLOCKS OF
LIVEOPS
Data Content Community
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32. PlayFab offers many options for configuring and acting upon content
One of the best things about PlayFab is the ability to make changes to content that is living in the cloud
The ability to store a bunch of contact configuration and game data inside of the cloud allows you to act on that
content without producing new client
Even act on that content immediately by setting automated rules based on player behavior and create targeted
offers and promotions
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Make changes without a client build
Set automated rules based on player behavior
Create targeted offers and promotions
CONFIGURE CONTENT
IN THE CLOUD

33. For instance you can create and run live events from inside PlayFab
PlayFab has a powerful key value pair system that allows you to connect basically any number of content hooks
back into your game and then make changes to them at anytime
You can set up rules and segments so if you have a lot of these hooks already created inside of your game and you
want to do something like running an event that changes the drop rates off of enemies in your game or one that
offers up a game mode that's not usually available, you can do that from inside of PlayFab I just setting those
configurations and then deploying them
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Create and run a Live Event

34. You can also use play fab to manage your in game or platform stores through our Commerce tools
Set up any number of items bundles, containers, drop tables, and stores
That you target to specific player segments
Set up sales and offers in real time
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Manage in game and platform stores

35. PlayFab has a fantastic system for managing various tournaments rules associated with leader boards
Supports schedule resets and multiple leaderboards at a time.
Automated prize tables and distribution.
35
Run tournaments from top to bottom

36. In game events can set to trigger based on player or client behavior in game in real time.
36
Tigger actions from real-time events

37. OK now let's talk about the last building block of live OPS, community
37
BUILDING BLOCKS OF
LIVEOPS
Data Content Community

38. BUILDING BLOCKS OF
LIVEOPS
Data Content Community
38

39. Managing your community successfully in a live OPS game is really about knowing your players and trying to get as
much information about what they're doing and why they might be doing it and then acting on that information to
make the experience better for them
play fab has features like dynamic player segmentation, in game messaging, and multiplayer
It’s all multiplatform so you understand what your players are doing and deliver them targeted experiences
anywhere
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Dynamic player segmentation
In game messaging and push notifications
Multiplayer that is multi-platform
KNOW YOUR PLAYERS

40. Player segmentation is dynamic and real time
As players meet a criteria that you've set up in your segmentation they get moved into those segments and they
get acted upon based on those segments
Those actions can be player behavior based or event based or timing based
Anything that you can set up an inside of PlayFab can be used to act upon player segments, helping you create
experiences that are specifically targeted to the right players
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Player segmentation driven analytics and
in game events

41. PlayFab has a variety of player messaging
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In-game message
Push notifications
Email
Player Messaging

42. Full set of multiplayer services
Orchestrated multiplayer servers
Dynamic scaling that is worldwide supported by Azure
Matchmaking
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Multiplayer Servers

43. And we now have a set of player to player engagement features
Voice and text chat with real-time voice to text ability
Peer-to-peer hosting and relay
Persistent connections
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Player to Player Engagement

44. Those are just a few highlights. PlayFab supports all the building blocks of LiveOps in a variety of ways.
44
BUILDING BLOCKS OF
LIVEOPS
Data Content Community

45. Want to Learn more?
10 demo stations right here in the Microsoft booth
Tech-spert Lounge
The PlayFab Definitive Guide to LiveOps
playfab.com
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