Live events are useful for player retention and driving key metrics like logins, play time, spending, and engagement. They also provide short-term goals, highlight game content, foster community, and create a shared history. To deliver successful live events, developers need to balance predictability and surprise. Live event teams should have a process focused on goal setting, data collection, analysis, and iteration to continually improve events. Common live event types include login events, game modes, drop events, tournaments, and goal events, each with different purposes and best practices.

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Crystin Cox
LiveOps Evangelist
Azure PlayFab
The Art and Science of Live Events

2. Live Events
The Fun Never Stops!
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3. What are live events good for? Retention!
If we make a content treadmill, players will run on it and we get all these wonderful things
But thinking about all the things live events could get us as developers, won’t help us design good live events.
It will help us evaluate them, but we’ll get to that later.
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Retention!
Logins
Play time
Spending
Engagement
Glory

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WHAT DO PLAYERS GET OUT OF
LIVE EVENTS?

5. Short term goals at the end game to keep players going.
Directing to and highlighting game content
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Connect back to core game play

6. Community shared history
Community.
Live events create shared history.
Make a game feel alive
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7. Short term reward loops
Live events increase satisfaction by providing extrinsic rewards to compliment your intrinsic core loops.
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8. Okay, how do we deliver all these things to players with live events and get what we need as developers?
I’ll start with the high level and then drill down to specifics.
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When Players Get…
• Logins
• Play time
• Spending
• Engagement
• Glory
• Core game play
• Community
• Rewards
Devs Get…

9. To deliver a great live events strategy, you need to be predictable and surprising.
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You must be…
SurprisingPredictable

10. • Really, you need to be dependable. You must establish yourself as part of your players’ lives, if you’re going to
make the transition from consumed entertainment to hobby, players need to be able to establish something of a
routine around your game.
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11. • Reliability is key and frequency is ideal as it will allow you to iterate quickly and move past misses without your
community left to dwell on them. This requires a content pipeline and tools that will allow you to produce
temporary content easily and manage multiple event teams.
• The scheduling approach I have found most successful, has the live team’s primary target as date. Building
individual events and items modularly so that they can slip to later releases if needed but the team never misses
a release. To achieve this I have usually worked with plans for 12 months with the next 6 months being firm.
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12. Live Event Team
Design Lead
Artists Programmers
Producer
Community
Manager
Brand
Manager
Business Owner
Creative Owner
Stakeholders
Those teams should look like tiny content teams. Multi-disciplinary and design lead. Additionally they need to be
strongly paired with marketing and community. I always like to have a community manager and brand manager
embedded with the team if possible.
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13. Live Events Process
Goal
Setting
Design Build
RunAnalyzeIterate
The process for these teams is focused on goal setting, data collection and analysis, then iteration.
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14. Goal
Setting
Design Build
RunAnalyzeIterate
Live Events Process
You’ll get the most out of live events by having clear, measurable goals and a strong post-mortem process so the
live team can iterate. Live events are all about player participation and you should expect that they will get better
as your team learns more about your community and how they engage with limited time content.
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15. Now let’s go over the basic types of live events used in games and how to best utilize them.
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Live Events
Types and Targets

16. Login Events Example
Purpose
• Encourage consistent logins
• Entice back lapsed players
Best Practices
• Ask for more than just a login
• Have a progression
• Make it about community
Goals
• Unique logins
• Play session length
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17. Game Modes Example
Purpose
• Entice back lapsed players
• Increase logins
• Prevent churn
Best Practices
• Different but not too different
• Make it special
• Add community elements
Goals
• Unique logins
• Re-acquistion
• Retention
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18. Drop Events Example
Purpose
• Increase play time
• Prevent churn
Best Practices
• Be generous
• Include messaging
• Monetization element
Goals
• Unique logins
• Play session length
• Retention
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19. Tournaments Example
Purpose
• Increase play time
• Prevent churn
Best Practices
• Broaden the audience
• Reward tiers
• Careful with global leaderboards
Goals
• Re-acquisition
• Play session length
• Retention
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20. Goal Events Example
Purpose
• Increase play time
• Increase logins
• Increase social engagement
Best Practices
• Working together is better
• Be generous
• Careful with public tracking
Goals
• Increase session length
• Increase engagement
• Increase logins
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21. Want to Learn more?
10 demo stations right here in the Microsoft booth
The PlayFab Definitive Guide to LiveOps
Tech-spert Lounge
playfab.com
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