Introductory talk on life cycle of F2P games from business perspective, given at the opening of Ganymede Academy.

1. GAMES VS MONEY
Maciej Mróz
CEO Ganymede
WWW.GANYMEDE.EU

2. TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS DESIGN

3. GAMES VS MONEY!

4. GAME LIFE CYCLE
Greenlight
Production
Operations
Sunset

5. GREENLIGHT
It's a game, so we have to ask:
Is it fun?
But it's also business, so the
second question is:
Why should we build it?

6. GREENLIGHT
Do the homework
Who is the game for (target group)?
What is the target platform?
What is the unique selling point?
IP licensing opportunities?

7. GREENLIGHT
Do the homework
What our competition is doing?
Do we have any benchmarks for similar
products?
What are alternative projects we could
do?
Do we have the resources?

8. MARKETING PLAN
What is the marketing budget?
How are we going to acquire users?
How are we going to keep them?
How are we going to monetize?

9. DEVELOPMENT
Keep it short!
If you keep it under wraps, you are:
• Not learning about your real
users
• Not validating assumptions made
at greenlight
• Not adapting to market changes
• Possibly just burning money
Canceling project early can be a
success!

10. Validate your game idea first
•Everything else usually can be deferred
•MVP is probably half of what you think it
isEvery game
is a learning
opportunity
Be prepared for the
unexpected
Careful about future
proofing by developers
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
“Lean startup” approach

11. Team dedicated to
a game may
actually grow post
release
Users expect new
content/features to
be delivered on
regular basis
A lot of effort
spent on
optimization
• A/B testing
experiments
• Exploratory
analytics
Successful games
are serving
players for many
years
11
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Release is only the beginning...

12. F2P- DOMINANT BUSINESS
MODEL
F2P is nothing new - Dropbox,
Evernote, etc
Revenue opportunity vs
marketing opportunity
• Top spenders/hardcore fans vs
casual players vs non-
spenders
• No such thing as "average
player"
• Value perception is subjective

13. BEING CLOSE TO PLAYERS
Focus groups
Community management
Customer support
Data analytics!

14. VALUE OF DATA
Provide actionable insights
Provide great content
recommendations
Provide more accurate ad
targeting

15. VALUE OF DATA
Optimize pricing
Make operations more efficient
Improve categorization/tagging/
sentiment analysis

16. BASIC KPIS
Basic metrics and their meaning
• MAU/DAU
• Retention (D1/D7/D28)
• Avg. session time, Avg. sessions
• Conversion, ARPPU
• ARPU
o Incorporates other sources of revenue than
direct payments
• Virality, social interactions

17. LTV
One metric to rule them all
LTV - Life Time Value
LTV for users who already left is
definite, but not really useful
We have to predict!
There's no such thing as universal LTV
formula
• Too many moving parts
• So we build models

18. OPTIMIZING PLAYER LIFE
CYCLE
LTV is an outcome of massive and
never ending work
• New content
• A/B testing of game features
• Funnel analysis
• User segmentation/classification
• CRM systems
• Community management

19. USER ACQUISITION
Game will not be successful without
great marketing
o Don't bet your life on being one of the
outliers!
CAC - Customer Acquisition Cost
If LTV > CAC, you're good
Organic traffic is not really free, CAC >
0!!!

20. USER ACQUISITION
In reality it's a bit more complex than
that:
• LTV varies by user cohort
• CAC varies by acquisition channel,
targeting, even time
• LTV vs CAC is predicted and tracked per
campaign
• Can even be predicted per user (RTB)

21. ADVANCED TOPICS
Recommendation systems
Classification/clustering of players
Fraud detection
Cross promotion inside portfolio of games
• Optimal path of player
• Indirect acquisition
• Amortizing CAC across multiple games