From Hyper to Casual & Merge - Gus Viegas, Lessmore

Uh next I talk uh about uh from hyper to casual and merge how to soft launch and grow around hybrid monetization. And it's from new studio Less More who got Guy Viegas coming to talk to us uh on that topic. So Hello everyone. Nice to see you. I'll give you a moment to put your headsets on. Thank you. Thank you all so much for joining me here today. So today is going to be an interesting talk

because I'm literally just going to be talking about some stories that I've had over the last few years. So brace yourselves. I might have to go fast and if you have any questions about anything, save them to the end or maybe even after the talk. I'll have some things to share. So today's topic is again hodgepodge of let's see if this works. Does it? There we go. Today's topic, we're talking about different learnings. Mostly four different topics around four different companies. Not necessarily in order and I'm not going to name names. But mostly from my time at Rovio, my current time at Less More and some other companies. Let's start and I would argue that we should start from not only the beginning but where companies should really start focusing all of their attention on the

most, which is monetization. And in terms of monetization, most of us think of it as a binary. We think, "Oh, we either do purchases, in-app purchases, or we do ad-based revenue." I would argue that yes, they're massively different. On one side, one is hunting for whales. On the other, you're hunting for scale. So, the thing is you would think that you could mix and match them mix and match them, but the thing is your focus gets so splintered in a way. You have to think that a team that is good at hyper-casual, let's say, which is a more ad-driven business, has to focus on scale, focus on speed. All of their learnings are in hours, not days. You have to immediately adapt. So, you have to have fast, dynamic teams that are used to restart into a new game almost

immediately the next week. It has nothing to do with the titans of our industry that have the purchase, in-app purchase models, in which you're spending months making models, trying to understand, predict the LTV, trying to understand your user in more depth. But I am greedy. So, I believe that we can emerge both. And there are some easy ways. So, based on my past experience, and this talk kind of came from working with games that had 50/50 models, there are some easy wins, some easy wins. I think a lot of the in-app purchase teams are scared of ads because they believe they will wreck their retention or something like this. If you are scared, it's simple. Put some rewarded ads in a corner. After a few days, something very simple. You don't need to go full on interstitials, banners, blah blah blah. Try it. Test the waters because, quite

frankly, if you just serve free ads uh impressions a day on a rewarded ad, it already will multiply your revenue, and it won't take almost anything from the retention. Users are used to ads by now. It's way more easy than that you'd think. Then, on the other corner, you have the in uh the advertisement giants of hypercasual. And they, quite frankly, a lot of them don't have the expertise for purchases. But, you can start easy. So, the idea with uh ad-based monetization models is that you're broad appealing. So, why not try monetization features in the purchase side that are also broad appealing. So, we all know the revolution that the battle pass was. And the reason it's a revolution it's because it has one of the highest conversion rates in the industry. You're not uh necessarily dependent on uh point 01% of your population to monetize

everything. Maybe you have 1%. Maybe you have 10% if you're lucky. Maybe I've heard cases of 20 and more. So, I would argue it's not super hard to implement. So, we've been talking about uh random sporadic learnings. Let's talk about what can also go wrong at certain extent. I've had uh the privilege of working for merge, but I have to say that merge is a very hot contested area, and it has some really good benefits and some really big negatives. And it's because at the heart it's a genre that is between two worlds, the world of puzzle that is more complex, that is more like uh casual. And on the other you have the hypercasual. You can see this by some titles being mostly driven exactly like a hypercasual game and others being driven exactly like a puzzle game. Uh It was very interesting as in a UA point of view. And I think this is the thing that I

want to share more for my you UA um colleagues, which is you literally could pick an algorithm of your choice. You could try to focus on in-app purchases or you could focus on cheap CPI a la hypercasual, and both would work. So, what could you do? You could segment your user base into two separate uh piles. You could flag them. But, that takes a lot of data effort. That takes a lot of uh implementation effort. Uh you could try nowadays there are more blended uh models in UA networks, but those are relatively new. Uh the UA networks are usually focused on one KPI at a time. So, I have to say it is very tempting, but it's not as good as you'd think unless your team is already ready for quick adaptation on on CPI, chill, hypercasual-style campaigns, and

a long amounts of modeling on the in-app purchase and optimization on the other side. So, another cool thing. Sec- the second topic here, we're going to talk about the steps of a soft launch. So, let's imagine that you already have formulated your team and you know, "Hey, I decided to focus mostly on, let's say, purchases." So, the thing is each of your soft launch phases, I would argue you have to pick a KPI. You have to pick a field. You shouldn't necessarily uh try to test everything at once, or else uh it will be virtually impossible unless your team is massive, and in which case you wouldn't be listening here. So, start with a technical launch. Never forget this because when you're doing for instance an ad monetization model, crashes are a huge huge ordeal. And it's going to crash way more than you think. So, it's really important to do that technical launch. It might just be a day

of UA, nothing really fancy, just something to make sure that your user base is not crashing massively. Once you're done that hurdle, go into your your main KPIs and focus on them. I would argue one thing that I've seen on the companies that are the most successful is also user testing. Never underestimate it. As UA managers, we are usually focused on quantitative testing, but never underestimate the power of qualitative testing. Actually seeing videos of a user playing it for half an hour makes a whole difference to figure out why things are broken. Anyway, I'm just going over basics. But one thing that most companies on a more startup level don't get to reach is the next stages. It's more when you get to monetization. A lot of the people when they're testing, they're focusing on retention first, and that's perfectly fine and reasonable. But do not forget your monetization plan from day one. And

I would argue the most efficient way is to plan an amount of time of session time of users that is rife with opportunities to monetize later. So, in other words, you're already planning, okay, I need 20 minutes to monetize this much to get to this LTV. So, the first stage of soft launch testing is more around getting to those 20 minutes, getting that retention, getting that session time. But once you get there and you have proven that your CPI is at a certain level, and your session time is at a certain level, now you're starting to fill up. Think about it as a bar filling up until it gets to the very top and you get that LTV. Try to overextend your target because once you get to scale, everything will get worse. So, your CPI will get worse, your retention will get worse. So, always overshoot your goals. And then remember, when scale happens, the KPIs will change. So,

you cannot validate a global launch until you kind of global launch to a certain extent. Anyway, here's some examples of things that have failed in the past. So, we have uh trying small samples in both time or scale, uh which give golden cohorts, which is a definitely real thing. I cannot I cannot stress enough that it isn't a myth. It does exist. So, I already have people laughing because they know exactly what I'm talking about. So, uh that is one thing that is big no-no. Second no-no, uh it's a more recent one in the last 1 year or 2. Uh I would say do not trust only one ad network or one social media giant. Try to diversify as soon as possible because you never know. A game that might completely fail on Facebook might completely succeed on a different network. I have seen it. Also, on the other hand, don't If it

doesn't work once or twice, don't forget to kill it. Celebrate it. Let's do it like Supercell. Pop open a bottle of champagne. Do not fall in love with your game as much as you care for it. And the last one, again, more specific to UA managers, uh do not fake your creatives during the soft launch. You want to focus on your core KPIs. You want to prove your retention. You want to prove everything that you have right now as is. Yes, I know that for mid-core is fake creatives are super important. Great. Get your core checked first. And once you're done you're done, you probably have failed. Because here's the thing, any company, doesn't matter how good it is, has a hit rate, not a hit certainty. So, even if for some miraculous reason two out of three of your games or even 90% of your your games are successes, you will miss 10% of the time. It will happen. It is inevitable. So, one of the things that I really really like to warn

people is to remember that that happened. And it's happened a lot to me. After a decade, you will see misses. Do not take it personally. That is the last thing you want to do. You understand it's a product thing. I'm actually going to skip this one and go straight to solutions on how to move on because quite frankly, don't focus on why you had mistakes. Focus on what you can learn. So, move fast. Remember to recycle the things that did work. Yes, it is possible to learn KPIs from your previous successes. Yes, if you are were really good at creatives anyway, you can still get those same learnings and get low CPI anyways. You can get high retention again. I've seen teams the teams that are good at one KPI, they will still be good tomorrow. And that brings me to the most important thing is the team. Do not love the product, love the team. The team learned things. The team is still great. SWOT it. So, by that I mean, check their

strengths, check their weaknesses, understand exactly why they succeeded in some areas and failed in others. Be objective. You love them. You want the best for them. You don't love the products. They're just products. They're not real people. So, but let's talk about what if things go right? And I have seen this, too, and it's very nice. There's four lessons here when you actually succeed. First of all, I don't care what you say. I've heard all the excuses under the sun for the for not monetizing. I've I've heard, "Let's increase the retention, because then you'll have uh more opportunities to monetize." No, just monetize them. Uh you don't solve a problem of having wanting to move an object on the table by moving the table. You move the object on the table. Like retention is important to scale up, don't get me wrong, of course. But there's innumerable opportunities to scale monetization. So, I've seen a lot of teams focus on this particular

mistake. Second, blame it on UA. Why not? It's tempting. It's right there. UA, their CPI sucks, and they suck, too, and you your product is amazing. No. Uh UA is an amplifier, a modifier of your success. The product is king. The product dictates everything. So, yes, you can do fake ads, and suddenly your CPI goes down. Yes, you can get a different audience that retains more. That is all possible, but it's a modifier. It's a 10% 20% difference. Don't overestimate it. Focus on the product. And the last, more for the tinier companies, that the data maybe uh is too overwhelming for you. Maybe you don't have a good LTV model. Maybe you don't get it. It's fine. Simplify it. Doesn't matter. Uh I've seen a lot of companies succeed with the simplest model in the universe, which is just how much money is coming in, how much money is going out. They succeeded. Do not overcomplicate things. Second, what do you model? So, if you do

go into models, I would suggest 70% of your of the effort, or how should I say, 70% of the value of modeling comes from just understanding how does the LTV grow per source. So, let's say you have a beautiful Unity campaign, and it's doing amazingly. Measure out how amazingly it is because on day one it might be over here, on day 30 it's over there, and now you know by 30 you have this much amount of money, and you know how much you're going to spend. Remember, CPI is a factor of your LTV, so knowing your LTV is half the battle or in this case 70% of the battle. But, okay, let's imagine that you have a more uh a more robust data team or more time under your hands or you already figured out the the LTV growth factor. What do you do next? So, we now have talked a lot about iOS 14 and how you need to predict the LTV because you don't have as much data as you used to. I would argue at the aggregate you still do have

all the data that you want. Obviously, attributing it is a bit harder, for sure. But, for that you go to LTV predictor events. Great, model those. Then, this is the one that I see the most games companies focus on the most is understanding their funnel from start to finish. I understand that you are product-oriented people. You love to to understand what's the funnel, and it's very important. For instance, if you do fake ads, you want a funnel that is consistent from the fake ad to the store page to the tutorial to increase the conversion rate because for instance, on a fake ad you have lower CPI, but the retention is worse. So, you want to take care of that funnel. Great. But, why did you go to fake ads? Why did you focus on a funnel? Because you already did your homework. You already did the basics. And now, for those more fancy over there, you might uh consider that the CPI is different at every single point. So, why not understand exactly how it evolves? Find your sweet spot. Understand what's the biggest um absolute ROI that you can get get.

And for us UA managers, we like to talk about creative exhaustion, and there's more. Again, skipping ahead, there's infinity things to talk about. Now, the spiciest subject in UA for the last year. I would argue never never again will we only do two UA channels, period. I don't believe in this. I've seen countless companies fail at this and I've seen countless companies succeed because of this. Remember, it is perfectly fine to validate early learnings on a Facebook or on a TikTok or something. I've seen it work. That's fine. But that's at the very very very start. Once you're already spending 10K, 20K, 30K in UA spend, you already want to go to the next network. You want to go as fast as humanly possible. It's actually, and I've tested this again in different companies, it's actually more profitable to go and spray and pray on multiple

different networks with the least amount of optimization rather than sticking with one or two and optimizing and being really good at them. It's way more efficient. Yes, there's more paperwork. Yes, it's more hard to to read the dashboards. There's way more analysis. But don't make it a paralysis. Just just do it. It's simple. And there's more, but again, skipping ahead. To the most important topic, which is less is more. And this is kind of the the the summary of all the things that I've been saying, I think, is that you don't and analyze if you don't have a need. There's a lot of people that spend a lot of time just creating dashboards that lead nowhere. [ __ ] it. Go ahead. Analysis only what blocks you. Uh and also, another mistake I've seen very often, read the data as is, not as you hope it will be once you release that amazing social feature that will change everything. It will not change everything. Your KPIs will be the same. Move on. Uh check the data as is. Oh,

but the 2E is not ready yet. No. Weirdly enough, retention doesn't change as much as you as much as you'd think. UA factors actually change retention more than you'd think rather than uh a good uh first-time user experience. And last but not least, uh don't do decisions if you don't need them. Again, oh, we might be leaving money on the table because we haven't launched on a certain geo, we haven't optimized for a certain geo, we haven't translated it. Who cares? Focus on what matters the most, be objective, less is more, and simplify those processes to the hour so you don't waste time. Thank you. Yeah. I don't know how much time I have. You've got about You've got a minute or two, actually. Gus, that was incredible. A real A real whistle-stop tour of some great insight there. Yeah, that's that's it. If you can You want to pop that on. Does anyone have any questions for Gus? We maybe have time for perhaps one or two questions.

Again, I know it was very, very broad here, but it was to condense it to It was great, yeah. It was a lot lots of actionable things that I think are just great insight, yeah. Does anyone have any Have any questions for Gus? I'm seeing this. Well, what I suggest then is since you're around, you can look up Less More on the Meet to Match platform and find you there, perhaps. And you're around around to perhaps this evening for a drink or maybe tomorrow at the conference. We've got another day, so people can find you there. Yeah. Great. Well, look, thank you very much. Yeah, and please do seek out Gus for more insight. Thanks. Thank you Cheers.