Game Monetisation Design: Strategies, Trends, and Best Practices with Oscar Clark

Hello folks. How are we doing? Welcome to the game monetization design webinar. As I say, we're going to give you a little bit of time to get started. If you are not familiar with using Zoom, who am I kidding? Of course we're all familiar with using Zoom. Where were we 5 years ago? You should be able to remember that there is an option to use thumbs ups and various other uh reactions. Uh so if you want to raise your hand, if you want to um you know, give a reaction or you know, use an emoji, please feel free to do so. Uh I want this to be as interactive as possible. Um I want to be able to try and respond to your questions as we go along. Uh so again, feel very free to add comments in the chat. So we're going to be talking about game monetization design. Uh importantly, I want to make sure that we get a good understanding of some of the key functional elements to make sure

that you can have an ethical approach to monetization. And the reason that matters is because it's important that we keep players wanting to enjoy our game because the most effective way to monetize is to have people who love the game and want to keep buying things in it. And we'll come back to that principle as we go along. This is one of um three separate topics all building on the subject of monetization and game economies. This is the first one where we're talking about designing for engagement and retention and another element. And then finally, we'll talk about the game economy and balance design. So those are the topics for later. This is the free webinar where we'll be talking about the specifics of game monetization design. And obviously, this is the taste of of the interactive workshop that we would also be doing which you can also sign up for separately. So as I say, uh and Carl, thanks very much for commenting. Um and um yeah, there's an interesting

comments there about uh the Netherlands fine against Fortnite affecting Indies, and I think that's a topic we should get into uh probably closer to the end. But, let's talk about the fun of some of the functional elements of how we do this. Now, there's a lot of conversations about it the kind of the ethical kind of the design parts and also making sure that there's no predatory elements. Some of that will be better to deal with at the end, but some of that will be implicit in the approach that I'm uh recommending and the way that we're looking at it. So, I'm going to be dealing with things that are much more brass tacks kind of functional level to start with, and we're going to talk about the uh process uh as a result of that. So, let's kick off. Um what we're going to try and do is we're going to talk about a Well, first off, who am I? Uh so, I'm Oscar. I've been around the industry for a very very long time, at least 26 years. Uh I've been running online

uh gaming experiences from PC, uh mobile, and console. Uh I'm currently working as a uh publisher consultant in the uh live op space, but I do a lot of work where I'm helping people understand the function of their game from the monetization point of view and providing monetization game design advice. So, that's basically what I end up doing. Um we are going to talk in this uh in three sections. The first section we're going to talk about is player value. So, I want you to understand player value. He says, I'm going to put my head over here so it's a little bit clearer to see and read the the the comments. Um player value. This is the first thing we need to think about. It's absolutely critical, and the vital thing is forget about money. Now, now, don't get me wrong. Only for now, only for a moment, I'm not saying, you know, money that isn't important. If you start with money as our primary and sole driver, we will miss the point.

There's a fundamentally important factor in anyone who's trying to look at game monetization, and that is to understand this. What we do is identify and satisfy player value. That is the only thing that matters. And how do we know that? Why does that matter? Well, what let's look at why people play games. Well, we play because there's some things that we get out of it. We get a sense of competence. We get a sense of completion. We get a sense of control or escape. Well, you can take They're both sides of the same coin. We are controlling something, which is an escape from our normality. These are emotionally driving factors that apply to almost any game, and we cannot ignore one of the other elements, which is the principle of social capital. So, why do I like this? Well, part of what I like is what it says about me. So, the ability to show off

is absolutely vital. And that's why things like Fortnite are so, you know, clever in the way they do monetize because I buy outfits that I don't really get to see, but they are about me expressing myself. If the game doesn't support that, if the game doesn't make that important, why would anyone buy the cosmetic things in the game? But, it's more than that. And this comes actually from a piece of work done in 1960 by a guy called R. Bauer. It's called Consumer Behavior as Risk Taking. That means we need to understand what is driving any purchase. And this was not about games. This was about anything we might ever choose to purchase. So, we need to think about anticipation. Why am I looking forward to? it? What I'm hoping for? What's the kind of predictable surprise that I'm aiming for, that delight that I'm aiming for? But also, I won't act unless there is a fear of missing out. If I've got a reason to

act, I'm not going to. So, what is the fear of missing out in this process? Similarly, the social capital again matters. Why? Because I care if I get to express myself. I care if people will judge or view me based on that. I care if I'm part of a tribal group, if my social identity is connected with belonging, and that's reflected in this game. These are reasons why I play. But also, there's a fourth one. This is the most important one as far as I'm concerned, because it's the one that we don't control. And that is abnegation. Now, what does abnegation mean? Abnegation mean I set aside the things that I don't want, you know, that I know I should be doing. I know I should be going off and doing, you know, the washing and up. I should be going off and, you know, tidying my, you know, office. I'd never get around to doing that. Instead, I'm busy playing

Fallout 4 or whatever else the game is. We cannot control people's decision to set aside their other things. All we can do is create the conditions in which they choose to do that. And that's why we, you know, yes, you can manipulate people in the short term. Don't do that. Just just don't do that. It doesn't work in the long run. But we have to create the conditions that support our players. Um so, how do we do that? Well, we have to actually understand what it is they're getting out of our game. And for me, these things come down to the following. I need to understand things like the subsistence factors. What subsistence mean? Well, it means what do I need to have in order to play the game at all? Well, if I have to have health points to be able to play, then health is a subsistence thing. If I have to have a fuel to be able to drive my car, then fuel is a subsistence thing. Now, this

easily we could go into this is just free to play, this is you know, this mobile. It's actually more widely um important than that. The fact that I have to own a license for a pay up front game is a subsistence factor. That license itself becomes a thing I must have or I can't play. And we ignore what that does psychologically at our peril. So, we have to understand what that means. That's a blocker to participating. And if we put a price to that blocker, we're enhancing the barrier to entry in playing the game. So, we have to understand when we're offering goods and features and value, what they actually mean and how they affect the whole psychology of each player. So, moving on from that, we also have uh shortcuts. What are shortcuts? Shortcuts are anything that allows me to play longer, do better, maximize my output, maximize my rewards.

They could be any number of things. Again, it's important to understand what they do, how they affect gameplay, how they affect balance. Understanding those things really matter. So, shortcuts are going to be very important. Uh and that could be a power up crystal that gives me more strength temporarily. It could be a hat of wonder that makes me charming, makes everyone want to listen to me talking about monetization design. Okay, maybe that's stretching it a bit. But, the point is that shortcuts is understanding that what they're doing is they're enhancing play. They're enhancing play in ways which are generally beneficial. And you may have heard the phrase pay to win. Don't do that. Actually, I don't think that exists. But, I'll explain. Pay to win win means you've broken the game. It's not a game anymore if you can buy the means to win. So, understanding that pay to win is absolutely not going to help you sustain the revenue model of your game. Once you understand that,

then you'll understand the benefits of of where creating these beneficial elements of play matter, and why we're looking at it without just thinking about money. We're thinking about just what is the value for that. Social, again, you understand that already. Cosmetics, we delight on that. That's social value. But gifting is something we used to do a lot more of than we currently do. What strategy? Strategy I I used to define different ways to play. So, for example, if we introduce a new weapon type, say a machine gun versus a shotgun. Uh so, let's say the default weapon in the game is a machine gun. It's a line of fire. It does a constant rate of DPS. But if I introduce a shotgun, it changes the way we fire. All of that damage just happens in a moment, and there is a delay. Some of that delay is aiming and and preparing to shoot. Some of that delay is post shooting. But that different behavior changes how

I play strategically. So, that has a different element of how we look at strategy. Similarly, say the paper stone questions. I have a fire armor against your water sword. Well, your water sword's probably going to bounce my fire armor, and therefore be more effective than maybe an earth sword that might catch fire. Having this way of differently looking at what things we have in a game, how people enjoy it, what the value is, understanding what people want out of the game really matters to get stuff. Moving on from that, we have to understand what form that comes in. So, that means thinking about things like consumables. Is it a potion? Is it a one-off use and it's gone? Is it more durable? I call it an aspirational item, something I'm going to want. It's interesting about the difference between consumable and and these aspirational items is consumables are actually really valuable

at all times. And you use it, it's gone, but I can get another one. I can get another one. I can get another one. But, an aspirational item, once I've got the hat of wonder, I've got it, it becomes part of my hygiene, my normal factors of my experience. And I think understanding that there that there's a difference, once I own something, it is no longer special as opposed to having consumables which I can use to continuously boost. Capacity is about how many of those things I can hold. And generators, how many do I gain on a daily basis? So, understanding the forms that these things take can also be important. So, for example, knowing that I have fuel and that's a consumable, but I can get a bigger fuel tank, which gives you more capacity. I can buy a gas station, which gives you more fuel, which fills up my fuel tank more quickly. And then I can get a bigger car, but my bigger car uses more fuel. Now, we're starting to tell a narrative around the things in a game that players

can gain. We can look at the life cycle of a player and think about how these various elements can add to the value. For example, you know, are we looking at the abnegation at the start? Are we looking at anticipation at these different points? But, the point here is that if we ignore where the player is in their journey with our game, we don't look at our game in terms of its different behavior and needs, we are not going to be effective but understanding where these player value points fit in the overall experience. So, what have I tried to say to you so far? Let's Let's go back and think about this. We're talking about when we first start looking at monetization, we need to stop and not think about the money, but think about the value. We need to think about the forms that that value comes in and I've given you four uh types and four forms. Um so, basically, the uh subsistence, the social, the shortcuts, and the strategy goods versus

the forms of consumables, capacity generators, and aspirational items. And by understanding how we can take the things that players want and create structures for them that that we can then distribute that and where in their life cycle those things have different kinds of emotional value and how that affects their decision-making process of why they would want to buy or or otherwise engage with the game, that is going to put us in a incredibly strong position from which we can start understanding the value of our game and looking at how we can then build exchange into that. Hopefully, that all makes sense. So, with that in mind, we're going to move on to the second stage. And so, in this stage, we're going to talk about exchange. Yes, I know

previously we were saying forget about the money, but we're not just going to be talking about money here. Again, you'll notice I'm paying attention in my monetization design not just to cash as a hard exchange, but also how I build the journey for a player to build trust and engagement and excitement. And that is just as important as how we work out the bottom line. How we generate revenue comes from that engagement. Comes from that trust. So, a couple of things to note when we start looking at exchanges, the first thing is not every game is the same. Okay, we know this. But, as we increase complexity in the game, what that does is it increases potential average revenue per user. But, it tends to decrease the scale of the audience. Similarly, if we have simplicity, that again can help increase our

audience, but it comes at a cost in general where the margins that we're talking about will tend to decrease. So, you need to understand where in your game you want you know, what what what is your game actually offering? What does it need? And are you going to be focusing on high margin, high value options, or are you going to be focusing on maximizing conversion to small elements? Now, I should add a caveat to that. Whilst it is true that this is the case, please don't ignore high value items. If you happen to be doing the you know, simple game, they can still be incredibly valuable. Some people will use the word whale. Please don't do that anymore. It's not a good example. Whales refer to gamblers who have a fixed amount of budget want to stay in Vegas as long as possible. That is not the same behavior as what I

call a fan or a super fan in in mobile games in particular, but in games in general. A fan will have an amount of money they're willing to spend each month on your game. Now, don't get me wrong. Sometimes that will vary for various reasons, but I'm going to focus on these fans who have an of money they would want to invest in your game because they love your game. In order for them to invest in your game like that, they have to trust you. They have to have a disposable income. What's important is that the disposable income of a fan is not related to their degree of fandom. You have fans who have huge vast amounts of disposable wealth and fans who can barely scrape together a dollar a month. And we should love those fans equally. Because they absolutely contribute not just to the bottom line, but to the ability for other people to engage in that game. If we don't understand that spread and how that spread works in our game, we are not going to maximize the revenue of

the game anyway. So, let's talk about exchange in terms of its forms. There are various forms of exchange. Grind. That's the bit where they play and they keep playing. If you don't understand the grind model in your game, you're not going to get the rest of it to work. If If you have a free-to-play experience in particular and people can't see their path to succeeding at all through a free path, they will reject your game. It will be found out and that will lose half of the value of playing in the game and it will have a negative effect on anyone who might have spent money in that game. We also have to think about that grind that needs to resource it. Now, resources can be currencies. They can be flavored objects. They can be wood, gold, food. Uh typically, the a resource will be something that is a currency for a specific kind of purchase.

Um you know, you can have hard and soft currencies. So, your resources might be very infrequent in terms of gaining through uh play to only being purchasable. There is an you know, a range of hard resources, hard currencies. Similarly, they might be soft. They might be very available. They might be extremely available as part of grind. But, they might still be value in buying bundles of those soft currencies so that you can save time in grind. And remember, time and money are absolutely parts of different sides of the same coin. So, what's an anchor? An anchor is something that I can only get through play. Why would I have that when I'm trying to design the most effective monetization? Because when we're doing balancing, if we don't have a game play anchor, we

don't have a root in the play, we will not sustain repeat purchase. So, we have to understand that there needs to be some motivation to play in order to make the resources that we buy valuable. Anchors allow us to create scarcity that's supplemented by paid premium uh objects and items without having to blow our minds with the complexity. So, anchors are a really important factor. Then, we have ratchets. What's a ratchet? It's simply things like you have to have leveled up to this level before you can use this object. You have to have upgraded your town hall before you can upgrade your mine, your your vault, whatever else it might be. Ratchets are incredibly important because a little bit like anchor, they root the play and the value in the game, but they also provide aspiration points

for us to aim to, which again builds retention, and retention is a direct contributor to revenue. Again, we'll go into that in more detail when we cover in the next um master class piece where we talk about engagement and retention design. But, it's intrinsic to monetization design to understand why people play, and we build in these aspiration elements which are intrinsic to our ability to convert to revenue. I mean, how we get to this point is also valuable. Let's talk a little bit about kind of the elements of monetization, uh and I'll also talk a little bit about the impact those things have. So, um I think the least impact thing in the world is an in-world ad of some kind, um especially where it is on the basis of me being able to see a brand and engage. There's problem with that we'll talk about in a bit, but it's it's no it's no

barrier. If we have to click on it or we could accidentally click on it like a banner ad. That can create a barrier cuz it can throw me out of the immersion. It can throw me out of the engagement, but I'll talk about that in a bit. Uh we can look at soft currency. Again, we can earn that through players, we can talk to them, we can buy it in bundles. We can look at rewarded ads. I'm a massive fan of rewarded ads. I'm going to talk about some problems that have happened more recently uh in a second, but rewarded ads, if they're designed well, can provide me with a whole bunch of elements which we will talk about as we go. Uh we can look at interstitials. Um now, I'm not a fan of interstitials. I think we should not do them. There is an exception, an exception which I only discovered when we had the era of hyper-casual games. Obviously, that era has passed mostly. There's still some out there, but what I found is that there are moments where an interstitial can provide a break, a relaxation. But, you might discover, if If think

back to what I'm saying here, to all of these things, monetization isn't just about an exchange between money and success. It's about where the monetization method delivered something additional to just the functional success. That's important. It's an absolutely vital insight to understanding effective, ethical, and and you know, profitable monetization business. You have to think about non-recurring payments. That might be bundles and so and so forth and how we make them attractive. And you also have to think about reoccurring payments, whether that is like a a battle pass. And again, Fortnite was a question that was raised earlier. We'll come back to that at the end of the webinar. So, I said I'd come up to some of the sort of more up-to-date questions here. So, um yeah, uh move my head out of the way. Um in-world ads don't fit most games. And as I said, if you interact and it creates a barrier, a blocker to play,

that can also mean you add more fatigue. And what fatigue does is fatigue contributes to people's likelihood to churn. And the more complex these decisions, the more sophisticated the kind of a decision making, the harder the barrier, the more players get to the point where they'll eventually just give up. But they will refresh from fatigue if you don't continuously bombard them. If you are constantly sending notification, buy now, buy now, buy now, buy now, guess what? You build up enough fatigue, they go. You've lost them. So, knowing that you have to communicate the value proposition of each of these elements and why doing this per point of exchange, the buying of currency, the use of currency, the use of an ad. If we don't communicate why they're valuable, we won't get people to do it. But if we do it too often, we won't find them churning out. So, other things that's worth thinking about is and yeah, we don't want to create

impaired experiences. We don't want to create blockers. Uh and when we talk about impaired experiences with rewarded ads, it's because there's been a trend of there being um you're faced with a 30-second ad that's been extended to a 45 to a minute-long ad. By the way, that's not as effective. You're an advertiser. Uh we did this back in the day when we started doing the analysis of it of uh rewarded ads. We found that 20 seconds was the most effective. 30 seconds was the best balance because that's what advertisers wanted. But, now we're starting to see longer ads. We're seeing that not performing as well. And what's worse is we're now seeing ad providers adding into that playable, so adding another 30 seconds, and then they're forcing you to sit on a um additional kind of like store page for another 30 seconds before you can go back into into the game. That's a minute and a half to 2 minutes. I'm not playing. That destroys

retention. Yet, companies don't care because they're getting more people converting, so their numbers looking great. But, it's damaging our player base. So, you can There are some organizations out there mediators out there you have words with them, they will adjust that for you. But, be very careful about how some of these behaviors are affecting our our our attention. Moving swiftly on, um you know, we want to create reasons for people to care. Yes, you can have pay up front. Yes, you can have pay in game. I am not a fan of pay up front, but there are certain types of game where that's necessary. Particularly, if your game is not replayable, you do not have any option but to do pay up front. Don't call that premium. That's not premium. Premium is high value, high quality um pricing is also high price. Pay up front is not necessarily great, and I can talk about that later if

people want me to. Uh moving on, we also have a number of other elements. So, again, thinking about why should people retain? If you go into the uh the recurring payment level, the subscription, the VIP model, that can be fantastic, but there's been a lot of breaches of trust. And at the end of the day, if we end up in a gym model, as though as in I pay, but I don't play anymore, and I haven't stopped paying, you build up a lot of resentment. And that can be incredibly damaging. So, we have to be very careful about what we're offering, why we're offering it, and how we make sure we go back to the spot, which is why do players care? Um again, talking about exchange, you have to think about sinks and sources. Um some people might use sources as a as a term. I mean, just the point that I'm trying to get across here is uh you've got things that are coming into the gameplay, that are going out of the gameplay. You have to understand the flow in your game. There are various techniques to do that. Uh in the

masterclass interactive, we're going to do an exercise where we take a game, you decide what game, and we try to identify what are the points that you're going to have in a game which could be going in or going out. And understanding that flow is critical because if you don't have a net need to acquire additional value, you are not going to get anyone wanting or needing to spend money. But equally, if that need is so demanding, so unbalanced, that it feels unattainable through play, you're equally going to find problems. So, we'll talk about balance later. And I'm going to talk about one more thing when we talk about exchange. And that is to look at what ads can do. Now, this is a metaphor for lots of things about any kind of transaction when you're talking about coins, when you're talking about gems, you're talking about blueprints, whatever it might be. If we're smart about how we apply the

exchange, we can do really interesting things. So, first thing that an ad a mobile ad can do, or particularly rewarded ads, unblock my progress. I am trying to do this particular generator. The generator's run out of charge. I've got to wait 20 minutes or before it comes back. I can watch an ad one time and then that gets me back on track. Fantastic. I'll watch that ad. Typically, you want your ads to be no more than around 2 cents worth of value, but that value can be different at the start of the player life cycle compared to the end of the player life cycle. We can look at creating a second chance. I've done this run. I've died just the last minute. I'm just about to collect the last thing. I don't want to lose all my rewards. Oh, I can actually watch an ad and revive. Thank goodness for that. Again, that moment of watching an ad is super delightful if it's done well. Super annoying if it feels like it's the

only way to make it work. So, for example, in this case, we might have a cool down period. For example, you can only get that revive once per run. Or even, you can only get that revive once every 7 minutes real time. Why would you do that? Cuz it means that the act of using the ad is a purposeful one. I chose it. The ad is not a tax anymore. The ad is a choice. It's a joker card I can play if I want to. And yes, I have to watch an ad, fine, but I choose to. And we've seen historically, although you obviously there's been a lot of time passed since we did the original analysis, but the original analysis of that we saw people genuinely engaging more with the game as a direct result of having these smarter mechanisms. Another example, you can use an ad to offer people a trial of something in the game they haven't experienced yet. That could just

be rather than giving them coins, which no one cares about by the way, you give them a new skin to try for three goes. And at the end of those three goes, you say to them, "Ah, do you want to buy it 50% off? One time offer and we will never offer that discount again." That's actually super compelling. It's actually a sales technique called the copy dog sale, which is a very kind of Again, I'll talk about those sort of techniques if anyone's interested, but basically the point being is that but we've given them something that we're going to take away. We've told them in advance it's only a trial. They get to experience it, then they get to choose to keep it. That's powerful. By doing these things, we suddenly change everything. Another one, my favorite one was actually inspired by Transformers mobile game. I've forgotten who did it. I think it was I think it was Angry Birds Transformers game back in the day. It was the one I first saw do this. We used to have a thing called a coin doubler. You used to buy a coin doubler. And instead of a coin doubler, this game

decided they were going to make the coin doubler an ad. Fantastic. The best thing about it is you couldn't coin double every time. You could only coin double every 7 or 21 minutes. I think it was 21 minutes, I think it was. Why 21 minutes? Because if I've got something that's more than 20 minutes, it means they're going to probably have to come back for the next session to get access to that. By the way, that means they're going to come back for more sessions if it's demanding and enticing and delightful enough. It also means that I choose when the best moment is to use that ad. When I choose it as a gameplay mechanic, it is no longer as an win. These are the the kind of thinking that changes what exchange is all about. And that's why I try to kind of get across to you. In understanding exchange, we have to understand that every time we make a transaction, there is a risk of creating fatigue. There is going to be a question about the margin

that can be gained, which is based on the complexity of the game that's underlying this experience. And at every stage, we have to think about not just the money part of that transaction, but the player value part of that extraction. And and that's right. Exchange and transaction um exchange transaction I'm now calling it an extraction. What am I like? Anyway, the point being getting that um deep understanding of what's going on in your game means that if we define the exchange, if we look at the way that the sinks and sources of all of the components of value in the game, where they sit, we can have a clearer understanding of what's enticing, delightful, that we want, and we can introduce it to with a no um cost value of watching an ad. We can provide a bundle to give you a an exciting reason to buy this season starter pack for $10 that gets you that first thing that I choose to buy, and

then we can build these sustainable long-term bundles that provide even greater player value on a regular ongoing basis. That's the difference between a game that's well monetized versus a game that's badly monetized. We build essentially compound interest into our model. Because if we can sustain the audience, if we sustain their playing, if we continue to deliver player value, we build deeper, more engaging value in the game itself. Okay, so that is exchange. We're now going to move on to the third part. When we get to the third part, we're now talking about packaging. It's not good enough to just say, "Here you go, done." We've got to think about what it says and how we communicate. And the first thing I'm going to say is we need to think about our uh monetization as a story.

We need to build awareness, interest, desire, and action. Those of you who know those phrases may know the film Glengarry Glen Ross. I thoroughly recommend you watch it. Uh uh and Alec Baldwin's uh performances are outstanding. It's got Kevin Spacey in it. Not going to worry about that right now. But, the point being is this is a classical term. It's well understood. People don't just buy. You have to take them on a journey. You have to create desire and give them a reason to act. I'm actually going to go a bit further. And I talk about Columbo a lot. Anyone who is probably uh you know, well, my age will know what I'm talking about. Anyone younger than me probably doesn't have a clue. But, Columbo was a classic 1970s detective show where it's referred to as a um it's not a whodunit because you know you see at the beginning of the show who did it. You what you're doing is watching the detective. You're watching Columbo, a buffoon, an idiot. And you're seeing all sorts of random stuff. And you know the

immortal line 5 minutes before the end of the show is just one more thing. But, this is the point of the show. The show is actually a game. We're guessing how Columbo solved it. We already know who's done it. How does he solve it? Now, what has that got to do with monetization design? Well, what it has to do with that is during the process of that show, the player has all of the scope of everything that appears in the experience to decide what their choice is. And they know there's a timeline. They know there's an endpoint where something will be delivered. And they know if they get it right, they're going to be delighted. But if they get it wrong, they're going to be surprised. And it's also going to be good. Therefore, they're also going to like it. That's how we have our attitude to setting up our monetization model. This is not a one-time deal. This is

about creating a story, an ongoing narrative. It's a soap opera where we are telling you this month, this is happening. Something's going to be happening this month. What will it be? Can you guess what is going to be the thing that you could get if only you pay attention, you stay playing, you stay engaged. We need to tell that story. We also have to understand some of the other things. So, we have to understand impulse. We have to understand things like progression and optimization. Uh do not underestimate the power of optimization. A player will spend forever trying to have the most perfect way to solve the puzzle. And the less the more ambiguous your game design is, the more room there is for optimization, the more deep down the worm they will go. But also narrative arcs are massively important. You know, if we are left with the cliffhanger, will the princess be saved by um the frog? Anyway, I will work out

who it is, but let's not be sexist about it. There are all sorts of different cliffhangers we could have. There are so many different stories that we can tell that engage people. And it's important that these are the things that they they remember, they hold onto, that they engage with. Again, if we don't understand what we did before, I What were the forms and types of goods? What were the things that the player values? You don't have that. Remember that? That's why we did that exercise in the previous session. That's why we try to pay attention to those moments and the types and forms that we can deliver those goods. That's why we think about the exchange. That's why we think about where the grind fits in, where resources fits in, where the anchors that tie the experience to the game, why they matter.

But then also the ratchets, where we can look forward to doing these things in order to unlock the value that we want. Those things matter. It goes beyond that. We need to think about how we bundle these things and how we can create reasons to buy right now. So, like, what is the time-limited element of that? This season is available now. Week one, you're going to get week one's goods. But week one's goods will stay available during week two and week three and week four. Week two's goods come in, week two only. But what's coming week three? What's coming week four? By the way, after week four, you've only got a few days before we're going to stop this seasonal pack. You've got to buy it all now or it's gone. And by the way, I don't just mean buy in cash. You have a really well-designed battle pass, you're going to find it a struggle if you don't communicate how much time you have to complete missions to get and exchange the stuff that they ground for.

And by the way, they're just shy of completing that. Why not let them throw in a bit of cash to complete that edge? I'm selling things like special offers, like buy one get one free. Uh what is scarcity? How do you make scarcity in your game feel natural, normal, not fake, not arbitrary. It's going to be dug deep into the story. Why fuel is rare, why bullets are hard to get. Don't do what Last of Us did where if I uh kill somebody it was stealth, I get no ammo, but if I shoot them I get loads of ammo. That just breaks the player's brain. Cuz you've just broken why things are scarce. But think about that. But also be transparent. Tell them there's only 3 days left to get this deal. Tell them what the price is. Tell them what the discount is. Don't be afraid to ask for the money. If we don't say, "Pay us."

they won't pay us. We need to do that. There is a whole webinar I could do on pricing. Just price. I'll be sending it going to, but this is the point I'll say. You know, you have premium means something. It is not pay up front games. You can have premium in app purchase, and you can have economy in app purchase. You can have premium VIP bundles, and you can have economy VIP bundles. But I don't really suggest skimming. Although market penetration is a strategy that is valuable. There are some logical reasons why skimming is appropriate for some types of commodity. I don't think it fits right in game design most of the time. But equally there are other aspects. So we talked about offers, you know, we're talking about things like bundles, promotions, rewards. Rewards are incredibly important part. Remember, exchange is not just cash.

Cash is one of the factors. We want cash, but we're not going to get cash we don't take people on a journey with us. We're going to think about elasticity of demand. So, if we change price, does it affect the amount of people who will then buy that good? Quite often, particularly with upfront payments, the price itself does not change the volume of people who will buy it as much as you might expect. And instead, we find that price can often be a value statement. $14.99 on Steam is typically a good quality indie game. $24.99 on Steam is a professional double-A game, but if I have a game that's only indie quality, I'm going to be resentful of it. So, think about those sorts of things. Um, we can have loss leaders, we can have conditional discounts, a whole bunch of things. We can also think about hot dog economics. Now, hot dog economics is just an example of behavioral economics,

but I would genuinely think everybody should read about behavioral economics. If you're interested in monetization design, you have to be interested in the psychology. You have to be thinking about what motivates people. So, why do you get eight hot dogs and six buns? Well, because buns are relatively cheap compared to hot dogs, I might as well buy another pack of six buns. Oh, now I've got four buns left. What am I going to do? I'm going to buy some more hot dogs, then I'm going to need more buns, then I need more hot dogs. This imbalance is absolutely critical to understanding effective monetization. We obsess with game balance, but in practice, we need to be better and smarter with imbalance, and make that imbalance feel appropriate, not unfair. Um, nearly there. We also need to think about I think the

probably the most important thing, my favorite stat of all in any data is not our poo, it's not our poo poo, it's not Dow, it's not all those other acronyms. I have a 14-page document of all of the weird words we use in games, if anyone's interested. Um I'm interested in percentage of repeat players. Because if you have a high percentage of repeat players, you know you have built something people liked and value. They wanted to take again. So, thinking about the unboxing process, and these are old examples, but I you know, one of my favorite examples uh was a uh Next Games game. I forgot the name of it. And the way that they produced their rewards was in these packs that felt really like cards, and they opened up, and they felt tactile. Uh they also had a massive, the interesting way to upgrade those cards

that you got by investing either ground, yeah, you know, um earned coins or real money. Amazingly well designed. It felt beautiful. It had that magic moment when the you take the box, and I I'm not an an Apple fan generally, but I you know, we all know that moment we you take the box up, and the sucking of the air as the box comes off, and that tactile feel. Unboxing matters. The reward, paying off matters. Um thinking about uh visibility. Look at what I bought. Try to make it so that nothing that I've bought ever is useless. If we might forget about it, that's fine. But how do you get people to want to reuse some of the stuff? How do you make them feel good about the fact they invested in your game, and it hasn't just been wasted? How do you use ads and and up purchases to foreshadow more value to come? And in equally,

don't make things linear. A plus one sword is no good compared to a fire sword, a earth sword, a water sword. I'm going to buy all of the elemental swords. I'm probably never going to buy the plus one sword. I'm going to go straight to the plus five if I'm going to buy it at all. And if it's too expensive, I'll never buy your upgrades. Make it interesting. Make me care and make it do something in game that that matters enough but doesn't break the experience for other people. In fact, if you get this right, if I have uh season pass or stone uh and you buy lizard spark, it should make my game more interesting because I now have to respond to more choices. Anyone who's really deep in the maths, I can debate you on why that still works even if the maths isn't quite right, but I'm happy to have that conversation separately. Next up then, um

that means that we end up with this point. The at the end of the day, I love a good battle pass. Why do I love a good battle pass? Because a good battle pass is embedded in a fundamental principle that applies to all of the monetization principles we've talked about. It shows me I can play for free and that's okay. But if I play and pay, I can get more. Free players can get anything that's available in a good battle pass. Only paying players who play a lot can get everything. And that principle matters. It sustains and retains the user mindset. And at the end of the day, don't just trust your gut. We need to use data. We need to use data to forecast. We need to use data for testing. We need to use understand the performance of players in actuality.

And use that data to inform our choices and our designs. Design is where we start. Data is where we get it right. And that is us. So, we have about 10 minutes left. I think someone will tell me otherwise if I'm wrong. Uh I've got a couple of questions. Um that I'm going to start off answering those, but please write your questions. I'm very happy to answer them. If for any reason we miss anything, then please feel free to, you know, email them or forward to me later. But also, don't forget we've got the interactive workshop where I'm going to put you through exercises so that you get to understand how to do this yourself and to do it in meaningfully, in ways that will improve the design of your own games. So, uh Carla was asking about the um uh Netherlands side. Now, I'm actually not hugely aware of the specifics, but um I know there's been a whole bunch of work and progression around particularly

the loot box elements of things. But I think there's a fundamental principle, which is that we are going to be have to be very careful that we're clear and we are um upfront absolutely about every element of monetization that we do. There is a misconception which has been propagated by the fact that the um uh the uh DMB uh 7 Is it 7 or 6? I think DMB 6. So, basically the the diagnostic and physical uh manual um DSM 6 um has now a principle called game this gaming disorder, which is conflating behavioral addiction, which is valid, true. Games are a vector in some circumstances for behavioralism. They're making it seem comparable to

gambling. Which there are a lot of psychologists and papers out there that are very much refuting that connection at all. I'm of the view, personally, and I'm not a psychologist, that they are not the same thing. There is a measured physiological connection between a gambling process that does not exist in the games process. But where we have to be clear is pounds. So, if you have a gaming device that allows people to cash out, that does introduce complexity we don't need. Additionally, if you do not provide clarity on randomness, that can introduce complexity. I'm not a huge fan of paying for random items. I never have been. But there are still valuable points to doing that. We just have to be super super super careful. So, I think that I like to say, I don't

know the specifics about the fine. Um I do think that it's there is we're in a very dangerous era where we have to be absolutely above board and make sure that we focus on unambiguous player value which is clearly priced, clearly communicated, and that has a very clear progression that you can acquire for free. So, the Advertising Standards Authority put some rules in place, um which uh in the UK this is, uh which I think they're very worthwhile paying attention to. They're really vital to pay attention to. So, for example, the bundles that you might offer in coins need to be able to buy whole things. You shouldn't have a bundle where you can't completely use that bundle. Now, there is a caveat to that, which is if we design our game where any leftovers can easily be gathered, so our coins are always valuable

through simply having enough gameplay, we avoid the complication almost entirely. So, you have to be careful, but we almost entirely avoid the complications. So, basically, I don't know if this answers Calvin's question. Hope it does. Uh but what I'm trying to say is whatever the regulations, we have to understand them, abide by them, but at the end of the day, what really matters is that players trust us. And it's important to do that because we're not just after the first payment. We're not just after the second payment. We want every month some payment. If we get 10% of our audience spending once, we won't make profit. We get 2% of our audience spending every month for 5 to 10 years, that's a completely different story. That's where compound interest style mathematics comes in place. And that is dramatically better than getting a one-off payment of someone through trickery.

So, uh hopefully that was um hopefully that was sufficient. Uh so, the next question I have here is what if we make mistakes? Yes, we make mistakes. Some of them are fatal. Sorry, I guess not. But the most important thing is to own up. So, for example, one of the things I've had to do quite often is a game that has gone in uh at early access as a fixed price, and they decided to go free-to-play. We've dealt with that. You have to deal with it head-on. You have to own it up to it. You have to do an absolute positive outreach, and you say to people, "We messed up. What we're going to do is this." And what this is has to be super value. So, for example, with one of the games we did, we said, "We're going free-to-play. If you already bought it, you have the Founder's Pack already. We're going to give you 20 more days to buy the Founder's Pack, and then we're going to stop selling it. And if you buy that, we're going to give you 12 months of premium content during the duration of the game. Which would have been worth 10 times the

average cost we were planning for the monthly subscription level. It's blow them away with value. But even then, it's not perfect. It's It's always really um you you will end up essentially having to start from scratch. But you have to engage with them and listen to them. They Most players, especially on PC, do not care if you ever make any money. In fact, they think, "Stuff you. I want this game for free." I I again, I'm being a bit unfair, but there is a genuine group of people out there who absolutely don't care if you are successful. So, what do you do about it? Well, the only thing you can do is to make sure that you can provide the best possible experience uh for your audience. That's basically the plan. Um Okay, next uh question. Hopefully that answers that.

Uh More about interstitials. Okay, so I don't like interstitials because they block. So, because interstitials block, they get in the way of my play. If they block and they get in the way of my play, then I am not playing. You broke me out of the immersion. Therefore, it is a challenge. And what do people do when there are too many interstitials? They turn the phone over and they don't look at them. Interestingly, if I ever offer I care about, I am more likely to watch the ad. And we only get paid by the ad company if the person watched it and installed the game. So, why would we show them an interstitial we're They're going to get them to watch? But, as I said, there are some circumstances. For example, you've been doing intense gameplay, intense gameplay, intense gameplay. You come back into a main menu. That's a point to use an interstitial. If you're going to have to use an interstitial, and commercially, it can often make sense to do that. But, that's a point where you've got fatigue, kind of like you want to relax. So, if the ad is there, it can be a relaxation point.

Again, that's problematic where people add playables, where people add uh delays on store pages, but that's a wide question. I hope that makes sense. Uh next up, for premium games who have the same gameplay and modes uh released every year, like FIFA has monetization issues with So, um essentially, this comes down to DLC, and I would argue DLC is just a very bad way to do live ops. It's just a bad way. Because you are dependent on a fanatical base that will stay for the entire year or 6 months, whatever the time period is between DLC releases. So, you have to have fanaticism, which means you have to have established brand value to such an extent that it provides you the momentum to offset that loss of users. So, um yes, some people will still go on the premium

route, but around 95% of game developers are making live ops based games now, according to the Griffin Gaming report from last year. There's a reason. It's because a DLC is a rule of diminishing returns. You have to spend so much to reestablish that audience, whereas a regular, sustained, you know, systematic live experience can, if done correctly, hold an audience for longer and get the compound interest effect. But, games like FIFA have the brand value. Games like FIFA have the premium price tag. They can charge the 70 bucks up front and on top have extra things you can buy in the game. But, where is all the resentment for live ops come from? It's come from those games. Because players don't feel they're getting value. They feel like they're having things restrained, you know, prevented from being in the

game and it's left a very bad taste in the mouth of a lot of players. Again, most of us can't do that. We don't have billion billions of dollars of brand value. So, it's just not worth it. Uh next up, Gustav. Uh to analyze data with funnels or our monetization design, is there a good open source project? Oh, well, yes, I wish. Honestly, um one of my biggest bugbears is currently there is no really good access to good data. And nothing, let's say, event or a um IAP level. You can get some very broad data that is extrapolated out of um you know, the rankings in various store pages, but to be honest, it's a pretty shocking state of affairs that we have so little uh access to data. I wish we had better. Um the only thing I can suggest is um

run tests. Uh but again, running tests can be expensive. We try to do that on a very low level, small amounts of spend, small experiments. Um and basically try to do experiments, not not necessarily AB, but linearly. So, here's a test, I make one change. I test it again, make one change, make test it again. Now, the problem with that is it means that your testing period can go on far too long. And it means that you're slowed up because every time you want to do that test, you got to do do a new build, you got to prepare the materials, but you do at least get to test running that game in effectively a live life game. Honestly, it's a very tough one to call. On that note, I think we are out of time. I think we have done all of the questions. If anyone has anything last minute they want to add or ask, please do. Otherwise, I think we're on time-ish. Okay. So, thank you very much for participating. I hope that was useful.

Uh if you're interested in uh after this, we have uh next up um the interactive session, uh which is happening on the 7th of August. You can get tickets for that now. Um that will be where you actually have exercises and work uh where we're workshopping you doing that work. Um the work that we've just been talking about. On August the 14th, we'll be talking about game design for engagement and retention. Uh that is again a free webinar. We then have the workshop that follows from that on the 28th of August. You'll notice we're avoiding Gamescom. Uh I will be again so if anyone's interested in saying hello. Um and then we've got uh game economy design webinar that's happening on the 4th of September, and that is itself followed up by the workshop on the 18th of uh September. So, with that all in mind, thank you very much for participating and taking part. I hope that's been useful to you all. And obviously, please feel free to uh reach out if you want to ask any further questions. Thank you very much, all.