Panel: Beyond Play: What Can Games & Apps Learn From Each Other?

to talk about beyond play. What can games and apps learn from each other? Which is really the crux of what we've been talking about all morning. I'd like to bring up Nadia from um Ned Garouch who's going to be our moderator and his panelists Oscar from Serious Games, Solomon from Dual Pulse Advisory, Steve Rock from Fastpring, and Talia from

Scopely. So come on up folks, let's get to know you and talk about games and apps.
Good morning everyone. So uh thank you for joining this uh panel today. Um before we start um I want to ask the audience like who's right now working on apps and games on both at the same time if you can raise your hands. So we have three. Yeah. And just on games. Okay. And apps only anyone. Okay. We have actually a few. Yeah, very interesting. Very interesting. So, yeah, thank you for joining today's panel. So, today we're going to talk about what can apps take from uh games to uh to grow their revenue, but not we're not going to talk too much too much about UA. We're going to talk mostly about how to retain users longer and how to monetize better. Right. So, I'm Nadi Garush. I'm a UI consultant for app and game developers and I'm joined here with Oscar uh Talia, Steve and Solomon who

are going to introduce yourself. So Talia, maybe you want to start.
Um thank you. So quick introduction, Talia. I've been working in the games industry for uh 14 years now, I believe. and I also on the side advise non-gaming apps in regards to gamification.
So I'm Steve Rock. I lead the growth team at Fast Spring, which is a merchant of record helps companies monetize their apps and games. Uh my background is kind of colored in that I started in Facebook uh doing games uh user acquisition uh and then transitioned into Stripe where I I kind of did the payments thing and at Fastpring I bring those two worlds together. I'm Salictor and they didn't grab my whole last name there. It's important call it out because we're in Espa. Um I've been in mobile tech for about 17

years. I've been in games for about seven years. I worked on the live ops CRM tooling side. I also run an event, the live ops, product live ops symposium. We do that every year at GDC. We get really great folks to come out, talk about product and live ops. Uh, now I have my own consultancy. It's kind of a dual-sided consultancy working with B2B game tech service providers, helping them build community, go to market, and then probably the funnest, that's fun, but you know, the funnest thing is working as a live ops, game design, strategy consultant, um, with some of the, you know, great publishers that I've worked with over my career. So, good to meet you all.
Okay. And this is Oscar. Thank you very much for inviting me to be here today. I have both like one academic site. Uh this is the new interactive technology school of the University of Barcelona. We've been uh working there for like 14 years [snorts] uh with uh students taking video game degrees. And then I

have like my professional side which is like Cookie Box. Cookiebox is consultancy that does gamification and serious games. And I'm also taking care of the serious game lab which is a publicly uh funded initiative here in the region to accelerate uh teams interested in applying the serious game philosophy to their uh developments apps let's say gamified apps. Thank you.
Thank you. So let's start with the the first uh question. So uh most of you work for games and uh I think you all know that uh for games uh I would say 70% of the success lies on the on the creatives right on all the the videos that you work hard on also all the playables and for apps actually most of the success comes from uh live up some on boarding from like making sure people convert as much as possible when they see a pay wall. So, uh I'm going to ask uh our panelists here like what do you

think um apps can still learn from games and also what can games learn from the top uh grossing apps out there? Maybe Oscar you want to start?
Okay, thank you. That's a good question indeed. I think uh that apps tend to be quite pragmatic normally offering some sort of service more than experience. So you expect something from your app. Something is going to happen because you want to access your banking account or you are interested in acquiring you know some flight for a trip or maybe you want some sort of reminder for you know the clinical treatment that you need to follow. So so the basis is quite pragmatic you know straightforward and this is not what happens in games. In games is absolutely com you know it's like the the other side of the question. It's not that rational but more let's say emotional. You're there because of entertainment. you want to have you know

like some good time and therefore I think that uh there's a lot related to positive psychology that we can take from games and we can sort of you know connected with apps so that uh you become let's say more positively adherent to the app and interested not only in the service that is providing but the story that lies uh behind and also a collection of what We talk we say uh intrinsic motivators in in gamification that are not really not really related to let's say rewards or prices only but to your feelings inside inside the game. So uh pragmatism can go to games and emotional intrinsic motivators should jump to apps as far as I see.

What about you?
Um there are much fewer monetization points in apps which makes it so that it's much easier along the way to measure what is happening and where it is. Because of that, apps tend to use a lot more points where of uh player behavior psychology in order to understand and push players and continue to push players along to keep going. Congratulations, you have this streak in regards to this behavior within the the app. Um in games, there is so much more going on that that seems to be missing the point. you have, you know, the login streak to keep players seven days that is actively used and you have a level streak,
but outside of those areas, you don't see a wide usage of behavioral motivators that are being rewarded for

the player.
But at the same time,
they're still that the player's there because they want to push these motivators. And so advertising could learn, I'm sorry, um, gaming could learn from the SAS apps in this way to continue pushing them forward. Meanwhile, as you said in regards to the apps, you have the experience that is going on that the players are learning through and uh, gaining through, but you're not trying to hold their attention by targeting the particular areas where they want to go forward. Yes. So I I'll start very high level then go kind of low level. I think high level just like Talia said games have so much more what we call spend depth right for monetization and because of that and they have just generally a far richer stream of live behavior right the whole

concept of live ops where I spent a bunch of my career Walia does a ton of d down um ton of tearowns so games have the ability to obviously um tease content this concept of frontier progression in a way that I think they've really mastered because there's so much content and you kind of have to it's this concept of kind of showing the player content and levels and modes before it's officially available in order to kind of keep them progressing through the game. And it's a it's a wholesome way of doing that instead of like a progression timer or something like that that's a little more Skinner box. And so I think um in terms of what games have, games have that real time event stream that they can act on um that life that um non-gaming apps just do not have. And non-gaming apps just because they only have maybe one or two holy grail monetization mechanics. I think they may be lacking a little a bit of imagination and ways that they could tease features, they could tease new utility, they could

tease new modes, and they just don't do that. On the other side, I think because games work with such this uh this massive excess of real-time in-game behavior, I think it's almost overwhelming and there's not a lot of studios and publishers that do life cycle very well. I'll give you an example. One of the top publishers and and game studios and I think in the world based out here in Europe, they just really started doing lapsed player win back campaigns about a year ago. Uh, so that that shows you these these big studios that are sitting on a mountain of data and contrast that against like a regular like a non-gaming app that's mastered the life cycle that only has that one holy grail conversion event usually the subscription and understands every single stage in the user life cycle and not just the stage to win them back in but even when they're showing the faintest signs of disengagement. Right? So, I think uh you know to to kind of break it down and summarize it, games have a wealth of real-time data

and content they're able to tease and monetize. Non-gaming apps can can learn a lot from that. And then on the other side, I think uh game studios can learn a lot from the way non-gaming apps run their life cycle marketing. They've really mastered it in a lot of cases.
Pass the mic to Steve, which I remember told me that uh you might see actually a disconnect between the two, right?
[sighs]
Well, I think [clears throat] the the summary of this conversation is it's it's the marrying of the emotional and the rational, right? So, I think gaming has nailed the emotional. It understands that very well. Uh apps is more in the rational domain. And if if we can kind of have a trade negotiation between the two sides, I think we'll we'll end up in a great place. And like the example that springs to mind is um Snapchat streaks, which this is like a super utilitarian app. And now you can they're actually monetizing people. If you miss a streak, you can pay 99 cents to get it to keep it going. I just thought that was insane. And it's a game mechanic inside

like a utility app. So it's like where can we do more of that? But on the on the disconnect between these two sides, I guess Fastr's background has been in the rational, firmly planted in the rational. We've got 20 years of experience like optimizing checkout flows and particularly in games. We're now entering into this space of direct to consumer. So my question around this was uh just a show of hands. How many folks here are building mobile apps? Mobile games. Sorry, mobile games. Mobile games. Okay, keep your hands up. Keep your hands up. Now of of the folks with their hands up, how many people their primary market they're selling into is the US. Okay, everyone kept their hands up there. How many of you have a direct to consumer strategy currently? Have a live web store. Okay, so there's a good drop off. So I think for me this is the rational disconnect. It's like Apple and Google

are charging 30% upfront. Uh there's a there's basically you know a 20% delta if you switch to direct to consumer. And I feel like that that is the major opportunity on the rational side to trade into into games.
Yeah. Yeah. A good answer. Um yeah, since we just spoke upon spoke about that. So can we continue on uh what uh could apps take from games in terms of monetization techniques that are not so popular yet for apps and also Solomon you talk a lot about life cycle management, CRM and so on. uh what could also games uh precisely take from uh from apps and also the opposite uh to retain users uh longer. So I don't know who wants to take this one first.
Yeah, go ahead.
Okay. Um so I'll start by saying my kids do not have games time. They have screen time. Mhm.

They are told you have this amount of time during the day and that's what you have to decide what you're going to put your attention into.
How long?
Depends on the kid and the particular schedule they have. Anywhere from an hour up to two hours.
That being said, they are interested in the attention, the active thoughts and active processes that they are going through when they are doing it. They don't actually watch a lot of TV. They want to interact with it. With apps, having different things for the purpose of what you are trying to do can help to push you along the matter. Now, that is hard when you have only a specific thing. Let's say you are measuring how much you're reading. You have an app that is measuring the amount of time you are reading. You start putting in

charts. You start putting in active uh direction and active ways in order to show the player or user what it is that they are doing every single step along the way. Suddenly, it's a lot more interesting than okay, I've read, you know, three hours today and I have a seven-day, you know, streak of doing it. what categories, what areas, you start breaking that information down that you have and feeding it back to the user in order to help them understand why they want to continue coming back to the app.
Very good. Scott have something to say about that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good points. I think that um as a matter of fact in apps I think that it's more a matter of quality rather than quantity that makes you come back and wanting

more and more. So for instance in gamification it's always about providing with some sort of collection of well-intended reasons to make people on board and stay. again not only because of the service cuz you could have like 25 apps trying to give the same service and then we are in a competition and then it's going to be about I don't know discountbased stuff which is what what we don't want we don't want that to happen only because then at the end everyone is like losing all the time or the big one is the winner right so what happens if um you sort of give them tiny reasons to come back to the again like for very specific moments cuz it's not about entertainment but to get some rewards connected to you know like status rewards connected to a better access rewards connected to you know to

power to do something that you were not able to do because you are for instance leveling up inside the app a lot of people they have no idea what that thing means in the sense that you know they are no gamers they are not playing well you know sometimes they say I'm not a gamer but then you ask and they are playing lots of mobile games, right? But the good thing is that psychologically speaking, people digest very well all those strategies. Like I'm leveling up, it makes sense to stay here like from time to time. I don't want to leave that thing cuz now I'm, you know, level 15. And what I'm getting is a substantial amount of rewards that are not again connected to you know money only but to other things uh that uh that sort of give me empathy and I like that and I might stay here you know like for longer. So when we game design, you know, game full apps, we try to provide with some doses, you know, fiction, a little bit of fantasy, you know, a way to customize, personalize.

What about tiny challenges that you might like to explore and of course community because community can be quite heavy. I had a conversation 10 days ago with someone that has diabetes. you know that diabetes is something huge in the world and I was trying to gather you know what is it that you would love to have in an app you know gamified app a serious game for health that sort of tracks you and she might say well there are tons I know there are tons what what are you what are you missing what are you missing there and there were like two guidelines and and it's very important to talk to the final user right we know that so one thing was well I feel I feel that uh when I was a newcomer all I got was you know like some conversations with my physician and I was like quite upset with the situation and I knew nothing about you know the disease and how to deal with that. So a service that will help me you know like on boarding but in terms of knowledge you know and getting right with the

disease for instance this is what I really I really want and once I know and I'm in balancing mode we could say right we're balancing all the time because we want to make you stay there all all that I need is because I know I know how to manage I need all the parameters and all that of course but everyone is doing that I need community so I wish I could send a question and then get you know like even if anonymous eight people saying, "You know what? You could do that. You could do that. You could do that." So, at the end, at the end, it lands on human needs and human pleasures. And I think that again, if we find the balance, it's going to be it's going to be great.
Yeah. Empathy is key basically. Uh Solomon, can you
Yeah, it kind of goes back to to my initial assessment, which is out of gaming nails life cycle. Literally out of the game experience. gaming tends to focus heavy on real time in-game session and behavior and because of that you see a lot of over like learned behaviors and

like baggage of tribal knowledge that probably has to be changed. I love the point that uh Talia made around the attention span of users. Now that's the contextual lens you have to think about all this through. It's harder than ever to v for any user or player's time whether it's a child or an adult. We're all kind of trained and locked into this, it's really sad, but this dopamine drip of content, some good, some bad, designed to get a reaction. And I think you need to be aware of that whether you're a game maker or whether you're not making games. As an example, if you're out of games, you probably need to get a user to understand the value as quick as they possibly can. I think that fatoule in in non-gaming apps could be a whole hell of a lot better. Um, and I think they need to be even better right now in such an attention-based economy. The the challenge is it's hard to show someone what a utility app is going to

do. There's no playable you could do unless it's like a language learning where you're completing the Spanish word or something like that. Um, so I think that you need to be very instructive at a fatoule level when you win that user to help them get to value as soon as possible. And I think non-gaming apps need to be a little more like freeto play in in the fact that you're allowing value in the user to get to that holy grail conversion event and maybe even have the user do it more times. have them touch up the photo, you know, 10 or 15 times as opposed to paywalling that right out of the gate because you're going to use that loser, that user straight up. You're going to lose them. On the gaming side, I think fundamentally you need to um understand when you're first winning a player, you should not make it a Skinner box of shitty ads, you know, and that's what everyone does. It is very, very tempting. Um there's a million great UA and growth vendors out there. I work with a lot of them. A lot of them are my partners, but consider maybe dialing that back a little bit for firsttime

players. You don't know if they're going to convert yet. You don't know what their LTV is yet. Learn a little bit about them before you start realizing you're going to have to monetize them through ads. Get them through your core loop. Get them on a streak. Uh, and get them engaged as quick as you can.
Okay. So we talked a lot about what features should uh games take from apps and apps from games but let's talk about the the features that you say app should not take from games but also the opposite that you do you see things like features used in top popular apps out there that games should use.
I'll jump on this real quick because I just kind of touched on it. Streaks. Um, I think streaks make a lot of sense for certain apps that function like games, but they don't make a lot of sense for a lot of utilities apps and everyone's trying to do streaks right now. Uh, and I think you're just kind of creating a a decaying, you know, value experience for

your user. Uh, the other one is I've seen like some crazy e-commerce apps. I was just trying to think the name of I think it's depot or what I don't want to pick on any but anyway some of in tier one market I think in some markets users are okay in e-commerce experience with having a bunch of like spin the dial win the thing get a pack or whatever it is I think in a lot of the tier one markets you you people
t-u yeah timu and it's like almost impossible like if I want to buy a thing
I just I came from e-commerce 10 years I just want to buy the thing reduce the friction for me to convert that's what the app is there to do. It's not designed to have me play a game. Maybe that works in some markets, but I think that like a lot of apps have been a little too uh, you know, too too liberal with that kind of thing. Um, and then on the other side for games, I think it's more it's just I think you don't want to pay you don't want to pay wall features. You don't want to pay wall functionality. You want to make your game obviously keep your game grindy and it should be grindy enough that a player

gets through it and they're still in the core loop but it's annoying and so they begin to spend money. You know, that's that's how we that's how we make money. But if you know you you over monetize um then I think you're going to run into the same payw wall issues with low attention spans that you deal with um in non-gaming apps.
Yeah. So, like to pick up on that, I think the the whole game that we're playing is a balance between friction and delight. What I mean by that is in game play, if you if you make it too difficult, you're going to lose people. You know, if if you make it too easy, you're going to lose people or you won't be able to monetize them. So, it's finding that sweet spot of friction within the game. It's just hard enough that they're having fun and not too hard that they're able to get, you know, not able to get through it, but then, you know, the incentive there for them to to to kind of convert at some point is is is is on point. And it's really about dialing in that friction level. When I talk about delight, I think um Spotify has done

this really really well where, you know, you'll have your uh say monthly top tracks or like at the end of the year, you have your your look back over the year. So, it's it's delighting you with content. And I think the other thing that like I I'm a big fan of Spotify. I think the other thing that Spotify did really well is um you know, it's a subscriptionbased model. Yeah.
But within their app experience now, you can buy merch and you can buy tickets and there's there's like a lot of value there for the user and there's a there's a there's a margin there for the for the app developer. And so I think like um when you're thinking about how to you know trade secrets across these these uh gaming and uh apps ecosystems is thinking about how to balance those that friction and delight. Anyone want to add something to that? No. Yeah. Um okay. So then uh I have an extra question actually because I see we have actually a few more minutes than uh than um ahead of schedule. So let's talk about monet monetization. I think maybe

Steve you have a lot to say about that but I'm I'm curious to hear about other people too. Uh I think yeah you all been using Dolingo here for a while and you know that Dolingo has ads right? Uh actually they make uh they make 10% of the revenue from inapp purchases right ads is what make the the app super big super popular because of word of mouth. And uh you actually see a lot of uh other apps using uh both u inapp purchases and subscriptions plus ads right now. For instance, uh if you're still single, you're using Tinder. And you can see that uh sometimes if you run out of swipes, you can actually watch an ad, right? So they're doing this because they know that uh they can get extra revenue for people who don't want to go to the credit card step, right? So can you talk about uh items that you have seen your um your your products or your clients like use recently that has shown an uplift or what do you believe should be the next uh thing in terms of hybrid

monetization?
Um well battle passes.
Yeah of course
battle passes big words out there big talk out there from the gaming side
but how do you do that in an app? Because if it's a subscription base, it's if it's a one payment base, you don't have a monthly pay in order to do it.
Or you have it with sorry, you have it with a shorts for instance. You pay to continue watching. So it's kind of like similar. It's not you don't want to achieve something, you want to achieve to finish watching. So
kind of similar. Yeah.
When you're looking at a battle pass, we talk about monetization, but there are also two other elements that are playing into that. engagement and retention.
Yeah.
So, if you continue to focus on the engagement and retention with the battle pass in apps, then you have the incentive to keep

pushing forward. This part of the app can be available to you in addition to everything else that you have. Once you've progressed along that way, you can pay to jump ahead to that point.
And that can also help to overcome some of the concerns about subscription for the free-to-play users.
Yeah, true. I think that here we will probably deal with the cultural differences that we have among countries and places because if I look at how people behave here in Spain you know this respect is going to be like completely different on what happens I don't know Ecuador Peru for instance the thing is that uh when you play you are fine with that you're there because you want you understand the rules You want to get additional stuff. There are like different strategies. Battle pass is something good because it's

giving a lot of let's say positive energy and again intrinsic motivation because you're feeling well right. You're feeling like more autonomous and you have the control as Steve was talking before like you know too difficult too easy I sleep I get frustrated. So uh a good flow in a game everyone understands not easy to implement of course but it's again the rule it's fine I'm here because I want and you know I might pay or I might when in an app it's much more difficult I think because again it it depends on the service if the service that you're getting is is good you know you definitely want to stay there and then you might be okay digesting some you know like let's say uh advertisement or whatever you're going to be fine because the service is okay if not the thing starts to be complicated and then the other thing is okay if you pay you can get like additional but we know what happens with apps it's so difficult to make people pay you know it's so

difficult I still remember like I don't know two three years ago when you know like send this news about you know everyone is going to have to pay I don't know it was like €2 or something for like one year and and people were talking in the cafeterias about that like should I pay to and I was like well you having a coffee and a croan and it's like 250 and you are having a conversation on should I pay or not and it looks like you are you know you are like a little bit upset you know about that
I see this with um [clears throat] I have a kid now who's growing into all this IP like young kid like and and getting obsessed with Spider-Man and like they do not get monetized watching Spider-Man but they get their parents get monetized in the where they can buy the Spider-Man attire.
And I like I think that is a space where I see Spotify winning like they're they're putting merch in there.
And like I think that like if you look at YouTubers, they they make very little

money in relative terms off their viewer base, but if they can monetize them with merch, like people are very happy to spend 20 bucks on a like MKBHD hoodie. And I think like it's it's thinking outside the box and delivering value that isn't necessarily digital or or it could be outside of what is normally, you know, like unlocking something. Like I think like for example, Sam Harris has this waking up app. It's like Headspace. And like I would most certainly purchase some Sam Harris merch if it if that was available, you know? And I think that there's there's just like creative ways that we can kind of step outside of like the normal app. you're not just unlocking content, but potentially like buying into a brand or being part of something bigger than yourself.
I think specifically the battle pass question is a content depth question every single time. Think about the way battle passes were invented. It was like the Valve folks and then the folks at Epic with Fortnite. Obviously, they kind of made it a paradigm, but um it's kind

of it's gone wide. It's broken wide as like a major monetization tool in live ops across all games. I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure battle passes make a ton of sense in a pretty casual game. Um, you got to have deep content in order to make it valuable to the user and the user the whole reason they were invented in the first place was it was this it was a tactic to get the valuedriven. It was a hypothesis about a valuedriven player that would not buy just a couple packs. they were waiting for a a higher ticket, more utility driven, bigger bundle offer and it ended up, you know, knocking it out the park. That being said, if you have and so I I think it's over applied in games just because everyone does it. Some pe some people do it really well, some people spend lend to it, others don't. Um, but it's the same thing in non-gaming apps. As long as you have con deep content, you can figure out a way to time box and create packages that are

more valuable to users. So I I do think that like folks should consider it, but don't consider it if you have a very basic, you know, utility app. I would consider it if you have like a really intense art app where you, you know, you can unlock, you can let a user unlock, um, you know, a bunch of editing functionality for a limited time or something like that. If you're in games, I I would consider and you're building a battle pass and you're in casual games, I would really interrogate that. Do do you really need a battle pass? Because there's a lot of easier ways to monetize uh from a live ops perspective. So, just to respond to that, do you think because again like battle pass is just like a way to describe a one-time payment, right? Really? And and so h how I guess my my I'm curious from your experience, how do you transfer that battle pass like one-time purchase into mobile apps? Is it just content unlocks or are there

other tools in the toolbox?
Geez, I think it's mostly content unlocks. Um you know, if you have like a progression system and levels, maybe you could do that, but it's going to be content and features, right? And I I say content very generally in a utility app is going to be features and functionality. A lot of the time it's not going to be content. It's going to be what can you do maybe with said content. Um and I think that the biggest thing for me with with battle passes is not that it's a one-time purchase. It's more that it's targeted for the value spender who wants to experience more of your game or app that you may not realize exists because they're out there. They're subscribing. they're, you know, they're not trying out new features, new modes. They're not, you know, maybe they're buying an AP just occasionally when they get tired of grinding. But if you package something up and you time box it and you make it interesting and you tie it to a real world event, you know, all the classic game design things or app design things, um, then you can maybe get that that uh

user or or buyer over the line. Yes, it's it's typically a one-time purchase, but it's designed to expose the user or player to more value in the game. So then they come back and they repeat purchase more.
One of the areas in gaming that has managed to do very well with battle passes despite having a very um I'd say flat economy would be the casino world where it shows that even if you don't have a lot in the game, you still can use this particular feature to push players forward. It's just a matter of having the motivation there, the elements there to continue having them drive to the next level. A lot of the casual games have taken that and added in the collection features in order to expand that economy and push it on to the next level. Yeah, I think um merge

three, you know, merge games obviously like you could I don't know, you unlock more of your map or you get access to a to a certain level or world on the meta map before you know you'd get to I totally agree with you that there has to be meta narrative period like you know and just think about that obviously if you're a casual game to your point Talia I I work extensively with you social casino I don't see that as casual you know yeah I mean technically
technically it might technically it's casual but It's it's if you see the if you see the way the players play it that's it's anything but right
you could say the same about some of the match three players though
good point touche
all right so we're almost at time so I don't know if someone wants to uh end this with a very nice conclusion that someone that everyone here can take home or if not we will take this uh one last minute to ask a question to the audience up to you conclusion or

I I will provide with uh something connected to what Solomon was talking about like the need for good content. I've seen some very nicely designed apps that have like this trans media approach where working on something like deep in terms of storytelling and nice characters that you have there. So even if you want to use like the very pragmatic services that you're hiring and all that, it always sort of sums up like it happens in video games uh to provide with some sort of layered storytelling some nice characters that you can relate to uh not monalizing not simplifying you know something that makes sense. So I remember the example you know with one of the you know greatest hospitals that we have in this city in fact very close to this place uh dealing with you know people that has a very complicated let's say relationship with canabis and all that for a very long time and how everything

changed when the gamified app included some characters these characters were empathic again to the let's say patience not simplifying crying, you know, like complicated stuff, adult dialogues, all that. You know, let's talk seriously. I'm not here to say, you know, you need to quit. You already know that you need to quit. Let's talk about other things that sometimes you don't have the opportunity to use, right? And it was like magic because you could see a ton of adult people with serious problems for more than 15 years really interacting with the thing and therefore following the treatment because of the characters and because of the approximation to the characters. So that would be like my advice. Let's let's sort of um you know uh use some like storyteller to to to our apps because sometimes it looks like it's not necessary. We don't need characters here. I I think that we need to bring that from games too.
Very good. Thank you Oscar.

I guess so one final point um couple predictions because that was something we we prepped on. I think you so again I look at everything through the this access of historical player data, user data, how has your player or user's behavior changed over time. There's so much, you know, there's so many nuggets and gems in there that I think a lot of studios that get hyperfixated on live ops and events which are very important. Um maybe you're not you're not acting on those. And so I think that something we're going to see over the course of the next couple years or year uh as the attention economy becomes even more more of a gauntlet in terms of not losing the player, retaining the player is you're going to see game studios executing life cycle player life cycle management better. And the I think the some of the best studios and publishers know how to marry that historical data, you know, how are the players habits changed over time with the more of the real time in-game behavior. here. And if you can marry those two things, you do what we used to call back when I was at lean

plum life cycle operations, which is full funnel, full context of how a player has moved through um the entire life cycle and marrying that with how they behave when they come back into the game and then personalizing the game experience based on that. On the other side of the coin, I think non-gaming is going to get more real time and I think maybe live ops might begin to go away as a term or it might be it might become more ubiquitous, right? I don't think you're going to see the the volume of events that we see in games, but I think a lot of non-gaming apps are going to figure out ways to monetize live events um because it's that's an opportunity that they're missing out on. So, yeah, that's uh those are my two predictions. U gaming a bit get a little better at life cycle. Non-gaming will get a little bit better at real time monetization.
Want to add something? Just my my prediction and a little plug is um DTOC will just get normalized like

globally. Obviously it's it's like kind of steering out of an app into a near native.
Did you see the sip plane numbers?
Crazy
44%.
Crazy. So it's going to get normalized like it's already live in the US and like it's essentially 20% of your revenue back in your pocket. Uh I think it makes sense for like you know whales driven games like the casinos of the world. um you know th those numbers where it's topheavy are are the ideal but but again like we're seeing it with social games as well like casual games. So um my prediction is that that will become very normal and I think to have a plan in D2C uh now is is a good idea. We're happy to talk to you about that.
Guess I um drive off of what has been said the talking about genres and apps going back to as I said my kids have an hour of screen time a day, your players and your users are looking across the entire industry. So, don't be

afraid to look across the entire industry as well and not just at your direct competitors in regards to what else is out there to bring in.
Thank you everyone. [applause]
Thank you. That was great. Thank you very much. Thank you for staying for that. Thank you. A great well very well moderated panel. Really interesting. Took loads of notes.