Retention reports and market data
Documents
Panel: How to Optimise Revenue & Retention for Your Games
Long-term success in the modern gaming industry requires a fundamental shift toward integrating monetization and retention strategies directly into the core design process.
- Integrate monetization and retention strategies directly into the initial game design document to prevent post-launch reworks and avoid churn-inducing imbalances.
- Prioritize non-intrusive monetization methods, such as native product placements and in-game billboards, over disruptive advertising formats to maintain player retention.
- Establish a unified analytics framework that breaks down silos between monetization tools and player behavior metrics to create a data-driven operational backbone.
Panel: Live Ops Strategies That are a Must for Every Game Developer
Live Ops functions as a foundational pillar of modern game development, serving as a critical mechanism for driving long-term player engagement and recurring revenue.
- Live Ops should be integrated into the development process as early as possible, rather than treated as an afterthought, to allow for iterative testing and audience discovery.
- Developers should externalize game configurations from the client code, allowing for real-time adjustments to events and tuning without requiring new client-side builds.
- One-size-fits-all strategies are ineffective; developers must tailor Live Ops to specific regional markets and player segments, as performance often varies significantly between regions like APAC and Western Europe.
Superstar Session: Know Your Players, Grow Your Game: A Guide to Live Ops in the Cloud
Live Operations (LiveOps) has emerged as a fundamental philosophy in the modern gaming industry, marking a transition from games as static products to games as evolving services.
- LiveOps transforms games from static products into evolving services, utilizing continuous updates and events to maintain long-term player engagement without requiring client downloads.
- Successful LiveOps relies on a cyclical process of design, development, delivery, and feedback, underpinned by analytics that capture telemetry to optimize gameplay, monetization, and server health.
- Cloud-based data lakes and machine learning enable developers to derive actionable insights regarding player cohorts, sentiment, and economic balance.
Panel: Is it Still About the Whales? Getting the Most of Your Users
The gaming industry is undergoing a fundamental shift in how it identifies and monetizes high-value players, moving away from an exclusive focus on traditional whales toward a more nuanced, hybrid revenue model.
- High-spending player cohorts continue to generate approximately 80% of total game revenue.
- The deprecation of Apple’s IDFA has forced a shift away from traditional acquisition strategies toward RFM (recency, frequency, and monetary) models to track player behavior.
- Studios are increasingly using contextual signals, such as session depth and device data, to predict and identify potential high-value users in a privacy-restricted environment.
Panel: Best Practices in User Acquisition & Retention
Modern user acquisition strategies are shifting away from traditional reliance on dominant social platforms like Facebook toward more diversified channels, including Google’s Universal App Campaigns, Unity, and AppLovin.
- User acquisition strategies are shifting from a reliance on Facebook toward a diversified mix of channels including Google’s Universal App Campaigns, Unity, and AppLovin.
- Marketing should be managed as a dynamic financial investment where capital is reinvested as long as marginal revenue exceeds the marginal cost of acquisition, rather than operating under rigid monthly budgets.
- Playable ads are a high-performance format that can increase install rates by two to three times compared to standard video advertisements.
F2P Design Tips for 2021, Collections FTW (3 of 4) Ft. Jeff Witt
Collections represent a highly versatile and effective design feature for free-to-play games, capable of integration across diverse genres ranging from RPGs and strategy titles to social casino and farming games.
- Collections function as a versatile, low-risk engagement tool that provides short-term, achievable milestones to break the monotony of core gameplay loops across genres like RPGs, strategy, and casual games.
- Designers should integrate collection systems early in the development cycle rather than as post-launch additions to ensure they effectively bolster player retention and provide consistent objectives.
- To maximize effectiveness, developers must tie the acquisition of collection pieces to specific, thematic in-game actions, which helps educate players on progression while providing secondary goals.
F2P Design Tips for 2021, Embrace System Deprecation (2 of 4) Ft. Jeff Witt
For developers managing long-running free-to-play games, the strategy of system deprecation is essential for maintaining economic health and player engagement.
- Developers of long-running free-to-play games should use system deprecation to reset economic balance when veteran players accumulate resource stockpiles that render original progression systems ineffective.
- Instead of inflating costs or adding incremental tiers, developers should introduce entirely new currencies or inputs to regain control over the game economy and reset player expectations.
- The mobile title Summoners War successfully implemented this strategy by introducing a 'second awakening' system that required new energy and boss-fight materials, bypassing the obsolete resources held by long-term players.
#ElevateYourGame: Improve Revenue & Retention With the Right Ads Approach
Modern mobile game monetization increasingly relies on a hybrid model where in-app advertising functions as a core component of the player experience rather than a disruptive afterthought.
- Approximately 65 percent of developers now utilize a hybrid monetization model, integrating in-app advertising alongside in-app purchases to improve both revenue and player retention.
- Transitioning from traditional waterfall structures to a unified auction model using real-time in-app bidding increases operational efficiency and maximizes gross revenue by allowing demand sources to compete for every impression.
- Rewarded video is the industry’s fastest-growing and most player-accepted ad format, making it the primary vehicle for integrating ads into the player experience without disrupting engagement.
Mo Money Less Problems! Increasing Revenue Without Damaging Retention
Non-intrusive audio advertising represents a viable strategy for mobile game developers to generate incremental revenue without compromising player retention or disrupting the core gameplay experience.
- Non-intrusive audio advertising generates incremental revenue without cannibalizing existing monetization models like rewarded video or negatively impacting player retention.
- Audio ads achieve click-through rates between 6% and 8%, significantly outperforming standard banner ad benchmarks.
- Developers can secure CPMs ranging from $6 to $10 by implementing audio advertising strategies that respect the player's environment.
Keynote: Hindsight is 2020: How to Gain & Retain Your Audience in 2021
The global mobile landscape underwent a profound transformation in 2020, as pandemic-driven behavioral shifts accelerated digital adoption across all demographics.
- Daily time spent in mobile applications increased by an average of 25 minutes in 2020, driven by pandemic-related digital adoption across all demographics.
- Revenue models have permanently shifted away from traditional ad-supported frameworks toward subscription-based models and in-app purchases as primary drivers of consumer spending.
- Developers must pivot to a retention-centric strategy that prioritizes long-term lifetime value over immediate acquisition metrics to maintain momentum in 2021.
Superstar Session: How to Enhance the Gaming Experience Through Content Micro-personalisation
Micro-personalization serves as a critical strategy for modern game developers to enhance player retention and revenue by leveraging data science and artificial intelligence.
- Micro-personalization leverages centralized player data and AI to transition from generic engagement models to highly tailored, context-aware experiences.
- Studios can manage technical complexity by using behavior-based player clustering, which enables targeted content delivery at scale without requiring individual-level processing.
- Implementation requires a dual-model framework that integrates machine learning with business-oriented rules to provide real-time suggestions, such as gear recommendations or personalized in-app purchase offers.
The Power of an Embedded Community Platform to Inform, Engage, Educate and Retain
Integrating community platforms directly into the game environment serves as a critical strategy for enhancing player engagement, retention, and monetization.
- Integrating community platforms directly into the game environment eliminates friction from external forums, which helped Zombie Gunship Survival achieve conversion rates between 45% and 50% among new players.
- Owning community infrastructure allows studios to bypass third-party social media algorithms, ensuring direct control over brand messaging and audience access.
- Embedded platforms facilitate the collection of high-quality, actionable player feedback, which informs live-ops strategies and the development of community-requested features.