Live Ops
Alpha & Beta = passed. The team is set, and sustainable cash-flow reserves keep the studio running while the game starts getting real-time feedback from the player base. Each released game is a learning process and today the LiveOperations are just as important as the base product’s quality, becoming part of its DNA. There’s an abundance of games out there, User Acquisition is costly. The competition developers and publishers are in is - player time and attention (that’s very limited and tastes are specific). Keeping players engaged after the initial Global Launch becomes the bread and butter of a lot of studios. Contractually LiveOps starts after the Gold candidate has been delivered, but if you want to increase the chances of success, Liveops will come into play starting Closed Beta.
Closed Beta
Now if during Alpha & Beta, players could see the development progress through blogs and videos, in Closed Beta talk translates into play. How and if to approach this milestone is up to a team’s internal processes. Whatever the method, it is an invaluable environment that helps fill in the gaps of missing knowledge about the game (outside internal assumptions). This is a test run, and the feedback players provide can shift entire character classes, difficulty curves, levels, and game design. The players who choose to walk this path can become some of the most loyal advocates of the game if they are heard and treated with respect. Not every comment is a signal though, gamers like to vent on all sorts of topics, and some of it is just subjective noise. Discord and newsletters are the best tools to be employed to tailor a personalized communication approach with the players (channels, invite codes, rewards, etc.). Gamers know to separate a passion project from “just another one out there“. Build a community of people that believe in a product’s future success. However, treat all the data received with a dash of skepticism, as it can create a false sense of security from the overwhelmingly positive feedback or become the land of nightmares if it is bad. Creators are heavily biased in favor of their projects. Always balance beliefs and narratives with reality checks. Implement the most relevant and achievable feedback and get ready to Soft Launch.
Soft Launch
The land of benchmark KPIs. Start off by finding a few countries to launch the game in. Based on how much an average player spends on apps and games, countries are divided into tiers. In a tier 1 country a player “spends a lot” while in tier 3 an average player “spends little”.
To put it in a mobile-games context - while there is no one shoe to fit all devs and publishers - Canada has a broad range of cultures and player archetypes, so it makes it a strong Soft Launching contender. Time is of the essence, as based on the revenues, retention and engagement numbers, some tough decisions will need to be made.
Here as a few scenarios I encountered in the Soft Launch milestone
Hits the benchmark spot - all the hypotheses that “Project Fulfillment “ is a future hit, are true. All the benchmarks are met and exceeded. Congrats, go global!
Tweak till success - follows the assumption that the game generates decent results, but can be further improved.
Tweak with A/B - so the benchmarks are not quite there yet. Those involved “want to make it work”. Maybe if tweaks “x“ and “y“ are done in mechanics, story, and design, benchmarks will improve. Some of the implemented changes can be rolled out in some countries or player cohorts to test the newly implemented mechanics. Just don’t tweak until complete failure, use the stop loss orders.
There’s always the chance that if a game performs badly in Soft Launch, it doesn’t necessarily mean going global equals bust (the reverse applies). We are a volatile industry filled with entropy - maybe right before the Global launch a streamer picks up the title. An improvement to the core mechanic and reward systems makes the game stick in ways it hasn’t before. Fortune favors the prepared, and the convex. Since data-driven is all about KPIs let’s check them out, before doing anything drastic.
Looking at numbers
There is such a concept as “too much data”. Bad data floods people with numbers and theories, confirms biases, and generates lots of noise. So following the premise that the Soft launch KPIs validate whether a project is a product-to-market fit or not, how we work with numbers makes all the difference.
Don’t place everything in a universal bucket. The world is a complex system. Tier I country player behavior and spending practices drastically vary from a Tier III one. Don’t cherry-pick data - making an average out of 2 countries of different tiers, leads to unrealistic averages in retention, monetization, and engagement. For example, when looking at the average revenue per user (ARPU), adding just one whale that spent 1000$, to a cohort of average players that spend 10$ on average, changes the entire data set. From an ARPU of 10$, you get $19.80 instantly. If the benchmark you need is 15$ on average, a false sense of validation will drive the decision-making, just because the data says so.
Within a budget and time frame, if you have enough players that are engaged (i.e. constant feedback via Discord) you could run some A/B tests. Perhaps you would like to validate a claim that one balancing and/or monetization model is better than a different one. Check how they perform and stick with one that has better numbers. Testing can be done on in-game visuals, banners, icons, and so on. More insight means more areas to improve upon, but resources are limited. Pick your battles.
Know when to stop improving and launch. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
With this, we arrive at the center of the uncertainty storm.
Global Launch
It goes by the notorious “Hard Launch” or “Gold Candidate” milestone. It is really brave and bold to get here. Sustainability, factual learnings, growth, and risk of ruin are all part of it now.
Release Windows
Pick a date. Waiting indefinitely to launch and then doing it right next to your competitor or potential market leader can lead to sub-par results. Market research exists specifically for this purpose.
There are also the holidays and quarterly reports of (big) companies, that influence decisions for release. Try hitting a sweet spot to capitalize on universal holidays as players are more inclined to buy during special events.
Google, AppStore, Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft, Nintendo, Epic Store, GoG, and many others are all platforms and markets with particular requirements, and tools There are processes, compliance checks, asset requirements, and many other factors needed for a win-win launch and future collaborations. Imagine a post-release critical update is needed, and it becomes impossible due to…reasons. Time is a currency and losing it because of mishandling communication or a point of contact can lead to (huge) downsides.
Unforeseen events
Soft Launch provides benchmark averages, but a game launched globally is very much dependent on “Black Swan” events. In his books, Nasim Taleb explores the impacts of highly improbable outlier events, and the games industry is no stranger to improbability. I only scratch the surface with the following observation. Marvel Midnight Suns had top talent working on it (individuals that had previously worked on the Civilization and XCOM series), and Take-Two Interactive is the publisher behind the GTA and RDR series (enough said). It was objectively a good game and received critical acclaim. It flopped commercially. In my book it is an improbable event, it shouldn’t have happened. We can single out that the release window wasn’t good enough, it was buggy on release and keep providing arguments while using very bounded reasoning to support our “because“ claims. Just as upon release it wasn’t forecastable that it will not generate the expected revenue, it’s incorrect to count this game out. As Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said, a long-tail event might lead the Midnight Suns to rise again (and it should). What exactly this log tail event will be is a game of degree of confidence. Maybe a big streamer accidentally catches a glimpse of the game on stream or a social media meme becomes the ultimate promotional material. DAU (daily active users) and revenue that is on average “x“, can spike up like blood sugar levels after a hefty meal (dessert included). Developers and publishers can position themselves favorably to be prepared for such unforeseen scenarios by being active post-release in the LiveOps space.
Live Operations
The games industry is no stranger to friendly, but fierce competition. To be visible long-term LiveOps should be part of a product’s DNA. Even single-player games are doing it (the sweet calling of God of War Ragnarok New game+).
For mobile, try framing it as a never-ending Milestone. When things go right (metrics and revenue streams are on point), it unleashes a team’s imagination and potential for innovation, via new modes, mechanics, gameplay loops, social features. If smooth sailing isn’t the case - the game is underperforming - it provides a chance to steer things back on track.
Hearthstone Battlegrounds went from Beta to full release while in Live Operations a few years now. The team added the battle pass, new resources to grind, mechanics (buddies, quests) and opened new monetization venues. All this while improving on the core gameplay, without changing its DNA. Hearthstone BG provides a very particular player base (yours truly included) with randomness-infused entertainment and gratifying moment-to-moment decision-making.
Consistent event releases should be highlighted on social media platforms, media websites, newsletters and blog posts.
Communicate with your community (Discord) daily, spread the word among industry peers at events (Reboot, Gamescom, GIC) to get some expert feedback and find further collaboration opportunities in the LiveOps space. There’s more than internal stakeholders rooting for good projects to be seen and heard.
Staying authentic and relevant can bias even search engine “algorithms” to support the game’s growth. Players should constantly have visibility over the project's progress. Maintaining momentum of a title where so much passion and time can lead to it becoming the talk of the town (internet): “This sword had a 0.3% drop rate, and I got it!“ ; “This boss was unbeatable, but with our team build, we annihilated the bastard“; “Took me 3 days to complete this quest, but I got the best ending…waiting for the DLC to see what’s next“; “Finally got the resources to unlock Thanos, just look at the Infinity Stones“
Let us take a moment to tackle the downsides. It’s easy and inspiring to create presentations of well-performing titles, but no one talks about the boats that never reached the shore. Failing projects is tough, no matter how many times, one goes through it. The games industry is no stranger to “power law” distributions, where high performers can vastly outperform low and mid-tier titles. That’s where execution, planning, and randomness come into play. It’s a studio’s responsibility to position itself correctly. Skill set, network effects, technologies and tools are interdependent. Teams working on new IPs with potential should leverage that. Sustainable growth > growth for the sake of better economic outcomes. This involves risk-taking and asymmetries. For the last statement to be applicable in practice, I humbly ask for patience, while I’m working on a framework. These will be covered in a future post
That’s all for milestones. From Contract Signing to Live operations, these are part of the game and are here to stay. Tailor a framework that fits your team and context, in an otherwise volatile landscape. Milestones will keep evolving as does the entire industry.
When utilized properly they set tinkerers free, rather than constraining them. We are in the business of providing entertainment, discovery and engagement. In the hands of players, games can become a habit, part of a person’s journey, and a method of self-expression. They don’t need to go through all the development steps to have a say about a project. But, as developers and publishers we need milestones for checks and balances.
Credits: Artwork by Tanya Timosina
