Using LiveOps to improve the game longevity
The mobile gaming industry is going through tectonic shifts. With the explosion of smartphones, games are now more accessible than ever before. The barriers that prevented people so far from playing have significantly dropped.
In 2019, almost one-third of the global population (2.4 B people) played mobile games.
While the core objective of the game is still to provide fun and engaging experiences; it has now become all the more important to segment players into cohorts, understand and meet the needs of each cohort. This is where LiveOps can be used as an effective strategy.
LiveOps is the practice of making frequent data-driven changes to the game to keep the players engaged.
At the bare minimum, an effective LiveOps platform has to have the ability to track a player’s behavioral data on a real-time basis and make it available in such a way that Product Managers can take action. For example, if data points such as login, purchase events, and player win states, etc are available on a real-time basis for targeting the one can:
- Run special in-game events to keep the game interesting or attract players to come back and re-engage — often with dramatic impact.
- Segment players and make targeted communications or offers appropriate for each segment to stimulate engagement and boost monetization.
Such a platform helps in keeping the game fresh and greatly improve monetization opportunities because it offers optimization opportunities across all the facets: the ability to attract players, retain them over time, and monetize them effectively. For example, let’s say that the business goal is to improve gameplay time duration then campaigns such as Milestone rewards and Streaks can be deployed. For example, a popular Gin Rummy mobile game uses that. It is quite possible that streak challenges and rewards would be configured differently for different cohorts of players so that each segment follows it’s own optimization curve.
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I would love to hear how you are currently using or plan to use LiveOps in your games.