Saturday, August 24, 2013

Casual Connect 2013: Removing the Risks from Building Games and Maximizing Profits

by Chris Dewolfe, CEO, SGN
·         Summary: Follow the analytics closely and make daily updates to the game.
·         Create a great FUE and be very analytical about the metrics. Check when people are dropping off and reduce the long load times.
·         Launch on Facebook, iOS, and Android at the same time. Look at stats and analytics on a daily basis.
·         Difficulty curve should look like a step ladder, not a linear straight line going up.
·         It’s good to monetize free users with ads if you are smart about it. Wait a few weeks before showing the first ad to the user and show the ads sparingly.
·         The biggest challenge of game development is staffing up with passionate talented people.
·         Chris started Myspace and left at 2009. There were many business mistakes with Myspace. They tried to add e-mail and classified sections and staffed up quickly to do that. The company ended up growing to 1600 employees too quickly with very little focus.
·         Be on the forefront of cross-platform development. Develop once and deploy everywhere. Zynga failed to quickly move their games to all platforms.
·         Do remarketing programs to grab users back and fix any balancing problems for all future new users.
·         Game profits are a mixture of retention and average revenue per user.

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