Apptica Talks. Episode #7. Growing your game with Smart LiveOps with Julia Iljuk and Pavel Ignatov from Balancy

"Instead of attracting more users, studios start to think about how to better monetise a current loyal audience, and how better retain the users they are attracting".

In this episode Apptica Talks about growing your game with Smart LiveOps with Julia Iljuk, Head of Growth, and Pavel Ignatov, Founder, at Balancy.

Balancy is a LiveOps platform for game studios that helps increase LTV and win the competition by customizing and personalizing the gaming experience.

What we have talked about:

• The story behind Balancy: how former game developers created tools for studios to avoid their mistakes
• Current state of the mobile gaming market and the place of LiveOps in it
• Liveops in 2023: current approaches and how tactics have evolved in recent years
• The role of personalization + successful cases of game personalization from Balancy’s portfolio.
• LiveOps at UA level
• Advantages of ready-made LiveOps tools vs in-house platforms, spreadsheets and JSONs.
• Upcoming events where we could meet the guys

Key Takeaways:

• LiveOps is a strategy that helps you to achieve a goal of retention and monetisation. Titles with LiveOps integrated usually generate 2-3 times more revenue.
• There is no other option for you to grow rather than using LiveOps since CPI is growing.  When it used to be cheaper you were able to have a sustainable business by acquiring more users and monetising them with positive ROI. Nowadays, your ROI can’t be positive without LiveOps.
• Before LiveOps strategy was implemented as a hard-coded similar experience for everyone, now LiveOps is a very complex set of approaches that is aimed at increasing the value of a game by highly personalized gaming experience. It’s not enough to give the same offer or the same event to every user, you also need to tailor it to their needs and expectations: pricing, bundle composition, etc.
• One of the important criteria of segmentation is RFM analysis: when/how much this segment paid. On top of that, you can select the segments of the users who like to watch ads, but do not pay at all, or who are about to churn.
• Managing LiveOps now is like flying in a starship where you have to be always in control of a game.
• You should provide the deal at a price that this particular user can afford. If a ‘whale’ can pay more - give them this chance.
• If you operate your game with spreadsheets and JSONs, you will fail to create a highly personalized experience at large scale and speed, that’s why some studios are looking for a ready-made tool to start quickly with LiveOps and be able to compete with top-publishers that have good in-house systems in place.
• LiveOps from UA point. Main goal is to attract users that will later retain. With LiveOps and personalisation you can achieve a better retention by providing seamless flow from a campaign creative into gaming experience and by avoiding controversies between what you see in a creative and what you see in a game.

You can learn more about Balancy on the website and get more insights in its blog.

Put on headphones and enjoy:
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