Casual Connect Tel Aviv - To the Stars! Scaling your Game from Concept to Soft Launch (and beyond!)

Editor's Notes

• #2: I’ve been around many games and saw how success and failure feels like. In this talk, I’m going to go over some examples of scaling, reveal a few insider tips and warn you of some pitfalls when pushing your app through soft launch and beyond. This will be an intro-level lecture, as I only have 20 minutes to cover a gamut of topics - so unfortunately I won’t have time to go in-depth into everything - but feel free to touch base with me after the lecture if you want to dive deeper into a specific topic.
• #3: 11 years in the business, 5 years in the games industry I’ve worked with Mytopia, Win, Tacticsoft and a few other companies Now I’m Consulting, mostly for early-stage game startups
• #4: So you have a great game concept and you built a prototype. What’s next? How do you get users? Where do you start? How do you reach your first 1k DAUs? Or 10k? And how do you do that without spending big bucks? Well, let’s dive in.
• #5: Back in the day when I was doing SEO, we had a saying - “content is king”. Well, in games, this saying should be “design is king”. It all boils down to design. It doesn’t matter how big your pockets are or if you have a license for a great IP - if you want to make a game that will grow, and keep growing - your design must be solid. Test, test, test! Make a playable MVP ASAP and start testing it. Not only on yourself - but on everyone you possibly can. Even go to people in the street. Just test it on whoever you can. And ask the right questions! Check what people liked. What they didn’t like - and why. This can be an entire lecture by itself - so let’s just say that having a rock-solid core loop is crucial, before anything else.
• #6: Once you have a core loop, it’s time to do some thinking. Ask yourself the three “W”s- Who is my audience? Where is my audience? What other games are they playing? You must figure out the answers for these questions before you go any further. 
• #7: Don’t be afraid to go into forums, talk to gamer friends, find online communities on FB, reddit etc Look at your competitors - what are they doing? Where are they active? How do they position themselves? Figure out where you can do a better job - be it your core design, your art, your messaging… play to your strengths!
• #8: Now that you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to start engaging with them. Go back to the forums and start recruiting testers. Remember - gamers like to be first, they like devs who listen to them, and they like feeling special. So make sure you have some nice rewards for your testers. It doesn’t have to be tangible stuff - even sending them free stuff in-game, putting some vanity items or a special “tester” status will do. Some services you can check out are: BetaBound, TheGameOnProject, and Prelaunch.me - all of these offer games a way to recruit testers - mostly for free, or at a very small budget.
• #9: Once you got a 100 players, it’s time to start looking at your metrics. The most important things to look at are your engagement and retention numbers. Start with the top of your funnel - looking at tutorial completion rates, drops in the first sessions, 2nd day retention etc. As soon as you got some numbers, go back to the design phase. Figure out what can cause those drops, and how you can circumvent them. Make sure to test every change you make!
• #10: By now you’ve got a couple of hundreds of players and a pretty solid basic game. Now it’s time to push on to the next level - but you don’t have any marketing budget! So what do you do? While it’s true that having deep pockets is always better, there’s still some tricks you can pull to get some more traction. Now it’s time to invest in some growth features: things like sharing, inviting, etc - don’t forget to incentivize your users - otherwise they won’t take part! Reach out to other indie developers, and make a “user swap”. You can either do it directly, or use a platform such as Chartboost to help you push this forward. Twitch: if your game is streamable, get out there and stream it! Ask your users to stream as well! Youtubers: use the youtuber list (link) and try reaching out to medium-sized tubers and ask them to review the game. Be nice, be direct, and don’t forget to give them a little something for doing so. Remember: at this stage, even a tuber with 1k followers is good for you - and they get less requests than the big guys. Employ the power of social media: use twitter hashtags and subreddits to promote your game further. Include good art and a good message and start getting more users Simply ask! Gamers like to share games with their friends. If your game is any good, why wouldn’t they share it? Ask your players to spread the word about the game. You’d be surprised at the results! * a word on analytics: in order to ensure you’re putting your efforts in the right place, track every channel - it can be a bit.ly, a special system you use, or a tracking provider such as TUNE/Appsflyer. Know what works and what doesn’t, and put more effort where you actually see results. 
• #11: Always, always talk to your players! Open a support channel, a reddit channel, a twitter handle, all of them and more! Promote them in your game, push users to go there with incentives, and simply let players talk. Be where your players are – if your userbase is mostly on reddit –that should be your focus. Same goes for any other channel. Pro tip: open a secret FB group and invite your early testers to join. Constantly update them on what you’re working on, and ask for their feedback. Use surveys (link them in-game), and get to know your players by name.
• #12: As I mentioned, players like to feel appreciated and listened to. Always comment on feedback - good or bad. Reply to reviews (even the good ones!), and give attention to any player who needs it. Remember - until your game is ready for mass market, your players are your testers, your QA, your think tank. Listen to what they like and dislike, consult with them on features to develop, and let them know you’re listening. That being said, players not only like to feel like you’re listening, they also just love to talk. And some of that talk is either not constructive, a waste of your time, or simply rage. Learn to filter through what you’re reading. Sometimes a player will suggest a feature that completely changes the game, or just rage about wanting more freebies. Learn when to say no, and when to stop taking it to heart. Growing a thick skin is crucial!  Pro tip: reward users for finding bugs or hacking your game. Again - they are your additional QA team. Don’t be mad if they broke the system - be glad they found it, give them a reward, and fix the leak.
• #13: Here’s an example from BDEA – players reporting about exploits they found in the game. We were able to plug the leaks, and obviously – rewarded the players for reporting
• #14: Planetside 2 did a fantastic job of listening to their audience – they shared their feature roadmap on their site and allowed players to vote for features they wanted. Based on this feedback, the game’s roadmap actually changed several times, with a few features being bumped up in priority based on user requests, while other (that initially were scheduled to go live earlier) where delayed since users deemed them not important enough
• #15: OK, so by now you’ve reached about 1k DAU and you maybe even have some income (either from IAP’s, ads or both). So now it’s time to start investing that money back into your game. Again, spending on UA is a huge topic, so let’s just touch a few critical points: Don’t bother with agencies at this stage. It’s a waste of your money. Spend it yourself, so you can also educate yourself in the process. Go for FB and Chartboost. Those are your sure-fire bets. FB will be more expensive, but should yield better results. CB is cheaper, but the quality gap is smaller than the price gap - so don’t be afraid to use it. If you can, create a video ASAP and start promoting it. It’ll get you great results. Track and analyze! Don’t spend more than $50 (max!) on a campaign that’s not working. If you need numbers for testing, go for tier-3 countries in CB. the quality might be lower, but you’ll get scale fast.
• #16: ASO is your friend. Learn how it works (depending on the platform you go for) and how you can utilize it for your benefit. Sign up for a free account at SensorTower (or a different service) and start tracking your competitors. Notice any changes they make and how they affect their rankings. Think like a human, not a machine! Think of what people would type into the search box and try to reach good positions in those keywords Go for long tale. You can’t beat your competitors at the big keywords, so go for a variety of smaller keywords. If you do a good job, those smaller keywords combined will get you great traction. Use keywords in your title - it save you space on the keywords box (on iOS) and have more weight on both platforms Translate your app page! Get more local hits Constantly A/B test your creatives (on Android it’s really easy. On iOS consider using StoreMaven) to learn what converts better Use the platforms’ auto-complete feature to figure out what search terms pop up more often Android - use HTML formatting on your description to put emphasis on your strongest keywords
• #17: Creativity is key when looking at scaling with low budgets. There is no recipe here but being aware of the trends beyond the industry and figuring out creative ways to take advantage of them. For example - looking at movie trends. If you know you’re working on a game that will be ready in about 6 months, but your art and lore aren’t finished yet, try looking at the film industry to figure out if there’s any clear trend you can follow. If there’s going to be a huge super-hero trend, try setting your game around super-heroes to enjoy an organic uplift. Or, following the US elections, making a game about the elections, or using faces similar to the contenders could get you great traction in the US.
• #18: Here’s an example from SM. Some of you might’ve heard of the big robot showdown due to happen this years between Japan’s KURATAS and USA’s MEGABOT. When both companies launched their trailers, Tacticsoft (SM’s developer) quickly created both mechs in-game and aired a gameplay video showcasing the battle, to gain additional free traction from mech lovers who didn’t know of the game
• #19: Another example – Empire War is a strategy game, whose icon looks fairly familiar… They used the concepts of GoT characters to create a sense of familiarity with the game, although they are not affiliated with HBO in any way
• #20: These are a few common mistakes many developers make. Try to avoid making these, and you should be on the right path to success.
• #21: A growth example from SM. SM was released on android in december 15. On june 16, the game was covered in a youtube video by ssundee – a streamer with over 7m subs. He featured the game in 2 different videos, totaling at almost 3m views. The results? SM gained over 50k organic downloads within a week, and a 6-figure revenue boost during that month! and although these number subsided since, the baseline for both has jumped and is still significantly higher today than it was before!
• #22: Another growth example from BDEA. The game launched in open alpha on android at the end of april 16. On may 16, tacticsoft worked with PLM to create a campaign for bringing new testers to the game. we created a store page within PLM’s app, and offered free in-game currency for every tester who joined. The results? Over 1k free testers within 3 days of launching the campaign.
• #23: So let’s recap
• #24: Thank you for listening, and I hope this has been helpful to you in some way. If you have any questions or would like to dive into a deeper conversation, feel free to ping me at my email or twitter. We’ll now have a few minutes for question.