Let's Talk Player Feedback 🎮🎙️ Season 4 | Episode 37 🎙️🎮
Join us for a another great episode of Let's Talk Player Feedback, as we delve into the intricate process of sunsetting games. In this episode, we are thrilled to have Alysia Sanders, an industry expert from Kongregate, sharing her insights on:
🌅 From Dusk till Dawn: Sunsetting a Video Game and the Impact in its Community 🌅
We'll explore the decision-making process behind sunsetting games, the challenges faced by community managers, and the strategies employed to ensure a smooth transition for the gaming community. Key discussion points include:
👥 The Decision to Sunset Games - Understanding the circumstances that lead to this crucial decision.
📣 Communicating the Decision - How to effectively communicate the sunset decision to the game's community.
💪 Preparing the Community Management Team - Insights on team preparation and their roles during the transition.
🚀 Managing the Community During Sunset - Navigating challenges and maintaining engagement.
🎮 Transitioning for the Community - Strategies for those who wish to continue engaging with the game.
🌟 Unexpected Outcomes and Learnings - Surprising positives and key takeaways from the experience.
🔍 Looking Back and Lessons Learned - What could have been done differently and the support needed.
💡 Advice for Fellow Community Managers - Expert tips for those facing a game sunset in the future.
Join us in this thought-provoking conversation with Alysia Sanders as we uncover the complexities of sunsetting games and its profound impact on gaming communities. Tune in now for an in-depth exploration of this essential topic! 🎉🔊
Let's Talk Player Feedback is available on all major podcast platforms.
#VideoGameSunset #CommunityManagement #GamingCommunityInsights #PodcastEpisode #ExpertInterview
Let's Talk Player Feedback 🎮🎙️ Season 4 | Episode 36 🎙️🎮 Join us in this insightful episode of Let's Talk Player Feedback as we delve deep into the world of video game communities with special guest Alysia Sanders from Kongregate! 🎧🕹️ 🔥 Navigating Turbulence in Video Game Communities 🔥 From common crises to effective crisis management strategies, we explore it all: 🌐 Identifying crisis types within player communities 👁️ Spotting early signs of crises and challenges for community managers 🚀 Key steps for crisis managers to tackle situations head-on Discover the secrets behind maintaining trust and engaging with affected community members: 💬 Effective communication strategies during crises 🤝 Fostering unity in the face of conflicts and disagreements Tackling toxic behavior and building a healthier, inclusive environment: ⛔ Addressing instances of toxicity and online harassment 🌈 Creating a safe space for gamers of all backgrounds Rebuilding trust and restoring a positive image after crises: 🏗️ Strategies to regain reputation for both the game company and community. Stay ahead in the evolving gaming landscape: 🌟 Emerging trends and concerns in community management 🎮 Navigating new platforms and technologies successfully Join us for an enlightening conversation with Alysia Sanders as we explore the intricate world of video game communities and the art of crisis management. Tune in now! 🎉🔊 Let's Talk Player Feedback is available on all major podcast platforms. #GamingCommunity #CrisisManagement #VideoGameInsights #PodcastEpisode #ExpertInterview
Join Itamar Rogel, CPO of Affogata and Greg Posner, Director Solution Engineering at Helpshift while they walk us through the importance of a 360 degrees view of player feedback to create exceptional player experiences.
About Affogata
Affogata is an AI-Driven Player Feedback Analytics Platform, that allows world-class video game studios to understand their player community feedback and harness it to make better decisions when building games, new levels, features, characters, and more. Affogata gathers all the unstructured player feedback from the open web and combines it with internal player data to provide a full view of the player community voice. Multiple stakeholders such as product managers, player insights professionals, player experience teams, data analysts, and more use Affogata to make better business decisions. Affogata was founded in 2019 by Sharel Omer and Itamar Rogel.
To learn more about Affogata, visit: https://www.affogata.com/
Helpshift is a consumer-first digital support platform, made for companies that want to meet the rapidly evolving needs of their customers.
Helpshift combines smart segmentation with conversational AI to understand customer intent, facilitate a guided modern support journey, and quickly resolve their problems across today’s immersive channels like mobile apps, gaming consoles, and the metaverse.
Within weeks you’ll demonstrate ROI with our easy-to-implement SDK built with customizable automation that drives faster response and resolution times.
To learn more about Helpshift, visit: https://www.helpshift.com/
In this episode we had the pleasure of hosting Agatha Bejan, Director of CRM & Subscription Optimization at Phiture to talk about the role of a CRM professional in a games company and how they leverage player feedback for retention and monetization.
What will you listen to in this episode?
1. Minute 05:37 - Agatha introduces herself and talks about her current role at Phiture, and her previous roles at EA, Jagex and Zynga.
2. Minute 08:38 - Agatha, a CRM specialist and manager for many years, explains our audience what does a CRM manager exactly do, and why is it such an important role in the gaming industry.
3. Minute 10:14 - She talks about how player feedback influences her day-today job as a CRM Manager.
4. Minute 11:49 - Agatha dives into what is the type of data that she searches for when doing player or user research and what are the metrics she looks at to optimize performance.
5. Minute 13:24 - Our guest shares some effective CRM strategies that add value to the customer experience and drive revenue.
6. Minute 16:20 - What are the top three user insights that bring Agatha's team the biggest impact?
7. Minute 17:58 - Agatha talks about how she intertwines player insights qualitative and quantitative data.
8. Minute 20:05 - In Agatha's opinion, what is the best way to retain players?
9. Minute 21:53 - If there would be a dream insight you could get from your users, what would it be?
We had the pleasure of hosting Joshua Johnson, Director Solutions Architecture at EdgeNext. Josh began his technology career in his mid-20s. His work experience includes 10+ years in broadcasting and live event industries as an audio/video engineer, stage and production manager producing news segments as well as live broadcasts. He moved to working in the networking and computer industry during the Internet's infancy, which eventually resulted in his landing in the CDN industry in the year 2000. Within the CDN and Cloud industries, Josh has held positions running Support, Operations as well as Service Architecture and Streaming Media Service groups while also performing as an individual contributor. He currently serves as the Director of Solution Architects at EdgeNext.
What will you listen to in this episode?
1. Minute 05:09 - Joshua shared with us what are the main pain points he perceives in the games industry from the game development and performance perspective and how can EdgeNext help gaming companies combat these issues.
2. Minute 09: 10 - Joshua explains how important is got game studios to have solutions for accelerations and data enhancement so games don't lag. He shares an example of how in Esports for example, milliseconds are the difference between winning and losing a competition and if there is a lag, that can decrease exponentially the game experience.
3. Minute 14:28 - We shared with Joshua how Affogata did a report analyzing the 4 biggest Battle Royale games: Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty Mobile, and Apex Legends and we found that technical issues appear to be a recurring topic in the negative mentions of all games examined. Common complaints include server connection issues that cause lag and freezing throughout gameplay, and more and we asked Joshua what were his thoughts regarding these main complaints.
4. Minute 19:23 - Joshua shares how Game Studios could utilize both EdgeNext and Affogata to provide the best experience for their players, optimize their games with all of this data and achieve their maximum potential.
In this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Ayush Gupta, Analyst Team Lead at Sciplay Games. Ayush has a decade of experience in data analytics, about 6 years of that time has been in gaming. He started his career in an analytics consultancy, working for various clients across industries and leading projects ranging from descriptive & prescriptive analytics to building machine learning models. During this time, he got to work for Call of Duty in Santa Monica. Him being an avid gamer, he was amazed at the opportunity and it propelled him to a career in gaming. After a year, he joined Ubisoft Pune, where he got to work on a bunch of mobile games. During the course of his career, he got opportunities to work on mobile, console, and PC games, all being in different phases of their releases.
What is this episode about?
1. Minute 06:46 - Ayush shares with us his amazing experience in the gaming industry, working as an analyst in places and games such as Call of Duty, Ubisoft, RedHill Games, and Sciplay.
2. Minute 10:41 - Ayush discusses the types of metrics you should look into in every phase of the game.
3. Minute 13:11 - We asked Ayush what is the insight that brings his team the biggest impact and he said that for free-to-play games, the most important insight that you would like to know is what actually converts a player into a payer.
4. Minute 15:20 - Ayush tells us how as soon as you start asking the right questions, you get an insight. As an analyst, you come up with a lot of hypotheses that constantly need to be approved or disproved and that's how you come up with insights.
We had the pleasure of hosting Mafalda Duarte in this episode. Mafalda is the Studio director and producer at Nerd Monkeys. Mafalda helped launch titles like Out of Line and Short Games Collection into the world. In addition to being an ambassador for Women in Games, she works for the organisation as Ambassador Coordinator and teaches project management classes at Lusófona and ETIC´s video game courses. She´s a founder of the Game Dev Lisbon collective and has been organising events such as Game Dev Camp since 2020, among other community projects.
What is this episode about?
1. Minute 06:41 - Mafalda shared with us how she entered the games industry and what she likes most about it: the community.
2. Minute 12:41 - Indie Studios can have difficulty gathering player feedback, but Mafalda shared with us a story on how Nerd Monkeys asked the public which character they connect with the most, and because of the players, they changed the way their main character looked in their game.
3. Minute 17:20 - Mafalda discusses how at Indie Studios you need to be more creative to gather feedback and sometimes it is a matter of going with your gut because you don't have enough data from the communities.
4. Minute 22:06 - we asked Mafalda what insight brings the most impact to her and her team and she shared how engagement is critical for her to understand how much players enjoy the game.
In this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Jinesha Gandhi. Jinesha has been in the gaming industry for over 9 years. She currently works as a producer at Redhill games in Helsinki and she has worked on several AAA games. Making games is her passion and profession.
What you'll listen to in this episode:
1. Minute 08:18 - "player feedback is very important for any gaming company to survive" - Jinesha shared with us and how does player feedback influence her day-to-day position.
2. Minute 10:30 - Jinesha shares with us the metrics and things they look at to create and optimize games such as market trends and technology. And once the game is released, what players like the most, monetization performance, etc.
3. Minute 14:35 - We asked Jinesha what insights bring the most value to her and she told us they always look for performance insights, specifically how smooth is the game when players start playing it. Also, how many people are encountering problems in the game. "Usually, players are very vocal about such things. They write it on the community chats, and they let the company know because the players are not going to be easy on us."
4. Minute 18:15 - Jinesha has worked in several gaming companies, both mobile and console and she shared with us what are the main differences she was seen between these 2 categories and also the way they collect and utilize player feedback.
We’ve had an amazing year and 3 great seasons in the Let’s Talk Customer Feedback Podcast by Affogata. During season 3, we had awesome interviewees from companies such as Activision Blizzard, Playstudios, Wargaming, Mytona, and many more. We’ve talked about the importance of inclusivity in the games industry, how to balance player needs with the company’s strategy and vision, the influence of the community on game development and optimization, and everything in between. It has been an awesome season and we can’t wait to see what 2023 brings.
Although we’ve talked about multiple topics in the games industry, one question we asked all our guests was: “if there would be a dream insight they could get from your players, what would it be?” and we bring you here a compilation of all of these answers to end 2022 on a perfect note and hoping that we can bring these insights for next year!
So find here the 10 answers we had to this question from incredible player experience experts.
Caro Solari, the Head of Marketing at Affogata was the host in this episode and she had the pleasure of interviewing Mickael Dell'ova.
Micka is a Senior Player Experience Designer, currently working on Alan Wake 2 at Remedy. Micka has a strong belief in what video games should be: a safe place for all, a refuge where everyone must be represented, be themselves, and enjoy the same quality of experience beyond their gender, their sex orientation, their culture, their social background or their physical and mental abilities. Micka has 15 years of experience in different fields like graphic and web design, ergonomics, accessibility, Game Design, UX design, Diversity & Inclusion.
What will you listen to in this episode?
1. Minute 06:16 - We asked Micka how he became an accessibility diversity and inclusion specialist and Micka shared his background with us. He also mentioned that the video game industry is making progress in this regard, but still, the main problem is unconscious biases and preconceived ideas.
2. Minute 10:50 - Micka shared with us games that are doing a good job of representing minorities such as Last of Us, Overwatch, or Dead by Daylight.
3. Minute 14:21 - Micka also emphasized what the LGBTQ+ community is looking for in video games. "The idea is to move away from the usual stereotypes that have been served to us for years and I'm not saying that we should all represent gay men in this way. Just that is refreshing to be reminded that identities are diverse and that stereotypes and unconscious biases are frequent."
4. Minute 15:14 - We shared with Micka a few mentions that we found through Affogata from people talking about inclusivity in video games in the open share and we asked Micka his thoughts about these comments.
5. Minute 20:26 - Lastly, Micka told us about a new event he is working on for everyone around the creation of video games but integrating all the ethical and social topics in the design process. "The name is the 'Vertical Game Jam', and the goal is to bring together participants to create a video game around an ethical theme by including constraints of inclusion, representation, and accessibility and the teams will be guided by mentors and final jury members, who are prestigious diversity champions from the video game industry."
In this episode, Itamar Rogel, Affogata's CPO & co-founder interviewed Rizwana Rahman, Technical lead product manager at Intel, Board member on the Advisory Council of California State University, Chico and Journal Peer-Reviewer at IEEE.
What is this podcast about?
1. Minute 11:26 - Rizwana shared with us how can companies build product roadmaps and gives a super interesting example from Salesforce.
2. Minute 14:23 - we asked Rizwana how much should companies really listen to their customers, versus relying on their gut instincts and the strategic vision to really shape the future of the product and she shared her thoughts with us.
3. Minute 16:05 - Rizwana shared with us her top tips for incorporating customer feedback into the product without completely derailing the product roadmap: "gather the feedback proactively, understand the problem and need, identify opportunities to help the goals and incorporate in the roadmap based on the priority."
4. Minute 19:21 - we asked Rizwana what would be the 3 insights that bring the biggest impact to her team and she emphasized on: customer behavior, the path to personalized customer experience, and predicting churn.
5. Minute 21:16 - we wanted to hear how product teams receive reports from customer-facing teams in the companies and she shared with us that "customer Support or subject matter experts from customer-facing teams are essential key drivers to learn about the voice of customers."
6. Minute 28:15 - Rizwana shared her dream insight from customers and she said "it would be connecting with the target customers and learning about their behavior patterns, to proactively know their pain points and help arrive at solutions which are novel."
In this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Diana Choi, CRM Manager at Playstudios Asia. Diana has been in the space of Digital Marketing since the beginning of her career. Started her first job as a Digital Marketing Executive at HYPEBEAST, which is a global digital platform that delivers news related to fashion, arts, designs, technology, and more. Her primary role was working closely with editorial teams in Japan, South Korea, and France to grow their regional readership through social media, CRM, and SEO. Last year, she transitioned her industry from digital media to gaming and started working as a CRM Manager.
What is this episode all about?
1. Minute 05:48 - Diana tells us all about which tools she uses as a CRM Manager and how personalization is key to engaging players.
2. Minute 8:32 - Diana shares with us how they collect player feedback, by utilizing surveys and Affogata: "Affogata gives an overview of how players are responding to our app, and what's even better, is that you know, as opposed to surveys, we can see responses in real-time. So, we can confidently say that data is unbiased as players already discussing amongst themselves."
3. Minute 11:18 - Diana tells us about a new feature Playtstudios added to their game and how important was to gather and analyze player feedback. together sure the feature is delivering an optimal player experience. They analyze topics and keywords, and they even added a new product feature in the product roadmap according to the players' needs.
4. Minute 14:23 - Diana discusses how analyzing player feedback and sentiment has an impact on retention and how they utilize this feedback in creating real-life rewards for loyal players.
5. Minute 17:32 - Diana shares with us a case study in which they added a new layer to a feature that initially showed a positive spike in players, however, the quantitative data didn't show enough. Qualitative data then showed them how players were not happy with these rewards and therefore, Playstudios changed its strategy.
In this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Kristian Kanne, Senior Community Manager at Wargaming. Kristian is a passionate gamer pursuing the dream of working in the gaming industry - once a player, now taking care of the player base.
What will you listen to in this episode?
1. Minute 09:46 - Kristian shares with us how he was a hardcore gamer himself and how moving into being the Senior Community Manager coming from the competitive gaming landscape can connect more with the players and truly understand the passion and. the pains.
2. Minute 11:45 - Kristian discusses how he and his team as a player-facing team, transfer quickly the player feedback they gather to the development team, especially when discovering bugs to efficiently target these problems.
3. Minute 13:11 - as a hardcore gamer himself, Kristian shares valuable insights on the importance of transparency while communicating with your players, even if there are mistakes, delays, or screw-ups.
4. Minute 15:48 - We asked Kristian how he and the team at Wargaming maintain an active community with their players and he shared with us his main tactics.
5. Minute 18:56 - Kristian tells us how they listen to their community and how they utilize Affogata to analyze player sentiment and dive deep into player feedback conversations.
6. Minute 22:33 - Kristian shares what's the process of implementing feedback in product changes, how it is added to the roadmap, and how he is excited about the fact that upcoming features have been created based on the player feedback they've gathered.
In this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting, Muriel Goldstein, Community and CRM lead at Playstudios. Muriel is a digital marketing leader with a proven track record of acquiring, retaining, and reactivating customers through cutting-edge tactics, innovative tools, and in-depth data analysis. With over a decade of experience in online gaming creating strategies that drive growth, enhance the customer experience, build brand equity and increase engagement across all platforms, she's currently leading the CRM and Community at PLAYstudios in Tel Aviv. Among her areas of expertise:
Implementing a direct-response & brand-centric retention plan.
Leading teams through mentoring, inspiring, and fostering a 'fail fast, succeed fast' environment.
CRM and customer journey optimization
Transforming insights into high-value initiatives.
A coffee lover, a Pilates fan, and a personal development geek.
What is this episode all about?
1. Minute 4:30 - Muriel shares how player feedback influences her day-to-day position: "data tells us a lot about game performance, but real-time reactions and sentiment, complete the picture for us. We're getting to the why behind the what."
2. Minute 06:08 - we asked Muriel about the relation between player sentiment and retention and she shared with us an impactful way in which they integrate Affogata's impact score with their churn models by working with their user acquisitions and data teams.
3. Minute 08:03 - when asked about the 3 insights that bring her and her team the biggest impact, Muriel knows exactly what to answer: "players' profile personas, what motivates them to stay and play, what they like and dislike, we really want to hear everything they have to say, and three, turn signals and willingness to buy are enough deals."
4. Minute 8:49 - we were curious to understand how the player-facing teams transfer their insights to the product teams and the game studio and Muriel shared with us her amazing model: "we categorize, prioritize, share, adapt and improve."
In this special episode, Itamar Rogel, Affogata's CPO & Co-founder was the host and he interviewed Rob Gallerani, Senior Principal Game Designer at Activision Blizzard.
Rob is an industry veteran of over 20 years. He has shipped a wide range of franchises including Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, and Skylanders. He was the design lead on the Warmind expansion of Destiny 2 and led the puzzle team on the Black Armory expansion. Rob is a Principal Designer at Vicarious Visions, the developers that just recently shipped the award-winning Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2. His last role was as Game Director on Diablo 2 Resurrected.
Outside of digital games, Rob designed Charmed and Dangerous, a crowd-funded card game. He also runs homebrew tabletop games and ARGs that he can’t tell you about. When he’s not designing games, he occupies his time with blacksmithing, running obstacle courses, and spending time with his amazing wife and two daughters.
A quick snapshot of what you'll listen to on this podcast:
1. Minute 4:00 - Rob shares with us how he got into the games industry, his design background and his experience of 15+ at Activision Blizzard.
2. Minute 14:43 - We asked Rob how he collects player feedback even before launching a game and how to make a game fun according to your audience.
3. Minute 23:02 - The impact of adding or removing mechanics to a game on the player experience and a special emphasis on Diablo 2 Resurrected.
4. Minute 27:47 - We asked Rob how's the process of listening to players, respecting the feedback, respecting the community, but also, figuring out how to create something new out of it without disappointing the fans and he shared his insights.
5. Minute 41:11 - Rob shares his input on how perception is everything in a game and how Game Studios can use this when analyzing player feedback.
6. Minute 47:57 - Rob and Itamar discuss the differences between single-player and multi-player games nowadays and why people feel so connected to multiplayer games and why they find these games fun.
7. Minute 51:01 - Rob shares with us amazing insights on his top 3 player insights that he remembers made the biggest impact on the games he was part of.
8. Minute 55:36 - you don't want to miss what Rob answered when we asked him what would be a dream insight he could get from players.
For this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Ian Cofino, Co-founder at Afterburner Studios.
What you'll listen to in this episode:
1. A short intro about Ian, how he got into the industry and what are his favorite games of all times.
2. Ian shared with us what was the feedback process they had for their latest game "Dreamscaper" and how they had a nine-month open development process with feedback and input from their audience:
Minute 8:41 - "First we did things like a pre-alpha with just friends and family to solicit feedback. Then we did an alpha that was public, that people could join our Discord and get a key and we did a Kickstarter demo, and then a beta and then an early access launch in August of 2020, and each step of the way we were soliciting feedback. We're soliciting feedback throughout that whole process as well."
3. Ian discusses how player feedback is extremely important for the games industry, especially due to its user interactivity:
Minute 11:05 - "gaming is different than a lot of other fields, because it has so much user interactivity. So, separate from something like movies or books, you know, television, there's so much more back and forth that's required between the audience and the creator, when you're making a product, especially thinking about it as a business. So, it's really important that audience feedback is taken into account as you're developing."
4. We asked Ian how Indie Studios collect feedback from their games since we know that not having a community makes it extremely hard for Indie designers and developers to have this feedback to optimize their games:
Minute 12:18 - "For a lot of indie Studios, that's very challenging and we made a point of marketing very early on so that we could grow that community and we use them in tandem. So, growing the community to us also meant soliciting feedback. So, it wasn't just getting more exposure for the game. But it also meant getting more feedback so that it was kind of like a flywheel in that sense."
5. Finally, we asked Ian how they balance positive and negative feedback and how does it impact their product decisions, and he shared some valuable insights:
Minute 15:38 - "We try our best to maybe divorce emotion, a little bit from it, and think rationally about basically what is this person really trying to say. Because a lot of times, you'll receive feedback as a game developer, that might run counter to what your goals are, what your intentions are, for the artistic intention of the game, or the mechanics, how you want players to experience things. So, it's always about a synthesis of where they're coming from, why they've given this feedback, and what your intentions are for the game.
For this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Latoya Peterson. Latoya lives at the intersection of emerging technology and culture. Named one of Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30 rising stars in media, she is best known for the award-winning blog Racialicious.com - the intersection of race and pop culture. She is currently co-founder and CXO at Glow Up Games, a game studio working on their first title set in the world of HBO’s Insecure.
What will you listen to in this podcast episode?
1. Minute 04:13 - An amazing background story on how GlowUp Games was created between Latoya Peterson and her partner Mitu.
2. Latoya shares with us how their game studio is focusing on the representation of a huge hidden market, for a market just like herself and her partner Mitu.
Minute 12:27 - "In 40 years of gaming, if I want to play as a black female character, I have like 12 opportunities [...]. Mitu was actually feeling the same way in terms of also being a brown-skinned girl, she is South Asian, specifically British, Bangladeshi, but in terms of, you know, not seeing the types of representation that she wants, types of stories and lived experiences [...]. So, one of the things that we ended up really wanting to focus on is the serving of what we were hoping with the largest hidden market of players, which are players like us, people who are already playing games, who already love games."
3. Latoya tells us how they started talking about GlowUp games as the Fenty beauty company in the entertainment industry so people could understand what they were trying to do because the industry still being very male-dominated:
Minute 14:30 - "(people) still think a young, white man is kind of like your ideal player, the person who's going to spend the most money, all these different things, so everything is calibrated towards that player. There's nothing wrong with that player. It's just that that's not the only thing in the world."
4. And Latoya continued telling us how even though there is data and players are giving feedback out to the industry on what they really want to see in games, it seems like it is still not heard enough:
Minute 18: 30 - "What was happening in the games industry, and what is still happening in the games industry is that they are hearing from customers, 'hey, we want to see more diverse stories, [...] players want to see more diverse experiences and the games industry is like, 'Yeah, but you know, what? Who cares?'
5. Continuing the point from above, Latoya shares how this lack of data in the industry inspired GlowUp Games to create a new ecosystem where they try to gather as much data as possible to provide players with the best experience"
Minute 20:45 - "So, that was super enlightening for us and it became part of the value proposition we started building up as the company, which is like, Okay, we're going to understand our player better than anyone else and we want to have data that nobody else has. [...] We didn't think we need to change it ecosystem. But that's ultimately what ended up happening. We do need to change the ecosystem around video games."
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Let's Talk Customer Feedback. We had the pleasure of hosting Olga Koryakinajoined who joined MYTONA 4 years ago, and became a Head of Marketing Creative from junior Creative manager.
What's this episode all about?
1. How Mytona attracts gamers' attention and their empathetic approach.
2. A description of how Mytona keeps their players engaged and creates a great player experience your personalization and customization:
Minute 08:55 - "we gave our players an opportunity to express themselves through our diverse and deep customization features. Starting from players' appearances to their home and restaurants they can customize everything, so every one is unique here in the cooking diary."
3. Olga shares how the company gathers player feedback and the importance they give to it.
Minute 10:54 - "We're trying to gather all the information about our players from all sources. We also read story views, especially after events come out. We also read official and non-official communities to understand what our player needs, what engages them in the game, and what they don't like [...] because the main goal is to make our player's experience more fun, and we are using target audience motivations as a core for our creative strategies for each project."
4. We asked Olga about what would be her dream insight to get from players and her answer revelead probably something that all of us are looking for:
Minute 14:00 - "I think it will be like a first impression of the game. [...] What made our players stay and play? We have players who play our game, almost from the beginning. It means seven years for someone or four years and I would love to meet them and ask them this, it would be really exciting to know."
For this episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Michael Rubinelli, Chief Gaming Officer at WAX Studio - Worldwide Asset Exchange, now Tyranno Studios.
Michael is a 25-year gaming industry veteran having started his career in the early 90s with Electronic Arts. While at EA as a producer of various sports titles, Mr. Rubinelli's main focus was overseeing the production of John Madden Football. In 1993, he garnered the "Rising Star" Award and in 1994 he was honored with the "Top Producer of the Year" and the "Fast Tracker" award. Currently, Mr. Rubinelli is the GM, Head of Studio, at Worldwide Asset Exchange (aka – WAX) Studios. WAX is the number one blockchain in the world based on daily transactions. He oversees the development of all internal and external games in their play-to-earn gaming portfolio. Mr. Rubinelli has also worked at The Walt Disney Company, THQ, Take Two, Esports Mogul and P4RC in an executive capacity.
What will you listen to in this episode:
1. Games in Web3: how is WAX different, why is retention so high in these games, why is onboarding so important and more.
2. The importance of mixing qualitative and quantitative analytics for creating the optimal user experience.
Minute 8:00 - "You have to blend the art of instinct and creativity with the science of empirical evidence and analytics and cohort analysis and once you have those two things, working in concert with one another, you can deliver an unbelievably well performing product that you know, has your audience in mind."
3. How does player feedback influence the games at WAX.
Minute 12:00 - "What we've done at WAX is we've taken kind of five or six different really prominent gaming genres, and we've applied that thinking of ownership to those things and we're bringing it to the masses, and we're bringing it out, not when it's completely done, but when it's close to being done. So, again, we can get that signal from the audience. Do you like this? Do you not like that, you know, where do you what resonates with you, and what does and we've kind of live operating to coming out with a full game that really performs unbelievably well relative to their behaviors."
4. The top player insights that bring Michael's team the biggest impact (hint: it's not retention).
Minute 17:30 - "I think is really important to keep in mind is player onboarding. So, if you look at Web3 gaming, it's filled with a ton of friction [...]. It's just friction everywhere you look and so one of the things that we measure really, really closely is what does our conversion funnel looks like."
5. WAX's mission: player ownership of assets.
Minute 32:30 - " So, the vision of WAX and the mission of WAX is to help subsidize at a minimum subsidize that players spend and if you subsidize that player spending, you remove that stigma of I can't quit. Now, I don't own anything. I'm committed. This is really powerful thing and we're gonna go from, you know, 3 billion gamers to three and a half to four to five fairly quickly, because now more people are going to come in, it's like, oh, I feel comfortable spending, because I know that I have a means to let go of these assets to other people who want them."
We are very excited to start with Season 3. We will have incredible industry professionals as guests from companies such as Playstudios, Afterburner Studios, WAX, Plarium, GlowUp Games and much more.
As the first episode of this season, we wanted to share with you some highlights from Season 1 and 2 and also, share with you our new format of the podcast, we hope you love it as much as we do. So find here the top moments and quotes from the incredible guests we’ve had until now.