1. Why Live Ops Matters for Casual Games
Three Strategic Mindsets
Tim Shepherd
Creative Director, Playable Ads
Wooga

2. Live Ops culture - “Wooga is 10 years old, 190+ staff; 120+ working on live titles
- Focus on story-driven casual games
- 6 live titles aged 1-8 years old
- Live Ops is integral to our culture and organization”

3. Why does Live Ops matter for casual games any product?
- “A simple Product Lifecycle chart
- Live Ops is a fundamental aspect of the F2P model – it matters, a LOT”

4. Why does Live Ops matter for casual games any product?
LIVEOPS
- “In the past, Live Ops has been a band aid to keep products alive for a
little longer, boost LTV through various basic retention and monetizing
activities”

5. Why does Live Ops matter for casual games any product?
LIVE OPS
- “Now, Live Ops should be the foundation for your post-launch lifecycle,
not an afterthought…”

6. Why does Live Ops matter for casual games any product?
LIVE OPS
- “…Quite the opposite – think about a long term Live Ops strategy as
early as concept stage. If you are thinking IAPs, monetization, core
loops, ad integration and so on, this is also the time to be thinking Live
Ops”

7. Why does Live Ops matter for casual games?- “This has been Wooga’s strategy for some time now. We invested in our
live teams, and new games think about post-launch roadmaps very early
on in development. It’s simply part of the business model now.

8. Why does Live Ops matter for casual games?- “This is echoed by other market leaders, such as Zynga and Rovio…

9. Why does Live Ops matter for casual games?- “On a product level, the game changer that is Live Ops is represented
nicely in Angry Birds 2. After launching to moderate KPIs, consistent and
smart live ops activities built the game into a market leader.

10. What is the alternative?
- Longevity
- High LTV
- Long term
- “The alternative to a Live Ops strategy is a burst of revenue at launch,
with minor spikes later around key updates and sales. If you are not
building for longevity, maximum LTV, or long term support (ie hyper
casual/premium), this is fine – but big games require bigger plans…

11. What is the alternative?
- Longevity
- High LTV
- Long term
- “…June’s Journey – Wooga’s latest Hidden Object hit – is built for the
long term. The game is built around a framework to support continuous
Live Ops (events and sales strategies, new features, iterations et al) and
the team’s execution of this strategy is shown in this chart of MoM
growth since launch.

12. What is Live Ops NOT?
- The end of ‘real dev’
- Constant, arbitrary updates
- Clearing backlogs
- Execution of longer term plans
verbatim
- “It’s worth mentioning what Live Ops isn’t at this point

13. Differing opinions - “We have many product owners with different products, challenges,
audiences, and at different stages of their game’s lifecycle. This means a
discussion about the next best move for a game in Wooga often has a
few different voices. This is a great culture to nurture if it is viable for you
– sparring regularly brings new opportunities and previous learnings to
surface

14. Live Ops Strategy
Choose from 7 things we could do,
to the 1 thing we should
- “Ultimately, it it the PO’s job to parse all these opinions and decide what
is the best for this game, this audience, this team, at this time.

15. GROWTH MARKETOPTIMIZATION
3 Strategic Live Ops Mindsets - “I want to present a framework of different mindsets that might help PO’s
identify an appropriate lens for their current situations, and guide their
decision-making process.

16. GROWTH MARKETOPTIMIZATION
“It’s all about GROWTH”

17. “It’s all about GROWTH”
● Sales
● Events
● Big impact features
- “The GROWTH mindset is typically used post-launch, when scaling a
game is the priority. There are lots of big wins to be had here, and if you
don’t already have these basic Live Ops features in place, it would be the
best place to start

18. Sales and Events: Live Ops building blocks
Offers
Events
POST LAUNCH ARPDAU ARPDAU + 100%
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
- “Tropicats (match 3 & city building) doubled ARPDAU with a growth
mindset in the months following launch last year

19. Early Stage Sales
Generic
Generous
Accessible
Timely
Relevant
Special/one-off
- “A quick refresher of key characteristics of these fairly standard features

20. Early event/s
Supports core game engagement
For everyone (not always competitive)
Passive engagement allowed
Time limited
Simple
Foundational
- “A quick refresher of key characteristics of these fairly standard features

21. GROWTH MARKETOPTIMIZATION
“It’s all about THE INDIVIDUAL”

22. “It’s all about THE INDIVIDUAL”
● Players
● Actionable data
● Personalization
- “If the growth mindset is about the player base as a whole, the
INDIVIDUAL mindset aims to maximize LTV on a per-player basis
through iteration, segmentation, and personalization

23. It’s all about THE PLAYER (“data’/”crm”/”optimzing”...)“It’s all about THE INDIVIDUAL” - “Also, games entering the maturity phase have a MUCH better idea who
their players are, and a ton of data on how they play. By this stage, data
is an increasingly valuable and actionable asset. CRM channels to
communicate with players (Facebook, surveys, Helpshift etc) would be
expected by this stage (if not much earlier)

24. Personalization at Wooga
Marketing-driven player surveys
Game-driven analytics
Data Science black magic
- “Here is a quick snapshot of a recent sophisticated personalization
project at Wooga. We aimed to understand our Hidden Object players
better. Survey results from 5k+ players on play preferences and
psychographic identifiers was combined with player data to see how
what a player says corresponds to how they play. 4 clusters of player
groups were created as distinct from one another based on various
metrics…

25. Personalization at Wooga
Player profile #
- “Each cluster contained a profile of behaviors, activities and motivations
which differed from the norm in a noticeable way. We created names for
these personas which everyone in the games and service teams can use
to refer to a segment.

26. Personalization at Wooga
In game
Player profile #
Even more
data
Dynamic
configs
- “We already have ‘basic’ segmentation for sales and offers in games;
players are offered the best sale based on various variables such as
playing and purchasing history. The insights from the persona will allow a
deeper level of configuration in offerings and messaging. This is an
ongoing project.

27. Personalization at Wooga
Player profile #
Marketing/UA
- “Personas are used end-to-end in the company; they are also used to
inform creatives for marketing, so ads can be used to try to target a
specific audience specifically. This requires coordination between
marketing creatives and UA using tools such as Facebook lookalikes.
Below is an example of a recent ad targeting “social” players

28. GROWTH MARKETOPTIMIZATION
“It’s all about THE MARKET”

29. “It’s all about THE MARKET”
● Competitors
● Trends
● New markets
- “Finally, it is always important to keep an eye on the market in general,
but as your game matures you may begin to look outward for inspiration
more than toward your existing ideas/backlogs

30. Changing landscapes: outward - “New players enter established spaces all the time. Being aware allows
you to maintain your position in a market. Also to spot new trends, find
inspiration, and understand evolving player desires and expectations.

31. Changing landscapes: outward- “For example, the Piggy Bank as a mechanic became prevalent in the last ~2 years.
Originally (AFAIK) it began as a feature in Slotomania. It seemed like a good idea and
ended up on our backlogs to consider. But as Candy Crush adopted it and match-3
players began to expect it, it became more important internally to our puzzle teams.
Bubble Island 2’s integration did not work as expected: balancing issues meant that the
feature had a larger cannibalization effect than anticipated; Tropicats took learnings and
refined the design to fit their game (which has more in-game resources in general) and
found success. Lesson: tune new ‘standards’ to your game; consider if they even fit older
titles.

32. Changing landscapes: looking inward- “Also look for emerging markets WITHIN your game. As players got
older in Pearl’s Peril (Hidden Object + island building), an emerging
audience of elder players who had a sense of mastery were running out
of content. A social feature (“Adventure Clubs” – task orientated ‘clans’)
was developed for social and elder players. This would not have been
the right feature to do right after launch as there was no audience for it.
When the PP team did it as they entered a later phase, it was the right
time

33. GROWTH MARKETOPTIMIZATION
So which is the right approach?

34. Focus changes over time - “It’s about balance – always keeping an eye on all fronts, but investing in
the most pressing/best opportunity. This graph was animated to show
shifting focus/mindsets based on time progressing

35. Focus changes over time

36. Focus changes over time

37. Focus changes over time

38. Why does Live Ops matter for casual games any product?
LIVE OPS
CONCEPT>SOFT
LAUNCH
- “Again, a Live Ops mindset is not only relevant at launch; think about all
aspect of the product lifecycle from concept phase…

39. Designing for Live Ops from day 1 - “This is what June’s Journey did, even considering how features likely
to be built ~12 months AFTER launch should be affecting the
economy design ~12 months BEFORE.
- Of course, not everyone is building June’s Journey; but if you are
building something between hypercasual and June’s Journey, scale
your Live Ops planning accordingly.
- Also a note: acknowledgement of key seasonal events (Halloween,
Christmas etc) is the best minimal framework to begin planning Live
Ops roadmaps around, at the very least.

40. Designing for Live Ops from day 1 - Other mention-worthy Live Ops titles and genres:
- PVP/Battle Royale: amazing segmentation of players based on skill
and other variables. Impacts sales and events offerings; S&E built into
economy
- Social Casino: “A platform, not a product” – a constantly evolving
service delivering new gaming content to players, and catering for all
tiers of engagement and purchasing behavior.
- “Platform, not product” is maybe the mindset of the future, as we
begin to think about building games with content strategies and LTVs
more like Netflix than the games of the past. Think outside of the box
and consider where the industry is heading…

41. Takeaways
● Live Ops can redefine your game
● Plan from Day 1, think long-term
● Identify a mindset
● Embrace seasonality
● “Platforms over products”
● Revisit regularly

42. Thanks for listening
Time for questions
- Feel free to ping me on
LinkedIn. Thanks