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[00:00:43] Tom Hammond: Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode of the master retention podcast. I'm super excited for today's episode. It's been a little while since we've done a super deep dive into everything live ops. So super excited. Um, and we have one of the best with us. Uh, we have Tiago, uh, later, um, coming to us from, you know, games where currently doing stuff for forge of empires, which is like, I mean, such a commonplace name, a great game reference for all sorts of things. Um, so we're going to have a lot of fun delving into the wonderful world of LiveOps today. Um, but Tiago, before we do that, we always like to, um, understand, like, what's your journey? Like, how'd you get to where you are? How'd you get to working in games? Yeah. Tell us your story. All [00:01:36] Thiago Leite: right. Hey, Tom. Thanks for having me here today. [00:01:40] So a little bit about my story. [00:01:43] Um, I think in the past I worked, uh, in engineering, like direct mechanical engineering and did that for almost 10 years. But during these years, I was always very passionate for games. I used to play a lot, try different platforms, different games, uh, also different, um, uh, genres. [00:02:07] And it was always something that I considered like a, uh, a hobby. But then when I moved to Germany and I did my master's degree, I was looking for, uh, working positions in Germany, trying also to go back to the mechanical engineering area. But a position at InnoGames appealed way too much for me. At the time, they were requiring a market analyst for gaming, and I was like, Well, that's perfect. [00:02:36] That's exactly the kind of, uh, job I would like to have, because I... And [00:02:43] then required to play as many video games as I can and try to classify them in generous art styles, like the [00:02:50] Tom Hammond: dream job, right? Yeah, [00:02:52] Thiago Leite: job. I'm paid to, to play video games. So I did that for one year. It was incredible. I think the company is also a very nice company. [00:03:01] They received me very well. They gave me all the opportunity and all the space to really show my creativity, to learn together with the people that were in there. And by the end of my first year as an intern. Um, I was contacted and offered a position as a game designer because they felt that I absorbed a lot of knowledge doing these deconstructions of game for almost a year. [00:03:27] On that moment then I started as a junior game designer for Elvenar in the first time and I worked as a game designer on Elvenar for one year and after one year there was also an available position as a product manager [00:03:43] also on the same team I was before. Also on Elvenar, and that's when the whole journey, uh, on LiveOps actually started being a product manager on Elvenar where I stayed for another year. [00:03:55] And then in the beginning of this year, I was invited to also do LiveOps in Fort of Empires. And here I am for almost six months doing it. And here you are. [00:04:08] Tom Hammond: So my first question, because I feel like everyone has a slightly different answer and interpretation is. What is LiveOps? [00:04:17] Thiago Leite: Well, that's a very interesting question. [00:04:20] If you look, for example, from a developer's perspective, it's everything that's related to acting on live markets and how that is done, all the changes, bug fixing, response to communities. In a product manager perspective, at least from my perspective, Live Ops has to do with all the small changes that come every day, so everything that is not 100 percent [00:04:43] static and long term for me, I already consider Live Ops. [00:04:46] So, in my opinion, uh, it's exactly what I do. Really paying attention to seasonal events, mini events, all the sales, quest conditions. So, making sure that the player is, most of the time, making sure that everything that the player encounters that is not Part of the basic gameplay is being taken care. So this is what I, I spend most of my time looking into with artists, with game designers, with the developers. [00:05:16] And I love it because, uh, I used to work with, um, mechanical, uh, repairs and I like these every day. There's something new and mostly not dealing with. long term projects, six months sometimes of implementation, and mostly pushing out events every month or every second month, looking towards the player's feedback and reacting as fast as possible, creating [00:05:43] infrastructure, doing data analysis on player feedback, on player behavior. [00:05:48] And I think it's always incredible, because you see that each small change you do in the game actually is perceived by the players. They come and they give you feedback. So it's an open conversation between us and the players. I think that's the part that I love the most about working on LiveOps. Yeah, [00:06:12] Tom Hammond: that's, that's great. [00:06:14] And I did skip over this a little bit, but, uh, for folks that maybe aren't familiar, I guess I was assuming that everyone is familiar, but can you tell me a little bit about like, you know, games, like, what do you guys make? What do you do? How long have you been around? Yeah. Like, I just love to hear a little bit more about that. [00:06:30] No [00:06:30] Thiago Leite: problem. Yeah. You know, games is a company that was founded several years ago. I think the, if we look back to one of our first games, you have tribal wars. Um, in 2003, [00:06:43] and it was founded by three friends that were working on their, like, their houses. And these three people, uh, first built this online, um, MM, like, massive, uh, online game. [00:06:59] Tribal Wars where players would compete, conquer some cities, grow their cities, and then the whole portfolio started to grow from Tribal Wars. They recreated also Grepolis, that is a game that is more on the same direction, then came Forge of Empires in 2012, then we had Elvinar in 2015, and today InnoGames is a company with 300 employees from 40, 40 different nations. [00:07:30] So it's an incredible, like cauldron of ideas of different people coming together and discussing how they think, what they think. So a company that started [00:07:43] so small and managed to reach. Milestones like tribal wars, for example, that already reached its 20th year or what we had this year. Also, a very cool milestone for forge that now I even find it incredible to think like that has reached like a one billion euro lifetime revenue. [00:08:03] So everything started with these three guys and grew up all to what it is right now. And I think it's really cool because even sometimes when we go to the office, And we have, uh, flexible working positions. So you work whenever, whenever you want. You can still sit close to other founders, Ikea or, uh, Hendrik. [00:08:23] And talk to them in parties. I remember coming and saying, Hey, how did it happen? When did you grow? And they are super open to talk, to discuss. They're into the games, they come to you to ask. Uh, so it's a very nice environment. It's amazing. [00:08:39] Tom Hammond: Very cool. Very cool. All right. [00:08:43] So the first thing that I thought we should get into, um, is segmentation. [00:08:49] So for those listening. Segmentation is basically the idea of grouping players together by things that they have done, you know, in the past, basically. Because the way that they reacted in the past is probably indicative of how they're going to react in the future. And maybe I want to change, you know, some part of their gameplay experience to better match them. [00:09:15] I think probably like the most standard example might be, Hey, me. I have segmented quests in a game like Rocket League, because maybe my PlayStation players play for, I don't know, two hours a day, on average, and my Nintendo Switch players play for 30 minutes a day, on average. Now, imagine that my base quest took about an hour to do. [00:09:39] You know, that's going to be trivial, not going to push the PlayStation [00:09:43] players to care at all. And the Nintendo Switch players might be like, Well, I'm never going to hit that because it's like way more time than I'm ever going to play. You know, it's like an impossible task. So, maybe it makes sense to have a quest that takes, I don't know, 35 minutes to complete for my, uh, Nintendo Switch players. [00:09:59] And maybe like, I don't know, two hours and... 10 minutes or something for the playstation players like that pushes you a little bit more is actually like challenges you and keeps you kind of engaged and playing um, so that's uh Segmentation in a whole I think the chat like everyone tends to get Segmentation at a high level but what i've found is that very few companies have actually been able to do Segmentation well like when I ask you like Okay, well segmentation sounds cool, but like what segments do you do or how should you group these players together in a way that actually like Lead to a better player experience. [00:10:37] So, you know, you guys obviously are great at LiveOps. I'm curious, like, what's your take on [00:10:43] segmentation? How do you guys approach [00:10:44] Thiago Leite: it? Yeah, I believe that you can approach segmentation from different perspectives. We also have, we have the basic CRM segmentation, where we're going to try to create a modular offers that will be interesting for different type of players. [00:11:03] So play styles, spend, uh, records. So if a player is tending to spend more or less on a specific... Price point. I think we have a great CRM team inside of, uh, you know, games that supports each of the games, so they are more into trying to make player profiles, try to be to build AI based models to ensure that what we are offering to players is actually what the player needs and when it needs to receive. [00:11:38] So all the So we're Um, the offers that [00:11:43] I presented when they are presented. So these user journey offers is a way to segment and that is a topic that I sometimes participate, but it's not something that I put myself so much into because I have we have these big team that is really looking into it. But there's also another side of segmentation. [00:12:03] And that's the part that you also mentioned, and it's good that you ask that. How do we make events for different player and different play styles? How can we make sure that my 55 year old American guy also enjoys the mobile, uh, playing an event on mobile the same way that a 32 year old female in Germany likes to play on browser? [00:12:29] How can we put these things together? And I think that is something that... And Elvin are have been doing very well for years because I think after a while, we managed to create a connection to [00:12:43] the community and we have this open communication for feedback to try to understand what drives them. So, for example, I spent a lot of time on Elvin are almost two years. [00:12:55] Working with live up as a game designer as a product manager, and it was really interesting to see for on Alvin art. You have two different races. You can progress in the game. In three different ways, you have PvE, uh, events, you have negotiation events in which you have to try to solve a small puzzle, but using resources instead of units, and you have the progression that is the progression throughout the game. [00:13:27] Some players will specialize in events. For example, endless dungeons or guild activities while other players will focus and target in progressing to the game as fast as possible. So in [00:13:43] these, uh, in the game structure, you already start to attend to a different kind of, uh, uh, player profile. I remember, say, having players complaining, I don't want to battle. [00:13:57] I have a quest that requires me to battle. I don't want to battle. I'm not interested. I'm interested in trading. How can we do that? And understanding these profiles is how you make an attractive event. I remember years ago, we received some, we usually received gifts from our players. They'd send it to our office and people would start sending pictures of their cities. [00:14:21] Not that they were the min max city with the biggest amount of production or attack, but they really enjoyed decorating the cities. They wanted to make it beautiful. How can I get to this, um, segment? So we created a set of buildings that were super beautiful, that you could decorate the main buildings, and they were also [00:14:43] meaningful even for the players that don't want to decorate. [00:14:45] So you start doing changes in some points to be able to accommodate all these players. In games like Ford and Elvinar that you have a very complex, uh, economy, several features connected to each other. You can, in not one single event, attend to the needs of people that want different features. For quests, we have quests with, uh, or conditions in which a player can do this or that. [00:15:13] We try to make sure that the quests are also tailored, depending on the player, uh, progression in the game. So our players, if they are in the end, they get a set of quests. When they're in the beginning, they got a different set of quests. So we try to make it modular for each of the players, try to understand how this ecosystem works, and bring them a specific quest. [00:15:38] If we look back, for example, to Elvinar, we came up with a season [00:15:43] pass last year, the four seasons of Season of Dreams, of Victory. And the way we did it, and we put a lot of effort in it, is to generate the quest conditions individually for players. You don't go out and set a set of quests, a list, and you expect everyone to follow. [00:16:01] You say, what does this player have? What has he unlocked? Then let's give that to him. Also, on our reward lane, we brought something that I don't think I saw anywhere else that allowed players to pick one out of three rewards, and each of these rewards will cater to a specific part of the game. So if you're more into one, you still have something there. [00:16:25] And it was a test we did. We ran the seasons for already, I think, four iterations. And it's really interesting to see how we understood our players. Because when you see on the data what rewards were picked, you don't have clear, uh, [00:16:43] preferences. They are all well balanced. So we know that every player is playing the game the way they like. [00:16:49] Sometimes they have to stretch a little bit here and there, but the vast majority is still, uh, being able to complete the questline. And when they look at rewards, we always find something that the player wants. So I think looking to understand your audience, really talking to them, listening to them. I spend a lot of my time on forums, on discords, saying what people are discussing. [00:17:16] Really reducing the barrier and understanding why are the players coming to the game. You have also to think like that. When we make a feature, we expect the player to play one way, but not all the time. It's exactly, they're not exactly playing how we expected. And we have to judge, okay, is this like bad to the game? [00:17:40] No, they're just playing the way they like, okay then. [00:17:43] Let's always look towards making something that captivates the audience rather than fighting against it. And understanding how your game is composed is the, is I think the baseline. And the more you can custom, make it custom, the more you can tailor make your quest, your rewards, it's even better. [00:18:01] In a game that has already so many years, we're talking about 10 years, 11 years of Forge, you have a very big assets, a very big variety of assets that you can give to the players. And by keeping track of the selections, always reevaluating our strategy, we Mostly find it. I think that is how to do segmentation on game design and how I as a product manager look at our product. [00:18:32] Tom Hammond: That's great. I love that a lot. Okay, here's a variation of that question. What's a segment that you created that you thought would work [00:18:43] really, really well and it just went terribly? Like it didn't work at all. So I created this segment so we could do this thing, but like, why didn't that work? Or like, how do we group these players wrongly? [00:18:57] Thiago Leite: Yeah, I think with the experience we had, it was really hard to not, uh, with the information we had to not find very well the segments. I remember, um, one thing that we tried to do, was we tried to cluster the players depending on their progression in the main quest line. And try to provide, uh, a balancing that would be specific for each of the chapters. [00:19:28] Meaning the parts of the main progression. And that was the only thing that didn't work quite well. Because we expected the players to grow. on a curve that was the same based on the [00:19:43] game design data. And what we realized is you can predict the behavior of the players in the beginning and try to see how they're going to progress because they have way less options. [00:19:53] But trying to use a theoretical approach to model the creativity of players that are playing a game for one year, two years, three years. It's way off the charts. It doesn't work so well. So we started to change quest lines and to change rewards and say, oh, now it's going to be perfect because all the numbers work. [00:20:14] And then we start to see that the quests were really, really harsh on the beginner, beginner players. Super easy for players in the middle, harsh for the players in the end, because they just found a different way to go around the feature. But most of the times, I think the segmentation we, we pursued was quite visible in the data. [00:20:35] Because when you look at the actions, the behaviors, and all the decisions, if you spend some time, and that's something I [00:20:43] love to do, I'm really into data, you can really try to see, and you create your idea of what the players would be. And then you just go into the forums and see what players are talking about, and you start to perceive that they fit in that. [00:20:58] That's [00:21:01] great. [00:21:04] Tom Hammond: Okay. Um, well, let's keep going. So, next I kind of wanted to talk about the LiveOps calendar. So, how do you guys approach, like, thinking about a calendar? So you kind of mentioned you plan maybe like a month or, you know, two months out, like, How do you figure out what should be going on for each of these different, you know, player segments, you know, throughout, let's say, the month of November? [00:21:33] Thiago Leite: So, um, basically, uh, for the offers, uh, [00:21:43] they are created via the team, the CRM team. And they are mostly based on time between, um, purchases. They're based on expenditure profiles, but, uh, the LiveOps calendar for sales is more, uh, built by these teams than by myself, what I would be working more on is, uh, defining which events run when, how long they should take, what sales are we doing for all the players. [00:22:22] And when to do them. So when I work in the calendar, I'm working much more into understanding. Okay. How long should this event run? Is it too long? Is it too short? Will players be bored? How can we make the mechanic be attractive for the player during 20 days, [00:22:43] 30 days, 18 days? Should we run a sale after? [00:22:47] Should we not? Do we want to try to drain some resources in the end or not? So it's really, um, approach more into the... Uh, event calendar than on how the sales are actually set up. [00:23:04] Tom Hammond: And if you think about sales, players don't give a damn about, you know, sales running, right? Like they care about, is there something fun and interesting and surprising waiting for me that like gives me a reason to open the game? Because I don't think like hardly any players are going to open the game to see what they can spend money on, right? [00:23:20] They're going to open the game because there's like this, you know, big concert that's going on in Fortnite, or there's this other thing that I don't want to miss out on, or I don't know what's going on today, but I know that every time I open the game, there's something new and exciting. So I like, I want to have a reason to do that. [00:23:34] Right? [00:23:36] Thiago Leite: Exactly. I think I'm, I just find the idea, I define the idea that the player should always be able to find something cool when [00:23:43] he enters the game. I think every time imagine how frustrating it is for a player to really want to buy something and not be able to, I think we have to keep. Offering the player new products, new, uh, offers all the time and how most of the times I work with that is we always run events. [00:24:04] So we have now the medium sized events between 20 and 30 days that have run in a mechanic, in a specific mechanic. Currently we have, uh, the POP3 mechanic. We work with, uh, MERS mechanic. We have also an idle mechanic running. Uh, we just released a card mechanic and we also have a chess mechanic, so five different mechanics Wow. [00:24:34] Inside of the game. And we make sure that we cover almost 200 days per year [00:24:43] with these events. So even when the player is playing, after he's done doing the call loop, he can also vent out a little bit, sit there and play a mini game. That is slightly simpler than the whole, uh, Forge game. And we work together a lot with our artists, bringing new content, bringing new buildings inside of the game. [00:25:07] It's a city builder, right? So what attracts the players will be the city builders, and the buildings, and the consumables. [00:25:18] So we work, my team on the live ops together with the team that develops the main storyline on creating mechanics, creating, advancing the game. And then the event covers it, bringing the rewards that will support the player into these, uh, new mechanics. So, I think in the beginning when I was a game designer, we had the, [00:25:43] I had a presentation with a friend of mine, uh, Timon, about the rewards theory. [00:25:49] And he defines rewards as going through seasons. So every time you have a new feature, the player first needs to learn about it. And you can give him temporary help after he gets to learn this mechanic. You can give him more a permanent help. And that's how we do with the events also. So as soon as something new comes out, we give some rewards that will help the player learn that mechanic. [00:26:13] And then after he learns it, we solidify his performance on that mechanic by giving more permanent rewards. So this is the, the, the. interaction between the events and, uh, the main game progression. And the way Forge is doing its own features is literally connecting one feature to the other. So creating a circle where the player plays one feature, goes to the next one and to the next one. [00:26:41] And the events will be also [00:26:43] a flow of rewards to each of these, uh, features. So the events run during the events. We have cool buildings, cool packages where players also can select what rewards they prefer. We run sales on the same day, so players that want to buy, uh, these, uh, buildings can purchase for a better price. [00:27:04] After the events are gone, we run also more sales so they can prepare to the other features. So, they also can purchase on that moment. So, always bringing something new, something fresh, seeing what the community needs, and preparing and delivering every, let me see that thing, like every 14 days we start a 20 day event. [00:27:26] So, covering the year with 200 days, more events. [00:27:32] Tom Hammond: Do you guys ever, so if I think of like the game that has the most scaled live ops that I've ever played, I actually look at Royal Match these days. I don't know if you've [00:27:43] played Royal Match, but it's like, like when I think of a perfect live ops. Experience. [00:27:49] You've got a gameplay that has a good core monetization move because I don't really like doing sales because players just get addicted to discounts and it like ruins your game economy. Um, but if you have a good core monetization, like match three has a very good core monetization, right? Which is to play a level and sometimes you'll fail level. [00:28:07] But you have the opportunity to spend like just a little money to get plus five moves that you can beat that level. Mm hmm. So that's a good core monetization move. So if I look at live ops in a real match, like all of their live ops are oriented to how do I get players to play more matches per day, so they have more opportunities to hit that plus five moves and more opportunities to spend on those. [00:28:31] And then I can also layer in some additional reasons of why you might want to buy that plus 5 moves because you want to, you know. Avoid losing these things or get this extra [00:28:43] bonus by beating it on the first level Attempt or you know all these other things that like give you more of a reason to do that But at the end of the day all of this oriented towards getting you to you know, spend more Um, you know time playing levels And then they have it layered together perfectly I feel like a lot of games that I see they think in terms of like oh well We have like this event going on this week, which I think works. [00:29:04] Okay? But when you're like really scaling up LiveOps, you know, do you start to think of a calendar as like layered events? Because like when I play Moral Match, I complete the Balloon Rising event, but then I see that, oh, I'm like 80 percent of the way towards completing the Lava Quest. So I might as well like play a couple more levels, so I can beat that. [00:29:24] And by the time you get done with that, there's like another one that you're like nearly all the way there for, and you just keep like layering on. And after all these kind of stack together, you end up... I played maybe twice as much as I intended to, but I got all this extra stuff and it was really fun and like totally worth it. [00:29:40] That's a balance. You can do it very wrong [00:29:43] if you don't do it well. But, um, what's your take on like thinking about the calendar? Like is it better to try to take that like stacked approach where you're thinking about the calendar? How do all these events work together or. You know, is it more about like, Hey, this week we're kind of running like this event where we're doing this thing, we kind of have all the features like oriented around that or is that kind of game specific, audience specific? [00:30:07] Thiago Leite: I think that is also, in my, in my opinion, it's a little bit game specific, because in a metric game, you are in a way more casual, I think, audience that we're trying to beat the, the, the game. And then you bring some small details to make the player play a little bit more. When I look about, when I look on, on Forge of Empires, for example, the core gameplay is already very dense. [00:30:33] So the player is already required to prepare on a medium to long term, uh, period. to be able to, uh, [00:30:43] be outstanding on one feature. Also, there is a lot of competition going on among these players. And then I think on specifically our event, uh, calendar, the events, they somehow go on top. Because you're just talking about Royal Match, and we have the same. [00:31:01] We have a pop mechanic that you go there and you play the event, and then if you get to the end, you can buy plus five rules, and you can buy some tools. And you can really play the game even longer and you can buy tickets to have more games a day, but that is connected to a bigger reward that it's in the end. [00:31:19] that will be placed in your city that will help you on the midterm to long term. So we, we, what we do is we balance long term goals in short term actions. So you have this long term goal of beating a specific battleground. So every second week there is a guild battleground where players fight players for a big [00:31:43] position to prepare for the battleground. [00:31:45] Then you are playing daily the seasonal event. That is happening for 20 days and what I believe is that we can even spend on top of, expand on top of the events. So you see, um, FarmVille. FarmVille has races, event races, three day event races. They have two day event challenges, so, uh, collection challenges. [00:32:08] So you layer smaller events. Because the gameplay, like the core loop, is a long to mid to long term progression. So depending on how your game is, you either construct up or you construct it down. So if you are on a short term, uh, if your game is working on a more of a short term, uh, base, then you can have a layer that is okay. [00:32:34] If you play 25 games without losing, you get this stuff. It's also being done in some board games. The more games you play without [00:32:43] losing, the more you get rewards to play more. So you create this long term layer on a short term, more or less short term, uh, gameplay. On Forza, since we are on long term, then we build on the shorter term. [00:32:56] So our players will come in, they will do their collections in the city, prepare the layout, prepare for something bigger, that will be the guild expeditions or the guild battlegrounds. But they have on these days... To play a few of the games and we try to bring them really more casual mechanics so they can have this quick fun between, I don't know, their houses to work or from work back home and also have this big perspective on the game. [00:33:27] Okay, I want to beat this championship. Next week, I will coordinate with my guild to reach this point in a month. So I think it kind of, we try to even out to allow the players to have these both experiences. That is, that is the [00:33:43] way you should look at your game and how to implement these seasonal events. [00:33:47] Very cool. Very [00:33:48] Tom Hammond: cool. Okay. Um, so switching gears just a little bit. A lot of people, when they think about LiveOps or like the player journey, they think about kind of like triggers. Um, so one thing that you've talked earlier about of like a segment that didn't work was like triggering, you know, a player's experience of like, hey, once they get to, let's say level 20, we want to do this thing for them. [00:34:15] I'm curious, like, what are some other triggers that you've tried that have actually worked really well for you? Um, so, like, what are some things of, like, hey, when we did, or when players had this thing happen, we triggered this thing and it was, like, a good experience. So, like, an example might be, hey, when your gold falls below a thousand, I want to trigger up, like, a recharge offer, or I want to trigger up, like, An event that allows them to play the game [00:34:43] more and earn, you know, free gold or something like that. [00:34:45] Thiago Leite: Mm hmm. Yeah, one thing that I found that worked quite well, and it was not on Forge, but I saw it being done. And I liked it a lot, was one of our other games, um, Sunrise Village. And what Sunrise Village did, and they realized it really fast, was we have seasonal events, they had seasonal events running. But, they realized that sometimes the players that were starting in the game, they also would like to participate in the events. [00:35:19] But a very, very... Beginner player sometimes has very, either it starts when in a moment that there is no event running so he doesn't understand that the game also has this calendar, or he saw in the beginning that the hurdles to actually participate in the event are actually quite good. Quite big. So one thing that they did and I found [00:35:43] really interesting is having events, having user related events. [00:35:51] So no matter when you start or how you start, you will get a complete, really short event just for you that will introduce you to the event mechanics in a simplified way. And give you a pool of rewards that will be meaningful in the beginning of the game. So you already start, and you feel like you're a part of it. [00:36:12] So I watched it happening, and... It was really, really, uh, successful for them and already started to show the players that we will have something more for you while you play the game. And I think that worked, worked incredibly for them. Very cool. [00:36:37] Tom Hammond: What about, are there any other triggers that you've tried that like you thought would work really well, [00:36:43] but then didn't work? [00:36:46] Thiago Leite: To be honest, while I was, uh, on Forge and Elvinar, I haven't seen many that did not work well. Because most of the, the, the offers that players receive and rewards that players receive are more based on time than on a specific trigger condition. So I don't recall at the moment anything that came to my view that was incredible or it was very weak. [00:37:21] Tom Hammond: Make sense. Make sense. Okay. Um, last topic that I thought we'd cover today. It's crazy. We're like almost out of time already. Um, how can you design, let's say, offers or events for, say, competitive players versus social players? You talked about how [00:37:43] you have different player groups, like some they like to trade and other ones like to, like, compete. [00:37:49] So I'm curious, like, what are some lessons that you've learned of, like, how to design something that works for these different, you know, groups of players so that they're happy, but also that they don't feel like they're, hey, I'm completely missing out on this thing because I don't want to fight other players or whatnot. [00:38:05] Thiago Leite: Yeah, that's, uh, that's where you have to be very flexible. I think, uh, in our game we cover, first, a very wide, uh, price point range, so we have offers that go from 99 cents to 199 euros, so we have offers on the size of different players, uh, we try to, uh, present these offers On the, for the right players on the right time. [00:38:36] So if a player is a more high spender, he's going to get bigger offers, offers with higher value. We will not be bothered [00:38:43] with a 99 cent offer because. It doesn't bring anything. That's not what that player wants. Why are players that don't spend so much will, uh, be more interested in maybe these smaller offers? [00:38:55] I think the whole balancing of the offers we do with a lot of care and try to make these offers rather quite modular. So they scale with the prices, we change the content of these offers. And also the variety, right? Because if you, if you can target the player with two, three, four offers that you think might be interesting I think it's a more movement of trial and error. [00:39:21] You create an offer for thinking on the segmentation, present the three of them, see which one performs better, and then you start to mod, having these modular offers. In which you will design the offer, not based on the player profile solely, but on the feature [00:39:43] you are pretending you intend to target. So if we have a feature, good Battlegrounds or any battle focused features, then the offer that will run together with the feature of focus to that point. [00:39:57] Yeah. So looking towards more, uh, a feature, uh, based, uh, offer. And I think also. There are offers that are general, so if you are offering something that every single player needs for the general progress, you can, uh, use that a lot. And one thing that we do a lot also on Forge, and I really like this approach, is I don't sell you an item, but I sell you a selection kit. [00:40:28] And I try to create this kit. With variations off the off a specific reward. So if you are more into trading, then I will tell you a kit that has some goods inside. Where [00:40:43] you can choose, or if you want to fight, inside of the kit, there are also units and they are on the same value. So, I allow you also to decide. [00:40:51] And I think one of the most, uh, interesting things that you can provide to the player is the sense of, uh, decision. I bought it because I wanted it, and that is what I wanted. So, allowing the player to, to make his own decision instead of trying to cover with a lot of different... Options and most of the time this feels not so good because I bought something, but I got something I don't want so you look for things that are more general and you let them um, Select from a kit. [00:41:22] What do you want? What what fits you better? [00:41:27] Tom Hammond: I love it. I love it Okay. Well, we're pretty much out of time here So I have one last question for you because we are on the mastering pod master retention podcast I should say Um, and that is you know What's one tip or trick or lesson you've learned over the years to increase [00:41:43] retention? [00:41:43] Like how do you keep your players? Coming back and playing day after day, week after week, hopefully year after year, right? [00:41:50] Thiago Leite: Yes, mostly year after year. A game that has 12 years, it's, retention is something very important. I think, uh, what, first what we look a lot is try to make the beginning of the game, the tutorial and the first steps very... [00:42:08] Easy. So allow the players to learn the game slow and steady, bringing the features into the game as the player gets comfortable with the next one. So making the onboarding very smooth in that something to get these beginners and actually put them into the game, allow them to interact with the game and get reward. [00:42:28] They're meaningful for them. And for the long term players, the players that we are already there with us for 10 years, 15 years. listening to them and bringing the challenge that [00:42:43] they expect. I think it's really different when you have a game that just started that is one year and you're still trying to find your audience for 40. [00:42:51] We have like a very solid audience that has been with us for a decade sometimes and really understanding that. The players are the most important part of the game. So how do they want to play this game? What is this game that they dream in? How can we, with all the design we have, with all the artists that we have, deliver this thing that they are passionate about? [00:43:16] I think it's keeping this contact with your community, listening to the feedback that they give, and try to improve the game. And bring something new. Say, let me solve your problem. I think services in general are like that. I'm here to solve a pain point. So, you want to have fun. You want to be strategic. [00:43:35] You want to be, you want to have a community. You want to talk to your friends. How can I better deliver that? And I think that is the secret to keep these players [00:43:43] engaged. Because they want to come back. They want to meet their friends. They want to play together. They want to get this cool reward. At this new level that they reached. [00:43:50] So I think, uh, the secret for the performance that Forge and Elvenheart have after so many years is because we're always looking into the players, understanding their pain points and their needs, and addressing in a creative way, in a positive way, and with a lot of work and quality. So that's what I believe in. [00:44:12] Tom Hammond: Love it. Well, thank you so much, Tiago. Uh, if folks do want to get in contact with you, or, you know, games, like, what's the best way for them to do that? [00:44:20] Thiago Leite: Well, if you want to get in contact with me, you can write me an email. Um, Tiago dot later at, you know, games. com. If you want to talk to, you know, games, you can always go to our website there. [00:44:33] You have the context of all the, the departments also on Facebook, [00:44:43] uh, on the forums, anywhere, it's really easy. You can just go to the games also. On the web pages, you have all the context as well. Love it. Cool. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Tom. A lot of pleasure to be here.