Games and Names, an industry podcast launched by AppMagic in partnership with WN Media Group, is back. The first episode of 2024 is all about LiveOps and the main challenges that mobile developers may face in this area.
This time, Games and Names host AppMagic VP of product Stan Minasov was joined by mobile gaming veteran Vikas Menon. He is an experienced producer, who spent nearly 12 years at Zynga and worked on titles like FarmVille 2, Mafia Wars, and CSR2.
Below are the main topics discussed during the 9th episode of Games and Names:
- What is LiveOps and how the industry’s approach to it has evolved over time;
- LiveOps in 2024 — launching a new successful mobile game is getting extremely difficult, so running a long-term operational strategy is more important than ever;
- Zynga’s approach to LiveOps — data-driven decision making matters a lot, but you also need to deeply understand what players want from the game (interacting with your audience, running focus groups, etc.) to generate the best insights on what works and what doesn’t;
- The importance of building a framework with clear processes so that the team can continue to run LiveOps and deliver results even in cases when some people leave the company.
Here is also Menon’s personal take on live operations:
“You won’t find success by having a one hit or one feature that does well — you need to have the thought process embedded in your team and therefore set up your team for success in a way that they can continuously learn. Every two to four weeks we just want to get back together and see what’s working and what’s not, and we would obviously get a lof of insights from every release and every event, as well as almost daily insights from players. “
You can watch the full episode below or listen to it on: