Rustam Bekmuradov participated in a panel exploring monetization strategies for developers during Casual Connect Europe 2015. “Without UA, it’s incredibly difficult, and a lot of money that goes into a game is not going to get returned,” he said. For more, see the video below.
Rustam Bekmuradov is a producer and game director at Ximad, where he is involved in every aspect of game development from game design to analytics to monetization to user analytics. He had loved games since the age of 7 but had never been involved in the games industry until 2011, when he joined Ximad. However, he did have considerable professional experience in related fields: advertising, animation and film. Two projects he is particularly proud of having worked on are Lucy, Daughter of the Devil and Bob’s Burgers. In 2011 he was between jobs, as is common in any creative field, when he happened to meet someone working at Ximad. He was intrigued enough to send them his resume and shortly thereafter was working there.
From the Entertainment Industry to the Games Industry
Even though Rustam worked in the entertainment industry, he had always loved and played games: computer games, video games, and mobile games later on. When the opportunity arose to make a game himself, he instantly grabbed it. Although game development was new to him, he was confident in his ability to tell a story, to lead a team, and most importantly, about his unprofessional experience of thousands of hours playing all sorts of games. He felt he had developed a sixth sense about game design.
His experience in animation and film crossed over well to the games industry. He had to catch up in terms of technology and “player interactivity,” but narrative, art and other creative aspects of game design were the same. For him, games are about the experience, and working in the entertainment industry had already taught him how to create that.
Finding Inspiration
Art and story are his inspiration. He consumes everything related to them and can, for example, easily spend 20 minutes looking at the cards in a grocery store.
His greatest enjoyment in developing games comes from exploring game ideas, characters and mechanics. He admits that 90 percent of the time what he envisions is not included in the initial release of the product, but spending time imagining what the game could be is the most fun in his work.
One of his proudest moments in his work at Ximad came with the release of his first game. The first review on the iOS App Store said, “Love the game but I don’t get the point of the afterburn powerup because I almost always die when I use it.” This was his acknowledgement that he had made a product someone was actually using and experiencing. It made him realize he is making games for others and not himself, so, as he puts it, “I better make it good!”
As a game designer working at a large company, he sees his biggest challenge as being creative while also being ROI positive. In some ways independent developers have an advantage because they can experiment, really pushing the boundaries of game design. He admits he has not overcome this challenge but continues to hope he will.
Monetization Issues
Monetization is also a major challenge. It is essential to find the right balance between asking people to pay while still keeping the players who will never pay interested. And, although Ximad has made great strides in finding this balance, Rustam admits they still have a great deal to learn. They work through the monetization issues by experimenting, trying anything and everything, and tracking everything they do. Early on they experimented without doing the tracking and, as a result, wasted large amounts of time and money. Now they track and analyze everything they do.
He recommends smaller companies handle monetization issues by focusing intensely on data. They should research, implement, track and analyze, and keep repeating this cycle. He has noticed that people either don’t use data to improve their games or track too many things without understanding the data that is generated. Instead, they should make a few solid theories, try them out, analyze why they failed or succeeded, and move on.
Rustam expects to see further evolution of the free-to-play model. He believes players have become accustomed to basic monetization strategies and are bored with them, so developers will need to continue innovating and improving their strategies. “There is no silver bullet to get players to pay,” he says.
Some companies have very high ARPPU, so they don’t mind losing some players through being overly aggressive with monetization. But in general, he feels it is best for most games to make things easy and intuitive and to be generous. People should know what they are buying, where they are buying and why it will help them. He emphasizes, “Make sure to give enough goodies away so people get a sense of what they can expect by spending money.”
The games industry evolves so quickly that it is difficult to predict what may happen in the future, but Rustam believes more social, player vs player, and cooperative mechanics will be key to successfully engaging and monetizing players. This trend happened with PC games where single player games have moved toward multiplayer experiences, and he expects it to continue and expand in the mobile arena.
Eclectic Inspiration
Rustam says he has no really unusual hobbies, but he tries to do as much as possible outside of his work in games. As he says, “The most beautiful and most frightening thing about game design is you have to draw from all aspects of life to be good at game design. A game designer must always be learning something.” Lately he has become interested in bikes, which gave him ideas for potential game characters and game mechanics. He feels it almost doesn’t matter what he chooses to learn. Inspiration can strike anywhere, but the more he learns, the more often inspiration can happen.
Comments
