Vasiliy Sabirov: Making Games Better with Analytics

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Development Exclusive Interviews

Vasiliy Sabirov: Making Games Better with Analytics

September 19, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

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Vasiliy Sabirov is Lead Analyst at devtodev, a full-cycle analytics platform that helps developers to improve their games. Vasiliy has seven years of experience in game analytics and describes his transition to devtodev as smooth and effortless. He began as a business analyst, then worked in a B2B service for games. He followed that with working for a game development company and from there to devtodev.

Making Decisions That Mean Something

Vasiliy Sabirov is Lead Analyst for devtodev

Vasiliy’s work as Lead Analyst covers three major areas. The first is helping developers understand why analytics is so important to games and how analyzing their games can make them better. At devtodev, this has included writing books, hosting webinars and, most recently, launching a free online course in game analytics. Vasiliy also participates in international gamedev events as a guest speaker, something that involves a great deal of travel and offers opportunities to exchange ideas and opinions with other professionals.

His second major area of responsibility is creating and improving the devtodev platform. He generates ideas for reports that are useful for different game projects in different genres and that help developers understand the meaning behind the numbers in their games. And he is also responsible for analytics outsourcing for some of their clients.

Vasiliy describes, “It is really important for me to feel that my decisions mean something and influence something for the best. And the more things I can influence, the faster those decisions are implemented, the better. I’m getting all those things working at devtodev.”

Europe 2018 Video Coverage

Teut Weidemann: Conversion and ARPPU in Your F2P Game | Casual Connect Video

August 16, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Teut Weidemann speaking at Casual Connect Europe in London

Are you a game developer who has decided to use the free-to-play business model? Then, no matter how exciting your game, you must find ways to make it profitable if you are to continue in business. How will you convert the users into paying users? Then how will you convince those paying users to continue spending in your game? These are difficult but absolutely essential challenges. There is no better person to advise you than Teut Weidemann.

Teut Weidemann is the F2P Consultant at I Teut You So. As a senior online games specialist, he consults with companies in the F2P space, sharing the knowledge he gained working in games since the 1980s and shipping over 100 titles on multiple platforms. He was part of the team that created the browser game of the year, The Settlers Online.

At Casual Connect Europe 2018, Teut gave the session titled Raising ARPPU and Conversion in Your F2P Game. In it he used examples from dozens of different games in best practices for raising ARPPU and conversion: the most difficult problem. Once past this hurdle, raising ARPPU is a little easier, but still tricky. You must always be aware of the fact that players want value for the money they spend in the game.

To learn more about how you can keep your game profitable while providing the value players want, be sure to watch the video of this session.

To read more about Teut including some more of his wisdom from Casual Connect Europe 2017 which took place in Berlin, see this exclusive article.

Europe 2018 Video Coverage

In-App Header Bidding and Why with Natalie Portier | Casual Connect Video

July 10, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

What is happening with monetizing today? What do you need to know to successfully monetize into the future? These are questions that are crucial for everyone in the game industry. Natalie Portier offers the information and solutions that can make the difference to your business.

Natalie is the Chief Operating Officer at ad mediation company Appodeal and has been with the company from the beginning. Innovations and quality game development are Natalie’s passions as they implement their ten years of experience in business operations and tech development.

Currently, everyone is interested in in-app header bidding, the next big thing in mobile development. Appodeal is now implementing this solution, providing closer access the actual highest price per impression for publishers and making it available to all Appodeal clients. At the Casual Connect session Mobile Advertising is Evolving: What You Need to Know to Monetize in 2018 and Beyond, Natalie explained more about this technology and why you should care about it, as well as shared the first industry results of in-app header bidding. You can learn more about this trend by watching the video of the full session from Casual Connect Europe 2018.

For more about Natalie and her career, please see this exclusive article.

Europe 2018 Video Coverage

Lamia Shreim: Using Data to Enhance Monetization | Casual Connect Video

July 9, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

This wasn't just a job I settled for, I enjoy everything about what I do. - Lamia ShreimClick To Tweet

Over time we have seen MENA’s mobile gaming market to be one of the world’s top profitable markets. This is particularly surprising given the fact that it has not been tapped into very much. In the MENA (Middle East and Northern Africa region) market, whales make up less tha 10% of total users yet they generate nearly 60% of a given game’s revenue. Join Tamatem Inc.’s Monetization & UA Manager Lamia Shreim at Casual Connect Europe as she described how to manage whales from the MENA which have proven to be more challenging than whales in other areas of the globe. Language barriers and cultural sensitivity and two big contributors to this challenge. This talk titled The Importance of Managing Whales in MENA focused on the importance of managing whales from the MENA with an emphasis on why localization is the key to unlocking this market.

Contributions Development Indie Postmortem

The Office Quest: A Story of Success

May 31, 2018 — by Industry Contributions

By Lior Bruder, Founder and CEO of 11Sheep.com

I guess that every single games developer in the world could say that everything started when they were kids and, with gleamy eyes but steady hands, played their first game. But I’d like to finish this post before the year is over, and that’d be a bit cheesy anyway, so let’s fast forward a little bit. In some sense, everything started when I decided to found a small development company. But then I would have to talk of 10 years of hard (but rewarding) work, during which we developed more than 50 products and saw many of our clients succeed – one of them sold his product that we developed for him for 50 million USD to NASDAQ!

So, fast forward again to the moment when we decided that the time had arrived to create our own “baby,” to make a game for us and not for others. The idea had crossed our minds before, but it wasn’t until some random day, having some coffee, when I saw a beautiful demo that Oren Rubin and Alon Simon had created. Back then it was something really tiny, but I instantly saw that it had something special – it was eye-catching, quirky, and funny. So I contacted them and told them that maybe we could make a mobile game out of it. We all agreed that it was worth a try.

And here we are, one year, one nomination to the Google Indie Prize, 20 times featured by Apple and Google (even featured once in the “Today” tab), and 4 million downloads later. It was definitely worth the try, don’t you think? But let’s see how we got here – the path is as important as the destination!

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Ad Monetizing in Mobile Games: Benefits and Risks | Casual Connect Video

April 12, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

As everyone involved in the mobile game industry knows, ad monetization has become critical to monetizing mobile games. And without effective monetization, no game can succeed. So how can you learn the best ways to monetize your game. At Casual Connect USA 2017, the panel discussion, The Pain and Gain of Ad Monetization – Publisher Stories, offered some important information from the publishers’ perspective of what works and what doesn’t.

Publishers experienced with ad monetization for mobile games participated as panelists. They included:

Jarrko Rajamaki, Vice President Advertising at Rovio. This is Jarrko’s second commission in this position at Rovio, heading ad monetization over the entire Rovio game portfolio. Jarrko began his career in online advertising at AOL’s European business and still proudly uses aol.com as his email address.

Dave Yonamine, Co-Founder and Chairman of Mobilityware. Dave is the primary liaison between Mobilityware and other app developers and has the primary responsibility for the company’s strategic direction. Mobilityware is a leading mobile games developer and has more than 250 million downloads across its award winning portfolio.

John Boog-Scott, Chief Operating Officer at PeopleFun. John has spent the past five years growing PeopleFun, learning the hard way what succeeds and what fails with mobile games UA and monetization. PeopleFun builds five star casual word games. John has also been a lean startup founder in many other software and games companies, including Ensemble Studios, the creators of Age of Empires.

Karim Farghaly, Director of Business Development at Bandai Namco Entertainment America for mobile platforms. Karim manages external partnerships with development studios, licencors, digital distributors and advertising platforms. Prior to BNEA Mobile, Karim held a number of executive positions in the games industry, including at Scarab, Empire and Interplay.

The panel was moderated by Ayala Rudoy, Director of Strategic Customers at SafeDK. Ayala is passionate about helping game developers ensure the ads they serve in their games don’t affect the game’s user experience, retention or revenue.

This session discussed the benefits and best practices when monetizing with ads and described the issues and main risks of displaying ads in mobile games. Watch the video of this session to learn from these experts in monetizing with ads in games.

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USA 2018 Video Coverage

Maximizing Revenue with Mobile Apps | Casual Connect Video

March 27, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Producing the revenue you need for a healthy company is a constant concern is a constant concern for most developers. If maximizing the revenue you can generate from mobile apps is something you want to know more about, the session at Casual Connect USA 2017, The Next Phase of Mobile App Monetization: What Developers Need to Know to Maximize Revenue, offered some important information.

Presenters at the session were Adam Carey and Boris Logvinskiy. Adam Carey, Senior Director of Ad Monetization at Sega Networks, is a specialist on ad operations, ad product, data and marketing with 18 years of experience in digital advertising. You will be especially interested to learn that he is an expert in helping companies adopt and adhere to digital advertising best practices. Boris Gogvinskiy specializes in monetizing mobile apps and heads product management for all MoPub products at Twitter. Previous roles included product management at Demandforce, which was acquired by Intuit in 2011.

New kinds opportunities have been emerging for monetizing mobile apps. Don’t miss learning about them; watch this video of the complete presentation from Casual Connect USA 2017.

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USA 2018 Video Coverage

Natalie Portier: Succeeding With Mobile Games for Kids | Casual Connect Video

March 10, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

Succeeding With Mobile Games for KidsMobile gaming for kids is one of the fastest growing sectors of the gaming industry, now worth $2.2 billion. Not surprisingly, many of us may want to participate in this market. But when you start, you quickly discover there are tremendous challenges, including specific regulations for children’s apps, promotion and monetization.

Natalie Portier, Mike Arkin, and Mike Hines at Casual Connect USA 2018, photo by Emily Baker

At Casual Connect USA 2018, Natalie Portier presented a session designed to help you by the name of Overcoming Pitfalls of Launching Kids Apps. Natalie is Chief Operating Officer at the ad mediation company Appodeal. They joined this rapidly growing company at its beginning, and is using their ten years of experience in business operations and tech development in fueling their passion for innovation and quality game development.

In this session, Natalie brought together insights from successful publishers of apps for children, legal experts and marketing agencies to help developers avoid pitfalls and succeed with the mobile games they offer for children. To learn more about the opportunities and pitfalls in mobile gaming for kids, be sure to watch this video of Natalie’s session at Casual Connect.

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For more about Natalie’s insights and career, see this exclusive article from Casual Connect Europe 2017 in Berlin.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Boris Logvinskiy: Solving Monetization Problems with MoPub | Casual Connect Video

February 15, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

I try to make sure each week I have time that's blocked off to think rather than do. - Boris…Click To Tweet

At Casual Connect USA 2018, Boris Logvinskiy and Adam Carey (Senior Director of Ad Monetization at SEGA Networks) discussed MoPub’s in-app solution for the header bidding concept, called Advanced Bidding. It is a new way of allowing different demand sources to compete for the opportunity to show an ad to a user, maximizing ROI for the advertiser while also maximizing publisher revenue. During the conference, Boris said “The core tenet of Advanced Bidding is that is has to be different than Desktop and built from the ground up.” This is something Boris believes will help solve the difficulty of monetizing an app. Furthermore, “I can’t wait to explain to brand dollars the performance of Rewarded Video. You skate to where the hockey puck is going to be, and that’s in-app advertising budgets.” To learn more about how you can make this work for you, be sure to watch the video of the full session.

USA 2018 Video Coverage

Mike Raznick: Enhancing Games with Music and Sound | Casual Connect Video

February 14, 2018 — by Catherine Quinton

We believe every game is unique & there is a special audio treatment that the game deserves. -…Click To Tweet

Join the founder of Dreamcraft Music and Sound Mike Raznick at Casual Connect USA 2018 as he explains how music and sound can be leveraged towards user acquisition and monetization. He provided real world examples of effective and ineffective treatments in music and IP licensing. Mike said, “We as composers strive to create a juxtaposition in the music and sound so that it can remain fresh throughout the gaming experience. A successful audio treatment should not cause fatigue. It comes down to good audio design, highlighting another reason to bring your team in early during a project’s development cycle so that there is time to test and make changes as needed.” Hear the discussion of how to create a compelling, fun and exciting audio experience for casino games.

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