Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
You're listening to Level up with Melissa Zaloof.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: So welcome back, everyone. I'm Melissa Zaloof and you're listening to Level up, the podcast for people who love making, growing and of course playing mobile games.
Today I'm here with Sensor Towers, Chirag Ambwani, SVP gaming and entertainment. Chirag, thank you so much for being on the show today.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me, Melissa.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: So welcome to Level Up. As you may know, it's customary here to sort of start off each episode with the guests sort of telling us a little bit about their journey in the gaming industry. So sort of tell us, tell us about your journey and what led you to sense a tower.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I feel like a lot of folks probably say this, but, you know, always been a big games has always been a big passion ever since I was a little kid. As much as my parents would allow me to play games, they're happy with how things turned out with my playing in my younger days. So. But yeah, I mean, I think the, the general way of how I stumbled on the game spaces. Again, I've always been a big fan of games. I think part of the reason being always have believed that not only is games like extremely fun, but I also felt it was extremely social.
And growing up, a lot of my time was spent between moving and going to different cities and countries and games was sort of the core social way that I was able to keep in touch. And for me this was very important when I was a young kid. And you know, I am Canadian who lives in the US So I've done moves also in my personal or my professional life and I think games always been that really big social element for me. But yeah, the way I stumbled onto games is I actually started my career in finance, so nothing close to games. First was always playing games, but luckily had exposure to working with companies in the entertainment space and using data to understand. And then luckily post my finance days, I actually had an opportunity to work at a esports company Almost now over 10 years ago in its early days of Twitch, which made me really fall in love with the industry and made me realize how complex and interesting it was.
And you know, at that point I was like, you know, finance is not for me. Tech is where I need to be.
And this was summer of 2016 and I remember reading an article about Pokemon Go having its biggest mobile game launch and it quoted sensor Tower. And I remember being like, what is the sensor complete? How do they know that? Pokemon Go meet $100 million and long story short, I ended up cold emailing my now co founder and CEO and that was now over eight years ago and that's how I hold into the game space and now run our games vertical for the business.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Amazing.
That is a great story. So tell us a little bit about sort of like 2, 2 seconds on sensor tower and what part it plays in the mobile game industry.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I mean Sensitar I think started off in humble beginnings. I think the fun story is games has always been a big part of the DNA for the business.
So actually my, my co founder was a professional StarCraft player. If for folks who played StarCraft they'll know what Sensor Tower is, which is the core beacon where all the information is within the game. So I think the name has some meaning to it. It's not just came out of nowhere but again, I think senstar as a business has changed a lot in the last couple years.
The mission statement of the business is we want to help our customers understand the digital economy.
Meaning again, folks are interacting with their mobile phones, their devices across all different spectrums and our goal is we want to be able to help people understand what is happening on all of those devices. Now as a business we started off on the mobile side. I lead our games initiative and games has always been a really big part of the DNA. But also the industry of digital and especially the last couple years we put a lot of time and emphasis on really becoming sort of the go to company for all things gaming. And especially this year we took quite a big leap in not only supporting mobile gaming, but now also PC console with our most recent acquisition of Video Game Insight and now also playliner to go deeper into the LiveOps space, which was a big request and a big part of the mobile games ecosystem.
So all in all our goal is we just want to be able to help customers understand whatever they want to know in the digital space.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Excellent. So that's a good segue a little bit to the main topic of the episode today, which is LiveOps. Tell us a little bit why LiveOps and the Playline acquisition was such a sort of strategic priority for you guys.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean should not surprise you I think, especially post ATT and some of the advertising changes.
I think being able to target new users has become harder and more challenging for all types of developers, whether that be your smaller big.
I think the other sort of fundamental reason for why we were so excited to do the Playliner acquisition and bring Live ops as a capability in senstar is essentially, I think More and more game developers wanting to understand how can they increase the life cycle of their titles. And they've seen these games now. Like, you know, when I have conversations with folks outside the games industry and I tell them, you know, Handicrush has been on the market for 14 years now. I think it's for folks.
And again, I think part of the reason being, of course, they've built an extremely good brand, but also I think people love playing the games and they've done a really good job with extending the life cycle of the games.
I think folks want a similar kind of opportunity for their titles and the work that they and their teams have built. And it is one of those areas where it's not easy to get that kind of data. It requires someone to essentially play the game all day.
And that has its own challenges.
But again, I think to back to Sunstar's mission, we want to be able to help our customers understand the digital landscape. And mobile games is extremely complicated and complex industry. And we wanted to be a company that not only could you use us for the top level of what's happening to a mobile game, but also what's happening within the mobile game.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: So break that down for us a little bit. What are some of the sort of key metrics for LiveOps teams to be looking at closely and which presumably they can get through Sense Tower?
[00:07:07] Speaker A: I mean, first and foremost, I mean, I think the one really powerful thing that we now provide our customers because of the Playlander acquisition is we're actually now bringing out all of the LiveOps events that a game is actually running inside the game itself, which again, traditionally no one really captured, given it required folks to play a game and then pick out, okay, as you're going through different levels, how does the gameplay changes? We've kind of done a lot of the hard task of capturing all of that data and putting it in a place where it's easily digestible. So I think first and foremost, just getting that data, I think is extremely valuable.
But I think what's really unique is not only do we have that now really, really deep data, we actually now have the impact metrics on when somebody introduces LiveOps, what the result of it, which is things like time spent and retention and audience. And I think this is a big area on why we were so excited to bring these two products together. Because it's one thing to, let's say, introduce a new event into your game. It's another thing to know, did that event actually have an impact?
And again, it's Also one thing to know if it had an impact for your own game, it's another thing to know did it have an impact for your competitors game.
So I think this now ability for us to tell you the macro insight but also the micro insight I think is extremely powerful. You know we've had, we have a lot of happy customers already now subscribing to both of the data sets and starting to utilize it in their games and ultimately will only be evolving in the coming months.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Right. And what sort of when you look at those impact metrics, how do they and obviously how, how they are impacted right. By various different Live Ops tactics that you might be implementing.
Do you see typically that studios over focus or under focus on specific metrics to the detriment of others?
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Absolutely. You know I have, I, I think what's great about Synstar and especially I think personally my role is I have this opportunity to work with all types of developers.
It's not siloed to one company.
And I think what's really been interesting when having these conversations with Product Teams or LiveOps teams for titles is I mean you know, of course we're doing all of this to try to make impact for our individual businesses and try to make money.
But it, you'd be surprised the amount of folks that lean too much into monetization too early and with the, with ultimately impacting it where the gameplay and the user experience sort of suffers.
And I think that's a common theme because of course you know, a game has to make to make money for the business to run. So I'm not discounting that. But I also having a game where your engagement and players actually like coming into the game and playing it is extremely valuable. So I think first and foremost I think balancing monetization is very important.
And I think then to that point on what where do people I feel like don't under or or undervalue. It's just audience understanding. And again I know sounds very simple but I think the, the way I would sort of position it is if you have a title that has let's say a million active users, not all 1 million players think the same or operate the same.
And again I think what I recommend to a lot of developers is you should really understand your audience and try to give an understanding of like what are their core motivations, who are they? Are they, you know, are they students, are they moms, are they gamers who are also playing other games? Like actually understanding your audience and seeing like how can we have a strategy that impacts all types of our audience versus just one audience in mind where I think the, the teams that do it really well, that those are the teams that are on top of the charts because they really understand that, okay, the mom that has three kids at home has a different style of playing the game or interacting with the game versus the college student who has four hours on the weekends to play the game.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: And speaking of, I mean, since we're talking of data, what are some of the ways that studios can do a better job sort of segmenting and understanding their audience in the way that you've just described?
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I think first and foremost is being data driven.
I think for a lot of studios, I think they capture a ton of data on their customers and I think, you know, totally understand that a lot of folks might not have the time and the resources to analyze data to that scale. But I would recommend like, you know, I think first and foremost looking internally and seeing like, okay, we know when players log into our games, we know where players fall off in our games and really understanding like why is it and why is that? So I think using internal data I think is extremely valuable.
And of course, I mean, should not surprise you, but you know, there are data providers out there like Sensor Tower that actually give you process data of like what's happening in the ecosystem. So again, I think it's combination of using like external data, internal data to really understand like, okay, you know, we have a casual game on the market.
Do our casual gaming players play other games as well?
What types of games are they playing? Are they interacting with different kinds of websites or advertisements? And I think all of this is available for developers to really dive in and understand.
But again, it's tricky because I get the challenge that developers have, which is I think for a lot of folks, they came into this industry to build games and not be data analysts.
But I think it's, I think it's this balance of like, okay, let's build an experience that people really like but also understand how they.
Right, exactly.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: So you talked about sort of understanding why users drop and it sort of made me think sort of to go to the other end of the, of the journey.
So looking at sort of first time user experience and how, how, how or what part that plays in a live op strategy and how data can sort of help inform optimizations for that experience to set players up for long term engagement.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I mean I can't stress, I mean, I mean it's in the, it's in the word first time, like I think optimizing FatUI is, is extremely, extremely important from all aspects. Right. I think if you're a studio that has a new title and you're running a bunch of advertisements and your first time experience is not ideal or folks are having issues going through your onboarding flow, you're probably not optimizing your ad dollars and you're causing it. So your players have a bad impression of your title even before they get into the game and really start playing it. So again, I do think like fatui, like is one of the most critical areas that a gaming company can spend time really optimizing. And again, it's not just around optimization of getting someone into your game, it's how do you want the person to go through your games and interact with your titles. Again, I think we all talk about this notion of ltv like lifetime value of a customer. And again, I think lifetime value of a customer really starts at the beginning of when the customer comes into your life cycle and really aligning them to, you know, what your game represents, how they can interact with their titles and ultimately how can they go through your titles in a way where it works for their gameplay and how they interact with games, but also for your monetization. So you have a really interesting opportunity to quickly show folks how you progress, how you do monetization. I think first time user experience is where a lot of that is determined. So again I, I stress to game developers is taking a step back and honestly playing your own titles or you know, getting titles in front of non gamers and you'd be surprised the amount of folks that get a really interesting perspective from non gaming folks on how do they, how they go through these.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Onboarding flows and seeing as you do like looking at FATUI from a data perspective because you're obviously seeing this like across the board in the aggregate, what are sort of some of the, let's call them, best practices or tips that you would give to studios for optimizing that experience.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean I think first and foremost, I think this is another key area as to why we were so excited to bring Playlander into Sensor Tower is we do capture all the changes that someone is making on the first time they're fatui. And I think the biggest sort of like reaction I have is you'd be surprised how often people change their fatui, even big titles that have been on the market for five to 10 years. Because again, I think it goes back to this audience point where your audience is constantly evolving Like a game that was big ten years ago who might be still big now. The folks who are playing Candy Crush are different.
Even if they're same, they're technically different now because the generations have changed and you know, the way people consume content has changed. I, I think I call it, we call it the tick tock effect. But you know, short gameplay now really resonates a lot more than long form gameplay. And you know there are so many examples of really big titles like I mean Brawl Stars is coming to mind where, you know, when Brawl Stars came out originally the, the each match was close to 10 minutes.
Now each match is close 2, 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Again I think that's an example of where you know, it's like optimizing how is entertainment now consumed. But also I think that has also impacted their first time user experience because they've changed it to make it more short and burst gameplay. And again I think this goes back to being data driven and really understanding like what are the dynamics that are playing out with your audience but also just the industry and then adapting to those as folks are coming into your games. We're also like going, progressing through your games.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: And so I think that's actually maybe a useful jumping off point for AB testing. Right. Which is another sort of, I think key element of game optimization in general. But certainly when it comes to LiveOps, what are some of the common challenges that you see studios face when they're sort of trying to implement robust A B testing for LiveOps campaigns or features and how do you see them sort of overcome them to iterate faster?
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean this is going to be such a cop out answer but I would say a lot of folks just do too much. A B testing is again I think it takes a little bit of time for folks to like have enough data to analyze. And you know, we've seen examples where folks are A B testing every couple days.
Right. Where again there's nothing wrong with that but it doesn't give your audience the ability to kind of absorb the new sort of flow that you have created within your title.
So I would say first of all almost I think there's this like balancing act on a B testing. I think it's like I'm the first one to say a B testing. It's extremely valuable having just made the point on understanding your market dynamics but I think it's giving your player base the opportunity to absorb it. And again, I'll go back to Brawl Stars as a really good example where they completely changed the way that you played the title halfway into the life cycle of the game.
And I remember the first like couple weeks I was like, okay, this is not a, this is a really different experience than what I'm used to. But I think over time started to get to a point where not only did the experience end up working out, it ended up making a lot of sense as to some of the new levels that they started to introduce. And again, I think it goes back to, it says balancing act between, you know, you should definitely be a B testing because a B testing allows you to, to understand like based off the different audiences you have in your games. How do we optimize for folks who only will never monetize but play the game a lot versus folks who really want to progress but don't have the time? And this is where monetization comes into play and AB testing comes into play. But again, it's like segmenting your audience, understanding how each audience interact and then ultimately getting, giving it a little bit of time and actually letting it play out and see did it actually have a positive or negative impact on what I'm trying to target.
And again, I think the key point there at the end is like, you really want to know, like, why are you a B testing? Like, are you a B testing to increase monetization? Are you a B testing to increase your upper funnel for new users? And I think this core understanding I think will help get game developers really understand not only what to AB test and what to implement, but ultimately what the results will be.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: That's a.
I mean, you also mentioned this before, sort of how do we understand or how do studios understand their player audiences better?
So let's maybe jump to talking a little bit about how we use data to predict if we can use data to predict player behavior in game.
So maybe let's start with sort of what, from your perspective, what types of player behaviors can game studios effectively Predict today using LiveOps data?
And then sort of like how does that inform proactive live or active live ops campaigns to prevent, churn or encourage spending?
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think first and foremost when we think about audience, we think about like we think about demographics.
So again, I think there's a lot of data available, whether that be within senstar or others where you're able to quickly understand like what are the types of demographics that are playing or in within a specific title. And again, I think why that's really valuable is again, it's taking a perspective of not only what the demographic is doing or what types of games they're playing, but it's also like what they're interacting with outside of the games. And I think that's an extremely valuable and important point is again, I'm going back to the mom example, right? We know if a mom with three kids, like a lot of their time will be with their kids and they might be on the Internet searching for how to like, you know, maybe with lunch or how to get kids to school. Like there's all these like key elements that you have that you could think through on how like an audience like that interacts with the world. And the reason why I'm mentioning that is again, if you for example, introduce, let's say a, A, let's say get, take your kids back to work event within your title, which is maybe a casual title, and it's very like kids or school theme, you could see a world where that audience might gravitate towards that more given that they're interacting with these kinds of either websites or these kinds of events on the web. And again, it's this example of like really understanding and segmenting on who the audience is. What does this audience do outside of my games? And then again for game developers, they also know what the audience does within my games.
And you will. Not, every, not every audience will play your games the same.
It's really then understanding like, okay, my audience likes to play these side events within my game.
How do we introduce more side events that really impact this user base?
And then again, it goes back to this segmentation of if you're able to then understand like what my audience does inside and outside my games, then you're able to then properly ab test and then release the types of content that will actually resonate.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: And so let's get really sort of concrete here. What are some of the sort of, let's say, you know, you've got your data, you've extracted some insights about sort of how players are responding and what they're responding to. What are some of the sort of infrastructural processes that studios need to really operationalize kind of predictive analytics in their live ops?
[00:24:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think first and foremost, I think, I mean it sounds simple, but having a team that actually just looks at the data, you know, again, I think it's, it's, it's a, it's a fine balance because you still want to build really good titles. And again, I think this goes back to this balancing act of, you know, building titles that folks want to play. But at the same Time building them in a way where you are able to increase their engagement of their games, increase the engagement of your games but also in a way where it ultimately gives back to the player as well. And I think a fun anecdote that I want to quickly talk about is like, you know one thing we've been sort of now that we have this data internally we've been looking at is you'd be surprised. A lot of folks have aren't as don't have as much issues with watching ads. For example there's like a set of an audience that like is totally fine with watching an advertisement if it has an impact for them.
So you do so for example like rewarded videos is like a format that we've actually seen that from the data now that there are some audiences, especially the audience that doesn't monetize but still want to progress within the title. They're actually, they're okay with watching an advertisement if it gives them a new power up to then progress in their in the game. And again it's I think it's this balancing act of always trying to understand what the player might be looking for based off the internal data but then also just still focused on reviewing the data, predicting what a player might be interacting with or will be interacting with and then implementing that and testing it and giving it some time.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: So that's maybe a good segue for the some wrap up questions. So very tough to predict anything in the gaming industry. Right. But looking, let's say sort of like four or five years out, how do you see live ops continuing to evolve and what do you sort of see with regards to new technology or new approaches that you think are going to become sort of standard order of business for successful live service games.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I mean it should not surprise you what I'm gonna say. I don't like Live ops will only get more complicated and more important for titles.
Again I think to use the buzzword of AI, I do think like AI is going to be a very interesting impact for the games industry and I think particularly for this one reason which is it now gives developers the ability to build games faster than they've ever been able to.
And again which will make it so there are even more games on the market now and I think for folks who've been in the games industry and myself being in the games industry for now over a little over a decade, I think the fundamental challenge for any game developer is discovery. Like how does someone find my game versus the hundred thousand or a million games that are in the market and how do we get someone who's been on for 14 years get off that game? And again, it's extremely difficult.
And again, I think in a, in a world where it's now actually even easier to make games, I do think that will be a very big challenge for everybody. Which is why I think Live Ops go. Live Ops becomes even important because ultimately how do you differentiate your game which is creating an environment where all types of audiences have the ability to interact and have fun.
So it goes back to how do you build games that are still very fun. And I, I do think Live Ops is another component of, you know, we got in. There was an era in mobile gaming specifically where there started to become a lot of copycat games.
So I remember when Coin first started to explore, a couple months later there was like five new games that were really similar to Coin Master.
And again, I think that's an example of where what really sets games apart is of course not only first to market, but it's uniqueness and it's building a gameplay that's actually very fun. So and that has, that is an element of Live Ops is creating a dynamic where the games have this life cycle of constantly giving players the ability to keep getting entertainment.
So I do think Live Ops will become important. More important. The other big thing I did want to quickly highlight is we're starting to now see it where there's a lot of like cross game collaboration. I think a fun example is we, we just saw one with Subway Surfers and supercell where you're now starting to see like elements of two different games coming together.
And that's an, a really interesting one that I'm really excited to personally watch in the coming weeks and months as it plays along because you can see a world where it impacts each of these individual games differently. It'll bring the audience of, of Subway Surfers is very different than the audience of supercell. But again the fact that they're doing this like game on game collaboration I think is really interesting. And I know, I think with, I think it would not be surprised if they started to continue down this path with other developers to bring their titles to diversify audiences but also implement these events that will make it so that audience has a fun gameplay experience when they're in a new title.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Perfect.
So two big pieces, I think two sort of two things to highlight there. And then last question, what's one key piece of advice you'd give to a game developer to ensure their game thrives long after launch.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I mean, first and foremost, make a game that's fun to play with.
Again, I.
It's such a simple answer, but I can't stress this notion of this balancing act between I think we're all in this industry, of course, to make impact and hopefully get some rewards out of it. But it is a very competitive industry and I think the publishers and developers that succeed the most tend to be ones where games, they want to make games fun and exciting for the end player, but still utilizing data to drive this, like really fine balance between monetization and gameplay impact.
And again, I think that is just the key thing that I would mention is again, if you create a game where it's only your core focus is only monetization, you might have a game that makes a lot of money in the beginning. It might not be a game like Candy Crush, who's been here for 10, 12 years now.
So again, it just goes back to this balancing act between let's build good games that people really want to play and then how do you build this loop of creating new content in your games that allow you to not only keep the player, but ultimately extend their life cycle and hopefully get them to monetize more.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Perfect. Thank you, Shira, for being on the show today and thank you everyone else, as always, for listening.
See you next time.
