PocketGamer.biz is well known for its conferences and round-tables, but the short nature of these sessions means they only scratch the surface of important subjects. For real in-depth learning, we have worked with industry experts to create the MasterClasses. They are professional half-day activities featuring tutorials and breakout groups, all accessed from your home office.

There are five sessions running in March 2021 (see below), and this session is:

Game Economy Design and Optimisation with Nick Murray, an 11-year veteran of the F2P industry

OVERVIEW

Game economy is a crucial but often overlooked part of game design which has a far-reaching impact on retention and monetisation KPIs. By building a robust economy, games can engage users, giving them a more enjoyable experience. Economies define difficulty, player progress and enjoyment!

The key takeaways people can expect from this session are:-

• Why game economy design is so critical and plays a key role in defining the success of a game and its KPIs
• The steps to design a strong economy, avoiding pitfalls and following best practices to drive significant retention and monetisation improvement
• How to balance a game post-launch, which data is required to do so and how to not upset your community while doing it
• How to boost the value of monetisable game content and ensure that money isn’t left on the table

About the host
Nick Murray, an 11-year veteran of the F2P industry (former Rovio, Ubisoft, Aeria Games, GREE) will share methods and clear plans on how to think about economy creation, post-launch economy optimisation and overcoming the challenges in creating value for virtual items.

Content
The workshop will focus on 3 subject areas (each with 20 min Presentation, 20 min Group Work and 20 min Feedback/Review):

Part 1 - Creating a virtual economy from scratch

How to think about designing your economy. Which tools do you use? What are the key opportunities and challenges? How can we apply these lessons in practice?

Part 2: Understanding a live economy and optimising against data

How do we use the right data to tackle an unbalanced economy? How can I minimise player churn within the first days? How can I tune my game to different player types? There will be some very basic data analysis (in Google Sheets only).

Part 3: Optimising value in a virtual economy

Lastly, we will look at how to make sure that item value is the best it can be, how to drive further value through live operations strategy and reach the maximum monetisation potential of content.

Attendees will learn

Why game economy design is so critical and plays a key role in defining the success of a game and its KPIs
The steps to design a strong economy, avoiding pitfalls and following best practices to drive significant retention and monetisation improvement
How to balance a game post-launch, which data is required to do so and how to not upset your community while doing it
How to boost the value of monetisable game content and ensure that money isn’t left on the table

Format of teaching
We’ll use Zoom as our primary platform and Google Sheets for some of the practical work.

Target audience
Any level of seniority from the disciplines of Development, Design, Product, Live Ops Business Intelligence, Production etc. This workshop is suitable for game-teams within almost any genre - it isn’t suitable for example for Hypercasual as the economy isn’t deep enough.

Other sessions & attendee offers
There are four other sessions available in March 2021. Each MasterClass requires a separate ticket, although multiple bookings are encouraged and come with a discount:

Tuesday, March 9th (10am-1pm)

Understanding The Market Through External Data & Tools, with Max Samorukov

Tuesday, March 9th (3pm-6pm)

Collecting and Using Data - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Brett Bauer

Wednesday, March 10th (10am-1pm)

How (and When) To Save a Failed Game, with Oscar Clark

Thursday, March 11th (2pm - 5pm)

Game User Experience: Making your games more fun and profitable, with Jason Schklar

Individual multi-buy discount: book for three & get fourth free (so, book for all four MasterClasses and get one of them free).

Corporate discount: a group of six or more from one company can get 30% off if booked together.

To take advantage of multi-buy or group discounts, please email [email protected] to discuss your bespoke package.