In this LevelUp episode, Melissa Zeloof sits down with Chirag Ambwani, SVP Gaming & Entertainment at Sensor Tower, to discuss the data of LiveOps - how to measure them, their effect on games' long-term success, and how developers can use their LiveOps data to make better, more profitable games.
Tune in here or read some of the highlights below:
What led you to Sensor Tower?
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 an eSports company almost now over 10 years ago, 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 a sensor company? How do they know that Pokemon Go made a hundred million dollars? And long story short, I ended up cold emailing my now co-founder and CEO and that was now over eight years ago."
What is Sensor Tower's role in the gaming industry?
The mission statement of the business is we want to help our customers understand the digital economy. Meaning, 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.
What led to the Playliner acquisition?
I think more and more game developers are wanting to understand how can they increase the lifecycle of their titles. When I have conversations with folks outside the games industry and I tell them, you know, Candy Crush has been on the market for 14 years now. I think it's shocking for folks.
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 lifecycle of the games. LiveOps as a capability in Sense Tower is essentially, I think, more and more game developers wanting to understand how can they increase the lifecycle of their titles.
Speaking of extending the lifecycle, what are some of the metrics should be looking to?
First and foremost, just like 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 is, which is things like time spent and retention.
How important is the the First-Time User Experience (FTUE)?
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 your players have a bad impression of your title even before they get into the game and really start playing it. That can only be a bad thing for your game's longevity.
What do you see as the future of LiveOps?
LiveOps will only get more complicated and more important for titles. To use the buzzword of AI, I do think AI is going to have a very interesting impact for the games industry and particularly for this one reason, which is it now gives developers the ability to build games faster than they've ever been able to. 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. It's all about retaining the audience you already have - which LiveOps play a huge role in. So LiveOps are only going to become more essential moving forward.
