https://appmagic.rocks/assets/angular2/chunk-Djim6UGN.js

1import {f as fe$1}from'./chunk-OZwYWwFg.js';import'./chunk-DheOcjQc.js';import {N}from'./chunk-Dt79Ucc0.js';import'./chunk-CmkRHQc-.js';import {w as we}from'./chunk-BnyhbJiH.js';import {e_ as j,eQ as Je,s as sw,f as fe,A as An,h as he,Z as Zi,b as bb,i as ib,k as kl,E as Eg,I as Ig,_ as _b,a as AE,a2 as Ib,ez as LI,ai as qp}from'./main-HXZZBYKT.js';import'./chunk-eO5kn6vL.js';import'./chunk-BxIsaYkZ.js';import'./chunk-CnI3MAjo.js';import'./chunk-B4vhKnGs.js';var l=d=>({src:d}),m=d=>[d],A=class d{constructor(){this.Article=j;this.ArticleUpdateForFreeAccessUrl=Je;this.ImgPath="/assets/angular2/img/articles/product-strategy/";}static{this.\u0275fac=function(h){return new(h||d)};}static{this.\u0275cmp=sw({type:d,selectors:[["article-product-strategy"]],decls:155,vars:59,consts:[[3,"formatDate","articleType","url","image","title","author"],[1,"articles-body","m-b-xxl"],[1,"p-b-md"],[1,"p-b-md","p-t-md","articles-subhead"],[1,"list"],["src",LI`https://www.youtube.com/embed/rAmtUzf_xEs?t=70`,"frameborder","0","allow","accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture","allowfullscreen","",1,"yt-video","m-b-xl","p-t-md"],["href","/google-play/arknights/com.YoStarEN.Arknights/","target","_blank"],["src",LI`https://www.youtube.com/embed/16hjioB8yN4?ab_channel=LastHeroesGameplays`,"frameborder","0","allow","accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture","allowfullscreen","",1,"yt-video","m-b-xl","p-t-md"],["href","/google-play/random-dice-pvp-defense/com.percent.royaldice/","target","_blank"],["src",LI`https://www.youtube.com/embed/7MIUqUcCDws?t=442`,"frameborder","0","allow","accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture","allowfullscreen","",1,"yt-video","m-b-xl","p-t-md"],["href","/iphone/matchington-mansion/1216575026","target","_blank"],[3,"imgItems"],["href","/blog","target","_blank"],["target","_blank",3,"href"]],template:function(h,n){h&1&&(Zi(0,"layout-article",0),bb(1,"translate"),Zi(2,"div",1)(3,"div",2),ib(4," In this article, I will share my ideas on developing a product strategy for a mobile gaming company and on how various market research tools can help you do this job better. "),kl(),Zi(5,"div",2),ib(6," An important note: you don\u2019t just build your product strategy in the early days of your business. Companies are constantly tuning their product strategies, and sometimes you may need to completely revise your current strategy when it fails. "),kl(),Zi(7,"div",2),ib(8," I\u2019ll start with some quite obvious stuff, and then we\u2019ll go deeper. "),kl(),Zi(9,"div",3),ib(10,"In What Game Genres Do You Have Solid Expertise?"),kl(),Zi(11,"div",2),ib(12," One of the main things is to identify in what genres you have solid expertise in development, game-design and marketing. Obviously, having solid expertise is a powerful advantage: you are able to plan your future development and operating expenses accurately enough; you are capable of recruiting and leading a team that matches the genre of your interest and you can build a proper development pipeline; you are well-equipped with understanding of working out the proper game balance and feature set; you know which user acquisition approaches work best for this genre; etc. To cut it short, having experience allows you to "),Zi(13,"strong"),ib(14,"dramatically cut business risks."),kl()(),Zi(15,"div",2),ib(16," But what if you don\u2019t have explicit expertise in any particular genre? The first way is to buy expertise by means of acquiring specialists who DO have it. The second way is to gain necessary experience on your own. In the latter case, it makes sense to start with products with short production cycles and low development costs. This approach should let you iterate and learn faster by means of parallel development of several products and frequent product launches. You need to trade money and time for experience with the best possible ratio. "),kl(),Zi(17,"div",3),ib(18,"Selecting The Market Niche: Narrow Or Broad? Copy Or Innovate?"),kl(),Zi(19,"div",2),ib(20," For the next step, you need to make up your mind on the type of market niche that you find more promising: a narrow or a broad one. And on what\u2019s more beneficial for you: to copy or to innovate? "),kl(),Zi(21,"div",2),ib(22," The conventional definition of a broad market niche refers to a broad target audience. A bit more practical way is to define a broad niche as the one represented by a lot of successful titles. Addressing a market niche, you need to take into consideration not only the genre, but also setting, metagame complexity and art style. Why is this approach more handy? Well, it lets you identify successful games of the niche using market research tools and perform quantitative analysis. "),kl(),Zi(23,"div",2),ib(24," This type of niche is definitely highly competitive. Before going for it, you need to have a very clear idea of what exactly is going to drive your product to success. Are you going to produce a game that will be the best at monetizing its audience? Do you know how to buy traffic better than others? Are you going to come up with an innovative feature that will help you achieve incredible retention? What is it that you know or can that will help you successfully fight the competition? "),kl(),Zi(25,"div",2),ib(26," Actually, all the same applies to narrow niches, too. The main difference is that it will be much harder for you to hit the top charts with a product targeted to a narrow audie

1nce. And even if you aren\u2019t eager to earn millions of dollars, but are aiming to develop an indie game you have always dreamt of, you need to be very clear on how exactly you\u2019ll be getting ROI-positive traffic enough to cover your development and operating costs and bring you some profit on top of it. "),kl(),Zi(27,"div",2),ib(28," In practice, businesses usually go for broad market niches, armed with one of the following approaches: "),kl(),Zi(29,"ul",4)(30,"li"),ib(31," Go for a widely popular core gameplay, adding innovative meta gameplay and/or monetization to achieve better LTV compared to conventional examples of the genre. "),Eg(32,"iframe",5),ib(33," Example: "),Zi(34,"a",6),ib(35,"Arknights"),kl(),ib(36,". This game is a tower defense at its core, but instead of regular towers we see characters here. Developers implemented classic complex metagame from battlers to advance their monetization. And they turned out to be damn right: the game is generating about $15-$20M a month. "),kl(),Zi(37,"li"),ib(38," Cloning a game with explicit flaws that is performing relatively well despite these flaws. In this case, your hypothesis is that you\u2019ll be able to produce a similar product with a much better retention, marketability, balance or monetization by means of removing these flaws. "),Eg(39,"iframe",7),ib(40," Example: "),Zi(41,"a",8),ib(42,"Random Dice"),kl(),ib(43,". This game is also a tower defense game, but this time mixed with the \u201Cmerge\u201D mechanic and a 1x1 PvP mode. This game seems to be not that easy to grasp for a new user in terms of how one should play to achieve good results. Also, the graphics could be better, at least from the point of view of a Western user. I know several companies that are developing similar games now, focusing on removing these particular flaws. And it seems to be a reasonable tactic. "),kl(),Zi(44,"li"),ib(45," Cloning a successful title leveraging huge resources at your disposal. "),Eg(46,"iframe",9),ib(47," Think of "),Zi(48,"a",10),ib(49,"Matchington Mansion"),kl(),ib(50,", which is said to be run by AppLovin, for example. AppLovin is an ad network that not only has a LOT of money at their disposal, but also a huge amount of information about the behavior of hundreds of millions of users: who plays what, how often, and how much they pay in games. "),kl()(),Zi(51,"div",3),ib(52,"Selecting The Market Niche: Approaches To Production"),kl(),Zi(53,"div",2),ib(54," What I\u2019m about to share with you now is quite a new idea for me as well. It came to my mind not that long ago in a conversation with a friend of mine, who also happens to be an owner and CEO of a gamedev company. I was amazed by their game production KPI: they take 1 month to produce a game with a team of 5 to 8 people, and we are not talking hypercasual here, but medium-sized arcade multiplayer games. So, having several teams they are able to deliver several products a month. "),kl(),Zi(55,"div",2),ib(56," I was curious to learn what exactly helps them maintain that insane pace, and it turned out that one of the cornerstones of their corporate culture was the so-called rapid development. This means that everyone involved in production is constantly focused on performing their tasks as quickly as possible. They cut out everything that is not strictly necessary, and focus on the main parameters of the future product. The timeline forces them to be creative and flexible. "),kl(),Zi(57,"div",2),ib(58," The conventional development paradigm implies well thought-out architecture, code reviews, well-documented code, writing a lot of unit tests and so on. Which takes time. "),kl(),Eg(59,"article-img-block",11),Zi(60,"div",2),ib(61," I\u2019m not saying that the conventional development approach is bad. These two approaches are just fit for different tasks. The classic solid approach is a must for long-term projects that involve many developers. The rapid development approach is good for smaller games and for prototyping. "),kl(),Zi(62,"div",2),ib(63," The thing is that you can\u2019t ASK your team to change its approach. It's a kind of mindset, like DNA. In most cases people who follow the conventional development paradigm are perfectionists who just can\u2019t force themselves to produce \u201Cfast\u201D solutions that may turn out to be unstable, non scalable, non flexible, etc. "),kl(),Zi(64,"div",2),ib(65," It all starts with your tech lead who participates in recruitment and defines development standards in the company. And, in the end, you most likely end up with a full team of players of the same kind. "),kl(),Zi(66,"div",2),ib(67," So keep it in mind. You need to match your product strategy with the development approach that is used in your company. "),kl(),Zi(68,"div",2),ib(69," By the way, to some extent, the same ideas can be applied to other fields: creating art, game design, product management, etc. You need to build all departments of the company that way, so they can best serve your development paradigm of choice. "),kl(),Zi(70,"div",3),ib(71,"Selecting The Market Niche: Casual Vs Midcore/Hardcore"),kl(),Zi(72,"div",2),ib(73," There is a separate article dedicated to hidden dangers of developing mid- or hardcore games in our blog at "),Zi(74,"a",12),ib(75,"https://appmagic.rocks/blog"),kl(),ib(76,". I\u2019ll just do a quick recap here. "),kl(),Eg(77,"article-img-block",11),Zi(78,"div",2),ib(79," For this graph, I only picked the most successful game genres (that are represented by a lot of successful titles). Each circle in the graph stands for a game. The X-axis for each graph stands for USD LTV. The LTV displayed is over lifetime (not 180d or 360d). LTV estimations cover "),Zi(80,"strong"),ib(81,"iAP net revenue only"),kl(),ib(82,". The size of each circle in the graph is defined by the sum of iAP USD net revenue over the last 3 months + the number of downloads over the last 3 months. Using this metric lets us comb

1ine both downloads of a game and its revenue in a single figure. This approach is comprehensive and works great in practice. LTV estimates for iOS and Android apps are displayed separately, as they sometimes differ significantly. "),kl(),Zi(83,"div",2),ib(84," If you had a closer look at random games from this graph, you would learn that, in most cases, games of genres with high average LTV usually have very high production costs. It means, their development cost a LOT: millions and millions of dollars. They have loads of content and meta gameplay; think MMORPG, turn-based RPG or slots. If you want to get by with a relatively low budget, you will simply fail to compete for user traffic against market leaders. "),kl(),Zi(85,"div",2),ib(86," Games of genres with high average LTV usually have high lifetime for paying users. And it means that financing a proper soft-launch may cost you a fortune. Say, you decided to AB-test some features in midgame. To get statistically significant results, you\u2019ll need a lot of midgame paying users. And, taking into consideration the conversions to midgame payers and the CPI, you\u2019ll figure out that you need to spend a LOT of money to run the test. "),kl(),Zi(87,"div",2),ib(88," Also, you\u2019ll need to wait for several weeks to figure out what implications to long-term monetization the changes you made to the game have. "),kl(),Zi(89,"div",2),ib(90," LTV and ROI predictions for games with high payer lifetimes are incredibly tricky. Buying user traffic for a game like that is an actual pain in the neck and may result in significant money losses caused by mistakes in predictions. "),kl(),Zi(91,"div",3),ib(92,"Selecting Your Market Niche: Financing User Acquisition"),kl(),Zi(93,"div",2),ib(94," It\u2019s also important to think of how exactly you are going to finance user acquisition if the game you are going to develop performs well. "),kl(),Zi(95,"div",2),ib(96," There are two important metrics to consider: ROI and the pace of return on investment in user acquisition. "),kl(),Eg(97,"article-img-block",11),Zi(98,"div",2),ib(99," This graph features two curves for the LTV over LT (lifetime) distribution for two imaginary games. The red curve is a copy of the blue curve stretched across the X axis. The LTV for these games is equal, with t (time) tending to infinity. But the pace of return for the first game (represented by the blue curve) is much faster. The blue curve reaches the 150%-ROI bar on day 60, the red one\u2014on day 365. "),kl(),Zi(100,"div",2),ib(101," And here is the ability for these two games to scale their user acquisition budgets by means of reinvesting their revenues back into marketing: "),kl(),Eg(102,"article-img-block",11),Zi(103,"div",2),ib(104," The first game will be able to scale much faster than the second one. "),kl(),Zi(105,"div",2),ib(106," In both of the presented cases, you will be welcome to partner with companies that help game development studios to scale their user acquisition providing them with borrowed funds, such as GetBraavo, Mail.ru, XSolla, TiltingPoint and others. But in the first case, when the pace of return on investment into user acquisition is high, it will be easier for you to get the funding, and the amount of the funding will be much larger due to better predictability of your ROI model and much better turnover rate. "),kl(),Zi(107,"div",2),ib(108," In this sense, picking genres with a quicker pace of return on investment seems more appealing. Now, how do we find out which genres enjoy the fastest traffic investment returns? My experience shows that the higher the short- and mid-term retention, the higher this rate of return. Which, in turn, primarily refers to casual and hypercasual games. But it\u2019s definitely not set in stone. "),kl(),Zi(109,"div",3),ib(110,"Selecting Your Market Niche: Analysing Trends And Market Leaders"),kl(),Zi(111,"div",2),ib(112," We\u2019ve finally made it to market analysis. To make your final choice of the genre and reference products, you should study the dynamics of the market niche that you\u2019re targeting. How often do new successful titles appear on this market? Does the aggregate success of new titles make up any notable share within the niche? "),kl(),Eg(113,"article-img-block",11),Zi(114,"div",2),ib(115," The blue line in this graph features the cumulative revenue of all match-3 games, monthly. And the red line features the cumulative revenue of all match-3 games that have been published less than 12 months ago. The share of revenue that is being generated by new games is VERY low. And it\u2019s a bad sign. It shows that new players within this market niche can\u2019t compete with existing titles. "),kl(),Zi(116,"div",2),ib(117," And here is the graph featuring cumulative downloads of all hypercasual games vs downloads generated by hypercasual games that have been published less than 12 months ago. "),kl(),Eg(118,"article-img-block",11),Zi(119,"div",2),ib(120," You see that nearly 80% of the downloads are being generated by relatively new titles. And that means that new games can successfully compete for a position in the top charts. "),kl(),Zi(121,"div",2),ib(122," Have a look at a similar graph for racing games for comparison. "),kl(),Eg(123,"article-img-block",11),Zi(124,"div",2),ib(125," And this graph is for FPS (First-Person Shooter) games. "),kl(),Eg(126,"article-img-block",11),Zi(127,"div",2),ib(128," Another important thing to consider for this type of research is how diverse the market segment of your interest is. And aren\u2019t there just 2 or 3 titles that make up the lion\u2019s share of the market? "),kl(),Eg(129,"article-img-block",11),Zi(130,"div",2),ib(131," In each of these graphs, you see the top-100 games of each genre (with corresponding areas). "),kl(),Zi(132,"div",2),ib(133," You can notice that nearly 80% of the cumulative revenue of all match-3 games is being generated by just 6 titles. It\u2019s a bad sign. It means that the market is monopolized by very large companies, and others fail to compete in a serious way. "),kl(),Zi(134,"div",2),ib(135," Three other market segments are very diverse, and it\u2019s a good sign. There are better chances for a new player to take over a reasonable share of those market segments. "),kl(),Zi(136,"div",2),ib(137," You need to discover and analyze the topmost newcomers of the niche, and then go and play and analyze them, to figure out, what helped them succeed? What innovative product solutions do they feature? Based on this analysis, you\u2019ll be able to come up with a strong set of product ideas for your future game. "),kl(),Zi(138,"div",2),ib(139," AppMagic has a handy tool to discover new notable players within any market niche of your interest. It\u2019s the "),Zi(140,"a",13),ib(141,"Top Trending chart"),kl(),ib(142,". This tool allows you to specify the genre, subgenre, setting and art style to figure out what apps made it to the top charts within the timeframe of your interest. "),kl(),Eg(143,"article-img-block",11),Zi(144,"div",2),ib(145," You may then want to analyze these games to sort out what helped them make it to the top charts in particular; and then come up with ideas for your own games. "),kl(),Zi(146,"div",2),ib(147," Also, using this data, you can easily do research of the kind we had above. "),kl(),Zi(148,"div",3),ib(149,"Do market research!"),kl(),Zi(150,"div",2),ib(151," I constantly meet people that invest their time and money into ideas that are doomed in terms of commercial success. Sometimes I can\u2019t help asking them: when was the last time you saw a successful Western CCG? How many successful indie MMORPGs do you know? Have many successful clones of Brawl Stars are there on the market? "),kl(),Zi(152,"div",2),ib(153," Guys, do market research before you start the development. It\u2019s very important. "),kl(),Eg(154,"

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2export{A as ArticleProductStrategyComponent};