Mass Appeal #4. Improving the Performance of Free to Play Games - Matt Emery (Turbine Games Consulting)
It’s hard to be profitable as a Free to Play mobile game. With a 97% failure rate, it’s not uncommon for games to see that the Lifetime Value (LTV) of their users is below their Cost Per Install (CPI). In this episode, Matt Emery, the founder and lead product manager at Turbine Games Consulting, talks to Tommy about how he helps F2P games improve their monetization, retention, KPI performance, and CPI with as little effort on the client’s part as possible.
Matt has worked with over 80 gaming companies on more than 100 games as a product manager over the last 15 years. He founded Turbine Games Consulting in 2016, and for the last five years, Turbine Games Consulting has been perfecting the art of split testing to refine their product recommendations over time.
Questions Matt Answered in this Episode:
- Is the rate at which game developers launch new games part of the reason such a small percentage of mobile games make it?
- When did you found Turbine Games?
- What was the problem you were trying to solve for your clients, or the service you were trying to provide?
- What’s the most common need you see?
- How do you design your split tests? How do you prove the efficacy of an effort within a game in a split test environment?
- Is reskinning a store worth it?
- Tell us about one of your success stories.
- What are you excited about in 2024 for Free to Mobile Games?
Timestamp:
- 3:00 Matt’s background
- 7:14 Mobile game survival rate and the development process
- 11:20 The birth of Turbine Games Consulting
- 15:49 Split testing to help games improve performance
- 21:48 When clients don’t have enough user volume for split tests
- 25:45 Even top-grossing companies miss low hanging fruit
- 29:54 What initiatives create the greatest lift?
- 31:33 A 9x ROAS success story
- 36:00 Helping Free to Play games with pre-code product validation