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In this episode of the Mastering Retention podcast, Dafna shares how LiveOps teams focus on events and promotions to engage players, drive retention, and monetize games. Successful LiveOps events are those that balance the core gameplay loop of a game while introducing new features, challenges, and rewards to keep players interested. She also highlights the importance of understanding player behavior, segmentation, and time zones in planning LiveOps events, and the need to balance creativity with return on investment.
Creators & Guests
What is Mastering Retention?
Welcome to the ultimate gaming breakdown with Tom Hammond and Neil Edwards! Tune in every week as we deconstruct today's top games and reveal the secrets behind their success.
0:00
hi everyone uh welcome to today's episode of the mastering retention podcast uh today oh i'm supposed to i'm
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supposed to introduce myself i'm a terrible host i'm i'm tom hammond uh co-founder of user wise um and your host
0:13
today um i'm just so excited to get to you daphna that you know i can't stop myself um so we have daphne been on
0:19
today uh who is director of monetization at sciplay um which is super exciting um
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you know i never knew this before but i actually went to college in cedar falls iowa
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where sciplay is based i know they've got a pretty big austin office now but i had no idea that
0:39
it even existed when i was at you know you and i up there um but come to find
0:45
out later small world there's this like really big gaming company based in cedar falls so it could have been a dream
0:50
college job but i i missed that opportunity um but anyways i i ramble um
0:56
daphna i always like to ask like what's your story like how did you actually get into games
1:01
for sure so first of all hi um our founder always says that um we're
1:07
the only company founded in sierra falls iowa that was um
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ipo'd on nasdaq so we are actually super proud of that it's a huge company and it all
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started there 20 something years ago and that's super exciting as for me um i guess after college i was
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looking for an opportunity and it was i don't know 12 13 years ago i think and um
1:35
a friend of mine suggested that i uh applied for a marketing job at a
1:41
company it was um actual casino uh games like real money
1:48
and that was very interesting i applied and i got in and back then there were no
1:55
schools for like for marketing or anything like that so my peers just taught me everything i
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knew back then and so i grew up from real money and uh black hat ppc
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um it was really interesting it opened my mind to thinking creatively and trying
2:16
new things and never getting a no as an answer which is super israeli i'm
2:21
israeli um and um from there i kind of i
2:28
i moved to a marketing agency which uh was a very
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short period of time because i didn't like it um and a friend that worked at
2:39
the first company that i mentioned um suggested that i apply for platika and
2:45
when uh and i was like maybe but that changed the course of my
2:51
life because um i made amazing people there and um the most
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uh impactful person that i met there was my boss noga hoppering which um later moved
3:05
to sciplay and um [Music] we ended up
3:11
where i also moved to sciplay um and i have been here for oh over five years
3:18
almost six years um in very different roles i started at a small game 88 fortunes
3:25
um being the marketing lead and um establishing the marketing activity from
3:30
the first dollar we when i joined ada fortunes as a slot game and it was a tech launch and that was super
3:37
interesting it was a school um and for me of how to build the strategy from from day
3:45
one um a few years later i got an offer to move to the states and join goldfish
3:52
casino within sciplay so my family and i relocated about a
3:58
year ago to the states to austin texas and a couple of months ago
4:04
i was some endor called to move to jackpot party our biggest and largest game
4:12
as a director on monetization specifically focused on players ops
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um so of course i immediately said yes um
4:23
so i'm a lot and like i i travel a lot to siera falls
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to be with my team um so i guess that's that in a nutshell
4:34
that's awesome so is the um sorry jackpot party actually based in
4:40
cedar falls then it is yeah it's a huge team yeah
4:46
that's great um okay so i have so many questions um i'm gonna endeavor to put them into
4:53
some some semblance of coherence um let's start with uh
4:58
can you just tell me a little bit about sciplay like it's been around for 20 years it's you know out there but
5:05
i don't really feel like i hear that much about sciplay and like the regular gaming space so like give me the lowdown
5:11
like what does sci play like what's it like to work there um i'll start at the end i like it and the
5:18
last part of the question is so much fun i think with cypress
5:23
biggest advantage in the market is that um we work with actual um slot games that
5:31
are from the casino floor we are uh we work with scientific game slots and so
5:38
our player base basically knows that the slots that they're looking for they look for us and
5:45
then they want to take the experience that they have in the casino in vegas or any any other casino to their mobile
5:52
phones i i was almost about to say to bed but basically you do everywhere probably you know
6:00
to the bed to the bathroom you know wherever you want to play exactly yeah so that is our biggest advan
6:06
advantage um uh the brand that we give to our players like for example
6:12
jackpot party goldfish 88 fortunes all of those quickit is another huge game that we have so all these apps contain
6:20
with them slots and and and and games that the players know from the casino floor
6:26
um as for what what we are as a company i think we are very very focused uh we're very
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focused um on our players and our employees so people first type of mentality uh whoever they
6:42
are and we're basically here to serve i as as a manager i am here to serve my employees
6:49
and my players and i think there's a lot of emphasis and focus on um
6:56
mental health um great partnerships great communication
7:03
so just making sure people are excited and energized when they come to work
7:09
for me all of those things are culture
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that's not to say that we don't have happy hours parties and uh events and
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snacks all over the offices around the world of course we do but for me
7:25
the first part is the actual essence of our culture yeah that's really cool
7:32
okay next question you said player ops what is player ops yeah
7:37
so we differentiate between uh in the monetization world we have a separation between um the
7:44
economy part of it and the live ops the crm social media social
7:50
media communication um so we are because jackpot party
7:55
specifically but is such a huge game we wanted to focus and make sure that we
8:01
put the right attention and the right people um focused on on those different aspects and
8:08
both of those um aspects have teams that support all of that and all that goes into that
8:16
so yeah so if i need to give examples of like what what i focus on and what my team
8:22
focuses on as basically making sure that the monthly calendar is
8:27
always planned ahead and that we are hitting everything that is exciting and
8:33
giving the player a new an engaging experience almost on a on a daily basis
8:39
where um everything that supports that including crm social media all that kind of ties
8:44
into that together but a lot of the times we find and please stop me if i'm
8:50
if i'm rambling but a lot of the times we find that we have great ideas for example we want to surface a new type of
8:57
liveops event for thanksgiving just as an example but we're missing some tech to support that
9:03
creative idea then then we would go and kind of have a development
9:08
pod uh work on that and and develop that so everything needs to kind of outline
9:14
and and be on time specifically when we're targeting holidays because we can't move that date
9:23
so there's a lot that goes into that and um a lot of process and focus and on the right
9:29
things and a lot of prioritization and stuff so i guess um that's that's like like player ops from
9:37
how we look at it yeah here's a question so
9:42
you know uh i think a lot of people understand this idea of you know planning ahead and whatnot
9:50
i know some people that try to plan their calendars like three months ahead some people are one month some people are chasing the current week um
9:57
you know what have you found is a reasonable time frame to be able to you know react to what players want and you
10:05
know plan reasonably but also a forward of like hey if i need to do something technically to run this thing on
10:12
thanksgiving like how long ahead do you need that or do you guys do like a blended approach where it's like
10:18
hey for for big holidays we're gonna think six months out and make sure that like we're kind of planning for that but like
10:24
more of the day-to-day we fill in the calendar only like a month ahead or something like that
10:29
so i think it's it's it's the latter it's like it's exactly how you you said it um when
10:36
when when the teams that i run are established i aim to to be at a point
10:42
where the big chunks the the holidays the for us the the main content is slot
10:48
so uh an epic slot release something like something big that is happening and that has a certain date i want to be planned
10:55
six months ahead i'm not saying that that happens on every game team because
11:00
um there's need to there we we need to build this and it's not easy to get to a point
11:06
where you know exactly what you're going to do six months ahead it's not an easy task but it it is desperation and it is
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the the goal that i always have in mind because it allows us to plan all the
11:17
engineering stuff and it allows for a very healthy um cadence of development
11:24
both with art and and engineering um and
11:29
then in my in my metaphor it's like the big rocks and then the smaller rocks and
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so the smaller ones right are like three months ahead where uh maybe the the less
11:41
epic slots or uh a new feature that the the product team is giving to me and i'm gonna do some
11:49
reskins for that so those are like three months ahead and then i have
11:54
and also it depends how long of our how long the our team needs in order
12:00
to create something like a reskin person so it always always depends and we kind of
12:06
assess how long does things take and based on that we reverse engineer when
12:11
we need to ask for those things um the the smaller things the pop-ups um
12:18
we are trying to be like about 45 days ahead because i feel like that gives us
12:24
a lot of time to pivot if we need and the smaller things are easier to attack
12:30
the gaps that are happening immediately like if i see a drop in a kpi then it's
12:35
easier for me to pivot and change something within the 45 days time period but um we don't leave the
12:43
calendar at 45 and say yeah it's perfect we always like on a weekly and daily basis look at everything and make sure
12:49
that we're as aggressive as we need to be in order to hit our goals um
12:55
and i always kind of strive for the health of the team um to be 90
13:01
planned and only 10 changes in the last minute uh
13:06
specifically for the amazing config people and the qa people that they need to go and actually do all the
13:12
changes when we come up with with a pivot so um in order to keep a
13:19
happy and healthy team um that is still reactive and very much on top of things
13:26
i i try to keep a balance of 90 to 10 percent it makes sense
13:32
so one thing that you talked about um which i don't know why i've never really thought about this before um but you
13:39
kind of talked about calendar planning of how long do we need from a dev perspective to do that how long do we need from an art perspective to do that
13:46
i'm assuming now maybe you're just super smart and way smarter than me which could be the case but you might not perfectly know how
13:53
long a dev project or a art project might be to do like a reskin or something so i'm curious like who should be in the
14:00
room when you're doing like a calendar review or like a calendar planning and
14:07
yeah so i am super lucky to have amazing
14:12
an amazing producer and like a liveops reducer in my in the team
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that basically runs things very very
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she's very on top of things we actually are growing to more liveops
14:28
producers because of the capacity that we just are increasing and increasing and because we
14:34
see such great like impact through the things that we're doing as a team um so first of all i lean very heavily
14:41
on the producers and as i said earlier i don't i don't just in like come up with how
14:49
long before i need to ask for stuff what we did is i went back and identified the
14:54
things that we're doing this this feature for free to be reskinned i need
14:59
six weeks for this i need four weeks for this i need two and based on that she's like i have the capacity for october for
15:07
example to do this this and this because we're this far ahead i'm just throwing out dates and stuff um
15:13
and same goes to to featuring like if i uh if we're coming up with an idea or a
15:20
gap that we need to solve with engineering we then go and ask we sit again in the room with the
15:26
producers but with the engineers themselves and they give us a time estimate after they understand exactly what we need and based on that we
15:34
prioritize things on the roadmap of of of the liveops engineering pod
15:41
so does that answer your question basically producers and engineers based
15:48
producers engineers and art based on what we're asking for so um there's a
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article that one of my friends wrote that i love that's out there that's titled homescapes is a
16:01
masterclass in live ops and i reference this a lot because i really like it
16:06
but um in there what i've really enjoyed is that they really seem
16:12
to know their players and when they have time during the week to play the game and if you look at the calendar
16:19
from like monday to thursday they have you know usually one three maybe four events that are kind of running
16:25
simultaneously throughout the week but they're all very easy events it's like log in play the game one time
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and get some you know a nice reward it's almost like you're punishing yourself if you don't log in and do that um
16:38
but then the weekend comes like friday saturday and they have these like super intensive monetization events where it's
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like you win 10 games in a row to get this really big reward and you know that it's a match three games they monetize
16:50
with the plus five moves which you know doesn't really have that big of effect for most people most of the time but by
16:56
the time you're on game nine or game 10 you don't want to lose one more move and it's like oh do i
17:02
really want to restart and do all that again well i can because it's the weekend and i have time but do i want to
17:08
i could just spend a little money now and it's really catered towards like when they have time to actually play the game um so i'm kind of curious like do
17:16
you guys do any of that sort of you know behavioral analysis to figure out hey our players like to play a lot during
17:23
this time frame so try to have an event that matches that time frame that kind of matches their
17:29
play style we sure do um we have
17:35
we have a meta feature that is always in the game with the easy daily tasks um
17:40
and it's called honeydew specifically for jackpot party and it basically has five to six um
17:47
uh tasks for you and they're super easy basically if you play you will complete them like it you you really have to let
17:54
luck out in order to not complete it uh in addition to that we add a lot of
17:59
smaller events uh for the weekdays because very act like very uh similar to how you
18:06
describe it our players are also coming for shorter sessions and
18:11
and play less during the weekdays and so on holidays and weekends we kind
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of lean more heavily into our live ops events and and run
18:22
four days events with very a lot more difficult
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tests um and we are trying to be as creative and
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um and interesting and engaging for our players in order to give them a really good and and big reward
18:41
to um to to just make sure that they have a reason to
18:48
uh play and engage with our tasks
18:53
so uh yeah [Laughter] we really we really focus on days of the
19:00
week and time of day that is also a thing the evenings are stronger for us
19:05
and so we make sure that we hit more exciting things on on the on the
19:11
peak of the days and holidays holidays are big yeah
19:16
do you do any sort of like time-based segmentation of stuff like
19:22
you know if i noticed you know you might have a you know a guy or a gal that's working
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the night shift that often plays at like 2 a.m and that's their normal play time compared to like 7 p.m
19:34
so do you ever like segment players so this event starts for players that typically play at seven
19:39
at seven and for the players that play at two a.m or nine a.m or what not they kind of get that event that starts there
19:46
so not on a player based granularity that is too much but
19:53
definitely looking at a group like the the entire population or
19:58
specifically we're focused on the u.s time zone but if we want to go and hit another geo location or something like
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that we would diversify and then take it and put it in the right time zone for
20:11
those players um in order to kind of um hit where where they're picking and
20:20
there's a lot more that can be done with this but it requires a lot of planning
20:26
and i'm not saying that's not a great idea it is it just requires a lot of
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config tools and config efforts so um there's a lot that goes to that and
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we only we always have to consider the roi like is it worth to invest all of this great
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ideas always come but we need to make sure that um the return on the investment even if
20:52
it's time of of configuration and keyway people people time has has real
20:58
value most people don't think about that but it does it's more important because when you run a business um it's part of
21:05
the things that you have to take into consideration yeah your most important cost [Laughter]
21:12
um okay um i have a few more questions along this train but i actually wanted to take a step back because
21:19
um i don't know i just talked to a number of people lately that really haven't fully gotten the the
21:25
liveops suite of things they weren't brought up in platika let's say
21:34
here's a basic question um walk me through how
21:39
let's say a casino game normally makes money and then how could you do let's even
21:45
just give me like a simple liveops example of how you could maybe make more money with that just to kind of help people wrap their their mind around how
21:52
a liveops event could work okay so i'm pretty sure i'm not gonna reveal any like top secrets
21:58
it's it's hard i tried to keep it basic but if you want to share some top secrets you know we're all ears
22:04
so we separate between core loop mechanism
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to uh to to in to liveops and the core loop
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of of casino or specifically slots is spin earn
22:20
spend by spinning again and that is the that is the main thing
22:26
everyone every product manager liveops manager that i met that tried to take away from that
22:34
has lost money the most important thing for a slot player is the slot that's very important
22:40
if if anyone wants to take one thing from this as slot players wants to play slots
22:47
i know it sounds trivial but that's actually a learning that takes a lot of time because everyone
22:53
comes with a great idea of a feature but when the features take away from the
22:58
core loop mechanism we lose so that's that that's the first thing that's how we make money basically every
23:04
slot has a an rtp the rtp is usually if you want to make
23:10
money less than 100 percent so it can vary from in the casino floor
23:16
from 86 to 90 something percent but the idea is is that it's less than 100
23:22
because that means that if you're putting a putting in a hundred cent bet
23:29
um the casino will take will give you back on average
23:35
90 something percent of cents back of that uh just as an example so that is how you
23:42
make money now that doesn't mean that every spin you will get that 90 something percent that just means that
23:49
on average eventually uh you will that would be the return on your investment
23:56
um and that's how we make money um as a mobile game because we're not a real
24:02
casino we are not this that's not we're not a gambling it's not um as it is in the casino you
24:10
don't actually take money back you you are getting free coins or you
24:15
buy extra coins um in order to extend your your recession and you invest those in the slots by
24:23
betting um there's a range of bets that you can have on every slot machine
24:29
and by losing those those coins gradually and over time of course a lot of people win but eventually you lose
24:36
your coins you'll get to a place where you have to either wait for your next free coins or
24:41
buy again so that's the business now what we do with liveops as a simple
24:49
example would be i am giving you a task and i'm telling you if you spend 100 times
24:56
um in a minimum bet that is a little bit higher than your average bet
25:01
um so i'm pushing you up um from your comfort zone i will give you a
25:07
huge reward so i promise you something i may tell you in advance what that is or
25:13
not that's up to us as a as a business and depends on what type of players we have
25:20
and that's that's how you start being more evolved that's how you start testing stuff what works best for your
25:26
players and that's how you know start to learn your players and by doing those hundreds pins but on
25:33
a little bit higher of a bet than you're comfortable with
25:38
i am not guaranteeing but i have a bigger chance of getting you quicker to out of
25:44
coins so if you usually uh would get through those 100 spins
25:50
easily because your bet is lower than what i'm asking you to do now you're gonna get it you're get it you're gonna
25:56
get to 80 spins and you have a friction point um the friction point is do i want
26:02
to um buy in order to get that buy coins in order to get that
26:09
that reward or not um my job is to make sure that you think
26:15
that that reward is valuable in order for you to extend your session i i used to have um
26:22
a boss that says that friction point making it not frustrating but exciting and inviting
26:31
that is the magic if i get to like 80 spins and i've got
26:36
gotta do i don't know a million coins per spin or something and i see that there's a hundred million coins there
26:44
and it's like well if i just buy those 20 million coins right now
26:49
i'm gonna get like a five times return on my you know investment kind of a thing
26:54
yes um when it's too easy of a math
26:59
i think it's um it's it's really tricky to nail it down
27:04
because then you have to be super micro segmented and make sure that you have everything
27:10
correctly i'm not saying it's impossible um so because the player would say it's not
27:16
only investing the extra 20 k in order to get the 20 spins it's also
27:22
everything that i invested so far so is that 100k enough for me before all this
27:28
investment then you have to be more sophisticated and and and hiding or making sure that basically
27:35
making sure that the reward is worth it for the players to to make that effort um and
27:40
and and that requires a lot of testing um there's no
27:46
one answer that fits everyone um and and i find that super exciting like
27:53
it's like a riddle like that you're always trying to solve like why would it work for my players as opposed to the
28:00
the other games player or or to this segment versus the other segment
28:06
yeah that's really interesting um actually on that note let's talk a
28:12
little bit about segments um so you know what would be a good example of
28:18
segmentation because i you know i hear people talking about segmentation a lot in gaming but i don't know that very
28:24
many actually do segmentation or maybe do it well um so do you have any any
28:30
examples of ways that maybe you split players into a segment that has worked really poorly or
28:36
on the contrary like ways that you split players into a segment that has worked really well um
28:43
i want to say in all honesty that i feel like we have a long way to go
28:48
with segmentations um we have gone several ways to try and analyze our our
28:55
uh player base and trying to find like work with analytics to find um
29:02
the players are leaning more heavily on weekdays or the player or versus
29:08
versus weekends or the players that prefer autospan versus spinning spin
29:13
after a spin like trying to separate them and trying to put them into categories
29:19
um it's a very heavy lifting on the analytics side and then
29:25
painting them or coloring them in the database and and use that in order to uh
29:32
pull leverage that a really good
29:37
and interesting segmentation thing that we're trying right now as um
29:43
as as the with crm actually um we have
29:48
tested through throughout the past couple of months um
29:54
and and before that and the in goldfish the other game teams that game team that i was at for over a year
30:01
we've tested like groups of of about of time on not time on up but just um
30:09
seniority sorry i forgot the word seniority in our games in order to segment players and see what type of
30:16
coin reward work best for them in order to get them back into the game or um
30:22
[Music] or just keep them into the game so retention or
30:28
preventing churn um and there's there's a lot of things that went
30:35
poorly for example trying to get back people um that um
30:41
haven't played for five days uh we have we we sent
30:47
we we at the beginning we just arbitrarily decided on that and we send this coin
30:53
amount and then we increased it but we couldn't get them back so we changed approaches and we went to a shorter
31:00
period of time we understood that that time window is we lost that player it's it's and i'm just saying five is as a
31:07
random number but we lost the player um and so we need to shorten that window and we
31:13
test and test and test it until we found the right value of coins that we want to give and the right time in order to hit
31:19
that so that we're getting the most players back so um that's just one example of a lot of
31:26
testing that went in the beginning was it just didn't work and yeah but we continued iterating on it until we found
31:33
something that works for our game and then when we moved from goldfish to jackpot party
31:38
we're like it doesn't mean that if it worked in one game team then that's the exact same um
31:45
equation that would work for jackpot parties players so again test and testing and making sure that that
31:51
segmentation works west best for um uh retention as an example
31:57
yeah so you know maybe a different way to think about it is to start with the business
32:04
goal of what thing are you trying to influence or to effect or to change
32:10
and then you can try breaking players up into different sorts of groups and giving them different sorts of things to
32:16
try to actually positively impact that business goal in whatever way you're trying to do it absolutely and one of the things that i
32:23
learned this past year for from a ux consultant that we had here is that you have to start with a theory
32:30
try to have a good enough theory that is based on what you think you you know
32:36
about your players and then test it test it test to test it until you prove it right or wrong
32:42
but you have to start somewhere so um that was a very eye-opening experience for me because i was like
32:49
well we have to base everything on data and she's like well let's try to look at it differently start with a theory and
32:56
prove your theory because that's um that's how um
33:02
um like the mythology and the methodology that
33:07
you worked with and i i like that i think that makes a lot of sense yeah
33:13
that's really cool okay um i appreciate that
33:19
um just jumping back a little bit to the people that are maybe like getting started with liveops and maybe like
33:25
heard all this like crazy calendar planning and like something new every single day and you know all this stuff
33:31
um you know if if you and i were to start a new well we'll make it a casino game so you're familiar with it you know
33:38
today we have no live ops um what would be like would be like a good starting point or
33:44
like a good first step for you know somebody that's just trying to like get into live ops
33:53
in my opinion is understand your game really well um
33:59
and then understand what the competitors are doing um whenever i have a new employee
34:05
no matter if it's live ops or anything else i tell them use the first month to play the game and then don't stop
34:12
but later like i play every day my game and all and all the the
34:18
the main competitors that that i think i i need to to to look at but later it's
34:23
really hard to find time to play the games uh but the beginning understand what you're selling right
34:30
because it's it's really easy to assume a lot of
34:37
things and um if you don't understand your game i
34:42
think it's really hard to build good liveops it's it's easy to uh start getting in love with your ideas
34:50
and think that you have a creative idea and so that's a good idea
34:57
but if you don't understand the business model if you don't understand your players
35:02
then um you're not you're not hitting i don't think you'll be able to hit the
35:08
right kpis and that's the second thing if you're like the first thing is understand your your game understand
35:14
your players but then analyze what are the gaps or or get help
35:19
understanding what are the gaps that you're trying to solve what is the kpi that we're trying to move obviously everything translates into revenue but
35:26
what are the pr preliminary kpis that you're trying to move where where is it is the gap and
35:33
how are you gonna solve for that and based on that
35:39
only then and come up with your first liveops events
35:45
it's very interesting i don't think i would have taken that approach but i like it what would you
35:50
have done what would i have done
35:55
well any time that i think of uh liveops or do any sort of like monetization
36:00
consulting work i mean i think the first thing that i like to look at in a game is like do you at least have stable retention
36:07
and do you at least have like a stable core monetization metric because if you don't have that you're gonna you know
36:13
mess everything up like yeah i could maybe make you some money by doing some special offers and stuff but it's probably gonna destroy your economy and
36:20
and people are just gonna get addicted to that and it's like you know the flash sales it's it's not a good
36:26
sustainable model um so i like to look at that core business model um and if i'm thinking about liveops
36:32
there's usually two realms of things that i'm thinking about um and again maybe this is the business model but
36:38
like the first one would be um is it like an engagement retention type thing
36:43
or uh i forget the name of the metric somebody coined it the other day it's like how
36:50
often do they come back like are they coming into the game every single day and that was like their core metric over
36:55
attention i loved that i didn't remember what it is um like the overjoyed retention
37:01
yeah it's like consistency or something like you know do they come back every single day
37:08
so you know i think some liveops events can be oriented towards that which is like you know players love this idea of
37:14
new and surprises so i i want to come back every day because there's always some new surprise or something
37:20
interesting for me to check out i don't know what's coming tomorrow so i better log in and see um that's kind of almost the appeal of
37:27
tick tock and instagram like you never know what's going to be in there so you always want to just like open it up and see right
37:34
email slack does that to us too um but then if i'm on the monetization side of things if i've got that good core aspect
37:41
i try to think about well how can i add a live ops event such that
37:47
i can get them to do more of that core or maybe just a little bit more of that core than they do before so as you kind
37:53
of outline you know maybe they spin 80 times and they bet this so i'm gonna do a hundred times and bet a little bit
37:59
more or you know if i was designing something in let's say royal match and i see hey they play three games on average
38:05
per day well um i want to try to get them to five so i'll make some sort of live ops event
38:12
where they you know collect 60 of the 100 required gems or whatever you know they're trying to do and now they're
38:18
like well 60 of the way towards that really big awesome thing that i want by the way you have to know what they want um
38:26
and it's like well i might as well just like play two more levels like just a little bit more to get that thing that i've pretty much done and now there's
38:33
two more levels that are played two more opportunities for the plus five moves two more opportunities for that monetization kind of thing to happen but
38:39
you have to have that core monetization layer first this is how i like to approach it i think you're saying um
38:46
i think you're saying what i'm saying but your your answer is like the the next level
38:53
once you understood the gap because you said you either do this or do this depending of of what i'm trying to solve
38:59
right you first need to identify what you're trying to solve and then you gave a lot of examples of things of that so
39:05
for me i think we're saying the same thing as just
39:10
it's just like what are what what is the the order of things what what are i
39:16
think understanding what you're trying to solve and you mentioned three examples of things that you're trying to solve and how you're going to solve them
39:22
but understanding that is the core because if you don't understand what you're trying to sell you're just throwing spaghetti on the
39:28
wall yeah okay so here's a question that like goes deeper beyond that that i often am
39:35
struggling with um okay well i think we both said this of like i can
39:40
do it a live ops event but i have to know what's valuable to the players so how have you like is it literally just
39:47
tons and tons of experimentation or have you ever been able to figure out like what is actually valuable to players or
39:54
players in this segment um yeah
39:59
okay so for a slot player the currency is coins so that's very valuable
40:06
the question is how much um and that is um
40:12
easy for a slot game because of the rtp um
40:17
if if the slots are giving let's just say 90
40:22
then i can give anywhere between zero to
40:28
about like nine and a half percent back to the player with still leaving
40:34
some room for me to to to gain money from this experience so
40:41
anything in the betweens i can give back to the player so if i'm
40:47
giving them a task and it takes them one million coins to complete that i i will
40:53
give them the maximum that i can without losing on their
40:59
work the investment yeah so but
41:04
with that said i still i'm a very very strong
41:11
on one coin reward and that's it um
41:16
you should continue testing and specifically when you have
41:22
going back to segmentation right so um a really great
41:27
use case of segmentation in in jackpot party um is based on star
41:34
powers so star power basically segments the population of our game into 15
41:40
categories um and that is being calculated on a daily basis
41:46
and that takes into account the bets that you did yesterday and
41:52
based on that gives you a task and a reward that is appropriate to what you invested
41:58
yesterday so that is a really great example of segmentation and answers the question of
42:05
how do you know what to reward your player because it all ties to your experience i
42:10
don't want to give you too many coins i don't want to make you make you feel offended by too
42:16
little of coins so there's a balance there yeah
42:21
so i will admit that i've never really played too deeply into a casino game i i've
42:29
played them but never like super deeply so this might be a super amateur question um but you know
42:36
are there ever any rewards like on on your side that are more valuable or
42:41
equally valuable to coins like you know have you guys ever made like items and
42:46
it could even be you know related to the core aspect of like double your next jackpot reward or 10 free spins or you
42:53
know something like that like there are there yes absolutely there are so many rewards and specifically
43:00
injectable parties so we have a second currency called honey bucks and you can unlock things with using honey bugs so
43:08
we can reward that we have um battle pass we call it honey pass and uh
43:15
the currency there are gems so we can reward that or give you a live ops event that if you complete it today only
43:22
your gems are doubled um or things like that we also have a feature that is a
43:28
bingo feature that once you complete a board you get a lot of coins and so we
43:33
can reward bingo balls um so and those are just some of the examples
43:40
we have other things that we can reward in game um so a lot of things that are
43:46
just loops are happening around the core loop
43:51
uh basically meta loops in order to uh engage the player and not always bore
43:58
them with just giving them coins but that's also the starts the complexity of liveops because
44:05
you can then start having another layer of events that for example bingo balls
44:11
this day i'm going to give you a lot of bingo balls but the next day i'm going to take away because i'm going to ask you to invest them in order to collect
44:18
coins but you're going the day after that i'm going to tell you invest a lot of coins by bedding up and
44:25
so in order to get to get bingo balls or honey bugs or so this there's a loop
44:30
that keeps you very very interested and gives you a motivation to come every day
44:36
and discover what's new in the game and that's the exciting part
44:41
sounds great i love it but you always got to remember the core
44:46
loop of playing slots you can't mess with that everything comes back to that right
44:52
you see i'm a great teacher i've learned i've learned so much already um
44:58
well uh this is great well daphne i know we're pretty much out of time here so we've got about time for maybe like one
45:04
one question left and i always like to ask because it is the mastering retention podcast you know
45:09
what's one tip or trick or lesson you've learned over the years to increase retention like how do you keep your
45:15
players playing for longer huh that's a very interesting question
45:21
i think i think we're lucky because we build games
45:27
and so there's always that expectation of what
45:33
what will happen tomorrow what am i i'm sorry but i'm gonna say like leaning
45:39
into the fomo of what am i missing because i know that this game always
45:45
rewards something amazing every single day so what am i missing if i'm not logging in for for me that's the magic
45:52
and that's what keeps player coming day after day that's great i love it
45:58
well daphne if folks do want to get in contact with you have any questions or you know maybe they're curious about
46:04
side play i i assume you guys are probably hiring and so if it sounded like a place to work um
46:10
what's a good way to do that um linkedin always daphna been on my
46:15
name um i always answer to everyone and uh through the sciplay site and careers
46:22
there are all the sites that we have which are cedar falls austin finland
46:27
turkey israel um ukraine um and india um so many
46:34
all over the opportunities um we have so many open wrecks because we're growing uh constantly and it's just
46:41
um something that i really recommend trying to do enjoying cyprus
46:47
love it yeah i mean it sounds like if you want to learn live ops like i kid you not the stuff that you just kind of
46:52
outlined there of how it all works together there's so few games that actually really do that well so if you
46:57
want to learn live ops go here all right well daphne thank you so much
47:03
for joining and hopefully we can talk soon thank you for having me bye