Startup Life
Technology. Startups. Venture Capital. My Life.
Archive for March, 2010
Product Management for Mobile Gaming
Mar 10th
As an aspiring tech CEO, I have been told numerous times that being an “A+” Product Manager will provide the experience, understanding and discipline to become a great CEO and to lead an accomplished company.
I often provide strategy and product development guidance to some of our portfolio companies; however, I wanted a more immersive experience and to be part of the excitement of startup life. So over the last several months, I increased my assistance to a particular portfolio company in the Toronto area, which I believe is well positioned in the marketplace. Strategy discussions with management of this company led to a conversation to bring me on-board as Product Manager of a new mobile social game at the idea stage. Eager to help the company succeed and to gain additional experience, I undertook a more formal responsibility on evenings and weekends as Product Manager. It was a perfect fit for both the company (lacked product management capabilities) and my career ambitions.
As part of the team, I faced my first challenge: Figure out the best way to manage the development team and the product. I evaluated several methods of product development and eventually settled on SCRUM since it is ideal for agile development with rapid iterations and incremental updates — perfect for an iPhone game.
For product managers that are new to SCRUM, be sure to check out the SCRUM Reference Card (great overview) and beginners SCRUM Guide (fairly basic). These were helpful resources in my quest to better understand this product development process.
It was my next goal to conceive of a process to coordinate everyone’s collective efforts on the team to come up with ideas and potential features for the game and to convert that list into the Initial Release Plan and Product Backlog for the game. I created a spreadsheet in Google Docs and shared it with the team. I wanted to be a very transparent Product Manager and show the team everything that I saw — idea list, resource planning, timeline estimates, business value associations to product features, etc… I did this because I believe that transparency will help the team better understand my points of view and decision-making rationale.
Since I am continuing to learn, I invite you to have a look at the Initial Release and Version planning spreadsheets that I created to manage the product development process. Naturally, I stripped out any game-specific information, removed the names of people involved and altered values so that it would no longer represent our plan in any fashion. Other small changes to this public version include:
- For the idea list tab, each item should be a minimum of 4 hours to a maximum of 16 hours only; tasks less than 4 hours should be placed on each developers Scratch Pad and aggregated into an item on the list; tasks greater than 16 hours should be broken down into components (if possible) to fit within the 4 – 16 hours window for ideal planning purposes.
- Each developer would have his or her own “Scratch Pad” (the demo version only shows 2).
- The only tab that was completely removed was the method by which we determine business value for each product feature.
- The “Product Backlog” tab is dynamically driven from the “Idea List” tab and broken-down into version and sprint for each assessment; a tip for collecting the unique “Groups” is to export the long list of Groups from the “Idea List” into Excel and create a Pivot Table, then select the grouping and extract the unique elements to import back into Google Docs.
- In the “Product Backlog” tab, you should determine your own complexity factor for the project (a guide to determining this factor can be found in the SCRUM Guide linked above).
I would love to hear your questions, comments and (hopefully) suggestions to further improve what I have already created in hopes of making this effort more successful. If you would like a copy of my example spreadsheet, please let me know and leave me your email address in the comments section below; I’ll make sure to get you a copy either on Google Docs or as an export to MS Excel.
My next post will discuss putting this plan into action.
Reward Systems that Drive Engagement (via Amy Jo Kim)
Mar 9th
Amy Jo Kim, CEO of Shufflebrain, gave a talk at Game Developers Conference 2010 and focused on the web-meets-gaming world (called metagame design). This is the practice of applying game-like reward and feedback systems to non-game applications for the purpose of driving loyalty and engagement. This slide deck (embedded below) focuses on three levels of metagame design: points tables, feedback and rewards, and viral outreach. She also reviews the pros and cons of metagame reward systems like levels, badges, leaderboards, spotlights, and quality ratings. AJK was kind enough to post those slides online for the community — thank you!
Metagame Design – Presentation Transcript
- MetaGame Design Reward Systems that Drive Engagement Amy Jo Kim CEO, Shufflebrian
- What is a Metagame?
- Using out-of-game info or resources to affect in-game decisions Gaming definition
- Layering an rewards system onto an existing activity
- Metagames are Everywhere
- Collecting Complete Collections — Gain Status, Access, $$
- Behavior Chart Collect Stickers – Earn Privilege or Prize
- Karate Develop Skill – Earn Rank, Prestige, Powers
- Scouting Complete Tasks – Earn Badges, Rank, Prestige, Powers
- Frequent Flyer Programs Spend Money – Earn Points – Redeem for Flights
- Arcade Spend Money – Earn Points – Redeem for Items
- Text RPG Complete Missions – Earn Points – Redeem for Items
- Contest/Raffle Take Action – MAYBE Win Item
- Contest/Raffle Take Action – Maybe Win Item
- Tournament Play Sport – Enter Tournaments – Earn Ranking/Trophies Leagues & Teams are part of this
- Tournament Play Sport – Enter Tournaments – Earn Ranking/Trophies
- So how do you design a Metagame?
- Metagame Design Framework Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
- Metagame Engagement Loop Post updates, give gifts, send taunts Get feedback, earn rewards Take actions, earn points
- Act React Customize Create Earn Spend Step 1: Assign points to actions Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
- Which ACTIONS earn points?
- Which REACTIONS earn points?
- 3 Types of points
- Experience Points (XP) – earned directly via players’ actions – track & reward socially/economically useful player actions
- Skill Points (Score, Rank) – earned via interacting with the system – based on mastery of the activity or game
- Influence Points (Rating, Reputation) – earned via the actions of other players – proxy for quality/reputation/influence – track & reward socially valuable contributions & actions
- Is your points system tracking skill, experience, or both?
- Is your points system assigning ratings to people or objects?
- Can you Spend your points?
- Levels Leaderboards Roles Reputation Missions Challenges Achievements Collections Step 2: Add Feedback & Rewards Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
- Levels are shorthand for participation and achievement
- Leaderboards identify, motivate and reward your most devoted players
- Social Leaderboards drive competition and enable missions
- Leaderboards can cause problems – don’t be afraid to remove/hide/change
- Missions tell players what to do next
- Mission-driven engagement loop Post updates, give gifts, send taunts Get feedback, earn rewards Accept Mission Update Mission List Take actions, earn points
- Reputation and Ratings track quality/skill + motivate contributions
- Achievements provide short-term goals + sense of progression
- Motivate newbies with easy-to-earn rewards
- Motivate power-users with scarce resources
- Motivate contributors with a rating system
- Updates Gifts Sharing Invites Step 3: Grow through Viral Outreach Viral Outreach Points Feedback & Rewards
- What are the ‘social moments’ in your game?
- Competition Bragging, Taunting, Challenging
- Cooperation Sharing, Helping, Gifting
- Self-Expression Check out my character/outfit/farm/page
- Case Study: Farmville
- XP + coins earned by completing tasks
- Customize your character
- purchase seeds
- Plant & Harvest Crops
- Help Neighbors
- Design & Develop Your Farm
- Buy exclusive items with $$$
- Tutorial introduces pts, levels, rewards
- Earn coins, level up, buy more stuff
- Leaderboards facilitate social interactions
- Achievements come early & often
- Achievements displayed as collections
- Achievements displayed as collections
- Help your neighbors, then brag about it
- Many opportunities for self-expression
- Gifting pulls people into the game
- Case Study: Stack Overflow Technical Q&A site w/crowd-sourced moderation
- Ask/answer good questions to build Reputation
- Leaderboards for Reputation score
- Earn badges by performing basic site tasks
- Question: why no viral outreach?
- 5 Tips for Designing a Compelling Metagame:
- Create a coherent experience that unfolds over time
- Define a points system (XP, social pts, redeemable pts) that supports your purpose and audience
- Introduce feedback and rewards that motivate newbies, enthusiasts, and contributors
- Design rewards that players will be eager to share
- Use “game pacing” to grant rewards over time
See Amy Jo Kim’s profile on GDC 2010.
Understanding Social Game Player Dynamics
Mar 8th
Understanding the behavior of players of social games has been an expensive lesson to learn by many companies, often picking up bite-sided pieces of insight through extensive A/B testing and internal metrics over time. Many companies have also tried to better understand the viral invitation process and successful virality of social games both on and off the Facebook platform. An academic paper entitled “Diffusion Dynamics of Games on Online Social Networks” was recently written by Xiao Wei and Jiang Yang from the University of Michigan, Ricardo Matsumura de Araújo from the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil and Manu Rekhi, VP of strategy, marketing, business and corporate development for Lolapps.
The paper analyses the viral spread of an application and how/why are these processes occurring. SocialTimes.com did a great post that summarizes the academic paper. Alternatively, you can view the entire paper here.
Some of the key findings are summarized below:
- On average, each inviter has invited 26 friends while the median number is 10
- Just 10% of users account for 50% of successful invites
- Around 90% of users share their locale information
- Around 40% of users share their friend list
- Only 1% of users share their relationship status
- Invited users remain in the game longer: over 50% kept on playing for more than a day and 20% of all invited users were still playing 80 days later.
- Around 80% of non-invited players leave the game within the first day
- Overall, they find that invitation strategy is more important than demographics in determining invitation success rate
To determine how to create a profitable social game, please explore my previous blog post on the importance of Customer Acquisition Costs for startups.
Update: Disqus Replaces IntenseDebate for Comments
Mar 15th
Posted by Josh Sookman in Miscellaneous
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Apologies to all my readers for being unable to post comments over the last couple weeks. I tried to get the IntenseDebate system online (customer service was helpful and easily reached via Twitter/email); however, although it seemed that comments were being accepted by the commenting system, they were mysterious vanishing into the Internet abyss.
I made the switch to Disqus and I couldn’t be happier. Not only does it have a much easier integration process, but it also has a richer set of tools and options for commenting, sharing/social and UI/UX elements.
Once again, if you had tried to post a comment in the past (but were unable to do so), please take this opportunity. You can now easily sign-in through Facebook Connect, Twitter, OpenID, Yahoo!, Disqus or as a Guest.