“Games that do not have a clear game growth strategy to acquire users or lack appropriate creatives are easily forgotten by the market and have difficulty in effective expansion.”
In order to wish a successful game business, Adam Stevens, Vice President of IronSource Luna Products, introduced the topic of ‘Why advertising material is the most important thing in a successful game business’ based on various know-how and secrets accumulated in the industry.
According to Vice President Adam, in most mobile game production processes, all teams are doing their best for the development and growth of games, but collaboration and communication between teams is often neglected. He noted that results and impacts can vary significantly.
One of the key factors that can be improved through improved communication is that more and more mobile game studios are prioritizing creatives to expand and optimize the user base, as many creative teams have recently fused game development and user acquisition processes, and the importance of He also introduced that it is getting bigger and bigger.
In particular, he emphasized the need to create an integrated and seamless feedback loop so that all teams can demonstrate their capabilities, and to focus on recruiting talented people in the creative field rather than trying to improve collaboration between existing teams. This is because the positive impact on the entire company can be maximized if a core team is formed with these talents and organically integrated with the rest of the teams.
I heard that if you are looking for talents who will lead to success in developing creative materials that capture users’ hearts and collaboration between departments, you must first be curious. To stay one step ahead in a fast-changing industry, quick ideas are essential, and the more creatives you test, the more likely you are to find something that will captivate your users, and you will be able to find new growth engines for your game.
Accordingly, the creative team has to study the creative like a sponge, absorb the concept from the game, and fuel the continuously moving ‘idea radar’. Ultimately, it all boils down to hiring curious talent. This is because a talent who asks “why” about an advertising material is a sign of a talent with the curiosity that the team needs.
Also, the ability to utilize data is important. A deep interest in data is essential in a market where small changes produce big results. In addition, close collaboration between the creative team and the UA (User Acquisition) team is very important, as data from designers to animators should be the basis of all thought processes.
To this end, the creative team must also be able to understand numerical data. Collaboration with creative solutions that support easy access to advertising data currently in operation is also important, and by using the solution, each team repeats the development work by identifying the level that game users like, customer preferences, and advertisements that require optimization. can do.
Then, the field of understanding of multi-disciplinary fields was introduced. This does not mean to hire experts in various fields, it means to find talents who can understand the positions of other departments with a deep understanding of the work within the game studio based on one area of expertise. In other words, it refers to a case of looking at work from a broader perspective and handling it independently.
As the number of tasks that require transfer between departments decreases, the processing time also decreases. Talent with multi-disciplinary understanding of game development has a high level of empathy for the work of other departments and increases the possibility of collaboration between teams. because it can
On how to promote collaboration between teams, VP Adam gave examples of work order, transparency, and performance of creatives. If we envision this as two scenarios, first, the creative team handles their work vertically. The created advertisement is delivered to the UA manager, and the manager uploads the advertisement on various channels to analyze it, and then waits for feedback on the performance.
The team in the second scenario works together with the UA manager. We listen to the UA manager’s wishes for upcoming creatives, identify creatives, and discuss features to be included in the game. Increased transparency between teams leads to better structured and more structured user acquisition campaigns.
Another key partnership after that is the close collaboration between creatives and product teams, which can improve both creatives and gameplay. The creative team is able to provide feedback on features and actions of advertisements, such as colors, tutorials, and characters. During the build process, the product team can conduct A/B tests based on the elements identified in the feedback, and the test results can be used to improve in-game indicators such as user retention rate and game time.
Finally, Vice President Adam Stevens stresses that user acquisition optimization starts with creatives, and he points out that the first step to this is to hire talented people. He concluded that, in addition to recruiting talent, facilitating cross-team collaboration to secure an efficient and converged collaboration-based workflow can be of great help in forming a high-performing resource for a successful game business.
