The transition to a live service model is more than just a technical challenge; it's a cultural shift. In this session, panellists will detail how to successfully transition a team to a live service model and how to avoid common post-launch obstacles and ensure smooth, long-term success by:
Stop ignoring the world's biggest gaming platform if you work in games. How to make it in the UGC space.
As live service games scale, studios must decide which tools to develop in-house and which to source from third parties. Striking the right balance can impact everything from agility to long-term costs, but making the wrong choice can drain resources or limit flexibility. This panel will dive into how these decisions affect budgets, impact development efficiency, and a studio’s ability to keep up with evolving player needs:
Dive into the complex cloud infrastructure that powers Sea of Thieves, a AAA live service game with over 40 million players served by a web of microservices dealing with hundreds of billions of requests per month. This session will explore the architecture of a large-scale live service stack, focusing on resilient systems design and challenges Rare Ltd have faced along their journey such as:
Knowing your audience and what they want in a game is critical, but once you have a great game, how do you best spread the word and boost revenue? Panellists will discuss how to effectively leverage data to refine monetization strategies, optimise player acquisition and retention, and maintain engagement across multiple platforms by:
As more studios explore Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) models, the benefits of deeper player engagement, revenue control, and brand ownership are clear – but so are the challenges. This panel, moderated by the Founder and Director of Tebex, Lee McNeil, will examine the biggest hurdles of launching high-converting D2C platforms, as well as:
This talk by Michael Schade, Co-Founder & CEO of ROCKFISH Games, will provide an in-depth analysis of how free and paid content updates for EVERSPACE 2 have performed from a Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) perspective. He will explore the strategic approaches used to balance these updates and how they’ve impacted player engagement, monetization, and long-term retention. Attendees will learn to balance base game engagement via free updates and creating value through paid content by:
This presentation will introduce a universal framework for designing a monthly Live Ops events calendar for mid-core games. Poiasnyk will refer to their own games as well as similar titles. He will try to create a step-by-step algorithm that synergises unique offers, in-game events, and promotional campaigns into a cohesive meta-layer. The goal is to provide actionable guidelines that boost in-game KPIs, while offering a scalable template that can be adapted across various projects.
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The role of UX design in live service games has evolved dramatically over the past 5-7 years, shifting from vague and undefined to a critical component of player retention and monetisation. This session discusses how studios may begin the task of quantifiably measuring the success of UX design through key metrics, the tools needed for accurate tracking, and why investing in UX is essential for long-term growth by:
Elisa Olmedo - Associate Production Director, led a strategic shift in ways of working within the Core Gameplay area of Farm Heroes Saga by re-organising the team into smaller, agile 'pods'. This presentation will explore not only how this model helps the team manage limited resources and increases visibility across all roles, but also how building a great team culture is an essential first step in an organisational change by:
In this session, Muhsin Yaramis, will reveal how deploying an efficient operational framework not only boosts cross-functional team collaboration and elevates player experiences, but also ensures launch and operational readiness from pre- and post-launch operations to sunset. We'll dive into strategies for streamlining live operations, advocating for player-centricity, and risk management practices. Attendees will hear about applicable and proven best practices such as:
In this data-rich session, Harris Kaldis, Director of Product at FM Games, will walk attendees through a global player retention strategy case study.
From prototype and the importance of early data to progression-based tunning and long-term retention mechanics, dive deeper into:
Live service gaming, and the gaming industry as a whole, is evolving rapidly. This panel of industry experts will discuss how studios can set their teams up for sustainable success and turn challenges into opportunities via strategies such as: