RUNNING THE SHOW!

What does a Product Manager on a live game really do? 

When I got started in games as a Jr. marketer there was a clear delineation and separation between marketing and development. Games took years to make, and development teams rarely talked with marketing while making them. Then as they neared completion, the development team effectively threw them over the proverbial wall and Marketing launched them.

Then games went online and started to be run as services and the above process didn’t work anymore. Enter – THE SHOW RUNNER aka Product Manager.

PM’s are a relatively new role and prior to their existence the work they now do was split up among marketers, producers, sales teams, analysts, finance folks and designers. Running services necessitated someone to be the orchestrator of the service. A good friend used to say that we were running a show and that PM’s were the show runners.

So what do they do?

At its core, the Product Manager is the strategist and guardian of a game's vision. Their responsibilities can be broadly categorized into several key areas that morph and change as the product lifecycle moves from one phase to another.

Early on in development they are there to channel the voice of the consumer. Defining the market and how your game will fit. They use consumer research and testing to provide evidence and guide  product strategy and design. Working very closely with developers and researchers they are providing the development team with the voice of the eventual player.

At launch the PM works very closely with Marketing to maximize the initial cohort of players and efficiently deploy marketing acquisition spends. They are leveraging their analysts to monitor performance and optimize efficiency providing intel and data to the marketing divisions on how best to adjust spend.

Once the live game is past launch the real work begins. During the early growth and retention phases the PM is tasked with expanding reach, finding new audiences and working with the live ops team to optimize the in game experience. Test and learn is an iterative process usually led by great PM’s. It is during this time that I believe the good PM’s are left behind by the great ones! The PM’s that I have worked with that are great at RUNNING THE SHOW are equally left and right brained. Constantly theorizing, testing, optimizing and doing it again. It’s a very “Scientific Method” process. 

Finally, as a live game ultimately starts declining the great PM’s look to secure the core. Tasked with reducing churn and maximizing profit, during this phase the PM’s recognize that some of the decisions they make may be detrimental to new users but as a consequence will solidify the core base.

Great SHOW RUNNERS are a unique breed. They are equally creative and analytical. They must be world class communicators and relentlessly data obsessed. Like any good SHOW RUNNER they need to be deeply in tune with their customer and what delights them.