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So there are many times when the marketing team needs something to be added to a game. We are a needy bunch, game marketers. Especially for live service games.&nbsp; We want Attribution Tracking, CRM SDK integration, game data API’s, better game capture tools, in game survey capabilities, launcher/patcher promo real estate, deep linking, in game CS ticketing systems, data outputs for dashboards… the list is seemingly never ending. Having been in charge of large publishing organizations I can empathize with both the needs of marketers and bandwidth demands of the dev team. &nbsp;Usually it comes down to the Product Manager (PM) to decide what features are prioritized or killed and what features make it into the dev backlog.&nbsp; So to my marketing friends here is the secrete to getting your PM to take you seriously with your dev feature asks!&nbsp; WRITE A CLEAR FEATURE REQUEST DOC Its really that simple. &nbsp;You cant claim to be a victim if you don’t justify your ask. But what should go into a feature request doc? &nbsp;Good question! In my experience if you can be clear and concise on these elements your will get your fair shake from the PM. And if you can write it as a “user story” you will be ahead of most: Describe the problem you are trying to address (best if it’s a customer problem you are trying to fix) Propose the solution to your problem (best if you don’t give a technical solution, let the experts figure that out) Describe the use case (again best if described from the customers point of view) Provide a desired outcome and critical dates (best if expressed in a numeric form) Provide examples and research (who has done it and what was their result)That is about it. Its not hard, just very seldom done by marketers and your PM will love you for it. &nbsp;Oh and last don’t try and sneak to the front of the backlog by disguising your feature ask as a bug.. &nbsp;&nbsp;

How a Game Marketer Should Request a Feature

data.ai predicts Mobile Game Spending to grow in 2024, reversing a two-year decline! The new report… uhh prediction, says they attribute the rebound to increase in spend in tier 1 markets like the US, Japan and Korea. The biggest genres are predicted to be RPG, Match, Party and Casino. Growth is to go from $107B in 2023 to $111B in 2024. This is great news for a segment of the games business that saw explosive growth up through the COVID years and has been hit hard lately with the deprecation of IDFA, global inflation and China’s regulations. I think this will be a turnaround year for mobile as smart mobile game UA teams start to figure out how to optimize UA spends without per user attribution or fingerprinting.&nbsp; Also, I think in addition to the tier one market spend rebound predicted in this report we should also pay close attention to India and China. @Niko Partners reported a few months back that India has more than 450M gamers (90% on mobile) and has a yoy growth rate of 20%. Even if their APRU is low by comparison the sheer volume of users will have a significant impact on mobile revenue. Also, China is stinging right now from the regulation announcement they recently made on F2P games. Tencent, Netease and other Chinese game companies lost over $80B in value over night! They recently removed press and publications regulator head Feng Shixn over this announcement and I sense that they will soften their stance on these regulations.&nbsp; In addition, I think with the EU regulation coming in 2024 we will see the introduction of new 3rd party app stores that will have a net positive impact on spending. &nbsp; Lets go 2024 Mobile Games!&nbsp;

Mobile Game Spending

Well earlier this year around May I would have said yes for sure. CS:GO announced CS:GO2 in Mar 2023 and things got hot and heavy. CS:GO started to have peak CCU records regularly (using Steam DB). Breaking 1.5M CCU shortly after the announcement. Then things went crazy in May where they spiked to 1.8M CCU! Holy crap that is big. Why did they spike? Well its probably a few reasons – CS:GO2 hype, Paris Major hype, new Stickers and the Pick’Ems were all happening at the same time. It looked like CS:GO2 was gonna crush it! Hmmm but look at the CCU now… There was a cool off over the summer where their peak CCU came back down to 1.1-ish levels. But for the full release in May it did spike but only up to 1.4 and since it has been trending down and back around the 1.1M CCU level.&nbsp; What has happened to VALORANT over the same period? Well it seems that VALORANT weathered the early CS:GO2 announce storm well. In March they actually had their highest peak unique daily player count of 6.6M (using tracker.gg it does not have CCU, just daily Unique’s). Then came the CS:GO2 launch in May. What happened to VALORANT’s player numbers? Not much really.. They shed a few hundred thousand daily unique’s but they have lost that many several times before and always recovered. In fact, in June and July they got them all back and more.&nbsp; Actually, both games are a losing players lately. Since Nov CS:GO2 is down around 30% from their peak in May and VALORANT is down 35% from their March peak. So, what have we learned? Well, I think both games are strong, resilient franchises and one does not significantly affect the other. These player number fluctuations are probably more affected by what is actually happening in the respective seasons with esports, new content drops and events more than what each does to each other.&nbsp; What’s your take? Is VALORANT slowly going to take CS:GO’s crown for top competitive tactical FPS? Or is there room for both to live on for years to come? #CS:GO #VALORANT

Did Counter Strike 2 Slow VALORANT’s growth?

Let’s face it, the majority of gamers hate Web3 and what it has stood for up until this point. Get-rich-quick rug pulls, Play to Earn, To-the-moon NFT’s and Tokenomics have tainted the consumer facing communication of most of these terms. So now even if a game is outstanding, was built for gamers primarily to have fun and incorporates Blockchain, its DoA because of the language used to market and explain it. But there are back-end advantages for gamers who play games with Blockchain integration. Digital asset ownership verification, additional security and digital asset history are all cool things for dev teams to use while designing a game. So why must the game be labeled a “Web3” game if it uses some of this tech? Back-end services are used all the time in game development. Matchmaking, cloud servers, player to player in game communications, data analytics, anti-cheat and more are regularly used in GaaS and are almost always invisible to the player both in game and in marketing. Would you label your game a “Playfab” game or a “AWS” game or a “Easy Anti-Cheat” game? Absurd right? Is this even possible or is any Web3 integration a death sentence to a game. Will it get sniffed out by gamers and then immediately labeled as a scam?&nbsp;

Web3 Gaming Has a Marketing Problem…(amongst others)

Ever wanted to clearly articulate to a colleague or boss a marketing campaign idea but don’t have the time for a massive pitch deck? Here is a process I use occasionally that is really effective at clearly defining why someone should approve a new strategy. The Scientific method is made up of a series of logical steps you go through to prove something or not. It typically begins with something you “observe” or a new “insight” you receive. From there the scientist usually has a hunch or “hypothesis” that they want to prove out. That leads to an “experiment”, then an “analysis” and finally a “conclusion”. Marketing GaaS games is all about testing and optimizing and the scientific method (kinda) can be applied similarly.&nbsp; Below is a template I used for a optimization we executed at FoxNext when we had a hunch that our TV ad spend could be better spent elsewhere (content marketing). #marketingstrategy #gamemarketing #gaas

The SCIENTIFIC METHOD can be used to market video games.

Would we all agree that one of the for sure benefits of a strong brand is reducing customer “pricesensitivity”? Why are iPhones so much more than Android phones? Apple is king at brand building. So how do you convince your boss, with evidence, to support brand spends? I say the number one end all be all KPI for any for-profit business is total PROFIT. Agree? If you agreethen how do you drive profit with brand building spending? Its hard to attribute profit directly to brandspending, right? The secret is how you look at metrics that lead to total profit. If you can build a breadcrumb path ofKPI’s that end in total profit you can justify brand spending. More on how to do this in subsequent posts. Back to the first point. Why is “Price Sensitivity” so important? Due to incremental costs selling at ahigher price will almost always be more profitable than just selling more and certainly selling more at alower price. Look at this fun little case study below #PriceSensitivity #Branding