Last week, our SF Game Monetization meetup group hosted its second speaker event, Maximize Your Virtual Goods Revenue. We had over 150 people attend to socialize and watch three awesome speakers share what they’ve learned about game monetization. Check out each speaker’s presentation below.
(Author’s note: I can’t get the embedded Slideshare presentations doesn’t work. Please click on the title to go to each slide deck.)
Leveraging Branded Virtual Goods, by YuChiang Cheng – Founder & CEO of WGT
YuChiang Cheng is the co-founder of WGT (World Golf Tour), the #1 online golf game with a community of millions of online players, making it the largest golf website in the world. Prior to WGT, YuChiang served on the executive team at WagerWorks, launching Virgin Games, World Poker Tour and Hard Rock Casino. WagerWorks was acquired by IGT for $90 million in 2005.
In his presentation, YuChiang shared the pros and cons of working with large, established brands and licensing their IP for your game. This is a great primer for anyone looking into IP for your game so that you can maximize your return on investment, negotiate appropriately and avoid the potential pitfalls of a licensing deal.
Josh is a Associate Director, Products for 6waves, the largest global publisher of independent games on Facebook, iOS, and Android. Josh has worked with developers on more than 50+ games across Facebook, iOS, and Android to provide game advisory, including Kingdoms of Camelot, Ravenwood Fair and Mall World. Prior to joining 6waves in early 2010, Josh held a hybrid market research, analytics and product management role at Electronic Arts.
In his talk, Josh shared his learnings from working with some of the top social games of the last 5 years on their monetization and virality strategies. With 50 slides and 11 Best Practices, this deck is a great playbook of tactics for any free-to-play game.
Max Skibinsky is serial entrepreneur, angel investor & start-up mentor for past 17 years in Silicon Valley. He bootstrapped his first consulting startup over decade ago working with clients such as Netscape, AOL, and Electronic Arts. He founded Hive7, one of the very first social gaming companies, which produced first Facebook MMOG Knighthood that grew over 6 million players. In 2010 Hive7 was sold to Playdom/Disney. Most recently, Max co-founded mobile e-commerce startup Inporia that secured investments from Y-Combinator, Ron Conway, NEA, Clearstone & 500 Startups.
Max’s presentation, Color of Money, talks about the psychology behind game monetization and what really drives the user’s intent to purchase. When a player’s emotions are involved (such as their investment in a character, or their desire for revenge against a foe), they have a much stronger incentive to pay.
This was originally posted on the Betable blog.