KPI Management: how to manage metrics in a game

What the talk is about

Alexander Shtachenko explains how to manage KPI metrics in free-to-play games by treating a game first of all as a business. He starts with why it matters: earning more, scaling the audience, extending the lifecycle, estimating a project's value, closing a weak project in time, and showing investors real numbers. He then walks through the stages: soft launch (engagement, retention, monetization, virality), scaling, live operation, stagnation and sale. The practical tools are a backlog tagged by its impact on metrics and by mechanic type, and prioritization with Fibonacci numbers plus a separate complexity estimate. In the Q&A he covers analytics services and who should own metrics in a small team. Useful for producers, game designers, indie developers and studio owners.