One of the most essential parts of any Pocket Gamer Connects are the many talk tracks and sessions that take place and this year at PGC London there are more talks than ever!
Kicking off Pocket Gamer Connects London 2023 was a session from Jesse Lempiäinen, CEO & Co-founder, Geeklab, bringing to bear his previous experience at Rovio to deliver essential advice on creating successful game launches.
During his presentation, Jesse broke down some essential learns from his years at Rovio and Geeklab and dispensed some essential advice covering off some basics that less experienced managers still miss.
Having previously seen and lived through what he referred to as ‘linear’ launch methodology he’s devised an approach that minimizes expensive delays and enhances success rates by engaging a live audience right from the outset.
Know your audience
Firstly Jesse isolated one of the most common problems in game development. “The mistake that many people make is that they’re designing for themselves rather than for the audience,” he explained.
Research into the audience is essential but trying and testing different possibilities is even more important. “Don’t put too much work into one launch. For all the effort and expense of one big launch could do two in the same time. Then you can see which works and concentrate on that one.Fail once and you have to start again. This versus, fail once and you still have a successful launch.
Jesse showed how minor tweaks to art and approach and then launching different versions simultaneously will reveal a winner.
“We were working with Funcraft and they wanted to create a crossword and puzzle game. We did research and we found that no crossword game had meta elements. And the research showed that the American audience much preferred dogs over cats… So we created this nice dog design and launched with art that featured the dog character and one that featured the game logo,” he explained.
“We built all the assets and we ran a test. But the game with the logo was twice as successful. You have to realise that the smallest changes can have the biggest impacts.”
“Show it, test and learn! Instead of thinking of a launch as a flightpath, think of it as a loop – test and evaluate and learn all the time.”
There’s a lot more still to discover from PGC London 2024, with talks and conversations ongoing through January 22 and 23. Find out more about what’s on and how you can be part of it here.
