Creating Sustainable Revenue

I love making and publishing video games. As a veteran of over 20 years, and having been able to lead teams at Sega, Bandai Namco, EA, and now my own studio, I have been blessed to work with some of the best in the industry.

Creating fantastic games that players love is paramount, but in addition to delivering a positive experience we must also properly monetize our games.  I remember when the Free To Play revolution hit North America & Europe, and it was the wild west! Micro-transactions are now a staple in the monetization tool box for most game publishers, but there is still controversy on the subject. An especially big one surrounds Loot Boxes

(https://www.ign.com/articles/englands-top-mental-health-nurse-says-games-push-kids-into-gambling-habits?sf116170943=1)

While I do utilize micro-transactions, I am not a fan of the Loot Box mechanic.  Loot Boxes create an uncertainty in rewards and can lead to player frustration.

Creating a great “Core Loop”, referring to the main activity in your game that makes it truly fun, opens up multiple ways to monetize your game, especially if it has replayability.  Relying solely on Micro-transactions for a title can be a risky gamble, especially considering only a small percentage of players actually become spenders (typically 1-2%).

My flagship title (still in development) has a fantastic Core Loop and is built to be replayed again and again.  We realized that we could monetize in a way that maintains a superb player experience but allows us to constantly generate revenue from every player via Intrinsic Advertising.  Even better, this revenue stream does not compete with Micro-transactions (or any other revenue streams) but rather complements them.

I have avoided advertising in the past as a revenue source, not because it didn’t make money (it can be a huge revenue source), but because the usual ad methods (pop-ups, redirects, forced videos, etc.) often ruin the player experience, and destroy player retention.  Frameplay offered a better solution: to have ads naturally placed within the game just like a billboard on the highway or a poster at the bus-stop, I realized that we could advertise to players without interrupting their play sessions. Through this “Intrinsic Advertising”, I could monetize EVERY player, not just the spenders.

After searching out several companies that claimed they could do this, my search led me to Frameplay.  Frameplay was the only one that stood up to my testing, and I was so impressed that I decided to partner with them.  Frameplay intimately understands not only the technical challenges to create an in-game advertising platform, but completely understands the gamer’s experience. This is because they are all gamers themselves.

In summary, one recipe for a strong title is to: maintain a great player experience, monetize every player with Intrinsic Advertising to generate a consistent revenue stream, and thus increase your player LTV (Life Time Value). I strongly encourage game developers and publishers to utilize Frameplay’s Intrinsic Advertising.

Frameplay’s SDK:

• Optimized to minimize frame rate drop and memory allocation
• Increase Life-Time-Value (LTV)
• Drag and drop nodes into the game flow
• Manage your workflow and game performance with an easy to use plugin
• Monitor analytics and revenue performance with self-services dashboard

About Tony Colafrancesco

Tony is a video game industry veteran with over 20 years of experience. After having worked in leadership capacities and several large name brand publishers such as Sega, Electronic Arts, and Bandai Namco, Tony currently runs his own studio and consults throughout the industry.  Tony is currently consulting with Frameplay Corp. in San Francisco, California