8 Things to Do and Don’t in your FTUE

🔖 8 Things to Do and Don't in your FTUE Follow FTUE Cheat Sheet to make sure you don't churn your players.If you have a good FTUE doesn't necessarily mean you're ganna be successful.❌ BAD FTUE ABSOLUTELY RUIN YOUR MOBILE GAME✅ Dos❶ Small and quick winsWhen a player installs your game, he's entering a new world. It's unknown. So make sure your guide him with small and quick wins and gradually progress.❷ Short loading timeNo one wants to wait so long just to see what your game looks like. If there's sth important going on in the background, make sure you're informing your player about it.❸ Consistent DesignYou must follow a same design language across your universe. Think of it as you're placing driving signs here and there. If you consistently change your language eventually it leads to a chaos.❹ […]

M. Ali Saatchi November 20

Journal

6 in-game currencies you MUST know

🤑 6 in-game currencies you MUST know ❶ Soft Currency• Low value• General-purpose currency• Can be obtained for free by playing or waitingExamples: Credits in Call of Duty Mobile, Coins in Royal Match or Polygun Arena❷ Medium Currency• Obtainable through grinding (like soft currency)• but it has some kind of limitation such as their usage or accumulationExamples: Gold or Elixir in Clash of Clans❸ Hard Currency• High value currency• Mostly you can get it through in app purchase meaning it's closely related to monetizationExamples: Gems in Polygun Arena or Brawl Stars or Clash of Clans❹ Energy Currency• Exchanged exclusively for playing time• Usually priced over every attempt or actionExamples: Heart in Royal Match or Homescapes❺ Event Currency• This currency just exist temporarily during an event• It's focused around a time-limited event or featureExamples: Pickaxes during Hidden Temple in Royal Match, […]

M. Ali Saatchi November 14

Journal

Better iterations with OODA Loop

💫 Better iterations with OODA Loop Why typical "Learn, Build, Measure" methodology may be misleading?OODA Loop is a decision-making framework, developed by John Boyd consisting of 4 steps:❶ ObservationIdentify the problem.Gain an overall understanding of the environment.❷ OrientationDefining what should be the next steps and why.What's your timeline and how feasible your solutions are?❸ DecisionCheck your resources and data.Take into consideration all the potential outcomes.❹ ActionDefine who's responsible, prepare the scenarios and take the actions.👉 HOW TO USE IT FOR GAMES?OODA Loop is one of the best approaches when you want to optimize your user experience.First you identify a friction or you want check a UX theory.Then you start checking your data, things like your custom events, your data dashboards, etc.Often you need to write new queries in order to inspect some new ratios and broaden your view.Once you have […]

M. Ali Saatchi November 1

Journal

Understanding Retention #4: Retention Vs. Rolling Retention

🚨 Understanding Retention Part 4: Retention VS Rolling Retention ❶ What is Retention?Retention measures the percentage of players who return to your game after a specific period (D1, D7, D30, etc).❷ What is Rolling Retention?Rolling Retention takes it a step further. Instead of focusing on a fixed point in time, Rolling Retention looks at whether users continue to return to the game beyond a specific day.👉 For example, instead of asking how many users returned on exactly Day 7, Rolling Retention asks how many users played on any day after Day 7.This metric gives you a broader picture of long-term player engagement and helps you understand how sticky your game really is.❓When to Use Which?· Use Retention when you’re focusing on immediate engagement and onboarding· Use Rolling Retention when you want to calculate long-term stickiness and lifetime engagement patterns✨ Checkout […]

M. Ali Saatchi October 25

Journal

Understanding Retention Part 3: LTV and Retention

🚨 Understanding Retention Part 3: LTV and Retention In my previous posts, I covered the importance of long-term retention and how games with low retention will survive. Now, it's time to talk about how we can calculate LTV (lifetime value) and its relation to Retention. ⥅ Here's the formulaLTV = Lifetime ⛌ ARPDAU 👉 Using this formula you can make estimations on your early retention data ❓How Retention Impacts LTVRetention and LTV are closely linked. The longer players stick around, the more opportunities they have to make in-app purchases or watch ads, increasing their lifetime value. ↳Higher retention naturally translates to a higher LTV. Part 1: Part 2: If you found this post helpful: ❤️ → Give it a like 💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments🔄 → Repost it to help others🔔 → Follow me for more insights […]

M. Ali Saatchi October 17

Journal

3 Pillars of a Successful Game Studio Founder & Director

⭐️ 3 Pillars of a Successful Game Studio Founder and DirectorIn a recent workshop by Amir H. Fassihi, creator of the famous Children of Morta, he shared a powerful framework for what it takes to be a successful Game Studio Founder and Director:1. 🧠 Creative (World of Imagination):A great founder must have a boundless imagination, big dreams with high hopes. They need to generate fresh, innovative ideas and have an open mind with a broad vision for what’s possible. Creativity is the engine that drives all new projects.2. 👷🏻 Execution (Real World):However, ideas and dreams alone aren't enough. A founder needs to have the ability to bring these ideas to life—whether executing solo or leading a team. It’s about translating those imaginations into tangible results in the real world.3. 👀 Grand Vision (The Bridge):Finally, the bridge between imagination and execution […]

M. Ali Saatchi October 11

Journal

Game Ideation via ChatGPT

15-min with just using GPT-4o and GPT-1o to create a complete game idea & concept:👉 Initial prompt for GPT-1o:" I want you to be my Lead Game Designer who knows all about mobile gaming, all genres, all mechanics, market trends, etc I want you to come up with a compelling idea with USPs. I want you to pick the genre and sub-genre for me based on market data, somewhere that has high potential and is quite blue ocean a high chance of success. The idea should be mobile friendly with simple mechanics and at the same time good depth so at first players can easily pass and progress but soon they have improved their skills/characters or whatever to progress further "↳ Here's the game concept and AI-generated idea:- Title: Eden Rising: Rebuild & Survive- Genre: Hybrid-Casual City Builder with Survival […]

M. Ali Saatchi October 4

Journal

Understanding Retention Part 2: Retention Isn’t Everything

🚨 Understanding Retention Part 2: When Retention Isn’t EverythingWe often make quick decisions based solely on retention numbers. But there are times when other metrics hold more weight.❓ Let’s take a look at a retention curve of a project with Day 1, Day 7, and Day 30 rates:* D1: 17.5%* D7: 4.5%* D30: 1.6%These retention numbers are below industry benchmarks, both short and long term.🤔 Would you continue working on this project?Before making a decision, let's look at an important factor:👉 ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): the amount of revenue earned for every dollar spent on advertising.💡This retention data is from Nitro Nation: Car Racing Game. With over 50M downloads and $18M in revenue, this game is thriving despite low retention.⭐️ TL;DREven though this game doesn’t have exceptionally high retention rates, it’s still achieving positive ROAS—proving that , ROAS is […]

M. Ali Saatchi October 1

Journal

Understanding Game Retention

👉 One of the most critical metrics when producing a game is ⭐️RETENTION⭐️, specifically, long-term retention. ❓But what does retention mean, and how should we monitor it beyond just the surface numbers?Many teams and even publishers look at retention numbers like D1, D4, and D7, but these only tell part of the story. Long-term retention is what really dictates the success of a game. ↳If we don’t measure and understand it properly, we risk making decisions based on incomplete data.

M. Ali Saatchi September 20

M. Ali Saatchi

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