Holly Liu (cofounder of Kabam) discusses the soaring cost of customer acquisition for launching and scaling mobile games.
Insight
Using established IP like Marvel significantly lowers mobile game acquisition costs
“So for us the IP has been very helpful in reducing that CAC. Because I don't have to explain what Marvel is. Like, I could go after the Marvel fans, and it's so much cheaper than just trying to get them to understand what is, you know, Edge World, or Dragons o…”
Insight
Game studios with large budgets should not rely solely on paid ads
“Even if you have a big budgets, I wouldn't spend it all on customer acquisition. You're just not going to get like bang for your buck.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Blockchain games suffer from VR-like hype without mainstream consumer traction
“I think that blockchain games are kind of a little bit currently suffering from the VR type world. There's a lot of heat. There's a lot of you know, excitement around it, and you can make some great cash like CryptoKitties, but I think They only drove like a 1…”
Insight
High paid acquisition costs force mobile game studios toward organic marketing
“Because of the pressures of just straight acquiring, like, paid acquisition is the pressures are so high on there, that's when you see things move more towards organic, because you're always trying to reduce the cost of customer acquisition.”
Insight
Game developers are best suited to build cryptocurrency virtual economies
“In my world gaming gaming definitely pushes those types of technologies forward, or at least test those boundaries of like, how far can it go? And I, I'm always encouraging, I think in the blockchain world and with crypto, like what better people to really exp…”
Insight
Mid-core video game mechanics cannot be effectively tested in isolation
“There's so many things that happen in a mid-core game. That trigger all these other things that's very hard to, like, test on. Just one piece of it without the full context of the game to say, like, okay, is this thing compelling? Because it could actually be …”