Step 1

Problem Statement

Companies in the Gaming space (Studios or Publishers) constantly do market research & user research to:

1. Support new / upcoming game concepts
2. Support released titles with player retention & churn management
3. Support released / catalogue titles with player acquisition strategies including promotions
4. Identify games / concepts which have high retention metrics and release features inspired from them in their own games
5. Identify games / concepts which have good traction to invest in them or publish them on a larger scale.

This research is very difficult as these companies have their own data and some data from companies like NPD, Newzoo, Mscience etc. but that isnt enough because:

1. That data is based on a very small sample hence metrics are not close to actuals (specially engagement metrics)
2. Monetization metrics are reliable but they are generally not breakable by regions , customer segments & cohorts etc.
3. Marrying monetization data with other sources of data like reviews, engagement etc. is not possible as it's pre-aggregated
4. This data is reported on a daily / weekly / monthly level
5. This doesnt help them understand the impact of external events like competitors releases on their titles.

Solution

Yugen.ai developed a market intelligence platform tailored to their requirements, which enabled them to perform real-time analytics and has event-based analysis capabilities to gain deeper insights into their game's performance and player behaviour.

We gather data from various sources like Steam & Xbox to give these companies distilled information of:

1. What other games are their players playing & how much time are they spending on them?
2. What are the new releases or announcements from your competitors and how are they going to impact you?
3. 1. How were your competitors sales impacted by their new releases to enable you to carry out your own impact analysis
4. Who are the users who are at a risk of churning?
5. What are the hot and trending games which are getting very good traction?
6. What are players saying about you on platforms like Steam & Xbox?

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Some screenshots of the product are being shown below:

Leaderboard

This view enables the user to find games which are trending & leading the charts for various KPIs. This can not only be used to find games which are popular in terms of DAUs but also those which are smaller in scale but have really good retention metrics.

Performance Insights (Trends View)

This view enables the user to view historical trends of different KPIs for a particular game. This also enables them to view any metadata related to a game like their genres, key features, languages supported, system requirements, release dates etc. The trend charts in the dashboard enable the user to see patterns in Active Users, Retention Metrics, Concurrent Users, Review Scores etc. by user segments & at a Daily / Weekly / Monthly level.

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Price Comparison View

This view enables the user to compare prices of different games or SKUs over time. This is important to understand not only the price gap between various SKUs but also to track when various promotions were rolled out, so that their impact on engagement can be teased out.

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Game Comparison View

This view enables a user to choose and compare some KPIs between 2 or more games.

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Event Comparison View

This view enables the user to select various events / announcements & releases by gaming companies and analyze their impact on a particular game's KPIs. The event tracking here has an inbuilt intelligence layer where events like metadata changes, new language support etc. as well which are not released by press are also tracked and added over time.

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Game Migration Insights

This view enables the user to understand where their players are coming from and where are they going to. This helps them create better acquisition strategies by targeting more relevant players while this also helps them build reactivation strategies by planning to introduce features & game-modes which mimick the other games that players were interested in.

This view also has an extended version where we show other metrics like how much time are various customer segments spending on you vs your competitors etc.

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Why I selected this product

• Why this problem:
• • Over my 10 yrs of being a consultant in the gaming industry, data around this research has proven to be a bottleneck time and again for me and other stakeholders I had worked with earlier, which means that there is a problem in the industry
  • We have already implemented this solution with 3 big brands (Bungie Studios, Sony Playstation & Scopely) for their PC & Console business and are in talks with a few more like Sega, Krafton, Nintendo etc.

Step 2

Gap Analysis on Whimsical (Click Here)

Initially the users face some challenges with using the platform due to complexities involved and the stages are based on increasing maturity levels of adoption. With increasing level of maturity, the questions they have and their use-cases also increase and they start using this platform to get inputs for various other tasks as well.

• Why Partnerships are important for this product?
• • Distribution Partnerships:
  • • VC Investments in Game Dev have been increasing consistently (shown in the charts below). A lot of studios have now started building games, many of which are at a smaller scale and which might find our product costly as such. I want to target Gaming Focused Funds like Lumikai Fund in India, BitKraft ventures, Play Ventures etc. to build partnerships and get access to their portfolio companies as potential clients.
      
    • Create an Agency Partner Network with Market Research Companies like Gartner, Niko Partners, IDG Consulting etc. as they can leverage tools like ours to conduct research, create market research reports and deliver value to the end customers.
    • • This will enable us to build trust and credibility in the market, while generating PR for us by getting associated with brands.
  • Integration Partnerships:
  • • Most of the customers of the product have their own mobile gaming divisions as well. Their existing teams using our platform have often requested similar features to understand mobile gamers better.
    • • Right now they use 3rd party tools like 42 matters, app annie etc. for research however, it's not as comprehensive as the metrics we provide for the console space.
      • ~half of the gamers today game on mobile devices and not just on PC & Consoles. In terms of revenue as well, mobile gaming comprises of ~50% of revenue of the entire gaming industry. The chart below shows a split of gaming revenue as of 2022. I want to partner with some companies in the mobile app data space so that I can cater to the other half of my market by providing studios & publishers working on mobile games with similar insights.
        
      • Going ahead, most of the game development will happen across platforms. i.e. same franchise / IP can be played on pc/console or even on mobile, so these teams will need a unified platform to support both these markets.

Step 3

Do you have a PMF?

1. 1. Market Demand & Growth: We are closing in towards PMF as we have acquired ~3 paying enterprise customers at an avg. price point of ~$75K per year with 5 more in POC stage.
   2. Overall NPS Score: 7.8
   3. Customer Retention & Usage: For each of our enterprise clients:
   4. 1. ~5 - 15 users per enterprise
      2. ~75% users use the platform atleast trice every week (for the last 6-9 months)
      3. Observing account growth where game devs are also looping in marketing, finance & product stakeholders on the platform organically
      4. They have committed to pay for atleast 1 full year while adopting the product indicating their trust in it.
   5. Feedback:
   6. 1. Their analysts say that the platform saves them upwards of 8-10 hours per week in terms of time needed for competitor research
   7. LTV vs CAC:
   8. 1. LTV: $250K (assuming a life of 3 years)
      2. CAC: unknown (just starting marketing campaigns for it)

Are you finding it difficult to acquire new customers or enter a new market?

1. Since the number of Large Game Publishers & Studios (having Rev > $100M) is limited, I was expecting to be able to reach and interact with most of them within an year but it is taking much longer than expected.
2. I have been relying on outreach campaigns (emails & Linkedin) for growth but A lot of them are inactive on Linkedin.
3. A huge chunk of gaming companies are based out of Japan & South Korea, where english is a language barrier.
4. It is also very difficult to connect with people given so much restructuring and consolidation going on in the industry, which means that the timing of the deal is off and even though they see value in it, they'll have to wait for some other sponsor to come in and approve it.

Are you looking to drive power usage?

1. Absolutely! I believe that smaller companies will use insights from platforms like ours more intently to roll out experiments which in turn will make the platform impactful and give us more opportunities
2. 1. For example, One of our customers is a Barcelona based Game Publisher, which started using it to do market research to build their own games but they also saw that they could use our platform to identify smaller games which have amazing traction and they could approach those indie developers for publishing opportunities. This then unlocked a new area that we could work towards in the future.
   2. A lot of our work with Bungie Studios (who was our design partner), was to enable outcomes by enabling their product teams to create new roadmaps for cosmetics, releases etc. while optimizing for the impact on churn rates.

Do you have customers making requests for an integration?

We have 2 customers in the POC stage requesting integration of new data sources like E-sports data, streaming data & mobile data.

Results

1. Given customers in the POC stage are very enthusiastic about the platform and we cannot develop some of those modules in-house, integration partnerships are a good way of solving that problem
2. Partnerships with VC firms & other distribution channels can be helpful however, I am currently not sure if it falls within our ICP exactly.

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Step 4

Identifying the right partner (for distribution partnership)

1. ICP (Ideal Partner Profile):
2. 1. Gaming Focused VC firms
   2. Location: US/CA, EU, MENA, JP, SK, SGP, India, CN
   3. Have a partnership framework to provide portfolio companies additional benefits other than just funds
3. Brand Values:
4. 1. Focus on enabling Outcomes for customers and not just on closing sales
   2. We help users take better decisions, more easily by solving the data, engineering & visualization problem for them. They can then focus on consuming the analysis and experimenting with it.
5. Current Market:
6. 1. PC & Console Game Development Studios or Publishers
   2. Location: US/CA, EU, MENA, JP, SK, SGP, India, CN
   3. Studios / Publishers with >$50M revenue or $20M in funding.
7. List of Possible Partners:
8. 1. Lumikai Fund
   2. Galaxy Interactive
   3. Maker;s Fund
   4. Tencent
   5. MGVC
   6. Lego Ventures
   7. Hiro Capital

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Step 5

Outreach Strategy

Finalized List of partners:

1. Lumikai (P0
2. Tencent
3. Lego Ventures

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Outreach Message:

Subject: Enhance Gaming Insights for your Portfolio Companies

Dear Salone,

I'm Aayush, a Co-Founder at Yugen.ai. We are working with Studios & Publishers like Sony Playstation, Bungie & Scopely to empower their teams & decision makers with our Market Intelligence Tool.

In the dynamic world of gaming, understanding how your games stack up against competitors is crucial for success. Our platform, Speedily provides comprehensive insights into your game's performance in terms of user engagement on platforms like Steam & Xbox, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to drive engagement and retention.

Reaching out to you feels like an obvious choice as Lumikai is the pioneer of VC investing in Gaming space in India. I myself have worked in this industry for years now and I'd like us to explore synergies for partnership to take our gaming studios to the next level!

Would you be available for a brief call or meeting to discuss further? Please let us know a convenient time, and we'll be happy to accommodate. We look forward to the opportunity to collaborate and be a part of your success story in the gaming industry.

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FES Job Matrix:

F - Functional - Enabling their portfolio companies to make better decisions & be more competitor ready

E - Emotional - being associated with us (having very little brand value), might not be what they want. So instead sharing some valuable resources with them could help overcome this.

S - Social - They want to be seen as leaders in this space who know about it. Sharing some insights could make for an interesting conversation.

I'd like to use Linkedin & Email as the 2 primary channels of outreach. In case they dont revert, I'd like to try and publish some gaming related content on Linkedin and have some of my mutual connects tag them or share it with them, which can then become a premise for conversaation.

Step 6

Partner's current goals:

1. Building a community of founders who will define the future of interactive content for domestic & international markets
2. Setting these companies up for success

Our reasoning for goal alignment:

1. Capability building for smaller studios:
2. 1. Smaller studios do not have insights into gamer behavior which inhibits them from taking decisions about new features in their games
   2. Smaller studios find it difficult to evaluate an IP & it's market size as they do not have so many research analysts.

Competitive analysis:

1. Pros:
2. 1. Our existing competitors like Mscience, Newzoo, NPD etc. lack the depth in engagement metrics that we have
   2. The reliability of their data has been questioned repeatedly, whereas due to our much larger sample size, our numbers are much closer to actuals
   3. Our data is refreshed atleast once per day, enabling users to perform analysis in real time and measure the impact of various events sooner and hence be able to react sooner.
   4. Ability to define custom segments & cohorts, makes it easy for their teams to marry insights from our platform with their existing data & strategies
   5. We are integrating predictive models into the system for some additional value adds.
3. Cons:
4. 1. Competitors have More depth in monetization metrics
   2. They have deep relationships with most existing studios & publishers as they were the only data providers in this space earlier.

Value Prop:

1. Cut the research time for your portfolio companies by half leading to savings of >$250K per year.
2. Make your portfolio companies more competitor ready