On Tuesday, March 17, the WTIA held a tech in focus series event on the monetization of gaming at member company, Motiga. The event drew a crowd of ­50 attendees to the gaming company’s Bellevue location. Panelists included President and Executive Producer at AfroJack, Allen Murray, CEO of FlowPlay, Derrick Morton, Marketing Director of Her Interactive, Jared Nieuwenhuis, and CEO of Hidden Path Entertainment, Jeff Probst.

Moderator, Ellen Beeman, Senior Lecturer at DigiPen Institute of Technology, led speakers in conversation surrounding current trends, such as “free-to-play” games, and the implications such models have had on profitability for the gaming industry.

“It’s an acquisition model, not a business model,” said Probst, while discussing the current free-to-play trend. Nieuwenhuis added, “there’s a real science to it; and its something you need to be tracking every single day or it’s not going to work.”

Free-to-play, while beneficial for the customer, does present many challenges for the game producers. “There is just so much free content out there,” said Morton, “it’s hard to get people to pay and find value in your game.” But in the end, popularity outweighs profitability. “If you have a really great product and people will come to it, you will make money,” said Murray.

Panelists agreed upon a few other major issues that impact monetization in their industry including acquisition, discoverability, and retention. “We don’t talk about the challenge of making quality entertainment, we talk about making the player notice us and stick around,” said Probst.

“You made this game but nobody knows about it or cares about it. It is your job to make sure they know about it and care about it,” said Murray. “Its all comes down to your sense of scale and perspective.”

Design, of course, plays an important part in profitability of a game; “ Monetization has to be a part of the design,” said Probst. Murray added, “To be a good game designer, its important to have empathy. By not understanding, you are taking away that sense of community.”

“It’s a competitive race to the bottom, we need to offer additional value added things at the same price,” said Nieuwenhuis as speakers were discussing the “extreme expectation of quality” from their customers.

Success in gaming is a gamble: “You don’t find out until the third or fourth week if you’re going to be successful; and the market changes so rapidly due to mobile trends, what’s popular at the time, etc,” said Morton.

In the end, “we just want to entertain our customers,” said Probst.” That’s our goal.”

Thank you to our host and sponsor, Motiga, our moderator and panelists, and everyone who attended. March is gaming month, we look forward to seeing more members at our Gaming: Esports event on March 24^th!