LiveOps (live events) is anything that happens in a game, anything that changes without releasing a new version of the game.
Events are in-game developments. Hence Live Ops events (live events) are limited time events. What is not a live event? Any stable functionality that doesn’t change. It’s not time-limited, it’s there to stay.
Let’s take a look at the types of live events. We can divide live events into two types: payment events and playable events.
Payment events are any activities where users pay to participate. To put it simply, any event with a “buy” button.
Playable events are all other activities that are available for anyone including free players.
Payment Events
There are four subtypes of payment events. The first are offers/promotions.
1. Games often have complete offer systems and offers become something that appears on a regular basis. In about one month of lifetime, gamers already know that they get a certain promotion when they run out of currency, they get another promotion the moment they open the game and so on. These are the usual features of the game that are not very exciting for gamers..
Meanwhile, LiveOps events, live promotions are something new, surprising, something that can encourage their engagement. There are different types of promotions, they can boost sales of different items, but their primary goal is monetization.
Besides the usual promotions, when we sell a certain item for a certain price, there are special mechanics. To give an example, when you make your first purchase you get a bigger discount for the second purchase. Or you buy a promotional item and get access to a new and more interesting or surprising promotion. Anyway, all of these are purchases.
2. The next type of payment events are bonuses — straightforward discounts on items from the menu. They are simple and clear. In your menu, you just need to point out that you give, let’s say, 100% discount for all items for 24 hours.
3. The third type of payment event is a series of purchases. Imagine that you have a condition: make three purchases and get the fourth for free. There are several ways to implement this. The first option is when the gamer makes a specific payment three times and the fourth they get for free. Or an easier, more suitable for all user groups option is when the player buys any three items and then they can choose a bonus.
4. The fourth and most interesting type of payment events are special mechanics. There are various game mechanics where the player buys not an offer but an opportunity to play a different game, a different mechanic in order to gain in-game currency. Let’s say it can be slots or blackjack. I am talking about casino types of games for a good reason. These are the most exciting gambling mechanics that can be built into games of various genres. You buy five spins in a slot machine and win in-game items, in-game currency, and so forth.
Read more: How to Integrate an Analytics System into your Game
Playable events
Now let’s talk about playable events. There are also four subtypes:
1. The first subtype is missions. Everything is very easy. We all have seen in-game tasks or missions. Earn 50 coins, play five hands, and so on. Later I will talk about the missions and other subtypes of in-game events in more detail.
2. The next subtype is temporary content. This is when you let all your users play something that they can not lay a hand on any time soon. For example, in any free-to-play game you want to maximize the lifetime value. You want your user to live in the game for a year or more, and you create new content over and over again so that gamers can keep on playing, learning new functionality.
Suppose you have a slot game, then you need to create new slots every month so that players who complete the entire game can enjoy new content. But in the end, after a year of operating, there are so many slots in your game that they are enough to play for a year or more. What situation are you in now? For new players, these slots will become available in a year, and it means that after you develop new slots, you monetize them using only your loyal audience base, and you get nothing from the new players.
What can you do? You can give temporary access to new content. You implement an in-game event and say “only today the last slot is available to all users”. Thus, you make your new users and the users who are half-way in the game very happy. That is, using this type of in-game events, you can monetize all your content and your entire audience.
3. The next type is the enhancement of existing functionality. Suppose you have a level system and players get experience points for performing certain actions in the game. So, you release an in-game event and say “Only today each of your actions in the game will be rewarded with twice the XP”. This way you improve user performance due to the fact that today the progression through the game is more rewarding.
4. And the last, the most exciting type of in-game events is special mechanics. This is a kind of additional functionality, new mechanics. Even free players can participate by performing certain actions.
