R&D Research
Highlights
The process can appear chaotic, but it has its (often heuristic) rules
R&D is an ongoing process that helps our games to stay on track and to adapt to the ever-changing market.
In a field where everything changes so fast, I try to stay future-proof by constantly hunting for new systems – or better ways to frame the ones we already have. I spend a lot of time digging through GDC talks and playing through a wide variety of titles (though never as many as I’d like). The goal is to keep retention and LTV climbing, but there’s a trap: while studying the data, it’s easy to let logic obscure the most important metric: fun. Most of my ideas stay as sketches in a notebook or on my iPad, acting as a sandbox for the concepts that eventually make it to production for real-world testing.
Looking for ways to improve KPIs
To figure out why one of our products was struggling with Day 1 retention, I mapped out 13 specific areas for intervention. I wanted to see exactly where we were losing people. The follow-up was a gauntlet of iterations; while some changes didn’t move the needle much, most led to huge insights into our players’ psychology. We’re still testing and refining those solutions today, turning those “failures” into a much deeper understanding of our audience.
Researching new metas
When researching, I like to deconstruct top-performing games to see what actually makes them tick. I tried to use a system to track mechanics and their variations across the market, which eventually led me to focus on “unusual combinations.” By smashing together mechanics that don’t traditionally belong together, I’ve been able to explore some of my most original (and effective) ideas.