Ep. 72: Future-Proofing Game Economies

Free-to-play is here to stay. For years the video game market has been saturated by free-to-play games. All facets of the gaming industry have had to adapt to this shift in the gaming landscape - as well as many other changes in the way a game economy is designed. This week on “Mastering Retention”, Rudy Saldivar (Lead Product Manager at Robin Games) joins Tom to discuss how game economists and economies have adapted to these many different shifts.

Here are your cheat codes:

- 0:49 How did Rudy Saldivar get started in the video game industry?

- 6:47 Robin Games

- 9:37 Game Economy within free-to-play games.

- 17:38 Solving Broken Economies

- 21:46 Balancing Economy Design

- 24:06 Navigating the massive variety in user’s playtime

- 28:21 Feature development based upon players habits and behavior.

- 31:35 How game economies affect player engagement.

- 33:05 Identifying deficiencies in your game economy.

- 36:38 Feature prioritization.

- 43:20 Properly addressing issues within your game economy.

- 44:56 Understanding your players.

- 47:19 How to keep more players around longer.