Product Management & Monetization 101 & 201, with Gordon Rowe

Gordon Rowe was a product manager on Mafia Wars, and then served as Zynga's only product manager on the 3rd party publishing team working with external studios to help them improve the performance of their games. He also worked on PC f2p as the Director of Product at Daybreak games. He's currently working at Facebook as an in-house consultant.

Gordon has worked with dozens of external studios and has problem solved their products, and evaluated their chances of success. These are superpowers you can develop by listening to this episode...

We dive deep into product management frameworks, rule-of-thumb KPI, common free to play errors, the evolution of monetization beyond pay-to-win, how to implement an analytics stack, and much much more.

If you work in, or have interest in, free-to-play games, this interview is absolutely unmissable.

About Our GuestGordon Rowe was a product manager on Mafia Wars, and then served as Zynga's only product manager on the 3rd party publishing team working with external studios to help them improve the performance of their games. He also worked on PC f2p as the Director of Product at Daybreak games. He's currently working at Facebook as an in-house consultant.

Connect with UsFind all of the Playmakers episodes at playmakerspodcast.com
Connect with GordonFind Gordon on Twitter (kinda)
Gordon talks fast-- blink and you might miss some of this:The hypothesis, test, iterate framework for moving KPIThe importance of using funnels to understand player behaviorThe team composition on Mafia WarsAnti-cheat considerations in competitive mobile gamesZynga monetization tricksGame currency "hangovers" and how to manage themThe nuances that allow teams to avoid "pay-to-win"Why League of Legends has elements of "pay-to-win"The importance of analytics, and why many companies get this wrongThe four elements needed to have real, actionable, analyticsHow to evaluate the prospects of any given f2p game on any given platformWhat d1 retention you need before you can launch your gameHow to fix retention, and when you won't be able toD1 retention for premium games vs free-to-playThe minimum level of engagement needed to have a successful gameThe relationship between engagement and conversionHow to evaluate a game concept before developmenthow to create the cornerstones of your game economyHow to balance progression mechanics with skill mechanicsThe advantage of players who are in your game's "golden cohort"What players need to feel after the spend money in your gameWhy you shouldn't add too many monetization mechanicsHow to get the right monetization "levers" in a gameWhen to put the "pinch" into a f2p game.The importance or purpose of retention mechanicsThe role of "power spikes" and why they matterWhen in the player journey to monetizeHow to evaluate the ratio of D1 retention to D7 retentionWhen to ask for push notification permissionThe maturation of the mobile marketThe differences between mobile f2p and PC f2pThe importance of Steam reviewsWhy speed matters in testing and optimizationHow Rocket League evolved through testing and iterationThe future of f2p on consolesAnd yes, believe it or not, much more...