Two types of LiveOps Events in Games

What are playable and payment events? Learn more about live events in games, their sub-types and functions.

LiveOps (live events) refers to everything that happens in the game, everything that changes without releasing a new version of the game.

How to distinguish it from a non-LiveOps events? Any stable functionality that does not change, and has no time limit, is not a LiveOps event.

We can divide live events into two types: payment events and playable events.

Payment events are any activities in which users pay to participate. Simply put, any event with a “buy” button.

Playable events are all other activities that are available to everyone, including non-paying players.

Payment Events

There are four sub-types of payment events.

1. Offers/promotions. Games often have complete offer systems, and offers become something that pops up on a regular basis. After about a month of lifetime, players 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 features of the game are not very unusual for players and do not impress them much.
2. Bonuses. These are straightforward discounts on items from the menu. They are simple and understandable. In your menu, you just need to indicate that you are giving a discount. For example, a 100% discount on all items for 24 hours.
3. Series of purchases. Let’s say you have a condition: make three purchases and get the fourth one for free. There are several ways to implement this. The first option is when a gamer makes a specific payment three times, and they receives the fourth one for free. Or a simpler option, more suitable for all user groups, where the player buys any three items, and then can choose a bonus.
4. Special mechanics. There are various game mechanics where the player does not buy an offer, but the opportunity to play another game, another mechanic, in order to earn in-game currency. Let’s say it can be slots or blackjack. These are the most exciting game mechanics that can be built into games of various genres. You buy five spins on the slot machine and win in-game items, in-game currency and so on.

Read more: How to Integrate an Analytics System into your Game

Playable events

1. Missions. We have all seen in-game tasks or missions. Earn 50 coins, play five hands and so on. Later we will talk about missions and other sub-types of in-game events in more detail.
2. Temporary content. The essence of this sub-type of playable events is that you allow all your users to play something that they will not be able to reach in the near future. For example, in any f2p game, you want to maximize the lifetime value (LTV). You want your user to live in the game for a year or more, and you create new content over and over again so gamers can keep playing while learning new features.
   Suppose you have a slot game. Then you need to create new slots every month so that the players who have passed the whole game can enjoy the new content. But in the end, after a year of operating, there are so many slots in your game that they will be enough to play for a year or more. What situation are you in right now? For new players, these slots will become available in a year, which means that after you develop new slots, you monetize them using only your loyal audience base and get nothing from new players.
   What to do? You can give temporary access to new content. You implement an in-game event and declare “only today is the last slot available to all users”. This way you will make your new users very happy. That is, with this type of in-game events, you can monetize all your content and all your audience.
3. Enhancement of existing functionality. Let’s say you have a leveling system and players get experience points for performing certain actions in the game. So you fire up an in-game event and say “Just for today, every action you take in the game will be rewarded with double XP.” In this way, you improve user productivity due to the fact that progress in the game brings more rewards today.
4. Special mechanics. This is some additional functionality, new mechanics. Even non-paying players can participate by completing certain actions.

Now you can think of a live event (or couple) that suits your game better. Don’t forget about the best option — you can mix playable and payment events and get even more benefits!

With the right analytics tool, you can A/B test your live events in order to avoid making mistakes in your game and get the best result.