Navigating Risks and Driving Engagement with Live Games

Ahead of the Live Service Gaming Summit, we spoke to Sahil Gupta, Senior Strategist at CCP Games, who shared his expertise on managing live service models. Gupta emphasized the criticality of player acceptance and the ongoing process of identifying and addressing high-impact risks.

As a senior strategist, how do you prioritize and manage risks within live service models? Could you elaborate on the role of strategic decision-making and specialized hiring in fostering a stable live service ecosystem?

The biggest risk of all is player acceptance of the product, so most of the time and energy goes into addressing this risk. That said, the risk profile keeps shifting in intensity over the course of the product’s lifecycle, so it’s an ongoing process of identifying and addressing those with the highest potential impact at each stage. While the techniques and tools used at each stage shift as well, the role of data – both qualitative and quantitative – cannot be understated in importance towards informing better decisions. Having the right people to collect and interpret this data and assimilate into easily digestible action items becomes critical.

What strategic considerations do you find most critical when delivering engaging live service features and managing community interactions?

Delivering on high player expectations with the ambition of surpassing them is the single most critical aspect of delivering a great product, and more so for a live service experience. Having a pulse on the player base, gathering that valuable player feedback and validating it with other data sources to inform further product direction and development helps ensure that the product is relevant at all times when it comes to delivering an experience that doesn’t just meet player expectations but also exceeds them. All player facing interfaces need to be carefully considered and implemented keeping this in mind.

In the dynamic environment of GaaS, what strategies do you implement to ensure sustained player engagement and continuous business growth? How do you keep the community active and satisfied through ongoing LiveOps innovations?

At its core each game seeks to address a relatively static set of player motivations – to offer players an interactive escape that provides a sense of purpose and fuels a sense of achievement once that purpose is accomplished. The difference with GaaS is usually that the goalposts keep moving to deliver a meaningfully long-lasting experience. Providing such meaningful extensions to the player experience is what drives sustained player engagement, which in turn drives business growth through well designed, non-exploitative monetization mechanics.

How do you adapt your live service strategies in response to rapidly changing market conditions and player expectations? Can you discuss the processes and tools that assist in maintaining agility within your operations, ensuring your service remains relevant and competitive?

Keeping tabs on the audience pulse is crucial to be able to respond to market conditions and player expectations. Ongoing dialogue with the player community, combined with analytics data, provides a comprehensive picture of the product’s health, while market reports provide insights into wider market trends. Where possible, modular, remotely configurable systems allow quick pivots when needed.

What discussions are you most looking forward to at the Live Service Gaming Summit?

I am looking forward to learning more about the challenges studios have faced and how they approached and addressed those situations. Another topic of interest is scaling a product up over its lifecycle. End of day drinks are always a good draw too.