Game Product Manager VS Product Manager.pdf

Hi guys!

To do the first things first, I have to introduce myself and my background, and we need an explanation for the reason and incentive behind this summary presentation and the series of articles that may follow for more details. I am a game designer with a focus on economy design. After some years of working in game design, I felt the most inspiring thing for me is seeing an increase in a graph (of course, not the churn graph). The combination of this with a focus on features and their results and the needs of the game led me toward becoming a product manager.

At first, I started reading about product managers' roles, responsibilities, daily routines, and most importantly, the methods they use for fulfilling their responsibilities. Initially, I tried to implement these methods in our structure, but the deeper I delved into gaming product management, the more methods I found that needed to change to achieve the best results. After some time, I realized that having knowledge of how product managers in application products operate is necessary but not sufficient to call oneself a game product manager.

Of course, they invented the wheel, special thanks to them, but the fact is that we do not have a car; we have bicycles or airplanes! So, the same wheel does not work for us! In this series of articles, I want to describe how things are different when playing the role of a PM or GPM, what you need to know, and what are not our primary challenges. How to become a GPM after discussing the pros and cons of being a PM or GPM. If you are going to choose between one of them, you can stop reading this and choose PM! But if you are passionate about becoming a GPM, I suggest you read these, then take a deep breath, make your final decision, take your sword, and be ready to face dragons, without knowing how to use the sword!

1. Game Product Manager VS Product Manager

Shohre Esmaili
Karizma Game Studio

2. Introduction
-10 years in game industry

-7 years in Karizma Studio
As a Co-Founder, Lead Game designer
And Product manager

3. What I mean by Product?
-A business or startup which serves user needs by a tech
product! (Application or website)
-I'm not considering physical products in this talk.

4. What is product management?
Based On golden methodology of Lean Start Up :
Managing the iterating process of Build- Measure - Learn

5. Who is product manager?
-Manager of this process with focus on
creating value!

6. Now let’s dive into details!
Build - measure - learn
What actions are required of each of these!
How they relate to PM responsibilities !

7. PM responsibilities related to “BUILD” !
BUILD Actions PM responsibility
Define Hypotheses Vision - Strategy - Discovery
Design the MVP Feature prioritize - Roadmap planning
Develop the MVP Delivery - Alignment with cross-functional team
Launch the MVP Go to market strategy

8. PM responsibilities related to “MEASURE” !
Measure Actions PM responsibility
Define Metrics Performance Monitoring
Analyze User Behavior Performance Monitoring - alignment with data
team
Customer Feedback Performance Monitoring - alignment with
support team
Learnings and Insights Discovery - Vision - New strategy - plan for
improvements with new Insights
Report Findings Onboarding team and stakeholders

9. PM responsibilities related to “LEARN” !
Learn Actions PM responsibility
Identify Insights Discover problems and good actions
Decide to Pivot or Persevere Strategy
Plan Next Steps Vision
Iterate and Improve Increasing Profit and Decreasing Loss (PnL)

10. Let’s take another look on PM responsibilities!
-Vision
-Strategy
-Discovery
-Product design( feature prioritization - road mapping )
-Delivery
-Go to market strategy
-Performance monitoring
-Reporting to stakeholder
-PnL

11. So what about differences between PM and GPM ?
Up to here everything's the same!

PM GPM

12. Where are the differences!
Differences show themselves in details such as:
-Skills
-Way of working & Methods
-Concerns
-Challenges and etc….

13. Skills
Besides having all PM skills such as creativity, critical thinking,
Problem solving, data mindset and leadership,
GPM must have a great understanding of GAME,
Player psychology, player motivation , what makes a game
Fun and engaging and what makes them pay!
Because money is somewhere between 3 main aspects:
Successful User acquisition -> successful Engagement -> successful monetization model
And profit can not come true unless you have a great understanding on the game as a whole and on the
game you are working on!
User
Acquisition
Engagement Monetization
money

14. Way of working : Visioning!
Product Vision Game Vision
In game implementation “Visioning”
Sometimes means “Dreaming”

MVP: feature 1 ,2 , …
competitive edge
Unique ceiling points
growth
We want to have a game
with lots of heroes, lots of
abilities for each of them,
lots of arenas, and a horse
to ride when the stamina
of heroes is recharging!
Oh, and we need chests
and level-ups for each
character!
Oh, wait! What did you
say? We cannot design
level 2 of the second
hero?So maybe we should
build a main menu first!


Important Note:This slide
exaggerates the state of visioning! Neither is
visioning in product development this easy, nor
is game development that chaotic! However,
overall, we can say that the initial vision version
faces many pivots in game development. As we
sometimes cannot predict player satisfaction,
the possibility of designing something, etc.

15. Way of working : Strategy!
Strategy in both product development and game development contains activities such as visioning,
market analysis, value proposition, roadmapping, resource allocation, development methodology,
go-to-market strategy, monitoring performance, and risk management.
Additionally, it involves making decisions in dilemmas such as whether to kill or pivot the product or
game.
However, each of these activities has a different meaning in each context, requiring a detailed
explanation for each.
I hope to write a detailed article about how these actions are executed in game development.
I have no experience in executing these in a product, but I'm sure the intrinsic differences between games
and apps make a huge difference in the type of strategy setting for each of them.

I think it's necessary to say that if the word "strategy" reminds you of a handsome man in a nice suit writing something
on a board while the team applauds his ideas and takes notes, you are getting your information from the wrong sources!
Reality is not what we see in inspiring movies and management articles. It is something like this:

16. Way of working : discovery! Needs!
No doubt every pm should have
enough knowledge about the
industry he/she is working on!
But discovery and finding the needs
of an application user is different
from a player needs!

17. Way of working : discovery! Feedbacks!
Needs in other products! Needs in game!

Who are we? Who are we?Online shoppers!
What do we need?
Safety, fast delivery,
item score…….
gamers!
What do we need? More hard currency!

18. Way of working : product design: Prioritization: MVP!
Prioritization in other products!
We were going to make a testable mvp!
prioritization in game!
We are going to make one mvp for
Engagement test, another for monetization
test!
We do not have an MVP any more! VP at
best case !
-Let's build a shop (check performance)
-Add users score (check performance)
-Add users comment (check performance)
-Add direct delivery (check performance)
-……
-Let's build a game mode for cash out!
-It doesn't work without trust!
-So lets build a chat , a profile system, a
support panel! (check performance)

19. Way of working : product design: Prioritization:
low hanging fruit!
Let's take the lowest hanging fruit!
Lower value
Let's take the lowest hanging fruit!
Lower value
-We saved lots of time and money now we
have time to get the high hanging fruit!
-We saved lots of time and money but
now we have depts, we need economy
changes, for next update we have to
answer 1000 messages in support, we
have to give lots of currency for the
changes, our purchases will decrease,
lots of churn we had after the 2 releases!

20. Way of working : product design: Prioritization:
Value Vs Effort!
Let's choose the feature which creates the
best value with least effort!
Let's take the lowest hanging fruit!
Lower value


Value/Effort Ratio=EffortValue

Effort : resources, time, and complexity


Value/Effort Ratio=EffortValue

Effort : resources, time, complexity,
liveOps daily Effort( resource , time ,
money)

21. methods : product design: Prioritization: homework! :))
These models are great for prioritizing features. However, by delving deeper into them, you will understand why
they do not work for prioritizing features in a game.

●Moscow Method
●Kano Model
●RICE Scoring Model
●ICE Scoring Model
●Cost of Delay (CD3)
●Buy-a-Feature

22. Way of working : Delivery!
Words
cannot
express
My
feelings! :))

23. Way of working : Performance monitoring!
Application common KPIs Game common KPIs

● Cost Per Install (CPI)
● Daily Active Users (DAU)
● Monthly Active Users (MAU)
● Retention Rate
● Churn Rate
● User Satisfaction (CSAT)
● Net Promoter Score (NPS):
● Monetization Metrics:
● Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)
● Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
● Conversion Rate
● Performance Metrics:
● Crash Rate
● Load Time



● Cost Per Install (CPI)
● Download Rate
● Daily Active Users (DAU)
● Monthly Active Users (MAU).
● Session Length
● Retention Rate
● Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)
● Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU)
● Conversion Rate.
● Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
● In-App Purchase Revenue
● Virtual Goods Sold.
● Level Completion Rates
● Churn Rate
● User Satisfaction (CSAT)
● Net Promoter Score (NPS)

24. Way of working : Reporting!
PM Reports GPM Reports

●PM: We have increased total revenue by 50% and total
users by 60%, and we want to enter a new market.
●Stakeholder: Wow, that's great! Let's do that ASAP!



●GPM: We have increased player session length by
10%, gem sink per game has increased by 30%, and
players clicked on the "new game" button 20% more
than before.
●Stakeholder: So, how much increase did we have in
revenue?
●GPM: Hmmm, actually we successfully decreased it
by 10%. But don't worry, after launching the new
onboarding, our Day 1 retention rate will increase by
30%.

25. Pros and Cons : Concerns and challenges!
-Alignment with team! ( team definition : very very passionate gamers who used to play Dota 2 and
now are developing hyper casual games in order to make money for the studio! )
-Unbalance characteristics
-Every game needs different knowledge!
-Every studio has different expectation! Nowhere responsibilities of GPM is clarified!
-Special competencies which are necessary with a low frequency!
-Everyone should learn about the new studio and its games, so mindset is more important than
knowledge! Have you ever tried to hire someone based on mindset?
-When starting a new game or entering a new studio you have to throw away 60% of your
knowledge and experience!

26. Pros and Cons : benefits!
-Being a GPM! :D

27. So…. why should I become a GPM?
-Good question!
-But I do not have a good answer!

28. With all of things said above, i want to become a
GPM!
-Gathering knowledge about game , specially the type you want to work on!
-Play games!
-Deconstruct games!
-Gather knowledge about being a product manager!
-Don't waste time on searching about gaming product manager!
-Make sure you can work with data!
-Make sure you can work with people!
-Again play games ….!
-And more games!

29. Wishing you all the best !