Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2019 will take place on October 1st to October 2nd. To give you a taste of what to expect, we'll regularly be publishing interviews with the speakers at the show.
For more details on PGC Helsinki and to book a ticket, head to the website here.
In this speaker spotlight we caught up with Gustavo Viegas, head of UA at Lightneer. Viegas has been responsible for the User Acquisition & Monetization on over 40 games in mobile, PC and web over the last decade.
In those launches, he's used performance marketing, Influencer marketing, growth hacking, Live-Ops events and content marketing. He also has experience with data pipeline design and analytics, monetization setup and management, game design, app development and app production.
At Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2019 he'll share the lessons learned and market patterns of over 30 mobile games developed and published in 9 months on a panel called Strategies for Dealing With an Ever More Expensive UA Funnel.
Pocketgamer.biz: Tell us a bit about the company
Gustavo Viegas: Lightneer is a Mobile Hypercasual games developer & publisher. We have released more than 35 mobile games this year. Our goal is to develop more than 50 games a year and market test all of them, to find multiple hit games a year. Check out our current hit game - Hammer Jump!
What does your role entail?
UA & Monetization manager with a hands-on approach to Data pipelines and Game Design too.
Why did you want to work in the games industry?
Started by crafting board games on a pool table. Invited friends over to that same table to play them, talk about game news and game design. Before I knew it, we started making and selling games, from board to pc to mobile! Got good at the selling part, so decided to join the industry as a growth hacker. It's been more than a decade since. Time flies when you're having, and making, fun.
What advice would you give to anyone looking to get into it?
Make a game. Yes, start it now. Don't hesitate! Make it simple. Now, keep making it even more simple. Ask all your friends to play it and listen to them. See? You should have made it even more simple than that. But it's fine, because now you should make another one!
What are your thoughts on the industry in the last 12 months?
Data-driven decision-making isn't just important, it's the standard. And the tools available to make those decisions are easier than ever. The best players haven't hesitated in their decisions. And to help make those decisions, hypercasual has shown us that less is more on the design department, because time is vital.
What major trends do you predict in the next 12 months?
Hypercasual will continue to dominate, but will have increasingly intricate meta games and monetization schemes. The role of the UA manager will change even more dramatically than it already has. New skills will be needed. More and more automation will make it easier to develop and publish games, but that won't change the dominance of the experienced, data-driven decision makers.
How has the games industry changed since you first started?
Hypercasual taught us that you don't need prior experience to make it to the top, but you, more than ever, do need robust data and publishing teams/pipelines that value numbers above ideas.
Which part of the Connects event are you most looking forward to and why?
Looking forward to learning the newest monetization trends and techniques, while also sharing ours and trading stories from the mobile publishing trenches!
