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At first it may seem strange to consider monetization before a game is even completed, and many developers leave this as an afterthought. But monetization should be built into the fabric of a game from the beginning, because a clearly defined and understood monetization strategy can have tremendous impact on design decisions made during the development process. This kind of forward-thinking approach is especially important in today’s highly competitive game market, and keeping monetization strategy front-of-mind throughout can be the difference between product success and failure. This course will teach you how to make your game stand out in a very crowded field, and encourage people to pay for game features that will define the ultimate success of your product. Currently, most game apps are free to play, and many users are looking for something simple and entertaining without the risk of making a purchase. We'll look at the most successful premium and freemium games, and discuss the most effective strategies for monetization. Our goal in this course is to teach students how to design games that produce sustainable revenue over the long-term.
Syllabus
Engagement
Students will learn the best design strategies to keep players interested and engaged, and come to understand what it takes to build an appealingly addictive game. We'll talk about designing game difficulty, and including competition and social networks to get players more involved in your game. Inspiring genuine engagement is critical for a game to produce revenue in the long-term. ##Lesson 2Monetization Models
We'll discuss monetization strategies for both premium games—which cost a set price to download—and free-to-download “freemium” games which rely on things like ads and in-app purchases to generate revenue. Topics will include a comparison of both premium and freemium models, how to make a profit from them, and how to effectively implement ads and in-app purchases. ##Lesson 3Best Publishing Practices
Here we’ll look at the final steps you’ll want to take before submitting your game to the app store. This lesson will cover how to get useful player feedback, and how to test out versions of your game with A/B testing. We'll also discuss design strategies for choosing what will appear in the app store—like icons and screenshots—so that your game is appealing to potential players, stands out against the competition, and encourages shoppers to become customers.Instructors
- Ankur Prasad - Ankur Prasad is the Head of Developer Education with Amazon specializing in mobile game development. He regularly works with developers to help them learn about best practices in game design, coding, marketing, and monetization best practices. Before Amazon, Ankur was in developer outreach at Microsoft where he managed the largest student developer competition in the world. He also founded a fund and start-up accelerator to help student developers launch successful ventures. He has an MS in Management Sciences with a focus on entrepreneurship from Stanford University.
- Cezanne Camacho - Cezanne Camacho earned her MS in Electrical Engineering at Stanford focussing on developing biomedical technologies. She fell in love with teaching after working as a summer camp programming instructor at Digital Media Academy where students got to program their own games. In her free time, you’ll find her reading comic books and dancing.
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Udacity is a for-profit educational organization founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky offering massive open online courses (MOOCs). According to Thrun, the origin of the name Udacity comes from the company's desire to be "audacious for you, the student". While it originally focused on offering university-style courses, it now focuses more on vocational courses for professionals.
