Strategize a Smooth Tenant-to-tenant Migration and Copilot Takeoff
New tools and services to take your live ops to the next level
1. One year ago… gave talk called “introducing PlayFab”
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New tools and services to take your
LiveOps to the next level
James Gwertzman
Chief Strategy Officer
Azure PlayFab
2. Today, games are huge.
There are 2 billon gamers in the world and last year, games generated over $100 billion in revenue. Games are a big
deal and the market is continuing to expand.
But games have been through a lot of change to get here.
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AN
AGE OF
CHANGE
$
100B+
Global expansion
2B+ Gamers
3. First we had games as products.
Games were a single item that was purchased before playing
Playing required special hardware, it was a big event.
created a strong emphasis on advertising and marketing to generate demand and interest in a game before release.
Developers rarely had an opportunity to interact with players, they created games mostly in isolation and then
delivered them as static objects.
3
Games have changed as connectivity has expanded
Games as Product
• Retail store distribution
• Marketing -> Sale
• Air gap between creators and players
• PC and Console premium focus
4. But as connectivity increased with the advent of the internet, the nature of games changed and we got Games as a
Services.
Digital distribution created a direct purchasing relationship between devs and players
This era is dominated by social and mobile platforms that were well positioned to take advantage of digital
distribution and connection.
This era was all about acquisition of players and popularized free to play as a business model.
But we are now moving past the games as a service era and moving onto the next evolution of games.
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Games as Product Games as a Service
• Digital store distribution
• Marketing -> acquisition
• Creators -> players
• Mobile and social F2P focus
Games have changed as connectivity has expanded
5. We like to call this Games as Community
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Games as Product Games as a Service Games as Community
Games have changed as connectivity has expanded
6. Because this new era of games is about games as more than services, now games are about the community of
players engaging and with them and game developers are focused on growing and retaining communities.
Many touch points of communication between the developer and the players all along the player journey.
Dominated by multi-platform experiences, games need to meet their communities where they are and provide
deep interactions between developers and communities both in and out of the games themselves.
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Games as Community
• Direct distribution
• Marketing -> part of the fun
• Creators <--> players
• Multi-platform, multi-model focus
Games have changed as connectivity has expanded
7. Because this new era of games is about games as more than services, now games are about the community of
players engaging and with them and game developers are focused on growing and retaining communities.
Many touch points of communication between the developer and the players all along the player journey.
Dominated by multi-platform experiences, games need to meet their communities where they are and provide
deep interactions between developers and communities both in and out of the games themselves.
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Compete
Play
ChatWatch
Create
Buy
8. This new era of games as community is already having a massive impact on the industry. Here is the list of the top
grossing games worldwide for the past two years. One of the things that stands out about these lists is how much
overlap there is.
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Top grossing games worldwide
1. League of Legends
2. Honor of Kings
3. Dungeon and Fighter Online
4. CrossFire
5. Monster Strike
6. Clash Royale
7. Fate/Grand Order
8. Candy Crush Saga
9. Pokemon Go
10. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
2017 2018
1. Fortnite
2. Dungeon and Fighter Online
3. League of Legends
4. Pokemon Go
5. CrossFire
6. Honor of Kings
7. Fate/Grand Order
8. Candy Crush Saga
9. Monster Strike
10. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
9. 90% of the games are on both lists. These games are building and managing communities to keep them relevant
and growing year over year. They are all employing the same kind of strategy.
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Top grossing games worldwide
1. League of Legends
2. Honor of Kings
3. Dungeon and Fighter Online
4. CrossFire
5. Monster Strike
6. Clash Royale
7. Fate/Grand Order
8. Candy Crush Saga
9. Pokemon Go
10. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
2017 2018
1. Fortnite
2. Dungeon and Fighter Online
3. League of Legends
4. Pokemon Go
5. CrossFire
6. Honor of Kings
7. Fate/Grand Order
8. Candy Crush Saga
9. Monster Strike
10. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds
90% carryover
10. We call that strategy LiveOps. A strategy that cares deeply about continual engagement with player communities.
You’ve probably heard this term before but what does it mean?
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IT’S CALLED
DESIGN AND PROCESS
FOR CONTINUAL ENGAGEMENT
LIVEOPS
11. We can start by looking at the term itself. It’s the combination of two words.
Live stands for Live Games. These are games that include some sort of connected experience or persistence. This
part of the term speaks to the design and engineering of a game as well as back end and services needed to make a
game live.
The other word is operations, this speaks to the continuation of the service, it's managing the game itself over a
period of time which requires process and structure, This is really about mindset and strategy in fact LiveOps all up
is a mindset more than it is a process .
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Live Game
• Connected experience
• Requires backend services
• Design and engineering shift
Operations
• Continuous investment
• Requires process and team
• Mindset and strategy shift
LIVEOPS
12. Having a Live Game is not enough
Time
PlayerEngagement
All these things that make up the live OPS approach produce games that have longer player engagement cycles.
They produce games that engage players over a longer period of time.
You get that to some extent we just live games, a live game is going to have a longer tail then a game that is
completely static. But being live is not enough, it will extend the life of your game, but not grow it over time.
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13. LiveOps is where the magic happens
Time
PlayerEngagement
All these things that make up the live OPS approach produce games that have longer player engagement cycles.
They produce games that engage players over a longer period of time.
You get that to some extent we just live games, a live game is going to have a longer tail then a game that is
completely static. But being live is not enough, it will extend the life of your game, but not grow it over time.
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14. It’s never too late to start!
Time
PlayerEngagement
All these things that make up the live OPS approach produce games that have longer player engagement cycles.
They produce games that engage players over a longer period of time.
You get that to some extent we just live games, a live game is going to have a longer tail then a game that is
completely static. But being live is not enough, it will extend the life of your game, but not grow it over time.
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15. So that’s a lot of information about live ops but we’re really here to talk about play fat so how does play fab enable
LiveOps?
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HOW DOES
PLAYFAB
ENABLE
LIVEOPS?
16. Compete
Play
ChatWatch
Create
Buy
Services
Player activity
Intelligent Actions
Our vision for modern LiveOps
Insights
And do it all in real-time
Because this new era of games is about games as more than services, now
games are about the community of players engaging and with them and
game developers are focused on growing and retaining communities.
Many touch points of communication between the developer and the
players all along the player journey.
Dominated by multi-platform experiences, games need to meet their
communities where they are and provide deep interactions between
developers and communities both in and out of the games themselves.
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17. PLAYERS
Stronger, secure
relationships
Our suite of LiveOps tools and services
Because this new era of games is about games as more than services, now
games are about the community of players engaging and with them and
game developers are focused on growing and retaining communities.
Many touch points of communication between the developer and the
players all along the player journey.
Dominated by multi-platform experiences, games need to meet their
communities where they are and provide deep interactions between
developers and communities both in and out of the games themselves.
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18. MULTIPLAYER
Build social experiences
with cross-platform play
PLAYERS
Stronger, secure
relationships
COMMERCE
Sell more virtual goods,
more easily
ANALYTICS
Measure and react
in real-time
COMMUNITY
Strengthen player to
player relationships
AUTOMATION
Customize experiences
with cloud-hosted logic
CONTENT
Engage players with
frequent updates
Mix-and-match with your
existing infrastructure
Our suite of LiveOps tools and services
or adopt the entire platform.
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19. Multiplayer
Matchmaking
Leaderboards
Server orchestration
Facebook Instant
Games
Full integration
Bot creation
PlayFab Insights
High throughput telemetry
Multi-source data warehouse
Xbox Live Data
User Generated
Content
Storage and delivery
Catalog management
Moderation
PlayFab Party
Voice and text chat
Peer to Peer Multiplayer
Relay services
Accessibility
Architecture
Exciting new features
and services
Entities programing model
Cloud Script in C#
PubSub
Crash analytics
We have a number of new features and capabilities we’d like to walk you through today. First let’s talk about the
new features that are available in preview or have just launched.
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20. Multiplayer
Matchmaking
Leaderboards
Server orchestration
Facebook Instant
Games
Full integration
Bot creation
PlayFab
Insights
User Generated
Content
Storage and delivery
Catalog management
Moderation
PlayFab Party
Voice and text chat
Peer to Peer Multiplayer
Relay services
Accessibility
Architecture
Entities programing model
Cloud Script in C#
PubSub
Crash analytics
Exciting new features
and services
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21. PlayFab
Insights
• High throughput in-game
telemetry
• Data warehouse powered by
Azure Data Explorer
• Integrates with analytics
visualization tools (like Power BI)
• Combine data from multiple
sources
• Apply your own offline logic to
segment players and take action
using PlayFab
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23. Multiplayer
Matchmaking
Leaderboards
Server orchestration
Facebook Instant
Games
Full integration
Bot creation
User Generated
Content (UGC)
Storage and delivery
Catalog management
Moderation
PlayFab Party
Voice and text chat
Peer to Peer Multiplayer
Relay services
Accessibility
Architecture
Entities programing model
Cloud Script in C#
PubSub
Crash analytics
Exciting new features
and services
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24. Multiplayer
Matchmaking
Leaderboards
Server orchestration
Facebook Instant
Games
Full integration
Bot creation
User Generated
Content (UGC)
PlayFab Party
Voice and text chat
Peer to Peer Multiplayer
Relay services
Accessibility
Architecture
Entities programing model
Cloud Script in C#
PubSub
Crash analytics
Exciting new features
and services
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25. User Generated
Content (UGC)
• Strengthen your game’s
community with UGC
• Searchable catalog with
customizable meta-data
• Moderation workflows
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29. Architecture
• Real-time updates and
messaging with PubSub
persistent socket connection
• AppCenter integration provides
crash log analytics
• New entity programming model
is simpler and more modular
• Cloud script adds C#, better
debugging via Azure Functions
• Visual Studio Code integration
PubSub enables real time player messaging, pushing config changes to clients, instant invites and updates on long
requests without polling
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35. Facebook
Instant
Games
• Use PlayFab in HTML 5 games
with Unity and Phaser SDKs
• Authenticate with FB Instant
Games identity
• Use PlayFab in messenger
bots with server SDK and
Azure Functions
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39. Multiplayer
• Dynamically scale custom
game servers in 14+ global
Azure data centers
• Queue-based matchmaking
for individuals and teams
• Bucketized leaderboards with
additional meta-data
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43. PlayFab
Party
• Real-time voice and text chat
• Real-time multiplayer
• Closed captions for
accessibility with Azure
Cognitive Services
• Cross platform
• Uses relay server for security
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45. Efficient
• Fully managed
• Integrates in hours
• Lowers cost & risk vs.
building yourself
• Scales dynamically
• Self-service
Complete
• Everything you
need for LiveOps
• Supports all major
devices and engines
• Make better
decisions with one
source of truth
Reliable
• Secure cloud that
spans 54 data
centers worldwide
• Giving you control
of your own data
• Supports GDPR,
CVAA, and COPPA
compliance.
Real-Time
• Monitor activity and
events in real-time
• Respond
intelligently to
player behavior
• Experiment and test
hypothesis
• Configure game
content any time.
A complete backend platform to build and
operate live games
Faster, cheaper, more reliable than doing it yourself
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46. • All major platforms
• All major devices
• All major networks
• All major game engines
• All major app stores
Completely agnostic
PlayFab is completely platform agnostic
It supports the Games as Community future of multiplatform experience
Great to have all your data in one place even if your game is on multiple platforms
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47. MULTIPLAYER
Build social experiences
with cross-platform play
PLAYERS
Stronger, secure
relationships
COMMERCE
Sell more virtual goods,
more easily
ANALYTICS
Measure and react
in real-time
CONTENT
Engage players with
frequent updates
COMMUNITY
Strengthen player to
player relationships
AUTOMATION
Customize experiences
with cloud-hosted logic
• Leaderboards
• Tournaments
• Prize tables
• Matchmaking
• Server orchestration
• Guilds / Clans
• Gifting / trading
• Authentication
• Player profile
• Support
• Banning
• Real-time segmentation
• Roles and permissions
• Facebook Instant Games
• Virtual currencies
• Item catalog
• Stores
• Promotions
• Inventory
• Receipt validation
• Drop tables
• Subscriptions
• Remote configuration
• Storage
• News
• User generated content
• Localization support
• Player messaging
• Real-time voice chat
• Voice transcription
• Serverless scripting
• Actions
• Rules
• Scheduled tasks
• Webhooks
• Admin APIs
• PubSub
• Dashboards / Reports
• A/B Testing
• Event search
• Data warehousing
• Import 3rd party data
• Crash reporting
PlayFab was built from the ground up to support live operation of games
It's a set of back end services and tools that make it possible for you to build and operate your live game
PlayFab is modular, you can use it completely but you can also just use parts of it
We built the platform from the ground up to easily integrate with existing middleware packages engines so you can
use just the pieces that you need
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48. Microsoft Game Stack
MULTIPLAYER
Build social experiences
with cross-platform play
PLAYER MGMT
Stronger, secure
relationships
COMMERCE
Sell more virtual goods,
more easily
ANALYTICS
Measure and react
in real-time
CONTENT
Engage players with
frequent updates
COMMUNICATION
Foster healthy player
communities
AUTOMATION
Customize experiences
with cloud-hosted logic
XBOX LIVE
Trusted gamer identity
and community
AZURE
More than 100 cloud
services in 54 regions
VISUAL STUDIO
Integrated development
environment.
APP CENTER
Continuously build, test,
and monitor apps
POWER BI
Visual exploration of data
and report generation
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49. • Visit our booth
• Experience PlayFab and Microsoft Game Stack for yourself
• 24 demo stations
• 30 talks
• Ask questions in our Techsperts lounge
• Sign up for a free account at playfab.com
• Look for our LiveOps Academy (coming soon)
Call to Action
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