5 benefits of a studio-wide approach to your creative workflow
As more mobile game studios prioritise creatives as the single most impactful lever to scale and optimise their UA, the bottlenecks and pain points of producing them only become more evident. Whilst having a great game is key, without a UA strategy that can scale efficiently and effectively, studios will be left with a growing number of “didn’t make it” products that could have benefited from a better creative process.
But of course, the entire workflow, from creative ideation to optimisation, is resource-intensive. As a result, studios have been looking for solutions to help them overcome the inherent constraints (whether that’s time, resources, knowledge, team collaboration, or data availability) and maximise their capabilities.
At Luna Labs, we provide solutions that optimise studios’ production of playables and video ads whilst enhancing the end-to-end workflow from production to delivery. Because of this, we’ve been able to see first hand that one of the most impactful ways for a studio to improve their creative process is by increasing cross-team collaboration.
This concept of “bringing your team together” involves everyone in the studio, from developers, designers to UA managers. By doing so, you will be able to unlock new areas of capability, efficiency and ultimately, performance.
Now, what makes this tight-knitted collaboration so vital for the success of your creative process? We’ve put together five key reasons to share with you below.
- The industry is moving towards a creative-first approach, which requires direction and ownership
Creative production no longer refers to the art of designing a quality image, video or playable. It involves everything surrounding the creative itself from ideation, creation, to management, optimisation, and of course, analysis.
To stay relevant and even ahead of the competition, studios must acknowledge this and make sure each team member with the necessary skills and experiences is part of this new creative flow. But to do this effectively, you need to define this process upfront and even allocate owners for each stage clearly.
What is your creative process? Is it well defined? Are the key stakeholders clear on their role?
2. Giving visibility to the creative production process makes a smoother working environment
After identifying the owners for each stage of your creative process, it’s important for everyone involved to communicate and share updates regularly. You can adopt a visualisation tool (or other project management ones) like a kanban board or even create a document that tracks your creatives every step of the way. Not only does this keep everyone in the loop, but it also gives them enough time to pivot when plans change.
For instance, let’s say one of your creatives has passed the initial performance tests and is now moving into the next phase of iteration testing. Naturally, your designers would want to review it to figure out how they can influence the next round of creatives. And, with such visibility as a natural part of the plan, the transition between different stages of your creative process becomes a lot smoother and quicker.
Similarly, if there’s a delay in a set of creatives, your UA team may want to start decreasing their daily budget to extend the testing period of the ones they currently have. Without a heads up, their budget would’ve run out a lot sooner, before the new set was ready.
Of course, most teams do this organically. But formalising it can ensure consistency, especially when things start moving fast!
3. Data powers the success of your creatives
Creative production is a mixture of art and science. Yes, the concept and the variation possibilities of your creatives are led by you and your creativity alone. But, to produce a set of well-crafted creatives, you need to be able to understand the results so you can iterate and improve accordingly.
This is why it’s crucial for all of your teams to be familiar with data and understand what it means to your studio. Because it’s only when everyone knows how they should act upon these results, the more efficient and successful your creatives (hence your studio) become.
4. Creatives are now influencing game design too
Sharing what performed well in a video ad with the developers who’re building your playables can give them a head start on the key mechanics or features they should showcase.
Similarly, having your developers apply the outcome (fail, win) users have preferred in your playables to your video creatives is another quick and easy way to get ahead.
Beyond that, we’re seeing studios use creatives to influence their game design and vice versa. For instance, they’re paying more attention to the engagement metrics of the different playable variations they’ve tested to better understand which version resonated with their target audience the most. This way, they can modify their game accordingly.
It could be a colour, a key character or even messaging to use in your game’s tutorial.
But, to do all of this and to make sure no feedback was lost, they needed their game designers, developers, data scientists, and UA managers to all work closely together.
5. It keeps everyone accountable for the success of your studio
It doesn’t matter how good your game is* because if you aren’t able to acquire users (of the right kind), all of that hard work will then be for nothing.
And, creating a cross-functional team where everyone understands each other’s responsibilities yet shares the same overarching priorities can prevent this from happening. This is because each team member will then be able to recognise the importance of marketing, and know how they can contribute to the success of the game meaningfully.
*Of course, there are exceptions to the rule here :)
But, how has this played out in reality?
Not too long ago, CrazyLabs scaled their creative capability to their studios across the globe by formulating this process.
With this global publisher, their goal has been to expand their hyper-casual and casual games portfolio. To do this, not only did they see how important creative production is to the success of their game launches, but they also saw the value of having a structure that can be easily integrated into their existing ways of working.
Using Luna Playable and with detailed onboarding, CrazyLabs was able to naturally integrate our tools with their workflow and “bring their team” together, enabling greater time and team efficiency as a result.
With this new-found time, expertise and support structure, the team was then able to produce a playable that was almost an exact replica of their endless runner, Jumanji: Epic Run — a lot quicker and smoother than previously.
And by unlocking the creative potential within the team, CrazyLabs has been able to refine its creative processes and even define best practices.
At the end of the day, creatives have never been more important in the gaming industry than right now. It has forced studios to rethink their approach to their creative process and leverage the opportunity it presents. And as the uncertainty around user-level tracking looms, there’s little doubt that creative influence will rise to another level.
If you want to learn more about what we do at Luna Labs, feel free to shoot us an email at contact@lunalabs.uk or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram. We’d love to learn more about you!
