Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) represents a significant trend in the game development industry that has recently received huge traction from the leading game publishers and Mobile game development companies. 

Why has the Games-as-a-Service model become so popular? What kind of impact does it have on the game development industry? What are the key aspects of this model? As a mobile game development company, it is important to know these things. So, let's explain these things now. 

What Exactly is Games-as-a-Service (GaaS)?

Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) represents a monetization model by which the Mobile Game development company can earn revenue from their games. They do this by making value additions to the game through new updates against subscription or in-game purchases. These types of games are also called Game on Demand, Live Service Games and Cloud Game Streaming.   

Evaluating the Impact of GaaS on the Gaming Industry

Gaming as a Service (GaaS) brought era-defining changes to the game development industry and offered many advantages for the mobile game development company, enterprises, game players, and game publishers. Thanks to this model, Mobile game development companies now no longer require a big investment in starting a game project. Instead, after the initial release, the game experience can go through value additions and changes based on the feedback of the game players. 

Let's have a look at some of the key advantages of the GaaS model. 

• The GaaS model allows players to play a game for free initially and, based upon their experience, buying additional features. 
• Thanks to this model, game app developers no longer need to make manual updates or hardware implementations as these games allow online playing. 
• Thanks to online game playing, players can play with their near and dear ones and make social gaming possible. 
• A mobile game development company can start a game project with minimum resources and develop the game further with subsequent value additions and new features.  
• The Game as a Service (GaaS) model allows mobile game development companies to earn more revenues apart from the mainstream avenues of earning, such as in-game ads. 

How Can a Mobile Game Development Company Use the GaaS model?  

To successfully implement the GaaS model, aspiring game developers need to have a clear idea about the key attributes and how it works. Let's start.  

Automated and Streamlined Updates

The biggest challenge for the mobile game development company is to retain their game playing audience and keep them engaged in gameplay. For this, a game needs frequent and timely updates offering incremental value additions every once in a while. 

When it comes to rolling out game updates, the GaaS model automates and streamlines the updating process. Thanks to the model, you can keep the game updated to keep players engaged.  

Continuous Gameplay Support

Since the GaaS model relies on online gaming experience, offering continuous gameplay support is an important aspect. GaaS model requires giving responsibility to the support professionals to receive user feedback and complaints and accordingly provide support. 

This continuous support is crucial for the long-term success of the game project as the game playing audience will increase, and the project will be more complicated over time. It is advisable to avoid using bots or freelance support for support as this can ruin your game's reputation. 

Robust Player Community Management

For a game to stay longer and achieve continuous popularity, it is important to have a robust community of players around the game project. Like the communication through the social media pages, you need to keep game players continuously informed about the upcoming value additions and all the changes in the pipeline. You must remember that a game primarily goes viral because of the active contribution of the game playing community. 

When it is about building a strong player community around a game, don't forget it all starts with the way you push them to give feedback and respond to their feedback and comments from time to time. If you sense there is an issue with the gameplay experience as a mobile game developer, reach out to your players and gather their feedback. Remember, there are instances of players warmly receiving unfinished games and having a great gaming experience. 

When building the community of the players, it is also important to remember the language barriers as gamers can speak different languages and can belong to different parts of the world. Therefore, it is important to localize the game project in the most popular and widely spoken international languages and add other language options for the most effective results. 

In the beginning, when you make a soft launch, such deeper localization of the game project is not necessary. Usually, it is enough to launch it in English initially, and if you can afford it, you can offer one or two prominent options such as French or Spanish.

Getting Paid Traffic

You may consider that your game is fully loaded with viral potential, and you don't need to rely on backdoor tactics such as buying player traffic. I suppose you might be wrong. In spite of the sophisticated gaming experience, a game can't get viral solely because of the organic potential of the game. Many widely popular games that went viral began with paid traffic strategy. 

The standard practice in the gaming industry is to make a certain investment in buying game traffic every year. When the game gets older, it becomes challenging to keep the Life Time Value (LTV) of the game higher, which is also when paid traffic offers a great strategy. 

To continuously increase game revenues, you need to look for new markets corresponding to new mobile OS platforms and countries. For continuous revenue-earning, you also need to integrate video ads. Apart from standard measures such as App Store Optimization (ASO), you need to engage creative game marketing avenues and influencers as much as possible. 

Conclusion 

This short guide on the GaaS model for Mobile game development companies mainly focuses on the advance and ground principles. On top of these practices and principles, you can make creative inputs to take things to the next level.