Apprien automated IAP pricing engine

Today most video games and especially indie developers lose money and scaling up opportunities; most games studios constantly struggle with pricing and how to manage it. This is hindering their ability to stay in the race and make good business. Also, the cost of user acquisition reaches record highs each year making the situation even harder. So, rejecting best practices such as dynamic pricing from other industries is irresponsible!

Analytics

Pricing needs to be analyzed continuously. With our sophisticated pricing analysis you find out what sells and what doesn’t. Identify high seasons and top products, monitor how discounts and competitor prices affect your demand and react to it to defend your revenue. Use the forecasting to complement your decision making process. And the best is that you can beat competition by reacting faster to market changes!

Turnover maximization

We enable that your prices are always optimal for turnover maximization based on price elasticity of demand. Apprien can boost your LTV either by increasing prices when the willingness to pay is higher or by optimizing sales volumes when competition is hush. This method used by successful mobile game companies worldwide is now available for you too.

Dynamic Pricing

And best of all – it’s totally automatic. Sit back and let Apprien take care of the daunting job of pricing a whole range of your IAP products. In the meanwhile you and your staff can monitor growing revenue streams on the dashboard and focus on developing the key areas of your business.

Arto Käyhkö, CEO at Apprien, COO at PHZ Game Studios

”Suomessa pelialalla kaikki tuntevat toisensa. Samat ihmiset joko perustavat uusia pelistudioita tai liikkuvat studiosta toiseen. Verkostoitumisen kannalta se on kätevää, koska yhteydet pysyvät.

Jos meiltä joku lähtee maailmalle pelialan tapahtumiin, se joku olen vähintään minä. Matkustan 50–100 päivää vuodessa ympäri maailmaa.

Suomalainen pelialan väki on tottunut matkaamaan pitkiä matkoja messuille kuulemaan alan viimeisimmät uutiset ja näkemään uudet pelijulkaisut. On tavallaan hassua, että matkustamme 8 000 kilometriä Helsingistä San Franciscoon tapaamaan toisiamme, yhteistyökumppaneita ja asiakkaita. Tämä on kuitenkin alusta alkaen toiminut näin, koska peliala on globaalia, ja alan messut kansainvälisiä.

Kuva: Eirik Manne. Editointi: Marko Torkkeli

Olen Apprien Oy:n toimitusjohtaja ja PHZ:n Game Studios Oy:n operatiivinen johtaja ja osakas. Apprien on mobiilipelifirmoille suunnattu mobiilipelien optimaalia hinnoittelua tekoälyn avulla tekevä tuote.

Tulin taloon 2017 vastaamaan Apprienin liiketoiminnasta, myynnistä ja markkinoinnista. Olen tehnyt 20 vuotta erityyppistä myyntiä, ja pelialan kanssa olen ollut tekemisissä 15 vuotta. Päiviin mahtuu paljon palavereja ja paljon sähköistä viestintää.

Verkostoituminen on myynnin työväline. Tehtävissäni on keskeistä, että tunnen pelialan oleelliset ihmiset; pidän heihin yllä riittävää yhteyttä, ja pystyn avaamaan keskusteluja sen takia, että tunnen heidät ja he tuntevat minut. Suomen peliala käsittää noin 2 500–3 000 ihmistä.

Mikäkö on riittävä yhteys? Keskeisiin asiakkaisiimme olen yhteydessä useita kertoja viikossa. En roiku ilkkapaanasten ja petervesterbackojen hihassa päivittäin, mutta vähimmillään niin, että näemme muutamia kertoja vuodessa keskeisimmissä alan tapahtumissa tai vaihdamme viestejä uusien pelijulkaisujen yhteydessä.

Pelialan ihmiset ovat mukavaa ja fiksua väkeä. Kyse on pienistä ja omistajavetoisista yrityksistä, joiden kanssa sovitut asiat tapahtuvat aika nopeasti. Ei näy jäykkyyttä tai tiukkoja ylähuulia. Voi puhua kenelle tahansa mistä tahansa. Peliala uskoo paljon testaukseen ja kokeiluun, joten mielipide on validi, jos on olemassa dataa perustella oma näkemys.

Toimialan pienuuden takia pelialan sisään on rakentunut ajatus, että vain yhdessä voimme menestyä. Yhteistyö toimii yhä hyvin. Ei kannata pissiä toisen vihtaan, koska sillä voidaan vihtoa sinunkin selkääsi. Jos en jaa tietoa sinulle, sinäkään et jaa minulle, ja kaikki kärsivät.

Pelialalla näkyy usko tekemiseen ja draiviin. Ala on opettanut, että on parempi tähdätä kuusen latvaan ja kupsahtaa puoliväliin kuin tähdätä alaoksiin ja pudota maahan. Apprien ja PHZ Games Studios ovat kasvattaneet ja opettaneet epävarmuuksien ja muuttuvien tilanteiden sietämistä.

Nuorena en ollut peleistä niin kiinnostunut. Pelaan, mutta aika vähän: muutamasta minuutista puoleen tuntiin. Yleensä pelaan meidän asiakasmobiilipelejämme ja sellaisia pelejä, joiden kanssa haluamme Apprienin olevan kosketuksissa.”

Kirjoittaja: Eija Kallioniemi

 Get to know how Apprien Pricing Engine can help you boost your IAP revenue!

Apprien’s Arto Käyhkö visited the Arctic 15 Startup conference at the Cable Factory recently. It is a conference which aims to values based matchmaking and is a meeting spot for startups entrepreneurs, investors, corporates and media.

There is a lot happening now in the start up field. Apprien’s dynamic pricing engine arouse once again interest and it was nice to hear all the exquisite keynote speaker’s speeches at the event. It was also nice to see so many familiar faces at the Cable Factory  and to tie new contacts. These events are an important meeting space for startups and investors so Arto brought once again always needed visibility to Apprien. Keep the events coming, our Apprien team is always ready to tell you about our revolutionary game changer of dynamic pricing!

The Apprien team and PHZ Game Studios visited the Nordic Game Conference 2023 in Malmö. The Nordic Game Conference is the leading games conference in Europe and there were 1500 games industry professionals gathered all around the globe to this event. Also Nordic Games Awards was held during the conference and we were pleased to see that Finnish games got awarded. Well done!

Apprien was there to get new clients to dynamic pricing. But also we were there to meet old and new customers and friends.

All in all the event was very rewarding and we had about 60 scheduled meetings and several other encounters with professionals of the games industry. We also hold a traditional Apprien event for clients which gathered over 50 clients, partners and investors together.

Thank you for all the participants and see you again next time! 🙂

The Finnish Game Awards was held in Helsinki at the Old Student’s house but before the main event, we held a little preparty at our Offices for our customers, cooperation partners and stakeholders. We had such fun times at our preparty that the time just flew by and we almost were late from the actual gala, but luckily we got it there in time after all.

Approximately one hundred people were attending the gala and celebrated together the achievements of the game industry. Koopee Hiltunen from Neogames ry was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Power Player of the year Award was given to the grounder and CEO of Critical Force Entertainment V-P Piirainen. Three Men Games’ Pako Highway was awarded not one but two awards: the game of the year and the mobile game of the year. Undead Horde 2: Necropolis from 10tons was the Big Screen Game of the year.

The Gala was exceptional and big congrats to the winners! Seems to us that the Finnish game industry is still kicking it!

You can learn more of the awarded games on Neogames:  https://neogames.fi/fga23winners/

Games Job Fair Spring 2023 was once again a success and we met many promising candidates. We also had interesting conversations about the games field and got to mingle with our fellow gamers and developers.

Online our PHZ Game Studios teamlead and Apprien advocate Sasu Louke gave a speech about the Apprien app among other interesting online expert talks and panel discussions. Onsite in Espoo on Friday we met face to face with our fellow gamedev community and had a blast.

Was so nice to see you all there!

Apprien and Game Studio’s team were visiting Plug in Digital, the publisher of Siege Castle and Castle War, at their headquarters in Montpellier. During the visit there were great conversations about the collaboration so far and planning of new possible game projects also took place.

Luckily Game studio’s and Apprien’s team were in Montpellier at the same time as the Celsius Online team, which PiD had just bought. Therefore Game Studio’s team also was able to have interesting conversations regarding the mobile game market and Apprien’s team members introduced them the Apprien app.

These kind of face to face visits strengthens collaborations between our team and Plug in Digital’s team and are truly a pleasure!

Apprien’s Sasu Louke gave an online presentation about Apprien at the Games Job Fair 2023. Go and watch our Sasu Louke explaining how the Apprien – Automatic IAP Pricing works and which benefits it gives to game developers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtlY-YLQL5U

You can also come to meet him tomorrow onsite in Espoo at the Games Job Fair! See you there!

Come to meet us on Games Job Fair next week! An event dedicated to recruitment, career-building and networking in the games industry.

Online April 26th – 28th and Onsite in Espoo on April 28th

Our Game Lead Sasu Louke is giving a presentation about Apprien Automatic IAP Pricing at the event.

There is also a programming challenge which Sasu Louke will be judging with Unity.

Find out more about the challenges: https://gamesjobfair.com/programming-challenges-unrealengine-unity

Come check it out and hear what’s happening right now in the games industry! See you there!

Bigger, better, GDC 2023!

It was again time for the brave team of Apprien and PHZ Game Studios to put on the yellow hoodies and jump on a silver bird and fly over the big ocean to the wild west! This blabber means that Arto and Sasu geared up and headed to the yearly highlight of the game industry events GDC in San Francisco.

For me this presented to be the tenth GDC that I have participated. The event itself has changed a lot, at least by size, but the spirit has stayed pretty much the same: celebrating the game community and their achievements, getting together, no matter where and how far you are coming from and sharing the knowledge and best practices amongst the peers. All and all, I would say that GDC is much more than your regular business to business trade show – it’s state of mind: one week sheer gaming madness for the game industry peeps!

GDC 2023 San Francisco

This year GDC returned even stronger and larger than previous year, that was the first live event after the pandemic break out. Some 24.500 gaming industry professionals gathered in and around Moscone Center for the event. Some 5000 participants remained only online via digital GDC attendance. Also, some 3000 participant where attending Game Connection Americas 2023 in Oracle Park. This is purely a different event and not even a side event for GDC, but still utilizing the same week and the attendants that are in town. This double occupancy made the week bit hectic for our dynamic (prizing) duo Arto and Sasu since the events and meetings are happening in 2 different locations and in 3 different meeting system. Anyway we survived and had some 70 focused meetings and hundreds of run-in meetings during the week. We talked a lot about dynamic pricing solutions and how game studios can boost their sales with this simple and automated solution. We also met potential investors and publisher partners and some studios that were looking for WHF help for their current projects. I assume that some interesting new will be following these meetings during this spring – stay tuned 😉

Apprien & Zaibatsu Traditional drinks or cocktails in San Francisco

We also arranged our legendary Apprien drinks or cocktails at the famous Irish Bank bar in San Francisco. This year we organized it together with our friends from Jyväskylä Zaibatsu. We gathered some 90 friends and customers of our companies to hang out with us in a relaxed atmosphere on a #CalifornianStreetParty as we called it, since half of the people were roaming outside on the street and enjoying the only decent weather day for the week. All and all, GDC happened again, but we survived it! Onwards and upwards our dear game-heads and see you next year!

Yours in yellow hoodies, Arto & Sasu

Since we have a small representing office in Tallinn in Estonia, the Business Estonia and the Ambassador of Estonia and the Ambassador of Estonia in Finland, Mr. Sven Sakkov were kind enough to invite our CEO Mr. Arto Käyhkö to the Estonian Independence Day reception at the embassy in Helsinki. It was a very warm event, and we could see with our own eyes how large and vivid the economic cooperation between these two countries is!

We congratulate our Baltic friend for their success!

Arto

ICE, ICE Baby!

The brave CEO of Apprien, Mr. Arto Käyhkö hit the road again towards London and visited the world largest Gambling industry event ICE (International Casino & Entertainment) in exCel London. This was the first time for us and it was an experience, I tell you that! The huge expo was packed with casino, gambling and gaming companies and service provides. More that 180.000 visitors during the week. We were seeking new customers and seeing that what is hot and happening in the gambling and how those will affect the mobile gaming world. We also partneder up with Legal Gaming Ltd. from Finland to host a industry panel with the Finnish gambling and legal experts. I say that I have seen a lot of different kind of events, but this was unique! ICE ICE Baby as they said in London 😉

Always bet on black!

Arto