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!

The team Apprien representative, CEO Arto Käyhkö went to the land of never setting sun, in the Northern part of Finland, namely the city of Oulu to participate in the first Way Forward Forum organised by our dear friends from Fingersoft game studio (makers of the legendary Hill Climb Racing saga). Actually, this is not the first time such an event has been organised in Oulu, but the first time it held this name. The similar get together of gaming industry executives have been held in Fingersoft offices during their Blockparty celebrations for many years now. Blockparty had it’s 10 years marker now.

The speakers and organisers wanted to create a low key forum and event for game executives and experts to meet each others and share valuable knowledge and knowhow within the industry. Also, to collect all friends, partners and other stakeholders of Fingersoft to one place to actually see and spend some quality time face-to-face with each others. I think this was overwhelmingly achieved with the top notch catering of food, treats, sauna and drinks and also the superb line up of entertainers. Since the event is in Northern Finland, metal is must! The organisers had booked Lake Bodom tribute band to former metal icon from Finland Children of Bodom and also world famous Finnish dj Orkidea among others.

This event and gathering of the industry leaders is definitely the kickstart for the summer and we would like to extend our sincere thanks to all organisers for the invite and excellent hosting!

Apprien and PHZ Game Studio’s teams participated at Games first hosted by Supercell. It was held at the Cable Factory on Thursday the 8th of June. Supercell has hosted the legendary and highly awaited Games First events already from 2014 onwards. They were organised both in Helsinki and London. Due to the mandatory and unfortunate brake of events over the covid-pandemic period also games first was on hold but are now finally back!

It is an event for game developers to meet other game developers and to strengthen networks. The idea behind this event is to meet other game developers and people in the games industry so that we can learn from each other and to share knowledge along with experiences.

In addition to exquisite keynote speakers the legendary game demo session, where you can show what kind of game you are working on, allowed a concrete glance to what kind of new ideas are twirling around in the game developing field.

This is such a professional and fun event and we had a blast! Thank you for the invite Supercell!

The international Tampere Smart City Expo & Conference was held June 6-7 20223 at Nokia Arena Tampere, Finland. The event was a celebration of innovative thinking coming up to life in different kind of solutions. There were also excellent keynote speakers at the event and  cutting edge technology presented along with the latest digital solutions and services from all over the world. It was exciting to see all the forward-looking thinkers gathered under one roof!

The city of Tampere is pioneering as metaverse city and is looking companies to join in this project. “Tampere has taken the first steps towards a city that genuinely utilizes the possibilities of the metaverse. Tampere Smart City Expo & Conference this year featured many concrete examples of the metaverse’s potential for human-centric urban development.” That we wish our partners to co-create and share with us -” Teppo Rantanen, Deputy Mayor & Executive Director of Growth, Innovation and Competitiveness, City of Tampere.

All in all seems to us there is no worries: if there is a problem there is a solution and always a way to make things smarter. Apprien’s innovative dynamic pricing engine fit in with these other exquisite technologies and solutions perfectly. Also the atmosphere was warm and welcoming and it was nice to meet people and tell them all about Apprien and dynamic pricing.

Until next time!

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!