From Pac-Man to Pokémon GO: Goodbay Technologies Explores the Rich History of Gaming

This year Goodbay Technologies, a leading provider of premier customer service and technical support solutions, is celebrating 20 years in the customer support industry. As a preferred partner of fast-growing publishers in the mobile and console gaming space, Goodbay has emerged as a leader in delivering player support that improves both in-game and player support experiences. “We’ve experienced unprecedented growth and development over the past two decades, in large part due to our ability to innovate and change based on market pressures,” says Sapan Shahani, Founder and CEO. Goodbay Technologies offers digital experience, customer service, technical support, growth strategy and business intelligence services.

“One trend I’ve seen over and over,” Shahani continues, “is publishers without a strong player support strategy end up losing a lot of players, and a lot of money.” In the Pac-Man days most player experiences were contained in a box - one game, one feature set, one way to monetize. Then the industry, and games themselves, evolved into more sophisticated situations where multiple players could play from the same box and feature set, but not against each other. Next came better graphics and more interactivity so two people could play live and directly compete with one another. When games moved to consoles, they eventually became a lot more sophisticated. From Nintendo to Game Boy to PlayStation to Xbox, the gaming evolution has progressed at lightning speed. It wasn’t until mobile games entered the scene that player engagement became a competitive strength.

Shahani and his team have a wealth of industry insights, especially when it comes to the world’s largest mobile games titles. “The mobile gaming industry has revolutionized who plays, how frequently they play, how long they play and how much they spend.” Today most gaming dollars are spent in mobile game microtransactions, something that didn’t exist 10 years ago, due to mobile games offering a perpetually-improved feature base. Even games that start with a few levels after download now iterate and add new levels, seemingly in perpetuity. The strategy enables both a longer more involved kind of play as well as short play of 60-second snippets. It’s this versatility, where games no longer require a 2-hour gaming session, that blew open the marketplace. Whereas before the player base was dominated by teenage boys on weekends playing in front of a TV or computer, today it might be an attorney between meetings or a grandmother riding the subway.

“With the cost of player acquisition skyrocketing more every year, titles that lack an engagement focus – through other games, cross-game marketing, offline engagement and player support – will never become a 20-year franchise. The companies behind games like Pokémon GO or Clash of Clans have figured out to how to make their games last decades,” observes Shahani. Offering tips for longer-term success, he suggests that a title should consistently introduce new features to keep the player base continuously engaged and enable the game to evolve.

Since many game companies make their entrance as a startup, most are excellent at one thing – making games. By staying focused on what they do best and partnering with external companies that are experts in their field, emerging publishers can defer things like VIP support, localization, quality assurance and testing to their partners. “It all comes down to how engaged players are so they'll keep spending,” Shahani concludes. “We’re continuously trying to listen to players and find answers to the problems they have. Our goal in player support is to give gamers a solution so they stay, play and pay.”

For more information on Goodbay Technologies, please visit https://goodbaytech.com/industries/gaming-mobile-apps/

About Goodbay

Goodbay exists to be the smart partner for innovative companies seeking experts in customer support outsourcing. We believe intelligent companies deserve an equally intelligent approach to support. Learn more about Goodbay at goodbaytech.com.

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