This week, Solomon sat down with Josh ahead of Gamesforum San Francisco! Solomon gave Josh a preview of what he'll be talking about on his panel, including maintaining a successful liveops calendar, staying ahead with an efficient product roadmap and GTM strategy, and his favorite spots to visit in SF as a native.

Josh: Hi Solomon, thanks for joining me! Can you briefly introduce yourself?

I’m Solomon Ruiz-Lichter, and I run the global gaming practice for CleverTap. I’ve been in B2B MarTech and the mobile tech space working across most consumer industries for the better part of 17 years, and have been in the GameTech space providing LiveOps and player retention tooling for the past 5 years.

Josh: What is your go to mobile game?

I have a few, depending on my mood and the situation, i.e.: how much time I have. If I’m killing a little time, I like casual games like Cooking Craze by Big Fish Games, or side scrolling runners like Hill Climb Racing by Fingersoft. My perennial go-to core mobile game is Madden Football, because I’m a huge NFL head. But lately I’ve been playing a very cool military real-time strategy game called Sea Raid where you’re a submarine captain taking out enemy ships and building naval bases. It’s made by a Chinese publisher and they found me on Facebook and converted me.

Josh: Looking to your work in gaming, can you tell us a bit more about CleverTap and how you came to start working there?

I joined CleverTap by way of acquisition. In 2019, I worked at a veteran game tech provider called Leanplum that many in the mobile Free to Play space will remember and recognize, where I built the North American Gaming Practice. In 2022, Leanplum was acquired by CleverTap, which is a major player in the CRM, mobile engagement and analytics space in many of the mobile-first emerging markets globally. I actually left the business for a short time and returned in Spring of last year to launch and run the global gaming practice here, bringing the new consolidated suite of LiveOps, Analytics, and CRM tools to market. And that’s what I’ve been focused on ever since.

Josh: What makes for a successful live ops calendar in 2024? What key milestones should not be missed?

Like most things, the execution cadence largely depends on the type of game and player base.
I’d say generally that game makers should deploy events as much as their content treadmills allow for, but in a way that’s thoughtful and adds value to the players relationship with your game. Personalization is an overused term, but it’s key here. Even though you’re likely giving something away, the player’s birthday is important to know, because it’s a way you can personalize experiences at scale. This seems really common sense, but you’d be surprised how little this is actually taken advantage of.
So, here’s to hoping every indie studio reaches that key growth milestone of having a player’s birthday happen on every day of the calendar year. This is basic stuff, but so incredibly important in a market where UA is so tough and retention/LTV are king and queen.

Of course, it’s critical gamemakers commit to a robust event pipeline and content treadmill to keep things interesting, and then line those events up as well as you can on the axis of that player’s specific in-game behavior and IRL themes/events around a calendar year: holidays, sporting events, seasons etc, (localization is key here).

Josh: Mobile still falls behind PC and Console when it comes to player engagement, in your opinion what can mobile F2P learn from the wider ecosystem when it comes to successful player engagement?

I’m not sure it’s as cut and dry as that - but I get your overall point. There are some key genres where HD will always have the highest engagement/retention metrics. My father in law has been playing a MMORPG PC game called Everquest for 25 years. Mobile (as we think about it today) hasn’t existed for 20 years. I think 2025 will truly be the year of cross-platform player experiences. Things have lined up pretty nicely for it now and the marketing and monetization infrastructure is all there. You see folks like AppsFlyer making the product investments on the UA measurement side, and the LiveOps/retention/engagement tooling, whether built in-house or via folks like us, is being designed to engage with players across platforms. The big publishers are in position to capitalize on this first, because of the breadth of their portfolios and the inherent cross-promotion and loyalty opportunities there. It’ll be interesting to see how studios build a more expansive strategy to see these platforms begin to complement each other to drive more contextual in-game experiences for players, rather than competing for attention and playing-time.

Josh: 2024 has been a turbulent year for gaming. What advice do you have for keeping on top of a product roadmap and GTM strategy as we look to 2025?

In a market like this, efficiency is everything. To be clear, I think efficiency is a loaded term and we’ve been harping on it since the Leanplum days. I try to be mindful when I use it, because I recently had a good friend and senior leader in games who is between roles approach me after a panel and say something like “when I hear you say efficiency, that’s what happened to me!” He was laughing and being a good sport about it, but it really made me pause and reflect on how personal this is for so many folks in our space.

When the big publishers who are public companies talk about efficiency, they’re talking about reducing headcount while increasing output. It’s a spreadsheet and margin exercise. I don’t mean to be pejorative about it, but it’s true.
When folks like us in the GameTech space talk about it, we’re talking about using automation, ML, and AI to democratize and accelerate various types of product execution, whether it’s testing new content or feature releases, or speeding up go-live time for in-game events. If we can put that directly in the hands of non-technical business teams, and at the same time focus the precious technical people on more core-game dev and meta execution, that’s not only the best way to run your roadmap and release strategy, but that’s a better way to run your entire business IMO.

Josh: What can we expect to hear from your presentation at Gamesforum San Francisco?

I’m going to touch on a lot of the themes we discussed here in fact. I also plan to drill into just what happened to set up the down-market we’re all operating in, and explore ways that our industry can push through and hopefully thrive on the other side. It’ll be a little less focused on what we do specifically, and hopefully a little more of a general value-add, because after a year and a half of grinding it out in market, thankfully folks are getting to know us a bit!

Josh: As a Bay Area local, can you share any restaurants, bars or must-see attractions to our out of town guests?

I’m native SF head, not just a Bay Local. It’s levels to this!
For my money, we have the best Dim Sum outside of Hong Kong, so you gotta go to Chinatown and get some of that. That is a quintessentially San Francisco experience. Check out Begoni Bistro on Jackson Street. There are so many great bars in the City, but if you like themed places, check out Smuggler’s Cove. It’s a Pirate Bar and it’s a blast. Also The House of Prime Rib is very old-timey SF and worth checking out if you’re not vegan. Don’t listen to the transplants who denigrate it. Real City heads know.