The situation

Wordscapes is the #1-grossing mobile word game of all time, built by PeopleFun — a small (under-50-person at the time), design-led studio with serious design chops and leadership. The game was already a hit. What the team didn't have was comfort with letting the product-management function run LTV optimization experiments.

The team did have fantastic Ad Ops, UA practices, and retention, and so they succeeded in spite of their (relative) underinvestment in IAP monetization.

But category CPI was rising, so they needed further LTV growth to keep user acquisition profitable. They wanted experienced, fresh eyes to find and prioritize the highest-value opportunities, expedite growth, and (in parallel) help re-create their success on new launches.

The problem

The product was well behind best practices when it came to nearly all IAP monetization surfaces: storefront, limited-time offers, merchandising (generally), loss-aversion mechanics, and gacha mechanics.

The team was design-led, skeptical of PM, and highly protective of the player experience (a good thing) — so it would take time to win their trust.

Meanwhile, rising category CPI meant the game needed more lifetime value just to keep buying users profitably, and the team wanted a repeatable way to hit the same bar on future titles.

What we did

We opened with our typical deep teardown — a 30-factor analysis across product, data, UA, ad monetization, and the competitive set.

As always, we cross-referenced against our vault of past experiments — 400+ split tests at the time — for perspective on which types of interventions were most likely to pay off.

From a list of 50+ opportunities, we prioritized the highest-ROI initiatives by estimated lift per unit of effort, then embedded deeply with the team — onsite and off — to product-manage development and split-testing alongside their design, eng, and art. (This is the part where clients tell us we feel more like team members than consultants.)

We also helped stand up a concept-validation pipeline so the team could de-risk and repeat that success on new titles.

The result

Blended IAP ARPDAU rose 38% over the period of the engagement when our Wordscapes initiatives were deployed (Month-10 vs. Month-1).

We designed and shipped 4 of the best monetization features still live in the game today (can't say which, of course).

Some of my favorite features:

Of the 8 initiatives we ran, 2 drove double-digit ARPDAU lifts, 3 drove single-digit lifts, and 3 didn't move the needle — the honest arithmetic of disciplined experimentation.

Observed per-initiative ARPDAU lifts redacted per NDA.

Testimonial

"To any publisher or studio looking for additional product management or live-ops support, I can't recommend Turbine highly enough!"

— Carol Miu, CEO, PeopleFun

Matt's take

"A textbook example of the perfect Turbine client. A razor-sharp, design-led team (good people) without major focus on IAP monetization — and therefore vast opportunity for PM-led optimization and best-practice deployment. This will always be one of my favorite clients."