Ergatta - Vortex Video Game
The Opportunity
At Ergatta, we were looking to expand our game portfolio with a new game that would allow members of all fitness levels to compete against each other on a level playing field. This is where Vortex was born.
The Audience
More social inclined members who seek out competition with others in a way that is not strictly tied to how fit they are.
The Role
Product Manager:
Lead initial discovery to understand user motivations around competition to inform game strategy.
Led the game dev squad on building out the infrastructure for asynchronous networking allowing players to compete in real-time against other player’s asynchronous data.
Led my squad on Android development of all the screens and user flows for players navigating into and out of the new game as well as all the backend infrastructure needed to support it.
Led iterative prototyping and user testing for Vortex from conception through GTM, with our first open-beta period to give us a more continuous stream of user feedback leading up to launch.
Lead the Go-To-Market launch from the product side, working heavily with the marketing team.
Key Performance Indicators
Share of game play within our game portfolio
Reactivation of inactive or canceled members
Net new customer sales
The Outcome
Launched our most technically complicated game to date with and designed our patented “Calibrated Competition” technology which adds unique value to Ergatta’s technology for exit opportunities.
Share of game play was about 10%, which ended up being the lowest of all our games.
New game launch had virtually no impact on reactivations or net new customer sales.
Lessons Learned
This was our first time building out asynchronous networking for a game that required a very high sampling rate for reactive gameplay which was pretty complicated to know exactly when each played takes a stroke.
Since each player’s “Calibration” (difficulty settings) are use-selected, there is a big opportunity for improper selection to throw the balance of competition out the window and giving them an unfair advantage.
The idea of “Calibrated Competition” is difficult to explain without some education and becomes more confusion when certain users select a difficult level that doesn’t match their fitness.
From a fitness standpoint, this game incentivizes faster speeds in a HIIT workout format. We later learned that only a small portion of our members enjoy HIIT workouts and the majority prefer slower endurance workouts.
Later after more game launches learned that new games in general have virtually no impact on net new sales and reactivations, but does keep existing customers happy with new content.
Key Skills
Product Management
Game Design
Prototyping
Go-To-Market
Tech patents