Kwalee’s Director of Engineering, Andy Russell, shares insights on the company’s infrastructural shift toward a hybrid economy and how the LiveOps partnership plays a crucial role in this transformation.
The path to a hybrid economy
Kwalee has been evolving its strategy in line with industry trends. Its current focus is transitioning to a hybrid casual and casual game portfolio with a longer lifespan and stronger IAP monetization.
This strategic shift required advanced infrastructure for faster feature deployment and A/B testing, more precise segmentation, and personalization of player experiences. To speed up the hybrid transition and reduce the costs of building new tools in-house, the team has integrated Balancy, a ready-to-use LiveOps platform, into their existing tech stack.
“At Kwalee, embedding a LiveOps platform into our core framework has revolutionized how we prototype and deploy LiveOps-enabled games.
The new tools have accelerated our development cycles, allowing us to quickly iterate on gameplay designs while implementing dynamic features that adapt to player behavior.”
Kwalee’s Director of Engineering, Andy Russell
Building the infrastructure to support LiveOps-driven game development
One of the core challenges for product teams of live service games is delivering the content and experiences that players need as quickly as possible. Some features must be delivered in time for a celebration, others aim to improve key metrics swiftly, and some must be launched before a trend fades. Timing is critical for achieving performance goals.
However, the reliance on spreadsheets and hardcoding, as well as overloaded developer pipelines, slowed down prototyping, delayed time-to-market, and complicated feature iterations. To overcome these roadblocks, the Kwalee team has utilized an approach called the Content Management System (CMS).
This solution gave them a unified yet flexible admin panel that streamlined collaboration between product and engineering teams, enabling faster content delivery and smoother workflows.
Kwalee’s strategic shift to hybrid monetization also required advanced tools to better segment players and personalize their monetization journeys.
Without this targeted approach, the team risked missing significant revenue opportunities and spoiling retention rates. The LiveOps platform was integrated to make it easier to launch new game events and in-game shop offers without updating the game build and to tailor these activities to individual players.
Innovative solutions born from the collaboration
In collaboration with Kwalee, Balancy has created a must-have solution for teams that actively work with LiveOps – branches.
This approach allows teams to create separate versions (branches) of a project to develop new features, test changes, or fix bugs without affecting the live game. Once a feature is complete and tested, the branch can be merged back into the main project, ensuring the main version remains stable while new development continues.
Also, Kwalee recommends using packages to save and reuse features or settings across projects. This is especially useful for publishers and developers managing multiple live games, as it allows them to quickly replicate successful elements—like high-performing special offers, shop templates, battle passes, or ad setups—to new games with just a few clicks.
Once the package is ready, the final step is filling in the template with resources and values relevant to the new project.
Delivering results
One standout success has been Dream Build Solitaire, where adding LiveOps strategies to the game helped the team boost key metrics in just three months:
- D7 Retention: +27%
- ARPDAU: +37%
- Average conversion: +41%
- Development speed: 50% faster
The team has achieved these results through an approach that ensured:
- New players aren’t overwhelmed by irrelevant offers or pop-ups.
- Ad-focused players (IAA users) enjoy uninterrupted gameplay without unnecessary shop promotions.
- Purchasing players (IAP users) receive highly curated shop deals at the moments they value most.
“The new LiveOps infrastructure gives us the flexibility to deliver highly personalized experiences while optimizing our monetization strategies.
However, it’s not just about maximizing metrics; it’s about making the most fun games for the world’s players.”
Kwalee’s Director of Engineering, Andy Russell
With this LiveOps collaboration, Kwalee continues to push the boundaries of LiveOps-driven game development, ensuring long-term engagement and growth across its portfolio.
