What Video Game Marketing Teaches About SaaS Retention
Luiz D’Elboux breaks down his experience at Ankama with Dofus and how player retention applies to tech companies.
Community dynamics in the gaming industry anticipated core retention and product strategies for subscription software businesses. In an interview, Luiz D’Elboux explores Ankama's transmedia model and the impact of the initial user journey on customer lifetime value.
Luiz D’Elboux, a board member and advisor for SaaS companies, detailed in a conversation with Bruno Gimenes on Marketing - The Podcast how his time at French game developer Ankama shaped his perspective on retention and community management in subscription models. The episode also covers broader topics in artificial intelligence and business.
In the video above, D’Elboux contextualizes how Ankama’s entertainment ecosystem operated far beyond traditional video games, integrating games with audiovisual productions and physical merchandise.
Ankama's transmedia model and fandom management
When joining Ankama to lead expansion initiatives across Latin America, D’Elboux encountered an environment quite different from standard advertising operations. The company held titles such as Dofus—which recorded 2.5 million paying monthly active users at the time—and Wakfu, running an ecosystem that went far beyond software.
According to D’Elboux, the company operated as a comprehensive entertainment structure: "It doesn't have a player base or a customer base; it has a fan base, which was Ankama's case. It's a mini French Disney. So, it doesn't just have games; it has animations, movies, series for Netflix, for TV. Its series aired in several countries—the United States, Mexico, Colombia. So, it's what we call a transmedia universe."
The volatile nature of community relations
High player engagement levels bring immediate operational challenges whenever product changes are rolled out. D’Elboux recalls that character balance updates triggered severe backlash from the user base, requiring swift fixes to in-game mechanics to curb public outcry.
"There was a game update right after I joined affecting the online game characters. They buffed some characters and nerfed others—it's a very fine balance. The players hated it, and a flood of YouTube videos started appearing with people mocking it and criticizing it. They had to rework the character skills, everything. So you really have this love-hate relationship," D’Elboux explains.
This closeness also manifested at in-person events, such as Comic Con in Medellín, where fans interacted directly with the team. "We set up a booth there, and a player showed up with a handcrafted wooden potion box identical to the in-game item; he made it, brought it, and gave it to us as a gift. Inside the booth, we had PvP setups—eight stations for PvP matches—and they all wanted to play against the staff," he shares.
Creator campaigns in 2012 and 2013
The brand activation strategy involved hiring influencers for live streams and group in-game events, a format that would become an industry standard years later. Back in 2012 and 2013, Ankama was already hosting events where content creators rallied their audiences for simultaneous in-game activations.
D’Elboux emphasizes that these initiatives paired influencer reach with themed in-person activations—such as event booths featuring archery ranges inspired by characters—fostering closer ties among players, creators, and official game channels.
Transitioning game retention lessons to SaaS
The need to sustain an MMORPG subscriber base drove the development of analytics-driven post-sale routines. D’Elboux points out that business survival depended on monitoring early touchpoints in the user journey to ensure they found immediate value and connected with other players.
"Running acquisition campaigns isn't enough. We have to ask: what is this player's 7-day retention? How are they progressing in the game? Are they interacting with the community, or are they playing alone? Because in an MMORPG, if someone logs in alone and has no interaction, they quit, and we lose the subscription," D’Elboux notes.
This experience with critical activation windows served as a direct foundation for his subsequent work at companies like HostGator and GoDaddy. "Either the customer derives value from the platform they subscribed to, or they will likely cancel their subscription. And if you can't make that happen in the first few days—the critical period is between day 14 and day 30—it doesn't matter what you do next; you've lost them," D’Elboux concludes.