It’s hard to go a day without hearing about Fortnite anymore. In February, Fortnite passed PUBG in total revenue on PC and console ($126M versus $103M). While PUBG (Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds) started a movement, Fortnite created a phenomenon.
Fortnite is by far the most viewed and streamed game on YouTube. source: Matchmade.tv
However, while the Battle Royale genre continues to heat up, I’d like to focus on a specific topic: the Battle Pass system as the monetization driver. Fortnite, for all of its smart decisions and flaws, made one key choice months after its launch: it wasn’t going to monetize based on loot boxes, instead, it was going to monetize off of its Battle Pass system.
It’s not as if Epic hadn’t thought of making it a loot box driven economy — Fortnite’s own “Save the World” mode is a loot box driven economy which you buy llama-themed pinatas that contain random gameplay-impacting items. Yet for their Battle Royale system, they chose to go against this.
Regardless of what you think of the choice — Fortnite’s revenue shows they’ve done something right. Fortnite has been steady as the top grossing game on mobile for weeks now, demolishing traditional mobile free-to-play titles, and outpacing all other battle royale style games on mobile in both downloads and revenue. The fact that the game was invite-only for the first weeks or so makes the feat even more impressive.
However, these results beg a question: is the revenue coming simply because of the user base size (DAU), or does the Battle Pass system actually drive higher revenue-per-user than a loot box system? In terms of KPIs, we’d be comparing ARPDAU or ideally, LTV.
While no one but Epic can peek behind the curtain and see what their metrics are, we will speculate today!
Fortnite’s Cosmetic-Driven Economy
Much like in MOBAs, Fortnite’s progression and monetization only come from cosmetics. Fornite is a “free-to-win” model: they do not sell anything that could impact the balance of the battle royale gameplay. All guns, armor, ammo is scavenged in the battle royale gameplay, but a player can choose what cosmetics they want to bring into a match.
Fortnite allows you to select a number of cosmetic options to bring into battle:
A Skin/Outfit your character wears
“Back Bling” — or a knapsack
Harvesting tool — a Pickaxe is boring, why not a Scythe?
Contrail — what Glider you use while falling (gotta look cool while falling)
Loading Screen — what loading screen you see (only for yourself)
Emotes to communicate with others. (you can bring in 6 emotes which you can trigger)
Since progress isn’t made through traditional stats and level up, the only way to show off your progress is through cosmetics. It’s not pay-to-progress, it’s pay-to-look-cool.
Until Fortnite, cosmetics-only based mobile games have not been able to achieve strong overall revenue, at least in Western markets. Although the large revenue growth certainly derives strongly from a massive number of installs, the amount of revenue and the #1 top grossing status cannot be explained without a level of monetization heretofore unseen by cosmetics in Western markets on mobile.
With the cosmetic driven economy, rather than dropping new cosmetic gear through gacha/loot boxes (like Overwatch, Destiny, etc.) cosmetics are either purchased with V-bucks (premium currency) or earned through the battle Pass. Interestingly, directly purchasing cosmetics through the shop has limited access. Each day there is a limited selection of items to purchase, so while loot boxes aren’t included in the economy, there is a limited set of items that are available at any time. Great for driving players to check the shop out daily, and giving additional pressure to purchase items while they are available.
The Battle Pass
Besides being able to purchase cosmetics with premium currency, players can also play and earn cosmetics and consumable boosts by completing their Battle Pass.
The Battle Pass is a set of rewards which can be unlocked by completing challenges. Completing challenges rewards the player with XP, which increases your tier, which unlocks subsequent rewards. The challenges themselves range in difficulty but give a baseline of progress for the Battle Royale style game.
When playing a Battle Royale game, especially if you’re not skilled, most games will end up with getting shot and losing all your progress. Also in many battle royale games there can be times when you’re waiting around for other players to arrive. These challenges give players additional goals to think about while playing, and can make even a losing round feel like progress.
The monetization comes in with the free vs premium tracks, much like the VIP system in Wargaming’s World of Tanks (read the full deconstruction of World of Tanks). Free players get far fewer rewards than the premium tier. Creating a very clear conversion effort. Look at all the stuff you “earned” but didn’t receive! The amount of content given out for the premium tier is compelling — its generous in terms of the payoff and pays back your effort quickly. This feels very similar to Annuities or “Subscription Diamonds” in mobile games. A small price that pays out far more than it costs – but only if you engage in the game.
The Battle Pass is limited to a season, which is what makes it so compelling. Each season has a matching Battle Pass, which comes with its own set of cosmetic content and rewards. If you don’t complete the battle pass in time — you don’t get the content. Some content may come in and out of the store on a daily basis — but then it’s usually for high costs of premium currency.
There’s a big “Fear of Missing Out” feeling with this system.
If being able to directly purchase progress was in any other game, most free-to-play designers would shoot this down. It’s usually a far better idea to monetize players on the gameplay itself and not allow players to directly pay to skip. It would feel very pay-to-win if you could directly pay to reach the top arena in Clash Royale, or pay to skip a set of levels in Candy Crush.
However, since Fortnite can’t really monetize on the core gameplay, and this is really just paying to reach cosmetic content (your battle pass tier isn’t really a metric player compare as a sign of skill) — player’s don’t seem to mind, and their revenue isn’t impacted. Player’s have a way to pay-for-progress to the cosmetic items they want.
Want a head start on the season so you can show off the cosmetic items before your friends get there? Pay to skip ahead!
A week’s challenges or season coming to a close and you don’t have time to get all the remaining challenges? Pay to skip ahead!
For this reason, the spend depth and potential of the battle pass system shouldn’t be seen as limited to just the monthly purchase price. When a player has locked into the battle pass, they are more likely to be highly engaged that season to unlock the content and to convert on skipping ahead to get all that content they unlocked.
User Experience of Battle Pass vs. Loot Boxes
Battle Pass can be best described as a system first and foremost for retention and player experience. Comparing Battle Pass to Player Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG), it gives players real goals, a direct sense of progress, and a clear path to the cosmetics that they want. PUBG instead uses a loot box system to gate all of their cosmetic content. Players play a match, get as many “Battle Points” (BP) as possible, to eventually open up a loot box.
These loot boxes can sometimes be locked with a key that needs to be bought with real money, which feels pretty much like a blatant rip-off. Like most gacha systems, as a player, this means the path to desired content is completely luck-driven. You can’t even save your BPs or a dust-like currency (example: Credits in Overwatch, or Dust in Hearthstone) to eventually get the item that you want. You just need to get lucky.
From a player’s perspective, Battle Pass simply feels fair compared to the competitors gacha systems.
So overall, from a player’s perspective, Fortnite’s Battle Pass system is a great match for battle royale:
It gives secondary goals which give a strong baseline of progress and can keep the game interesting
It gives players a clear marker of progress through a season and a goal of what to accomplish besides just killing every round
It’s a compelling conversion item + retention driver. The amount of content for the price and the clear visual of seeing content that you “earned” but can’t access is a compelling driver to both monetize and engage in the game.
It creates an endowment effect of purchasing an item but only being able to unlock the content if you engage highly in the game
But it’s not as if this Battle Pass system came from nowhere, it’s obviously inspired by the playbook of Valve’s DOTA2. Their compendium battle pass has been a staple of that game since 2013. Looking at Valve’s evolution of the compendium, you can see potentially how this system will evolve in Fortnite.
The Benchmark: DOTA2’s Battle Pass
Started in 2013 as an incentive for players to donate & get interested in the e-sports scene of DOTA2, the compendium was essentially an interactive guide to an upcoming tournament. Similar to a guidebook you’d get at a sporting event: it told you about the players, tracked the stats, and got you interested in the game itself. Valve doubled down on this by making it digital, interactive, and gave a portion of the money raised by the compendium as part of the prize pool. Players had a way of supporting the esports scene for their favorite game.
This has since evolved quite a bit. What started as just a compendium turned into a battle pass. They eventually added goals for players to accomplish in PvP that would increase their level for that season, and unlock cosmetic rewards (just like Fortnite’s today). However, DOTA2 has gone far deeper, with a number of recent additions that significantly increase the depth of the system.
Multiple Paths give players choices as they progress in the battle pass, giving far more goals in parallel for advanced players. Also, give further reason to reach higher levels in the battle pass (some paths only unlock when you’ve reached a high enough level).
Unlimited tiers with content unlocking slower and slower over time. Whereas Fortnite is capped at 100 tiers of content, DOTA2 has unlimited. This creates situations where players are even competing against each other to see who can progress farther in a season (when the competition itself is directly pay-to-progress)
Treasures/Loot Boxes as rewards rather than direct cosmetics. This gives players a mix of direct rewards and a chase to get the random rewards that they want.
So while Fortnite’s Battle Pass system may just be in its “early access” phase right now with a basic feature set, it’s clear that Epic is taking inspiration from Valve’s similar Battle Pass system. This evolution shows that the current implementation is not just limited to 100 tiers of content, but could be a far longer lasting and complex chase which could drive even higher retention and monetization. This system clearly has been successful for DOTA2, since recently they’ve started to shift the system to a full-on subscription style service called “DOTA Plus”. Little details are known at this point, but it looks to be replacing the Battle Pass with an ongoing subscription that gives even further systems and progression.
But comparing the Battle Pass system to a pure-gacha system, is Fortnite (and potentially DOTA2) leaving money on the table? While it’s obvious that its a play for stronger retention and higher conversion, is the lower spend depth hurting them?
Is the tradeoff of giving away all this cosmetic content for higher conversion really the smartest business decision?
Revenue Analysis of Battle Pass
Just how impactful is Battle Pass to monetization? More specifically, we should ask this question on two levels of scope:
Battle Pass vs. Cosmetics: How does Battle Pass monetization compare to other forms of cosmetics based F2P, mobile monetization?
Battle Pass Overall: How does Battle Pass monetization compare to F2P, mobile monetization overall (including pay-to-progress models)?
We can get a rough sense for both of these questions by doing some high-level comparison. In particular, we can a) compare monetization of the various “fair-to-play”, cosmetics driven Battle Royale games and then b) compare monetization with “pay-to-progress” game monetization schemed games.
As an initial investigation let’s take a look at lifetime average revenue per install (ARPI) of each of these titles based on Sensor Tower data to comparative, key high-performing titles:
*Note: Rules of Survival does contain some weapons in its loot box, while they are balanced it is not strictly a cosmetics gacha
Source: ARPI based on Sensor Tower data
Battle Pass vs. Cosmetics
Let’s now address the first monetization question we posed above: How does Battle Pass monetization compare to other forms of cosmetics based F2P, mobile monetization?
At first glance, it would seem that Knives Out has the best per user monetization (ARPI) of the Fair to Play games. However, two issues are not fully captured by the chart above:
ARPI growth over time and
Audience distribution.
#1. ARPI Growth Over Time
Note the number of months in launch in the Lifetime ARPI chart above. Generally speaking, the longer a game sits in launch, the better the game’s ARPI becomes (eventually achieving it’s LTV):
Source: Based on SensorTower Data
Note the number of months since launch in the lifetime ARPI (avg. revenue per install) chart above. Generally speaking, the longer a game thrives in live operations, the better the game’s ARPI becomes (as the installs decrease and existing users spend more during their lifetime):
#2. Audience Distribution
The other key driver for monetization for Knives Out is it’s audience. Japan *generally* monetizes much more strongly than other countries, often 2x+ that of US. Hence, the large concentration of Japanese users in Knives Out primarily drives the monetization gap between Knives Out and Rules of Survival.
You can see the revenue split by top 5 countries for all three of the games below:
Source: SensorTower
So what happens to monetization if we were to exclude Japan?
Wow, what a difference a country makes! Without Japan, Knives Out actually becomes the worst performing game in term of monetization. Somehow Fortnite per user monetization actually does better without Japan.
Battle Pass vs. Mobile Free-to-Play
Let’s now address the second question we posed regarding Battle Pass monetization earlier: How does Battle Pass monetization compare to F2P, mobile monetization overall (including pay-to-progress models)?
From the Lifetime ARPI chart, it would seem to indicate that more traditional F2P monetization mechanics such as gacha or PVP speed-ups are much more effective on a per-user, unitary level than cosmetics based monetization.
However, we should also take two factors into consideration:
Months to LTV: How much further can a cosmetics driven monetization last over time?
Downloads vs. ARPI: Although ARPI for “free-to-win” games may not be as high as other, more traditional F2P monetization mechanics, these games should generate higher install volumes based on the friendlier monetization scheme.
Let’s discuss both of these points in turn.
#1. Months to LTV
So how long can gacha based games continue to increase ARPI until it hits LTV? Unfortunately, we only have 6 months of data on Rules of Survival and Knives Out and less than 2 full months for Fortnite.
One way to estimate the ARPI growth is to just do a logarithmic trendline and extend out the timeframe to say 20 months.
Another way we could guess the eventual LTV of these games is by taking a look at other game examples such as Clash Royale:
Source: Based on SensorTower data
Based on the above ARPI growth continued for at least 15-20 months. Hence, the 20 month timeframe for our logarithmic trendline earlier.
Traditional F2P designers would typically assume that cosmetics driven monetization should hit their LTV ceiling much sooner than a well-designed gacha game.
However, for the sake of simplicity, and just to get a rough feel let’s assume that the fair-to-play game monetization will follow a similar trajectory. In fact, let’s just eyeball all of this pretty roughly to estimate LTV.
Assumptions based on a rough eyeballing of Clash Royale ARPI growth:
RoS/Knives Out will increase another 50%
Fortnite to increase by 125%
On the face of it, Knives Out and Fortnite would have similar long-term LTV estimates based on our analysis above. However, when we factor in audience concentration, we can conclude that Fortnite has much stronger monetization design. This was clearly shown when we excluded Japan from our monetization data earlier.
#2. DL vs. ARPI
Although we’ve focused so far primarily on unitary economic measures like ARPI, at the end of the day, what matters most will be the amount of overall revenue (and profit) a game can generate. Hence, in addition to ARPI/LTV we must also look at product level economics by also looking at downloads and in turn overall revenue.
As you can see from the chart below, while free-to-win based monetization has not performed as well on a per player basis, but overall revenue can be quite healthy even compared to top pay-to-progress types of games.
Also note that we only have less than 2 months of data for Fortnite (so it’s not an apples-to apples-comparison), and it has been limited by a number of issues such as being iOS only and having high-end device requirements.
Further, Clash Royale, unlike the other titles, leveraged one of the strongest IPs in mobile gaming and utilized massive user acquisition to help drive stronger install volume for their game.
* Less than 2 months of data only and currently only on iOS ** Puzzle & Dragon started off in Japan only Source: SensorTower
Battle Pass For the Win!
So, what is our conclusion on the original monetization questions we posed with respect to Battle Pass?
While pay-to-progress style economies will certainly drive higher per-player revenue, for games that monetize off cosmetics the battle pass is certainly showing impressive results. Battle Pass will likely become a dominant monetization system used with cosmetics based monetization in the future. Not only can it provide far better player experience, but by a rough calculation, it shows that it can drive higher LTV.
Just keep in mind these calculations are rough – these are using estimates of revenue and downloads, we’re using trendlines based on a small set of data, and we’re looking at a game that didn’t start from scratch when launched on mobile. The legion of fans that came over from PC/Console area already highly engaged and used to its systems. We’ll need to see how this goes in the coming months!
Yet by these rough calculations, we’re pretty excited. A player-friendly system that gives better goals and drives higher engagement shows the path to stronger revenues. All the while Valve’s DOTA2 shows that this is just the MVP of a battle pass system. Bringing in a hybrid of gacha design and a deeper battle pass will most likely be the future for cosmetic driven games.
Exciting times ahead!
Deconstructing Gardenscapes
This post is the first of many to be done in cooperation with Deconstructor Of Fun. As announced by BothGunsBlazing, Anil Das-Gupta and I are joining forces with DeconstructorOfFun.com. Deconstructor has been an amazing resource for me and many mobile free to play designers around the industry so it’s an honour to be contributing to such an exceptional site. A big thank you to Michail Katkoff, Anil Das-Gupta, Dave Cross and Alex Collins for their help with this post. Looking forward to what’s to come!
Gardenscapes’ Big Pivot
Turn back the clock only one year, and it felt like the matching/puzzle game genre was locked up and dominated by one player: King. Since last year, things have changed. King’s still on top, but there has been a new contender slowly moving up the charts. Playrix, a veteran casual game developer, has created two huge hits on mobile: Fishdom and Gardenscapes. In particular, each of these games has shown that there is more than one way to monetize off a puzzle game audience.
Gardenscapes: New Acres by Playrix has now been a staple in the Top Grossing charts since September 2016, showing no signs of fading. Gardenscapes has made many companies within the puzzle genre turn their heads. It’s the first major successful innovation in the puzzle genre since 2012 when Candy Crush launched on mobile.
So what has Playrix done with Gardenscapes that so many have failed to do?
The History of PlayRix & Gardenscapes
To understand the success of Gardenscapes, we have to go back to the history of Playrix and the Gardenscapes brand.
Playrix as a company started in 2004, building casual downloadable games for PCs. They specialized in matching and hidden object games. Playrix during its early days released many successful titles like Fishdom, Gardenscapes, Farmscapes, 4 Elements and Royal Envoy.
It’s interesting to note that King.com, Big Fish, PopCap and Playrix all competed within the casual market in these formative years. It’s not a coincidence that many of the top puzzle game developers today competed back in the casual PC market more than a decade ago.
Similar to the competitive market of launching casual games in 2017, developers during the casual PC downloadable era fought to try to stand out with new mechanics and new themes. Casual game companies attempted to innovate on the match 3 formula by adding simulation elements, decoration elements, darker themes and narrative elements.
PlayRix competed in a market from 2004 which mimicked the competitive trends we’re seeing now on the AppStore. They’ve seen the cycles that match 3 players go through after playing too many bejeweled clones. Focusing on narrative & decoration had already been proven, only 10 years prior.
By 2009, Playrix moved into Free-to-play and launched their first simulation game, Township, onto Facebook. By 2013, they had redesigned and launched Township on mobile. After porting over Fishdom, the pressure was on to port over their Gardenscapes IP.
Gardenscapes, the Hidden Object Game
Gardenscapes on PC actually was not a matching game, but a hidden object game. As you can see from the above video, it was less about decorating a garden and more about running a bed and breakfast, looking after the guests that come visiting. What’s interesting is comparing these old games to now — the characters, the animation style, the UI/UX design have all stayed consistent with the latest New Acres release. So when it came time for Gardenscapes to follow in the footsteps of Fishdom and Township, this would have been PlayRix’s first Hidden Object game in free to play. According to VentureBeat, Gardenscapes for mobile was in development for over four years. It can’t have been an easy project.
Regardless, after four years of creating hidden object gameplay, Gardenscapes was soft launched in 2015, with the same story, characters & features you see in Gardenscapes: New Acres today (just without the match 3). Watch this video to see how Gardenscapes soft launched:
During the course of this soft launch, Playrix decided to shift their strategy from making a Hidden Object game to making a Match 3 game. This decision can not have been an easy decision to make. Most developers would sooner throw away a game than make such a drastic change so late in development. Regardless, PlayRix ported over the matching gameplay from Fishdom (their only mobile match 3 game at the time) and soft launched again in 2016.
Playrix must have seen promise with shifting away from Hidden Object, because after this change to matching gameplay, Gardenscapes grew to become the success we know today.
So why is it that the match 3 gameplay turned Gardenscapes into a hit?
2 Reasons why Gardenscapes Pivoted
For creating long lasting free to play games, a match 3 style core will always beat out hidden object style core. It comes down 2 reasons: the scalability of content, and the ability to monetize from the core gameplay.
Reason 1: Scalability of Content
As discussed many times before, driving the most value from your content is imperative to free to play success. In content driven games like Hidden Object and Matching games, where players rip through content quickly, it’s increasingly important to minimize the amount of time it takes you to build content while maximizing value and replayability of this content.
Matching games have a huge leg up when it comes to the simplicity of creating new content. As I discussed in my GDC talk regarding the scalability of content, Matching games typically take about 6-8 hours to produce one level. This includes concept, implementation, balancing, testing, and polishing. The actual content in the level (the art, the mechanics, the pieces) are all reused many times throughout all levels, and players are usually asked to replay the same level multiple times before progressing. Thus, content is relatively easy to produce and players are happy to re-play similar content over and over. This is a healthy content cost.
To create content in Hidden Object games, the process is significantly more expensive. There is the arduous process of creating the backgrounds, the pieces in the scene, on top of the level design and balancing of each level. This content is far less likely to be repeated through multiple scenes — each scene has a new colour palette and lighting is completely different, using the same content over and over makes the scenes feel awkward and easy to spot. Objects which don’t have the same shadows or obviously look pasted onto a scene make the gameplay trivial. Content takes significantly longer to produce for each hidden object level, content can’t be easily reused, and game designers have to get really creative at pushing players to replay the same level over and over again just to keep a healthy content consumption for their players.
As a result, Match 3 games can create more content significantly faster than hidden object games can, and this content can last longer. This is exactly what you’re looking for in a content-driven game.
Reason 2: Monetizing from the Core
The biggest difference between a Hidden Object core gameplay and a matching puzzle game is that a puzzle game can effectively monetize off its core gameplay, where as a Hidden Object game can’t.
Hidden Object games typically monetize only through hints. Can’t find an object in the scene? Use a hint to let us guide you to the object. This helps players finish a level, but isn’t nearly as powerful a driver as +3 moves or in-game boosters in match 3 games. Why? Because hidden object games don’t have failure states.
In Pearl’s Peril, Criminal Case and the original New Acres release (as seen above), a player can only maximize their score in a level, there is no chance that you can lose a round. Hidden Object games incentivize players to find all objects in a limited time, but they don’t have a state where a player can’t progress in the level. Most Hidden object games instead monetize off of pushing players to grind a stage multiple times over rather than block the player from progress whether they win a level or not. As a result, Hidden object games typically have to get far more creative to monetize off their player base, usually relying significantly more on a timer-filled metagame in order to pace players.
Conversely, match 3 games can monetize very effectively off their core gameplay. Because there is a failure state (you can run out of moves before completing the level), players are invested in winning the level to progress. When running out of moves, players are incentivized to use premium boosts to win the level, or else they will lose all their progress in the level up to that point. There is significantly more pinch to monetize in matching games over hidden object.
On top of being able to monetize through boosts, match 3 games can pace through luck, rather than only skill. In an excellent GDC presentation, Florian Steinhoff directly talks about the power that luck has in pacing players. Due to luck, level designers can ensure that all players, regardless of skill level, are paced appropriately within a level. Match 3 games contain so much luck that designers can balance each level with a fair degree of certainty that players of all skill levels will come close to winning even if they lose — the recipe for strong retention and strong monetization. Hidden Object games, with their pre-placed objects and skill driven core gameplay, can’t boast the same.
As a result, Gardenscape made a very important design decision. Rather than allow players to purchase stars to progress through In-App Purchases, in Gardenscapes you can only purchase coins, which can be turned into boosts, lives, and extra moves. They fully leaned on their matching gameplay to monetize rather than allowing players to ignore the match 3 gameplay and skip ahead.
In Gardenscapes, players can only purchase boosters in the core gameplay. Unlocking Narrative and Decorations can only be done by winning the match 3 levels
This is the critical reason why Gardenscapes as a match 3 game monetizes so well. By only allowing purchases of boosts, players can’t buy progress, they have to earn it. Players have to roll the dice with the match 3 gameplay in order to unlock the content that they want, and these levels require plenty of patience or boosts to win.
Taking Lessons from Hidden Object
PlayRix’s swap to a match 3 core seemed to have paid off. But while they moved to matching as a core, they still kept the metagame of their original hidden object game. By keeping the narrative and the decoration aspects it separated Gardenscapes from all other matching games while leveraging all the content they had already built.
Gardenscapes has a compelling narrative which drives the game forward between match 3 gameplays. This style of narrative may not be your preference, but the light narrative of slowly cleaning up and building out your garden is clearly compelling for their target audience. It’s refreshing to see more free to play genres prove the impact of narrative on retention. A story can be just as compelling to pull a player a long as a saga map or a leaderboard, if done right.
On top of a long, overarching narrative, Gardenscapes allows its players to choose how to decorate their garden as they rebuild it. Players slowly rebuild a massive overgrown garden. As you clean up the areas, you’re allowed to decorate it. But the key decision here is that players are only allowed slot based decoration.
Instead of allowing players to place decorations freely, they can only choose from a limited set of decorations in any area of the game. See for example the lampposts above — this can only be chosen from 3 different styles, and it replaces all 4 instances. This of course lacks in self-expression, but obviously keeps their usability issues and production costs in check. Players are restricted to creating similar, nice looking gardens, and this gives players clearer goals.
Comparing goal setting in Gardenscapes to Fishdom shows this. In Fishdom, players are allowed to spend their coins on as many decorations as they’d like, and progressing in the saga is only meaningful if you actually desire the content unlocked in the late game. Players can quickly feel overwhelmed with the choices Fishdom offers to decorate and spend coins. Also in fishdom, PlayRix constantly has to come out with new and desirable content — otherwise their players have little reason to grind. Gardenscapes however streamlines this process and always gives players limited choices: this is far more effective for casual audiences.
Lastly, Gardenscapes chose the right approach when crafting the core loop. In order to unlock decorations in your garden or progress the story, players must trade in their stars for progress. Each star is earned by completing a level, an easy to understand system. This system could never monetize on its own, but because the match 3 core game can monetize and pace players so effectively — it never needed to.
Gardenscapes have crafted a perfect core loop: Their decorations and narrative teases players to stick around for the long haul, while their core can effectively pace and monetize of its player base.
In Summary: The 4 Keys to Gardenscapes Success
The success of Gardenscapes was a long time coming. PlayRix has been in the business of making successful casual games for nearly 14 years. So when Gardenscapes was soft launched in 2015 and didn’t meet their expectations, they did what most companies would never do: pivoted successfully to an entirely different genre. But how were they successful at this?
PlayRix was a veteran casual game developer, through their history they’ve seen the cycles that casual game players go through. They knew that the audience would eventually hunger for a deeper layer of narrative and decoration.
PlayRix made the right choice to move to match 3 overstaying in the Hidden Object genre. This allows them to scale their content faster, pace through luck, and monetize off players more from the core puzzle gameplay
Their core monetization strategy relied entirely on the match 3. They do not allow players to purchase decorations directly (like most hidden object decoration games do) instead they relied on the core gameplay to drive monetization.
Strong decoration + narrative aspects brought innovation to the match 3 genre. While adding these systems, the core success criteria for a puzzle game stayed intact.
As a result, PlayRix have successfully merged the Hidden Object and Matching game genres, and pushed everyone in the matching genre to think twice about just blindly following the trend of saga based progression. Whether intentionally or not, PlayRix have turned heads in the matching genre. No longer are casual game developers believing that Saga is the only model. You’re already starting to see the trend take impact: more matching games have decoration & story at its core, more games are looking to combine new systems wrapping around a matching gameplay.
Story Match, Chef’s Quest and Gemmy Lands. The fast followers to the Gardenscapes formula.
What does this mean for the future? Who will be the next developer who drives success? What will the next successful progression systems look like in the puzzle genre?
I for one am excited to see what happens next.
Evaluating Monetization Early in Development (GDC 2017)
As promised, here are the slides from my talk at GDC 2017 on Evaluating Monetization Early.
Monetization’s root comes from a long lasting urge to progress.
The most successful monetization mechanics come from speeding up pacing to progress. So adding and tightening pacing systems is the key to improving monetization opportunities.
Pacing systems which can be monetized on usually come in 4 forms: Time, Stats, Currencies and Luck. Find where in your core loop you can add additional pacing systems which make natural sense.
Ensure your game can scale for years
To be in the top grossing you need games which take years to progress, and can withstand tens of thousands of dollars of spending
Watch out for red flags in your prototype that it won’t scale:
Map out a vision of your progress over years. Do you think it will be enough?
Do the mechanics break? How large is your scope of stat upgrades?
Do the sessions break? In the mid and end game, are you asking too much of your players?
Does your Content scale? Can you effectively produce enough content to retain top players?
Does your Economy scale? Does your tight currencies remain valuable?
Design & Tighten Triggers for spending
Record down for your game the various trigger points you see players spending. Can you add more? How can you tighten these reasons?
Triggers Usually come in the form of these 6 forms:
Loss Aversion: Protecting what players believe they’ve earned
Vanity: Showing off to other players in the game
Competitiveness: Wanting to dominate the game or other players
Impatience: Wanting to make progress quickly
Investment: Investing a small amount early which reaps greater rewards in the future
Social: Spending for the benefit of others
Which of these triggers does your game have? How do you tighten these?
Prototype with Monetization & Pacing
Prototype with your pacing & monetization included to avoid misleading fun early in prototyping
Thanks for all that attended, and I hope this is useful for everyone!
Mobile Monetization 101: The First Steps
“We should have thought of monetization from the start”
Countless free to play games have launched and failed, and this is a constant regret many game teams have. They should have done more in the beginning to think about monetization. They should’ve been thinking a lot deeper about how their game was going to make money instead of just making a good game.
Learning how to evaluate monetization early is difficult. Most resources talk about clever monetization mechanics (ex. Pricing of in-app purchases, limited time offers, VIP systems, sales, etc.) but rarely is there much information about how to tell if your early prototype has what’s necessary to eventually monetize. The common remark to monetization is that good monetization can only come from good retention, as if just making a fun game will inherently make your game monetize. Anyone that’s launched a free to play game knows this isn’t completely correct.
The truth is that monetization and retention are strongly interconnected and you need to think about both as early as possible within your game. Monetization is not something that you can stumble into if you want to compete on the AppStore.
But before you start obsessing over your in-app purchase prices and before you start obsessing over sneaky monetization mechanics — you need to figure out how your game is going to survive as a free to play game. The best way to set up monetization in your game is to ensure that your game has 3 things:
A clear definition of what you are primarily selling
Assurances that your systems will last for years
Ways of pulling the player to the end game
Completing these 3 steps will allow you to set up your game to monetize to its full potential.
Step 1: What are you Selling?
Every top grossing free to play game primarily sells the means to progress.
Progress comes in many forms and sizes. It could mean moving forward on a map. Progress could mean building up a farm. Progress could mean collecting and upgrading characters. To start, you need to define what progress means for your game.
Let’s take a look at 2 games, and what progress means for them:
Candy Crush
Candy Crush’s core progress is to move forward on a map. Candy Crush focuses all of their monetization mechanics to help progress on the map. They sell boosts, extra moves or charms which all help you progress.
Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes
Galaxy of heroes is all about upgrading & collecting heroes. Each game mode promotes the need to have a large collection of characters. As the game progresses, it demands an increasing upgrade level of your characters, requiring you to progress. They sell the means to progress faster: currencies to train your characters, the ability to fight battles instantaneously, and loot cards to unlock characters faster than your normally can.
Every top grossing game has a long path of progress which is the main focus of their monetization.
You must define the core progress for your game. What do you see players building over a long period of time?
Just to give more examples, here are some of the Top Grossing games’ Core Progress:
For each of these games, this core progress is the central focus of their monetization strategy. All monetization mechanics give options for the players to speed up their progress.
When you’ve discovered what your core progress is — what the key central point you are going to be selling — then you can start designing monetization mechanics that speed up the player’s progress in interesting ways. You can start designing mechanics that pace the player’s progress giving you opportunities to monetize.
But there is one important step you need to do before you can start creating monetization mechanics: you need to ensure this core progress will actually last. Otherwise you won’t be selling progress for very long.
Step 2: How long will it last?
What you are selling must be able to scale for years.
It doesn’t matter how many monetization tricks you’ve got in your game. If what you’re selling won’t last, you won’t be successful.
This is usually where systems begin to show weakness. Not many systems can last for years. Many of the games that we all loved growing up were great games, but only lasted 10 or 20 hours before the system would crack. These games aren’t well suited for free to play.
An example of this happened when I was working on a racing game prototype. The core of the game was to race against an opponent to the finish while avoiding obstacles.
Our core progress was upgrading your car (similar to CSR Racing). The player collected loot from races to purchase upgrades which would improve their car’s stats. To progress in the game, the player needed higher and higher stats. The key stats to progress were: Speed, Handling, Acceleration and Boost/Nitro. As we tested out the game, we noticed: the more you improved the Speed stat, the harder the game became. The player’s cars were moving faster, which meant that the obstacles were becoming harder to avoid. We had a very limited cap that the speed could be upgraded to without demanding way too much skill from players.
With this cap in mind, we tried many things to avoid the issue. We made all obstacles travel with the player based on the player’s speed to make high speeds more manageable (instead of stationary obstacles, we switched to cars driving with the player on a highway). We adjusted the opposing AI’s speed based on your upgrade level to ensure that each upgrade was necessary. We tried many weird tricks to get the system to work, but all of them fell apart and were making the gameplay feel confusing.
In the end, the cap on our speed stat wasn’t high enough. In order for the game to be successful we needed the cars from the beginning of the game to be much, much slower than the cars at the end of the game. If we wanted the end of the game to take a months to reach, yet each upgrade along the way to feel meaningful to progress, the “Speed” stat was just not going to work.
This was a signal that our system wasn’t going to scale, and our game was not going to work as free to play.
Compare this Speed stat problem to a regular RPG system with Health and Attack. This system can scale almost infinitely. A 200 HP monster when you have 20 attack is the same as a 200,000 HP monster when you have 20,000 attack. Attack and Health counter each other, allowing both to grow infinitely large. Speed had no counter stat, which made its growth eventually constrained. This is why many free to play games rely on an RPG system of Health vs Attack (ex. Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Best Fiends, Puzzles and Dragons, Summoner’s War) this simple system can scale.
Look at your base gameplay — do the stats scale?
Health vs Attack: The infinitely scalable system that many of the top free to play games use.
So how do you apply this to an early prototype? How do you ensure that your system will last?
2 basic tools you can use to evaluate your scalability:
Model your economy
Test your game in the Beginning, Mid and Endgame
Model your Progression
Modelling your game’s economy and progress early is an easy way to give you a sense of just how much content you need and how to pace your game.
Exactly how to do this is a very deep topic that I’d love to cover some day. If you don’t have the skillset on your team to model your economy with a tool like Excel, then you need to get someone who can. Without modelling, it is impossible to see just how you’re going to get your game to last.
But what should the goal be? How long should your game’s progress last?
10,000 hours or $10,000 dollars: that’s how long your system should last.
This of course is just a high level estimate (and easy to remember) but this is a good goal to have if your looking to reach the top grossing charts. Looking at the top games today, they easily go beyond these numbers. Games like Clash of Clans support purchases larger than $10,000 in their games. In comparison to Game Of War, this economy can support a purchases by a single user of over $120,000. These are insane values, but to give you a sense of just how long lasting and resilient these economies are. There is a lot of room in these economies to monetize.
With this model, you have a great tool to show what it will take to last. Compare your model against the models of your competitors in your genre and you’ll have even greater benchmarks for how much content you will need. If you want to beat the competition, your game has to last longer.
Test your Beginning Game, Mid Game, and End Game
When you’ve modelled your game’s economy, you will have a sense of what the beginning game, mid game and end game’s content will be. From this, you can build a prototype which can showcase how the game will feel in the beginning, in the middle and in the end. With this prototype you can ask questions like:
In the beginning, do player progress quickly? Is each progress step desirable and felt as required by the player? Is this beginning of the game still engaging or have you taken away too much of the depth? Is the gameplay easy to get into?
In the midgame, has it sufficiently changed from the beginning game? Does it feel like the game is getting deeper?
In the end game, does the game still work? Is the amount of skill required to succeed still feel achievable to all of your player types? Is the end game sufficiently complex and deep? How does my end game depth compare to my competitors? Is there a dominant strategy, or do you see your end game players debating over best choices?
There are many more questions to ask to ensure the depth of gameplay is there at each stage, but these 3 prototypes can give you a better sense that progress is happening and that your game will work at these 3 stages. This will ensure that the progress that you will be selling is desirable, and that the end game is worth reaching.
Using a model and effectively testing your game at multiple stages in the game is the basics of how to prove your game can last. When your game can last, then you now have the necessary base of a game that can monetize. Now it is time to start driving desire to spend.
Step 3: Why do I care?
You’ve got a core system that can last for years, and a clear definition of what you are selling. All that doesn’t matter if players have no desire to progress.
As free to play games, we are selling virtual items. In reality these things have no value. Our job as game designers is to create systems which create value for our virtual items. When our virtual items have value, we are much more likely to monetize.
Making virtual items valuable is not easy, but thus far most free to play games have focused on 2 ways to do this:
Visual progress & teasing a long term vision of the end game
Social Pressure
Visual Progress & Tease Long Term Vision
The majority of free to play games use visual progress cues to create a sense of value as you progress through the game. Visual progress can come in many forms, but it must showcase your progress thus far as well as tease future progress. Showcasing your previous progress gives value to your work so far. Gives you real value for your playing time or payments in the past. Teasing the future content gives the “carrot on the stick”. Shows players that there is lots more to come, and hopefully entices them to discover the new content still awaiting them.
The 3 most used examples of visual progress are:
The Saga Map
Base Expansion
Character Collection
#1 The Saga Map
The Saga map in puzzle games clearly shows the visual progress of the player. Each time you complete a level, you progress on the map. At any time in the future you can scroll through the map and feel good about the progress you’ve made.
At the same time it clouds over the future worlds and hints at the mountain of content yet to come, giving you a reason to continue playing to discover the content.
#2 Base Expansion & Building Progress in Clash of Clans
Clash of Clans and almost every game like it with a city/base-building component has this to create greater visual progress to the user. Looking at an early level base in Clash of Clans to a late base really shows just how far a player has come. Each time they enter the game they are reminded of their progress. Each base also feels completely customizable and your own. You decide where each piece of wall goes. This creates more attachment to the visual progress — this is your own base.
On top of this, players are teased each time they preview a greater opponent. They can look at the top of the leaderboards and be tempted by how amazing the bases look near the end game.
#3 Characters in Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes
Looking at your character list in Galaxy of Heroes is the best way to see your progress and be teased of the future content.
You can see each of your characters and how amazing they are. This showcases their value. Just below your characters, you can see transparent versions of the characters you have yet to unlock, enticing you of the future progress pulling you along.
These 3 examples show how the top grossing games use visual progress to create value and desire. Each are also tightly tied to what the core progress is for the game itself.
When your core progress is visual, players are much more likely to feel like it is valuable and worth playing or paying for. When progress is teased, players are much more likely to stick around to see what happens.
Social Pressure
Want your game to monetize? Then make sure players are engaged socially within your game!
Deep Social mechanics is the key to building a game that retains the longest and monetizes the strongest. When a player is actively engaged in a lively community of players, then the content in the game is far more valuable. As a player, I am far more likely to spend . We’ve already written a lot about how strong community features in your game will heavily influence how well you can monetize:
Dawn of the Dragons (5th Planet Games): conversion rate for non guild members: 3.2% vs. guild members: 23%
Tyrant Unleashed (Synapse Games): ARPU for non guild members: $36.59, vs. guild members: $91.60
It is not a coincidence that MMOs like Habbo Hotel (pictured above) monetize so strongly with a core interactions that are quite simple. The deep social interactions that are possible in Habbo Hotel pull players in over a long period of time. Because of this strong social connection, players put a much higher value on looking good, showing off their progress and helping others. As a result players play longer and pay more money.
So when you’re thinking about monetization, make sure that you have truly defined what is going to be pulling players through the game on the long haul. Ensure you have strong visual progress mechanics that show off the player’s progress and tease the late game. Ensure that you have social mechanics which give real value to the content that you’re creating. If players have minimal desire to progress, then it doesn’t matter what monetization tricks you have — they won’t play long enough to spend.
The Last Step: Capitalize
You can see that Steps 1, 2 and 3 don’t really talk directly about monetization. There’s not much about skipping timers, VIP programs, limited time offers or designing virtual currencies. It’s because all that doesn’t matter unless you’ve got a long lasting game.
This is really why many monetization topics usually say “think about Retention before you think about Monetization”. What the real crux of it this statement is: don’t think about monetization unless you’ve got a system that can last. Obsessing over monetization mechanics before you’ve got a long lasting system is futile. However if you’ve nailed a long lasting system that can keep players engaged for a long time, the remaining steps to monetize become significantly easier.
When you’ve got a long lasting system, you can start creating mechanics that pull the player faster forward in that progression by paying or playing the way that you want them to. With enough desire to reach the end game, you can drive players to spend repeatedly to reach it. This is where true monetization begins.
More on the ways to capitalize on your long lasting monetization systems coming soon!
So while Fortnite’s Battle Pass system may just be in its “early access” phase right now with a basic feature set, it’s clear that Epic is taking inspiration from Valve’s similar Battle Pass system. This evolution shows that the current implementation is not just limited to 100 tiers of content, but could be a far longer lasting and complex chase which could drive even higher retention and monetization. This system clearly has been successful for DOTA2, since recently they’ve started to shift the system to a full-on subscription style service called “DOTA Plus”. Little details are known at this point, but it looks to be replacing the Battle Pass with an ongoing subscription that gives even further systems and progression.
Source: Based on SensorTower Data
