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 Marvel Contest of Champions
It’s happened. F2P Mobile is now officially triple A. The major publishers have all put more focus on mobile than on console. (see Bethesda, Nintendo and Konami)
Now we are also starting to see high budget games climb on the top grossing charts.
If you still believe that the AppStore can still have indie success on the Top Grossing, the stakes are rising. Games from now on will need significant investments in their visuals on top of having a strong economy design to succeed.
The proof of triple-A F2P is “Marvel Contest of Champions” by Kabam. Showing their recent commitment to working closely with Hollywood, they’ve brought both AAA visual standards and a strong license to mobile. As a result the game has been downloaded by over 30 million people and taken a dominant spot in the Top 25 grossing:
But is this game just all glam, but no substance? Can Marvel sustain in the Top Grossing?
The Pitch
Kabam’s approach for Contest of Champions was clear: Take “Injustice: Gods Among Us” and, apply it to a new license. On top of having the license, take learnings from Kabam’s other games and improve the economy design, multiplayer, and ensure that events are strongly tied to its core.
Its a simple premise, but Kabam’s secret formula of events, multiplayer gameplay and monetization is a powerful force. They’ve proven this before with the Hobbit’s mobile game and the Fast and the Furioius mobile game.
Injustice: Gods Among Us was a game released in March 2013 by DC Comics and Warner Brothers. Its essentially a very simple fighting game at its core with a collectible card game as its meta.
Both Injustice and Contest of Champions are similar to Idle games where it really gives players a “bait and switch”. Based on the screen shots you’d think this was the next Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. But after the first battle you quickly get introduced to the true intention of the game : collecting the characters and upgrading them. You came for the 3D fighting mechanic, but are quickly hooked in the long haul to collecting the characters.
The Core : Back to Basics
Comparing Injustice to Marvel Contest, Marvel has simpler controls, easier strategy, and much shorter battles. Injustice focuses on building up a combo enough to do a quick-time-event (“Swipe to knock down opponent”) whereas Marvel is more about building up a sustained combo of attacks of choosing whether to jab (which can be defended) or go for a heavy attack which can break defenses.
Fights are much shorter because they’ve cut out the 3v3 battle. Its 1 on 1 like original fighting games with victory based on the first KO.
Overall I believe the changes make the game better for mobile. Its easier to play and the fights are quicker. This allows players to complete sessions in less time and spend more time in the metagame. However, moving from 3v3 sacrifices some of the strategy in the battle. As a result battles quickly grow pretty tedious, which puts more pressure on the metagame to keep the strategy.
So how did Marvel fill the gap in the Meta?
Unlike Gods Among Us, Kabam also chose to focus on elemental types. This adds more strategy to choosing which hero you bring to different fights. Also to make sure that the simple 1v1 fights don’t push players to collect and invest in only 1 hero, they added elemental types which push players to collect heroes of each element.
Each element has a strength and a weakness. So each time the player enters a match, they run the risk of facing up against an enemy which is their weakness. This adds strategy to choosing who you bring along and making sure you have a spread of different strong heroes for each type.
Bringing this all together, Kabam really pushes players to be strategic outside the battle. So when you’re playing a online match, players are invited to strategize about which fighter they want to play against an opponent:
Note here that the Scarlet Witch shouldn’t be paired up against Hulk. The player should try to find a better matchup.
The Meta : Gacha for the West
This is really where Contest of Champions gets interesting. At the metagame layer, the game delivers on the licensee’s strengths. There are a ton of different Marvel heroes to collect, each of which has their own, stylized 3D model.
Each character feels unique. Each character looks beautiful. As a fan of Marvel, you’re really driven to collect your favorite heroes. However, this is where the monetization and retention come in. To get your favorite hero, you need to get lucky in the Gacha system.
This Gacha system is embodied in the Crystal Vault :
Crystals are a currency that is used to give a random reward. Crystals are earned through timers (daily, every few hours), through play (multiplayer or single player) or from purchase. Each time the player completes one of those actions, they are pulled into the Crystal Storage screen. From here, they can open up a random reward within: A resource or sometimes a new character. Here is an example of a player opening up a crystal:
These Crystals are the most important design decision that Kabam made.
There are 3 reasons for this:
#1: Each time the player earns a crystal, they are brought back to the Crystal Vault
Each time they complete the actions needed for the crystal, they are brought back to the storage area. Each time they are reminded of all the other options they can purchase, and all the other means to progress. Players know that in order to get heroes, they need to earn crystals. In order to earn crystals, they need to pay or play.
#2: Each Crystal is a Lottery
Each crystal gives a chance of what you want. No crystal ever gives defined rewards. Want that cyclops? Well that’s the top prize in this crystal, so buying the crystal will not guarantee you earning Cyclops. This is gacha done perfectly.
Gacha works because in the beginning players can purchase these gacha packs (crystals) and get great content. Each time they open a crystal they get a brand new hero they’ve never seen before. As time goes on, as a designer you introduce mechanics and promote content that drive players to want rarer and rarer star players. So a player wanting a 4 star rare Cyclops is going to have to purchase many, many gacha packs before they get exactly what they want.
This should be taken with some fairness though. You want to make sure that player’s don’t feel cheated when they spend money. So similar to Hearthstone (each card pack includes 1 rare), Contest also guarantees a certain star tier with each crystal that is paid.
Unlike Injustice: Gods Among Us and Mortal Kombat X (a recent release by Warner Brothers) Kabam chose to offer no direct purchasing of heroes. In Injustice, players can look at the store of all the heroes in the game and directly purchase the hero they want. In Marvel, players have to use Crystals to collect all the heroes they want. This design is more similar to Japanese games like Puzzles and Dragons, and has been a lucrative business for them. By cutting out the direct purchase and going for a more pure-Gacha system like Japanese games, they’ve maximized their revenues.
#3: They offer no direct purchase
Never allow player’s direct purchase of the content that they want in a Gacha system
Allowing players a direct purchase of the hero they want is a hit to your retention and monetization. You’ve given them the end game content for a single quick purchase.
You can see this also when you compare Mortal Kombat X to Contest of Champions. Mortal Kombat X was recently released by Warner Brothers. Arguably each game is well designed and looks beautiful, but on a Total Revenue to Total Download ratio, Marvel comes out well on top. Kabam is simply far better at monetizing, and offering no direct purchase improves this metric.
Gotta Collect ‘Em All
But the strength of Gacha lies only when you’ve added an additional layer: Rarities. In order for Gacha to work, you need to drive desire to get the absolute rarest items. In the beginning as a player it is alright to get a 1 or 2 star spider man. It feels good to get these heroes. But as you play, you quickly realise that this spider man isn’t going to cut it — you need to play your chances at getting the rarest heroes.
To do this, Kabam added Star Tiers to their heroes. Each hero can be found in 1 star to 5 star forms. The higher the star rating, the rarer the hero. Having a higher star hero increases their base stats, exponentially increases their potential highest level, and adds passive and active special abilities during the battle. All 3 of these are important to monetization and retention.
Having strong base stats makes the hero feel powerful immediately versus opponents. Making sure that Rare monsters immediately feel good to purchase and easy to dominate opponents with is crucial to drive first time purchases.
Exponentially increasing the maximum potential also increases the amount the player must invest their time and energy to reach the hero’s maximum potential. The higher the star rarity, the more time the player must spend to upgrade the hero to their maximum potential.
For players to upgrade their heroes, they must use in different strands of ISOs. ISOs come from actively playing (mostly) so in order to fully upgrade your amazing 3 star champion, you have to collect ISO.
This is essential for Long term retention. This mechanic nudges players commit to training their heroes to receive their full benefit. Without this exponential growth, players would pay for the best hero then forget about actively playing in the game.
Lastly, Adding Passive and Active special abilities in the battle gives visual feedback to the player that what they are doing (collecting rare heroes) is worth it.
Heroes that are 3 stars or more have an extended special ability bar (as shown above in the bottom left). When the player fills up this meter, the hero shows a unique animation and does a lot of damage. You can only trigger this ability if you’ve got the 3 star or higher version of this hero. This is very important to ensure that players feel rewarded and powerful for getting the highest heroes.
Just increasing a virtual number is not rewarding enough for players. Eventually you’re going to have to give players real visible rewards for getting the rare content.
In Summary
Kabam’s Contest of Champions decided to focus their innovation on outside the battle, in the Meta. The Meta for all games is what drives long term retention and strong monetization. This paid off for Kabam.
They focused on creating a pure Gacha system, stripping out elements from Warner Brother’s Injustice: Gods Among Us that was conflicting with what they know to drive strong free to play design:
Simpler, shorter battles for better sessions
No direct purchase of heroes
Engrained crystals into the core game loop
Deeper Star Tier system to create more reasons to purchase
Elemental system to promote collection of heroes
As a result, Kabam have a top performing game.
To be Continued…
Marvel Contest of Champions innovations and design insights don’t just stop at the Gacha system. Rather than overwhelm you, I’ll put this one on pause for now. Next up I’ll focus on Multiplayer and Session Design.
Stay Tuned!
Why you should care about Idle Games
Idle games are an exciting new genre that I expect to expand greatly in the coming years on mobile. Idle games, Clicker games, or “games that play themselves” is a baffling genre. Inexplicably these games are dominating many of the popular flash portals and shooting up the charts on mobile. Make it Rain by 337 Games, Tap Titans by Game Hive and now AdVenture Capitalist by Kongregate have all shown that this genre has a rightful place on the AppStore.
But why is this genre so popular? Why does this genre even exist? Why even discuss games that people don’t really play?
Idle games have risen on mobile because this is a genre that is perfect for modern mobile free-to-play design. The mechanics of idle games create perfect mobile sessions and drive strong long term retention.
What is an Idle Game?
Idle games, sometimes called Clicker or Incremental games, are games which are all about management of revenue streams. Similar to simulation games, their main differentiator is the focus on revenue growth decisions.
Cookie Clicker is the best example of an idle game. Each time you tap the cookie, you gain 1 cookie. You use cookies to purchase upgrades. Upgrades increase either the rate of tapping the cookie (now you get 2 cookies per click!) or increases the rate of cookies generated automatically (Grandmas will make 1 cookie per second). These automatic cookies are generated whether you are tapping or not. They are generated even if you’re away from the game.
On paper this sounds too simple to be fun. But try for yourself. The simple act of purchasing an upgrade always feels great. The growth curve is so fast it gets very addictive, very quickly.
Progress just for the sake of progress is fun. Even if it only means a virtual number increases faster.
Rate of resource generation is the core of the game. But an economy that inflates so quickly with a single currency has flaws. Very quickly, the game’s upgrade costs skyrocket. Starting off with nice low numbers the game quickly skyrockets into costs of trillions just a few sessions in. Most designers would cringe at this type of growth curve. What kind of player wants to worry about numbers in the trillions? In AdVenture Capitalist, your costs will eventually reach more than 1 Tretrigintillion(10 to the power of 102). Yet, players love this. Progress always feels good. Players playing for long enough to reach these ridiculous numbers feel like it is a real accomplishment.
As a result, Idle games have claimed 3 of the top 10 most played games on Kongregate (source: here). There are even Twitch channels dedicated to watching a computer play a game itself. Inexplicably, this genre has seen incredible growth.
Regardless of your stance of whether or not this is a “real” game genre, the mechanics in Idle games are perfectly realized for mobile. Idle games can teach mobile game designers a lot about creating a game that has strong session design. Idle games are so strong because:
It always feels good to come back.
Sessions naturally ease the player to leave
The mechanics ease the player from micro to macro gameplay
#1: It always feels good to come back
Many mobile games suffer gameplay mechanics that feel punishing on returning to the game after leaving for a few days.
In FarmVille: crops wither. If you do not come back to the game in time, your crops are worthless. In Clash of Clans: resources are stolen. The longer you are away from the game, the more likely a majority of your precious resources are stolen. Your rank on the leaderboard could be lowered. Your Clan becomes upset that you haven’t donated enough troops. These mechanics are all strong at driving reasons to come back, but also creates reasons for players to quit.
Idle games don’t suffer from this problem. Each time the player returns to the game, they are left with a massive stockpile of cash. It always feels like a bonus that they left the game. If a player leaves for a day, a week, or a month it only increases the amount of currency in their stockpile. In most economies this would be troublesome. Not in Idle games. Because the growth curves are exponential, leaving a game to infinitely generate a low income rate is absolutely fine.
Player A grows faster from Day 1. Player B waits until Day 7, but gains a massive stockpile.
For example, lets take 2 players. Player A comes back every day. Player B skips a week of play. Both players are generating 1 million cookies per day at this point in time. Player A, the active player, returns day 2 and receives 1 million cookies. Player B, who skipped the week, returns to have 7 million cookies. Player B can clearly purchase far more upgrades than Player A. Player B actually feels very rewarded for leaving for so long — they are rewarded with a very long session which they can purchase many things. However, comparing the growth curves Player A purchased many upgrades on that second day. So Player A by day 2 is already at a new growth rate of 10 million cookies a day. Player A is clearly growing far faster than Player B, but both players (because its a single player game) feel they made a smart choice. Player A is rewarded with faster progression. Player B is rewarded for waiting so long. It always feels good to return, but returning more often gives you faster progression.
Mobile games should strive to create this feeling. It should never feel like a punishment to come back to the game.
Players should be reminded that coming back often is a benefit, but coming back at all is always a bonus.
For this reason most farming games have shifted away from FarmVille’s model. Instead of withered crops, there’s low storage limits. In Clash of Clans, they incorporate shields and enforce looting limits to make sure players dont feel that not coming back feel too badly.
#2: Sessions ease the player away
Coming from my previous post on Flexible Sessions, the perfect mobile session finds a way to naturally push players out of the game. This is necessary for pacing and long term retention. Strong mobile games give strong reasons to come back (see above!) and strong reasons to leave the game. Idle games have mastered this natural prod of players out of the game.
Offering lots of purchasing options creates the session design. There is always something to purchase, but eventually the smart choice is the one where the player must wait.
As Idle games push players to invest in automatic revenue generators (ex. Grandmas in Cookie Clicker) over manual revenue generators (manually tapping on the cookie), players inevitably will reach a point in the game when they just have to wait. The player can purchase small upgrades fairly rapidly, but they know to make the next big leap of progression its smarter to purchase the more expensive upgrades. So, they leave the game feeling smart about their decision.
This is the exact point which the player, themselves, have opted-in to leaving the game. Naturally, the game has prodded the player to leave. Mobile games must strive for this. Create a situation which the player feels smart about leaving your game. Idle games have even managed to do this without timers, without social appointments or any other tacked on system as discussed in Player Commitments.
Create a situation which the player feels smart about leaving your game.
#3: It eases the player from core to meta gameplay
The first experience of a new player is very simple. In Clicker Heroes: A player just madly taps an enemy monster. In Make it rain: A player flicks heaps of money into the air. The first experience is addictive and immediately fun. Its obvious how to get better – tap or swipe faster. Players quickly master this mechanic and it feels natural. However, this mechanic’s interest quickly burns out. After the first few sessions, players are quickly tired of having to manually collect.
This is when the game offers a bait and switch. You came for the simplicty of tapping, but what you’ve been given is a game that is all about managing resources and upgrades. Players shift from tapping to managing which upgrade to purchase next. This clever switch means players that would have been burnt out from the simple mechanic are now thinking about long term decisions in the game. Which upgrade is the best value? How do I optimize my growth?
Mobile games must master this bait and switch. Players expecting to come into any mobile game will expect some core gameplay that mimics what they’ve played in the past. Playing bejeweled for Candy Crush, playing command and conquer for Clash of Clans, or platforming for King of Thieves. However, as a free-to-play designer your job isn’t to just hook these players with fun intial mechanics. You need to find ways to retain these players for years. The best way to do this is to switch the player from focusing on second-to-second core gameplay (tapping cookies) into longer term decisions (optimizing progression). Idle games clearly show a blueprint of how to accomplish this, regardless of the core gameplay.
Looking to the Future
Idle games are big and going to get bigger.
Anthony Pecorella gave an excellent talk at GDC 2015 on Idle Games summarized here. Clearly with the success of AdVenture Capitalist, Tap Titans and Make it Rain, more developers are taking notice.
The genre is ripe for innovation. Recently CivCrafter came out. A take on the idle genre with multiple resources and battles. Tap Titans has shown that the genre can apply to the auto-rpg genre. I believe that the progression systems in these games can really be applied to any genre. Replacing the core game play with a puzzle mechanic, an RPG battle mechanic, a Simulation theme, Arcade gameplay are all possible angles.
The key is to design the bait and switch: give the players the game play that is addictive and fun in the beginning, but eventually nudge them into purchasing the automatic resource generators. Players can then make the choice between grinding the core gameplay, or leaving and gaining the benefit just by waiting.
Get ready: the future will be all about games you don’t play.
After the Gold Rush: Competing in today’s App Store
It’s hard to believe that the App Store is only six and a half years old – it was launched in July 2008 with just 800 apps. Now there are 800 apps downloaded every second – 2 billion a month – and the number of apps available has grown more than 1,000 fold to 850,000.
Games dominate this marketplace, with more than twice the number of apps as the next biggest category, and well over 10,000 new ones being added each month. The barriers to entry remain low – you can code and release a simple game on your own – but the barriers to success continue to get higher. This is typical of all markets as they mature, but it is striking just how fast this has happened in mobile, and developers of all sizes are finding the competition fierce. Beyond the sheer quantity of games available, there are three clear indicators of this development.
Top Grossing
The top grossing charts are largely static. Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans have been in the top 3 games for over 2 years now. These games appear to have locked down their respective genres in the way that Call of Duty or World of Warcraft has on other platforms. Many of the other games in top 10 are similarly long lived, and just two developers: Supercell and King consistently account for at least half of the top 10. Games that do manage to break into the upper reaches of the charts are notable because they are so rare now, and often supported by very strong brands, such as Kim Kardashian.
User Acquisition
SuperData estimated that the cost of acquiring a user increased 37% between Jan 2013 and Jan 2014. Machine Zone’s recent $40m advertising campaign for Game of War illustrated just how much money the top companies can throw at marketing. SuperData also reports that CPI now stands at an average of $2.78 for mobile games, whilst average revenue per user is just $1.96 – not a good ratio for developers.
Production Values
Super Evil Megacorp spent two and a half years developing Vainglory, and it showed – the graphics looked closer to AAA standard than what we would normally expect from a mobile game. Smaller developers can pull off great looking games such as Monument Valley or Badlands, but only when they choose very stylized appearances that facilitate lower costs of production. Even the UI transitions in Hearthstone demonstrate a level of polish that few established studios, let along Indies could hope to pull off.
So where does this leave us? How to we compete in a market that has become this tough? It’s a question that we ask ourselves a lot at Wooga, and even with our current successes (Diamond Dash, Pearl’s Peril and Jelly Splash) something that we are still working out.
How to find success?
Looking at the charts it is clear that cloning games does not lead to success – the only game with similar mechanics to Clash of Clans is Boom Beach, also by Supercell. Replicates of Candy Crush Saga have performed similarly poorly. It is for this reason that we do not clone games at Wooga, and never have. It’s also creatively unsatisfying and for a combination of these reasons many people advocate the opposite end of the spectrum: radical innovation in the hope of striking it lucky.
This was my approach on my last game too. Whilst Wooga has a history of casual, single player games, I set out to make an action strategy game. I loved the genre myself, and felt there must be an audience who were likewise unsatisfied by the current offerings on the App Store. I felt that given the talent at Wooga, our understanding of game design and the amount of user testing we used in the creative process we could make a success in any genre. But in hindsight this approach seems just as misguided as cloning games, as I had failed to recognize the current state of the market and the value of building on existing company expertise, tools and audiences.
Games are complicated systems, especially action strategy games designed to give years of play. We had a good prototype and the gameplay was novel and fun. But the more we worked on the details the more problems we threw up. Exactly because the gameplay was novel, we needed novel solutions to these problems – we could get inspiration from other games, but no one had solved these exact problems before. The team did a great job of working through these, but it took a huge amount of time and emotional effort to be continually rebuilding large sections of the game.
Risk is inevitable
Furthermore, as we worked through design issues, we realized that we were left with a number of risks that we could not remove before launch. By staying true to the vision of the game we had ended up with intense synchronous PvP gameplay that only Hearthstone and World of Tanks came close to. These are successful games, but it seems largely because of their existing PC audience. We also started hearing horror stories about the CPIs for the mid core audience, several times higher than the best LTV any of our existing games had. In combination we were not sure if the audience we were targeting existed, and if it did whether we could profitably reach them.
Despite the team’s enthusiasm for the game I could see that this was becoming a passion project for us rather than a legitimate chance at creating a commercial hit, and unfortunately for those of us that make games professionally, commercial realities cannot be ignored. Eventually I decided it was time to stop burning time and money and start on something afresh with greater potential. I realized that we had been arrogant enough to assume we could build something as good or better than what was already out there, despite having none of the tools, none of the design knowledge, and no audience compared to developers that were already making these sorts of games.
I remembered that Clash of Clans was an iteration on Backyard Monsters and Candy Crush Saga a refinement of Bejewelled. But even before their big successes, Supercell had experienced teams working on Hay Day and Clash of Clans, and King had its casual gaming portal and picked games out of that to develop for Facebook and then mobile. In each case the companies had existing assets that they built on, as well as refining mechanics from other games.
What to do with an existing audience?
A company with the size and track record of Wooga has plenty of assets to build on. We have an existing audience, established IPs, game design experience earned through hundreds of user tests and millions of players on our live games, the know how to set up extensive content pipelines and so on. We hadn’t recognized their value before though, and instead choose to innovate across the board. Our core gameplay was different, our elder game novel, we were attacking a more core audience we knew only as players ourselves. The only asset of Wooga that we really used was building on technical expertise from previous games. In our post mortem we realized this was also the one area that was free from major problems over the course of the project.
Let me be clear though, that when I talk of innovation, I am not talking solely about design. I am talking about all aspects of production from the audience and genre you choose to the technical setup you have as well. Design can be innovative and successful, but innovative designs are best supported when you build on existing assets elsewhere. Hearthstone is a great example of this: the team built on a vast wealth of assets that Blizzard had to make the game a success. There was the experience of the design team, the strength of the Warcraft brand and Blizzard’s ability to recruit half a million fans whilst the game was still in beta. The gameplay was fresh, the genre basically non existent on the App Store, but even from the outset the risks that the team faced were greatly reduced by building on Blizzard’s strengths.
I also believe that this is the case whether you are a mid sized developer like Wooga with 280 employees, or an indie developer with a fraction of that scale. The key is to recognize the particular skills and assets that you have, and the niches where you can best apply these. Smaller companies may need to choose small niches to succeed, but they also need smaller successes to cover their costs. As a smaller company you can serve niches that aren’t big enough to warrant the attention of bigger players. As you serve that niche you should aim to build up tools, marketing channels such as email lists and other assets that aid your future work and thereby grow your business.
Learning from my recent experience, for my next project I will work on something that builds on a far greater number of Wooga’s assets. This is the best way for me to maximize my chances of seeing my game launched and successful – a goal that I am sure many developers can sympathize with. This might sound like a dispassionate approach to making games, but I don’t feel that it needs to be. Like most people in the industry, I work in games because I love games. Building on the assets that Wooga already has may seem constraining given the wonderful variety of games that exist. But it is an additional constraint and not the definition of an entire project, and as the saying goes, creativity loves constraints.
This article was originally published on Gamasutra
Free to Play: Coming to everything near you!
Since F2P became the dominant business model in mobile games, AAA publishers are anticipating changes throughout other platforms as well.
All the signs are pointing to the big traditional publishers to double down on digital games-as-a-service type models, especially free to play. EA’s recent earning calls show that their digital offerings are growing healthily, and that the CEO plans to continue to focus on delivering core experiences but with a free to try model. Activision’s headline for their earning call was Hearthstone and Destiny. They brought in $850M alone in new revenue. Now more than 46% of Activisions profits are coming from digital storefronts, not games sold in stores. Nintendo will clearly be focusing more on digital in the upcoming years. They are collaborating with GungHo on Pokemon Shuffle, and their recent financials shows their digital sales are a glimmer of hope in their rocky future.
The traditional big publishers are shifting to digital sales and free to play. We will see a bigger and bigger shift in game design of the mainstream commercial products because of this.
But shifting to digital services for many of these publishers is no easy task. The pay-to-play vs free-to-play model is drastically different when it comes to design. Thus far many attempts haven’t worked. Either the designs copy far too much from current free-to-play models and leave the current base alienated, such as “Age of Empires Castle Siege” by Microsoft. Or the designs are clearly a pay-to-play game at its core, and they fail to retain players long enough to generate revenue.
This is Age of Empires Castle Siege. A clear clone of Clash of Clans in an attempt to bring F2P to Windows 8/Mobile.
But publishers are starting to get this mixture between traditional game design and free to play game design right.
My prediction is that in the next few years we are going to see some excellent titles that really start to bridge the gap between free to play design and traditional game design.
This type of experience will soon be the norm for F2P.
Why can’t Call of Duty be F2P?
Traditional games, like Call of Duty, have been massive budget affairs. I remember working on Need for Speed in 2008 when we discussed the “D-Day” experience that is imperative for all console titles. The first experience a player gets within a console game has to be jaw dropping. This term came from the first Call of Duty game. The first mission had the player fight on the beaches of D-Day. The experience was a faithful recreation to the actual event in World War Two. This single mission cost a large portion of the budget for the game and it was worth it — the first experience players had with the game was incredible. This ecstasy created from this experience made them talk about the game, tell friends, and purchase subsequent titles. These experiences brings in millions of players. These graphics pushes player beyond the $60 entry price to get the game.
Free to Play games thus far haven’t really cared about this. Clash of Clans, Hay Day, etc. have nice art styles. But just by looking at the advertisements I already understand what I’m getting: a simple distraction. Not an experience.
There is a reason why most F2P games haven’t really focused on this experience. It comes down to what defines the game as successful. Pay to Play games like Call of Duty just need to get players past the entry fee of $60 and excited enough within the game to develop some word of mouth. If they beat the game after 14 hours and never play again, the publisher doesn’t care. F2P games are the opposite. Their focus is on driving long term retention. This comes with a price on the experience. The experience is slowed and blurred by timers, complex economies, and slow pacing.
Thus far pay to play experiences haven’t merged with free to play because no one has managed to build a strong experience while pacing the player properly.
I’m proud of the work Wooga is doing to push higher quality experiences in Free to Play games. Agent Alice and Pearl’s Peril are two games that are pushing the bounds of F2P on mobile. The games center around a strong serial narrative. The central narrative last for years within the game, because its given to the player only on a once-per-week basis (like TV shows). These games have found a sweet spot between giving a strong experience to players while pacing properly for long term retention.
How can Console move to F2P?
To merge strong experience design and long term retention is not easy. But we’ve already seen excellent examples of how game designers are subtly nudging their designs already down this route.
To see an example of strong retention design, play Dragon Age Inquisition. Dragon Age Inquisition was released late 2014 to critical success. The game is massive (it took me over 50 hours to complete) and the story line was captivating.What really marked the game as something different for me was managing your army in the war room.
War Room decisions were an interesting take in Inquisition. Players had to weigh between available operatives and their intended effect.
Dragon Age has an interesting meta-game or macro-decision making structure outside the usual grind of quests. The player has a war room which they have three operatives, a political mastermind, a spy master, and a general of an army. These three operatives can be sent out on various missions throughout the world. Each mission takes a specific amount of real-world time. So even when you’ve left the game or gone on long quests, these missions will continue. This type of design has been done in multiple ways, including Mafia Wars (the original Zynga hit) and even some Assassin’s Creed games. What adding this system does is give the game two levels of management for the player: a decision about what they should do with their time on the couch, and what actions should be done by the automated systems.
This two-tier system I expect to see in many more games in the future. This two-tier structure allows games to have its cake and eat it too. The player makes decisions about whether they want to do the necessary grind to progress in the story, or hand over the grind to automated systems. The timers included in the automated systems make sense — that time would have been done by the player themselves.
Dragon Age Inquisition shows that AAA design can drive long term retention. It requires progression to be gated by an economy instead of simple linear progression.
In order to accomplish this two-tier progression system, there must be an interesting economy that the player in engaged in. This type of system can only work if there are more currencies utilized than a linear progression system. If players are just moving through levels as quickly as they wish with only skill to pace them, these games aren’t going to last very long. The content will run out quicker than you can produce.
In order for a player to start the “Find Wardens” story quest, the player must collect 8 power.
To pace players you will have to use economies and currencies. In Dragon Age Inquisition they use “Power”. This currency is gained by completing side quests, sending agents on missions, and collecting and crafting items that aid your armies. In order to progress in the story, players must collect enough power and purchase the ability to start the next mission. This makes sense in the narrative and paces players properly.
Borderlands proves that a loot drop system can work in other genres beyond RPGs. Progression can be slowed by pushing players to collect better items.
Other genres have already shown excellent designs on how economies can be injected and feel natural to the game. Borderlands shows that loot-drop systems can be used to make players need to collect and grind for items before they can progress in the game. Destiny shows that this model can be taken to work at a MMO level.
Warlords of Draenor, WoW Expansion, adds a fully featured village building component to the MMO.
World of Warcraft’s new expansion “Warlords of Draenor” shows that even village-building components make sense. For WoW, the first tier is engaging and grinding through raids and quests with friends. The second tier is managing your garrison, the auction house, and your followers.
This two-tier approach is the key for future AAA games to bridge the gap to F2P and games-as-a-service. When players are engaged in a properly managed economy, pacing can happen, and long term retention can occur in a strong console-like experience.
The Future is Cross-Platform
I expect that in the coming years many more console and PC titles that are aimed at the mainstream will move to games-as-a-service models and in its wake we will see designs shift to a more economy-focused design.
Players will have two-tiers of managing their game: Players can grind through open world environments to collect resources, guns, loot, or any other designed economies. Or players can engage in the second tier: sending their army, their followers, their pet robot, to collect and grind for them. This tier is managed through monitoring timers and making commitments to return.
This second tier can be managed on console/PC, but more likely these games will have companion games which allow their timer management to be done on their phone. In this way each platform delivers on its strengths: The Console/PC deliver amazing graphical experiences that last for hours, and Mobile delivers strong session design and long term commitment from players.
Expect that Console and PC games will slowly push players to engage in their economies outside the game. Using companion games on mobile, these games will keep players connected.
We can see this with games like FIFA 15 and Madden 15. Play the game on your console, but while you’re away you can bid on new players and trade players. The game never leaves you and this feels natural.
Each platform delivers on its strengths: console has great controls and gameplay that can’t be matched by phones or tablets. Mobile allows the player to be always connected and engaging with the economy.
Expect this type of interaction will become the norm for future EA games and digital games overall.
Wrap Up
The traditional gaming space is clearly showing signs that its moving towards a digital future.
To make this transition, game designs will need to change. In order to move to this model, commercial games will have to adjust their progression systems to focus on economies and currencies to gate and pace players.
When economies are injected, a two-tier progression model can take place. Players can make choices between grinding out progression themselves, or using automated or timer-based systems to grind out for them.
When a two-tier system is in place, you can create games that are always connected. Cross-platform services that have the players attention whether they are playing on the couch or are out and about.
This is how the industry is moving. A digital future that is focused on games-as-a-service, long term retention and always-connected play.
Will pay-to-play games die off? Most likely not. But they will not exist in the same mainstream context that they do now.
Will this transition to games as a service and long term retention water down the experience of our players?
That’s really up to designers like you. We as game designers must find ways to make economies engaging and complement the experience rather than detract from it. How that can be done is yet to be seen.
How to start a new game
Starting a new game is a daunting task. You operate in a design vacuum. The possibilities are nearly endless. The chance of failure incredibly high. Logic and reason of what games make it to the top is alchemy, and mostly just biased observations. Coming up with what the next hit game will be is a bit like throwing darts while blind.
From years of starting projects from square one, I’ve found a process that works for me. A process that helps me get off the ground quickly and moving on an idea that can work in the market. The process is mostly adapted from “The new business model canvas” as well as many Lean and Agile Product Vision processes.
Creating a new game is about firstly identifying a potential market, then building empathy for that target audience, using the empathy to design a concrete definition of your product, and then testing this vision as quickly as possible with real end customers. This vision will drive the development of your game.
To even begin, you have to start from some inspiration.
Step 1: Find your Blue Ocean
Natural Motion’s “My Horse”. A game that is targetted towards fans of horse fans of all ages. A blue ocean for the App Store.
My strategy is to find a blue ocean. Find a market, a niche, a genre, a player type that is currently under-serviced by the top grossing games.
Natural Motion has spoken multiple times about this approach to their games. My Horse, CSR Racing and Clumsy Ninja are all masterful games that were targeted at blue oceans. When My Horse was released, many of the games that were targeted towards horse fans on mobile were unpolished, 2D, and a terrible experience. Natural Motion came out with a product that really hit what this market wanted: realistic 3D horses. Players can pet them and watch the horse react realistically. They could care for them, and even pick up their shit. Exactly what fans of horses wanted!
When working out of XMG Studio in Toronto we were a very small, indie developer. We knew that we couldn’t fight for market share against the larger developers in crowded genres. Instead, we chose to focus on niches that we felt we could hold on to : Car fanatics and Fashion. We created Drag Racer which held the mobile racing market very well from 2009 – 2012 as well as Fashion Star Boutique which remains one of XMG’s top grossing hits. They were hits because we operated in spaces that many of the bigger developers wouldn’t. We could sit on these games and carve a large market share for the small niche with ease. Aiming for these blue oceans is a viable strategy, especially for indie developers.
Magazine racks are excellent spots to do research. What niches are here that current games aren’t targetting?
Blue Oceans can be found everywhere. Even in this crowded mobile space, looking down at the Top Grossing try to identify genres, themes and playing styles that are currently not serviced by these games. Can you create a mobile game that services this genre?
Step 2: Build Empathy
After you’ve selected a genre, It’s about getting into the mindset of the customer. Understand why certain games in the genre failed, and why others succeeded. Play a ton of games. Write everything down. Plot points of reference on a graph and truly understand what defines this genre. Define what base feature set customers need in order for the game to be successful. Research how some games have exceeded player expectation and some games that failed to meet it.
The Kano plot is excellent for plotting features and figuring out the minimum requirements for a genre. As well as brainstorming how you can exceed their expectations.
Most likely, this genre isn’t your personal first choice. Some independent or successful game designers can design games that are essentially for themselves. They use their own experience and knowledge of the genre to design the game. This isn’t possible for all developers. When the target audience is not yourself, you need to do effective market research to truly know how to design for them.
In the early days of Zynga, it was customary that new hires would work in the customer care area of the company. For their first weeks, they would be answering phone calls from disgruntled customers. Whether intentional or not, this gave many designers a stronger backbone in designing games for this audience. Listening and hearing the wants and desires of their players allowed them to build empathy and step into the mindset of the players they would be designing for.
That is why it is important to have conversations with your target players. Understand why they play the way they play. Understand what they enjoy about the genre, but more importantly — discover why they don’t play. Why do they churn from games. What would it take for these players to leave the top grossing games? Even the most popular ones — whats the reasons why players leave this game? Identifying the chinks the armour — the areas which players hate about that game is your first order.
In the beginnings of Style Studio and Fashion Star Boutique, two games in the Fashion Design genre, it was important that we went out and talk to actual players/fans. In the case of Fashion Star Boutique, we even hired a full time Fashion Designer to help with designing the gameplay, designing the UI, and picking out all the items that players could customize. In the end the product really showed its authenticity.
Step 3: Define Your Pillars
After many, many conversations with players of your game you’ll start to notice patterns. Players of the genre will be demanding certain things about their next game. They will have annoyances, certain aspects that they don’t like, or just general fatigue in the way things have always been done.
To start creating pillars, take some of this feedback and focus on a few points you feel the audience would really be excited about. What if Clash of Clans had more depth in the battle? What if Candy Crush had alternate methods so you could get past those levels when you were stuck?
Endless Runner genre is full of design decisions that player’s don’t like.
For example, after interviewing a ton of fans of the Endless Runner genre (Temple Run, Subway Surfers), we started to see patterns about why many players dropped out. Many players complained because the beginning of the round always felt slow and the same. Advanced players would have to wait until the game got fast enough before they were challenged. Other players complained of seeing the same level over and over again. Players that left the genre complained that the game was too punishing: hitting one obstacle and getting knocked out was exciting, but felt like they got knocked out before they could understand the game.
Taking these 3 points of feedback, and playing a lot of OutRun 2, we decided that maybe we could take a different approach to the Endless Runner market. We transformed the game into an endless racer instead of a endless platformer. We focused on speed, not on avoidance. The game became about optimizing your speed to get to the next checkpoint (like OutRun 2) instead of just staying alive for as long as you can. We added mechanics like a close call system, which gave advanced users reasons to push their luck throughout the whole round. The beginnings were no longer boring, players no longer felt as punished, and we cycled new backgrounds in as the player upgraded to show progress and ensure players felt like the game was always new.
Our racer game came from focusing on addressing 3 key pain points players had from Endless Runners.
These innovations were created as pillars right from the beginning. We developed the game specifically to hit this points of feedback. This drove us through production and kept everyone on the same alignment.
Hearthstone is the great example of excellent pillar creation. In this GDC Vault talk by Eric Dodds, he articulates the importance of Pillars in Hearthstone’s creation. Specifically, he mentions certain pillars that you can really see came across in the design :
“Immediate fun for the new player”
“Allow non-competitive players to thrive”
“Simple Cards, Complex Interactions”
Hearthstone created pillars that focused on players that left the TCG genre. Aiming for simple cards with deep interactions pushed Hearthstone & TCGs to a whole new audience.
Hearthstone serviced a need of Trading Card Game (TCG) fans. They focused on “fringe” card game players that love playing TCG, but could never handle the complexity of Magic. With this focus, they managed to captivate a crowd that has always been turned away by games like Magic. These pillars defined what exactly the final game must feel like in order to be successful. They succeeded, and according to Eric, it had a lot to do with sticking with these guiding pillars throughout production.
Step 4: Fake it ’til you make it
When you have pillars, you have a strong vision for the game. Now you need to create a working prototype as quickly as possible.
You can start on developing a prototype, but this takes too long. Instead, focus on creating simple sketch mockups of key screens in your game as quickly as possible. Do whatever you can to articulate the exact vision you have for hitting those pillars.
How will the game look on device?
Can you articulate the unique aspects of the game in just a few screens?
Are the changes you are making exciting enough to your target audience?
If People aren’t excited when they’ve seen your sketches and discussed the product, they never will be. So iterate on the sketches, brainstorm about more innovations and get more feedback. Many times this will take weeks before an idea really fleshes out, and more often then not, your first idea sucks. That’s fine!
In Summary
The key to building a hit game is very similar to building an app or a business. It comes down to identifying a market need and servicing that need with a new game design. Even in games players have needs (or maybe wants) about what a new game they would be willing to play would be. Identifying large or small blue oceans is the first step. Making sure that there’s a market gap wide enough that by the time you get the game finished — the competition won’t be already swallowing up all of the market share. From here its about truly empathizing with this audience — recognizing what needs this audience currently does not have serviced. I
s it that the current genre options are polished or aesthetically pleasing like CSR or My Horse’s path to success?
Is it that the game design is just too complex for mobile gamers to get into like Hearthstone’s path?
Or maybe its as simple as the current offering just doesn’t have systems that draw players in for the long run, like Endless Runners.
Recognizing these needs, then solidifying them into pillars is the best way to start a new project.
There are 3 ways to win on the Mobile App Store (Part 2)
In order to be successful on the App Store a lot has to go right. Since 2012, the App Store has hit a point of maturity. The top grossing charts are in stasis with very little change from month to month. The winners of the App Store have been decided, and now the remaining developers are trying desperately to hold on to their existing market niches. Just recently (January 2014) in a report by Gartner they estimate by 2018 that less than 0.01% of all consumer mobile apps will be deemed a commercial success.
It’s not all so bleak though.
Looking back at the success stories since 2012, you can see some clear patterns of how developers built successes from this difficult market. Some clever developers have managed to launch games that turn a profit despite the trends. From comparing these success stories, I can see 3 clear paths that small developers can take to have a shot at being profitable on the AppStore.
If you don’t have the brand equity of Blizzard, Rovio, or EA, or if you don’t have the marketing budgets of King, Supercell or Zynga, then these 3 paths are really your only option to succeed:
Feature or Bust: do everything you can to get a feature.
Free to Pay your way to the top: optimize for CPI and LTV. Play the performance marketing game.
Viral Sensation: get lucky and build a game that just blows up on its own.
The first option I discussed in my last post. Create an amazing mobile experience and do everything in your power to ensure a featured spot from Apple or Google.
This is the best path for small, creative indie developers. For any developer that can’t fork over $400,000+ for a marketing budget should consider the first option.
But this option comes with limitations. The number of developers fighting for featuring grows by the day. There are limited slots each week that can be used for featuring, and only the top spots will drive the discoverability needed to sustainably bring in a profit. The bar for how much you need to invest into polishing your game is growing week by week. There is also a low revenue ceiling for these types of games. In order to get over $1 million in revenue, you need to have an editor’s choice featuring. This type of feature is not easy to get.
When you fight for featuring, it all comes down to getting the Editor’s choice.
As a developer looking to grow beyond just a 10-20 member studio, they must look beyond such a risky path to generating hit games. In order to hit bigger margins on games, you have to move to Free to Play. It is obvious just from glancing at the Top Grossing charts for the last few years that free to play is dominant and is here to stay. Clash of Clans clears over $1M/day according to AppAnnie. The only paid game that has consistently been in the top grossing since 2012 has been Minecraft.
The 2nd Path: Free to Pay your Way to the Top
So if you need to go bigger, how do you find success in the free to play market?
You need:
A game with incredibly strong long term retention
A game with equally strong monetization
Deep pockets to spend on marketing (user acquisition)
A good product is not enough. You need to be able to build a better product than the competitors, that keeps players playing for months longer than the competition, and then outspend them on marketing. If you can’t do these three things, your game will sink like a stone.
Free to Play Games must last for years, not days
Free to Play games are drastically different from traditional console games or paid games on the AppStore. As I discussed last week, if you choose the 1st option to succeed on the AppStore (“Feature or Bust”), your focus is on creating an amazing first experience. Creating just a few days worth of content is entirely okay. Players are fine with a quick, polished experience for their $2.99. You don’t need to sweat out creating months of content for players to consume. However, Free to Play is drastically different: the success of your game hinges on your ability to keep players playing for months, if not years.
In the early days of free to play on mobile, developers focused on creating revenue within the first week of a player playing the game. Players would start a free to play game and be accosted by deals and tricks to get them to spend as quickly as possible. Nowadays this has completely changed. The common approach now is that players that enjoy a game for months are more willing to spend, and will spend much more.
Tracking and optimizing retention is imperative. Ensuring that a substantial (5+%) of players come back 30, 60, 90+ days after opening is crucial to free to play success.
So unlike creating games to be featured (the 1st path), this second path is the exact opposite. Your success hinges on your ability to create a game that lasts for months. Focus should be on mechanics over aesthetics. Mechanics that drive players to return each day for months on end, and ultimately create systems that encourage players to eventually pay.
On top of this, developers will need to make a commitment to this game for many months after the launch. In order to drive the long term retention to where it needs to be, developers must invest heavily in consistent content updates. Updating your game every 2-3 weeks is imperative. As a small developer, this commitment to a single game may be deadly. Free to Play only works for larger developers.
If you don’t think you can create a game that will last for months on first launch, then rethink your path to be successful in this market.
LTV > CPI is all that matters
The second step to creating a successful free to play game is to make the magic formula work : Your game’s LTV must be greater than CPI.
LTV : Lifetime Value. This is the amount of money an average player will spend throughout their entire time playing your game. This is a reflection of your retention curve (how long players will remain in your game) multiplied by your game’s ability to monetize over that curve. To increase: retain players for longer and monetize on that game better.
CPI : Cost per Install. This is the average cost marketing must spend in order to push a customer all the way until the point of installing and opening up the game. This number is heavily dependant on marketing as well as the theme and art style of your game. How costly is it to acquire a player that likes your game enough to install it? Word of mouth, brand recognition, reddit posts all come into this. If you have a large user base that you can get to download your game for free, even better.
Optimizing these two numbers is the only way to success with Free to Play games.
As a small developer, how can you make this equation work?
First off, you need an amazing game. That’s not an easy accomplishment, but must be the base for making the LTV vs CPI equation work. Assuming you’ve got a healthy LTV (over $2) then it makes sense to start looking into smart ways of acquiring users.
As a small developer, you don’t need to be in the Top 10 grossing charts to bring in a profit on a free to play game. CPI scales with volume. So purchasing 2,000 new players a day can have a much smaller cost per install than purchasing the 20,000 new players required for a massive blockbuster. As a small developer you can be smart about purchasing enough volume of users to pay the bills and avoiding the big spenders.
Otherwise, as a small developer you’ll need to find a publisher or an investor to fork over the necessary cash to drive serious marketing out of the game. Dimitar Draganov mentioned in “Freemium Mobile Games : Design & Monetization” that a marketing budget must be minimum $400K. That was back in 2013. This baseline has only increased since then. According to AppAnnie and Flurry this trend will most likely continue to climb as long as the biggest developers have strong LTVs and can afford the CPIs.
The 3rd Path : Viral Sensation
This is the most elusive and undocumented of the paths. I myself have had no experience creating games like this, but have only watched as some games have become successful using this route.
Games like Words with Friends, Draw Something, Flappy Bird, Fun Run, Canabalt, and QuizUp are all games that drove a massive audience to their game by virality and word of mouth alone. They didn’t need featuring from Apple, many didn’t spend a dime on marketing.
Fun Run Multiplayer was built by a bunch of students for a school project. They polished and launched it on the AppStore themselves. It became a massive hit with a younger crowd (13-18 year olds) which resulted in the game reaching a dominant Top Free ranking position. They even managed to creep into the Top Grossing charts for a limited time. How they did this? I can only speculate. Focusing on a younger demographic that is more likely to spread games via word of mouth at school when all their friends have iPod touches or iPhones improves your chances of being viral. Ultimately they did not need to be featured or pay for marketing.
Flappy Bird was a massive news headline in early 2014. It left the mobile development world speechless why a game so simple could traverse the charts so easily. Tech Crunch did an excellent write up on the Flappy Bird phenomenon: http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/why-fads-fade-the-inevitable-death-of-flappy-bird/ . The game was incredibly addictive: it gave players always a reason to try once more. The player’s reason for failing was always blatantly obvious: tap better next time! This game again was for a younger audience — but captured an even wider one than Fun Run. This was a game that was so frustrating that players couldn’t help but tell their friends about it. It shot up on discussion boards everywhere. People naturally wanted to share their scores and their stories from playing this game.
Games like QuizUp, Draw Something and Words with Friends did something different. They built games that word of mouth and virality was at its core. You can’t play these games unless you get your friends to play it. Friends themselves are constantly prodding you to play one more turn. This drove massive growth for these games. Everyone was playing — to the point that Zynga purchased Newtoy (Words with Friends developer) and OMGPOP (Draw Something developer). These games were quick to rise and fall, but it was long enough for the developers.
Most of these games are very broad audience games. They appeal to a wide range of player types and demographics; this supports the game’s viral ability. You can’t create games that are niche that depend on word of mouth.
However, these games are risky. Words with friends didn’t even show signs of life until more than 6 months after their first launch. Most companies would have put the game to rest long before the game got the attention of the public. But when the game took off, it took off like a rocket.
Yet with all of these games, what goes up must come down. These games float in the top charts for awhile, but then sink incredibly quickly. Unpredictably, these fads are over almost as quickly as they came. So developers must seek to make money while they can. This success is fleeting.
Going for a viral hit is by far the most elusive path to choose. Its always difficult to see what games will become a viral sensation. But regardless, each year, one developer always wins the lottery. There will always be stories of developers arguing that you don’t need to sink years in to making beautiful games (the 1st path) or spend a dime on marketing (the 2nd path) to succeed. If we all could be so lucky.
In Summary
This market is incredibly tough, but in summary there are 3 distinct routes that a developer can take today that can lead to success :
Feature or Bust Focus on featuring from Apple and Google.
Go paid, not free.
Focus on experience, not on monetization.
Build games with an incredibly strong aesthetic experience.
Don’t fuss with a massive amount of content.
Focus on an experience that is a polished and fun few hours.
Free to Pay to the Top Build a game that will retain players for months, even years.
Find ways to optimize your LTV with retention and monetization.
Find a way to get $400K+ for a marketing budget to push the game to the top.
Hope that LTV > CPI, and that the game can sustain in the Top Grossing Ranks.
Viral Sensation Incredibly risky, and not much is known how to accomplish.
Aim for a broad audience game that enforces word of mouth marketing.
Pray that it eventually takes off.
Each of the big successes since 2012 have gone down one of these 3 paths. Each of these successes have spoken at length how they’ve won the lottery that is the AppStore. The mobile industry in 2015 will surely bring some surprises. For the rest of us that can’t count on surprises, looking for an equation for how to build a hit game, this is as close as you can get.
There are 3 ways to win on the Mobile App Store (Part 1)
The mobile App Store is a mature, saturated market. If you are a newcomer to the space thinking that there is still a chance to win, then you’re too late. That only existed from 2008-2011. Since 2012 the space has been a rapidly maturing industry. Innovation is scarce, barriers to entry are higher than ever, and the aim of hitting a top 10 grossing game is a seemingly impossible feat. The winners of mobile have been decided: they have the money, the long funnel, and the users to be able to dominate the top grossing charts.
Launching a game without spending $400K+ in performance marketing or getting a prominent featuring by Apple is a death sentence for your game. Regardless of how good it is. Discovery on the AppStore is no longer free and easy. Don’t expect to get noticed unless you seriously invest in your discovery.
many of the top 10 grossing games have now been on the charts for over a year. How do you compete with that?
So… as a developer in the market, what do you do? How do you deliver great new gameplay to the massive mobile audience without getting overshadowed by the largest developers?
From looking at the top grossing chart for the past 2-3 years I can see 3 clear ways games became a hit. To get enough discovery on the AppStore, it is my opinion to focus on one of these 3 paths. Each are extremely difficult, but each has the potential to make it big.
Feature or Bust: do everything you can to get a feature.
Free to Pay your way to the top: optimize for CPI and LTV. Play the performance marketing game.
Viral Sensation: get lucky and build a game that just blows up on its own.
Today I’ll talk about #1, then i’ll finish off with #2 & #3 next week.
#1: Feature or Bust
It is not in Apple or Google’s best interest that the market is not really innovating any more.
Apple and Google want novel games coming out every week on the AppStore. This drives customers to check the store often. These customers are also more likely to pay for new games to try out.
Apple and Google work hard to fight this trend. They have full control over the discovery on the AppStore, and it is in their best interest to find games that showcase their hardware and give amazing experiences to the players. Games like the Room, Monument Valley, and Leo’s Fortune drive customers to check the AppStore each week. Players love these experiences, and want to find new exciting games.
So one way to go about becoming successful on the AppStore is working as closely as possible with the platform owners (Apple or Google) to ensure the best possible featuring. Create a game that has a novel mechanic, looks beautiful, and showcases the hardware.
This all sounds like an easy choice. Make a game that is good enough that Apple will feature it. But each week over 1000 new games/apps are submitted to Apple. Are you confident that you are the top of all those entries?
Each week seasoned developers from consoles and AAA PC games are porting their famous franchises to the platform. Do you think you’re game is more worthy of the position than the next “Call of Duty” game for iOS? Each week indie developers are launching their games that they’ve sunk 4+ years of their life into working from their garage. Can you compete on quality with these guys? Every week there are bigger and bigger franchises that are launching, so building a new game in this space is not as simple as simply chatting with Apple or Google a few weeks before your launch.
It’s all about Art, Experience & Novelty
To approach this, take a look at some of the games that have been featured by Apple in the last months. Each week there is a new prominently featured game on the AppStore. They are each beautifully done and focused on creating an amazing experience. The bar is set high — Apple will only feature you if you can compete with all the other developers knocking at their door.
Can your game’s mechanics and visual style compete with Threes?
To find out how far you are from getting featured, start user testing your product package (icon & screenshots).
Start by bringing in some external, unbiased players to test your game. Ask them to look at your icon and your screenshots, then compare these to a recently featured games. Which would they prefer to buy? If they aren’t completely sold by your game, then think again. Apple only selects the best of the best, so make sure you start off strong — build a strong product identity that showcases what is different about your game right from the beginning. Nail the icon and screenshots before you’ve committed to development. This method will help you focus on the artwork and the communication of your differentiating features. If you can’t communicate why your game is unique and worth playing within an icon and a few screen shots, customers won’t buy your product and Apple won’t feature you.
As Ken Wong presented in his amazing GDC Europe speech, this market model works for games that are focused on creating amazing aesthetic experiences. This is not a model for games that focus on differentiation only in their mechanics. This model hinges on creating a game experience that is incredibly memorable. It should have your whole audience tweeting and celebrating its completion:
From Monument Valley’s website : some examples of reviews of Monument Valley
But when going with this business model, its important to focus on what matters, and not stretching yourself too thin when delivering the game.
http://windosill.com/ Windosill is a game that is really the best example of a visceral interface. Each action you do feels alive, organic and interesting. Aim for this feeling when creating the best aesthetic experience.
Focus on simple, intuitive mechanics that promote your aesthetics over complex mechanics that focus on niche audiences or require a high entry barrier to understand the mechanics. Like Windowsill, focus on making everything feel interactive and alive.
Focus on amazing artwork and aesthetic setting. These types of games should be started from a piece of artwork over a simple prototype displaying the mechanics. The story, setting and theme should come first, then mechanics afterwards. Showing potential players early your artwork and videos of your game should excite and build anticipation from players. The artwork should seek to pull players in just by seeing a small percent of the game play. When you’ve got your artwork to the point that its exciting your potential players, then it’s okay to start.
Monument Valley is a short game — but celebrated as so.
The game doesn’t need to be difficult or balanced perfectly. You just need to make sure the mechanic lasts for 2-4 hours on their device. Building a long lasting game will most likely be a waste of content, players on mobile download a new featured game once per week. They like experiences that are bite-sized but don’t require hours and hours to fully enjoy. As you can see from the Monument Valley response, the audience is not turned off by the shortness of the gameplay — its seen as a positive point. Don’t attempt to build a full console title worth of content if you don’t need to.
Focus on the Experience, not on Monetization
In my opinion, this path should focus on games that are paid, not free. This is somewhat controversial because you could make more money if you go free, but free with in-app purchases will push to make design decisions that are bad for your overall experience. Unless you really know what you’re doing, I would always suggest to go paid. You can then focus on what will get you the feature: amazing artwork, intuitive controls, and simplicity. Injecting Ads, In-App Purchases or monetization tricks is not a simple path. There is still a massive audience that is perfectly okay with purchasing games. This audience is looking for novel gameplay and gorgeous artwork, so don’t go half way and deliver an okay experience so you can have your cake and eat it too by trying to squeeze every dollar out of your players.
Keep focused on creating an amazing experience, ditch the free to play.
Ads and interstitials will only hurt your chances of getting featured. Stay focused on the experience, not on the money.
Price point for a paid game is a big debate. I would suggest going higher than you think. Featuring lasts between 1 week to 2 weeks. After this window, you will have very little discovery. Making sure you make as much money during this small window is very important. As a feature, players are far less price sensitive. If Apple has featured you, you must be worth the price! After these 2 weeks you can consider doing some promotional pricing. This may stir up downloads, but by that point your discovery will be so small. These price drops will only give you temporary small boosts.
To give you some pointers on price point, I would say $0.99 is only for games that look very simple and is more of a “while riding the subway” kind of distraction (ex. Threes). $2.99-$4.99 should be for games that provide 4-8 hours of content, and look amazing (ex. Monument Valley). $9.99 to $14.99 should be reserved for games that you believe players will get a “console-like” experience from: 10+ hours of fun, amazing graphics, and have a big developer or a big brand to push players over the hump when deciding whether or not to purchase the game.
You won’t be a millionaire
Games that are paid don’t make nearly as much money as free to play games. A top grossing free game makes hundreds of thousands of dollars each day, and usually can float within the top grossing charts for 6 months to over 3 years (Diamond Dash just celebrated its 3 year anniversary on iOS). The typical featured paid game will struggle to make that in its lifetime. Unless you get the editor’s choice and are featured predominantly on both platforms like Threes, Monument Valley or The Room, you will be looking below $1 million in total revenue. So when developing your game, keep in mind the risk of not being featured as well as the likelihood of being able to create a profitable game. Keep your development costs as low as possible. Having a 100+ person studio cranking out paid games is incredibly risky, the likelihood of being able to crank out hit after hit at a fast enough pace is very, very slim. Which is why most major developers have moved to free to play.
Also consider whether a full “games as a service” model works for you. Launching a game, then updating it each month is a big cost. Testing and resubmitting always takes far more time than you think it should. Ensure that the cost of updating your game as well as the amount of hassle to update the game each month is actually worth it to your bottom line. These types of games can be launched then updated only when necessary. Free to Play games are more likely to be updated on a monthly basis.
You don’t need a publisher
Publishers have been fighting for a place in the mobile market for awhile. Publishers made a lot of sense during the console era. During this era they handled communication & certification with the platform owner (Nintendo, Sony). They managed publishing and distribution of your game (shipping the physical package). They had the marketing budgets and contacts required to ensure your game was discovered by players everywhere.
But mobile doesn’t need that. Distribution is free, you can sign up for an account for $100/year to publish with Apple. Marketing and discovery is mostly handled by Apple if you aim for featuring. Certification is all done through apple review. Yet still there have been a few bigger publishers that have grown over the years, most notably is Chillingo. Publishers take between 10% to 30% and offer some help with discover-ability. They usually help mitigate conversations with the platform owners (ex. Apple), can provide support with performance marketing, and sometimes have a sizeable cross-game network to push players from one game to another.
However, you don’t need a publisher to get a contact at Apple or Google. Getting a developer contact at either of these companies is relatively simple, and just requires a little bit of networking. From here, keeping in close contact with them and sending builds and getting feedback from them is usually not difficult and provides great value. It’s in Apple and Google’s best interest that indie developers can work with them. It’s in Apple and Google’s best interest that they have direct communication with developers and that they can identify the best games coming up the pipeline as quickly as possible.
Publishers can help out with discoverability by doing some performance marketing. However if you’re going for a paid game, performance marketing is ineffective. Its more than likely that a publisher will not invest money into performance marketing unless the CPI to LTV equation works. I’ve never seen this work for a paid game. Most publishers never agree to a minimum marketing spend or a minimum users delivered for this reason. You will get the most amount of users from featuring from Apple, so you may as well focus on them. Also many publishers can deliver a ton of users using cross-game networks, but rarely are these users very active or engaged in the game.
Publishers biggest value is to provide consulting and comments on your game while its in development to help you launch it with the best chance of featuring. So if that value makes sense to you, then get a publisher. If you’re already a competent mobile developer that is comfortable with networking with Google and Apple, a publisher is not the best path.
Make it amazing or don’t launch it at all
This goes counter to the previous point. You have a lower ceiling when building this type of game than a free to play game. However, you’re still competing with thousands of other developers each week to catch the attention of Apple, and ultimately the customers. You need to create a game that beats out all other developer’s games by at least some measurable margin. If you miss this mark, even by a little, you risk getting minimally featured or not featured at all. When this happens, all costs up to this point are sunk: all that time you spent developing the game, marketing the game, obsessing over the design and experience is completely worthless. Your game will drop to the bargain bin basement of the AppStore, and is never to be seen by the masses. This is the most difficult part about this mobile market, and the industry as a whole. We are caught in a massive arms race between thousands of game developers. Each developer is seeking to one-up all others to inch themselves closer to this featuring which is absolutely critical for success. Amazing games each week drop to the bottom for the only reason that there are just too many developers attempting this business model. Too many developers are focusing on paid, aesthetically focused games that Apple and Google really have their pick of the litter. In the end the cost of development, and the barrier to entry will continue to rise.
If you choose this path, go full out, or don’t go at all. Focus on creating a game that’s even better than threes, monument valley or leo’s fortune or don’t release at all.
I talk about my experience prototyping and designing new games at Wooga. Specifically how we evaluate new game ideas and ultimately decide whether a game is good enough to launch or not.
My Big 3 Takeaways :
Never be afraid of stopping a game. Build a culture that embraces that failure is expected when coming up with new game designs.
For F2P to work, you need to develop a prototype as quickly as possible that proves that it can be fun for up to a month. This is really when the “minigames” are separated from the games that actually have a chance to become a long term hit.
You can use hard KPI goals during soft launch to quickly evaluate a games potential. You can use this method to make objective decisions about whether a game has potential to become a hit (rather than endlessly discussing subjective opinions about whether a game is good enough or not)
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
