This is a continuation from last weeks analysis of the Download Charts in 2018, this week we will look at the Top Grossing Charts in 2018.

Genres and taxonomies are important distinctions for game designers. What works in one genre may not work in another. The audience – their tastes, their expectations, their desires vary dramatically. Within the app landscape, we are generally confined to the genres defined by the stores themselves. However, most of the time, they are too generic or audience trends react quickly and the standard groupings are not large enough. GameRefinery have recategorised and evaluated mobile games into 40 more relevant sub-genres. MFTP worked with their data to see how sub-genre landscape changed throughout 2018 and as a developer which genres might be overlooked or undervalued?

Top Grossing Charts in 2018

The top grossing represents the genres with the best mechanics that make people part with their cash and spend via IAPs. With all free to play the action of conversion (spending money in game) is a rare event. The vast majority of people never spend and those that do spend, spend infrequently. Therefore, games that do well in the grossing chart have game mechanics that increase the likelihood of a conversion event or the frequency of multiple conversion events.

We took the GameRefinery data set of the top 500 Grossing apps in each quarter of 2018, the games were categorised into a fixed set of 40 sub-genres according to their game mechanics. For each sub-genre, we determined:

1. The number of games in each sub-genre
2. The rank of each game
3. The Min rank, Max (mode) rank, Average rank, Median rank, Standard Deviation for each sub-genre.

Games which have a high number of titles in the the chart, could be considered as strong monetizing genres. Their mechanics encourage higher spends.  Games with the highest rank, i.e Position 1-5, earn the most money on a per app basis. High, Min or Max ranks signify that apps within the sub-genre perform very well.  Using calculated metrics we assess each of the sub-genre ability at driving high revenues on the app store.

We found some clusters of sub-genres that have more effective game mechanics at making money on the app store.  

• Rising Stars – Genres which have the highest chart rankings, but not necessarily a large number of games.
• Reliable Giants – Genres that have a large number of titles that span the full chart rankings, top to bottom
• Smash Hits – 1 or 2 titles that hit the top 20 grossing but the average game performs poorly.
• Fun but Free – Genres that support a small number of low performing titles consistently.

The Best Top Grossing Genres in 2018

The number of games in the charts over each of the quarters is a clear measure of a sub-genres ability to monetize.  These are the 4 reliable giants (Slots, Match3, Turnbased RPG, 4X Strategy) in the top grossing charts and we have covered these in the monetization section of the bible.  Each of these sub-genres support a large number (40-60) of games across all 4Q of 2018 that stay within the top 500 grossing. The rest of the genres tend to support around 5-20 games on average with Word/Trivia and Puzzle supporting the most.

Each quarter there is some movement in the number of games within a category. Categories which grew the count of games from Q1 -> Q4 in 2018 are showing stronger performance to monetize. The large dark green circle represents Q4 and the smallest pale green represents Q1. A consistent rise through 2018 would have the largest green circle at the top and the small green circle at the bottom, showing a rise in the number of chart positions being held. Slots, Battle Royale and MMORPG have all shown stead rise through 2018, whereas 4X Strategy, Tycoon/Crafting and Card Battlers have slowly dropped through 2018.  The best rising star categories outside of the Reliable Giants have been Word, Casual Sports and Casual Racing. Each of these have shown that they can grow their category in 2018. Comparing between this and the download charts, you can see that monetization is broader and less condensed although safety lies within the rising giants, which is why we see so many clones and copies of these game mechanics.

The Skew of Top Grossing Genres

Wicks

The chart above shows the spread of the revenue data. I took the average data across the 4 quarters to represent all of 2018. All the games have been ranked according to their highest average position throughout the year, the bottom left quadrant are the top performing genres. A wick (the thin blue line) is the min and max position for titles throughout 2018. A Candle the short, fat rectangle is the median and mean chart positions within 2018.  The shorter the wicks the tighter the range for the whole subgenre, meaning more concentrate chart positions. Concentrated high chart positions are favoured because the higher the rank the greater the ability to drive monetization. However, the number of games per category vary wildly and a larger number of games naturally increases the length of the wicks.

AR games such as Jurassic World Alive, Puzzle RPG and Card Battlers all have a number of titles that sit very high in the charts with a tight overall range. These sub-genres represent the rising stars of the grossing charts as they have a small number of top performing titles. It could also mean that gamers in these genres are more fickle, and favour 1 or 2 top titles with unique mechanics rather than playing a range of titles that each feature similar mechanics, like the reliable giants.  A lot of these sub genres also represent new and emerging niches in 2018 and when you observe the data across the 4Q you can often see more game entering and climbing the charts quickly.

Candles

If a genre has a dark blue central candle then it means the genre skewed positively, it’s Mean was higher than its median. A positive skew means that of all the games in the sub-genre more of them were of a higher rank than the average, meaning more games towards the top of the charts.  If the candle is white then the genre skewed negatively meaning more of the titles lay towards the lower end of the charts. The wider the bar the bigger the skew.

Games with long blue candles and very low wicks tend to show genres which have a number of top ranking games pulling up some low rank games. Battle Royale, Synchronous Battler and Interactive Story genres all show some stellar titles in the category, but also likely have fast following low performing titles bringing the average down.

Games with long with candles and short overall wicks represent genres that sit in the middle of the ranks, with a larger number of mid ground titles. Card Battler, Bingo and Breeding all feature stable but not stellar performances throughout 2018.

Bubble Chart of Top Grossing Genres

Top ranking games make the most money and we know that the store itself. Another visual representation of the same data shows the count highlighted by the size of bubble. AR and Puzzle rank highest overall throughout 2018 but have a small number of titles. 4X and Slots have the largest number of consistently performing game in the Top Grossing for 2018.

Competition on the App Store

Competitiveness is a huge factor in deciding which genre to try to attack when building your next game. The more games in a sub-genre, the harder it is to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd. A small number of titles with a low average rank however, means that the mechanics of the sub-genre itself might not support good monetization and is also a risky undertaking. It is therefore prudent to try to create a game in a genre with a lower number of titles, that each maintain a high average rank. We favour games which are rank 1-10 disproportionately as they take a lot more money than the lower ranks and we also prefer genres which have a positive skew as that’s showing that more of their titles are sitting higher in the charts than lower. We then combine this together to form the Genre Score (This is not a perfect mathematical score, something we came up with) and these game genres. Anything over 0 is good.  

Match 3, even with it’s competitiveness still stands out as a clear favourite for consistently monetizing an audience and maintaining high chart positions. This has been known about for some time with King and Playrix building entire studios and brands, appealing mainly towards the match3 audience. With enough uniqueness and enough marketing power there is still always room for another match3, but be prepared for the competition on the marketing side. AR and Battle Royale are still the stand out winners in terms of new entrants on the grossing chart. They have managed to support a few titles that all perform quite well while achieving high ranks.  

Conclusion

2018 has seen some real flux in the smaller genres through 2018. Although the top 4 grossing genres remained strong, rather than further consolidation there have been 2 strong entrants in the form of AR and Battle Royale that have supplied new gameplay and new monetization routes. The overall number of viable genre options available to free to play designers has increased and new monetization methods, such as subscriptions or vanity based IAPs are providing large sustainable revenues. Match3, AR and Battle Royale we’re the top genres to pick in 2018. Stay on the look out for more pure RPG, Synchronous Battlers and Turn Based RPGs which might have new twists in 2019 for more adventurous studios. For more established studios the top 4 still consistently perform but the competition from niche studios is increasing and piling on the pressure.

Not too long ago, Nintendo vowed to never make mobile free to play games. Their own hardware is too important, the “Nintendo-factor” incompatible with free to play games. First, they yielded on hardware, with the release of Mario and then on free to play through collaborating with Niantic, creating the superhit Pokemon Go. A patchy success history followed, with some projects like Fire Emblem Heroes becoming hits, and others, like Pokemon Quest and Animal Crossing, opportunities to learn. Is Dragalia Lost proof that Nintendo can achieve continuous success on mobile or another missed opportunity?

Both Pokemon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes are seen as something of a surprise hit, vastly outperforming expectations. Dragalia Lost, in turn, is a much more predictable marriage, with free to play ancient Cygames (of Rage of Bahamut fame) adding tried and proven monetization design and expert systems knowledge to Nintendo’s famous world building and quality standards.

Written by  Florian Ziegler, who just recently  started up his consultancy Lava Lake; with additions by Adam Telfer.

How well is Dragalia Lost doing?

Dragalia Lost has had a weird launch approach. Rather than launch in minor market that behave similar to their major markets (ex. Canada, Australia), Nintendo launched Dragalia in Japan, Hong Kong, and the US first. A bold soft launch, but one where they will clearly see the success of the game.

Thus far, roughly 40 days from launch, the game initially peaked on the US Top Grossing charts, but has since fallen. Now it is still falling from the Top 250 Grossing.

So is the game performing poorly? Not necessarily. The japanese app store tells a different story:

While in the US the game is fading fast, this game looks to be a new staple on the Japanese Top Grossing charts.

Yet what sends signals that this game may be a contender is that these grossing ranks have sustained despite the game dropping off significantly in downloads. This is a soft launch, not a global launch, so it’s unlikely that Nintendo have put much effort into marketing the game yet. As of now, Sensor Tower estimates that the game has racked up over 2 million downloads in soft launch, but has already generated over $27 million.

Yet to put this in context historically, let’s compare the launch of Dragalia Lost in the US with Fire Emblem Heroes, Nintendo’s best performing free to play game to date:

Surprisingly, the game is actually hitting roughly the same per user numbers at this point is a strong indicator of success. So it’s likely that even though the game is fading from the top grossing charts in the US, the game is actually performing well on a per-user basis.

So the real question is — can Nintendo effectively grow this game to the same size as Fire Emblem Heroes? Can Nintendo repeat the success of Fire Emblem with a brand new IP?

Intro to Dragalia Lost

Dragalia Lost takes players into a familiar world of high fantasy, in which humans form special bonds with dragons to enhance their powers. Unlike previous Nintendo titles, Dragalia is an entirely new IP, relying entirely on the high-quality characters and beautifully crafted experience to draw players in.

Action Phase Gameplay

Dragalia’s action phase is a top-down 3D action RPG game. Players can use a single tap to attack, move their thumb to steer and trigger special abilities of their characters or their dragon form. The gameplay is very similar to pre-idle period mobile action RPGs like White Cat Project, with an optional “auto” button that essentially turns it into Nonstop Knight.

All of it is easily played with one hand and one finger in portrait mode, making it highly accessible. Auto gameplay is relatively efficient, and if you have the needed meta power you only have to trigger abilities when they are ready and otherwise watch the game play out.

Taking manual control is only useful to maximize the rewards from treasure boxes that are sometimes out of the way of the AI combat path, or for special bosses that require more thoughtful positioning and dodging than the control algorithms are capable of.

All in all, the combat is casual enough to be left alone, but has the potential for deep boss raid gameplay, which the game offers to engaged players.

Already completed grind battles can be skipped with skip tickets, which are not monetized.

Pre-Battle Phase

As the junction between action phase and metagame, the pre-battle phase is where players determine their team strategy and loadout. Key to winning is the elemental alignment of the characters (fire, water, wind, dark and light), and how it corresponds to the battle at hand. Another factor is the character’s class (attack, support, defense, and healing), and associated weapon (sword, axe, dagger, saber, lance, bow, staff and wand).

As the combat allows for this kind of depth, badly constructed teams (such as all support characters) tend to fail frequently, giving players another reason to maintain a large roster of characters.

With four characters, each with three potential slots (weapon, Wymprint and dragon form), making the right choice can be a complicated undertaking. Cygames has, however, simplified the process massively by giving you an optimization button that tailors the setup to whatever is the most effective elemental setup at hand. This means the amount of character and item management is massively reduced compared to other games of this type.

Systems Overview

Gacha RPGs essentially run on their system design, and from a systems standpoint, Dragalia is a massive game. To understand how it can generate the staggering $15 ARPI per player, the best way is to showcase the immense breadth and depth of its progression system.

As you can see, the game follows the classical trinity core loop of fight – get resources – upgrade. Where many games keep this pretty straightforward and potentially expand in the future, Dragalia comes with an an astonishing array of of sub-systems. In fact, they apply almost every commonly successful meta progression system on the planet. With those systems added in, a game map of Dragalia looks more like this:

That’s a lot of game! We will go through these systems one by one to explain how they work.

Adventurers

Players acquire adventurers from events and the gacha system, ranging from 3-5 stars in rarity. Adventurers have one of five elements (wind, fire, water, dark and light), and can each be equipped with a weapon, a Wyrmprint (essentially an upgradable ability) and a dragon form into which they can morph during battle.

Adventurers gain XP by battling, but can also be levelled with an XP currency called crystals. Duplicate adventurers are converted to Eldwater, which in turn allows 3 and 4 star adventurers to be “unbound” meaning they can become 4 and 5 stars respectively.

Additionally, each adventurer has a “mana circle” which is essentially a character’s skill tree. It unlocks stat bonuses and skills, and it, too can be “unbound” using special materials only found on certain recurring weekday events. The amount of mana circles (and hence power options) depends on rarity, and lower rarity characters need significant amounts of investment to break their limits to unlock them.

Dragons

Adventurer’s can turn into dragons for a limited time during combat, giving them strong power increases and new special abilities. Dragons can be levelled using a special dragonfruit currency to increase their power up to a certain level cap. Getting duplicates of a dragon allows the dragon to be “limit-broken”, meaning they can now have a higher level limit cap for further upgrading.

As an additional action, players can visit their dragon’s roost and give them gifts in the form of Rupies (Dragalia’s soft currency). In turn, the bond strengthens, which gives the player more time to use the dragon form. The dragon returns the gift by bestowing random item rewards onto the player.

Dragons have individual elemental alignments, and it is possible to give a fire adventurer a water dragon, in case a player cannot muster the right high-level elemental fighters for a specific challenge.

Wyrmprints

Wyrmprints are equippable trading cards that add or alter the adventurers ability. They, too, can be levelled using their own currency and limit broken with gacha duplicates. This means that to fully level up a 5 star top rarity Wyrmprint, you would need to acquire four duplicates (appearance rate of a specific 5 star Wyrmprint is 0.083% at the time of writing) and then acquire enough specific levelling materials or dud Wyrmcards to feed into them to level them up.

Some Wyrmcards are event specific (such as the anti-boss card shown above) and are needed to get the necessary horsepower to beat the bosses at highest levels, creating the need to go through the entire journey to max out an item that is not very useful outside the event. This is a powerful way to monetize whales that have all other standard game content already.

Like dragons, they can be equipped onto any character, but usually inherently are the right choice for certain classes (such as bestowing healing bonuses onto healers).

Weapons

Weapons can be found or crafted, and are not found in the main gacha. Crafting them requires rare materials that players have to grind, gacha or purchase. Just like dragons and Wyrmprints, they are levelled and limit broken with their own currencies.

Rare elemental versions of weapons can be created, which give 50% damage bonuses to characters of the same alignment. The 4 star and 5 star versions of the elemental weapons tend to be very hard to craft, with very rare materials involved, but crucial to late game success.

Being able to craft these high level weapon in the first place is dependent on the Smithy building in the Halidom.As a further connection between Halidom and the weapons system, after a substantial amount of time in the campaign, Dojos can be built to give buffs to your various weapons.

Dependence of the weapon system on the kingdom builder part of Dragalia forces players to have a steady predictable progression metaphor that is based on time, not random drops, until they can craft endgame items.

Halidom

The Halidom is a kingdom builder, and plays by the standard rules of builder conventions. Buildings costs soft currency, time and sometimes crafting materials to build, and there are a limited amount of builders. Building can be finished up quickly for hard currency. Buildings generate resources that can be collected when they are full, and unlock certain features in the game (such as weapon crafting).

Some of the buildings buff your weapons’ and adventurers’ combat power across the board, making progression in the Halidom a long term necessity. On top of that the economic gains the player requires towards higher levels make the return-to-collect mechanic a great retention driver.

Why have all these parallel systems?

As you can see, Dragalia Lost contains a character gacha game, a trading card system, a castle builder, a crafting system and dragon pets, each with their own upgrade paths. Each system is important to progression, none can be left behind to stay competitive. This abundance of systems is Dragalia Lost’s greatest asset, but also likely its greatest curse.

From the perspective of a developer, this is great. The monetization breadth and depth is incredible, and one of the reasons that players engaged in Dragalia Lost are spending so much money in the game for long periods of time. By leveraging almost every successful power progression mechanic known to man, Cysoft has created a large playground to tweak, leverage and incentivize the economy of the game and give players more reasons to spend, and for longer.

Mind that each of these sub-economies are in themselves closed, meaning that (for the most part) the resources required in each of these economies are only used there and nowhere else, making a system of this magnitude mangeable. Each one of them can be altered without affecting the others.

From a player perspective, this approach has its drawbacks, and that becomes evident when comparing the Japanese and US American market. The Japanese are used to highly complex systems and multi-faceted progression mechanics. This is the most likely reason for the big difference in ARPI. The western mid-core audience just doesn’t have the complexity appetite for this many parallel systems. Even Fire Emblem Heroes does not have so many granular avenues to power.

In my opinion, the main reason for the success difference is the progression complexity, in which the best path to power is not necessarily clear. Players that are more used to straightforward and easily accessible power progression will be turned off.

Economy

The plethora of progression systems is but one pillar of Dragalia Lost’s highly monetizing player profile. Cygames’ reliance on a randomized reward system is the other. There is rarely such a thing as a predictable reward in Dragalia.

The Summoning Gacha

Centrepiece of all character gacha games, Cygames’ main gacha cleverly extends the pool of gacha content by adding Wyrmprints and Dragons to the mix. There are 70 launch characters, a base upon which other games could build their entire game, plus 40 dragons and almost 80 Wyrmprints (190 droppable pieces in total). While some of these are currently event-only, the amount of content for the base gacha is staggering, particularly as Wyrmprints and Dragons require many duplicates to be useful in the long run, and can only be equipped on one character!

The large amount of content allows Cygames to be very generous in offering players spins on the gacha, and hence hooking them to the mechanic.

Adding to that, Cygames also applies a “pity mechanic” that increases the chances of pulling a 5 star item (character or otherwise) after a certain amount of summons without 5 star success. This prevents spender churn due to perceived lack of fairness.

While both of these methods sound generous, the chance of getting a rare Wyrmprint is still twice that of a character, and many players end up with these instead of their true desires.

Duplicates can be fed as XP boosters to their own kind, with the exception of characters, who are substituted by a currency called Eldwater, which is used to promote lower characters to a higher rarity and unlock high level skill boosts in mana circles. What is important to note is that at of yet, there’s no endless sink for Eldwater, meaning that at some point the currency becomes useless to high spenders – I will talk about this again in the live service segment.

A crafty way to turn more players into payers is the structure of the gacha summons: a single summon is 150 Wyrmite or Diamantium, the ten-fold summon at 1500 Wyrmite/Diamantium guarantees a 4 star item. The daily single summon ,however, only costs 30 diamantium, meaning that the paid-for premium currency is vastly superior when used in daily trickles, keeping spenders playing!

Item Gacha

Since players are in constant need of a variety of currencies and crafting materials, they get a free spin at the item gacha, which returns a small amount of them. Conveniently living in the shop, this daily habit makes sure players are exposed to any special deals they might want to make use of – or to buy the missing ingredients they hope the item gacha would return.

The item gacha fulfills two important purposes: the first one is to get players to visit the in-game shop daily and come in contact with all potential purchasing offers.

The second is to ensure that players can’t miss out entirely on anything they might need in case they lose overview of the system, or have trouble grinding. Dispensing all types of the commonly needed progression resources, it ensures a minimum amount of power growth, even if a player isn’t fully efficient.

Randomized Battle Rewards

Each time a player fights a battle, they receive a few consistent resources: rupies and mana. On top of this, each level has a drop table of random rewards, that includes weapons and even low-level Wyrmprints. So to find the more tertiary resources only found in drop tables, players need to not only select the right level and fight difficulty, but also get lucky.

There is a small skill component to battle rewards in the form of treasure chests that can be found during battle for going out of one’s way, but their contribution to overall results is relatively minor.

If players need to desperately acquire a certain resource, they have the choice to either fight for randomized these rewards and potentially spend on stamina refills, or they have to buy these resources in shop packs and the item gacha.

Knowing what is the best way to acquire an item, and consequently where to spend most efficiently, is often not clear. This reduces the appeal for players who are used to easily understood power growth, and who are time poor.

At 40 Wyrmite for a stamina recovery, 50 (base) Wyrmite cost for an item summon, or around 30 USD for a pack that contains the item, Dragalia does not make acquiring an distinct item a straightforward purchase decision, either.

Dragon gifts

When gifting to Dragons (which costs Rupies or special purpose items), they offer a random set of goodies in return, along with their increase in dragon bond.

Since Dragon gifts are not very predictable or good return of investment, they are not a good way for the player to advance their progress. However, Talonstones, as pictured above, are given at certain bond levels, which makes leveling dragons relevant at specific points in the upgrade journey.

Event Gacha

If the recent events are anything to go by, Cygames are offering a special gacha type for their unique events. Unlike the other gachas, however, it is a finite gacha (also called box gacha), meaning that once an item is taken out of the pool, it cannot be rolled again. Players get full visibility on the current contents, and are even allowed to reset it, putting things back into the pool. This allows players some influence on whether they want the remaining items guaranteed or have another chance at getting the super rare drops, assuming they have already been removed from the pool.

Having this much of player progression be determined by randomized rewards systems allows for many more spending opportunities and make it easier to obfuscate balancing changes.

Live Service

There are two main ways in which Cygames currently keeps the game fresh and their players engaged: Gacha events and limited time special events.

Gacha Events

Gacha events are large-banner introductions of new characters and items to the common gacha pool. These characters have a highly increased chance of appearing (currently 0.5% instead of 0.05% for other 5 star characters) and are particularly suited to whatever the current special event challenges at hand are.

Oddly, Cygames makes no direct reference to enforce this connection, showcasing how the game accepts that players have to figure everything out by themselves, bleeding even into their monetization methods.

Limited Time Special Events

Dragalia’s current and so far only format of LTE has essentially three segments:

An engagement mode, where a new character is introduced that players are given to play with for free. This character only stays if players have won enough fights with them to increase their “friendship level” to maximum. Event fights give more points. This segment is achievable for all engaged players to complete.

Boss Battles can be completed on their own or in coop mode and hence allow players who do not want or are not able to participate in synchronous coop to earn event gacha currency, emblems (engagement rewards) and raid access tickets.

Raid Battles are coop raids only, with four players bringing in whole teams of four characters each! This is where players can earn the highest tier gold emblems and hence the best rewards.

Coop raids cost special stamina AND require the access currency from the Boss Battles, making them real stamina pinches, particularly since grinding high amounts of access currency will also cost stamina.

The true end rewards of the special event are multiple copies of the featured 5 star dragon, summoning vouchers for free gacha pulls, ultra-rare items needed for highest mana circles, “joker” items that can unbind any dragon or rare weapon ingredients.

Because all of these items are either event exclusive or barely obtainable by other means, events are a necessity for top players. Not performing well in events affects their core game performance, causing them to be heavily invested in these social coop raids.

Future Problems

The current systems design and live service model of Dragalia will likely lead to difficult endgame management.

First there is the fact that in absence of a mode that creates content on its own (such a PVP mode), players who have all or most of the standard content have nowhere to meaningfully play. There aren’t even leaderboards for the most event victories or any other measure of competitive success or dedication that keeps top players pushing.

The only motivation that keeps top players in the game is collection of future characters. This system means that future events either always need to yield the new most powerful character (power creep) or monetization will decline as players have no power-driven motivation to acquire them.

Secondly, duplicates including the substitute currency for characters, Eldwater, do not have an endless sink. This means that further spins on the gacha are a waste of money and literally return zero game state change. Top players will end up with large quantities of barren items und currency stocked up, making them precarious for use by the liveops team in the future.

Both the gameplay and the systems economy in Dragalia have distinct endpoints. Currently the solution seems to be to make the top resource acquisition incredibly grindy, which is another feature that will reduce long term appeal in the West.

Generous Rewards

One of the first things you will notice playing Dragalia Lost is how generous it is with dispensing its premium currency Wyrmite. You literally get it for everything from fighting battles, to completing dailies, to simply reading the stories of the various characters. Usually you can get enough to complete a multi-summon every day or two. There are three reasons Dragalia hands out its premium currency so freely compared to most western games.

Get you used to spending

In my opinion this is something that the Japanese developers, who first introduced this system to the mobile market, have always done better than their western counterparts: For a gacha game to truly work, gacha must be the habitual center of the game. Everything revolves around the gacha, and players must get used to it being the prime source of their progress first. To that end, sacrificing some early monetization to have people spend more in the long term is an acceptable trade-off.

Get you into the game

Mid-core games (Japanese-made in particular) tend to be complex affairs with many features, taps and sinks. Since most midcore games rely on good long term retention to make use of their feature depth, heavily incentivizing players to stick with the game until they have learned the ropes and are committed is beneficial.

Incentivize certain behaviours

The high granularity of Wyrmite (1500 for a multi-summon) allows the team to trickle small amounts everywhere to incentivize behaviours. Because the currency is so valuable players can easily be directed towards the features deemed most important. As an example, playing socially with new players in coop mode will yield a staggering 150 Wyrmite per fight.

Traditionally, most of these ultra generous reward streams will bleed dry as the players venture deeper into the game, and Dragalia Lost is no different – many of these rewards are for first time completion only. Add to that the fact that each gacha is diminishing returns as your power demands grow in the game, needing more and more more Wyrmite to make a power difference, and it becomes clear that this generosity is deceiving.

Social Systems

In a world where synchronous PVP and guild play are the buzzwords of the day, Dragalia Lost feels strangely oldschool. Relying on what is the gold standard of Japanese social features since Puzzle and Dragons, players can take the hero character of another randomly selected player into any battle to help them out.

Repeated use of the same player’s character “befriends” that player, but it has little consequence beyond allowing more frequent use of their special ability. While it appears as a social feature, it’s mostly a showcase for more powerful characters and a potential monetization driver.

Forceful Coop

Dragalia does not have a PVP system, and seemingly no plans to introduce one in the near future. Whether that was by design to take monetization pressure off to cater to the Nintendo feeling, or simply due to time and budget constraints, or because games like Dungeon Hunter had failed implementing it successfully before, one can only speculate. What is fact, however, is that Cygames have decided to double down on coop gaming.

Almost every battle, whether campaign or event, can be fought in synchronous coop mode with other players. Some modes only allow one hero (of four), others feature multi-team raids of 12 characters. Coop follows a classical lobby system, with all its drawback of waiting and dud players.

Dragalia really, really wants you to play coop, presumably because it lacks both PVP and other forms of social organisation. Not only is coop mode front and center in most battle screens, but each time you play with a new player, you get a maximum of 150 Wyrmite until you reach a (invisible) cap of several thousand.

This high incentivization means that coop is the most economically important part for players to engage with every day until they are deeply invested in the game.

On top of that, the best event rewards are only in coop raids, forcing even solitary players to play socially to advance their game state.

Considering that group raids are one of the most well-loved and most engaging elements of a whole slate of multiplayer RPGs (most famously World of Warcraft), it could well be a viable strategy to cut out the player finding and guild management and create a frictionless social raid PvE endgame.

Building a Brand

Another subtle but important aspect is that Dragalia Lost makes an active effort to create a lasting brand. Not many companies have managed to use the free to play mobile platform as a launchpad for new IP, but as a company known for beloved franchises, Nintendo does not miss the opportunity:

High quality comic strips playing out in the world of Dragalia are regularly added to the game. Players are awarded substantial amounts of premium currency to read through each character’s story, encouraging players to get deeply invested into the world of Dragalia Lost. This way Nintendo sets about creating the necessary super-fans to build a new brand from scratch that has lasting appeal.

Summary

Dragalia is probably one of the most polished mobile titles I have ever seen. Everything oozes the quality and polish you expect from a Nintendo game: from the fully voice-overed cast to the gorgeous card illustrations and expert J-Pop tunes, Dragalia Lost is a joy to behold and play.

But this polish isn’t constrained to its visuals. Cygames deploys the latest and greatest of Japanese mobile systems design, and provides one of the most accessible versions of JRPG style mobile meta designs to date. Yet so far financial differences in the US compared to the  Japanese market make clear that improving accessibility alone is not enough to wean western gamers to these highly complex systems en masse.

Its focus on coop play over guild and PVP systems is a bold choice, but one that will bite twice: firstly for leaving competitive player types stranded and secondly for putting the game firmly on a event-driven content treadmill. Because the game currently has no truly endless, self-content creating mode there’s a high chance it will run out of steam for high performing top spenders. After all, there’s only so many adventurers, Wyrmprints and weapons you can find and upgrade – after that, you are just waiting for the next event and the next character to collect.

Character collection is the endgame of Dragalia, and collection game players only make for a fraction of possible player types in the west.

Cygames is relying too much on Japanese design staples, using a highly refined version of what’s tried and proven features in free to play JRPGs for almost a decade. Clearly efforts were made to make the game more appealing to Western audiences, but it still relies too much on intrinsic player effort to understand and manage all of its complexities.

A clearer path to power and a monetization approach that responds to the player state, such as targeted offers, would substantially increase player investment in Western countries.

Without more understandable power growth, more accessible systems and a dynamic monetization design, Dragalia Lost will likely be “just” another Japanese hit. Yet, even that is a huge step forward for Nintendo on its way to be on mobile what it is for the world of console games.

Guest Post by Florian Ziegler, who just recently started up his consultancy Lava Lake; with additions by Adam Telfer.

You may have missed it. Over the easter long weekend, starting on April 14th, a new contender took the #1 Top Grossing spot in the United States: Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle. Moving aside games like Pokemon Go, Clash Royale and Game of War from their usual top spots.

This can’t have been easy. Top game developers know the importance of holiday long weekends. A time of year when many players find themselves with extra time to play games. Many games advertise big events to create higher engagement and maximise revenue. Most games show spikes in their revenue at this time of year when they push big events for holidays. Games like Pokemon Go even had major Apple featuring with their easter event:

So how did Dokkan Battle do it? How did they manage to push aside Supercell, Nintendo and Machine Zone’s holiday events and become the #1 top grossing game?

It came down to 3 reasons why

• Monetizing Core: A strong gacha-based system which drives monetization
• Driving Desire: tie-ins to the IP, community building, and rare desirable content
• Sales Design: well-timed sales surrounding the event driving players to convert multiple times

#1 Monetizing Core

If you haven’t played the game, it is a Gacha-based RPG Fighting game using the Dragon Ball Z license. Developed by BANDAI NAMCO, the game is actually 3 separate games: one released in Japan ( ドラゴンボールZ ドッカンバトル) one in China ( 龙珠激斗) and one Globally, for all other countries.

The game loops are designed similar to Summoner’s War, Fire Emblem Heroes, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, Heroes’ Charge and various other Gacha-based RPG Games on mobile. For more on how those games work, check out our deconstructions here.

Where Dragon Ball Z adjusts the formula is in the core gameplay. Instead of a standard turn-based RPG, they opted for something completely different. The game board pulls from puzzle RPG games by having a board you manipulate to deal damage (similar to Puzzles & Empires and Puzzle Quest).

In the core battle, your focus is on charging your character by collecting Ki (energy). If you collect enough Ki you will launch a super attack, a vastly more damaging and visually impressive assault with iconic moves. The board works with a path system: selecting an orb at the bottom connects with its own colour as it moves towards your opponent granting additional Ki. Additionally, matching your character’s type with orb colour yields double energy. In the example below, my hero type is red, so I want to select red balls.

While the core gameplay interaction is simple, the strategy in who you bring into the battle is where the depth comes in. The strategy comes into choosing heroes which synergize the best with each other. Each character has linking abilities, leader abilities and passive abilities. Each benefiting certain other characters. For example, LSSJ Broly has a leader skill which benefits all characters on the team which are a physical type (yellow). Broly grants all physical characters a boost to their energy, hit points, attack and defence.

The gameplay strategy overall feels light but puts significant pressure on trying to create a synergetic team of characters, which is exactly what you need when creating a Gacha-based monetization.

To collect heroes, players collect stones (premium currency) to eventually cash them in on a summon. In Dokkan Battle, each summon costs 5 stones, but the optimal strategy is to wait until you’ve collected 50 stones for a Multi-Summon, so you can summon 10 characters at a time with a guaranteed high ranking hero.

Ultimately the game is down to summoning hundreds (to thousands) of times to collect the heroes that work best together. But just getting a strong top team in the game doesn’t mean you’re finished. Then starts the long, gruelling road of awakening (evolving) your characters to their ultimate form.

Rarity	Name	Allows you to…
	Normal	Reach Max level of 20
	Rare	Max level of 40
	Super Rare	Max level of 60, can be awakened into a SSR
	Special Super Rare	Max level of 80, can be awakened into a UR
	Ultra Rare	Max level 100, can we awakened into a TUR *Does not drop in Gacha, must be awakened
	(Transcend) Ultra Rare	Max level 120, can be awakened into a LR using extremely rare event-driven currencies *Does not drop in the Gacha
	Legendary Rare	Max level 150 Can only be 1 of 3 characters + a lot of rare event currencies *Does not drop in the Gacha

If you’ve played fire emblem heroes, this will seem very familiar. Dokkan was actually first released back in February 2015 and saw many of the similar growing pains that Fire Emblem Heroes is going through now. In particular, Dokkan has added additional tiers (UR, TUR, LR) on top of their initially launched tiers to extend the amount of time it takes to reach the optimal build of a character.

In Summary, Dokkan Battle is a well crafted Gacha-based game which focuses the player on building up a strong team of heroes. They’ve built a strong base which could be capitalised on using events.

#2 Driving Desire

So how did a game with a light RPG core play rocket up the top grossing charts? What was so special about this event?

The event was a summoning festival. For 77 hours, players have the ability to summon 5 new heroes. Included in this set is 2 heroes which are very desirable: Super Saiyan God SS Vegito and Goku Black Rose. If you’re not a fan of the show: the show is about the protagonist Goku, who fights, gets beat up, powers up to a new form, the bad guy does the same, Goku gets beat up again, rinse, repeat, until eventually Goku wins (this can take many episodes). For those knowledgeable about the show’s storyline, you will also know Vegito and Goku Black are different but we will avoid going deep into the lore of the show here.

Regardless, the Dragon Ball Z IP has been revitalised in the last year, broadcasting in a new major TV show and building up a strong following once more. In particular, in the last months, this Vegito and Goku Rose have been significant new characters to the plot line. The fans of the series know these characters and are extremely excited about adding them to their team within Dokkan Battle.

Besides watching the show, BANDAI NAMCO has been teasing these new characters joining the game for months. Teasing this content using the messaging within the game (seen above), social media, and their fan forums by showing silhouettes and teasing how valuable these characters will be.

Don’t underestimate the importance of proper community management and messaging with your live ops strategy. Building up anticipation & excitement is the key to driving high engagement in events.

Visually, these characters are just a recolouring of Goku and Vegito, but mechanically they shift the meta strategies of Dokkan Battle meaningfully. For one, these characters have a leader abilities which benefit a much wider array of characters (Vegito for SUPER type, Goku for EXTREME type) and these characters can deal insane amounts of damage (even having a chance to hit multiple times). For now, the fan base sees this as meta-shifting — not overpowered. It will be interesting to see how the audience reacts in the coming months to this meta-shift, and if BANDAI NAMCO can avoid the pay-to-win feeling in western markets. These characters were actually launched 6 months ago in the Japanese version of Dokkan Battle, which gave them some lead time to smoothen out the meta and avoid any negative meta changes in the process.

By combining these elements: a transparent time-limited window, clear tie-ins with the IP, and designing extremely desirable content, Dokkan Battle has created a recipe for their user base to be ravenous about collecting the event-driven content.

#3 Sales Design

But a strong gacha-based core and some desirable content aren’t going to drive you to the top grossing on its own. To drive top grossing games it is about properly capitalising on the demand for this content. Free to play games do this through the task of setting up and designing sales. In recent years this has become much more of an artform: finding the optimal messaging, timing, and cadence for sales so that it remains special to the audience, avoids cannibalization yet drives significant revenue.

Dokkan Battle clearly is being run by live op experts when they designed the Dokkan Festival Event.

A week before the event even started, when it was only being teased to players, Dokkan Battle started offering premium currency at a significant discount in limited time windows. Players were offered sales of 50%+ off of currency packs in limited quantities. Unlike most F2P game sales, Dokkan also adds a quantity limit per sale — allowing them to offer these crazy discounts without fear of players abusing the price window. But during these sales, players stocked up on their summoning currency for the upcoming frenzy that would happen during the Dokkan festival event.

When the festival started, Dokkan Battle offered big discounts for players that would summon multiple times in a row:

You can see here, that players would get initially 40-50% off the cost of a usual multi-summon, until reaching Step 4 which gave a free multi-summon. These were designed to get as many players deep into the sale as much as possible. Each Summoning type had their own step sales function — so you could get the 25/30/50 summon discounts first for Goku, and then again for Vegito. Players invested themselves in both sales to try to claim either top prize. After Step 4, players are given a free multi summon every 4th step, so any player in desperate pursuit of the unique content (and there was plenty) would attempt to take advantage of the “Buy 3 get 1 free” sale.

On top of this benefit, each purchased summon also came with 5 additional tickets which could be traded in for additional free summons (although these tickets did not have the unique content in their pool). Although this sales system is complex, it succeeded it pulling players into the pursuit of summoning as often as they could during the limited window for the content.

With these two systems, Bandai Namco capitalised on the limited time content. They utilised a strong premium currency sale surrounding the event to push players to convert early and take advantage of sales when they could, and they created an addictive savings system for continuing to summon. This drove players to continually spend and convert in pursuit of the rare content that was available at a bargain only this weekend.

Takeaway: Strong Core + Live Ops for the win

Dokkan Battle’s surge to the top grossing was actually many years in the making. Throughout the years of development, Bandai Namco built the base for what this event ultimately achieved.

• A strong monetizing core gameplay provided a basis for Dokkan Battle to build upon live events and extremely desirable content.
• Driving desire through leveraging the IP, effective messaging with players, and designing meta-shifting content.
• Sales design surrounding the event which pushed players to convert multiple times

In the coming weeks we will see if they can maintain their position. Was this event short-term focused, or can it propel Dokkan Battle into a staple in the top spots of the App Store? Regardless it is clear that Dokkan Battle is a finely tuned monetizing machine, that will be able to leverage their content and their audience many more times in the coming year.

Huge thanks to Matt Hood for this article! Without his knowledge of the deep systems in this game, I couldn’t have put this together.