Ken Hullett GREE International

Why Are We Talking About This?  Issues in Software Engineering  Reliability  Development process  Testing  Issues in Game Development  Balance  Usability  Player preferences  Developer effort

What are Mobile and Social Games?  “Freemium” model  Free to play, pay to play more  Resource management  Time is a resource  Either “grind” or pay to avoid waiting  Less that 1% of players spend significantly  “Whales”

Monetization  From sales of in-game currency packages  Soft Currency  Can be earned through normal gameplay  Hard Currency  Generally not available through normal gameplay  Scarcity of HC is key to monetization

Roadmap  Mobile/Social Game Mechanics  Mobile/Social Game Metrics  Deep dive analyses

Fixed Interval Schedule  Built in wait times  Collect income from buildings  Have limited amount of enemy to do actions  Takes time for actions to complete  Wait times get longer as players get further  Can pay HC to skip

Gacha  Random chance of a reward  Pay HC for better odds  One free per day  Pay HC for additional chances  Might be tied to collection mechanic

Sunk Costs  Pay to avoid losing benefit of money already spent  Crops wither if player doesn’t return in time  Retry gacha

Scarcity  Some resources are scarce  Rare or impossible to get through harvesting  Limited edition items  Only available for a short time

Treadmill  Core gameplay loop  Reward player  Increase difficulty  Set higher level for next reward  Grind v. Spend  Can pay HC to advance more quickly

“EVERYTHING MUST MOVE A METRIC!”

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)  Revenue  Daily Active Users (DAU)  Monthly Active Users (MAU)  Average Revenue Per DAU (ARPDAU)  Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU)

More KPIs  Retention  1-day  2-day  7-day  30-day  Lifetime Value (LTV)  Hard Currency (HC) Spend

How can I make my game better?  “Soft Launch”  Release in Canada only  Is some feature not monetizing?  Are too few players spending?  Are there enough players?  Are players not coming back?

Live Ops  Sales  HC and SC packages  Limited Items  Epic Boss  Combat v. powerful enemy  Pay HC for better attacks  Lockbox  “Gacha” mechanic  Pay HC for better odds  Leaderboard  Modify other Live Op

Live Ops Analyses  Events doubled ARPDAU, on average  Combining Live Ops can increase revenue  Sale & other  Too much can lead to fatigue  Longer length can lead to fatigue  Shorter length can drive spending

Churn Analysis  Find features that correlate with players staying or leaving the game  Staying  Player age  Clearing land  Having SC  Leaving  Completing quests

Monetization Analysis  Who’s spending?  Whales v. Fish v. Minnows  When do they start spending?  Most whales do not monetize in first week  However, those that monetize earlier, spend more.

Conclusions  Mobile and social games depend on unique mechanics to drive monetization  Revenue mainly comes from a small percentage of players.  Data analysis helps gain insights into player behavior and spending habits

Questions? Ken Hullett UC Santa Cruz Center for Games and Playable Media & GREE International Images From: Crime City (GREE)Kingdom Age (GREE) CSR Racing (Natural Motion)Pocket Planes (NimbleBit) DragonVale(Backflip)Farmville (Zynga)