Social games. Start and promotion

Short review

Games, this is an industry that is dynamically and rapidly developing, because the basic needs of people in developed countries are already more or less satisfied. And people have more and more time for entertainment. And if we add here the mass distribution and improvement of mobile phones or tablets, then we can understand that the time for entertainment becomes too much for a person. And strange as it sounds, the human brain is overworked and requires unloading - the killing of time. He is not designed for the loads that he has to endure while living in the current frantic rhythm. And here we are on the stage and we go out with our games that help the brain relax and kill the excess time.
 

 
The games that we will talk about later are social games, but almost everything is true for other games or applications. Social games have one distinguishing feature - they are not surprisingly social. This means that your users, playing games, want not only to kill time, but to somehow express themselves in society and thereby both justify their killing before themselves and take up another attribute of a basic need - interaction with society. Indeed, for all the amount of communications that now exists, people, due to the rhythm of life, for the most part become lonely and they are extremely short of society.

PS Please, all spelling and punctuation errors in private, thank you very much!
PPS The article does not claim to be absolute truth, because all situations are unique, or to the depth (yeah, i'm rock & roll nerd), it is only intended to reflect on some things, and, if possible, protect from stupid mistakes. All observations and conclusions are just my humble opinion.


 

Why is it difficult to start now?

It would seem that the market is not shrinking, people have more money, why are more and more initiatives failing? Indeed, now the income of games is estimated in millions of dollars, and monsters such as Clash of Clans in the hundreds of millions or even billions? It would seem that you need to repeat only 1% of success and you are a millionaire. With such a business plan, many start-ups open. But in these considerations a fatal mistake crept in. It’s not so difficult to make a project similar (although it’s not really easy, but without certain skills it’s not possible at all, but about that another time), but to attract users, there is one underwater pebble about which all dreamer ships and the name are broken to this stone - ARPU

ARPU your death sentence

ARPU (Average revenue per user)- average earnings per user. Now everything is focused on making this indicator as high as possible, because if you lose a little here, you will fly out of business. Why? Well, let Zinga get $ 6 per user, but according to our plan, 1 percent is enough, that is, 6 cents. But even a very bad application can collect so much. Then why are there not all millionaires around, but only a few? Trite because companies like Zinga, having $ 6 per user, can afford to buy a user’s attraction for $ 5-6, or even higher, but you don’t. You cannot even buy for 10 cents. This means that there will be no users in your application, you will play it yourself. Yes, of course, then you will try to promote some non-standard types of advertising on the forums yourself, but believe me, if you don’t have a mega hit or a highly specialized theme of the game, this will not lead to anything. You are bankrupt.
 
What to do to increase it?
To increase ARPU, you need to think about it right away and understand that right away you won’t be able to raise it to such heights as market leaders, because they invest millions of dollars in it, and you don’t have it, and most importantly, they’re already working on this topic more than one year, working in this direction and trying all kinds of methods and strategies. Now I want to describe those or other parameters that affect the achievement of the result we need and if at least one of them is not worked out for you, you can even not start your application, only if you are a fan of trying your luck. Only, believe me, the chances here are the same as going into the ring against a professional boxer and hoping for good luck.
 

Retention

Retention is a measure of the return of users to your application. This is one of the most important metrics in a social app. After all, if your user logged in, played, and never returned to you, he not only did not bring you money, but also ate it due to the maintenance of servers and the cost of attraction. Retention is usually divided into two types: short-term and long-term.

 
Long term
Long-term retention - what percentage of people return to your application at least once a month (two weeks, depends on the features of the application). This indicator allows you to understand what percentage of people in general your application is fundamentally interesting. This is the segment of users with which you can work. The higher this indicator, the greater the reach of your audience and the more accurately you have chosen your audience. For example, if you started buying ads from one source, and it does not give particularly active users, but the long term retenshin is good, then you just need to interest these users, these are hot customers. Find how to sell your application to them. Even if now they do not bring you money, you have the opportunity to change everything when they come in a week or two, do not miss such clients.
 
Short term
Short-term retention - what percentage of people return to the application every day or two. This metric shows what percentage of people are actively using your application. It is very important to keep this percentage high, it will allow you to receive fast feedback from your actions and work with your audience. There are tools for this, the daily tasks are now the main choice, with some significant reward motivating you to go every day. This is a very good method, but at the same time, because of this, you cannot rely solely on this metric. Imagine a situation where you have a short term retention of 80%, which is breathtaking, but at the same time you have a small ARPU. You think that you have something wrong with monetization and start playing with it, tightening the user’s nuts. But in the end, all indicators are falling. What is wrong? And everything is very simple, users did not really like your game, but they were in limbo and went only for daily bonuses. Because of this, the retention was great, but as soon as you screwed on their nuts, their condition went from suspended to negative, and not only did you not get any extra money, but you also lost users.

What does retention show and why is it important
But if, you cannot rely on it, what can you do with it and why is it needed? Everything is very simple, with it you can distinguish two segments (as many as possible) - those who are interested in the game (short term retention) and those who are potentially interested (long term retention). Using the segment of interested users, you can calculate how much they are involved in your game. We will talk about how and what in the next paragraph.
 

Engagement

Engagement is a metric that shows how much a player likes your application and how much it is immersed in it. If you have a game designer, ask him a question what it is and how to count it. If he does not know, you can safely dismiss him.

 
After all, engagement is the pulse of your game. What kind of doctor who did not hear about the pulse and does not know how to measure it? Charlatan. How to count it? There is no universal formula, because each application is unique, there are common factors, such as retention, arpyu, average time in the game, number of sessions, and so on. And the more experienced the game designer, the more accurately he can choose the formula for your application, and the more accurately he will choose it, the more chances to succeed, because this is a direct indicator of how your users have accepted this or that change, how they like the dynamics of the game. And without this, you can release features that the user needs in your opinion and they will pay you more for them, but in fact, everything can be exactly the opposite. Or because of small miscalculations in the feature’s balance, it’s a place to bring a positive mood, Causes annoyance or frustration for users. In general, if you don’t count, you don’t count your money.
 

Analytics

This is the heart of your application. The bottom of the iceberg, the foundation, and if this foundation is not solid, everything above will blow the wind of change. All companies in the world are now paying hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to receive more and more information about users. Today's technology has evolved to the point where stores are recognized by a pregnant buyer before or not. Already in America there are even lawsuits, therefore. That is, you imagine that by analyzing the check from the store you can now tell whether the customer is pregnant or not. Here. And we usually do not measure a couple of indicators. But even elementary tracking can save millions of dollars. I'll tell you a short story from life. We made a game for Playdom (Disney) and launched it in production. But they noticed that short-term retention is extremely low, they got deeper - it turned out that only 20% of people are trained. Really did such a bad game, we were horrified at the beginning. But as soon as we analyzed at what step the users were lost and everything became clear. The training was done on the principle of the railway, that is, you could not get out of the way or do something not according to plan until you completed all the training steps. And then one step taught people to switch to full screen mode. But 60% of people categorically did not want to do this (most likely they played at work and did not want their bosses to see it) and simply closed the application. If we did not have analytics for every sneeze, we would not have guessed in life and would have lost a lot of money. Therefore, my advice to you is, analyze everything that moves, lies, stands, or simply exists. But as soon as we analyzed at what step the users were lost and everything became clear. The training was done on the principle of the railway, that is, you could not get out of the way or do something not according to plan until you completed all the training steps. And then one step taught people to switch to full screen mode. But 60% of people categorically did not want to do this (most likely they played at work and did not want their bosses to see it) and simply closed the application. If we did not have analytics for every sneeze, we would not have guessed in life and would have lost a lot of money. Therefore, my advice to you is, analyze everything that moves, lies, stands, or simply exists. But as soon as we analyzed at what step the users were lost and everything became clear. The training was done on the principle of the railway, that is, you could not get out of the way or do something not according to plan until you completed all the training steps. And then one step taught people to switch to full screen mode. But 60% of people categorically did not want to do this (most likely they played at work and did not want their bosses to see it) and simply closed the application. If we did not have analytics for every sneeze, we would not have guessed in life and would have lost a lot of money. Therefore, my advice to you is, analyze everything that moves, lies, stands, or simply exists. that is, you could not get out of the way or do something not according to plan until you completed all the training steps. And then one step taught people to switch to full screen mode. But 60% of people categorically did not want to do this (most likely they played at work and did not want their bosses to see it) and simply closed the application. If we did not have analytics for every sneeze, we would not have guessed in life and would have lost a lot of money. Therefore, my advice to you is, analyze everything that moves, lies, stands, or simply exists. that is, you could not get out of the way or do something not according to plan until you completed all the training steps. And then one step taught people to switch to full screen mode. But 60% of people categorically did not want to do this (most likely they played at work and did not want their bosses to see it) and simply closed the application. If we did not have analytics for every sneeze, we would not have guessed in life and would have lost a lot of money. Therefore, my advice to you is, analyze everything that moves, lies, stands, or simply exists.
 

Ab testing

AB testing or split testing is when you select several focus groups and check those or your guesses on them. All marketing or design ideas need to be tested through split testing, because the results can shock you. What seems 100 percent logical to you may not really be that way. But this is still half the trouble, but how do you know which of the similar solutions should be applied in the project? For example, you have 3 start-up screensavers in the game, you divide your users into 3 equal groups and each show a different picture and then see how many percent of people have waited for the download. Where the percentage is better, and choose the option for the first show, the other two you can alternate, but not show the first time you download applications!
 
Also, AB testing is very useful for determining how much a new feature is useful in your project. For example, you decide to add a system of achievements, you can take a small group of people from 10 percent of your audience and only show them this new functionality. According to the results of two weeks, to see how it affected the players, is their arpu or growth increased - it means that the function should be added to the game, if it fell or remained at the same level - it’s better not to add it, because the abundance of opportunities can scare away new people and let's do not exert influence on existing ones, but negative ones on new ones. Also, a mandatory thing is split testing the tutorial, a lot depends on it and not choosing the best solution here can be a fatal mistake. Play with the steps, their number, form of presentation,
 
You may argue that all this can be tested sequentially, and not in parallel. Yes, you can theoretically, but not in practice. After all, the minimum testing period is a week and testing even three options will take three weeks already. And even more so, these three weeks can be different, on one holiday, the other falls on the vacation period, etc. And the results immediately become not representative. And most importantly, you do not have these three weeks, if you are so slow, your users and competitors will not forgive you for this.
 

Monetization

Now there are two of the most common monetization models: free-play and one-time purchase. There is a mixture of these two models, but it is not so common.
A one-time purchase is a monetization model when only one thing does a profit for you - a one-time purchase of an application. As you understand in social applications, this does not work, because you need to support it, develop it, and all this requires money. And what motivation is there to do something further if it does not bring you anything. So for us, only one monetization model is acceptable:
 
Free to play - a type of monetization, when a player can download your application for free and play it, and pays for additional preferences in the game. There are different preferences and the main thing is to get into your audience, for example, additional content for money does not attract hardcore players, and in turn, a sword of a thousand truths, available only for money, will scare off casualties. Here you need to clearly understand what audience you are working with, and not with your head and instinct, but with analysis and split testing. Regardless of which audience you plan to work with, try not to create the feeling that the user can buy everything in this game for money, and in no case do not sell the most powerful things for money. Otherwise, you will scare away everyone except a certain small group of people. Let the coolest things can be bought only for game currency, but things for real money, which are worse than the best, but stronger than those that the user has at the moment, will help people quickly earn the best. My opinion is that good monetization should be based on three basic principles: faster, easier, more. But no stronger.
 
In the FreeTuPlay model, the first purchase is an important thing. Your main concern should be getting one cent of the user to pay. This removes the psychological barrier to shopping for money and adds credibility to your application. To do this, use different tricks, such as the first trial free purchase, which completely simulates the process of entering money into the game except for withdrawing money or a bonus to the first purchase.

After you remove the psychological barrier from the user, your task is to put him on the hook so that he systematically contributes money to the application, but this amount does not scare him. If the application takes too much money, you will lose a constant influx of money, so in this case, greed is not your hobby. And with each cent, you will develop a dependence on the user, because he has already left money with you and if he leaves he will simply lose this money.
 

Significance training

The first impression of your application is the most important, it is easy to spoil it, but not much to improve. One of the most important tools for gaining trust and positive emotions among your users is the learning mechanism. It helps the user to feel the spirit of your application and to understand the whole variety of opportunities that you provide him. It is very important to ensure that the user does not immediately collide with an abundance of opportunities, this will confuse him, and will not cause positive emotions. Count so that the user has time to get used to it and enjoy the available functionality, and only then a new one will be added to it. Even if you limit the appearance of the functional, so that it will gradually be shown to the user, but not give him time to get used to the existing one, this can push away, because it will be necessary to make efforts to put all this into your head, and for many people this is not given so easily and quickly, and instead of a feeling of distraction and rest, they will feel the tension as at work. Accordingly, this will affect their perception in a bad way.
 
You have to fight for each player at this stage, do a lot of training options, both railroad and hint style, play with time, number of steps, dive speed, etc. (Remember the split testing and segmentation). Up to the point that you can show different tutorials for different groups of people - shorter for the younger part of users who are not used to waiting and will figure it out on their own, and any wait or hint will cause rejection, which is very detailed for those who are older and do not want strain, but just wants to relax. You must understand that different people have different types and the more precisely you select a tutorial for their style of play, the more likely you are not to lose them at the very beginning, when they still do not understand whether they want to play or not.
 
Another important nuance I would like to cancel the moment that many miss the addition of new functionality to the learning process. And often, after a long period of the application’s life, a ton of all sorts of features and game content immediately falls upon the beginner. This is not right, it will confuse and, as we said, it will scare away new users. Often it is because of this that old applications die off, although the creators think that it’s just out of date. No, it is not outdated, but simply overgrown with moss, which must be monitored.
 

Audience definition

Each application needs its own audience and the more accurately you can determine it, the more accurately you can work with it. You need to understand that even if you have a very narrow area, your audience is not homogeneous and is divided into certain segments. Proper segmentation can provide you with more flexibility in working with your audience, because if you show different tasks, texts, tips, etc. This can increase both engagement and monetization. You can segment by both some physical indicators, such as age, gender, country, and psychological, for example, by the style of the game how a person plays - aggressively, exploring everything or relaxing. In fact, you can use the segmentation and configuration of the game to turn one game into many different games that satisfy the needs of almost everyone.
 
And of course, the most important thing is to initially understand what kind of audience you are counting on, and this largely determines the genre of the game. If you are doing HOGI, then obviously you should not aim at a male audience (although it is about 30 percent for this genre) and vice versa, when creating a 3D shooter, forget about the female audience. You should understand and work with your audience right away, you don’t have to compromise and add beautiful unicorns to the Honor action (hello diablo3). But when you decide on your audience, it will become easier for you to work with it and determine what is expected of you and how you help your user, and not an abstract horse. When discussing game design, always refer to your audience and ask: “But will our user like this? Does he need it? "