June 21, 2010 at 16:16Social Games: Earth is in danger!
Once in November 2009, an artist, unixoid and flasher gathered in one room. What united them was that they were suddenly left without work, so the main question sounded classic: who is to blame and what to do? Having dealt with the first part of the agenda of that day, we moved on to the second - what to do? Of course, it was decided to make a game for social networks, since we had enough experience for this.
There was little time for reflection and what kind of game to do was decided quickly. We all already had farms, tamagots and city forks in the liver, so we decided to take a chance. Recalling some successful attempts to swim against the tide in browser games (for example, at that time the Technomagic browser inspired us), we decided to develop ideas for casual battles between live players. So, a game called “Earth in Danger” appeared, based on battles between real players “on pebbles” and ... in a sci-fi setting.
The “plot” was as simple as two pennies and consisted of the following: aliens flew onto our planet and began to capture it. The player could join earthlings or aliens in order to gain experience in endless battles, buy weapons with money earned, conquer territory from the opposite faction, etc. Looking back, we can say that it was a very (even maybe too) bold decision, which brought a lot of rakes on our heads afterwards :)
Links to the game: on VKontakte in MyMir
Having drawn up a business plan and looking like friends and old connections, the question of where and what to do the game decided quickly enough. The work began to boil in November and by the new year the first beta version for VKontakte and MyMir was ready. Here we suffered the first disappointment: the game itself did not grow as much as we wanted. Relying on popular methods of viral attraction of players, we didn’t even think that this would be a problem, however, despite the fact that players came and stayed, the growth rate was far from planned. Continuing work on the game itself, we began to think about where to get the “traffic”. First of all, we took advantage of the offer of My World: a starter advertising package (banner displays) for all new applications. But unfortunately it turned out to be of little use: the CTR of the displayed banners did not exceed 0.04%, which turned 21 million displays into several thousand installations. Having abandoned the idea of buying ads with such “efficiency”, we were faced with the only choice: to make small free toys that would promote the main paid application (our game in this case). It is said - done: a week and a half on the game - and we laid out simple, but addictive toysGlade and Jewelery , which on a beautiful banner under the game alone brought quite a few new players to Earth in Danger. The flow of payments began to grow and the future began to turn pink again before our eyes. However, again not for long. The influx of new users did not last as long as we would like - about a week or two after the launch, each game ceased to bring players and the situation returned to its original position.
In the meantime, the end of February had come and the time had come to take intermediate results. Despite the positive trend, revenues and installations differed from those planned in the business plan (not in our favor, of course), but we already had one working strategy: mini-games “traffic genes”. Having pushed the improvement of the main game into the background, we decided to switch to mini-games completely and did not fail. Our next toys were able to improve the situation again, and about one game - “Build your castle” ( link ), I even want to mention it separately. In my opinion, it’s still behind her the absolute record for the number of installations of a single game “per day” in MyMir. Almost 100,000 people added the game immediately after putting it on the first day ( proof!), which for us was a pleasant surprise, and our only server almost broke from the load (but withstood however).
Having dealt with the urgent problems of attracting new players, we decided to try to go west and to be honest, the results of this decision are still not clear to us: after spending about a month, we, on the one hand, saw that even without a penny of advertising, games can still be there grow by themselves, however, making people pay even harder than VKontakte (accepting payments is a separate problem there). However, it is still too early for us to summarize the Facebook results: let's see how it will be in the future, there are interesting trends.
In addition to Facebook, we tried to work with Odnoklassniki, who opened their IPA for the masses at the end of spring, but their agreement brought the familiar lawyers into such a shock that the attempt to conclude it was abandoned until better times. To be honest, it’s very incomprehensible why Odnoklassniki, with all their staff of sensible people, were unable to compose a normal agreement on which to work honestly (well, this is a personal opinion, of course).
The story of our startup does not end there, but I think it’s time to round off this story. I hope someone can learn useful lessons from this article.
Although not a penny was invested in advertising, more than 2,000 people regularly play in our game “at the same time” (with each other, that is); revenues already cover expenses, but there is still room for growth. Therefore, we are currently looking for partners for the development of the game on VKontakte, well, and are open to any other offers, of course :)
In contact with.
The audience is fastidious and has already seen a lot in its path, more of a hardcore or something and in this regard is not particularly ready to pay. Legally, it’s not easy to work with them: the contract is concluded only with those who earn at least 200,000 votes per month (according to rumors of such applications, there are only a couple of dozen for all contact now).
My world.
It doesn’t have as many visitors as it seems, apparently there are a large part of people who simply can’t get the “virus” - they have no friends and you can only “attract” them by advertising on the site, but they pay more actively than VKontakte. Legally, it’s easiest to work with My World: a competent offer offer (although not without subjective shortcomings), there is no commission on income.
Classmates.
Although there is very little competition between games at the moment, however, in order to work with them “white”, you need to be a very brave person - some clauses of the agreement look strange. In addition, the process of appraising the game is nontrivial. According to rumors, the audience’s solvency does not exceed the “average”.
There was little time for reflection and what kind of game to do was decided quickly. We all already had farms, tamagots and city forks in the liver, so we decided to take a chance. Recalling some successful attempts to swim against the tide in browser games (for example, at that time the Technomagic browser inspired us), we decided to develop ideas for casual battles between live players. So, a game called “Earth in Danger” appeared, based on battles between real players “on pebbles” and ... in a sci-fi setting.
The “plot” was as simple as two pennies and consisted of the following: aliens flew onto our planet and began to capture it. The player could join earthlings or aliens in order to gain experience in endless battles, buy weapons with money earned, conquer territory from the opposite faction, etc. Looking back, we can say that it was a very (even maybe too) bold decision, which brought a lot of rakes on our heads afterwards :)
    |
Links to the game: on VKontakte in MyMir
Having drawn up a business plan and looking like friends and old connections, the question of where and what to do the game decided quickly enough. The work began to boil in November and by the new year the first beta version for VKontakte and MyMir was ready. Here we suffered the first disappointment: the game itself did not grow as much as we wanted. Relying on popular methods of viral attraction of players, we didn’t even think that this would be a problem, however, despite the fact that players came and stayed, the growth rate was far from planned. Continuing work on the game itself, we began to think about where to get the “traffic”. First of all, we took advantage of the offer of My World: a starter advertising package (banner displays) for all new applications. But unfortunately it turned out to be of little use: the CTR of the displayed banners did not exceed 0.04%, which turned 21 million displays into several thousand installations. Having abandoned the idea of buying ads with such “efficiency”, we were faced with the only choice: to make small free toys that would promote the main paid application (our game in this case). It is said - done: a week and a half on the game - and we laid out simple, but addictive toysGlade and Jewelery , which on a beautiful banner under the game alone brought quite a few new players to Earth in Danger. The flow of payments began to grow and the future began to turn pink again before our eyes. However, again not for long. The influx of new users did not last as long as we would like - about a week or two after the launch, each game ceased to bring players and the situation returned to its original position.
In the meantime, the end of February had come and the time had come to take intermediate results. Despite the positive trend, revenues and installations differed from those planned in the business plan (not in our favor, of course), but we already had one working strategy: mini-games “traffic genes”. Having pushed the improvement of the main game into the background, we decided to switch to mini-games completely and did not fail. Our next toys were able to improve the situation again, and about one game - “Build your castle” ( link ), I even want to mention it separately. In my opinion, it’s still behind her the absolute record for the number of installations of a single game “per day” in MyMir. Almost 100,000 people added the game immediately after putting it on the first day ( proof!), which for us was a pleasant surprise, and our only server almost broke from the load (but withstood however).
Having dealt with the urgent problems of attracting new players, we decided to try to go west and to be honest, the results of this decision are still not clear to us: after spending about a month, we, on the one hand, saw that even without a penny of advertising, games can still be there grow by themselves, however, making people pay even harder than VKontakte (accepting payments is a separate problem there). However, it is still too early for us to summarize the Facebook results: let's see how it will be in the future, there are interesting trends.
In addition to Facebook, we tried to work with Odnoklassniki, who opened their IPA for the masses at the end of spring, but their agreement brought the familiar lawyers into such a shock that the attempt to conclude it was abandoned until better times. To be honest, it’s very incomprehensible why Odnoklassniki, with all their staff of sensible people, were unable to compose a normal agreement on which to work honestly (well, this is a personal opinion, of course).
The story of our startup does not end there, but I think it’s time to round off this story. I hope someone can learn useful lessons from this article.
The results.
Although not a penny was invested in advertising, more than 2,000 people regularly play in our game “at the same time” (with each other, that is); revenues already cover expenses, but there is still room for growth. Therefore, we are currently looking for partners for the development of the game on VKontakte, well, and are open to any other offers, of course :)
Impressions of social networks.
In contact with.
The audience is fastidious and has already seen a lot in its path, more of a hardcore or something and in this regard is not particularly ready to pay. Legally, it’s not easy to work with them: the contract is concluded only with those who earn at least 200,000 votes per month (according to rumors of such applications, there are only a couple of dozen for all contact now).
My world.
It doesn’t have as many visitors as it seems, apparently there are a large part of people who simply can’t get the “virus” - they have no friends and you can only “attract” them by advertising on the site, but they pay more actively than VKontakte. Legally, it’s easiest to work with My World: a competent offer offer (although not without subjective shortcomings), there is no commission on income.
Classmates.
Although there is very little competition between games at the moment, however, in order to work with them “white”, you need to be a very brave person - some clauses of the agreement look strange. In addition, the process of appraising the game is nontrivial. According to rumors, the audience’s solvency does not exceed the “average”.