Game design to life. The Economics of the Game (Part II)

Good day!

A little about the author: my name is Maria, a game designer. This is the third article in a series on the application of game design theory in life.

References:

1. First article: “Game design comes to life. An example of parsing game mechanics
2. Second article: “Game design to life. The Economics of the Game (Part I) »

Analysis takes place on a real game, without naming names. In the first part, the bottlenecks of the game were examined, the existing economy was analyzed.

Briefly about the identified problems of the game:

1. Little content
2. Currency surplus / no well spending
3. Packs of currencies - fluctuations in the value of one unit of game currency

About the game

Name: * Top Secret *
Genre: Simulator
Setting: Reality
Platform: mobile (iOS, Android)
Monetization model: ftp (free-to-play)
CA: from 8 to 25 years old, mostly girls / girls
Main gameplay: player appearance , relations with other players, rating of the most fashionable, creation and arrangement of your apartment.
Clarification. First, there will be the water part (yes, we’ll pour some water), then the numbers.

Problem 1. Content

Solving the content problem is simple and elegant - creating more content, new and in demand. Question - what is in demand among our players? Here are some examples of how to find the answers:

• Youtube

Our players are children and adolescents, so they are all “in style”, “fashionable” and know “hype topics”. Let's see what topics are in trend, what music, what clothes. The character in the game is an improved, upgraded version of the player. To be the best is to be the most trendy.

Result:

a) compiled a list of trending clothes
b) compiled a list of accessories - tattoos, bracelets, hairstyles.

• Official group (VK, FB, Instagram)

Watch player comments, devote at least an hour a day to this. To know your players is to communicate with them and always keep abreast. Thanks to the daily check of the group, they found bugs that testers would not get to, found initiative players, and understood the development vector.

Bottom line:

a) a fix of old bugs
b) found players who drew clothes for their characters, had a group of like-minded designers. We implemented their ideas in the game, made a separate post in the official group of the game indicating the authors of the ideas and gave the young designers a reward in the form of hard currency
c) compiled a list of players' wishes and began to implement

For example, they added such trifles as freckles, tattoos under the eyes (please do not roll your eyes, we followed the trend), scars (Samurai X, hello!). All of these accessories cost about 2-5 units. hard currency. The game has never seen such a shopping boom. The players wrote words of gratitude in the comments, and we smiled with 33 teeth, because the player is happy - the game designer is full.

• Polls and contests

Both points were introduced gradually. At the very early stage, when there were 3 people in the team, and the analytics department looked at us as an industry appendix, we came up with a “tricky way” to study the players - a Google questionnaire, where they asked us to talk about age, gender, character, total game time and talk about the first acquaintance with the game in the form of a story. So we took possession of a small, but revealing analytics. For the most interesting story, an award was given in the form of hard currency and VIP.

Bottom line:

a) activity began to increase on the official page of the game
b) a portrait of the average player was approximately composed

Competitions began with the simplest requests - make a screen in the game, make a screen in the game with friends, draw on the asphalt something spring based on the game. Then the competitions got complicated - make a video on the topic, fulfill the conditions and file the drawing, etc. As complexity grew, so did the reward.

When we found out the needs of the players, we started their implementation. What has changed in the game:

1. Updates to the game began on an ongoing basis - every Wednesday and Friday (die, but do).
   
   It was the beginning of a pipelined content creation scheme. Sometimes everything needed for the current update was completed on the same day, quickly tested and poured.
   
   The players were in great delight, still, after 3 years of rare updates, suddenly so much good poured into the mountain. The growth in daily revenue was x5 from the usual, DAU grew 2 times, old players began to return.
2. The cost of new items was increased by ~ 800%.
   
   First, there were changes in the cost of content, then the packs changed. In the first pouring, we drank so much dirt that we almost choked on our monitors (in fact, we got the case). At the same time, there was practically no drawdown in purchases; ARPPU (average payer check) and ARPU increased. It was natural - paying as much, but paying more. There was a slight increase in the first payments.
   
   Along with the cost of content, “image” and “comfort” were increased - the main numerical indicators in the game, which reflected the coolness of the player’s clothes and his apartment, respectively.
   
   A good example, a thing was worth 5 hard currency and gave the player +10 image. The new item cost 300 hard currency and gave the player +1800 image. Agree, the growth is colossal.
   
   All new calculations were made based on the relationship to the dollar. About calculating dependencies will be a little later.
3. Shares on packs
   
   On the old packs, shares x2, x3 were made. Those. the player paid the same amount, but received 3 times more hard currency. With new prices it was very profitable, otherwise to buy one new thing you would have to buy 5 minimum old packs instead of 2 new ones.
   
   At the launch of stock x2, revenue on the first day of launch jumped 15 times and stayed at that level the whole stock (in the end there was a decline, but not a sharp decline).
   
   In later versions of the game, rewards for viewing ads have been added. You can get both soft currency and hard.
   
   Players have long waited and requested this functionality. No revenue data.
4. Major updates in the game with new functionality
   
   With the growth of the team, the opportunities for implementing ideas have increased - the requests for events have also increased.
   
   For example, in honor of February 14, a location was created with a gazebo, if heterosexual players sat in it, then hearts began to fall on them. A new work also appeared - Cupid's house, where players collected boxes of chocolates and received event currency and craft items.
   
   Among other things, players could throw likes at each other (hearts).
   
   On New Year's Eve, players threw snowballs at each other, and in open locations snow began to randomly, and everyone could come to Santa Claus and collect gifts.
   
   Events raised DAU, MAU, returned old players and increased activity in the game. Now the players had something to entertain themselves with and what to show off in front of friends.

Now let's move on to the numbers.

Problem 2. Currency surplus

The currency surplus, as already mentioned above, was decided by raising the price of goods by 800% or more. Why is that? All pegged to the dollar.

For further calculations, we establish the following values:
1 $ = 65 rubles.
1 cu = 1 unit hard currency
1 cu = 100 units soft currency

The easiest way (and the most clumsy) to withdraw the currency from the player - to raise prices for goods. In one of the updates, things began to cost instead of 10 cu or 1,000 software for 40 cu and 8,000 software. In the next update 40 cu turned into 380, and 8,000 software to 35,000. Along with rising prices, the indicator of “comfort” / “image” also increased.

The first increase - checking the soil and trying to find the best price - is not cheap for us, nor is it expensive for you.

The second increase is the binding of prices to $.

Why to the dollar? The publication of games takes place on platforms that operate with this currency + in most countries to which the game is open, the main currency is the dollar.

Now, when putting down prices, we focused on how many dollars we are ready to give back the thing. And we distinguished 3 categories: cheap, average price and coolness.

$ 0.1 - $ 5 - cheaply
$ 6 - $ 14 - average price of
$ 15 - $ 20 - coolness

Set at $ 1 = $ 80 What then turns out at the prices?


The numerical parameters that it gives depend on the value of the goods. You can also attach them to the dollar, or set the coefficient of the dependence of the parameter on the price. The parameter on which the competition between the players is based should be “juicy”. Exceed the price at least twice. Example:

For example, the old system was without mathematical support, everything was random. Different things of approximately the same kind could give diametrical parameters - from 10 image to 150.

In each update there should be things of all three categories. Approximate ratio: 30% are cheap, 65% are the average price and 5% are expensive.

Problem 3. Packs

In games, the same rules apply as in regular commerce. All promotions, events dedicated to the holidays came to us from the market. And one of the rules that is observed is that the more expensive the pack, the more profitable one unit of game currency.

How the packs looked BEFORE the changes (numbers taken from the ceiling, for clarity):

As you can see, the cost is 1 cu dances as she wants and the most profitable pack is not the last, but the second. In the economy of a healthy person, the cost is 1 cu is declining. This is how packs were converted:

This is an example for understanding logic, not for application in the game :)

So the bottlenecks of the game were changed (the first iteration of the changes). There were also events that I wrote about, but I would like to put this topic separately so as not to extend the article.

PS Under the last article there were comments that the game would turn into another cash game. I would like to answer this in this way: it is worthwhile to understand that the mobile games market is a business, like the rest, requiring ROI. No money, no games. The question is whether the game gives you the joy of spending time and how well it treats the player.