6waves First 80days of Games

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First 80 days of Games

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What had happened

in the first 80 days of the games?

Key takeaways:

1. DAU growth momentum of the game could be predicted on the 80th day of launched2. Promotion could sustain the DAU upward trend, but stronger retention & viral features with

localization & globalization could accelerate the MAU growth

3. Make in-game purchase and spending easier could significantly contribute the monetization

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The DAU trend of top games launched in 2010

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According to the data fromhttp://www.appdata.com, most of the games obviously hit the peak of the DAU before celebrating

the 100th day of the game launched, for instance, Treasure Isle, Hotel City, Social City, Baking Life, Car Town and Tiki Resort.

Only few of them could maintain the DAU level in the next 80days or further grow, like Frontier Ville, Millionaire City and IT girl.

In other words, when you back from the 80-day world tour, you probably predict the DAU trend of the game.

Therefore, it is very critical to define the roadmap in the 3rd

month of the game development after launched. What should the

game developers focus on after launching the new games on Facebook platform?

Get the basics right!

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The ideal trend of the user growth

Ideally, high quality games should equip strong retention and viral features, so that promotion can accelerate the MAU growth.

Play Rate (DAU/MAU) Monthly Viral (K-score)MAU Month Over Month change

without Promo

12-40% 0.1-0.6 Drop 20%-80%

6waves supports the game promotion to secure the quality game got the upward MAU trend, includes:

M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 M9 M10 M11 M12 M13 M14 M15 M16 M17 M18

Month of the game launched

Ideal breakdown of MAU

Promotion

Viral

Retention

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Get the basics right!?

Retention

Virality Monetization Stability

Retention

Region (Country) Play Rate range (DAU/MAU) Play Rate (Median)

English speaking (US/UK/AU/CA) 15% - 20% 18%

Traditional Chinese (TW/HK) 20% - 40% 32%

Western Europe (FR/DE/IT/ES) 15% - 25% 20%

Latin America (MX/AR/CL/BR) 8% - 24% 18%

1. Daily login bonusMake the gift very attractive/unique and target users from specific regions for improvement

2. Facebook Notification, Counter and Dashboard Global News StoriesStay up-to-date with the changes on Facebook and apply the new features in the games. Notification is the most important

viral install channel nowadays.http://developers.facebook.com/blog/archive

3. Quests/MissionsMissions, quests and goals should be updated, otherwise the users will get bored with the same quests for 3+ months.

4. FeedsAlert users friends who just logged into the game with a reward and allow them to share that occurrence; this will make

the game more social, interactive and engaging. ( the Skip button is NO LONGER required by Facebook policy)

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Viral

Zyngas CityVille Springs To A Metropolis Overnight (Surprised?)http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/06/zynga-cityville-stats/

Zynga reports that in the games first 24 hours, over 290,000 people played CityVille. Zynga says that these 290,000 ini tial installs were primarily organic

With Over 20 Million Users, CityVille is Already a Metropolis

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/12/13/with-over-20-million-users-cityville-is-already-a-metropolis/

The question is how many viral points Zynga is reaching out through

Zynga demonstrated how important the viral channels are for users acquisition with CityVille. 6waves PMs always urge our

partner game developers to focus on the feed and viral channels; the more viral the game, the easier it is to grow the MAU.

Thinking in the users shoes, will you click Share if you know the feed content (image & copywriting) is the same all the time?

Will you post the feed again if it does not provide any benefit to you or your friends in game play?

# of daily stream published / # of DAU = 0.4 on average

Source: Facebook Insightshttp://www.facebook.com/insights/

The feed or request/invitation must:

1. Be an incentivized reward - Users can gain something when friends click on his/her wall post ( Note: the users cantget thereward directly & immediately by posting the feed, but they can obtain the items byfriends clicking the feed)

2. Make & send request in the feed - Help non-paying users to obtain the exclusive or limited item(s) within a limited time3. Localize and frequently update the call for action copy writing using eye catching images and content4.

Auto-publish: Ask permission to Post to the wall

5. Skip button is no longer necessary in the dialog before a wall post

# of DAU

# of Daily Stream Published

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Monetization

Monetization is the key metric to evaluate the how successful a game is, as the more the user pays, the better monetizationpotential of the game. We should optimize the monetization features and prepare for the DAU growth.

1. Facebook Package/Bundles Great integration on Facebook, only takes a few clicks and requires noadditional logins

2. Click to buy nowExpand the item purchase channels. When the user visits a friends home, island,farm or fishbowl, etc. he/she sees some attractive items, allow them to buy it immediately in the

friends game, with no need to search in the in-game store. The games that have adopted this feature

have doubled or tripled the pay rate (Daily pay user / DAU) with Facebook Credit package integration.

3. Post to the feed when the purchased is completed4. Redesign, re-price, retire the low selling items5. Reorganize the store, put the popular items in the front; segment the items into new, discounted,

recommend and hot & limited sections using data mining

6. Collect paying users emailaddresses Repeat customers are the most valuable and loyal user segment;you could send these users a new arrival to the store catalog to attract them to make repeat

purchases.

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System stability

1.

Machine loadingGame stability is always a top priority, as a stable and secure game platform will maintain the most engaged users trust

and indirectly contribute to monetization.

Review the web, database and memcache servers loading stats and be prepared for increased usage during the summer.

2. Backup frequencyAs the user base gets larger, the back-up practice needs to be updated accordingly, which minimizes the loss in a crash . Its

suggested that the backup frequency be every 12 hours when the DAU is larger than 300K.

3. Bug fixesThe most common bugs in games:

Loading issues Friends list cannot be displayed properly Missing items

- END -