Maintaining longevity of an SNS game (basing on Sky Garden)

By FireBat StudioNhựtNM, Game Design Specialist

Maintaining longevity of an SNS game (based on Sky Garden)

• History• Statistics• 7 techniques to Maintaining longevity of the Sky Garden game

• Achievements

Main contents

History

• Heading towards farming for its popularity to ZingMe users.

• Success of many farming games out there.

• Start: 04/2010• Closed beta: 08/2010• Open beta: 12/2010

• Incident on 5/2011: server error, data saved >80%.

• 8, 9, 10/2011: Sky Garden greatly affected by the outbreak of new games on Zingme.

• 11/2011: Standing up of Sky Garden up to now.

Statistics

• Total users: 9,479,170 • TOP on ZingMe (27/6/2012)

• 100 updated versions during 20 months running

Revenue chart

Tips and tricks that helpSky Garden “live long”

Build short-term and long-term objectives

• Level up to open new floor; Achieve beautiful plants and pot plants with terrific features.

• Reaching each group of levels unlocks a new exciting feature:– Golden Chicken laying Golden Eggs at level 45– The Golden Castle can be built from level 120– Achievements– What’s next? The Golden Castle with a brand new

gameplay

A lot of features to keep users busy

• Addictive mini games:– Pika-Mây– Paper Scissor

Hammer– Zombies Smasher

• Users keep coming back for Loyalty Gifts.

• Rewards for adding a lot of friends.

Community build up

• Prioritizing to build a huge community group from the very beginning.– Official channel.– Fan clubs.

• Hosting offline competitions: pot design, idea contribution...

• Sponsoring rewards even for competitions made by fans.

Responsive support

• Slogan “Games by Gamers”, always listen to users and change to adapt to users’ needs. (Ex: The Magic Bean)

• TOP 100 brings VIP users to hall of fame and special care.

• Diversified supporting channel.

Create new events and new emotions

• Luck controls every activity• New and creative events

Change look and feel

• Bring new feelings to users;• Oriented to more casual and friendly features.

Create value in game

• Super pots, ultra pots, extremely challenging to collect.

• A market place for PvP trading.• Price fixed by users and agreed by users.• Users can sell those items they do not need.

Sky Garden overseas

•At the end of 2011, Sky Garden was successfully exported to 3 social networks :QQ Zone and Weibo(China) and Yahoo Mobage(Japan).•Sky Garden won the Sao Khue Award in 2011.•More than 3million users per month in China.