Monetizing Free-to-Play (F2P) Games - Sample

MONETIZING

FREE–TO–PLAY (F2P)

GAMES

Vig Nest

Copyright Vig Nest 2014

Thank you for purchasing this book. It is licensed for your personal use only. This book may not

be re-sold or given away to other people. If you did not purchase this book, please consider

purchasing your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

The author has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information within this book at

the time of publication. The author does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any

party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or

omissions result from accident, negligence, or any other cause.

This book is not a biography. The information contained within this book is strictly for

educational purposes only. All characters appearing in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance

to real persons, living or otherwise, able to take legal action against the author, is purely

coincidental. The author maintains that all the ideas in this book are valid. If you wish to apply

any idea contained in this book, you are taking full responsibility for your actions.

Contents

Preface

PART I – LOOKS DO MATTER

1. Stand Out From the Crowd

2. You had me at Hello

PART II – STARTING STRONG

3. Put It on a Diet

4. Build a Home of Your Own

5. Now You See Me

PART III – HERE COMES MONEY

6. Work Smarter Not Harder

7. Keep 'em Coming Back

8. Make Data Your Friend

Departing Thoughts

Thank You for Your Interest

Preface

About four years ago, my friend Paul and I left our corporate jobs at a big game development

company and founded our own indie company to create mobile games. We developed and

released many games on multiple mobile platforms during this time. We had some good success

in the beginning, but as the competition started heating up, our profits started diminishing. With

each new game, we started seeing lower returns. Finally, Paul decided to give up and go back to

his corporate job. That put me at crossroads of whether or not to continue as an indie. All the

games we had published were paid games with separate free “LITE” versions. Times were

changing, though. Free-to-play games were taking over the top charts. With the recent and

ongoing burst of casual free-to-play games, I wanted to give those a shot. I had an idea for such a

game and started working on it.

That is when I ran into Scott during a party at Paul’s place. I knew Scott for a long time but

hadn’t talked to him in a while. He had been a professional marketer for as long as I knew him.

As a game developer, I mostly hated marketers. As Scott was a friend, I didn’t have to hide that

feeling from him. After catching up a bit, we got into a conversation about mobile games. He

seemed to know more about the industry than any outsider I have talked to. We started talking

about how it is not easy anymore to make money by selling mobile games. But the conversation

took an unexpected turn after some time.

“What do you think of me as your new partner?” Scott asked.

At first I was taken aback, but the conversation intrigued me.

“What? You don’t know anything about game development.”

“I can’t help you with developing the game, but I am offering my expertise as a marketer. I am

even open to you taking me as a contractor for your next game with an option to become your

partner if you feel I can add value to your venture.”

“I do not believe marketing brings much value. A good game will make its way out there.”

“You are right. If the game is not good, marketing might get you some distance, but it’s not

going to make or break you. Marketing works more as a hype in that case. But if the game is

good, marketing will certainly help. If done properly in that case, it can really help scale the

momentum and returns. In the end though, it’s only a multiplier of how good the game is.”

I tried to recall the game releases from my job earlier because that’s the only time I had really

seen marketing being used first hand. What Scott said sort of reflected what I had seen and

experienced there.

Scott continued “What if I work on a performance-based model where my compensation will be

based on the money you make from my efforts?”

“I am not sure I understand that. How do I know what portion of the money is from your

efforts?”

“You can come up with a projected number based on your past profits from similar games. Then

for my first project I will take 50% of the extra profits we make on top of your projected number.

I understand that you’ll be taking a risk of reduced profits because of some changes I will be

suggesting. But whenever I ask you to do something differently, I would not expect you to

follow my advice until I convince you with my arguments and data. Does that work?”

“Can I think about it and get back to you?”

“Definitely.” Scott said.

I don’t remember talking to Scott during the rest of party. All I remember is that before leaving

the party, I went to Scott and said, “Let’s do it.” Knowing how I felt about marketing, I was

surprised at my response to his offer. But I was already doing things differently this time around,

starting with jumping on the bandwagon of free-to-play games.

And that is how it all started.

PART I

LOOKS DO MATTER

1. Stand Out From the Crowd

“On average, how much time and money have you typically spent on an icon and name for your

game?” Scott asked as he walked towards my desk.

“Not much.” I said. “I have always been able to find an icon on those websites selling stock

images for very little money. As for a name, I usually have something in mind by the time I start

game development.”

“How do you pick your icon out of all the choices though?”

“Paul and I used to pick the one that seemed close enough to the theme of game. In some cases

we had it modified by the artist who was selling it.”

“In my opinion, that is not a good way to pick the icon and name for our game.” he said. “Let me

explain why. Our store listing is the first thing anybody sees when they're scrolling through a list

of myriad options. At that point, our two objectives are to attract users to get them to click

through to our app page. Depending on the app store, the main parts of the listing are – the icon,

app name, average rating and in some cases, a screenshot. For a new game, we can’t do much

about average rating and will have to address that separately. Out of the remaining items, icon

and app name are used in all stores. So those two deserve more of our attention than they are

getting right now. We need to have something that will stand out from all the others.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said. “What do you suggest we do then?”

“I suggest we hire an icon or logo designer for creating our special icon. I'll get on writing the

instructions for the job and run it by you.”

“What about the name?” I asked.

“Do you know that the app name on the app store can be different than that on the device?”

“Yes. But how does that matter?”

“That means we can optimize those two differently since those are targeted for different people.”

“What do you mean?” I asked again.

“The name in the app store is targeted for people who don't have our game installed yet. We

should make it a bit descriptive while keeping it short enough so it can be scanned quickly on a

mobile device screen. But the name that goes on the device when the app is installed is for

people who already have the app. It has to be optimized to keep those people coming back to our

app. We should optimize that name to be easily recognizable by a user who has already

downloaded the app. There are two times when that name will be in play. One is when users

want to play our game and are trying to find it on their device. The other is when they are going

through all the installed apps on the device to find something interesting to spend time on.”

“Those are some very good points. I never thought of it that way. Based on what you just said, I

have something to add. I think the name on the device should not be too different from the one in

app the store. After installing the game, the user should be able to easily recognize it based on

the name they saw in the store.”

“Makes perfect sense.” Scott nodded.

“By the way, how did you come up with all this? I never thought of it that way.”

“I guess the reason you haven’t been able to think this way is that you're already so deep into the

idea that it is easy for you to miss on some of the obvious things. Since I am just starting, I do

not have my mind already clouded with pre-determined concepts. Another difference might be

that I am still thinking as a user while you are mostly thinking as a developer. Coming back to

the main point, we seem to agree that picking these two names is a well-deserved extra effort.”

“Yes. I can definitely come up with the name to be used on the device. You can then take it from

there to research the name that we'll be using for the app store.” I suggested.

The next day, Scott had already gotten back to me.

“I have the requirements for our icon. But one thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that I would

like to work with somebody other than our regular graphics artist for this, in order to get a fresh

outside perspective. Do you want to take a look at the requirements?”

“Sure.”

All he had was: Go to different app stores. Search for apps using the words

I have provided at bottom.

Look at icons for the apps that are returned. The icon to

be created should be able to stand out in that herd while

reflecting the idea and theme of these words.

“Is that specific enough? Don't we want to give some more details about some objects, words or

colors we want in the icon?”

“I don't think so. We want to leverage the designer's creative abilities first. After we see what

they have come up with, we can ask for any modifications we think are necessary.”

I was used to having much more control over exactly what and how things should be done. This

was pretty new to me. But it did make sense in this case.

“Okay.” I said, even though it made me flinch a little.

The strategy we talked about was very different from what I had done in the past. I hadn’t

focused much on icon and name until the game was done and ready to be published. Even then, I

don’t think Paul and I ever gave as much attention to the icon and name. It already seemed like it

was going to be an interesting experience working with Scott.

2. You had me at Hello

This chapter is not included in the sample. Please buy the book to read this chapter.

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PART II

STARTING STRONG

3. Put It on a Diet




4. Build a Home of Your Own




5. Now You See Me




PART III

HERE COMES MONEY

6. Work Smarter Not Harder




7. Keep 'em Coming Back




8. Make Data Your Friend




Departing Thoughts

During this journey with Scott, I noticed the differences between our thought processes, that of a

game creator and a marketer. I remember Steve Jobs’ famous quote, “People don't know what

they want until you show it to them.” As a game creator, I always started with an idea without

caring about its relevance to users. Once I created the game, I would go out and find people who

wanted it and liked it. Instead, Scott did not care about the idea. He was fine with my idea as

long I believed in it and felt that it would be a great game. He cared more about tweaking and

enhancing it to make it relevant to as many people as he could. To achieve that, he used the

“building blocks” approach where he would add blocks one at a time as he figured out what

works and what doesn’t.

During this partnership, we were able to bring tricks from two different worlds together to make

a wonderful game that worked well for our users as well as our business. As a result, I have

come to see a marketer as somebody who can sweeten the deal for everybody. In our case, the

first set of users won by getting a clean experience while we were growing our game. Once the

game reached certain level, the next round of users got an even better deal by being part of

something already refined and improved. Finally, we were only working for users we

understood. These were the users who really cared about and enjoyed our game. These were the

users that made us money.

###

Thank You for Your Interest

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