F2P Design Crash Course (Casual Connect Kyiv 2013)

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F2P Design Elements – Data Driven Advice For Success Anthony Pecorella Director of Production Kongregate.com

description

A high-speed run through some of the most important and interesting patterns and advice that we've discovered about our games on Kongregate. This talk was given by Anthony Pecorella at Casual Connect Kyiv.

Transcript of F2P Design Crash Course (Casual Connect Kyiv 2013)

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F2P Design Elements – Data Driven Advice For Success

Anthony PecorellaDirector of ProductionKongregate.com

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• At Kongregate for 5 years, directing our browser-based virtual goods business

• Also an indie game designer, cofounder of Level Up Labs, created Defender’s Quest and CellCraft

Who am I?

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• Open platform for browser-based games– Flash, Unity, HTML5, Java, etc.– 93%+ of users already have Unity installed

• 15M monthly unique visitors worldwide• Core gamers – 85% male, average age of 21• Core genres: MMOs, RPGs, CCGs, TD, shooters, etc.• Platform level virtual currency, “kreds”• Acquired by GameStop July 2010

What is Kongregate?

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• Mobile publisher of Free To Play games for core gamers.

What is Kongregate?

Synapse Games LingPlay

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Select Developer Partners

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• We have collected data from hundreds of games over the past few years.

• We provide advice and analysis on a per-game basis for games we work with, but here we will look at more general patterns and trends.

• This talk will go through highlights of lessons learned and advice we’ve developed.

• This advice is of course not unique to the Kongregate platform and applies more generally to free to play games, especially in the core genres.

How To Succeed On Kongregate

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• All stats are lifetime• User / Player: a Kongregate registered user who loaded

the game page at least once• ARPU: average revenue per user• ARPPU: average revenue per paying user• Play: a game session, measured by page loads• “Eastern European” is broadly used to include Russia,

Estonia, Poland, and Ukraine– There are of course lots of other countries in Eastern

Europe, but we don’t have any games from them. Come see me after the talk if you’re interested in putting your game on Kongregate!

Terminology

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• X axis is the User Rating (a score from 1 – 5)• Y axis is the ARPU. Top game is actually $10.• Bubble size is lifetime relative revenue

Overview of Kongregate Games

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• X axis is the User Rating (a score from 1 – 5)• Y axis is the ARPU. Top game is actually $10.• Bubble size is lifetime relative revenue

Overview of Kongregate Games

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• X axis is the User Rating (a score from 1 – 5)• Y axis is the ARPU. Top game is actually $10.• Bubble size is lifetime relative revenue

Overview of Kongregate Games

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• The foundations of a F2P game are strong RPG elements and a sense of progress over time

• Building your account, leveling up, adding/improving skills and stats, etc

• Surprisingly it’s more important than multiplayer

• Deep RPG mechanics and multiplayer matter:– 25x ARPU for Multiplayer RPG vs Single Player non-RPG!

Progress is Essential

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• Nearly all revenue comes from people who play a game at least 100 times.

• Focusing on long term retention is probably the best thing you can do for your game’s revenue.

Long Term Retention is Critical

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• For top performing games, paying users continue to spend for months, if not years

Spending Happens Over Time

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• The more they are able to do, the more time they’ll spend with the game.

• Wartune has live PvP, co-op PvE, team battles, single player, asynchronous battles, world raid bosses...

Keep Players Busy

Wartune, R2 Games

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• Give players clear goals in a daily gameplay loop.• Wartune provides something to do every day, and

rewards exploring the various parts of the game.

Help Create A Daily Experience

Wartune, R2 Games

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• We surveyed lapsed big spenders and 64% reported the reason they left the game was a lack of new content

• Good news: 70% said they’d come back if new content were added!

• Try to give players something new to do every 6 – 8 weeks if possible. – Don’t aim for huge semi-annual or annual updates.

Better to spread out in smaller chunks.

Create New Content Regularly

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• Have special content tied to what is fun and relevant in player’s real world lives.

• Bush Whacker 2 has incredible retention because of all of the special events and features they have in the game.

Do Seasonal/Holiday Events

Bush Whacker 2, DJ Arts

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• 100% of top games on Kongregate have guilds!

• Guilds are incredibly powerfullate-game tools.

– Create strong personal bondswith other players

– Encourage high-level, deep competition between guilds

– Motivate spending to helpperform at a high level, not just personally but for the guild’s sake

– Players who join guilds are 10 to 20 times more valuable– Check out my guild talk at developers.kongregate.com

Guilds, Guilds, Guilds!

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Percentage Of Big Spenders• What percent of paying users spend >$1000 USD?

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• On Kongregate, revenue driven by quality over quantity.• Make sure players can spend $1000+ meaningfully.

Big Spender Revenue

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• In a few Eastern Europeangames, we see currencyconversion that gives theplayer precise control overhow much to spend.

• Unfortunately, this limitsyour ability as asalesperson to “up sell”bigger packages of currency, or better deals.

• The buyer will only purchase exactly as much as he needs, so he will never have a balance of extra currency or decide to buy a bit extra because it’s a better deal.

Avoid Fine-Grained Pricing

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• Break currency sales into a few packages. • Provide a special deal for first-time buyers.• Add bonus currency for bigger purchases.• Throw in a bunch of great stuff if the player spends big!

Instead, Up-sell and Incentivize

Dragons of Atlantis, KabamCloudstone, Nexon

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• Provide incentives for bigger spenders on successive purchases, like a loyalty program (frequent flyer).– VIP Program that comes with extra convenience and power.– Increased VIP

levels for even bigger spending.

– Reward your mostvaluable players,make them feelgood about purchases.

Gamify Continued Spending

Pockie Pirates, NGames Ltd.

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• Long term retention and engagement is crucial.• Keep players coming back with new content and

events.• Provide incentives to purchase larger packages of

currency and keep purchasing.• Make sure players have the ability to spend $1000+

in your game in a meaningful, fun way.

Key Takeaways

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• For a copy of the presentation or questions, email [email protected]

• For more talks & data visit developers.kongregate.com • For web games contact us at [email protected]• If you’re interested in mobile publishing, email

[email protected]• Follow us on Twitter: @EmilyG & @KongregateDevs

Thank you!