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5 Ways to Increase Mobile Game Revenue

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The bottom line

Mobile games earn more when monetization is built on player psychology: generous gifts, well-timed offers, rewards worth doubling, paid shortcuts through waits, and a first ten minutes that hooks players. Players who feel rewarded and in control stay longer and spend more.

Key takeaways

  • Players who get something free feel they owe the game something back. 0:13
    • Right after a daily treat is collected, an offer screen is more likely to convert, as in Slot-o-Mania.
    • Clash of Clans and Clash Royale use the same pull through clan donations, which adds long-term retention.
  • Offers convert better when they show a high reference price and a deadline. 4:27
    • A 1.8 million coin pack is framed as worth $50 but costs $3, with a one-hour countdown.
    • Coin Master runs offers of only seven or eight minutes.
  • Offers should come in a sequence timed to each player's mood. 6:33
    • A declined 1.8 million coin offer came back later as 2.25 million coins, after wins and a free gift.
    • A new player who ignores an offer at minute three may buy at minute eight, once they are having fun.
  • Rewards players earned are easy to double, and waits are easy to sell past. 10:05
    • Subway Surfers lets players double a 1,000 coin level reward by watching a video ad, because they see those coins as their own.
    • Clash of Clans charges 599 gems, about $10, to skip a 3.5 day build.
  • The first ten minutes decide whether a player ever gets to spend. 20:17
    • About 50% of players are lost in the first five minutes, and those who reach minute seven or eight retain much better.
    • King of Thieves more than doubled its numbers by moving multiplayer, the feature its best players had found, into the first-time experience.

The first 10 minutes of your player's experience is the biggest indicator of long-term retention than anything else, because you're going to lose typically 50% of your players within the first five minutes.

Tom Herman

Chapter summaries

0:00 Player psychology behind monetization

Monetization works better when it follows how people actually think, not just how a store is laid out.

  • Games should be designed around how the mind really works. 1:13
    • A game exists to entertain, and players are social beings who engage in predictable ways.
    • Two books are recommended: Robert Cialdini's Influence and Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.
    • The mind works differently than expected, so these mechanisms can be used for good or for bad. Tom Herman recommends using them for good.
    • A favor in daily life, like picking up a neighbor's lunch or coffee, leaves the other person feeling a quiet obligation to return it.
  • A price is judged against whatever it is compared to. 4:55
    • Shown alone, a $3 price is valued as $3. Shown as a markdown from $50, it feels like a bargain.
    • Urgency, also from Cialdini, adds fear of missing out on top of the value.
    • 1.8 million coins is not much to a developer, but it feels like real value to the player.
    • Even an item a shopper did not need becomes tempting once it is marked down from a high price.

6:33 The cadence of offers

Offers should be a flow that adapts to each player, not a single one-time pitch.

  • Every player needs a different path of offers, built up step by step. 6:40
    • Players in the same cohort or segment can still react differently, so one fixed offer for everyone falls short.
    • The flow branches. A buyer may get a bigger offer next. A player who declined needs something else.
    • It works like an email drip campaign, where each step builds anticipation for the final offer.
    • Between the two offers came a free pass of cards, a prompt to brag to friends, and a big win that gave a dopamine hit.
    • Had the player bought, the next offer would likely have had a higher price and higher value.
    • Steve Young admits he once tried to make the offer right away, instead of building up reasons first.

10:05 Daily bonuses and double-ups

Letting players double rewards they already earned brings them back and raises spending.

  • Every daily bonus and level reward should be doublable. 10:10
    • Doubling is usually done through video ads or rewarded videos.
    • Daily bonuses drive retention, and doubling adds to that pull.
    • Players who get more are more likely to spend inside the app.
    • Subway Surfers has been on the top charts for years. Wikipedia calls it the most downloaded game of all time.

10:44 Doubling rewards players already earned

A double-up is an easy yes when it comes at a natural pause and asks for little extra effort.

  • Offer the double at natural pauses. 11:14
    • After dying, players can watch an ad to continue.
    • Crossy Road puts its double-up at the top of the home screen.
    • The bonus gives a dopamine hit, and the double is one small step on top of work just done.
    • Players treat the pause as a quick break anyway, so the ad feels natural.
  • Valuable rewards can be doubled for gems instead of ads. 12:24
    • In Merge Dragons, a hard challenge's reward, a rock dragon, can be doubled by spending gems.
    • It works only if gems are easy to stock up on, by buying or by surveys.
    • The price scales with the value of what is given away.
  • Daily rewards can be doubled too. 13:31
    • Games with a big day-seven prize can offer to double today's reward for a video.
    • Fun Run 3 shows 100 coins today, then 150 and 200 on coming days, which pulls players back.
    • By day 5 or day 30 the value is so high that players would be crazy not to double.
    • The economy has to be monitored so the doubles stay balanced.

14:33 Selling a way through the waits

Waits must stay in the game to pace long-term play, and each one is a chance to sell a shortcut.

  • Magic items sell time directly. 15:39
    • In Clash of Clans, a rune of gold fills all gold storage at once, and other items finish a building instantly.
    • Bundle a rune of gold and a building item at about $4.99. Players know how much time that saves.
    • The bundle gives little progression, so it won't break the economy.
    • Giving some items away free triggers reciprocation, and players then buy more.
  • Sell the way through waits that pace the game. 17:51
    • In Merge Dragons, a chest opens now for 14 gems or after waiting.
    • Without breaks, players eat through the content in a couple of days.
    • The skip can cost a fee or a video, wherever it fits.
  • A cheap starter pack turns players into buyers. 18:27
    • Subway Surfers shows a one-day countdown and 75% off.
    • It works like a tripwire: a $7 ebook first, then a $100 or $1,000 upsell.
    • Past buyers are usually the best customers.
  • Stamina and several currencies make waiting easy to sell. 19:24
    • In a puzzle game, players who run out of stamina wait, watch a video for one more round, or pay gems.
    • With only one currency, it is hard to blend these options.
    • Multiple currencies are worth having wherever they make sense.

20:13 The first-time experience

Ads before play even starts can push new players to leave.

  • Opening with ads risks an uninstall. 21:00
    • A game showed an ad on opening and another on pressing play, before any real play. Tom says: I would have uninstalled normally.
    • Game Refinery keeps a catalog of first-time experiences from many games, and Merge Dragons is a reference example.
    • That game's makers were already struggling to monetize and retain.
    • Tom only played on because he was reviewing it.

21:29 Make the first minutes easy and fun

A first session with no friction, no forced ads and quick wins keeps players long enough to be worth anything.

  • Merge Dragons hooks players by making early failure nearly impossible. 21:46
    • Players just drag items together, with no ads or monetization in sight.
    • The tutorial is not a forced, button-locked guide, yet it still steers players.
    • Another game forced a 30 second ad after the back button, and the player rage quit from ads.
    • Merge Dragons adds a little more complexity than expected, which makes players curious to continue.
  • Losing players early wastes the money spent to acquire them. 23:39
    • A player who never grasps the core loop quits, though they might have earned hundreds of dollars.
    • Peak Games retargets users in the first seven days, since those won back in that window are likelier to subscribe.
    • Top games lose players faster than others in the first five minutes, then flatten out.
    • Facebook ads and A/B testing are wasted if the first session fails.

25:09 Find the magic moment and put it first

Retained players share one key experience, and the first session should lead straight to it.

  • Analytics can show what every retained player does. 25:09
    • Compare core loop features and ask which one all retained players use.
    • On Twitter, following about 30 people seems to be that moment.
    • In games it might be reaching the core loop, or joining a clan and fighting a clan war.
    • At about 30 follows, the feed always has fresh, interesting content.
  • King of Thieves recovered by building its first session around its magic moment. 26:04
    • Early retention and revenue were atrocious, and most teams would have killed the game.
    • A small cohort monetized and retained well, and they had stumbled on multiplayer.
    • Players like stealing, breaking into castles and getting past traps.
    • They enjoy the challenge of facing a real opponent.

27:58 Let players choose after the tutorial

A reward the player picks keeps them playing once the guidance ends.

  • Marvel Contest of Champions softens the post-tutorial drop-off with a choice. 28:15
    • Players drop off when the tutorial ends and they must find their own way.
    • They pick a chapter one completion reward, choosing which group of heroes to work toward.
    • Normal quest rewards may not match what the player wants, such as experience, reputation or a certain hero.
    • After the chapter they pick a hero: I feel so in control, and now they want to keep playing to use it.

In the growth library

Tom Hammond and Steve P. Young, Tom: CEO and co-founder of TheoremReach (rewarded surveys); Steve P. Young: founder of App Masters. Five monetization fundamentals for mobile games: psychological triggers, offer cadence, double-up rewards, monetizing impatience and a strong first-time user experience, illustrated with Slotomania, Subway Surfers, Clash of Clans, Merge Dragons and King of Thieves. The standout case is King of Thieves, which more than doubled its numbers by moving the multiplayer mode its best players had stumbled on into the first-time user flow.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript656 lines
0:00

What is up app nation. It is Steve P Young founder of appmasters.com. The place you go, when you want to learn all about the latest, the greatest strategies to helping you grow your app downloads and your revenue. And today, we're going to talk all about the best practices that you need to have in place. These are the fundamentals, the building blocks that you need to have in place to monetize to better. Monetize your app today.

0:23

I've got phenomenal guests where we're going to be back and forth and sharing some content. His name is Tom Herman and he is the CEO and co founder. Yeah. That they're in reach. They're in reach, allows you to add rewarder surveys, easily, your app, and all allow you to double your time revenue, just like that. We've seen it with some of the people that have started using there and reaching our audience. It's going to prove well for you.

0:43

As well, Tom, welcome. Welcome, Steve. I'm glad to be here. Always fun to do these videos with you, and I'm super excited to just dive right into things. Just so you guys know we're going to have a lot of examples too. So it's just going to be us talking, but we're going to give you a lot of examples of games. That are doing very well in these space and are using some of the practices that we're about to share. So the first one, Tom, and this is the one that I love.

1:06

You brought this up in your monetization minute podcasts that you guys can find on therem reach, but you talk about psychological triggers. I think about player psychology a lot. Um, when it comes to monetization retention, pretty much everything because ultimately, uh, games. Uh, and apps like they have a purpose, right? Um, for games it's to entertain people. Um, and so as humans, we are social beings, we engage in certain ways.

1:36

Um, so, uh, there's a number of different principals out there. Um, a couple of books that I record and everyone read and check out one is influenced by Robert D Cialdini, I think. And the other one is thinking fast and slow by. Uh, can't imagine. I don't remember the first name. Um, anyway, uh, fantastic books that kind of outline how does the mind actually work, uh, because it's different than you would expect. And there's lots of different ways that you can kind of get tripped up and you can use these different mechanisms for good or for bad.

2:11

I recommend you use them for good. Um, But one of them is the theory of reciprocation. Um, so as social beings, if I do something nice for my neighbor or for Steve, I kind of go out of my way. Maybe I, uh, you know, send him a gift or, uh, pick up his lunch when we're out, uh, grab a coffee, you know, that that's kind of nice for me to do to you. Um, behind the scenes though, you, you probably feel a little bit of an obligation to like, You know, do something back for me there.

2:45

Um, and, and that's really the, the theory of reciprocation. Um, and so, you know, practicing that in gaming, when you are generous with your players, they're much more likely to be generous with you. So, you know, here's a little example here. So you get this daily treat and I think this is a Slot-o-Mania. So you get this daily treat, um, and you collect it and that's all well and good. And, you know, right after you collect it, you might get hit with a little offer screen here.

3:15

Um, now as a player who just got a free gift, I'm feeling. Really, you know, thankful that they, you know, took the time and gave that to me. And I'm actually more likely, and I'm more inclined to give back to the game by actually purchasing here. Um, so that's kind of the theory of reciprocation. Um, the more generous you are, the more likely people are to be generous back to you. Um, obviously there are certain things in play there.

3:40

You still need to test and stuff, but that's the general principle. So I encourage folks to think about, are there ways that you can do reciprocation. Reciprocation can also be really powerful, uh, within social mechanics. So like clash of clans and clash Royale, they rely on each other for getting extra cards or like troops to wing clan Wars or to participate in clan Wars or other events so that everyone can get a reward.

4:04

And if you're not pulling your part, while all these other people are giving stuff, you inherently kind of feel that guilt of, you know, not logging into clash of clans and doing that thing. And it can add a lot of. A longterm retention value because you've got that social responsibility, those feelings of reciprocation towards your guilt members. Um, another one that I often talk about and think about is the idea of reference points.

4:27

So this offer is actually a great one here too. So the reference point here is, Oh, this offer should cost $50, but it only costs $3 now. So, you know, oftentimes when you're shopping at the store and you see something. That is maybe $50 at first. And it's marked down to $3, even if you didn't necessarily need that, you're much more inclined to think about buying it because you're getting so much value. You add a, you say, Oh, this is actually worth $50.

4:55

Like that makes it more valuable to me than if I just saw the $3 price tag, because if I saw this and I saw, Oh, it's just a $3, you know, cost. I am, you know, Going to value that as $3. But if I see this and I see that it's a $50 cost, but it only costs me three, that's a ton of value that you're getting there. Um, so those are two psychological principles that I encourage you to think about. Um, and, you know, think about real world examples as well, and then think about how you can apply those to your games.

5:28

Um, cause you're going to get a lot of value. Add back from them. What I loved about that example too, is that it did feel like it was like, it could be worth $50, right? Because there's 1.8 million coins, which, you know, in the grand scheme of things, isn't much a developer, but from a value perspective, it's there. And one of the things I talk about too, from a monetization standpoint is urgency. You know, I think it's in that book by Robert Cialdini influence, but adding urgency.

5:52

And as you can see from the top, I don't know if you guys noticed it, but the top of that screenshot. It had an hour countdown. Right. And so you can see it there that it's like, okay, here's a great offer, but you better decide soon if you can. There's a FOMO element to that. You might miss out on this $1.8 million coins if you don't buy now. Yeah. And I've actually seen other games, like a coin master and other ones where like, there'll be like seven or eight minute offers.

6:19

So like you you've gotta be like on the ball or otherwise it's going to be gone. Alright, number two, in which you've talked about this, and we're going to use the same slot Armenia example is the cadence of your offer. Yeah, so I think a lot of people design for, you know, a one time purchase flow or they set up one offer or one event or one thing for everyone to get, um, Which in the scheme of things doesn't really work because every person, every player is different.

6:52

Like even if they're in the same cohort or the same segment, they might behave a little bit differently. They might respond to certain offers a little bit differently and stuff. Um, and so usually when I think about. You know, let's say I want to do a labor day special event. Like there's a certain cadence to how things should go. Um, and if I can get you to spend money here, well, then maybe I can get you to spend even more money here.

7:16

But if you don't spend money here, then maybe there's something else I needed to do here. So there's kind of like a different flow to how things should work out. So I'm using that example again, you know, this was the first offer that I got as a youth. Um, I eventually ended up just closing out of it. Um, So then I played the game a little bit more. Oh. They, you know, hit me with like a free pass, lack of cards. Um, they even encouraged me to brag about it to my friends.

7:47

Um, played a little bit more. Oh, I got hit with a big win, like I'm feeling pretty good. So all of a sudden I'm getting this like dopamine hit. Yup. And then, um, Continued on a few more little like things, but then I got hit with this one and you'll notice that the timer is actually just down two minutes. Like it's basically the same offer, but instead of 1.8 million coins, now it's 2.25. Um, so basically I'm just getting offered even more coins for where I am, you know, just trying to get me to convert, you know, maybe that 1.8 wasn't quite the right value.

8:24

So we're going to kick them down to the next slide and hit them here. And I'm pretty sure that had I purchased there would have been another offer, but it would have been something a little bit different, maybe a higher price, higher value, you know, something just to see like, okay, where can we, you know, put this guy into our offer cadence? And I think a lot of people don't really think about that, uh, when designing.

8:44

And events live ops, but having the offer cadence and hitting them at the right points in time, uh, is going to definitely up here, you know, overall conversion rates and value and stuff. Um, and sometimes, especially for like new players, like. Maybe you hit them with an offer three minutes into the game. And they're not quite convinced that like I'm going to stick around, but by the time they get to like minute eight, they've completed their 20th mission or something.

9:09

Um, Oh, now they're, they're having a lot of fun with this game. You hit them with another offer. And it's even more valuable. They might purchase that because yeah, I've decided I'm going to play this game for awhile. Um, so having the right cadence super important, I mean, if you kind of, I always translate to the online marketing world and you think about an email drip campaign and each sequence is building up anticipation for that eventual example you showed was like, Hey, win, win, win, win, win, win.

9:38

And then offer it. And then I think too many times we try to be like one by one by one by one of us. And then we just need to think through like, what's the general strategy. I even went through this myself. Cause I was like, well, let's just get them to buy. Right, right away. Like make the offer. Right. But instead it is this whole like reasons, reasons, reasons, reasons, build it up, build it up so that when they eventually, when you add eventually than what the offer, they're more likely to buy too.

10:03

Exactly. All right, next one. And this is one that we've seen and we've run a lot of examples for this is the daily bonus, and I'm kind of doubling this up with daily bonus to drive retention, but also allow people that even if you get daily bonuses or there's a reward after finishing in level, let them let them double it up too. And whether it's video ads, whether it's rewarded videos, allow people to double up every daily bonus, it's going to bring people back then.

10:29

As they get more, they're actually going to spend more within your app too. Definitely. I want to share it, Tom. And I actually just did a video about subway surfers, kind of analyzing the game. Cause it's been in the top charts for so many years. It's Wikipedia says that it's the most downloaded game of all times like 3 billion downloads already, but one of the things they do really well and you see crossroad do this too, is there's this double up.

10:55

Bonus. Right. So I can watch this thing, this video ad on here, and I'll kind of get out of it, but that I liked that they were just so, Oh man, I can't just escape there. I love that. They were just so upfront and center on the homepage, allowing you to double up at the very top, right? Like watch an ad. Right. And then let me pause that. Here's another example where after I died, do I want to continue? I can watch an ad through that.

11:28

And then here's a little bonus that I got after finishing a level. I could, I got a thousand coins and I could double up by watching a quick little video ad. So these little bonuses allowing me to get that feeling that dopamine hit, like you talked about Tom, and then allowing me to double up because it's a natural progression. Natural pause for me to then say, yeah, I'll watch a video. I want to say quick break anyways.

11:49

Well, and I think going back to the psychological approach here to, um, something that, uh, you don't really think about, but yeah, as a player, I just went through that level. Well, essentially I earned those a thousand coins I had to work for, or like I had to, you know, do really well on that level, do all this stuff to get it, those a thousand coins. So I kind of view them as mine. Like that was my effort. That was my work.

12:13

Um, and so now the fact that I can double them for. Not really that much extra effort, like just a little bit more for watching it. Um, yeah, I'm much more likely to do so. Um, here's another one where maybe you're giving away more valuable content than just those like coins. Um, so this is in merged dragons. Um, so you have to. B a, a challenge here and challenges are pretty hard, uh, but you can, yeah. This, uh, you know, rock dragon wealth, um, obviously early in the game for people that do play.

12:45

Um, but instead of just watching a video to double this, because it's, you know, dragons are pretty valuable, I can double my rewards by spending gems. And so that's a way that you can kind of even add in that purchase monetization to it too, especially as you're giving away. Very valuable characters are valuable content. You can just kind of scale that up with the currency that you're giving away. Um, and as long as you're making it easy for them to stock up on that, purchase it, uh, earn it through surveys, whatnot.

13:13

Um, you know, they're going to have the coins and they're going to double it because they just went through all that work, accruing this. And now there's one little step to doubling all the value that they just add it, you know, get back. So it's a great way to do that. Um, I think it's a super powerful way to monetize. There's like daily rewards. So a lot of games will have like every seven days you get like a big prize, but you have to sign in and collect it every single day.

13:40

Um, so going along there, you can have a little, you know, double today's reward for watching a video. Um, so that is a fantastic way to do that. Um, and as long as you monitor your economy and have it set up, right, like. Players are going to be even more apt to log in and try to double their reward. Because once you get to, you know, day, five, day 30, whatnot, you get so much value. You'd be crazy not to. Yeah, I kind of have this example up right now with fund run three, where they did exactly what you talked about, Tom.

14:08

They had, so I can see the a hundred, I get a hundred for the daily reward today, but 150 tomorrow at 200. And just seeing them makes me want to come back. And obviously I can double up by watching a quick little video and just like subway surfers. They also have these star economy and I could watch a video to double up my stars as well. Yeah. Love it. Anything else on that? No, I think that's that's about it. Yeah. Well, the next thing we have on our list, this is number four is monetizing off of impatience.

14:39

So you know, the clash of clan model where you're building up an army, you're building up these. To trees but you're in a building of a castle and you'd have to wait. Yeah. You have to wait a couple of days before the castle can be in play, but you can also spend some currency within the app to then speed it up a little bit. And I've seen other apps do this well, but that's where you try to think about just making the person wait, monetizing off their inpatients.

15:04

And that's worked great for a lot of these bigger app companies. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I actually, uh, Have started playing clash of clans. Again, I've been playing around with their, you know, battle pass and stuff. Um, I think some interesting things in there, um, there is a video that their design lead put out that we can find link to that I recommend everyone check out, um, as they kind of came in. And one of the things that they ended up creating was, uh, these magic items.

15:39

And so, uh, magic items will basically do different things. Like I can use a, uh, you know, rune of gold to completely fill all of my gold stuff. Uh, where, like, normally it would take me hours and hours, many, many different attacks, or like waiting all this time to. Do my gold collectors and different things like that. Um, but if I have a rune of gold, I can just fill it instantly. Um, there's also different items that will let you like instantly build a building.

16:11

Um, wow. You know, whereas like, Other buildings, like, you know, on here, like I have to wait three and a half days for this one to be fully completed. And if I want to, you know, finish it now I can do so for 599 gems, which is, I don't even know how much it is. I would have to spend like $10 to upgrade that single building. Um, and so, you know, maybe early on. People are more likely to spend money in the game. But as clash of clans keeps getting older and older, it's more and more inexpensive.

16:46

But having these like magic items in there, you can now start to do different offers and stuff, and they don't really have much up in my current screen. But imagine there was an offer here that. Um, gave you like a rune of gold and, uh, uh, you know, building book or something where it would just like instantly finish a building for you. Um, and then you flag that for, you know, four 99 or something like that. People inherently see the value of that because they know how much time they can save by getting those two magic items.

17:14

They're much more likely to fork over that money. Um, and because it's. Really not giving you that much progression for that 400. Yeah. I'm purchased. It's not going to break their economy or things like that. So monetizing off of impatience is definitely great. Um, but I think you can even take it further and start to add special little valuable things that you can do. Things like. Um, you know, giving some of those away to players for free, uh, because you're going to trigger that recipient education.

17:43

Also, it's a quality of life thing, and they're going to enjoy that, but then you can also sell it, um, which is pretty cool. Um, and then. You know, finally, you can have like a chess model, like here's merge dragons again, where, you know, you can pay 14 gems to open the chest now, or you can just kind of sit around and wait for it. So anytime you're making players wait, and you often need to incorporate those things in there because you don't want them just playing for, you know, a couple of days and eating through all the content.

18:11

So you have to have natural blade breaks in there to, you know, design the longterm engagement. Um, But allow them to speed through those four. A fee or a video or something, wherever it makes sense. Um, as long as you're monetizing it. Yeah. And I think on that front, I know an old client of ours, you know, he said welcome packs or starter packs do phenomenally. Well, this is the starter pack. You can see there's a countdown.

18:36

This is on subway surfers. There's a little countdown up at the top, right? It's a one day offer 75% off. And this allows people to like, Oh, I'm enjoying this. I can spend a little bit of money. And then it's like the online marketing world where you have a look. I think they call it a trip wire, but you have a very little low, expensive product that people pay for like $7 ebook. And then you try to upsell them on a, like a $100 or thousand dollars type of product.

19:01

But because they've paid a little bit, they're actually more likely to pay you even more like who are your best customers? Well, your old customers, usually our best customers too. Right? Cool. I wonder if there's another one that I wanted to show off? Oh yeah. The simplest one here. I'll show this one real quick though. While it loads. Yeah, take that out, Paul. All right. Here's another simple one. Obviously you can just, especially for puzzle games, you can have the stamina.

19:28

So at the top, right, you see 50. At the very top and I can, as I continue play, I run out. And so I can either wait, watch a video to play one more game round, or I can pay some gems. And so I'm at full life right now, but as I play more and more, I generally just watch a couple of different videos so I can keep playing. And then I use just thought. And so it was a great way to monetize off of that too. So that's the easiest way to just have some stamina currency that allows people to play for a little bit and then makes them wait for the rest of the time.

19:56

Yeah, I think it is super important to have multiple currencies. Whenever you can make sense, because if you only have one, it's very difficult to blend those different types of things in there. Um, so something to think about there too. So true. All right. The last thing we got is the first time user experience. That's up to the guys from game refinery and they actually have a, a catalog. So if you sign up for their service, they have a catalog of first time user experience from a bunch of different games.

20:27

I was like, really? That's that's cool. Joel. The CEO. He's like, yeah, that's what people love. And I was like, that's actually a great idea because it's so easy. Yeah. Produce. Right. And then you just record yourself as you're talking about the first time user experience, Tom, I'm going to go through merge dragons. Cause you said merge dragons is the one that you kind of point to. I'm going to actually go through it.

20:44

And then you, as you're talking, we'll, we'll be seeing what V merger dragon does too. That's awesome. Yeah. I actually just started playing merge dragons today as well. Um, it's been on my list of games to check out. I've heard so many great things about it. Um, so first time user experience. So I think, uh, part of what I loved about this is I'd been playing a few other games that had been kind of. Noting. Hey, we're, I'm, I'm struggling to monetize.

21:08

I'm struggling to retain or something. And, uh, the first time user experience, I go, I downloaded the game and I opened it up and they hit me with an ad right away. And I was like, what the heck? Um, I close out of it and I go to hit play and there's like another ad. And I'm like two ads before, even like into the first time user experience, like. All right. I'll force myself to do this, but I would have uninstalled normally.

21:30

Um, and then I like play through it all and I have to like pause for a second and I hit like the back button. There's another ad, but this time it's like a forced 30 seconds. And then like, I have to go the play screen again, like play it again. I ended up rage quitting from ads, force myself to go back and like leading it. But, um, merchant Reagan's was so pleasant and it's not even like a forced guided tutorial. Which I kind of don't like either, um, sometimes you have to do that, but they like restrict your buttons.

21:56

And I'm like, what if I don't want to click that button and stuff, but merge dragons, they have this little screen. They make it nearly impossible for you to mess up. Maybe it is impossible for you to mess up. But they just like, get you right into like dragging these things together. And it's like, Oh, this is pretty easy. I can do this. And it's like, Oh, but there's like a little bit more work and a little bit more complexity than like, maybe I'd expect.

22:17

So. Okay. Well, I'm like, I'm intrigued to see where this goes. Um, so like you're making a flower here. Do you want another one? Um, Oh, well what do I do? Really nothing to do, but like drag them together. So, you know, there you go. Um, So it's pretty cool. Like you're progressing. It feels good. You get that dopamine hit there's no ads, no monetization, nothing insight. Um, I was reading, seeing an article by a, uh, someone at Google had done an analysis of game retention and.

22:49

They said the first 10 minutes of your player's experience is the biggest indicator of longterm retention than anything else, because you're going to lose typically 50% of your players within the first five minutes. Um, wow. And it's like, it's this drastic curve. And if you look at. Uh, the top games and if we can find a link to it, I'd love to share this with people. Yeah. Um, but if you can look at like top games, their retention for those first like five minutes, like it goes down.

23:21

But like way faster on everything else and as it tears out, and then you can look at those player cohorts to see like, what is longterm retention look like and stuff. And then they end up staying so much longer like players that made it to like minute seven or minute eight are much more likely to be retained on like day one, 80 day 30, et cetera. Um, so I think first time user experience is just one of the most essential things that people should be thinking about and really just spending a lot of time designing on, because if players went through all that work, downloading your game and you spend money acquiring them and they just like quit right away because they don't understand what to do.

24:00

You're not guiding them. They don't feel like it's fun. They're not engaged. Like, you know, you, you just wasted all that money and all that potential because those players, they might've loved your game, but if you don't get them right into understanding what the core loop of your game is and how it's actually fun and engaging and encourages them to think or whatever you're doing, um, you know, it's just a wasted user that could have earned you hundreds of dollars potentially.

24:28

Yeah. And I know interviewing people from peak games a bit, the brain teaser, they also talked about like, The first seven days and how they were retargeting a lot of their users to get them back into the game. Cause they felt like if I can get a person within that first seven day window, I know they're more likely to be, become a subscriber. So they, we, we as app like all activity, there's a very short window. And so if you ruin on the first time, like you're just not going to get them back.

24:52

And so all that money that you've been spending online and kind of doing everything on those Facebook ads, AB testing, all these things, right. You just throwing money away. And so it's in line with that seven day. I always feel like there's that window of time that we have to do everything within a seven day window. Yeah, absolutely. Um, one thing that I like to do is to talk about the analytics and looking at the different features in your core loop and to understand like what thing does all of my players that are retained do because.

25:26

Probably that thing, whatever it is is that right? Some like magic moment that like clicks in a user's brain. So like in Twitter it seems to be the magic moment as well. You have our following 30 people like that. Right. It's the right amount of people where like you can open up Twitter and there's enough, like new, interesting stuff in there that like you're going to be engaged and be a longterm user. But if you can figure out where your magic moment is, and maybe it's getting into the core loop, maybe it's getting into a clan and doing a clan war, or maybe, you know, something else like that, but getting players into that experience as quickly as possible.

26:02

Um, they're much more likely to be retained. I think there's a game here called it's by no lab. Um, Oh, yeah. King of thieves. Um, so King of thieves, wasn't very interesting. And there's a number of like case studies out there on King of thieves and their early numbers, their retention, numbers, revenue, everything. It was just atrocious. Um, most people probably would have just like killed the game. Um, but one thing that they noticed is they dug into the analytics was that there was a small cohort of people.

26:36

That were monetizing well, and they were retaining well and they were engaging in the game well, and they seem to love the game. And so as they started to dig more into these people, they realized that these were the people that stumbled upon multiplayer, which wasn't incorporated in the first time user experience flow or any of that kind of stuff. Um, and so eventually they redesigned their first time user experience to feature and get people into the multiplayer because people like, uh, Stealing from each other.

27:05

They like breaking into their castles, getting past their traps and stuff. Um, they like the challenge of facing somebody else. Um, and once they did that, their numbers like. Over doubled. It was like, you look at their case studies and it was crazy the success that they started to have with this thing. Um, and I think that just shows you the power of first time user experience, coupled with that data driven approach to figure out what is the magic moment?

27:30

What does that mean thing and how do I get that incorporated into my first time user experience so that, you know, those players actually do the thing that people are finding fun. They're much more likely to stay and ultimately, you know, spend money in the game. Great, Tom. Is there anything else that you think we should cover? Uh, no, I don't think so. Although, one, one last little thing, I don't think I showed this on first time user experience that I thought was super interesting.

27:58

Um, in Marvel contest of champions, another game that I was checking out recently. After you complete the first time user experience, they're like tutorial. Um, you also typically see a pretty big drop off on users because now you're no longer guided and they have to figure out like what to do. So what they do is this soon as you get that, like, reward for completing the tutorial again, that dopamine, yeah. Then they give you the option to, uh, choose a chapter one completion reward.

28:27

So basically you can pick which groups of heroes. Uh, do you want to work towards, which is really nice as a user? Like for me, when I'm playing a game, typically I'm trying to do something. Um, whether it's like experience or reputation or like acquire a hero or something like that. And the quest rewards and things that I'm getting might not necessarily align with where I want to be, but the fact that I can choose what the quest for reward is, I'm much more likely to actually finish and complete it.

28:54

Um, so then after you complete the chapter, Um, it kind of looks like this where they then let you pick the hero, which is super cool as a user. Like I feel so and control. And now that I've got the hero that I want. I actually want to keep playing the game because now I want to use them. Um, so it's like keeping me in the flow and in the game much more long or a much longer time, much more likely to engage with it and stuff.

29:20

Uh, so some really great stuff in there. Um, and I also would say folks that, um, Are listening that want to incorporate a flow kind of like that should definitely check out our new called user wise, that IO, um, that is launching because you can do this kind of thing in it with like basically zero code needed. Um, so you can test and add these different variations and strategies to see how can I really optimize my first time user experience and deliver it a live ops flow to people.

29:49

There it is user wise.io. If you guys want to learn more about their reach, go to dot com. Here's the website. Go check out. Tom's yeah, the minute, the monetization minute right here on there as well. And then if you want more advice like this from Tom and myself, go. Fill out this form, it's there and reach out comm slash roaster. My app, it is roast dash, but I'll link it all up type anything in essentially you could submit your form and then Tom and I will do a deep dive.

30:15

Then we're going to be doing that every Friday. It looks like every month. And so definitely filled out that form. And then we'll take a look, get your, a game and kind of give you this feedback as we. You're Tom, you got to love our jobs. Right? Like we, we play games, we're doing stuff. My wife was like, what are you doing? We're watching like a basketball game. And I was like, I'm just doing work. It's like, you're playing a game.

30:35

Like, yeah, this is the work I'm trying to do research for her. I know. I'm like, I got to play games. It's like, Oh, it's so much work. Um, at best job ever. Yeah. You know, I will say with roast my app, you know, We're pretty open. We're pretty honest. We want to help you be successful. So if there are some hard things you need to hear, we want to tell you those, but we also want to congratulate everyone that has gotten to the point of launching an app, because that is so hard.

31:01

Nobody even, you know, gets that far with it. So, um, it's fantastic. And, uh, usually. Getting to the point where you have an app and it's out there and people are using it at all, is, is the hardest step. And then there are just small, little minor tweaks that you can make, um, that will just take you to the next level and make your app so much more successful. And those are the things we want to help you find and figure out and do.

31:23

So true. And as developers and as entrepreneurs, we're just so shy about showing our stuff. We're like, Oh no, it's going to have to be perfect. And it's getting real advice like this, you know, the big game developers game publishers up there, they spend a lot of time in soft launch to get all their metrics, right. And so if you're not that patient, and you're not a big game developer, you don't have that time and money and resources to do that.

31:43

Well, you get to experience guys, who've been in the space for some time looking at your app and giving you some feedback that we've seen in other apps and people we work with as well. So once again, it's there in theoremreach.com. Go check out the website. If you want to add rewarded surveys into your app and help you make more money, more money, and it's more money than you would get from a video ad during reach.com and then go fill out that form to get advice from Tom and I it's not thank you so much for coming on.

32:06

I'm doing this. It's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Steve. Thank you guys for watching. I'll see you on the next video.