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Exploding Kittens, Head of Analytics on Mobile Game Retention & Monetization

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The bottom line

Mobile games earn the most when teams track clean data from the start and build for retention first, because players who stay are the ones who pay. Live operations and value-based pricing then turn those players into lasting revenue.

Key takeaways

  • Analytics must start early, because the data you collect shapes how profitable the game gets. 3:08
    • Most teams write the design doc and build the game first, so analytics plays catch-up.
    • Opportunity cost is the big risk: a lot of money is always left on the table in a live game.
  • Retention matters more than monetization, because revenue depends on it. 9:41
    • Players who pay right after joining are not the ones to count on. The ones who stay a long time sustain the revenue base.
    • The reverse failure also happens: a game can have many users and high retention but little money when monetization is an afterthought.
  • Fresh content and well-asked push notifications bring players back. 10:40
    • At WB, a new character every two weeks pulled lapsed players back, and engagement and monetization rose with it.
    • Explaining why you want to send notifications, such as rewards or chests, may raise opt-in by about 50%.
  • Showing clear value turns non-payers into payers. 15:09
    • Labeling a bundle "20% more coins" lifts conversion without hurting the game economy. A $1,000 bundle makes the $100 one look reasonable (anchoring).
    • In a subscription test, a clearer yearly plan tripled conversions and moved the split from 50/50 to 80/20 toward yearly.
  • Starter packs work when the game gives players something to spend on early. 17:46
    • A/B test a cohort with the pack against one without it, to see which earns more.
    • If most of the value comes later in the game, buyers ask why they bought it and the pack works less well.

The retention should definitely be more important than the monetization, because the monetization is heavily dependent on the retention.

Chuka Ikokwu

Chapter summaries

0:00 Why clean data comes first

A game team can only judge its design choices with data that is reliable and clean.

  • Seeing whether a change works takes reliable, clean data. 2:09
    • Ikokwu joined Riot Games in LA as an early employee in 2008.
    • He worked on game economy, game balance and the monetization scheme.
    • Having data is not enough. It has to be trustworthy, or the team cannot tell what is working.
    • He has loved numbers and games since childhood, so analytics was a natural way into the industry.

3:08 The metrics that matter

A short set of metrics, grouped as acquisition, retention and monetization, covers a game's health.

  • Each stage of acquisition, retention and monetization has a few core metrics. 3:37
    • Acquisition: know where users come from and which sources are best, using LTV and return on ad spend.
    • Retention: day 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30, plus session length and number of sessions.
    • Monetization: how many players start paying, and the value they bring through ads and LTV.
    • Retention and engagement live in the same world, so they are read together.
    • Some metrics are unique to the game itself, on top of the standard ones.
  • A rough LTV comes from days played times revenue per daily active user. 5:01
    • Take the average days a user plays over 30 days and multiply by average revenue per daily active user.
    • Knowing each user's value and the user count gives a sense of the game's total value.
    • It is a back-of-the-envelope method that some teams used long ago.
    • Live operations means constant iteration, not fire and forget.

5:39 A simple tech stack

Proven, simple tools beat a complicated stack, and monetization tooling is still the weakest part.

  • Adjust, Snowflake and Tableau cover acquisition, storage and visualization. 5:58
    • Adjust handles acquisition, and its team keeps improving the service.
    • Snowflake stores raw data, offers SQL access and connects to Tableau.
    • His rule: if it ain't broke don't fix it, as his mother says, the devil you know is better.
    • Streaming SQL tools like Materialize exist, and some tools bundle storage with visualization. He keeps it simple.
  • Monetization is the trickiest area to tool. 7:13
    • Many tools exist, but there is not enough data behind them yet.
    • Game of Whales is a serious player. Other SDK tools tune monetization to player behavior and cut churn.
    • Game of Whales runs many A/B tests, because nobody knows in advance what will work.
    • Anything that improves engagement usually helps monetization too.

8:23 If they stay, they pay

Monetization built on retention lasts for years instead of fading after a launch buzz.

  • Monetization should be sustainable, not a trick. 9:21
    • Sustainable means lasting years, not a fast follow that loses its buzz in a few months.
    • Crossy Road's creator, Matthew Hall, cared only about retention and trusted he could monetize returning players later.
    • Ikokwu agrees: if they stayed they will pay.
    • Tricking people into paying is the wrong way to think about monetization.

9:34 Bringing players back with live content and push

Mobile games hold players by treating live operations and push notifications as core retention tools, not extras.

  • Skipping live operations is the most common retention mistake in mobile. 10:37
    • People hold many apps and won't open each one daily, but something interesting enough will bring them back.
    • A saturated market means a game has to keep fighting to stay relevant.
    • Flappy Bird is the rare exception: it never changed and people played it daily.
    • Staying relevant is like being a musician, who can be great and still fade if they stop putting out new work.
  • A steady, predictable content plan builds a loyal fan base. 12:21
    • League of Legends has released new champions for over a decade.
    • Some releases are reskins, but those are details. The steady culture is what keeps fans loyal.
    • Mobile can copy this habit.
  • Ask for push permission with a clear reason before the system prompt. 13:19
    • Explain crisply what the player gets, instead of showing the native prompt cold.
    • Examples: unlocking a chest, or new collector's item cards in Exploding Kittens.
    • Whatever would make someone return is also the best argument for letting you notify them.

14:20 Pricing psychology and starter packs

Behavioral psychology can turn the roughly 95% of players who never pay into buyers, and starter packs should be tested, not assumed.

  • Irrational behavior is a reliable lever for monetization. 14:29
    • Chuka studied irrational behavioral concepts, the idea that humans are irrational by nature.
    • The same psychology shapes products like Zoom, so games can use it too.
    • Many apps still don't communicate value, even though most now try.
  • The goal is to make non-payers think like payers. 16:06
    • About 95% of mobile players don't pay.
    • Value-creation methods that have worked for decades are the tool.
    • Anchoring works partly because people like free, so it nudges them off the cheapest option.
  • Starter packs usually pay off, but only if the game gives early things to spend on. 17:46
    • Chuka still recommends them as a starting point for thinking about value.
    • Test on a slice of the audience, for example 10%, and compare.
    • If the value comes late, buyers wonder why they bought a pack they haven't used.
    • Players must be able to spend soft currency early for the pack to matter.

In the growth library

Chuka Ikokwu, Head of Analytics at Exploding Kittens, Founder and CEO of Divercity.io. A mobile game analytics lead explains why retention comes before monetization, how to set up analytics early, and which retention and pricing tactics studios overlook. It is worth hearing for the concrete practices on push permission prompts, live operations, value framing, anchoring and starter packs.

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

Transcript487 lines
0:00

what is up app nation it is Steve P Jung founder of app Masters calm the place you go when you want actually packed content in the app business because I talked to some phenomenal people so knowledgeable in the app space so that I and you can collectively learn together and we can grow our collective businesses together as well I'm a big believer in community I'm super excited to have this guess on I messaged him about two years ago like please Jukka let me come let me interview you and finally we got to meet him person at the adjust event and finally got him on that's that's a key you got a meet in person they can't say no to you in person I'm super excited to have him on his name is chuka Eco COO he is the head of analytics of one of my favorite board games but also a mobile app called exploding kittens and he's also the founder of diversity really great mission we're gonna learn more about

0:50

diversity but you can check it out diversity dot IO so without further ado the long-awaited thank you thank you I'm honored to be on here it definitely has been a long time coming and I apologize once again I'm gonna have to keep going alright let's talk about the gaming inside I know that's what most people are you here for but you know you said one strategy that's were really working through is product analytics and so like talk to me about maybe your tech stack or how you guys think about analytics and then I really want all obviously talk about monetization as well absolutely so analytics is my specialty I've always loved numbers I've loved always loved games I'm a gamer from you know as soon as I could walk and aníbal of numbers you know those of revenue numbers I've always loved data just in general so it was a business quite a natural fit and allow me to break into the gaming space

1:52

pretty early 2008 actually I was one of the early employees at Riot Games here in LA before moving to the Bay Area and I was I had the privilege of working on game economy in game bouncy and the monetization scheme now what I also realized is that you cannot see whether what you're doing is working well if you don't see the data for it and it's and and not just see data but see reliable and clean data and more often than not a lot of game teams go straight to the development you know they build at the game design doc and analytics is playing catch-up right they've already started the playable the game is working and analytics playing catch-up and and I studied economics and on the grad so opportunity cost is a very real thing and the issue in the the in my opinion one of the biggest issues of mobile gaming is the opportunity costs like if you don't do this then this won't happen you know people okay

2:53

we have the IP people can make purchases we have ads but there's a lot of money that's always being left on the table right and that's why it's called live operations because you're operating in a live environment and results can happen in real time so all that said my strategy is always to get in as early as possible and look at the analytics and and just your your information the information you're collecting as the single biggest influencer of how profitable your game is gonna be you know what I always feel about analytics chuka is like there's so much numbers like do I try to measure everything like so are there some key things that especially from a gaming perspective that you don't always try to measure yeah I mean I don't think it's a mystery to your average you know whether it's like a PM or producer or even even you a manager but arm is like the acronym that we always use acquisition retention

3:54

monetization and retention and engagement live in the same world so it's like RM by IQ attention to the monetization and each of those the standard metrics but there are some that also unique to the application of the game itself so of course you know as far as acquisition goes the thing you care about mostly is do I do I know where my users are coming from and do I know if they're coming possibly right like what my best sources are so I can optimize towards that so the LCV or the the return on adspend is the big thing we would always care are you a from a retention and engagement standpoint obviously the retention metrics day one day three day seven 1430 the session length I people actually coming to use your app and if they're coming are they coming for a bit a fairly long period of time I didn't just coming for one second and bouncy you know you care about the session length and the number of sessions and

4:47

then also on the monetization side of course how many of them are starting to pay you know what is the value that they're bringing whether it's an ad revenue and lcv um and or Arbel which you know it's essentially your daily believe I've been you a long time ago some people would calculate the number of the average number of days a user comes to your game like over the course of 30 days and then multiply that by the average revenue per daily active user and then that's like your your back-of-the-envelope LTV so if you have a rough sense of how profitable each of your users is and how many users you have then I think it can help you determine the value of your game overall but remember again it's very live operations driven so it's not just fire-and-forget but it's a lot of iteration like okay let's try this and see if this works and let's try that and see that works named from a tech stack

5:42

perspective are you using things like a just to try to figure all this stuff out yes some tools of course but for me I just made it simple my mom always says that the devil you know is is always better so for acquisition adjust is the go-to you know that there's obviously a judge is not the only play out there but that is my player it works if it ain't broke don't fix it they're also evolving a lot of their services so that's the number one thing I look for it's not just oh this is our tool and take it out as you see you know it's more like okay there's that so but we're gonna constantly improve and make life easy for you so he's our acquisition for analytics snowflake is the the is my also is my goats either because they also allow you to store raw data and then they had to give you the sequel query NFA to access that data as well and then of course it has connector you know I can connect to your

6:41

visualization tool like tableau which is what I use tableau is my favorite there are also there screaming sequel players out there like materialized that I owe implied that I owe and and some some that build the visualization in the the data storage like personal but or look or even but um I keep it simple again snowflake gets you the raw data you can saw the word in and stuff like and then also query it and then send it to your visualization soul and then from monetization monetization is that that's like the biggest the trickiest area because there are a lot of tools there that help you optimize your monetization but you know it's still like let's just say there's not like that enough data out there right but there's a couple of folks like game of wheels that are art like serious in this in this space there's another one I can't remember the name which sucks because they did a demo for us recently boy I can send that to

7:42

you after I have when I check my inbox but there's this some source where you put the SDK and they actually help you improve your they help you optimize your monetization based on player behavior and reduce churn as well we just turned increases more monetization over over time so anything you can do to optimize your player engagement you will usually help you with monetization yeah I've had Doron on from game of whales and essentially what they allow you to do is run up ton of a/b tests and he kind of mentioned this to is like look with monetization we have no idea what's gonna work and so we this platform they've got a ton of great apps allows you to sort of a B test different things to to go you know I do want to talk about this I interview cross who wrote creator Matthew hall and he talked about like I was like hey how do you think about monetization early on and you just like look I cared about retention that's

8:34

all I care about if people came back into the app I knew that I would eventually figure out how to monetize them you should have a similar mindset as you start thinking through like new game launches and you game ideas through your vas game industry knowledge yes so I understand agree if they stayed they will pay right I've monetized in games myself but it was rarely as soon as I joined in find the people who monetize like as soon as they join aren't the ones you want to count on its the ones who stay for a long time because those are the ones who are gonna sustain your your revenue base so the the retention mechanics are very important and thinking about because I think it's tricky to think about oh how are we gonna monitor how we gonna put people and and trick them into pain but that's that's not you it will really be sustainable right when I say sustainable until about four years like years to

9:27

come not just like a fast follow or something that's just going to last for a few months and then the buzz is gone but you want to do something that the monetization monetization should not be a secondary it shouldn't be after an afterthought boy the retention should definitely be more important than the monetization because the monetization is heavily dependent on the retention so if you do something that itself will catch people and keep them that's great but do not forget about your monetization hooks because you can have a great game a lot of users high retention and no money you know little sad little to no money right I've seen that before and and that's usually because of the lack of like I said once they should not be like a strong thought from the get-go you know I do want to move on I do want to talk about retention monetization here a little bit you know you said you're a gamer you love games

10:16

are there different tactics that you seem that like most gaming comes not even most but that maybe is the most commonly overlooked retention tactic from a gaming perspective the most commonly overlooked tactic from a retention standpoint III would say and I hate to say it but with mobile I would say lack of push notifications I think of you know I have like over 100 apps usually and I cannot go to every relevant every day or every other day even I'm doing every month but if there's something that's interesting enough that comes up then I will come back right and then when I come back I see what what else is new if anything or at least like I'm we might let's to continue my experience and and that's reliable comes in again when I worked at WB I was there for three years and one of the things that we did to pull people back in was it put new champions or new challenges into the game so it's like

11:19

it's a very simple thing like every every two weeks or release in your character and when a new character comes announce it guys you know the the Scorpion met the nether on netherworld scorpion challenges up right come come come claim your character and then we tension just get you know like a lot of visas come back and then engagement increases monetization increases so again there's no with mobile gaming if you want to if you want to have the most profitable title that you can you don't want to ignore live operations in a rare case you can do that like with a flappy bird where you don't have to change anything about that game people are just gonna play it every day and the buzz and the revenue and all that stuff but that's an exception to the rule I think for the most part because of especially because of how saturated it is now you want to fight to be relevant it's like it's like it's like being a musician you

12:14

know you could be a great musician but you can just like that you can become irrelevant so but what you have to keep coming you got to keep coming hard I mean venting yourself so I think in the same way one of the most underrated things is having a scalable or consistent plan a league of Legends has been doing this for years I mean almost like over a decade now I've really seen new characters or champions and and well it's a reskin or whatever I mean those are the details but the culture has made for a very loyal fan base and I think in the same way that's something that mobile can benefit from have you seen certain types of ways to ask I know with games that might be a little bit more difficult but with sub-sites subscription-based apps it's like what a meditation app how when you like to meditate okay I like to meditate a TM can we send you push notifications when they ask and it's always the right

13:09

way to ask because I normally turn off all push notifications but is it what's the right way to ask for push notifications for games that's a good question I think that the one thing that we see as a best practice now is is what you just said like asking rather than just like sending the native prompt or so on to allow I very crisply explain why you want to send them a notification right like you know can we let you know about your rewards for instance can we let you know when it's time to unlock your chest or when you can get the new exploding kittens collected collect collector's item cards or what not i if you appeal to something that you suspect they use that might value then there are more than I don't know maybe your chances increase by 50% that they will allow the notification so that that again comes down to thinking about retention like what what do you expect in your call your creativity will

14:12

get someone to come back whatever that thing is is gonna be a biggest weapon in order to get them to even allow you to try to get them to come back with push notifications okay you guys I want to move on to the monetization side so what's a commonly overlooked monetized monetization strategy that you feel like hey people should be doing this sure so I studied what they call irrational behavioral concepts or ibc secondly the economic term of why humans are just irrational by nature and it's just like it's psychology but the psychology affects the world around us right even this zoom platform that were on does it right so I think in the same way we can do something similar with with monetization and in monetization communicating value for instance it's something that everyone most people do it now I see but a lot of apps still don't do it you know like um let's say you're offering like 100 coins right 100

15:15

coins for five dollars you can offer it 20 more coins and say 20 percent more right and if you just say 20 percent more you give the impression stones getting a good deal it probably will not great the economy at all but it will increase the conversion on that bundle so little things like that you know and I think it's um that that's like the theory of value there's also called there's also the fear of anchoring - right anchoring is where you have like a thousand dollar bundle and people see and like oh no I can never buy that but I'll buy the hundred dollar one instead you know so just um even though it's like a psychological trick I see it all the time where people see options and and they just no one it's it may be a good value but it's too much for them but it has automatically skewed them from the cheapest because people are cheap people like free by nature so skew them from that - just a little higher so your goal

16:09

should your goal I mean as you know I think like 95% of people still aren't paying for the most part on mobile games so your goals always really to get the non payers to think like payers and not like cheapos and in so doing you know you just have to employ some of these value creation methodologies that have been working for for many many decades you know I I love that you say value perception cuz I never thought of a fancy term but it's so simple like right but we did this a B test when I was at a different startup where essentially we said it's $25 for a month 179 for a year same thing right you get a little bit off and then 199 for all this a year for all this and what happened was we're just showing the monthly and yearly there's like a 50/50 split now obviously we want people in the year right so I made up a product and I just said you want I'm gonna make this yearly plan a little bit cheaper and then just give

17:07

the basics right and then because the value then becomes clear that oh just for 20 bucks more I get all these other things I'm gonna sign up for that and that conversion is like tripled conversions and it became an 80/20 split where 80% of the people were actually signing up for the yearly so it has a huge impact with the valued I'm so glad you said that the I know that some of these game developers they do these like starter packs and they these like huge promotion on these starter packs now what's your what's your take on it because I've seen nice revenue numbers from these starter packs but at the same times it might create your does it hurt your LTV so I I'm still in the camp where I recommend starter packs because I think it's a good starting point for people to monetize oh it's at least start to think about value in your application but I always say that if all fails you know you can always a be test to prove out

18:04

your theory still one hand okay be this cohort I'm offering the starter pack to and the other I'm not offering the back to this other cohort you know like whether it's 10% of the audience of 50% of 10% sorry person 10 not know starter which one does better I'll bet that the one with the starter pack would be better but again it depends on its it's case phase right because if you're offering value if a lot of the value you're offering comes later and that's in the the user experience then I started pack may not work as well because it's like wait why did I buy this thing and I haven't had to use it really for the most part so that's the it has to flow with your title like you have to be able to see what you can start to spend your soft currency on earlier on in the experience if a starter pack was going to make that much of a difference you