As a Game Developer or Publisher, you want to make an awesome game AND make some money. It used to be universal that players paid for their game upfront, with the hope they liked it enough to give it good reviews. But if you make F2P games, it’s a different ball game. You’re only going to make money if your players love your game. It just has to be good.
If players are leaving your game early and you haven’t made any money, it’s fair to say you are probably going wrong somewhere. Keeping players engaged is key to monetizing a game, and analyzing your players’ behavior is an essential step to figuring out where you may be going wrong. However, there are some mistakes that all F2P developers need to avoid to keep retention figures up and start generating revenue from your game.
5 Game Mistakes that will Stop Players Spending
1) Difficulty Spikes
Any change to the difficulty in the game should be gradual, creating a smooth difficulty curve. A difficulty level that spikes too early will make it very hard for players to progress and have fun. If a game is too hard, players will simply leave, never to return.
This is where it is extremely useful to harness the power of analytics to monitor completion rates in your game then adjust difficulty levels accordingly to support retention. Analysis by deltaDNA has found that players who spend after day 1, will spend more over their lifetime. Retention matters.
A Funnel analysis can be used reveal where the difficultly level may be causing players to leave your game
2) Time Blockers
Generally, time mechanics which stop players from playing the game are poor mechanics, especially for more hardcore games where players are likely to spend longer and become engaged. It is better to use mechanics that keep players playing and focus monetization more through character or environmental customization.
3) One Track Route
When players are progressing through your game, they should always be given a choice of multiple routes and objectives so they never feel they have no way to progress and feel forced to monetize. Using a rewarding task system or split path (as seen in popular mobile title Clash of Clans) gives players a clear choice giving them control over the decision to monetize.
4) Forced to Spend to Progress
Giving players a stark choice between spending money or not progressing, will have a major impact on retention. Players should never have to decide at a single point in the game to either spend money or leave. Generally it is much better to give players multiple opportunities to spend money and not force the decision. You’ll end up with more (and happier) players in the long run who will collectively spend more.
5) Sales and Offer Spamming
Spamming players with special offer pop-ups can be annoying to most and a good reason for abandonment if it happens too often. Message your players with offers at the right time, or based on their player style, however, and this will help you to maximize their experience while increasing your in-game purchases.
Conclusion
There are five things you need to avoid if you want to monetize your game and keep your players happy; difficultly spikes, time blockers, having a one track route, forcing your players to spend to progress and presenting sales offers or spamming.
So, how do you do this?
The unlimited free dashboards provided by deltaDNA GO can be used to identify where difficultly spikes may be occurring, or where bad monetization/game mechanics are losing you players. The deltaDNA games analytics and marketing platform also offers a host of real-time personalization tools that allow you to create dynamic content, and have been proven to increase engagement 50% and monetization by 30%.
About the author:
Fascinated by the potential of big data, Mark Robinson co-founded deltaDNA in 2010 and has made it his personal mission to evangelize how analytics can change the games industry by delivering player insight and personalizing game experiences. Working with some of the industry’s most successful companies, Mark has been showing how the next generation of analytics dramatically improves engagement and lifetime value across all platforms and genres of online games. deltaDNA’s platform allows publishers & developers to use segmentation and data mining techniques to deliver player insight, and shape player experiences through real-time in-game messaging, AB testing and dynamic changes to game balancing.
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