Autumn of Indie Game Markets from Lostgarden

This is a great Article which sums up the state of the industry very accurately but its so well written with metaphors and not being overly critical. Spoiler alert, it ends well too.

It’s easy to get discouraged as an indie developer.  Personally with my projects I’ve had to reduce costs to under $20k for a product, which doesn’t leave much room for experimentation (about 25% the budget) and you have to DIY and hire experts on contracts as much as possible.

Experimentation means, taking your core loop and doing user testing.  I don’t use friends and family for this because

Breaking the Habit [losing retained players]

How long does it take for a retained user, someone who has been playing for weeks or even months to disappear for good?  The answer may surprise you….  It’s only three days.  That’s right all it takes is a long weekend where your loyal player unplugs and enjoys not having to collect coins, shake trees or watch timers.  Habit is a powerful thing and the mechanics developers rely on to create a sense of obligation weigh heavily on players. Taking what may be intended to be just a short break could, in actuality, become a welcome change of pace and subsequently never return.

Losing paying players is a much more serious problem for developers. In general the rule

The Dark Arts of Monetization

The large fear for developers is losing players due to over exposing ads but what about In-App Purchases (IAP) that lead to churn?  I’ll give you several examples of what to avoid and best practices to maximize return on investment (ROI).  Just remember “You can shear a sheep many times but you can skin him only once.”

I use the term “dark monetization” practices meaning two things.  The first being that they actually hurt lifetime value (LTV) despite showing an uptick in metrics because players quit earlier than they naturally would have.  The second reason is because they are confusing or misleading which leaves a bad taste in the mouths of your players.

Bad monetization practices:

Super Cell Clash Royale lowers prices

The second major update on Clash Royale after opening its doors worldwide came yesterday.

One of the changes of note is the pricing of items in their shop.  The shop sell 3 different cards per day (6 on Sunday) of different rarity ranging up to the most expensive which is “epic”.  You can buy a limited multiple copies of the same card (used to level them up) with prices that previously escalated exponentially and now there is a linear price increase.  

Let’s take a look at the before and after:

We have to assume Supercell tested this

So you need a mobile analytics strategy?

Please check out the abstract to my article published in the Journal of so-you-need-a-mobile-analytics-strategy.pdf  

For a copy of the Journal please visit:
Applied Marketing Analytics.

Abstract: When it comes to analytics for mobile apps there are several differing categories which need to be addressed

Is the Kim Kardashian Hollywood mobile app ruining Free To Play?

With its aggressive conversion techniques, punishing player tactics and brutally tight economy does Kim Kardashian Hollywood actually hurt the overall free to play genre?  Making $700,000 per day (CNN, July 30, 2014) a day may sound great but at the cost of turning so many players off to IAP, who is really winning here besides Kim Kardasian (who gets a reported 45% of gross) (Forbes, July 7, 2014).  The problem is not extracting the maximum amount of money from its whales (which it is amazing at).  This game is now mainstream, being mentioned on TV and in the media, and attracts a new audience of players who may not be used to free to play games.  The concern is players needing to spend $2.40 to refill energy for a ‘fake’ photo shoot 3x in less than 1 minute will turn them off to buying again in the future, in any game which hurts the industry.

Like all games on mobile, especially big titles like this, I make it a point to play for more than week.  This one was so groundbreaking that I spent nearly a month.  I noticed some alarming things,

My answers to the GamesBeat survey contest

Enter now to win a free ticket ($850):
http://insight.venturebeat.com/gamesbeat-tickets

New whitepaper on the 6 essential mobile analytics which drive success

 

“Being “data driven” means real data in real time and building your company around it. Nothing more, nothing less, no compromise and nothing personal. ”   – Andrew Pearlman

Need help choosing which analytics provider to go with?  

Want to know what it takes to cover all your mobile analtyics needs?

6-essential-analytics-your-app-needs.pdf

 

Flurry Launches Return Rate Metric, Finally Offers REAL Retention Analytics

Flurry finally caught up with the rest of mobile development this week when they introduced “Return Rate.” This new-to-Flurry metric (but built-in-basic with most other mobile analytics providers) now matches the common definition for user retention – you only measure people on the actual days they come back.

Return Rate doesn’t completely replace Flurry’s previous misleading and potentially dangerous report of “Rolling Retention.” But at least it’s now more prominently featured on the platform – and it’s the metric developers should use instead.

 

Read more on the Sourcebits blog

slides for “Refining Success: The New Data Driven Model”

Here are the slides for my Presentation at Launch Fest “Refining Success: The New Data Driven Model” http://slidesha.re/MZy4tP

What are they keys to building a successful Data Driven organisation? What is the method to the madness to move your analytics into analysis and your metrics into action