Making money on your game ==== 1. Arcade (Pay to play/keep alive) * e.g. Taito / Space Invaders (+ Namco / Pac-Man, Atari, ...) * Technically, arcade buys/leases game 1. Single sales (Pay once, play forever) * Soooooo many 1. Shareware/DLC (Pay for more game) * e.g. Doom 1. Subscription (Pay to keep playing) * e.g. World of Warcraft & MMOs 1. Free to Play / Freemium (Pay to improve your experience) * e.g. Zynga / Farmville 1. Ad-supported (Free to play, but your eyeballs are worth $) * Sub-class of F2P Behavioral Game Design ==== 1. Behavioral Psychology (your players are lab rats) 1. Actions (Run maze, collect object, kill enemy, etc.) 1. Reward (Tasty cheese, get something, or just flash & congrats) 1. Contingency (Rule for when the reward happens) 1. [Response schedules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement) 1. Interval = time-dependent, Ratio = action dependent 1. FI = Fixed Interval; Cool-down timer 1. FR = Fixed Ratio; Reward every 10 enemies 1. VI = Variable Interval; Periodic/random reward drops 1. VR = Variable Ratio; Take action, sometimes get reward (e.g. slots) Behavioral Monetization ==== 1. Gambling (1:2 - 1:4 Variable Ratio) 1. Fun & enough content while free (or you lose them before they pay) 1. Positive & Negative Reinforcement 1. Positive Reinforcement (See my flashy thing) 1. Negative reinforcement (Don't want friends to see your failure) 1. Monetization can break your game 1. Either broken before, or broken after 1. Hard to balance for both 1. Treadmill / grind 1. Repetitive activity you can buy out of 1. E.g. grind for coins and items, or buy coins How to measure ==== 1. Who is playing 1. DAU = Daily Active Users 1. MAU = Monthly Active Users 1. [Angry Birds](https://app2top.com/main/mau-angry-birds-is-200-million-12756.html): 1B downloads; 200M peak MAU 1. [Farmville](https://toppandigital.com/us/blog-usa/rise-fall-zynga-cautionary-tale-game-developers/): 80M peak MAU, $235M Y1 revenue 1. How did you get them? 1. CPA = Cost per Acquisition or UAC = User Acquisition Cost ($0.50-$2.50) 1. Organic (users who come by word of mouth) 1. k-factor (virility) = new players per existing player 1. Do you keep them? 1. Retention (day 10 retention, day 30 retention) 1. Stickiness (DAU/MAU) 1. Churn (% who stop each month) 1. How much do you make from them 1. ARPU = Average Revenue Per User ($0.10-$0.20) 1. ARPPU = Average Revenue Per Paying User 1. Conversion rate = % users making 1st time purchases (2-5%) 1. LTV = Lifetime Value Free to Play Funnel =================== 1. Each step is a subset of the one before 1. Download / Open / Play once / Tutorial / D1 / D2 / D7 / D30 / ... 1. ... / 1st coin buy / 1st spend / ... 1. Either make the funnel input wider or increase retention/conversion per step What to sell ===== 1. Experiences 1. Unlock classes, items 1. Personalization / Vanity 1. Seasonal content 1. Exclusive features 1. Exclusive content * Worth something, ideally not more of the same 1. Continued play 1. Arcade extra coin to continue game 1. Farmville, pay to rescue dead field 1. Upgrades 1. Extra stats 1. Competitive advantage 1. Advance story (especially at roadblocks) 1. Consumables 1. Buy the gun or the bullets? 1. Buy in-game money 1. Usually buy gems or coins rather than spend real money as you go 1. Separate real monetary action from spending in the player's mind 1. Don't over-sell ("all the candy you want" doesn't last long) 1. Chance at an item "loot box" 1. Magic: The Gathering / Baseball cards * Buy cards hoping for one worth more than you paid 1. Kompu Gacha (kompu = complete, gacha = toy vending machine) 1. Banned in Japan in 2012 1. Small price, random item 1. Big prize for complete set 1. Can be $1000's to win 1. Middle school kid spend over $500 in a month 1. Primary school kid spent over $1500 in 3 days 1. $1.4B in 2011, 2-2.5 ARPU (vs. 0.5-1 for Zynga) Resources ==== 1. [Game Developer](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/) 1. [Behavioral game design](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/behavioral-game-design) 1. [Roger Dickey's tactics for game monetization](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/roger-dickey-s-tactics-for-game-monetization) 1. [Magic: The Gathering](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/game-monetization-lessons-from-magic-the-gathering) 1. [Kompu Gacha](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/why-quot-kompu-gacha-quot-was-banned) 1. [Raul Aliaga's blog](http://raliaga.org/post/87613863099/almost-everything-you-need-to-know-to-enter-mobile-game) * This one is a collection of links, but posts on the rest of the blog are relevant as well. 1. [Betable blog](http://web.archive.org/web/20160408131628/https://blog.betable.com/category/game-monetization/) * Site is dead, but still on archive.org 1. [Metrics](http://www.gamesbrief.com/2014/05/a-comprehensive-list-of-metrics-for-free-to-play-games/)