Miscellaneous

AppQuantum discusses its strategy with in-game events and monetization

Discover some of the company's exclusive trade secrets!

The human brain often adds value to items and events that are in some way limited, be that in time, quantity or availability. This approach is used with great success in free-to-play games. Let’s see how it works with in-game events, using the video game Gold & Goblins, published by AppQuantum

First, a look at some statistics. In 2016 only 50% of mobile games on the Top Grossing list (and 25% of mobile games overall) had in-game events. In 2021 they were present in 94% of the USA’s Top 100 titles (according to Game Refinery). Therefore, in other words, nearly all the top games use events to attract and retain users, as well as boost monetization. The in-game events of Gold & Goblins can be classified into a few categories:

  • Recurring and unique. For example, Christmas is a recurring event, but many people only see it in a game once due to the user life cycle, depending on the genre. There are also events that take place every three days or every couple of weeks. Those can be considered recurring for the majority of users
  • Varied by duration (from multiple hours to a couple of weeks)
  • With a completely new economic cycle or integrated into an existing model (battle passes work that way)
  • Using existing gameplay or adding completely new systems;
  • Singleplayer, competitive (e.g. leaderboards), and cooperative (for instance, kill a boss together).

The shortcomings faced by AppQuantum with the events

In-game events should always be unique and never repeat. According to the devs, however, they found that most players don’t care if the events are one of a kind. That means one can have recurring events, especially if the project’s user life cycle allows it. 

The dev’s approach to making every event unique proved to be expensive and difficult for the developers and didn’t allow them to create a large amount of content. Yes, there was an influx of people during the event and that didn’t drop afterward (any activity is measured by its effect on income). With that said, production was still too expensive and the amount of content was insufficient. 

app qauntaum game events change AppQuantum in-game events
Classification of in-game events from AppQuantum (Image via AppQuantum)

Also, the event’s duration was too long and didn’t always fit the content. For example, if you set a week for something small-scale, the user will think they’ll be able to finish the event in the last two days. As a result, the player will lose focus and forget about it altogether. You can, of course, work with longer events, but they have to be prepared properly. 

For Gold and Goblins, the developers themselves offered us to do events differently. During them, we saw a major ARPDU increase (4 times as much). On top of that, the events were recurring, which, naturally, led to a large increase in LTV (by â…“)

AppQuantum’s change in approach and its outcomes

  • Instead of specific holidays, the events were tied to weekdays and repeated every week. We still held seasonal events: Halloween and Christmas. For 2022 we plan to have seasonals for every quarter: Easter (already live), Summer, Halloween, and Christmas; 
  • Weekly events lasted from 3 days (Sunday to Tuesday) to 5 (Tuesday to Saturday);
  • We didn’t even have to tie them to player timings. With the Easter update we introduced three time zones (America, Europe, and Asia) for user convenience; 
  • We added a button to the main game screen. It displayed the event’s current status, showing if it was live and how much time was left until the end;
  • We added push notifications to remind users to log in and play. 

The approach produced a significantly favorable result

Events in Gold and Goblins were created as a parallel gameplay loop, using the game’s existing mechanics. Thus, within an idler we let people play another idler that attracted people for a limited duration. The players, who already enjoyed this gameplay, were happy that there was more of it 🙂

app quantum what changed events
Changes in in-game events made by AppQuantum (Image via AppQuantum)

Short events, lasting a couple of days, shouldn’t be too expensive for the player. In our case, completing one would cost about $40 or 150 ad views. However, it could also be completed without spending any money. Due to high availability, the event attracted a large share of our player base – around 80% of active users. Progress was linear, and exponential growth was left for the leaderboards.

Introducing leaderboards to Gold and Goblins increased the competitive players’ share, which led to an IAP ARPPU raise. People started buying more event bundles, in order to get in the lead of their group, which we paid attention to during the development of the 11-days-long Easter event. By dividing it into separate mines (instead of one mine for the short events), the devs set the final one apart for those who like to fight for top spots, letting the rest finish on the 5th shaft, getting all the rewards, thus making the 6th one purely competitive.

The importance of exclusive in-game rewards in events

Rewards are the most important part of event development and have a lot of influence on player behavior. They have to be paid enough attention to but also be unique enough. It’s important for them to motivate players into taking part in the event again.

In Gold and Goblins, there are two events at the beginning of a week and four in the middle. The former is shorter, with either evolve or hard-currency bundles as rewards, depending on the specific event. Thus, players already know they can greatly increase their resources from Sunday to Tuesday. Events in the middle of the week offer a more diverse prize pool, but they also last longer – Tuesday to Saturday. Those provide more rare chests and manager upgrade cards.

Event monetization and its importance in the long run

The system AppQuantum follows works not only in Gold & Goblins but in many games of different genres: RPG, tycoon, idler, puzzles, merge, farm, etc. That system is bundles. Bundles are tied to slowing down progress. Overall, there are 5-6 of them over 3 days and a little fewer for two-day events. Their price is usually low enough to not scare players away – $3 to $15.

app quantum trade offers AppQuantum in-game events
Reward strategy during in-game events from AppQuantum (Image via AppQuantum)

It increases as the player progresses through the event. The user knows that progress doesn’t carry over between events, so they’ll be ready to pay a bit more every time, in order to get all the content and rewards. Such monetization attracts even the type of players that are used to not spending anything on the game, thanks to the added motivation of limited duration. 

The impact of ad monetization

A good decision would be to only leave top ad placements in the events, and not drag everything there. This allows you to protect your eCPM and avoid the cannibalization of the other ads in the main game.  So, how exactly does one make quality, money-making events for your game:

  • Make them recurring and tie them not only to holidays but also to calendar weeks. For example, they can repeat every week or two. Set the frequency of your events based on the user life cycle for that specific project;
  • When choosing duration, look at the amount of content. Don’t make weekly events too long (over 2-3 days), there’s no point, as the player will lose focus; 
  • Events have to be user-friendly: both in gameplay and inaccessibility (the best decision is to have a button that can instantly take the player to the event);
  • Don’t make the gameplay too complex; 
  • Don’t overprice the bundles. For short events set low prices, $3 to $15, increasing as the player progresses. 
  • Offer rewards that are relevant to the user. They don’t have to be unique but should motivate the player to participate.

For instance, within Gold & Goblins, we only repeated two ads from the main game, the most popular ones. This decision proved to be the right one since it didn’t lead to excess Rewarded Video creation within a limited-time event. It’s important to keep the event scale in mind: the duration, difficulty, content – all of that can influence not only the number of ad placements but also their frequency. For example, it’s best to let a player watch an ad that helps them increase their offline income only 3-5 times a day. 

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So what are your thoughts on the strategies set by AppQuantum regarding in-game events and monetization policies? Let us know in the comments below!

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