CasualKit blog

Insights from experts:

CasualKit have been talking to Tim Shepherd about online multiplayer games. Get the insights and read the 2. part of the interview below.

Meet Tim Shepherd

I started my career in the gaming industry working on GUitar Hero and DJ Hero franchises at Activison. In 2011 I ventured to Helsinki, FInland to find out what was going on in social and mobile gaming and was lucky enough to find myself working alongside some of the most talented developers in the world, in a special place and time in gaming history. I am now creative director at Chroma Studios, a new start-up working toward our debut title, e: Click, Click, BOOM!

https://www.facebook.com/chromagamesstudios

https://www.facebook.com/clickclickboomgame

https://twitter.com/e_clickboom

Q1: What is your experience with online multiplayer games?

I worked on a couple of mobile PVP games before; they weren’t huge hits unfortunately, but the audiences they did have seemed to enjoy them a lot. PVP suits a particular type of person extremely well, but luckily they make up a large percentage of gamers and are extremely loyal players when they find something they like.  

Q2: Obviously people like multiplayer games but do you see any development challenges for a gamedev perspective?

There are lots of online multiplayer-specific issues, most of which revolve around balancing: fair match-making and avoiding Pay To Win being the two that immediately spring to mind.

Beyond that, there are logistical ‘extras’ such as community management tools, technical expertise required particularly regarding back end tech, scaling and speed.

And of course, online multiplayer traditionally tend to be much larger games than most, though mobile is changing that to some degree.

Q3: How do you see the future of casual online multiplayer games (both asynchronous and synchronous)?

More and more console gamers are discovering that playing on mobile is a very valid alternative for them - there’s tons of content being produced with this ‘core’ gamer in mind. As a result I expect to see more games for tablets which rival the complexity of PC and console titles. Hearthstone could be an example of this starting to emerge.

I expect that during this development, both players and studios will start to figure out what works and what doesn’t, using the technical opportunities to create some really cool new mechanics that might help differentiate the tablet experience from the PC.

Q4: If you have to highlight some unique qualities about multiplayer modes what would that be?

Obviously playing against a real person rather than AI gives players a much greater thrill and a chance to show off their mad skills in front of others.

Q5: What is your opinion about PvP challenges and tournaments for real money in casual free-to-play games? Imagine if you could challenge a friend or even a random person in Wordfeud for 1 dollar.

I think it’s an interesting approach to monetization, and if is implemented in titles which support that kind of PVP scenarios then it has a lot of potential.

Q6: Only a few game developers focus on casual online multiplayer (both asynchronous and synchronous) games (slowly increasing), why do you think that is?

Casual experiences are a digital ‘me time’, and so some titles focus on being a solely single player experience. But the canvass is changing all the time so I expect there will be a shift toward catering for a more immersed player who wants a longer gaming session with real rewards and accolades. Competition is a powerful motivator with lots of implications for F2P mechanics.

Thanks to Tim Shepherd for his insights on monetization and casual online multiplayer F2P gameplay. 

Insights from experts:

CasualKit have been talking to Tim Shepherd about monetization. Get the insights and read the first part of the interview below.

Meet Tim Shepherd

I started my career in the gaming industry working on GUitar Hero and DJ Hero franchises at Activison. In 2011 I ventured to Helsinki, FInland to find out what was going on in social and mobile gaming and was lucky enough to find myself working alongside some of the most talented developers in the world, in a special place and time in gaming history. I am now creative director at Chroma Studios, a new start-up working toward our debut title, e: Click, Click, BOOM!

https://www.facebook.com/chromagamesstudios

https://www.facebook.com/clickclickboomgame

https://twitter.com/e_clickboom

Q1:How important is it to think about monetization when you develop a game and the game design?

It’s absolutely essential to know what type of monetization/business model you want to use in your game from Day 1. Luckily there are lots of choices for developers right now, with Free-to-Play still being the hot topic, but with 100% ad-based revenue models and Premium beginning to trend.

The biggest mistake I see is developers who have a great premium game but choose to be Free-to-Play when their game, loops and possibly team experience do not support it; but they think they must be free to be competitive which isn’t really the case any more.

Once you know what your game mechanics and market is you can build your monetization model around it. What you cannot do is choose at the end of development. A sophisticated monetization design is the foundation for F2P games and can’t simply be stuck on at the end.

Q2: What kind of games do you find most relevant for the freemium monetization model?

It’s tempting to have a premium title and stick some additional content in at the end to boost your revenue a little more. It kind of works if you treat it like a valuable DLC package (episodic gaming like ‘The Wolf Among Us’ and ‘The Walking Dead’ are doing that very well) but not so much if you just add more powerful boosters for the sake of it. Such games quickly become pay to win, which apart from feeling unfair, simply isn’t any fun. PVP games have to watch for this particularly.

So while the above does show that there are different approaches to F2P as a business model, you can see from the Top Grossing charts that casual is still king (pun intended). Casual session, accessible gameplay and broad marketability feels like the best recipe for F2P success for me. Other genres have a little more flexibility regarding business model. But in this age, no-one is ever going to pay for a premium casual puzzler or city builder as the free alternatives are some polished.

Additionally, for F2P to ‘work’, a huge install base is essential; niche games attempting to be F2P run a much higher risk of failure as their game won’t appeal to a wide enough audience for the F2P model to make a significant enough return.

Q3:What mechanics do gamedev have to think about in relation to monetization in games?

Assuming we are talking F2P, the games who are winning at monetization have engineered every facet of their experience to drive a player to an eventual sale. However, this is not only exceptionally difficult to fine tune, it may also be seen as a little be devious by some players.

I feel the best games overall are those who can deliver a truly free and wonderful experience, with the option to enhance that experience if a player feels like it. Monetization should always be an option in F2P, never a requirement.

A little more specifically though, proven mechanics which convert well include farming loops, time-based loops, progression/new content, and of course, PVP.

Q4: With your experience what do you think is the big challenges in the future regarding monetization?

Finding ways to deliver an experience where the player can see and feel the value of a purchase is something every title needs to design carefully with their own game in mind, and that is always a challenge but ultimately a part of the design process.

With respect to ‘traditional’ F2P mechanics the challenge now is that commonly a designer will attempt to copy other games in the App Store. Not only may those particular mechanics not be suitable for the designer’s game, but players do get bored of them. F2P designers need to be constantly innovating and iterating toward something new.

It’s no wonder why monetization in games are important; but it’s even more crucial to increase your ARPU these days (average revenue per user) in order to be profitable and get installs in the saturated market.

PG have released a report for global trends Q2 2014 and the overall conclusion is that user acquisition methods like burst campaigns and era of CPI-dominated promotions is far from over. The user acquisition methods have maybe become more complex with CPI (cost per install), CPV (cost per visit), CPR (cost per reopening), CPC (cost per click), and CPM (cost per thousand).

CPI prices put pressure on your ARPU

According to the PG report the cost of CPI have been increasing since June 2013 to April 2014 with the average price of $2 today. This means your ARPU needs to be at least $2 in order just to break-even with the CPI burst campaigns - and that’s without considering all the other costs. Obviously this is high costs and hence a big challenge for the majority of gamedev and studios.

The reality for gamedev and studios today is that one of the key KPI (key performance indicator) is the ARPU because of the considerable higher install cost. Just a few years ago the CPI prices were ⅓ of the prices today and the saturated market makes it almost impossible to only rely on organic installs.

Winners take all

The life-cycle of casual games are very very very short. It’s a fact that people quickly and easily loses interest and want to get on with the new thing, the new game - which people will get exposed to every day! Most casual games are rather simple which is the point, but the flip side is that people often quickly loses interest due to the lack of depth, complexity, or emotional investment like in character-driven stories.

With the emergence of mobile devices and the boom of the F2P games globally in the last few years have proven that the market is saturated so it’s crucial that you as gamedev/studio knows how to retain your users and extend the life-cycle of your game. This will also save you developing costs.

Although most casual games lack depth, complexity, and character-driven stories there are still possibilities to extend the life-cycle for casual games. Lets look at some tactics:

1. Branding - like Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise

Popularity breeds more popularity BUT Rovio have been exceptional to utilize the popularity and turn it into a successful franchise. First of all Rovio had the courage to think big and then invest big in branding and marketing strategies and tactics. PR strategies and brand extensions/diversification (including collaboration with other key companies) are one of the key factors.

2. Product development

Product development is the most common regarding extending the life-cycle of a casual game. Typically it is an update with a new version of the same game like new graphical environments or new tweaks and upgrades to the gameplay. Another common product development strategy is  sequels or spin-offs (Angry Birds is also a great example in this case) which actually is more an extension of the brand rather than the first games itself. Usually sequels or spin-offs come with significant improved updates since it’s not just a normal upgrade meaning it typically involves higher costs. Nevertheless, at some point you have to give the users something new in order to retain them to the brand so it’s a question about timing and costs.

3. In-App-Purchases - retain users via financial attachment

When users get involved financially in a game they are of course less likely to discard your game; the more money players spends equals higher commitment. The challenge is to increase the number of players to make IAP and several studies report that only 2% of your players will make IAP; and of these 2% the big money spender (referred as whales) is representing only 0.5%. In other words you need a lot of players and you need to spend a lot of IAP optimazation resources.

4. Multiplayer - the power of competition between friends

It is no surprise that people want to interact and be social, and nothing is stronger than competition between friends in games which probably explain why boardgames have been popular since ancient time. Incorporate an online multiplayer mode where friends can challenge each other will definitely increase the retention rate and extend the game’s life-cycle. This is especially relevant for the casual games because of the typically lacking depth and complexity to keep players’ interest; even your hardcore players will at some point get stuck and consequently quickly lose interest.

5. Tournaments with prizes

Another form of multiplayer mode is tournaments. Obviously, head-to-head challenges are most fun with friends but it is a whole other ball game when it is about tournaments with prizes. Then people don’t care who they compete against because it is the gameplay and prize that are in focus. Everybody knows that people get hooked when there are a possibility to win a prize in a game they already like to play.

Casual online PvP/multiplayer games are becoming more popular due to the social aspect it brings to games. If your casual game include any type of highscore system then it is quite simple to add an online multiplayer mode (depending on the game of course). In this blog-post we will try to explain how to do make the PvP matchmaking between players in form of a simple step by step guide.

When you are making a game and you want players to be able to compete against each other, you’ll need a server. Whether it’s turn-based or real-time you will need the server to handle some game related tasks to prevent players from cheating, and you will need it to handle the secure calls… e.g. to the Casualkit API. Actions such as creating and settling bets must be handled by a server, and not by the players’ device, so they won't be able to interfere with the requests.

Below is a description of how the players and your server could interact with each other and with the Casualkit API.

Flow of a highscore based bet:

Actors:

Player1

Player2

Game: A flappy bird clone

Game-server: A server that handles the secure calls to the api, as well as some game stuff

API: The CasualKit API.

All calls to games-server should be done securely (with ssl)

Steps:

Player1 connects to casualkit api by loggin into his Hojio.com account.

Game sends the access_token to the game-server, which can use it to get the player’s info from the Api.

Player1 selects a 1€ bet (and possibly other conditions such as map, or difficulty).

A browser-window is opened with the confirm ticket page, where the player pays the 1€ + fee, and returns to the game.

The game sends the confirmed ticket to the game-server.

Ticket is saved with the user.

The game-server creates a new 1€ bet with the API and adds the player ticket to it.

BetKey is saved.

Player1 is queued for a match.

Player2 completes steps 1-6

The game-server finds Player1 and Player2 are a match.

The game-server adds Player2 to the game, using the saved BetKey.

Player1 and Player2 are informed that an opponent are found.

Player1 and Player2 both flaps to the best of their ability, and each get a score

The game of Player1 sends the score to the server.

The game-server saves the score with the player

The game of Player2 sends the score to the server

The game-server saves the score with the player

The game-server finds that both scores are sent, so it calculates the winner (or a draw) and sends the result to the API.

The API transfers 2€ to the winner’s account

The game-server sends the result to both players.

The game-server

Depending on your needs, and on whether your game is real-time or turn-based, there are different servers you could use.

An Apache-server with PHP should be sufficient for a turn-based game, where players don’t have much interaction with either the server or eachother.

A Node.js server with Socket.IO is an option for a real-time game, because it’s able to “push” messages from the server to the players.

Advertising is maybe an obvious source of revenue but it's a competitive media landscape - more than ever before because of the endless possibilities (paid and free channels) for brands to advertise and engage their audience. 

It's essential not to forget about the players since they decide your success. I.e. it can be a hard discipline for gamedev to choose the right monetization model that earns revenue and do not displease the players.

A survey conducted by VentureBeat asked what monetization methods players found most annoying, and not surprising banner ads topped the list but also worth mentioning are interstitials, video- and text ads:

Banner ads — 34.8%

Notification ads – 31.2%

Surveys – 31.2%

Lock screen ads — 27.5%

Interstitials — 24.6%

Video ads – 21.7%

Subscriptions — 21%

App walls — 18.8%

Text ads – 18.8%

Offer walls – 13.8%

The survey also included the game developers experience of which monetization strategies are the least effective and brings the smallest amount of revenue. Comparing the results with the user's results we see that overall there is a coherence. The only thing that really differs is the notification ads.

With the death of paid apps in 2013, everyone is looking toward freemium, but whispers and murmurs about saturation on the mobile market are already heard.

As competition gets bigger, releases more frequent, the freemium model faces the problem of gathering enough players. This can be seen with the cost per install (CPI) going up a staggering 41% in 2013, while average revenue per user has been more or less flat since early 2013.

We believe a look into the business model would be in place! Several game formats have a hard time even implementing the freemium model, that often practice deprivation tactics (wait for lives or pay).

The monetization model forces you with a negative game experience to make you pay. This is not satisfactory for either player or developer. You want people to play your game as much as possible. Freemium games where you challenge other players, are often subject to an even worse model, just pure ad-based revenue (of course with feeble attempts to sell stuff as well).

An increasing amount of games face the problem that they cannot have a positive ROI on their advertising; making them unable to build a large enough playerbase to break even with their freemium game. With 0.15% of users accounting for 50% of freemium games revenue, and often only 2% of the gamers paying in a freemium game, you need a lot of users.

So your game cannot get a million installs - what's the counteraction to this reality? At CasualKit we believe our ready-to-go devkit can help games beat the average revenue per user of the freemium model. Have a look at our site casualkit.com and see what we believe is the next thing in the game monetization development.

reference: business insider

We cannot emphasize enough that mobile gaming has come to stay and provides interesting new opportunities for game developers and their business.

First of all the key factors behind this mobile blitz are the vast install bases, open distribution channels and the rise of fragmented digital era.

According to Debbie Bestwick (Managing Director at Team17 / Worms) mobile gaming simply offers the lowest barrier to entry and ease to take to market. Chris Southall (CTO at Sega) supports Bestwick's point of view and adds that mobile platforms is really accessible and practical for game developers who are comparatively small and limited in funding.

One thing is the low entry barriers but do not forget about the huge world wide market size. Mobile gaming is not only for hardcore gamers but also include the biggest segment of todays gamers - casual gamers. 

The Community Manager at New Star Games, Mark Baldwin says, "The demographic change recently is toward a younger and a more casual user. Where previously a smartphone was an expensive luxury, it’s now an affordable need. The pricing structure of games in the mobile market means that even people who are not hardcore gamers appreciate the chance of trying out a variety of games, and that means someone who wouldn’t normally play games is more likely to try something."

Debbie Bestwick underlines that mobile gaming has the largest and most diverse audience to aim for. So no wonder that so many new indie game studios have opened but the real test will be how they succeed?

According to research from app analytics firm Swrve* and reported by Venturebeat, just 0.15% of gamers account for half of all in-app purchases.

This means only a very small number of "whales" are making games profitable which is alarming for the industry. People have become accustomed to playing games for free, thus it is very difficult to capture paying gamers. 

Of those who do pay, almost half make just one purchase a month, while 13% make over five purchases.