Getting Players to Return to Facebook games

Getting players to post to the viral channel is a challenge every game designer faces when he or she is making Facebook games. It’s known that players are most likely to post when they’ve just started a game, but what motivates returning players?

Four things:

• It helps me. There is a particular item or objective that is core to the progression of my game with which I need your help. Typically, the game allows you to buy your way around the “Ask Friends For Help” option. If I need your help to progress, short of paying cash, I’ll post it.
• I know it helps you. It’s key here that it actually does help other players. I am likely to post something to my feed if it gives you something I would want for myself. I understand the item’s value and scarcity. It’s also important to consider that over the lifetime of a game as well as the curve of player progression, the value and scarcity of an object may change. What I care about in an early game may not mean anything to me later on. Does that mean the viral messages should change? Not always, but catering to player’s needs and a player’s perceived value is critical. I have seen messages in feeds which offer stuff I have absolutely no desire for. There is just no reason I would click. Other times, I am prompted to post a feed which will give my friends something which I know has no value. Likewise, I am not likely to post through.
• It helps us both. Parody though it may be, Cow Clicker suggests players post a message to their feed. Anyone who clicks on the viral message not only gets “mooney” with which they can buy “clicks” to add to their “click” total, but also gives the original poster “mooney” as well. It is an example of a mutually beneficial viral which trades in the only thing that matters in the game – “clicks”.
• Pride. I will post if I am actually proud of what I have achieved, be it a quest, an item or something else. Generally, I am proud of this because I want to show off the great thing that I have done. Recently, I posted that I’d leveled to 17 in a game, because it took me quite a while. When I finish building the epic chapel I am working on in another game, I can assure you I’ll post about that, too.

Does this mean we should only include virals which fit the above themes? No. What makes one player proud could make another feel frustrated at the conclusion. For instance, an epic quest to gather a lot of materials could challenge and excite one player but irritate another. Likewise, some players abhor all forms of feed messages while others are happy to click through a wide variety of virals. In fact, there is a whole class of player for whom “playing the feeds” has become a pleasant meta-game to the game it supports. Of course, we also don’t want to limit a player’s viral opportunities, particularly when our games depend on it, nor do we want to overdo it.

Ultimately, your only defense against subpar virals is playing your own game. Do you actually feel motivated to click your own viral message? If not, why do you think others will? Are you aware of the click through? Have you investigated the good ones vs. the lame ducks to understand what hooks they’re using? Are you watching your competitors like a hawk? Remember, though, that you are only one player in your game. Watch how others play, too, particularly if their play style is different than yours.

Analyzing your own play, feeling the hooks in the game and watching the results via metrics offers the best chance of creating compelling virals which players feel motivated to click through.

How to analyze paying users - The RFM-analysis

So, paying users are those guys that bring money to your product. It is very important to know all the nuances of their behavior: what do they pay for, how fast and how much. It is important to know what they feel by doing this, do they get satisfaction from the investments they made into your product. In fact, even in the case of f2p online-game every payment made by gamers is their investment: at the beginning they pay, at the end they get some ROI, which can be denominated in a currency or in the emotions they experience. Therefore, you should perceive users as investors even if they are minority investors.

In order to better understand the behavior, distribution and needs of paying users there exist special analytical methods and reports. Today we will talk about RFM-analysis as one of the basic methods of understanding the structure of your paying audience.

RFM stands for:

R – Recency – how long ago the last purchase was made;

F – Frequency – how often purchases were made;

M – Monetary – the volume of purchases during all the time.

You give three marks that correspond to those parameters to every paying user. As a rule, in theoretical materials a user is assessed with a three-point scale (relatively speaking: good, normal, bad), however in practice we have also faced five- or even ten-point scales in RFM-analysis. To make it easier, let's look at the example of the three-point system:
 

• R = 1, it has been a long time since a user payed last time;
• R = 2. last payment was made relatively short time ago;
• R = 3, a user has payed recently;

• F = 1, a user pays very rarely;
• F = 2, a user pays with moderate regularity;
• F = 3, a user pays often;

• M= 1, the sum of all payments is small;
• M = 2, a user has paid moderate amount of money to the project;
• M = 3, a user has paid much money.

Of course, the question arises: how to understand in this case long time ago/recently, often/rarely and much/little. It is possible to answer this question in two ways:
 

1. Expert assessment. No one knows your project better than you. Therefore, define for yourself what is long time ago and recently, what is much and little. Let's say, long time ago is a month and more ago, rarely is once a month or more rarely, little is not more that hundred rubles during the whole payment history.
2. Quantiles and quartiles. Let's recall mathematical statistics. Arrange your users according to one of the parameters (for example, to the sum of payments made during all the time), take, for instance, top-5% of all the users and say that these users payed much. Congratulations, you have already got five-percent quantile of your users' sample. You can also take quartiles (quartile = quantile of 25% -level), and assess first quartile as much, last as little, and what is between them as an average size of a payment. Be that as it may, even when you use quantile and quartile you cannot do without subjective assessment, therefore, look at point 1 again.

Anyway, having spent some time in Excel (or somewhere else), you will give a mark to every paying user for recency, frequency and amount of payments.

Now is the most interesting part.

You can see how those marks are distributed among your paying users and what are the majority of users. This will allow you to segment your paying audience and plan your marketing actions aimed at raising profit.

A simple example:
 

• Purchased recently, but rarely (or only one payment) – new paying users. What should you do with them? Express your gratitude! Your aim is to stimulate them to make repeated purchases. As many researches show, repeated purchases, their regularity and size raise the app's chances to earn a million of dollars.
• Purchased recently and purchase often – loyal users. They do not need additional stimulation, however you can find a way and thank them for their loyalty (unexpected bonus, surprise, just “thanks” - all these work).
• Purchased often, but long time ago – loyal users on the verge of leaving. In other words, these are the money that right now slip through your fingers. Your aim is to remind them about yourself. Maybe, a simple push-notification will be enough. Maybe, it is worth asking them what has changed and why they are leaving.
• Purchased rarely and long time ago – outflow of users. They didn't become loyal, something in the past prevented them from doing it. You can propose them (and not only them) an action - even if it is not profitable for you - which would stimulate them to make a repeated purchase and to return to the product. Otherwise, at least you can try to find out what they didn't like, and adjust the product based on the feedback.

Imagine the following case.
 

1. Project X wants to raise its income;
2. They conduct RFM-analysis, and it shows that:
   1. the outflow of loyal users is very high;
   2. many users make only one purchase.
3. They introduce some triggers to the project that allow to recognize the moment when the stay of a user in a status “one purchase” is too long or when a user that was loyal before stops paying. At these moments users get “an offer that they can't refuse” (special action, big discount, information is delivered by push-notification or pop-up window when logging);
4. The percentage of repeated purchases rises, more loyal users stay with the product;
5. Profit.

Both of discussed examples operate only two parameters: Recency, Frequency.

Adding the Monetary parameter to the report will allow to use volumes of every user's payments in addition.

Besides that, the analysis can be conducted based on the quantity of users or based on money that you get from them.

In addition, it is possible to look at the combination Monetary-Recency (how much do users pay and how long ago did they pay), Monetary-Frequency (how much and how often do users pay).

The easiest way is to analyze paying users in the frames of one parameter is to get distribution of users and their payments depending on time (long time ago – recently), on frequency (often – sometimes – rarely), on amount (much – average – little).

In particular, analysis of paying users according to the size of their payment in f2p-games is usually described with the help of the inhabitants of sea depths:
 

• Whales – users that bring big sums;
• Dolphins – users that bring average sums;
• Minnows – users that bring small sums.

Here we don't speak about the sums of one payment but rather about general sums accumulated during the whole payment history of a user. The differentiation on big, average and small sums is made based on expert assessment again.

By analyzing the amount of users in every segment and the amount of money that you get from every segment you will be able to understand, which actions are better for raising the profit. To lower prices? To raise prices? To focus on the retention of “whales”?

At our service devtodev.com we have divided users depending on the volume of their payment into five segments additionally defining “grand whales” and “grand dolphins”. In particular, the discussed example shows that the main part of the income is brought by “whales” and “grand dolphins”, therefore, the focus of the marketing forces should be on them.

This is only a part of methods that can be used to analyze paying users. There are many more questions, answers to which will help you to customize your project's monetization better. There are only some of them:
 

• How fast your users are converted into paying? During the first, the second or the tenth purchase?
• What do users pay for? Why do they become paying after all?
• How much money do you make on the first payments of gamers, how much – on repeated?
• How much money do beginners bring to you, how much do “oldies”?

Clash of Clans Deconstruction

I see a pattern here. First it was Hay Day, which is Supercell's first poke at farming games and hands down the best farming game on iPhone and iPad. Now Clash of Clans is doing the same thing to the strategy games by outclassing genre veterans with ease. 

What makes Clash of Clans a great game is the trademark Supercell winning formula approach to game development. First you take an existing social game theme. Then you benchmark and reverse engineer the best titles in that genre in order to create a strong and natural feeling core loop. You follow up by building a game around that solid core loop. Sprinkle a new and improved game play twist and dress it up in stunning graphics. Finally you polish the game to perfection with a limited beta launch by making the game available only in Canada. Once it's polished and the KPIs look solid it's time to come out with a bang and take app charts by storm. 

But even though Clash of Clans is the best there is it's still not the best there could be. Despite being extremely polished and reworked on the basis of the genre benchmarks Clash of Clans has plenty of room for improvements in some key game play mechanics as well as in the virality and even monetization features. 

The Core Loop

There are three major parts in Clash of Clans' core loop: Collecting Resources, Building & Training and Battling. Nevertheless not all of the parts of the core loop are equally important as the importance of each part is influenced by player's ongoing goal in the game, which creates different style game play styles from resource gathering and building heavy to active battling.

Collecting Resources - beautiful use automated farming mechanics

Coins and Elixir are the two soft currencies in Clash of Clans. In order to produce Elixir and Coins player simply needs to have Elixir Collectors and Gold Mines. Resource production is automated meaning that player doesn't have to initiate resource production nor wait till resource production has finished production. Also to be noted is that the resource production facilities have a maximum cap, meaning that they will keep on producing resource till specific amount after which they will stop production till player has collected the accumulated resource. To increase resource production maximum cap player needs to upgrade the resource facility.

The resource production is perfectly done in Clash of Clans. Firstly it's always rewarding to return to the game as you can harvest all of your resources at the start of every session. Secondly the automated farming mechanics encourage new players to visit the game more often as the resource facilities reach their max pretty quickly in their early stages. 

Building & Training - everything is interdependent

Roughly put; everything that has to do with building consumes Coins while everything that has to do with troops consumes Elixir. This means that starting a construction, research or an upgrade takes either  Coins or Elixir (never both) as well as time to finish the tas. Time taken to upgrade a building depends on the building's current level, so that upgrading buildings is fast in the beginning and extremely slow on later levels. Same steep curve applies also to the price of upgrades.

Upgrading buildings is crucial for progress as player needs more and more resources to build bigger and better units. What's genius about the upgrading flow is that everything is tied to one-another meaning that players can't just keep on upgrading one specific building but instead have to upgrade everything.

For example take a look at the image below. To upgrade a Gold Mine player need Elixir while upgrading Elixir Collector requires Coins. This ties the resources together as upgrading one resource production facility takes always exponential amount of resources produced by the other resource facility. There's always a specific maximum level for each of player's building based on the level of their HQ. Upgrading HQ takes tremendous amount of Coins and in order to store those Coins player needs Coin Storages, which cost huge sums of Elixir... well, you get the point...

Nevertheless the greatest building/progress restriction is the fact that player has only two builders. In other words player can simultaneously have only two building/upgradings at the same time. Overcoming this restriction takes only $5, which is the price of a third builder (I'm sure many of us have made that purchase). In case you want to have a fourth builder, well the price just went up to 10$. Talking about great use of price elasticity!

Battling - stop punishing the player

Training troops consumes Elixir and takes time. The better troops you produce the more Elixir it costs and the more time it will take to produce them. But time and Elixir are not the only ones restricting players from building the most massive army. Every better unit takes also more housing space, which creates demand for bigger Army Camps. Army Camps need to be upgraded, this takes resources, time and of course upgrades to the HQ... and you're back in the devilish interdependent economy of Clash of Clans.

Here comes the sad part from player's perspective: all the troops you use in a battle are consumed win or lose. So you face a situation where you build and army, attack and lose every single troop even if you won the battle by a landslide. 

Sure from economy perspective consuming the whole player's attacking force creates a great sink for Elixir but from retention point of view I really think battling should be reworked. Kabam's Edgeworld does in my view the battles better as it allows player to retreat (raid other players) as well as to keep all the units who survive a won battle. Not only is this approach more user friendly but it also creates demand for super units, which player can take from one battle to another. And believe me, super units, in which players emotionally invest to, sell like pop corn in a movie theater. 

The Progress

Solid retention in Clash of Clans is mainly due to the steady and visible progress players have in the game. Second key factor in the retention is the well extremely well designed core loop, which reward player for being active and promises progress for each return session. Finally it's also about those notifications, as just when you think you won't be coming back to the game any time soon, you'r iPhone and/or iPad informs you that the awesome building you forgot you were even building is ready now.

Clash of Clans has some great first time flow, as it creates emotional attachment to the game area aka. player's village in a matter of 5 minutes. Game starts with Player entering her village, which is after a couple of dialogs attacked by goblins. Player defends the village with a cannon (learn defense) and launches a counter attack (learn battling). After the counter attack player gets back to the village and goes quickly through the core loop (build resource production, build barracks, train troops) till it's time again to launch a second attack against the goblins. After the second attack the game slows down to normal progress speed and introduces the achievements (which work in the beginning as quests) to the player.

But progressing is not only about getting more resources and upgrading your buildings and troops. Progressing is also a lot to due with the way you village transforms visually. The puny village of the first session will slowly but surely transform into a combination of Lord of the Rings and Warcraft.

What's cool and new with Clash of Clans compared to similar games is the single player mission flow. Sure it's super hard compared to the rewards you get for beating goblins and yes Edgeworld had also single player missions but the way they are presented on a separate map makes them just really compelling - till player engages in the player vs. player battles... 

The Virality 

The ultimate goal in Clash of Clans is to beat other players and be a part of a winning clan. First few days player is protected from attacks from other players but once this shield is dropped you become free game. In other words after the shield is dropped your village will be destroyed between 1 - 3 times a day. Protective shield is re-activated for several hours after each lost defense.

There are two ways player can stay away from destruction (or so we are told). Firstly players need to build up their defenses, which defend the village automatically in asynchronous PvP battle. Walls, traps, cannons, watch towers, mortars - you name it! Secondly players need to join a clan by restoring the castle next to their village (awesome way to introduce clans!). 

Once in a clan players can chat and in theory plan attacks or revenge in behalf of other clan members. In practice yes, you can chat and even donate some troop but you can't coordinate attacks, simply because in Clash of Clans you can't really choose who you will attack. You can only revenge to someone who once attacked you or you can just attack random opponents who're close to your own experience level. 

So what's the point of being a member of a clan apart from getting few low quality reinforcement troop for your next attack? Well, if you're a member in a powerful clan, you all get awarded. There are weekly tournaments and those who wreck the most combined damage get awarded. So yeah, clans are fun for few dozen of people but not for the vast majority of daily players. Plus it would be nice to even get a notification that a weekly clan tournament has been restarted.

Second issue is with friends. Players can sync up via Facebook, which enables them to see all of their playing friends. But after syncing up things fall flat. You can visit your friends or view their clans (and join them). You can't attack your friends. You can't message your friends. You can't gift your friends nor can you request anything from them. Not to mention that you can't even invite players who are not playing to start playing.

Third issue is the lack of World Map is a serious downfall as map creates true rivalries between players and rivalries fuse retention as well as monetization. For example in Kixeye's Backyard Monsters you can see you neighboring players, attack them, conquer new territories onto which you can create outposts.

The Monetization 

Clash if Clans has a whale based monetization because the prices increase as the game progresses creating a situation in which majority of players (retained users) pay higher prices than minority (new users). In short: ARPPU goes hand in hand with retention.

In Clash of Clans players pay for speeding time and boy there are a lot of waiting in the game. As described in the core loop chapter every action takes time from building to upgrading and from training to improving units.

Gems are used to instant finish what ever player is doing. And that's where the catch is. In the beginning whatever you are doing takes little time, which not only is good for retention but it also encourages to instant complete production with the free Gems you have from the start. So in the beginning it's pretty useful and cheap to progress fast and the free Gems you get for completing achievements just push you in that direction (+ first time flow forces player to use Gems so many times that it starts feeling right). But as the game progresses the production times increase. Pretty quickly you are waiting days for productions to be completed - and some players will continue paying (now tenfold) to skip the waiting. 

Gems can also be converted into Coins or Elixir. I usually like to sell separately virtual and premium currencies as it encourages paying players to make several purchases. For example if resources were sold separately buying Gems would help the player to instant finish a production. Then the player would want to start a new construction right away, which would create demand for Coins or Elixir. Player would lack the soft currency because he just speeded up the production instead of waiting so not enough time has passed and the resource production facilities are empty. Of course players can instant finish resource productions but that doesn't create re-buys in the same session - only increases consumption of Gems.

Also Clash of Clans still lacks power ups. Magnificent consumable weapons players can use to improve the success of their attacks (don't underestimate players' willingness to revenge the attacks on their villages). That would convert players who have progressed far but don't find it compelling to pay $30 to speed up a single production. 

The best there is, but...

Clash of Clans is an amazing game. Supercell has thoroughly gone through all the benchmarks in the genre and created a game, which simply outclasses genre veterans such as Kabam and Kixeye. What's even more impressive is that this is Supercell's first poke at the whole strategy genre. 

Clash of Clans is a combination of well balanced core loop, extremely compelling graphics and super smooth gameplay. What makes the game top grossing is the combination of very solid retention and whale economy, where retaining users end up making higher average purchases due to rising costs.

But even though Clash of Clans is the best there is there's still room for significant improvements in game play (battle mode), virality (world map, interaction with friends) and even monetization. Now the question is whether there will be someone else who comes up with improved version of Clash of Clans or will Supercell continue it's dominance with future updates. I believe in the later one, because Supercell has shown that they have the patience to perfect their games. They're not moved by financial quarters and their deadlines seem to be tied to the quality of the product instead of a random date set in executives' mind. I believe that Supercell has the winning formula to make great social games.