How Fractal tournaments increased Defend the Kingdom’s DAU by 50% and IAPs by 35%
Learn how a quick and easy tournament integration led to a huge uptick in users and revenue
When Kingdomverse launched their first mobile game, Defend the Kingdom, they had a small but dedicated community and a great but unfinished product. Today, they have multiple games, all of which are interconnected with one another, and a community that’s 10x the size.
Josh Kovac, Chief Strategy Officer at Kingdomverse, and Cloud Hui, Chief Product Officer, share how partnering up with Fractal helped them get there — ultimately increasing DAU by 50% and in-app purchases by 35%.
- Studio: Kingdomverse
- Game: Defend the Kingdom
- Fractal products: Authentication and Tournaments
- Results: +50% DAU and +35% IAPs
The obvious choice
“In the few years since we founded Kingdomverse, we’ve seen dozens of platforms pop up promising to deliver a certain amount of users. But in our experience, it never works out that way — until Fractal.
There were a few reasons we chose Fractal:
- First, the reputation. Given that we’re a startup, Fractal’s big name gave us a huge amount of credibility with gamers.
- Second, the community. Fractal had a lot of gamers, which we saw actively engaging with other games on their platform. Since we needed to broaden our reach and get our name out there, Fractal felt like an obvious choice.”
Quick and easy integration
“At first, our team wanted to take some time to research and test out Fractal’s API— which is the basis of their eventing products. The API sends gameplay data to Fractal and also creates Fractal Accounts for users, so they can redeem the points and rewards. But since our game has its own account system, we were wary of how they’d work together and impact user onboarding.
Soon we found the API actually made it easy for our players to sign in and start racking up points. Plus it was a quick process to get integrated.”
Boosting DAU and in-app purchases
“The first tournament we ran definitely lived up to the hype. It was incredibly fun and we got great feedback from our existing community — plus of course, a huge uptick in new players. The success of that first tournament is what pushed to start running recurring events on Fractal.
Now, whenever our community hears a new Fractal tournament or event is coming up, social media starts buzzing and we see a surge in DAU and MAU.
In fact, each tournament generates about a 50% increase in DAU and a 35% increase in in-app purchases. That’s because the tournament motivates players to gain an edge over their opponents, which they can do by purchasing our IAPs.
Bottom line — distributing our game through Fractal and running tournaments together tangibly increased our user base and revenue.”
Pushing to be better
“There are few platforms that demonstrate the level of creativity and innovation we’ve experienced with Fractal. Often they’ll write to us saying, ‘we have an idea, let’s jump on a call.’ They’re basically always thinking of ways to improve and optimize results.
For example, after one tournament we learned we didn’t want players to just come in and play for the prize, then leave — we wanted them to stick around. So we restructured the prize pool and the rules to make it happen — and it worked. Sometimes, you need a third-party to introduce a great idea.
We appreciate the constant feedback and ideation we can bounce off each other — that’s rare for us and the industry”
Equal partners
“You can tell a lot of platforms want to get you in the door, put out a tweet or announcement that you’ve partnered up, say they met their quota, and disappear. But with Fractal, we feel valued.
We know if we have something we want to discuss or even disagree on, they’ll see us as an equal partner and give us an excellent level of service. Now we’re working on a battle royal FPS, and plan to do it all over again.”
