Live Service Layered Cake — Part V
Advanced Monetization Features
This text is the fifth and final part of a new series of texts about metagame design and live service monetization of free-to-play games. You can read the previous parts on the following links: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.
We finally made it to the last layer of our layered cake. Layer 6 is where proverbial the cherries on the top reside. It consists of various advanced monetization features. Your live service game can totally exist without any of these features. Indeed, it should not rely on any of them. You should be able to run a profitable business without resorting to any of these. On the other hand, each one of them can, and if implemented correctly, will result in additional monetization streams. Consequently, this layer is something that is typically built only when all other layers have already been up and running.
The features that reside on this layer can be quite diverse. The one unifying fact that they have is that they are all more or less meant to directly monetize without reliance on the new content.
I will present a quick rundown of a couple of such features, although there are other examples. The two of them, at least to my knowledge, have their origin in the Chinese market. The far east markets of China, Korea, and Japan have always been hotbeds of innovation in the free-to-play world. These features have in the meantime become a mainstay in western games as well.
Piggy Bank
The first of these features is known as the Piggy Bank. It is actually quite often, but not always, even presented using this visual metaphor. This feature works in the following way.
A certain amount of virtual currency, either soft or hard, is added to the piggy bank whenever a player achieves something within the game. This goal can be anything, from reaching a particular level, to opening a lootbox, or even winning a match. This is presented as the player as if he is earning the currency.
The player doesn’t have direct access to this currency. However, the player can choose to open the piggy bank at any point. Opening the bank requires making an in-app purchase.
Usually, the bank has an upper limit, i.e. the maximal amount after which no new currency can be added. Typically the IAP is priced so that the currency is actually sold at a discount. This value proposition is usually communicated to the player as part of the piggy bank UI. The psychological angle of this feature is that the player has earned the discount through the invested effort.
The piggy banks can sometimes be limited-time purchases or even periodic ones, to capitalize on the fear of missing out, impulses.
Clash Royale offers a typical example of this feature. The Piggy Bank is a limited-time feature that costs about 6€ to open. All the gold that the player collects while the feature is active gets added to the piggybank with a 3x multiplier. The soft currency is thus sold to the player at a heavy discount. The bank has both upper of the amount of gold that can be stored and a minimal amount that needs to be in the bank for the bank to be open.
SimCity BuildIt has a very sophisticated version of this feature, tied to a bigger feature known as Regions. What sets it apart is that includes actually three offers that a dedicated player can unlock in the sequence. It thus offers three price points with different value propositions to the players, allowing for more flexibility.
Paid Progression Plan
Another similar feature is known as a Paid Progression Plan. In a way, this feature works in the opposite way of the piggy bank. In the case of the piggy bank player gradually earns the currency that he can get in one big payout. In a paid progression plan the player buys a certain amount of currency that will get delivered in installments.
The paid progression plans work in the following way. At some convenient point in the game, the player is served with an offer. The player can make a special in-app purchase involving a certain amount of virtual currency or other resources. A part of that amount is delivered to the player instantly after the purchase. The remainder is delivered gradually whenever the player reaches a certain milestone in the game.
For example, upon reaching level 10 the player can buy a paid progression plan that includes 10 000 gold coins. The player receives 1000 coins instantly. The player receives additional 2000 points upon reaching level 20, 3000 upon reaching level 30, and 4000 when reaching level 40.
The currency is again sold at a heavy discount. On the surface, this is a direct monetization feature, but its true purpose is to reinforce player retention. The player who has invested in a paid progression plan is more likely to remain with the game at least until the last installment of the payout has been collected.
Tower of Fortune
The last feature that I am going to examine is known as the has been developed by Angry Birds 2 by Rovio. I have insideržs information that the introduction of this feature has made a significant impact on the KPIs for this game.
The feature is built around a metaphor of an elevator. The player starts from the ground level and tries to climb to the top of the tower. The elevator stops on every floor. Whenever an elevator stops the player is presented with a set of cards.
The content of the cards is naturally hidden, and the player is required to choose one of the cards. Most of the cards contain some goodies, such as items or amounts of various virtual currencies, hard or soft. One of the cards hides a bomb (presented as a Bad Piggy).
If the player picks a card with a reward, the reward is added to the player’s winning pot. The player can choose to get off the elevator on any floor, i.e., and collect the winnings. If the player draws a bomb the game ends and all the winnings are vaporized.
Each stop of the elevator thus becomes a wager and the player needs to decide if he should take the risk of losing all that had been won already in order to increase the total winnings. It is a classical dilemma that skirts the concept of gambling.
As expected the rewards become more lucrative the higher the player gets. The player’s chances of dodging a bomb drop with the number of floors that the player climbs. Both risk and reward become higher the longer the game continues.
Of course, after picking the wrong card and triggering a bomb, the player can get out of the predicament by paying a certain amount of hard currency. This is the monetization angle of the feature which is probably one of the reasons for its success.
The game designers at Rovio did a good balancing job so that a player always walks with enough items to justify participation in this minigame. There are several other mechanisms that ensure the fairness of the gameplay. Some of the floors are so-called Jackpot floors and do not have a risk of finding a bomb.
The Tower of Fortune is accessible for free once a day, but players can buy tickets for additional access as an IAP.
Conclusions
The features described in this chapter are the final layer of live service monetization. By themselves, they rarely provide the structural support for the live service metagame. Their primary use is as optional supplementary sources of revenue. By design, they are largely independent of the core gameplay of the game. This makes them especially suitable for application across genres and can be bolted on top of any game which has a rich enough game economy.
Key Takeaways
- The top layer of the live service metagame consists of advanced monetization features that can directly monetize without reliance on new content.
- The Piggy Bank is a popular feature that adds virtual currency to a piggy bank whenever a player achieves something in the game, and the bank can be opened through an in-app purchase at a discounted price.
- The Piggy Bank is usually a limited-time or periodic feature, and its upper limit can be set for the maximum amount of currency that can be stored.
- A Paid Progression Plan is another similar feature where the player buys a certain amount of currency that gets delivered in installments at different milestones in the game.
- The Paid Progression Plan also serves to reinforce player retention.
- The Tower of Fortune is another advanced monetization feature that involves a metaphor of an elevator, where players climb to the top of the tower and select cards on each floor to receive rewards.
- The Tower of Fortune is a highly effective monetization feature in games like Angry Birds 2, where players are presented with cards containing various goodies.
- These advanced monetization features are typically built only when all other layers of monetization have been established.
- While a game should be able to exist without these advanced monetization features, each feature, when implemented correctly, can result in additional monetization streams.
