Product Teardown 12 — Monetization Strategies in Mobile Games/Apps
This is not a teardown for specific products, but a summary of common monetization methods in mobile games.
Many articles has been written about monetization strategies of mobile games. There are also countless social media strategies, content strategies, or talent acquisition strategies. I doubt they are strategies. When people talk about those strategies, they simply mean that they have plan.
But this is not the focus of this post. I am going to talk about mobile game monetization. In fact, monetization can not function independently. It must fit into the overall game design and close tie to player progression. So here I will try to do my best to summarize the usual ways of monetizing in mobile games.
Tactics to Encourage Users to Spend Money in Games
Purchase hard currency
This is the ultimate way of spending money in games. All other monetization ways are just variations of spending hard currency. Users spend dollars to get hard currency, which is the only legitimate currency in games, and then spend those hard currency to make progress.
A classic example is gems in Clash of Clans. Gold and Elixir are variations of gems and they give game designer better flexibility of controlling game economy.
Buy insufficient resource
Players need resources to play certain activities in games, such as building city, training troops, recruiting army, or shipping products.
Resources are generated through game core loops. As you progress in games, you need more resources to do the job. Game designers would intentionally create imbalance between what you consume and what system produce. And the gap? That’s the opportunity to make money!
Examples of this type are countless. Clash of Clans, Empires & Allies, Boom Beach, Simcity Buildit, etc.
Buy premium item in game
Some games sell premium items along with IAP( in-app purchase). Asian developers are big fans of this monetization method.
In addition to purchasing resources to progress in games, developers allow users to pay certain amount of money to get some premium item, either a one-time or a permanent offer.
These offers include customization items, special booster, leasing weapons, and so on.
Examples of permanent offers are decorations in Clash of Clans, heroes in League of Legend. Examples of one-time offers are special boosters in Candy Crush, weapon rentals in WeFire, strike force in Empires & Allies.
Skip Time gate
This is the most common way of monetizing. Game core loop is carefully controlled and designed to set a time gate for player. It has three main purposes: 1) avoid player fatigue. Developers don’t want players to play all the time so that they would get bored quickly about the game. 2) drive retention. If upgrading a building needs 2 days, then setting a time will guarantee the next day retention. 3) create monetization opportunity. Impatient players will spend money to skip the waiting time.
For example, players in Empire & Allies can spend gold to instantaneously train the troop.
I can spend 300 gem in Clash of Clans to skip the 1day and 7 hours wait time for my giant bomb. ( but I will just wait. not rush)
Reset timer / energy system
Like a time gate, a timer or energy recharge system allow users to play certain amount of activities per day, let’s say, 5 recharge per day. If a player wants to do more, he or she need to spend money.
An example is the energy system in Kim Kardashian, published by Glu Mobile.
Asian developers, especially Chinese developers, like this a lot. One of the reasons is game design is weak in China: as a result, a) The games need people to grind to progression. 2) no one wants to do that so developers invent a mechanism — batch wiping out, which allow players to press a button and system do the work for them 3) energy recharge is usually needed so that a player can do multiple actions per day.
Play Casino
Casino is just a RNG — random number generator. You get what developers want you to get. Some RPG, strategy games use this mechanism to monetize. For example, in KABAM’s recent mobile game Star Wars — uprising, players can do lottery draws to get supply or equipment. These items improve the game play and increase the wining rate. In console RPG games, players can also get great equipment by killing NPCs.
For instance, here is an example of what you will get by playing this casino games. Everything is predetermined.
I personally don’t like casino way of monetization, because I think this is a sign of poor game balance design. But I don believe developers should use this at appropriate way, to create fun and surprise for users, and even to balance the game.
Unlock new content/ level ( dark swan, candy crush)
This is rarely used now. But Candy Crush does a great job on this. Some freemium games will allow users to play some free content and charge for new content.
Ways to Implement Those Tactics
Upgrade
This is the most common way. What else can better signify progression in game than upgrading, especially when you can see the dramatic visual transformation and unlock new items after upgrade?
Fusion
Fusion is about combing 2 or few items into another more powerful item. This one, if used properly, will contribute most to the depth of monetization path.
Here is a fusion example in Global Assault published by Kongregate.
To fuse those powerful weapons, players need to first get basic elements. These elements are generated from battles. So this sends users back to the core loop. On the other hand, however, winning battle requires more powerful weapons. So players need to purchase backs, research and fuse them, which takes money and time. The more a play gets into the game, the more money and time he needs to put in to progress.
In a fusion system, players will have lots of options to choose, therefore have great customization and control in games. Also, players will have a long path to go to achieve upgrade. Fusion can be seen as a tiered upgrade system.
Add Star(升星，打点）
I don’t know how to translate this into English. But this is a very popular way in asian games to monetize users. It’s very similar to upgrade, but in a complex and un-elegant way. Instead of creating visual upgrading or adding new items by each level, developers can simply, say, create a gem stone for avatars. That gem stone signify your battling power, your class, your defense ability, etc. Now, developers can ask users to upgrade gem stone, for example, from white, to green, to red, to blue, to purple…… Developers can also add a star to each level of gem stone. Then you suddenly get a fusion system. In order to upgrade from while to green, you need 2 4-star white stone to fuse a 1 star green stone. Then 2 4-star green stone to fuse a 1 star red one.
This is a much easier way to create some sense of progression. But this is a bad to implement player progression. I personally dislike this method and regard it as a sign of being incapable of game design.
VIP sytem
As a developer, if you allow some content be available to certain players only if they pay, then you create some sort of VIP system. Just like business class, first call and coach seats in airline industry.
An example is VIP system in Game of War.
Putting Things Together
Putting things together, we get a mobile game monetization matrix. Next time you play the game, see where and how game developers try to entice you to spend money. That’s where they create excitement for you to spend. Turing the table around, you, as a game developer, should create those exciting moments and use propers ways to monetize users.
