The 2012 social gaming glossary: the 13 terms & 8 benchmarks everyone should know
There’s nothing we geeks enjoy more than inventing new words. Performant. That’s not a real word. It’s just another way of saying efficient: the server is performant. The world doesn’t need the word ‘performant’, but at least it’s meaning easy to guess. Online game jargon, on the other hand, is not so straightforward. K-Factor anyone? A new reality TV show? A new cereal? Nope, it’s the measure of viral growth. Obvious when you think about it…
That’s why I thought I’d start the year with a social game and virtual world glossary. I’ve listed the 13 most important terms, what they mean, and benchmarks.
So if you’ve ever wondered how much the average person spends in a virtual world, or what stickiness actually measures, then this post is for you.
1. Churn
The percentage of users who leave your game each month, or sometimes measured as the percentage who leave each week. For example, if a game that has 100 users at the start of the month, and 70 of those users are still playing the game at the end of the month, then we would say the churn rate is 30% because 30 of the original 100 people left that month.
The churn rate can also be thought of as a probability that a player will leave. For example, imagine a game that has 100 players and a 30% of any player leaving (30% churn). That 30% chance of leaving could also be thought of as a 70% chance of staying. So if we want to figure out how many players will be left at the end of the month all we multiply the chance of staying by the number of players at the start of the month. So 70% x 100 = 70 players at the end of the month.
To calculate how many will be left after two months we can simply do it twice, 70% x 70% x 100 = 49 players after two months.
Treating churn as a probability allows us to estimate how long the average person plays your game. The equation is simple: 1 / % Churn = Ave. Player Lifetime. For example, with our 30% monthly churn rate we find that 1 / 30% = 3.3 months average player lifetime.
This comes in important later when we want to calculate how much the average player is worth to us, or the LifeTime Value (LTV).
Ignoring the first week (we’ll talk about that in the Onboarding definition) a social game or virtual world will typically see week to week churn around 5% to 15%. A 5% weekly churn is equivalent to roughly 20% monthly churn. While 15% weekly churn is equivalent to 50% monthly churn.
Phew, that was a long one, don’t worry, the rest are shorter!
2. ARPPU
Average Revenue Per Paying User, usually measured each month. In other words, how much money does the average customer spend (most of your players will never spend any money, ARPPU only includes those who spend money). It can be calculated as total monthly revenue divided by total monthly paying users. Some benchmarks:
- Virtual World: Habbo Hotel: $30 ARPPU (Sulake)
- Online Game: Puzzle Pirates, Three Rings: $50 ARPPU (Gamasutra)
- Social Game: Playdom: $20 ARPPU (Lightspeed Venture Partners)
Club Penguin, on the other hand, has subscriptions and no micropayments. Their ARPPU is somewhere around the $6 mark.
3. ARPU
Average revenue per active user, and like the ARPPU this is also measured each month. The ARPU is calculated by dividing the total revenue for the month by the total number of unique players for the month. Sort of. Depending on the account methodology used it could be said that revenue from the purchase of a virtual clothing item should be amortized over the players lifetime, where as energy and consumables can be recognized immediately. I think that’s just making it all a little too complicated!
From the Zynga IPO filing (link) that the average revenue per user per month is around $0.40. Of course, that’s across their whole portfolio of games. In practice, different types of games monetize better than others.
- Casual Social Game: A casual game is designed for anyone, including those without prior gaming experience. Such as Farmville, Cityville, Bejeweled, Words with Friends. ARPU around $0.10 – $0.20
- Virtual Currency Poker and Casino Games: Traditional gambling games that only allow players to play with virtual currency, such as Zynga Poker, Slotomania. ARPU around $0.25 – $1.25
- Mid-core Social Game: Typically more investment is required to succeed. Tends to be more competitive in nature, and players can be punished for not playing well, such as Mafia Wars and Backyard Monsters. ARPU: $0.25 – $1.25
- Virtual Worlds: Online worlds where players create avatars and interact in realtime, such as Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, Runescape, and Puzzle Pirates. ARPU around $0.84 – $1.62
4. LTV
The Life Time Value is the average amount of money spent by each player. The LTV includes paying and no-paying players. To calculate the LTV you multiply the ARPU by the average number of months a player stays in your game. For example, if the ARPU is $0.50 and the average player lifetime is 5 months then the LTV is $0.50 x 5 = $2.50.
Earlier we used the Churn Rate to calculate the average player life time. This is really useful. After only 1 month you know roughly how long the average player will stay in the game, and you know how much they spend on average (ARPU) and therefore how much each player is worth over their lifetime (LTV). Through knowing how much each player is worth you can figure out how much you can afford to spend on advertising for new players.
5. K-Factor
The measure of viral growth. It’s calculated by multiplying the Infection Rate by the Conversion rate. The conversion rate is when the ‘Infection’ turns into a new user.
A K-Factor of 1 means every member is bringing one additional member to your game, your game is not growing nor is the game declining. A K-Factor of less than 1 means that without ongoing marketing your game will run out of players. While a K-Factor greater than 1 means that your game is growing exponentially.
It is very rare that any game will ever have a K-Factor greater than 1. That’s why Zynga spent $40,000,000 on marketing in Q1 2011. All games need marketing to continue growing. Of course the difference between a successful game and a failure is that a successful game spends money on marketing but still makes a profit on each player they acquire. That’s why the next definition is so important…
6. CPA
The Cost Per Acquisition is a measure of the cost of bringing that user to your game. The CPA can be measured in different ways. We recommend measuring the CPA as the cost to convert a new visitor from the homepage into someone who has registered, finished the tutorial, and become a player. So the CPA for an advertising campaign can be calculated by dividing the total spend by the number of new players. If we spend $1000 on Google Adwords and get 2000 new players then our CPA is $1000 / 1000 = $1.00 CPA.
7. eCPA
The Effective Cost Per Acquisition includes the effect of viral growth on the CPA. The eCPA is the real cost to acquire a new player. For example, imagine a game with a K-Factor of 0.5 – the game will not grow without ongoing marketing – and a CPA of $1. Remember, than K-Factor of 0.5 means that for every player who comes into the game they are responsible for bringing 0.5 more players through word of mouth and viral invites.
In this scenario spending $1 gets 1 player who (on average) invites another 0.5 players. So really we spent $1 to get 1.5 players. But it doesn’t end there, that 0.5 of a player invites 0.25 of another player. It’s 0.25 because we multiply the new 0.5 of a player by the K-Factor of 0.5 to get 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25. So now we’ve spent $1 to get 1.75 players. And of course this continues, that 0.25 of a player brings in 0.25 x 0.5 = 0.125 more players. And so it continues for ever and ever (kind of).
When calculating the eCPA we have to figure out how many people we actually get as a result of all those invites. The equation is simple, it’s 1 / (1 - K-Factor). For the example above, with a K-Factor of 0.5 we get 1 / (1 - 0.5) = 2. Which means that for every player we buy (the CPA) we actually get 2 players into our game.
So going back to the original problem. With a CPA of $1 and a K-Factor of 0.5 we find that the eCPA is CPA / (1 - K-Factor) = $1 / (1 - 0.5) = $0.50 eCPA.
For a game to be a success the eCPA must be less than the LTV. In other words, the cost to get a new player into the game must be less than the player spends during their lifetime.
We’ve developed an excel game business model that covers these topics in more detail. Check out the series of posts.
8. Addressable Market Size
The number of people who who could become players of your game. For example, imagine creating a children’s game. Globally, there are over 200M children aged 5-19 with internet access. But you game is unlikely to appeal to all those 200M children! Your addressable market is a fraction of those 200M children – only those who will be switched on to your theme and concept.
Its tempting to go after a broad target market. After all, the larger the addressable market the greater the profit. However, the things that young boys like to do in virtual worlds are quite different to the things older teenage boys want to do, let alone teenage girls.
Instead, its important that your games delights and excites a smaller core group of players. By spreading that target market too wide you risk diluting the concept and struggling to engage or retain users.
The Addressable Market Size is important because not only does it determine how big your game can become, but also how quickly it will virally grow.
9. Network Saturation
As more players join your game through viral growth or marketing common sense tells us that our conversion rates should start to fall; our viral invites or banner ads are going to players who have already played the game. Of course, some people will become active again (re-engagement) but most will not. The result is that the viral ratio falls as the game becomes more popular.
I’ve written in detail about this concept as part of our game business model series. The post about network saturation and the effects on your profits can be found here.
10. DAU
Daily active users. Just what it sounds like. The number of unique active users in a day.
11. MAU
Monthly active users. Again, pretty much what it sounds like. The number of unique users in a given month.
12. Stickyness
A measure of engagement, for every user who plays the game in a month, how many play each day. In other words, it’s the DAU divided by the MAU. For example, imagine a game that has 100 MAUs, and average 30 DAUs. We would say the stickyness is 30 / 100 = 30%.
13. Virtual Currency
An in-world or online currency typically purchased with real money, that can be redeemed inside a virtual world or online game, usually for virtual goods.
I think that’s covered the bases. But what do you think? What have I missed? Let me know in the comments below.
The ten best social game articles of 2011 – part two
Our This Week in Social Games newsletter is now one year old. On its six-month birthday we celebrated by counting down the most popular on stories of the past half a year. So now it’s a whole one year old we thought it only right to finish the job with the most popular stories from July to December 2011.
If you’ve not read the first part, you can read it here or subscribe to it here.
1 - Roger Dickey’s Tactics for Game Monetization
The man most of our readers wanted to hear from in 2011 was Mafia Wars creator Roger Dickey. His presentation at Money Talks is perfect for anyone new to games monetization and has some great examples for seasoned Veterans. Dickey’s key reason for social games success is what he calls ‘fun pain’. Want to know what he’s on about? Watch the video below.
2 - Four Reasons Why Virtual Goods Make Us Happy
We all know that virtual goods make us happy. All of us at Dubit can’t wait for our virtual Christmas presents. But why do they make us happy and how can we use this information to make gamers enjoy their time with our games even more? This article from Forbes tells us why and points to, among other things, the benefits of small but frequent transactions and the importance of ‘low-hassle’.
3 - Can Games Still Succeed on Facebook?
Zynga’s IPO was one the biggest social gaming stories of 2011, but does Zynga’s success mean that it’s now impossible to make money from games on Facebook? Not according to Inside Social Games who cite going after new markets and the importance of strategy games in their tips for companies who aren’t lucky enough to be Zynga. Oh, and remember you might not do too well making a game where you manage a bakery or work on a farm – that’s been pretty much done to death now.
4 - Exposing Social Gaming’s Hidden Lever
There were plenty of articles in 2011 that drew comparisons between the mechanics found in social games and those used in the gambling industry, but none got quite the attention that was lavished on this feature from Gamasutra. As well as some lovely graphs it looks at how Zynga managed to leverage these mechanics and become a billion dollar company because of it.
5 – The Design of Free-To-Play Games: Part 1
New to the concept of free-to-play games? Then this is the feature for you. Written for Gamasutra it outlines the key differences between traditional and free-to-play games, the importance of accessibility, and tactics for player recruitment.
6 - Trending Now: Simple Social Game Mechanics and Design Choices Gaining Ground
As social gaming gains in popularity, certain elements crop up time and time again. This can often be labelled as ‘copying’ but the truth of the matter is that as certain concepts become popular players begin to look for them in each game they play. In this article on Inside Social Games the site looks at some of these key trends and which social games have employed them most effectively.
7 - Game Monetization Lessons from Magic: The Gathering
What social game monetization have to do with classic card game Magic: The Gathering? A lot! Yep, if you think Magic is just about people buying and trading cards then you’ve not met a hardcore player. But don’t worry, this post by Tyler York and Magic fan Adam Summerville is all you need, offering valuable insight the power of actual versus perceived value and the importance of randomness.
8 – Gamification Dynamics: Choice and Competition
This article by Badgerville’s Tony Ventrice forms part of his series on gamifaction and what makes games fun. In this instalment he looks at the roles of choice and competition, with a heavy focus on the role of zero-sum competition.
9 - GDC Online – Playdom presents: The Year in Social Games
We love a good list, and this one’s great! For their talk at GDC, Playdom’s Steve Meretzky (creative director) and Dave Rohrl (VP of game design) presented their top social gaming trends of 2011. You can read their list at Motiveateplay or view the whole presentation on below.
10 - The Secrets Of Wooga’s Social Game Success
Wooga is the third biggest Facebook developer behind Zynga and EA, if you remove PopCap’s stats from EA’s Wooga leaps to number two in the chart. So it’s no surprise that this interview with Wooga’s head of studio, Henric Suuronen was so popular. In it Surrornen discusses social game mechanics, game design, and monetization.
Remember, if you want to receive the best social games articles and insight straight to your inbox every week sign-up here.
More than half of UK children own a toy based on a virtual world
Children’s virtual worlds – like Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin – aren’t just popular online; they’re also proving a big hit as toys with new research showing over half of UK children own a toy based on a virtual world with some as popular as Dr Who.
Dubit’s research department recently studied the popularity of toys based on online worlds, looking at Disney’s Club Penguin, Mind Candy’s Moshi Monsters, as well as Build-a-BearVille, Poptropica and Webkinz.
The study of 500 kids showed that an amazing 55 per cent of children owned a toy from at least one of these games. The most popular was Disney’s Club Penguin, with 32 per cent of children owning a branded toy from the online world. Club Penguin, which has 150 million registered users (globally) launched in 2005 and has spawned a series of books and video games. Each toy is connected to the virtual world as they’re packaged with a code that allows items to be unlocked in the virtual world.
Moshi Monsters, whose plush toys and Mini Moshling Treehouse are expected to be among the most popular toys for Christmas this year, was a close second. The study showed that even before Christmas a quarter of UK children already own a Moshi Monster or a Moshling (a Moshi pet). Since launching in 2008 Moshi Monsters has gone on to accumulate 50m registered users, with one in three British children believed to be a member. Even with the publishing industry struggling The Moshi Magazine, launched in February, has accumulated the largest circulation of any UK children’s magazine.
As a comparison with toys related to kid’s TV shows, the research shows that just as many children own Club Penguin toys as they do toys based on Dr Who. Furthermore, Moshi Monster toys are more popular (25%) than toys based on the cartoon Ben 10 (20%), and only marginally less than popular than Spongebob Square Pants (29 per cent).*
Interestingly, toys from virtual worlds are gender-neutral, with equal popularity across boys and girls.
73 per cent of the children questioned had played at least one of these online games, with half having played Club Penguin and 47 per cent stating that they’d played Moshi Monsters.
Dubit’s head of research, Peter Robinson, commented: “Children are spending more time playing in virtual worlds and now those worlds are becoming part of their offline playtime.
“Today’s kids are platform agnostic and don’t care where their favourite stories and characters come from. It used to be the case that books or TV shows launched characters and toys, but now online entertainment is proving just as important.”
*Research into children’s TV shows was carried out in October for Toy News.
Fighting against free is like fighting against gravity
Digital content will be free. Tv will be free, games will be free, books will be free, music will be free. All digital entertainment will be free. Fighting against free is like fighting against gravity. Why? Because digital distribution is free.
The internet is the most efficient distribution network ever invented. If something can be digitized if can be distributed for almost zero cost. It sounds obvious, but the impact is profound.
In the past businesses relied on distribution to protect their prices:
- Writing the news is easy. Creating a network of printing presses and distribution centres to get the news across the country in the same day is hard.
- Creating music is easy. Recording an album, burning a CD, and setting up a network of shops to sell the music is hard.
When you buy a newspaper or a CD only a small part of the price goes towards the cost of creating the content. You’re really paying for the distribution.
Today anyone can write their own blog or create their own music. But it’s not the citizen journalists that are threatening the newspapers. The real threat are the millions of ordinary people who email news stories to their friends!
Perfect Market
In economic theory, we’d say that each person who emails a news article to a friend is in fact a “competitor” with the original producer – the person who emails the news article is “creating” and distributing that content for free.
The same is true of digital music. I can copy and distribute an MP3 for free.
In economics this is known as a “perfect market”: the cost of coping digital content is zero and the cost of distributing the digital content is zero, therefore there is perfect competition and zero barriers to entry.
The bad news for content creators is that in a perfect market, economic theory dictates that the price of the product, like its marginal cost, must also fall to zero as more competitors enter the market.
Unfortunately (or not) every consumer consumer of digital content has the potential be a competitor with the original creators! That’s a scary thought. Making high quality digital content is hard work, and does cost money. But copying and sharing is free. The creators have all the cost, and too much “competition” from their customers to charge for the content.
Thing about this – every customer is a competitor! It sounds absurd, yet this is exactly what happened to the music industry and the newspapers. Trying to fight against it is like trying to fight gravity. Gravity always wins.
That’s why I believe all digital content will be free. And those business that rely on distribution for protecting their prices need to act fast.
Who’s next?
For a while slow internet connections made sharing music difficult. That’s why the newspapers were the first to see their business models disrupted by the internet. But every year internet connection speeds increase by 50% (Nielsen’s Law of Internet Bandwidth) so it wasn’t long before the average connection speeds improved enough to share music freely and the Recording Industry was hit square in the jaw by the very same perfect market forces.
Note. While perfect market forces predict the price of music should become zero. In practice, I don’t think this will happen in the near term. Services like BitTorrent are not perfect: there’s a chance of downloading a virus, not all tracks are good quality, and there’s even the small risk of RIAA law suite. Services like iTunes can continue to charge something for quality of service and to avoid hassles. But the reality is clear – music is much cheaper now than 10 years ago.
Fast forward, and today, home broadband has become fast enough to download video content and now we see the very same perfect market forces colliding with the TV and film industries. It is becoming increasingly hard for professional content creators to make money. At Dubit, we experience this every day in conversations with children’s TV producers – there’s little TV advertising revenue, falling DVD sales, and less funding.
So what’s the answer? Embrace free by adopting participative pricing.
Participative pricing
We’ve all grown up with the idea that everyone who goes into a store pays the same price, the price on the sticker. Participative pricing is turns this idea on it’s head.
Participative pricing is the idea that customers can pay whatever they want for your content – each customer could pay a different price.
Where fixed pricing finds the equilibrium between volume and margin – the point at which increasing the price actually results in less profit because there are fewer customers – participative pricing unlocks the demand curve.
Lets look at the hypothetical demand curve for a game. If the game is being sold in retail for $40 there people to the left of the curve who will gladly pay $40 because they would have been prepared to spend much much more. And there are even more people to the right who wont pay $40 because, for them, the game just isn’t worth it.
Participative pricing lets people pay what they consider good value. For some people this means paying $100, for others $5, and for a huge number of people this means paying nothing! And thats fine when content is distributed online – because there is no marginal cost.
Letting them have the game for free isn’t just being nice. Those people who spend zero dollars are valuable, because all those people are potential marketers for your product. People who might just convince someone else, someone who is prepared to pay for your content, to give it a go.
Thats the key. For those consumers who are prepared to pay for your content, be it $1 or $1000, you have to give them lots of ways to give you that money! For those who only want to spend a few dollars, let them, and those on the left of the demand curve who love your product and want to spend hundreds of dollars, find a way to let them spend too.
How?
I’m going to drawn an example from “my world” – games (my company creates games for entertainment companies, like our Wizard of Oz virtual world.)
So lets look at Zynga, a company who have wholly embraced free. Not only can anyone play Zynga’s games for free, there’s no pay wall at which point players have to pay – the whole game can be consumed for free. As a result, every day Zynga give away man YEARS of free entertainment! Every day.
The catch: Zynga games will only let you play for a short period of time per day.
Built into the game are “rate limiters” – these might be a supply of energy that runs out, or the need to wait for crops to grow. Zynga’s business model hangs off these “rate limiters”. Simply, if you’re enjoying the game, and want to keep playing, then you can pay money to play for longer. Or if you decide the game just isn’t worth $1 for another 20 minutes then you can come back the next day and play for free.
This is participative pricing in action. Players can decide exactly how much they enjoy the game by deciding how much money to spend to keep playing. Of course they’re not actually spending money to buy time, they’re buying energy or some other abstract concept that unlocks the “rate limiter” built into the game.
By recognizing how “perfect market” economics are changing the entertainment landscape, Zynga have become the most valuable games company in the world – reportedly worth $15B – $20B. Not bad for embracing free and adopting participative pricing.
But there is a downside.
In an effort to maximise short term gain, some games will use physiological “tricks” that lead some players to become addicted to the game. These are the same types of “tricks” used by casinos.
When players become addicted they do spend a lot of money, far more money than they would otherwise spend. But when that player breaks the cycle they’re sure to feel cheated – they perceive that they’ve spent more money than entertainment was worth to them. The result is a dissatisfied customer.
The cycle of addiction is the biggest risk facing free to play casual games. When customers feel they’ve spend more money than the entertainment was worth to them they wont spend money again.
Brands embracing free and adopting participative pricing, must create fans, not addicts – fans spend money because they love your product, not because they’re addicted. These are the children who want the Transformers bedsheets, the pencil tin, and the rucksack. Or the soccer fan who buys the jersey and goes to all the games. While addicts are the people who spend money for a while and later bad mouth your product!
In my next post I’m going to talk explore how to create fans, not addicts, in free to play games.
Matthew Warneford, over and out.
P.S. Let me know what you think in the comments. Am I right? Or just a fool!
Inside the sausage factory
Sausages are delicious, but I prefer not to think how they’re made. While I hope to never see inside a sausage factory, sometimes it is interesting to see how thing get made. I think that’s why our customers like to visit us; they want to see what goes into making a kids virtual world. Thankfully there’s very little meat grinding.
So if you’ve ever wondered what sort of people makes games for kids, then this post is for you.
For over a year, long standing Dubiteer, illustrator, and comic book artist, Simon Perrins, has been capturing the zeitgeist of the Dubit development studio in black and white sketches. In over 100 images, Simon has recorded the many of major themes throughout the year, including whatever did Matthew Fisher do with Richards chair, the three moods of Chris Ramsden, and Andy Kay’s second child.
Simon has annotated, and uploaded, 40 of his most important sketches. But before I show you my favorites I should explain how these images came to be.
As a production team we don’t follow a waterfall development process, not do we follow a pure agile methodology either. Like choosing from a salad bar, we like to think we’ve chosen the best of Prince 2 and the best of Agile development to create a production process that is appropriate for building virtual worlds.
From the Agile salad bar we adopted, amongst other things, short week long sprints, and daily standup scrums. Where our milestones are split into three short sprints, and at the end of the three weeks the product is pushed to the development environment. In this way we can reduce risk by releasing a functioning product with very few bugs every three weeks. And as a general rule the features are added in an order that takes into account importance and risk; the most important and risky tasks are added first. As the project progresses towards final delivery the the greatest challenges have been completed.
As part of this process, every morning, Liam, who runs the operations, holds a 15 minute meeting with the whole development team. It’s during these 15 minutes that Simon captures the important issues of the day.
Below are my personal favorite images, images that represent the one theme that has run throughout the whole year, Richard Walton’s missing chair. To this day we still don’t know what happened to Richard’s chair. But we have theories…
To view the full flickr album go here. Or if you really want to keep tabs on us, subscribe to the RSS feed. Or why not get in touch and come see virtual world building in action!
 |
 |
 |
| Shortly after Richard’s chair first went missing. Early speculation. | Matt Fisher, Special Ops, mounts a daring rescue of the kidnapped Richard the Chair | Thomas Holme and Richard the Chair: Prisoners of The Monkey King |
 |
 |
 |
| Matt Warneford breaks several international laws by trying to smuggle an innocent living chair through customs | Richard Walton is heading the scrum, but the team have been replaced by living chairs | Thomas Holme’s true identity revealed! |
You can’t polish a turd. Don’t iterate a bad game design.
Everyone knows data driven design is important. Zynga do it, so it must be good. But it’s not a golden ticket. Sometimes a design is just bad, and as we say in the North of England, “You can’t polish a turd”. Which translates as: despite your best efforts there are some things you just can’t fix or improve.
This post is about how to not polish a turd. Or more accurately, the risks of relying on AB testing, and how find inspiration for great game designs.
I like MY sandwiches
I like sandwiches. Not all types of sandwiches, and not all fillings. But I always like the sandwiches I make myself.
You see, when I make a sandwich there’s no salt beef, no pickles, no mayonnaise, no coronation chicken, no fatty ham, and definitely no egg. That’s just a few of the things I don’t like (the list is long).
If you were to make me a sandwich you’ll probably make me a sandwich I don’t want. Not that I’d tell you, I’m too polite. I’d eat the sandwich, but I’d remember not eat a sandwich you’ve made again.
That’s the problem. It’s much easier to make things for ourselves – I know what sandwich fillings I like. The same is true of games. I know what I like (Monkey Island, Fallout, and Deux Ex) so I know how to design a game I want to play (and quite probably other 30-year-old men like me want to play).
Making games for kids isn’t so easy. I am not an 8-year-old girl. I never have been, and I don’t believe in reincarnation, so I never will be. So how do I know what an 8 year old girl will like?
Don’t trust your instinct
Every day at Dubit (my company) we make games for 8-year-old girls. Strictly speaking we don’t just make games for 8-year-old girls, we make games for a wide range of kids. Nevertheless, the problem is the same, we are not kids any more – and we’re not allowed to employ kids (something about labour laws). So we can’t just design games that we want to play. We have to design a game that someone completely different that ourselves will enjoy.
Designing for kids means you can’t rely on your instinct – what you think will be fun – you’ve got to involve kids in the design. Instead, watch them play, and test your concepts. But you don’t just ask them what they like. They’ll lie (mislead is a more pleasant way to say it).
This is a really important point. Kids will tell you what they think you want to hear. The only way to know what kids actually think is to observe what they do. Online this means using data, AB tests, and analytics to see how they use your game, where they get stuck, and what they like.
Zynga are famous for this type of data driven design. At any point in time they’re running 500 different experiments. Each experiment is an AB test – they compare two versions of a design to see which performs best.
Trust the data
These types of tests don’t lie. If homepage A converts more visitors into players than homepage B, then homepage A is the better homepage.
In a earlier post, 7 month gamble: 2 months design, 5 months development, but is the game fun?, I shared some of the quick and dirty data driven techniques we’ve used to test how kids react to different parts of a game design without having to build the whole game.
The bad news, while the tests I described don’t lie they can mislead. The good news, there are plenty of resources explaining how to design tests that don’t mislead. There’s little I can add.
But running tests is easy, what I care about is knowing I’ve got the best homepage, the best game design, the best theme, or the best narrative. Not the best out of the two, three, or four tests. But the very best.
While the examples that follow are for a homepage design, the same process applies to game design, theme, and narrative using the principle explained in this post.
Watch the pennies
A typical AB test looks like this: design a homepage, then make a change. Usually a small change. Maybe change the sign up button from “Register Here” to “Play Now”. You let that test run for a while. Probably the second one wins, then try another variation: “Adopt Now!”
This continues with gradual incremental improvements. Over time all these little changes add up to a big improvement – it’s like watching the pennies so the dollars will take care of themselves.
Except, more often that not, it doesn’t work this way. Maybe at first you see improvements, but pretty quickly it gets hard to tell if the changes are making any difference at all!
I wouldn’t have started from here
The problem here, is that you’ve found the “local maximum”. Which is just a fancy way of saying you’ve made that original design as good as it can be.
All those little improvements have added up to a better homepage. But once you’ve found the local maximum any other changes wont improve performance, indeed, more changes can only result in worse performance!
The real question is whether you’ve found the “global maximum” – is the design the very best of all possible designs?
Usually the first design is not the best design, and you won’t get to the best design with incremental improvements. More often than not, the global maximum design is very different to the one you start with.
Yet data driven incremental improvements are just that, small improvements. And small improvements don’t lead to big design changes, because big design changes can (at first) lead to worse performance. But AB tests always choose the design with the best performance. The idea is illustrated with the chart.
To find the global maximum you’ve got to start with a design that has the potential to be the best possible design. Which reminds me of the old Irish joke:
Paddy stopped cutting the hedge as the big car drew up beside him and an English visitor enquired,
“Could you tell me the way to Balbriggan, Please?”
Paddy wiped his brow.
“Certainly, sor. If you take the first road to the left? no still that wouldn’t do? drive on for about four miles then turn left at the crossroads? no that wouldn’t do either.”
Paddy scratched his head thoughtfully.
“You know, sor, if I was going to Balbriggan I wouldn’t start from here at all.”
And that’s the problem with the first homepage design. If we want to find the global maximum we shouldnt have started with that design at all!
Where to start from
To find the best starting point is quite simple. Make several very different homepage designs, layouts, color schemes, and positioning statements. Then test those design. No small incremental tweaks until you’ve found the most promising starting points.
The problem is this advice is simple to write, but much harder to execute. How do you come up with a great starting point? Where does the inspiration for a great design, a great game, or a great story come from?
It comes from the extremes.
Inspirations at the edges
At Dubit we believe insights come from extreme users and not from center of the bell curve. There’s little inspiration in the average, there’s a huge amount of insight at the edges.
What does this mean for virtual worlds and games?
If it’s an existing children’s brand then start by finding the super fans, find the kids who run the fan sites. Talk to the adults who love the brand. These people are the extremes, they represent 1% of the target audience. But talking to these people is going to tell you much more than the kids who don’t really care about your brand. I’m always surprised by the super fans.
Then find the kids who hate you. The ones who take to vocalise their hate. They’re just as passionate as your super fans. You want to find out why they hate you, not so you can minimize why they hate. Knowing why they hate helps you build a game the fans will love. Because it’s always better to build a game that polarizes than a game that excites no-one.
The same principle applies to the game mechanics. Once you know who your super fans are, then find out what kind of games they play. What do they love, what do they hate? Find the extremes.
Maybe the love pet games. There are already dozens of different pet games online, on consoles, on mobile devices. What’s going to make your game great?
Again start with the super fans; the kids who run the fan sites for other pet games. Which games have the most passionate fans? Why do they love that game? Try asking them how they’d describe the game to their friends. You’ll be surprised. It’s usually the little things.
Remember to observe them. How they play the game. If its a cartoon then watch when they laugh.
Overtime, you’ll start to build up a vivid picture of your fans and haters. You’ll see the little things that are important, the quirks, and the insights that you can turn into designs, themes, narratives, or mechanics. Now you can start to design, now you know what to design. Only then is it time to go back to data driven design.
Almost by definition data driven design tests against the centre of the bell curve – the “average” people. To be financially successful you need the middle of the bell curve to love the game, but you’ll never find inspiration in the middle.
Inspiration and insight comes from passion. Like Mike92cp whose YouTube channel of Club Penguin videos has over 12 million views, or Lilfti332 who has made 3,200 edits to the Poptropica fan wiki.
In a nutshell. Start with the passionate fans, be those fans of your brand, fans of the genre of game, or fans of your genre of narrative. Find the super fans. Talk to them, and observe them. And only then test what you’ve learnt with data driven design.
One more thing. We’re not the only ones writing about game design. Every week we read through all the social games articles and link to the best stuff. Sign up for our This Week in Social Games newsletter to get it delivered to your inbox every week.
The 7 month social game gamble: 2 months design, 5 months programming, but is it fun? There is a better way
The recipe for making a new game is pretty simple: spend 2 months designing the game, 5 months of late nights and weekends programming it, fix all the bugs, and release a beta.
There’s nothing wrong with recipe, but you’ve got to remember to stick your finger in the mixture and give it a taste. After all, you wouldn’t bake a cake and never taste what’s in the bowl, it might need some more sugar! Yet that’s what most game developers do. They’ll happily spend a bucket of cash building a game for 7 months, and only after 7 months do they find out if anyone really likes the game. This is the 7 Month Gamble. There is a better way.
Although we make kids games and virtual worlds, the ideas in this post are still relevant for you folks making social games.
In an ideal world you’d want to know if your game concept is going to be a hit before you start to build it – then there would be no need to delay buying that yacht. Unfortunately, while we get the time machine working again, there’s no way to know for sure if a game’s going to be a big hit. So in the meantime, our Dubit research guys have developed a couple of processes for testing the game concept well before the beta release.
The easiest way to get some feedback is to just ask potential players what they think of the game concept. Does the game sound fun? Do they like the theme? What about the narrative, does that sound exciting? The thing is, it’s a pretty bad solution. In fact, it’s not just bad, it’s toxic. The reason being: people lie. It’s not that they mean to lie, maybe they want to make you happy, maybe they think they’re telling you what you want to hear, never-the-less, the outcome is the same. Don’t trust what they tell you, observe what they do.
I heard this story a while ago and there’s no better example for choosing observation over listening. During the early planning stages for the then-new Sony Walkman, a focus group was asked, “What color Walkman do you think most people would be more likely to buy: black or yellow?” Overwhelmingly, members of the focus group responded that most consumers would purchase a yellow Walkman. At the end of the focus group, everyone was allowed to choose a black or a yellow Walkman to take home as a gift for participating. All but one chose black.
The lesson is simple, watch what consumers do, not what they say they’ll do. Only now I sound contradictory. Earlier I admonished the 7 month design and hope strategy, and now I’m saying you can’t just ask players what they think, you’ve got to observe them doing it. The trick is to observe them before the game is finished, before the 7 months is up. The sooner the better. We do this by “ghetto testing” the things that make the game unique.
With every game or virtual world we create there are three things that are going to be completely unique:
- The theme. Is it set in space, underwater, a secret ninja society hidden among rooftops of ancient Japan? We actually thought the latter would be a great idea, so much so we even started making the 3D artwork, then we realized young girls don’t much like ninjas – this is the danger when men design a game for girls without following the testing ideas in the post!
- The narrative. What’s the purpose of the game, is there a narrative for the players to progress through? Perhaps there is an evil blue teddy bear called Dr Cuddles who is trying to turn the world hairy? Yes that’s a real example from our virtual world we created for the BBC.
- The golden mechanics. What are the major game mechanics, are players caring for a pet, collecting, battling, exploring?
So “What is Ghetto Testing?” It’s a simple, cheap, market test. It can be done fast – today if you want to. And it’s done before the game is built. Done properly you’ll quickly know if your theme, narrative, and golden mechanics actually work. The basic process is the same for all three.
Lets walk through testing a game narrative. Imagine you’re building a kids virtual world. Thats 5 months of development, much more if you don’t use an existing platform like ours (bad plug I know). You want to build a good virtual world, one the kids are going to love, and so you’re trying to build an exciting narrative into the game. The problem is it’s a pretty big part of the development and you’d rather know if the kids like the story before spending all those hours programming it. What do you do?
Step 1: Create three simple videos, one for each of your narrative stories. These don’t need to be fancy videos, just colored sketches and simple animations. Do spend money on good voice over. Voice over makes a narrative come to life.
Step 2: Create the game homepage and the sign up form. Duplicate the homepage for each of the three videos.
Step 3: Set up a Google Adwords account. Buy traffic for the same keywords your players would use to search for your game. Send that traffic in equal measures to each of the three home pages. Spend no more than $10 per day per homepage.
Step 4: Record how many players register after watching the different videos.
That’s it. Send traffic from Google to the three home pages. The only difference between the three pages are the narrative videos. See how many players sign up from each of the home pages. Which ever video produces the most registered users is the narrative to write into the game. Easy and powerful.
What’s so great about this approach is that players think they’re actually joining a game. They don’t know they’re part of a test, they don’t know the game doesn’t exist. They’re signing up because they want to play. This is observation at it’s best.
Where do the players go after they’ve registered? Nowhere. Don’t worry about upsetting people. Most wont remember who you are. Still worried? Just don’t reveal your brand, make up a new one!
This is exactly the approach we used for our Muddle Earth game.
It can be applied to testing the theme and testing the golden mechanics too. For the theme create a range of different home pages, each homepage should be representative of the theme. Record the ages and gender of the players who sign up, and run with the theme that converts best for the target ages. But, remember, it’s not the absolute number of conversions, it’s the percentage of conversions for each age – what percentage of visitors who land on the homepage actually convert into players?
For the golden mechanics the process is similar, but a little more work – we like to build a virtual world’s golden mechanics as standalone mini games. Sure, it’s more work than testing the theme or the narrative, but it’s also a lot cheaper to test the golden mechanic as a mini game than waiting until virtual world is complete!
Imagine a world where players run their own pet store – they buy new pets, look after the ones they already have, and sell food and accessories to their virtual customers. Don’t wait until the world is complete to see if the pet store is fun. Try developing the pet shop as a standalone minigame. Not a big game, just enough to prove the concept.
For the minigame, the test is not registered users, the proof is repeat visits. The golden mechanics should be fun. Players come back when they’re having fun. Therefore, if players are coming back, having found the golden mechanic minigame through the usual Google Adwords channels, we can be confident the mechanic is fun!
And that’s it. A simple testing technique for avoiding the 7 Month Gamble. There are however some downsides, chiefly that innovation comes from the edges of the bell curve, not from the centre. But that’s a subject for another post.
One more thing. We’re not the only ones writing about game design. Every week we read through all the social games articles and link to the best stuff, and our own posts, in our This Week in Social Games newsletter. Go on, sign-up.
Ten things you didn’t know about Moshi Monsters
Since beginning in 2007 Moshi Monsters has risen to become an online game and children’s social network with over 50 million members worldwide. There is a good chance that if you have children they probably have a Moshi of their own, as half of the country’s six to twelve year-olds are members.
As Moshi Monsters gets tipped to become one of the must have toys for Christmas 2011 we present you with ten things you probably didn’t know about the Moshi phenomen.
Before it went social Moshi Monsters was facing bankruptcy
Mind Candy, the company behind Moshi Monsters, hasn’t always had it so good. Speaking to The Independent, Mind Candy CEO, Michael Acton Smith said: “The real tipping point came in 2009 when we allowed kids to connect with each other and gave them a forum to discuss things. Until then, it had been a solo experience and we were on the edge of bankruptcy. It was when we added the social element that membership really took off.”
Education was the focus
When the game was built in 2007 the focus was on educating children. Acton Smith claims that teachers and parents loved it but kids just rolled their eyes.
Low subscriber numbers isn’t an issue
Only a “single-digit percentage” of Moshi’s users are paying members. But that is not a problem says CEO Acton Smith “Because we’ve got a relatively low cost base, you only need a few percent to be insanely profitable.”
Built for homework
A player’s ability to earn Rox (the virtual currency in Moshi Monsters) lessens after fifteen minutes since the game is optimised for short-term play. Mind Candy says this is to encourage children to do homework and play in other ways.
Breathing life into print
The Moshi Monsters magazine is the UK’s highest-selling kids’ publication. Its first issue, published in February this year sold out, despite printing over 80,000 copies. As well as comic strips, competitions, gameplay tips and other fun stuff it also has unique codes that unlock virtual items and other cool Moshi content.
A game by any other name…
Moshi Monsters was going to be called Puzzle Monsters but changed to Moshi Monsters to make it more suitable for a global brand.
Bright Sparks
In June this year one of Mind Candy’s original investors, Spark Ventures, sold half its stake in the company for $200m – 14 times what they money it invested in 2004.
A quick fix
The average game session is only ten minutes.
Class of 2007
Moshi Monsters was tipped for success by the Guardian in 2007. It was included in a list of hit websites to watch out for in 2008, alongside Twitter and Etsy.
Must have toys
Moshi Monsters and their babies (Moshlings) have made Hamleys coverted top ten list of toys for Christmas 2011. They sit alongside blockbuster film figures like Transformers and Cars 2 as well as festive staples like Barbie and Lego.
For more info on social games subscribe to Dubit’s This Week in Social Games newsletter.
The 10 best social gaming articles of 2011 – Part one
We’ve been publishing our This Week in Social Games (TWISG) newsletter for six months. It’s our weekly e-newsletter that contains that week’s most insightful articles on social games and virtual worlds and delivers them as a digest into our subscriber’s inbox.
But that’s not meta enough for us at Dubit. So now we’ve scoured all the issues of TWISG and produced this list of the top ten articles (based on clicks). It’s a bit like those annuals you used to get as a kid but you don’t have to wait for Christmas.
Want the week’s most insightful social gaming and virtual world articles sent to your inbox every week? Then sign-up to receive TWISG.
1 . Do you speak metrics? (free sign-up required)
Do you know your WAU from your ARPU? What’s the K-Factor? If this makes no sense to you then you have been one of the many people who clicked this story. Unfortunately it requires registration to Games Industry Biz but if you’re not signed-up already, now’s the time.
2. Social gaming statistics jamboree
We all love social gaming stats, which I guess is why this proved so popular – it’s got 80 of them! What makes it even better is that the list also comes with links to the source of each stat. Great if you’re trying to convince anyone of the benefits of social games.
3. Top 10 tips on social games success
Presented as a check-list for crafting the perfect social game, this list from GameDuell Co-Founder Michael Kalkowski proved so popular we’re expecting nothing but perfect social games from now on. We don’t expect to be let down.
4. Zynga’s Castle On Social Game Metrics
Social game metrics are always popular on TWISG but this interview with Zynga’s Lou Castle has been the most popular yet. In it he explains why social game project managers may have “more practical design experience” than many seasoned game designers; maybe that’s why it was so popular.
5. Virtual currency – an overview of the law
We’re sure that plenty of developers and publishers clicked this article to make sure they were doing everything above board. Whatever the reason, this post was a handy crib sheet for anyone wanting an overview of what can and can’t be done with virtual currency.
6. What do the top 20 virtual worlds have in common?
This post was by Dubit’s own CTO, Matthew Warneford. In it he dissects the top 20 virtual worlds and examines the results to see what traits they share. A bit like a virtual world autopsy. Read the article to see what they have in common and how these traits change with the player’s age.
7. Five ways developers can be less dependent on Facebook
As a platform, Facebook’s roads aren’t paved with the same gold that they were when Farmville first came on to the scene. Now they’re made from some form of gold plated tungsten. This could explain why so many readers clicked this post – a five point plan on how to be big in social games without relying on big blue (that’s Facebook now, not IBM).
8. Saatchi & Saatchi – Gamification for business, brands, and loyalty
The purpose of the Saatchi and Saatchi survey was to show how gamification can play a role in business. In the process of doing this they unveiled a host of tasty social gaming stats. Want to know what social games single people play? What about the most educated gamers? Go take a look at the presentation.
9. CityVille’s viral growth hooks : Levels 1-3 deconstructed
Digg founder and angel investor, Kevin Rose, is a Farmville addict! So when Cityville came on the scene he had to get involved and that inspired this blog entry – deconstructing the viral growth hooks from the game’s first three levels with a handy flow chart. We all know Zynga want you to share your accomplishments but seeing it in flow chart form really do emphasise their importance.
10. CityVille goal funnels – Game Mechanics and Overview (pt1/5)
Going in to more depth that Kevin Rose’s blog post was this article (from a series of five) by Kontagent. Here the author examines the game’s viral, engagement, retention and viral engagement funnels. Take a look at the other posts in the series for a deeper breakdown.
(This blog post has since been removed by it’s author, Kevin Rose, and the above link now directs to a report on the post by Kontangent)
Remember, if you want to receive the best social games articles and insight then sign-up here.
How many friends does a Moshi Monsters player invite? And what is Moshi Monsters’ viral growth?
Way back in 2010, as Moshi Monsters signed up their 30 millionth user, Michael Acton Smith (Moshi CEO) presented a breakdown of registered users by marketing channel.
There’s a couple of interesting snippets from Acton Smith’s presentation, I want to focus on two of them:
- The power of TV advertising
- Moshi Monsters viral growth
If you’re in a rush, scroll down the post to see Acton Smith’s presentation slides.
The Power of TV
For a long time online kids games and virtual worlds have left TV advertising well alone; it’s expensive, can’t be tracked, poor conversion, and all the other reasons (or if you prefer, old wives tales).
Those myths are just not true any more. At GDC 2010, Acton Smith revealed that Moshi Monsters’ targeted TV campaigns have been one their most cost effective marketing channels. And it isn’t just true for Moshi Monsters, we’ve seen very similar results with the campaigns we’ve run for our clients.
TV advertising is effective again.
It’s really not that surprising. In the last 5 years TV advertising has become a lot less expensive, but more importantly, many children have started to watch TV while also using their laptops, and often their smart phones as well.
This ‘three screen phenomenon’ has single handedly made TV advertising a truckload more efficient. There’s no writing down a URL, waiting until the end of the show, then going upstairs to visit the site. The kids already have their laptops open, providing the advert sounds exciting huge numbers will visit the site immediately.
Certainly TV is no guarantee. There are pitfalls, and because the minimum spend is far higher than online marketing channels the mistakes are magnified. But done right, it’s very powerful.
As an aside, I’ve half penned a post about the techniques we use to manage some of those risks. In the meantime, if you have any questions about marketing worlds, games, toys, books, and other kids entertainment do get in touch, I’m always happy to share ideas and learn new ones! (matthew@dubitlimited.com)
Moshi Monsters Viral Growth
I think I’ve been writing long enough without a picture break. Below is Acton Smith’s slide that shows new registered users each month, and split out by acquisition channel (Google, TV, Bing, etc). Notice my crudely illustrated arrow on the right – 70% of Moshi Monsters registered users originate from ‘Organic’! Acton Smith attributes this to viral growth / word of mouth.
So what does that 70% mean? Scroll past the image for the science bit (for those who remember the L’Oreal adverts as fondly as I do here’s Aniston selling shampoo).
Although Acton Smith’s presentation was a little ambiguous, I think we have enough to make some good approximations. Taking Acton Smith’s 70% of users that come from viral, and 30% that come through paid channels, then we can figure out that for every paid user we get 30% / 70% = 2.33 viral users.
Think about this another way. For every user they “buy” through advertising they actually get 3.33 users. 1 user from advertising, and 2.33 from viral.
The statement, while correct, is misleading. That lone user who comes through the marketing channels isn’t personally bringing 2.33 of his friends into the world. Because if he did wouldn’t those 2.33 people each invite 2.33 of their friends? And those people invite their friends? And before we know it we don’t need marketing any more, we’ve got exponential viral growth… Only that’s not what’s happening. Marketing is still very important for Moshi Monsters.
What I think’s happening here is that the user who came through paid acquisition channels is inviting some friends, but on average he’s responsible for less than 1 person joining. That’s normal for children’s game.
Following this train of thought. As an example, lets say each user is responsible for 0.5 people signing up (that means the viral ratio is 0.5). The first person invites 0.5 of a person, and that 0.5 invites 0.25, and that 0.25 invites 0.125, and so on. Or 1 + 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125… and on and on.
It’s a simple geometric series that can be modelled as: total users = 1 / 1 – k where k is the viral ratio.
For our example where k = 0.5, then we find that 1 / 1 – 0.5 = 2 In plain english (or as plain as my limited brain will allow), this means that when we got the first user through paid marketing channels we actually ended up with 2 users because of viral growth.
So lets apply this to Moshi Monsters. We can reverse the equation to find viral growth:
k = 1 – (1 / total users) = 1 – (1 / 3.33) = 0.7 viral growth factor
I think that’s pretty huge! For every player who joins the game he directly bring 0.7 other players. Any virtual world would be proud.
I hope this is a useful metric for developers exploring new virtual world, business models, or benchmarking their existing games. On the subject of business models. I’ve written at length about viral growth (where ‘at length’ is a code word for boring) and player acquisition cost in our series dissecting virtual world business models. If you’re interested check out the summary post along with template excel business model.
If you’ve read this far then you’re probably wondering why all I’ve done is re-enforce how important viral growth is without actually giving any suggestions for actually improving it. It’s because I’m out of time this evening! So for now check out one of my old posts “If bolting wings onto a car wont make it fly don’t expect that tacking a Facebook Connect button into a game will make it viral” and follow me on twitter because I’ll be writing more about marketing games and worlds.
Matthew Warneford
