Iterating Fun - Simon Newstead

E3 was manic. 

A whirlwind of next gen consoles and triple A titles. 

This year I roamed the show floor trying out as many games as possible.

Most were bigger & badder takes on familiar genres.

Forza 5 on Xbox One was stunning.  FIFA 14’s animations flowed better than ever.  Call of Duty Ghost had gunplay, underwater! Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs pulled us into an immersive wired city.  Oh and mechs are back!

So what about non core games?  

Not that many.  

With a couple of exceptions most of the industry remains focussed on its male core gamer demographic.

There were bright spots though - 5 personal highlights:

1/ That Dragon, Cancer

Not so much a game as a thoughtful piece of art.  The setting is a sad hospital room, the character a cancer patient and his thoughts.  This game had the most emotional impact, despite the lack of fancy graphics.

2/ Project Spark

Little Big Planet and Minecraft just had a love child…

This was the most awe inspiring demo at the event.  Microsoft’s ambitious game creation platform is a joy to play with: the first time you swipe your finger and literally create worlds of ice and forests before your eyes takes your breath away. 

3/ Octodad

Octodad is so ridiculous in its premise it can’t help but bring out the smiles.  Trying to control Octodad’s clumsy tentatcle to retrieve a wedding ring for your (female) bride is a farce, in a good way.  The game bursts with personality and character, a welcome contrast to all the high speed action and violence in the rest of the PS4 zone.

4/ Contrast

This action platformer leaves a dark impression.  Contrast has intriguing female leads, gorgeous french noir art and a gameplay twist.  When your character’s shadow is on a surface you can change modes and control your shadow in 2d, moving and jumping amongst other shadows. Whilst frustrating in its controls it pushes the boundaries in creative gameplay.

5/ My School

Not sure whether I’d call this a highlight or not, but worth a mention. This over the top school simulation game features plenty of “only in Asia” quirkiness (maybe fitting from a studio called Racoonsoft).  Busty teachers, an overabundance of cola machines and confused students looking for work, this game had it.  When I asked the goal of the game, I was told it was “to make money”.  

Education these days :)

ps - special mention to The Wonderful 101 - who knew 101 character multiplayer chaos could be so much fun…

What were your E3 highlights? Email or let me know on Twitter

New bootstrapped startup?

Building a new app?

Ready your credit card.

Back of the envelope costs

• Surveys to your target market $1000
• Starbucks focus groups and usability tests: $200
• Buy 1000 quality users to your new app $2000
• x 5 rounds of product iteration = $16,000

Based on

• $1 per response x 5 questions x 200 qualified respondents 
• $20 coupons x 10 people (random & Craigslist arranged)
• $2 targeted CPI x 1000 users

Conclusions

• If you’re running lean, early on it’s probably your biggest cost
• Good news: still cheaper than months of wasted design & dev effort 

Footnote

• Chances are you’ll need multiple iterations (maybe it’s just me)
• Figures excludes dev, launch marketing, hosting, pizza etc.
• Asking friends for feedback is cheap, but biased 
• You’ll need 1000s of users to test LTV in a freemium product

Question - is there a cheaper way?

What’s your take? Email or let me know on twitter

Edit: HN discussion on this post here

Lately I’ve been designing a couple new games and got me thinking back to virtual worlds.

Remember when they were the next big thing?

Millions of us tried them.  Gartner predicted 80% of all net users would have Second Life avatars.  VCs invested bigtime.  Even Google wanted a piece.  

My startup too. We launched the first browser 3d UGC world with cool tech we built on Unity. You could chat, create, shop and more.

But after a couple years we’d only gained 600k users so decided to pivot to mobile games.

Here are 5 reasons why virtual worlds never took off and some ideas for how they can live on in new games:

1. No purpose
   
   Virtual worlds don’t have explicit goals.  
   
   No quests. No mechanics. No problems to solve. They aren’t games.  
   
   Give people a blank piece of paper and ask them to “have fun!” A few might get excited and start writing a poem or sketch a masterpiece.  But most will be annoyed, grow bored and give up.
   
   Same with virtual worlds. 
   
   
2. No feedback
   
   Turns out, humans really love feedback.  
   
   Our addictive behaviours are mostly shaped by tight stimuli and response schedules.  We check Facebook often with the hope of new message or notifications.  We eat junk food and are rewarded with an immediate dopamine hit.
   
   Contrast that to virtual worlds where you might “work” for hours before getting feedback, which can only come from other players. Not very motivating.
   
   
3. No theme
   
   Most successful UGC communities have either a particular topic that glues them together, or easy ways to dive to them.
   
   Reddit has subreddits.  Pinterest has tags and categories. Youtube has search and recommendations.  
   
   Themes make it easy to consume, start and keep up conversations.
   
   In virtual worlds there is no easy way to jump straight into the themes you like, and no structure that enforce adherence to them.
   
   
4. Complexity
   
   Great technology doesn’t mean a great user experience.
   
   Virtual worlds offer great freedom, but also a LOT of complexity and ways to get stuck. 
   
   These days where the distractions abound, people don’t handle complexity well, especially when trying something for the first time.
   
   
5. Needs met elsewhere
   
   Despite drawbacks, virtual worlds offered a couple of bright spots - online community and freedom to create.
   
   But the spirit of these can also be met in other ways.
   
   I can build a great farm in Hay Day or doodle in Draw Something 2, interacting with friends in simple but meaningful ways.
   
   Minecraft offers great creativity and community with a small number of important mechanics. 
   
   On the deeper end, MMOs like Entropia have great freedom and incredibly loyal community.  

So what’s new?

So for those of us creating mobile games, should we forget about virtual worlds?

I don’t think so.  Whilst never living up to its hype*, we can continue to incorporate their positives in a deeper way.

First is to figure out how to tie greater creativity into our mechanics to broaden possibility spaces.  

This can be really tricky - how do you “judge” creativity in a programmatic manner? Easier if it’s creativity to meet a certain functional goal (ala Bad Piggies), but is there a way to judge “beauty” or “artistic merit”?  In our first game we built a system to judge a fashion outfit.  Whilst sufficient I’d be first to admit there is a lot more nuance that could be added, though it’s not always easy to define and balance such a system.

If judging is community based how to you build systems to make it fair, tamper proof and not feel like work? And do it in a way that’s timely, and gets the core loop running quickly?

We could also do more to foster friendships between players that last years, not days. Ability to collaboratively work on shared projects is something extremely meaningful in virtual worlds.  Guilds in some mobile strategy games let you coordinate attacks which is lots of fun, but haven’t seen much yet in the way of coop base building, or crafting etc.

We can offer a deeper level of customization, allowing you to tweak not only your look but your personality and how you engage in the game world.  Chat and status messages are a start, but could you have ways to customise how your characters or army or base react programmatically under different circumstances (like scripting in SL but without the complexity).

Not all virtual world concepts translate well, and getting them working with a simple UX for a small screen is the challenge, but there are things we can learn from and adapt.

What’s your take? Email or let me know on twitter

*Whilst not a mainstream success, virtual worlds are still active amongst several niche groups, eg deep roleplayers, virtual artists, or the disabled - where they can move, express and socialize in a way they can’t in real life.

There’s an interesting trend bubbling up of extremely time limited offers in mobile games - let’s call them microsales.

In a microsale, there’s an offer - for example a deal on a virtual item,  currency or content (eg- access to a special dungeon).  This is presented with a very short countdown timer, typically 20 seconds or less.

The player is forced to make an explicit decision on the spot - take the offer now or let it pass with regret and uncertainty as to when or if it would return.

It’s an interesting entry in the monetization toolbox, and one that to me, makes sense:

A study by Scott Swain, Richard Hanna and Lisa Abendroth (2006) examined 3 mechanisms (deal evaluations, anticipated regret, and urgency) that influence purchase intent, through the lens of time limited sales.  They concluded:

…shorter time limits create a greater sense of urgency thereby leading to higher purchase intentions…giving consumers more time leads only to more delay and, in effect, the shorter time limit causes the promotion to gain priority on consumers’ “to do” lists. However, caution is needed since… too short of a time limit can also increase perceptions of inconvenience, leading to lower deal evaluations and ultimately lower purchase intent.

On mobile the “inconvenience” factor I think is reduced - you’re already in a “limited time” frame of mind, and all it takes is a single tap on a button to take up the offer - especially when using virtual currency, not needing the interruption of IAP password entry.

That out of the way, all you need is a sufficient time for the deal to be evaluated, which is normally in the period of seconds, not minutes.  

Does that mean traditional 24 and 48 hour digital sales are on their way out?  I doubt it, but I suspect that we’ll see a lot more of microsales used in parallel in the future.

Have you used or seen a microsale lately? Would love your feedback.  Tweet or email

In the first social game wave, two common mechanics were harvest (appointment) and its companion, wither (delay penalty).

Playing off the harvest, the wither helped reinforce the regular return cycles those games were designed around. How?

The fear of loss can be strong.  The feeling that your precious crops would decay (or be stolen) was a strong motivation to log on that one last time before sleep or early morning before packing lunch for the kids.

Fast forward two years later, the wither mechanic seems to be falling out of favor. 

This year’s most successful mobile farming sim, Hay Day eschews it.  

So do many others that have ranked in recent times. Even Zynga’s Castleville team at GDC talked about how they wanted to remove it, but were constrained due to other factors.

So why this trend? Some thoughts…

1. Social players are already conditioned to return and harvest.  In the inital social game wave there were millions of first time “gamers”.  Early hits like Farmville trained them how to play, checking back regularly to collect and progress in bite size chunks. 
2. Other systems provide calls to action.  With development of more mechanics for high grossing whales (eg events), there are other drivers for players to return.  Zynga shared that 64% of players are prompted to return through  platform reminders - a growing set of open graph stories, pictures, notifications and requests.  An extra set just adds more complexity.
3. Elder players are motivated by efficiency.  For example, a deep crafting and request system provides strong drivers for players to be optimal in their return schedules to gain ever increasing rewards.  This desire for increased payoff turns out to be a very strong retention motivator for experienced players.
4. Wither unwieldily as a monetization driver.  Some games allow you to rescue decayed crops (or revive near death puppies) for a cost.  This can help as a time based monetization driver, but it’s hard to balance.  eg- the amount of crops a player may have growing at any particular time could vary greatly.  It’s also something part of the core loop, which can affect core satisfaction with the game, in the case you couldn’t log on last week due to, you know, real life.  Instead, other approaches such as time limited events provide a simpler single monetization request (extend the easter egg hunt by 24 hours?).  It’s also one that doesn’t punish you as part of the core loop, and instead gives you an chance to win something extra special, if you chose to.
5. Wither is a negative experience.  Losing something isn’t pleasant. Especially when that thing may have taken plenty of time and effort to create. Punishment and its avoidance has a place in game design, but arguably not as your primary return driver.  What are the options? A better way to handle that could be to remove it, or flip it around to be something positive.  
   

   

   
   For example Zombie Farm by Playforge originally had a wither mechanic.  However the sequel was changed to be an early bonus system - i.e. when you returned to Zombie Farm 2 on time you got a freshness bonus, but no matter if you returned a week or month later you never lost all your crops outright.  

This type of system gives the player a warm feeling, one that the game is on your side.

Update - a great comment on the article by Nick Bhardwaj brought up Clash Of Clans having a subtle wither mechanic with troops, which need time to be produced but can be lost via PvP. Personally I’d describe this as a core PvP loop rather than wither - there is no way to securely “bank” your troops for use later (shield is something separate), and there is also no attacking done by the game itself, just other players.  Fear of loss and the need to revenge are very strong drivers in all online battle games. His take was that Supercell encourages you to return and immediately “spend” your troops, which is more positive than the environment taking them away ie- its a more upbeat multiplayer twist on an established mechanic. Interesting discussion.

Does wither still have a place? Love your feedback: email or tweet

Quick one -

I’ll be spending the full 5 days at GDC next week.

If you’re coming and would like to catch up do ping me at simon@frenzoo.com

See you pirates there…

Simon

I took the train a few times last weekend, and on every trip I saw people playing both Candy Crush Saga and Puzzles & Dragons.  

Both are very different in style and mechanics, but at their core they’re both puzzle games. 

If we look beyond mobile, millions still play Sudoku, despite the “fad” being close to 10 years old.  And countless millions more enjoy filling out the daily crossword puzzle (yes, newspapers still exist).

Why?

Studies have shown the release of dopamine associated with solving a puzzle - the aha moment - clearly there’s pleasure in puzzles.

Humans only?

A fascinating new study shows how ingrained into our evolutionary makeup this behaviour is.

Research by the Zoological Society of London using a game designed with dice, pipes and holes found that chimpanzees are motivated to complete puzzles even in the absence of external rewards.  

“We noticed that the chimps were keen to complete the puzzle regardless of whether or not they received a food reward. This strongly suggests they get similar feelings of satisfaction to humans who often complete brain games for a feel-good rewar.”

- Fay Clark, ZSL researcher

The fun of solving puzzles appears to be wired deep.

Double the pleasure?

So does the pleasure come just on completion of the task? And does it only flow in one direction?

Other research has shown the that being in a playful state can help solve puzzles more easily, and interestingly, anticipating solving a puzzle puts the brain into a more open and pleasurable state.

So in addition to the satisfaction of finding a solution to a difficult level in CCS, there is also the sweet anticipation as you start loading up the game and prepare to play.

What does it mean for game designers?

So does that mean we should drop our space battle, shooters or farm games and all switch to Match-3 puzzlers?  

No, not really.  

But some takeaways I’m thinking about:

• Games that align with human “brain wiring” are more likely to do well 
• There’s more opportunity to meld puzzle games into other game genres to make them more addictive (this is an interesting one I’ll expand on in a later post)
• Puzzles can often lose the fun factor easily by being too easy or difficult - the researchers from ZSL could and did increase complexity by making pipes opaque and balance difficulty for the chimps.  The trick is to be positioned between apathy (too easy*) and over frustration (see Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s research on “flow”).  Note - this state of energized focus is different from mindless repetition which can be associated with hypnotic states. 
• To get people to do better in your puzzle game and enjoy it more, go for playful loading screens and audio to get them in the mood 
• Animals are smarter than we think :)

What’s your take on puzzle games? I’d love to hear: email or tweet

Note - this was a guest post for TechInAsia, a great site for APAC startups.

If you’re doing a startup, there’s allure to a big brand partnership.  

You might think: close a deal in a couple months and then prestige, validation, press, growth, new opportunities etc…

“If I get this deal we’ll be up in the bright lights!!”

Except it doesn’t usually work that way.

The reality is more like:

• getting a foot in the door is hard
• getting to a signed contract is grindingly tough
• getting a successful partnership that delivers real mutual value is the real challenge
• doing this all without getting sidetracked and “accidentally” burning your precious runway… hmmm

Our success and failure

My startup has worked with a few large brands in the past year.  One failed draining precious cycles.  A couple though turned much better, including a successful collaboration with media giant Condé Nast on new game Teen Vogue Me Girl, launched after months of hard work.

Here are some 8 startup lessons learned:

Lesson #1 - Press is overrated.

If your main goal is “buzz” that will lead to more downloads / users / revenue for your startup, brace for disappointment.

Even a mention in major media such as Tech Crunch translates to only a temporary spike (we’ve seen this).  A friend got a top tier celeb to promote his new startup, resulting in far less returning users than he hoped. 

We all remember glitzy press launches for projects that end up failing a year later.  And those that rose to success without PR.  Our new game got only a handful of editorial pieces but has still grown well despite it.

Whilst press can help for other reasons (eg- fundraising), a partnership is a pretty risky and resource grabbing way to try and achieve those goals.

Press is icing on the cake, rather than the cake itself.  

Think about press as a great bonus only - if you don’t get it, no worries, a solid project will still thrive without it.  

Lesson #2 - Is your opportunity cost acceptable?

Doing any project with a Fortune 500 company is going to take more time than you expected.  Much more time.

Our project took nearly 6 months to deliver, and that’s fast.  

Big brands need multiple approvals with different stakeholders, reviews with marketing and legal, endless back and forwards on product etc

If you’re a small startup and think you can create a brand new app for a brand whilst maintaining momentum on your “main” business, think again.  

You’ll need to either hire up, rework what you already have, or try to turn your tech into a platform…or accept that THIS is your startup, and that your prior project will have to wait, perhaps forever.

Our project that failed in the end turned out as a good thing for us -whilst famous and adored brand to be associated with, it was turning into a large departure from our existing path (high opportunity cost) without enough strategic benefit.

Lesson #3 - Work with the right advocates 

In a big company, it can be easy to find groups who may be interested and engage you in promising discussions that end up stalling.

Before committing lots of time with a group, some good questions to ask:

• What is the group’s mandate and business goals?
• Do they have budget?
  
• Do they have buy in from the relevant business units?
• Have they executed a similar project?
• Who signs off on a potential project?
• Do they have resources to commit to the project?
• Etc

In our case, we found an innovation products group who had a track record of projects and getting buy in from the different Conde Nast brands, and brands willing to embrace a new project - which got it all started.

Lesson #4 - Define your scope up front

Whilst in lean startup land we work iteratively and adapt, doing this with a brand that changes scope every week is a recipe for chaos at the least.

Small innocent requests - “oh can we add a module to let the customer redeem coupons through the website as well as the app?” can snowball.

Though there are pros and cons, I think it’s better to agree a list of deliverables and put it in writing early.

But how do you get it “right” from the start?  

A good way is to either adapt from something that is proven to work (we based the new game on a mechanic from our first game) or do the upfront customer development and planning work to make sure it has as high chance as possible at success.

It’s a tricky one.

Lesson #5 - Harness the supertanker.

Big companies have processes, legacy and move slowly.

Startups are lightweight speedboats, deciding and moving quickly.

So what gives?

The natural instinct may be to try and bend the big company to your way and pace of working. This will lead most likely to frustration. Yours.

Instead, adapt to their way of working and get the big supertanker pointed in the right direction and let it power through.

For example all our normal task planning is through Google Docs.  On the other hand, our partner did planning through Excel spreadsheets and a project management system.  After a while, we just ran with it, and made sure that ALL the things to make the project succesful were included.

Once they were “locked in” the system, they just got carried through their usual process and happenes. If you focus less on the “how” and more on the “what” you can make the big company ultimately work for you.

Lesson #6 - Get the term sheet in place early

Legal contracts are one of the least enjoyable things a startup CEO has to deal with (after emptying trash and 4am server down emergencies).  

Crawling through pages of minutia to spot potentially lethal gotchas doesn’t help you make your app even better.  

And you may, like me, suck at it! 

I’ve found a couple of ways to lessen the pain:

• First, get to a simple term sheet with the key points agreed up front, that can be signed off and act as the letter of intent. This should be no more than a few pages written in plain English. Once you have this in place, you can commit and focus on the project, and in parallel take your time with the legals.
• Get experienced mentors to help review the deal and legals.  In my case with Frenzoo, I’m lucky to have a few angel investors who have plenty of experience in contracts, and act as sounding boards and sanity checks.  It also helps to have a lawyer or two on your investor or advisor team (pro-tip, thats a HUGE advantage for an early stage startup)

Lesson #7 - Secure a budget.

Startups think burnrate, but big companies think budgets and headcount.

Are they going to contribute marketing to the project?  Then what budget will be spent, by whom and where?

Are they going to be doing part of the work on the project? Then who is allocated and for what percent of their time?

Ensure your project has resources allocated and if not, ask nicely for it.  If they are not sure, then request a good number and discuss from there.

Having these in place rather than a “best effort” will increase the chance of making it a success. 

Lesson #8 - Does your head and heart align?   

Back when we were still doing virtual worlds, we did a collaboration with Weta.  As a big fan of Lord of the Rings & King Kong etc I loved this deal!  

We would collaborate on a contest to promote their Dr Grordbort’s steampunk sci fi brand.  The problem? Our audience, mainly women, weren’t into that genre. Despite it being well executed, it didn’t either make our service more sticky nor drum up more buzz for their brand.  

The lesson? At the end of the day, only go ahead with a partnership if it really makes sense at both emotional and business level.  

If head and heart line up, chances are it’s worth to pursue.  Good luck!

What’s been your experience? I’d love to hear: Email or Tweet

Progress with friends

Count me as a fan of Candy Crush Saga on iOS.

The folks at King.com do a great job.  Much fun is the over the top (and slightly creepy) presentation of a much-loved tile matching mechanic.  But I also love the transition between levels on the Candyland map and being able to see my progress vs Facebook friends:  

Woohoo level 10… see ya Mike…

Um… Charles, Angus, Sana and Mary, you guys have too much time on your hands *_*

Air’s thin up there

Seeing your Facebook friends* in a game can be a strong motivation to continue on the grind of a game.  

* For many hardcore players who use dedicated Facebook game accounts with non irl friends, I think the argument still holds.  You often have as strong a bond with them through other games spanning many years of your life

But it’s increasingly the case that:

• Your FB friends won’t won’t be all playing the the game you are
• Of those who are, only a couple might be at high levels

This presents a question to game designers who spend many cycles on high level systems and players, those who bring in the big revenue.

On one hand you could argue that the real friend social layer is only needed to get you addicted to the game and helping the viral coefficient a bit, and once you’re up there at high levels the meta game and game-specific social components (friends, guilds, challenges, events etc) take over.

But to me it seems strange to have two separate friend layers within a game - Facebook and in-game, often used in different parts of the UX and game systems.  

A marathon model?

Imagine in a game like Candy Crush Saga if that instead of showing a ever thinning list of FB friends as you progress up through the levels, you blend in-game friends (and foes and strangers) into the progress map.

It could be done programmatically.

A sprinkling of high level players, with serious bling showing the spoils of progress, as well as those with a similar cohort, trajectory or level to yours, to encourage you to keep on moving (analogous to how Clash of Clans throws high level players occasionally into the random PvP matching as well as those ranked similarly in level to you)

The way I see it, this model could be like a marathon:

• You may have a handful of friends or people you know also running and motivating you to join, but they probably aren’t all running with you through the whole race
• You have the high level runners at the same event - the ones you admire on the big screens and in your dreams aspire to become one day
• But most of the time you are surrounded by folks running around you - some may be and remain total strangers, others you may develop an unspoken but real emotional camaraderie as you compete, but also drag each other to continue through the gruelling miles 

All of these three groups are different, but aren’t they all runners in the same game?

Should FB and in-game be treated the same? I’d love your feedback. Email or Tweet.

Recently we bid farewell to a new feature…

It was a cute feature, one we liked.  But at our morning metrics meet we made the grim call.  When the daily Android build went out hours later, it was gone.

Sunsetting a feature - how to decide?

“Stella’s Assistant” was designed as a basic plant & harvest currency mechanic.  Players would start a job from 5 minutes to a day, and get paid once done.

It was a small feature, an MVP hacked together on an assumption it would increase retention, helping remind players to return to collect their coins from Stella.  

Other retention features we had launched performed well.  Yet after launching it to our usual A/B test we found retention actually decreased in the group that had Stella’s Assistant, vs the control:

And to top it off, monetization also dipped:

We first verified the test was statistically significant.  Next we thought it might have something to do with economy balance and tried with different payout values. Yet in no A/B test was the result positive.

Should I stay or should I go?  Some tips to decide

When a feature under-performs like this, there’s a binary decision to make: iterate it or drop it.   

How do you decide?  Some questions to consider…

Is the feature meeting its stated goal?

It’s good to have a goal for each feature, preferably a specific number. eg- lift 7 day retention by 5%.  Then when you release it you can see clearly whether it was successful.

In our case, the answer was no.  The numbers don’t lie and for a feature designed to improve retention, to have it dip down, albeit slightly was pretty damning.

What is the underlying reason for its under-perfomance?

Often, numbers tell the what, but not the why.  

In talking with players we found Stella’s Assistant just didn’t add much to the game.  Whilst extra coins were nice, it felt like a weird farming sim feature tacked on to a fashion game.  It also made the UI busier, and introduced an extra menu layer and more taps, pulling the overall experience down.

What is the opportunity cost of iterating?

As a startup, every developer hour counts, and the question is whether trying to improve the feature would have a bigger impact on metrics vs using that time to develop something else.  

Apart from metrics impact, you have to weigh up the ongoing additional cost of testing and support.

In this case we weren’t convinced iterating it would move the needle much, and we had several other features that would have a much better “bang for buck”.

Does it have strategic value beyond metrics?

Some features may not improve the numbers, but may still have strategic value.  

For example, a device registration system to stop cheating, an icon promoting a partner, or a parental safety feature that stops inadvertent payments in a kids game and builds long term trust.

In our case though, there just just wasn’t one.

Final tip - stay positive!

Abandoning something you have worked hard on, whether for a few hours or a few weeks is never fun.  Us humans deal pretty badly when it comes to loss, including that at our own hands.

The key though is to stay positive, and realize you may have lost a feature but you gained a real learning - one that can only improve you and your startup going forward.  

So, Stella’s Assistant rides the slow boat to Valinor and for us, the adventure continues :)

How do you decide when to kill a feature? I’d love your feedback. Email or tweet.

For a startup game company, does brand matter?

A while back I sought wisdom from a group of experienced tech entrepreneurs, all of whom had built successful companies:

That makes sense.  

Why build a brand?

In an age of clones and cluttered app stores, having a strong brand for your portfolio is more important than ever.

Increased brand equity correlates to increased customer lifetime values.

A strong brand will convert better in cross promotion and organic adoption of apps from the same company, offsetting rising CPAs to individual titles.  A friend at a large mobile studio with many games, estimated the brand uplift factor to be over 20%.  

And basic brand building doesn’t cost that much, making it startup friendly.

Yet why is branding is usually the last thing on our minds?

6 months ago I would have counted myself in the “product is the ONLY thing that matters” camp, yet now I’ve switched camps…

These may be great games, but would players know these are from the same company?

On the other hand, how could a player who enjoyed Tap Paradise Cove and loves cute animals NOT want to play Tap Pet Shop?

How to do it?

Ok, so it’s important, but for us engineers or designers, where to start? 

Having gone through the process with Me Girl, I found working through these 5 questions was very helpful:

1. Who is the target player & market?
2. What are your core brand attributes?
3. What does your brand stand for? (emotional connection)
4. What will identify your brand to players?
5. What games and features strengthen the brand?

Let’s go through them one by one:

1.  Who is the target player & market?

Yes, the easiest one!  You’re making a game, you should have a primary audience in mind.  eg-

• We’re making strategy games for high income males over the age of 25
• We’re making lifestyle games for adult women 
• We’re making racing and sports games for boys up to the age of 14

What if you believe you’re making the next Angry Birds, a game that will be popular with literally everyone?  

Creating a game like this is difficult.  While you might strike it lucky, your chances for success and monetization go up if you create games designed and branded for a target group of players.  Even mega hits like Temple Run and Words with Friends have their primary markets (teens and adult women).

Defining player personas, who you’re building for, lets you really dig in and understand:

• Who are they?
• When do they play?
• What do they play on?
• What other media do they consume?
• What issues are important to them?
• What challenges do they have in their lives?
• etc

This will provide your base for the next step…

2.  What are your core brand attributes?

If you had to pick (and you do!) what are the 2 or 3 things that are unique to your brand.  Put another way, what makes you different from everyone else out there?

Let’s look at some examples from mainstream:

• Toms - style with a social conscience
• Nike - personal achievement
• Walmart -  large selection and low prices

In our case with Me Girl, after brainstorming and a surprisingly difficult process we settled on 3 brand attributes:

• Personal - games that relate to my life
• Playful - games that can laugh at themselves
• Inspirational - positive games that inspire me

Even though our first title was a fashion game we decided not to go for the high-end aspirational position ala Louis Vuitton or Jaguar, which we felt could exclude some players.  In fact a brand that appealed to Ashley, Christina and myself (our little branding crew) and seemed most in the Me Girl spirit was Ellen:

It helps to ask “if your game was a TV show, or car or fashion brand… what would it be?”

Once you have gone through this and settled on your brand attributes, it’s like you’ve found your North Star. It will help guide you in decisions from here on out.

3.  What does your brand stand for? (emotional connection)

The strongest brands form emotional connections with consumers that often override logic and reason.  

Low cost rubber and fabric stitched in a factory in Indonesia can inspire people to “Just Do It”.  People will queue for days for the latest iDevice.   Overpriced headphones from Beats convey urban cool and freedom from authority:

“Fabulously Me” sums our mission: to make women feel fabulous while playing our games.  Regardless of age, looks, body shape, status in life, challenges…everything.  

This is what our brand stand for.

If a brand stands for something - Freedom.  Challenging yourself etc., chances are players will care that much more in return.

4.  What will identify your brand to players?

Once you’ve locked down your targets, brand attributes and emotional connection, it’s time to bring that to life visually.

Creating a match of logo, typography, color palette, audio, UI elements and animations in a cohesive experience that conveys your values is the goal.  Honestly, it’s easier said than done (we have a ways to go)  But we just consciously going through the process will often result in something good.

The venerable Sims line and their “Play with Life” proposition does it extremely well, with consistent visual elements that a random 20-something on a street could identify in a second.  And their music and audio right including their quirky Simlish reinforces a unique personality.

As we’ve seen with the Sims, branding elements that anticipate and can weave into future games, expansions and sequels is also important.  Even more so in the age of mobile with more releases more often.  

For us a future “Dance Me Girl” or “Me Girl Dancer” would fit nicely into the same family from a cross promotion perspective.

5.  What games and features strengthen the brand?

Consistency is key - whether in art, storyline, mechanics, humour etc.

If Google decided to sell your personal info to shady direct marketers, how would you feel?

Likewise if you’re someone who enjoys Bubblez on Play First and returned to find them pushing a hardcore dungeon raiding MMO, you’d probably be confused.

These are extreme examples of course, but there are plenty of choices that we all face every day:

• should I add a feature to simplify UI but reduce freedom in my simulation game?
• should the game be balanced to encourage free players or heavily favor paid users?
• what types of ads should I be showing in my freemium game?
• should I add a feature that lets you lose a lot of real money investment in PvP?
• what should my next game be?
• etc..

Knowing your brand values often helps in these questions - ringing an warning bell when you’re heading down a wrong path.

For example we could add competitive systems where you systematically tear down the reputation of others. Whilst “fun” from a game design perspective and helping short term numbers, it wouldn’t align with our “positive and inspirational” feel. 

And on the flip side, carving out cycles to do brand building features that might not directly boost metrics but help players fall in love with your game brand can be worthwhile.

An ongoing endeavour 

As we’re understanding, it’s not a one time activity - building a brand is an ongoing sustained effort that spans from game design, to engineering to marketing and even customer support.

Of course a great brand can’t rescue a bad game and it’s always a tough call to put precious cycles into something you haven’t before.

But assuming you are making good games, investing in brand building can add up to huge wins in the long term.

Any branding tips to share? I’d love to hear your feedback.  Email or Tweet

Big thanks to our investor Doug Glen whose Mattel experience made us “see the light”!

Think it’s hard finding engineers?

Try finding a creative director for a startup that makes mobile games for women.  

Your wishlist might look something like this… 

• Someone who has deep games experience, but there are so few gaming companies that have done high quality mobile games for that audience.
• Someone who has a fashion industry background and a keen sense of trends and style - yet the worlds of fashion and gaming are proverbial ships in the night.
• Someone with a global perspective - knows the US audience yet is tuned in with innovation out of Asia (where our development team is based)
• Someone who can understand the vision for our brand (our ambition for that honestly scares me sometimes), and drive forward in unchartered waters 
• Someone who loves startup life - rewards and risks

Needle in the haystack enough?

After a couple months searching, we interviewed several talented artists, but few with the other elements.  Great people for building out the team but not the lead creative role.

Always “so close, yet so far”.

Yet in the end we managed to find someone who brought all the pieces together.  

Fashion design, deep love of games (everything from Star Wars Galaxies to Mall World). A third culture kid (fellow Eurasian!) who draws inspiration from the US, Europe and Asia.

The funny thing was, she turned out to be one of our original fans.  On our web 3d world Frenzoo.com, she created a popular vfashion boutique under the Sheeana avatar name. She knew our project from the start, and kept up we pivoted from web to mobile. 

We ultimately found the candidate with the best experience and passion for our project was one of our players.

Learning: occasionally the best talent is right in front of you, if you only look

Have you had success hiring one of your players? Email or tweet

Image for a minute, one of the U.S.’s Top Grossing iOS apps.

A freemium game that has stayed top of the charts for the last three months.

Like me, you might imagine a title with gorgeous HD graphics, slick UI and a lush soundtrack?

You’d be mistaken.

In fact, the first time you play Rage of Bahamut by Japanese developer Cygames (published by DeNA/ngmoco), you might think you’ve downloaded another app by accident.

The visuals?  Mangalicious, but low def only.

The UI? A web port with text, links, buttons and banners on often long scrolling pages.

Audio?  This game doesn’t have any.  Really.

But that doesn’t hold it back.

Rage of Bahamut (RoB) is a triumph of game mechanics over glamour.

It’s million dollar proof that depth counts (that should make us game designers happy :)

Up at the top of the ranks since launch

Here’s my attempt on breaking down some of the key elements that make it such a monetization monster.

Mobile-Friendly Core Game Loop

First the bread and butter.  

RoB is a collectible card game (CCG) with a very solid core game loop:

1. Quest and battle (pve and pvp) using sets of cards, which have various attributes.
2. This gives you resources: soft currency (rupies), items, treasures, cards and XP.
3. In turn these give you the ability to increase your level, acquire and upgrade cards.
4. Which lets you quest and battle vs more difficult opponents and get better rewards.  
5. Repeat. 

It’s a simple to grasp concept that let’s players get right onto an addictive levelling grind in the pursuit of making progress.  

Being a numbers heavy game (no actual combat or real time skill involved), there is plenty of depth for stats obsessed gamers to dive into.

By it’s nature it fits well for mobile gameplay. 

The game:

• is easy to grasp and UI works well on a small phone screen
• has a vertical orientation makes it easy to play with one hand
• can be played in small snippets - actions don’t take long (eg battle in <30 secs)
• can be resumed with minimal real time elements (eg- change trains, go in a lift)  

It’s a foundation that sets it up solidly for all the monetization* elements we’ll go into next.

* RoB also has a bunch of well executed retention and viral features (can I interest you in my referral code?) but that’s out of scope for this post.

IAP removed time restrictions

Ok, like all modern social games, RoB restricts how long you can play in a session, a limit that can be removed via IAP:

This is implemented through two main mechanisms - Stamina (used for progressing in pve quests) and Attack Power (used for pve boss battles and in pvp).  

Both are consumed through actions, and regenerate at a rate of 1 per minute.

Both can also be refilled through hard currency (rage medal) acquired consumables: “cure water” and “holy power” respectively. 

This basic mechanism motivates players to spend to reduce waiting times, and helps pace the game for free users.

Gacha and collection mechanics

Next, the gacha.  

There are several types and many hundreds of cards in RoB, each with different attributes and maturation and evolution states.  

All active players have a drive to gain better cards be it through gameplay, trading or card pack purchas  - a key monetization driver. 

Players can purchase card packs in the prominent position on the right of the UI header bar:

A card pack (there are several kinds) contains a set number of random cards, and there is always the small chance to get rarer (more powerful) items.  

For example, there is a small chance that an SS Rare card like the Crystal Queen above may drop in a beginner legend card pack.  There are at least 8 levels of rarity in the game (including normal).

And even if poor cards are received, they can at least be sacrificed to help upgrade other cards, reducing the psychological sting of drawing a bad set (more on that later).

All up it’s a solid casino mechanic that plays on the notion that you might well “strike it rich” in your next Card Pack.  And it doesn’t hurt that Card Packs cost quite a lot of real money.

On a related note there are also collection drivers within the game, with bonuses awarded in case of a set completion.  

One example -

In questing and pvp (you can target specific items from opponents) there is the chance to obtain an item from one of the treasure sets, which when complete give you a completion reward. This also carries over to events, where set completion unlocks bonus items.

Collecting of cards is also popular, as a result of the next topic…

Deep upgrading system

RoB includes a couple of systems, commonly used in conjunction that encourage you to source and consume cards to help make other cards incrementally stronger.  

This has the net effect of encouraging more gameplay and monetization sinked through the card upgrade system, that plays into the desire to make good cards “that much better”.

The first- enhancing is a way to upgrade a cards level and battle stats (attack and defence) by sacrificing other cards, called feeders.

The second- evolving is a way to combine two cards of the same type to a more powerful version of the card - there are normally 4 evolution levels, and at the final level the cards rarity also goes up one level.  The 4 levels are represented visually by different graphic versions of the same character, as in this Archangel example:

Like an an RPGs recipe and crafting system, these systems can be used in a variety of interesting combinations, yielding different results.  

The systems also operate on a “law of diminishing returns”.  

Cards have maximum rating, and increases towards a maximum require a greatly increasing amount of resources.

A maximum card evolution with only a few enhancements might deliver close to 98% of maximum, but to squeeze the last couple of percent up to 100% could take an enhancement investment of 15 (ie all cards enhanced in the evolution process).  

Perfect for perfectionists :)

An analogy might be world class athletes, competing and training more and using increasingly advanced technology to shave off ever decreasing milliseconds off world records. 

This makes it an awesome sink especially for its target audience, and combined with PvP participants competitive natures a strong monetization driver.

Well executed tutorial

Despite cheesy lines and endless tapping, the tutorial is strangely endearing, and more importantly introduces the player early to the key monetization systems - gacha, card packs, card upgrade and PvP, via a simulation with the guide npc.

Also subtle, the realm choice at the start of the tutorial uses your personal preference to drive the first sense of alliance and community.  I’d say it represents the first emotional investment in the game, and players are generally more receptive to pay if they are hooked in emotionally.

PvP - revenge, proactive revenge and competitive spirit

Like other top grossing games (think Kingdoms of Camelot or Backyard Monsters), PvP goes deep and is a key part of RoB’s success.

Players can battle each other (your attack strength vs their defence strength modulated by various skills/effects) and by winning, gain among other things, currency (a percent of the losers liquid amount up to a certain value) and treasure.

Whilst there is some protection mechanisms so that lower level players don’t get beaten down by much higher level players, beyond that you have the chance to attack and be attacked, with impact.

This encourages players to spend to money to increase their attack and defence scores.

PvP can also get personal - there is a strong human reaction (dust off the evolutionary psychology theory) to a loss inflicted by another, even more than a positive emotional impact gaining something.  Rivalry and in the evolutionary context, putting a wayward tribe member back in place I believe motivates even more monetary investment.

Feeding from that fear of loss, the game also lets you buy insurance (proactive revenge) for your treasure items (currency can be indirectly protected in other ways).  The game lets you buy a magic circle to place on your treasure items.  A magic circle fires once when that item is targeted by another player, automatically inflicting a loss on them.

Beyond the direct PvP battle system there is also a meta game available for players over level 10 (where some of the deeper monetization systems kick in), with a leaderboard of battle rankings, compiled using another attribute gained in proactive and defensive PvP.  This is used to determine the best players during that time period, and based on their placement they are granted another currency, gems, that can be then redeemed for items and even more powerful cards.

Battle leaderboards are reset regularly, encouraging ongoing level of competition and investment in the game.

Guilds and guild PvP

Continuing on the PvP theme, one area RoB has done particularly well is their implementations of guilds, or in their terminology, “Orders”.

Only available to more established players (level requirement), orders let players join and then ultimately form their own groups, complete with leadership, roles and hierarchy.  

Orders enable encourage investment in a group via a donations mechanism, and the leadership can also construct speciality walls and buildings that confer attribute bonuses to all members.  

For example, a church constructed by an order can boost all God realm cards attack and defence by 5%, for a cost of 3 million Rupies.

Like players and their cards, orders themselves can be leveled up through group donations which has the impact of increasing the maximum number of members up beyond 30, which is useful in guild PvP.

Guild PvP is implemented through a “Holy War” system, whereby an order declares war during a set time period, and is matched automatically with another order (I didn’t figure out that algorithm), triggering a time limited event where order members battle each other, with resulting rankings (tabulated by a guild PvP specific attribute, Holy War Points) that ultimately translate into more cards.

The guild structure and guild PvP system in RoB have several benefits to monetization:

• A loop of helping a guild which helps the player which helps the guild etc
• Guild events and structures give a reason to spend to help the team performance
• Guilds communication tools eg forums facilitate economic activities like trading
• Guild leadership roles encourage more investment by those members
• Encourages patronage relationships where senior members desire to help others
• And of course a strong social bond (shared struggle, shared rewards) that encourages higher ongoing retention

Note - In addition to the order guild system, there is also a personal group system (everyone gets a guild!) called Fellows.  I won’t go into that in this post as I understand it as more of a viral/sticky tool rather than directly monetization related, but indirectly helps monetization through mechanics where fellows leader cards can assist in certain attacks. ie- we upgrade and can help each other in a reciprocal manner.

Ongoing events

Events are key - keeping the game evergreen and encourage returning play and introducing new goals to drive towards.

In a recent event, players were encouraged to stop evil entities from using magic moon tears

In addition to guild PvP events (Holy Wars) there are also PvE events that encourage team work, and encourage purchase towards event specific cards which help in the specific event they appear in.  

The loop is obvious and direct but appears to works, especially when caught up in the thrill of the shared event (would be interesting to see if an indirect system would have fared better)

Events also tie in with normal grind mechanics (eg quest system) but with typically additional random effects that let players participate for longer.  This also ties in with a gacha mechanic whereby random rewards are assigned at random times.

Whilst a lot of work to implement and manage (there was a community uproar over technical issues in a recent event) the monetization impact particularly to dedicated paying users looks strong.

Item trading and economy

Last but not least RoB features a robust trading system and with it a simple but effective economy with de-facto item exchange rates (eg- to consumable items).  Players can freely trade currency, cards and items with their friends.

As player activity “generates value” through upgrades and random drops through extended gameplay, that value can be transferred between players. Psychologically this can mean investment in upgrades, grinding and collection is “worth it”.

This also adds another dimension to the gameplay, allowing players to participate in a (often as satisfying) meta game of trading, profiting from sales as well as purchasing desired items directly.  

Whilst in theory trading might be seen to reduce high end paying user monetization as it gives an option to purchase from another player (who in theory may have been farming for free) rather than directly from the game, converting free time into paid value, in reality it plays well with the random drop and upgrade nature of the game, encouraging more collection and investment in the game in general.

Summary

I believe Rage of Bahamut succeeds because of its excellent game design and deep systems that directly and indirectly drive monetization.  

Put simply there are many different reasons and ways to spend your money. 

It’s a great match to a high paying demographic and is implemented in a way that is mobile friendly and of course, fun :)  

ps - wrote this post for personal interest to understand about monetization in CCGs, an old genre that’s new to me (grew up with D&D, not Pokemon!) 

Thanks to Adriaan and other players for helping me understand the game better and also big ups to the RoB Wiki.

I’d love to hear your feedback. What did you think of the game?  Email or tweet

Video from my talk at Casual Connect last month is now up:

1 Million Downloads in a Month – How Indies Can Make It Happen 

Download slides 

Always trying to learn more - what other tips would you have included?

Ping me on email or twitter.

ps - new blog posts coming this weekend :)

I recently got this friendly text from T-Mobile:

Only slightly peeved, I called to ask what upgrade or top up I could get to restore my speed.  I was told, being on the highest volume plan already, there was no option. I had to just bear 1990’s style internet access while waiting for the next billing month to start.

I was willing to pay, but there was nothing to spend on.

Quite peeved, this got me thinking back to a game design issue - how to fully meet demand from paying players.  After all it’s normally easier to increase ARPPU than paid user conversion rate.

Take our title Style Me Girl. The core puzzle mechanic with energy based currency earning requires serious patience or skill to finish the game for free.

So most players who reach into the end-game are paying. And the majority of who do finish the game enjoy it and want to keep playing:

What’s the solution we offer today?  

Well you can go back and try and get 3 stars for all levels like in Angry…Amazing Alex.  

Or just sit tight and wait until the new levels hit, whenever that is. Tomorrow or maybe in two weeks. Dear player, cool with that? 

Oh hang on…. we’re guilty of… that makes us just like…. T-Mobile! *sob sob*

Drama aside, what are the sort of things that could help?

The good news is that there are LOTS of tactics in this sort of case.  These include:

• More content, on a faster cycle (no brainer)
• Parallel spending on multiple characters / pets etc  
• Parallel spending on multiple attributes, with accompanying mechanics
• Random drops to encourage speculative consumption
• Premium content, time limited or otherwise special items
• Item upgrading, crafting and customizations
• Adding more and varied time gates to gameplay
• Branched story overlays to increase fun of replayability
• Programatic goal generation (this is tough to get right, just ask D3)
• Community and PvP play to give new play goals
• etc

Some really interesting stuff here, I plan to dive into a handful of them in future posts as we design and roll them out.

Bottom line:

Whether you’re T-Mobile or Tiny-Startup, don’t leave money on the table.

How do you give paying players more to buy and enjoy?  Email me or tweet

For startups & game companies, it IS a war.  

One fought with stock and salaries, massages and medical plans.

At an event in San Francisco last week, chat swung from banter to business when one of the group started an eager pitch to another, a talented game dev.  The rest of us slunk away like friends leaving a flirting pair in privacy.

Back in Hong Kong it’s less crazy, but demand for quality talent still exceeds supply.

So how to compete?

Earlier we tried hiring an engineer position the time efficient (ahem…lazy) way - throwing up a vanilla job ad and waiting for CVs to roll in.  We only received 8, none up to our standards.

Now with several positions to fill, fast, we resolved to do much more this time around.

Here are 10 tactics we used:

1. A fun referral program

We decided to slipstream off the recent Retina Macbook Pro launch by offering a new Retina iPad as thanks. It seemed to work, with several folks getting in touch and introducing their friends.  We even had a random person coming to the office to drop a CV which was a first for us.

2. A personal email blast

To help spread the word, we pulled together a mass email to friends and connections we’d met.  We started with a large list, filtering out those outside of Hong Kong (exporting from LinkedIn) and culling other game companies (no bad karma). 

Whilst I couldn’t track open or click rates as I decided to use casual plaintext, the number of people who replied was over 15.  So for a cost of around $5 it was a good investment.

3. Promote the jobs in-game

Having gained a nice global audience including Hong Kong, we decided to reach out in-game.  We have a dynamic welcome message that can be displayed on loading, and we coded it to display the referral program and contact email for those playing from Hong Kong. Sadly it was hard to tell the impact. In hindsight I should have put the call to action as a different address eg- gamejobs@frenzoo.com to track the impact (note to self for next time).

4. Host and speak at events

One thing we’re doing more of in the last few months is having the team host and speak at more industry events (like one held together with Unity3d at Cyberport).  It’s good for the crew to hear from others and share our own learnings, and spread the word.

5. Targeted Facebook ads

Whilst the cost of posting a job on LinkedIn and Monster (not to mention a recruiter) would have been high, we found it more cost effective to do a targeted Facebook run.  Of course the beauty of Facebook ads is the ability to hyper target based on location, demographics and interests.  It’s something we’ve used a lot for different purposes in the past.  Whilst the CTR is low as expected, having it in front of lots of relevant eyeballs helps in background brand building. 

6. Give the company a face 

A big draw for working at a startup is collaborating with a fun, smart team, unbound (hopefully!) from bureaucracy.  A recent post intro’d the awesome new folks joining the Frenzoo family and gave a sense of the vibe.  This got good buzz out in the community…

7. Participate in Hackathons and Startup Contests

For programmers hands on events like hackjams and startups weekends are just a whole lot of fun and great chance to meet kindred spirits.  Two of our team recently entered and won a Facebook hack day in Hong Kong.  Working with an award winning team is one extra draw for potential recruits, and something we now highlight. How much does it help?  Who knows but sure can’t hurt…

8. Get press

How to get press coverage? That’s another post which luckily my friends at Buffer have written.  You don’t need a million users to get that - it helps, but frankly not as much as an interesting story angle.  Startups almost always have compelling tales and takes, so usually there is a pitch that can get coverage.  

In our case we recently got coverage by several great blogs.  Doing PR costs less and only takes a few hours of creative thinking (more on that for another day) 

9. Look at adjacent segments

If the need is niche and competition fierce, it may be better to look out to adjacent fields and skillsets.  One of our shortlist game designer candidates ends up being someone from the fashion industry and she just loves playing all sort of social and mobile games.  A reminder it always pays to…

10. …think outside the box!

Lately I’ve seen some great examples of startups thinking different in recruiting talent, from offering paid paid vacations (expensive) through to recruiting in Diablo 3 (cheap).

You may not come up with something that makes the front page of Hacker News and a gazillion page views, but chances are just by making an attempt you’ll end up doing more than the other companies, which is half the battle.

And our result?

Going beyond the usual job ad generated more than 200% more candidates, at approximately 50% extra cost.  Whilst it’s hard to isolate the impact of some of the tactics (mostly my bad!), all up it was worthwhile.

We’re able now to fill two of the three open positions.  Still have to work hard to fill a final programmer position, but we’re in much better shape.

Lesson learned - when hiring, you usually get what you put in.  Getting more creative and trying more things helped turn around our first failed attempt. 

What tips do you have for hiring?  Email me or tweet

ps - for friends reading this in Hong Kong, we’re hiring and giving iPad’s for successful referrals… but you knew that already ;)

When I first heard of Greplin via a flurry of news from elite tech blogs, I fell in love.

Finally, a way to search all my stuff - Gmail, Google Docs, even Facebook in one single search - brilliant!  And they were backed by Sequoia, generally a good sign.

The first weeks I used the service a lot but over time, less and less.

Why?

I found I didn’t need to use it that often, and when I did, I didn’t.

The handful of times I remembered to use Greplin though it worked pretty well.

In most cases though local and a search in one of the web services did the job. And in the rarer cases that didn’t work by habit I would go through them one by one until I found what I was looking for.

So in the end, something I thought would be a hit turned out the opposite.

What startup lessons am I taking away from Greplin’s demise?

1. Be a painkiller, not a vitamin (eg dropbox)
2. Make something that people are going to use often (eg evernote)
3. Hype is different from traction (eg greplin vs whatsapp)
4. Give people a trigger to return to the service (eg icons, notifications)
5. Make something viral or at least monetizing well enough to buy traffic (eg mint)

Goodbye Greplin, and wishing Cue the best…

What lessons would you draw from this?  Email me or tweet

Your app icon is like a shop front, on a very busy retail street.  

Warm and welcoming*, interesting and attractive and you’ll encourage people to wander inside and check it out  Drab or shabby (drabby!) and few will bother to look.

* I mean seriously, who could resist that cute a baby dragon?

It’s clearly something people think is worth investing in.  A co-founder of a top game company told me it took them 3 months to come up with the icon for one of their monster RPGs.  For our first game we tested over 64 different versions on the way to identifying a winning icon. 

One of the many tests we did over the course of several weeks

So how do you actually conduct an effective a/b test to come up with a great icon?

There are several ways - here are a few approaches in order of increasing accuracy.

1/ Good

One easy way to run a very fast and cheap test is to use a service like PickFu.com.  They do simple A vs B tests, typically as a front end to a crowdsource platform like Amazon Mechanical Turk, where the participants are asked which they prefer.

Pros:

• Cheap
• Very fast
• Ability to filter by demographic 

Cons:

• Bias of tester self selection 
• Subject to participant self awareness
• Lack of real intent and context 

2/ Better

Next up you can use a platform like Facebook Ads.  This let’s you deploy multiple versions in parallel out in front of many eyeballs and measure click through percentages. 

Pros:

• Fast
• Ability to target by interests, demographics
• Less bias 
• Flexible sample sizes

Cons:

• Intent and context is closer but not same as real intent 
• Can cost a lot depending on sample size to get statistical significance

3/ Best

The best way to test is to actually test with a real audience in the context they would discover your app once launched (ie ads and appstore charts).  For iOS and Android this can mean ads on networks including AdMob, iAds, inMobi, Millenial Media etc  You don’t want to use incentivized channels like offerwalls as they aren’t an accurate measure of actual self-generated user interest.

Beyond just clickthroughs, you can also measure true conversion to installs and app opening, by integrating the ad networks’ SDKs. Ie- do the players feel your game description and landing page reflects what they were interested in, which was the icon.  (A whole another story on whether the game matches to what they expected when they installed)

What if you app isn’t already launched? Then you can setup a separate test account and run the ads to point there.  Android is good that way.  Also you can restrict the test app and campaign to certain geographies if you want to keep it fairly low key.

Pros:

• Truly unbiased and representative audience
• Accurate context
• Flexible sample sizes
• Measure actual conversion 

Cons:

• Takes time to integrate SDKs, approve creatives and measure - cycles are longer
• Can cost a lot depending on sample size to get statistical significance

How do you come up with a great icon? Let me know by email or twitter

It’s not often you get to hear from a game designer whose work spans multiple genres, from blockbuster social games like Farmville while at Zynga through to girl games hits like My Horse for the iPad and many more.

Raymond Holmes of MunkyFun gave a talk at the YetiZen Innovation Lab last night on the different games he has designed and what he learned from them:

1/ Minimum viable product can be very “minimum” if you’re early

Farmville was pulled together in an incredibly short amount of time and with a very small team.  It went to show that a MVP can be very “minimum” and still succeed, particularly in the era of freemium and games as a service with fast iteration post launch.  He cautioned that it only works if the market is new, but given all the rapid evolution in gaming platforms these days there are likely to be plenty of situations where that remains the case - there are plenty of new markets that don’t even exist yet in gaming.

2/ Learn to think from a user point of view

One of his early gigs was helping design Barbie Team Gymnastics.  The game did well and taught him “the important ability to design from a player point of view”.  It was a game that clearly he wouldn’t enjoy playing himself, but he learned a lot about the actual players who enjoy that type of game and how they play and interact.  That resonated with my own personal experience in designing Style Me Girl.

3/ Leverage what you learned from the past

At Barbie Team Gymnastics, he learned a lot about gymnastics - animation, theory etc.  And later when he was on the team creating Aeon Flux, it was decided the lead protagonist would be much more acrobatic, and his past experience led perfectly to the new game.  His lesson?  Leverage what you have learned and have an open mind to new topics - they could be useful in the future too.

4/ Monetization has to be appropriate to the audience

It was interesting hearing about his experience with My Horse - on one hand an extremely popular game with over 10 million downloads for iPad but relatively speaking, low monetization. Why?  Because a lot of the level grind mechanics in the game didn’t match the audience - young girls and boys. They simply didn’t “get it”. In hindsight, his opinion was that it could have been better to have designed more of a pet simulator/dress up style of experience to match those who love the game.  That said, it’s hard to argue with the success of a product that has driven that much traffic and surely a good amount of revenue.

5/ And finally… every game needs a WOW moment

Raymond made the observation that the moment players fell in love with My Horse was when they first saw the horse in the field, animating and interacting with the player - truly a wow moment that emotionally hooked them (we see that when players first see their stylist interact to their touch).  He recommends all games try to establish a WOW moment early on in the experience to get them engaged.

All up, some excellent tips from a very experienced and creative talent.  

Any feedback?  Let me know

This is a repost of an article I wrote recently for Amazon’s app developer blog last week.  The original is available here

Guest author Simon Newstead, CEO of Frenzoo, discusses designing games for monetization. In it he uses examples from Frenzoo’s Style Me Girl, the first 3D fashion game on mobile. Simon can be reached at simon@frenzoo.com.

Our debut game Style Me Girl gained impressive downloads in its first two weeks, reaching the #1 position in the Amazon game charts. Whilst the downloads and rankings were nice, what made us really happy was the monetization, with Kindle Fire performing particularly well.

To look at what drives monetization it’s always helpful to look at the core game mechanics:

1. Incorporate a storyline

No matter the game type, if your game has levels, story serves up more motivation for players to progress through them. Players are emotional beings, and we are all compelled to be drawn into a good story. In our case, the game could have functioned just fine without a story line. However we saw from player feedback a deep engagement with the protagonist and goals in the story arcs. Given how little engineering resource is often needed on story, the ROI to include it is usually pretty compelling.

2. Replayability and collectibles

One thing that drives many paying users of Style Me Girl is successfully completing all levels with perfect 3 star results. Why? Of course completionism plays a part but the main one is being able to win rare “signature edition” items. These cannot be bought in the shop and a sign of success is sporting an outfit featuring 1 or more signature editions. It’s always good to make room for replayability and collectibles can play well in that.
 
3. Energy and speed up

It’s a cliche but it’s true - impatient players are paying players. Energy regeneration through paid items is a proven way to open up the purse strings. We saw that in Style Me Girl and cash purchase, even though Style Catch itself is just a game to let you earn the soft currency. Strange but it works.

4. Aesthetics and functionality

Whilst studies show that pure aesthetic items don’t monetize as well as time saving and functional virtual goods, if you can combine them together that can work extra well. In our case the cash items bought in the shop are attractive fashions, which lets users both look good and play good. Combinations are always good. Think the success of Toms, based on looking good and feeling good about it. Or owning the latest Macbook Air, a style statement as well as solid productivity tool.

5. A/B testing

Like eating enough fiber, it may not be a glamorous part of game design but it certainly is necessary to get the most out of your game. We implement A/B testing in the major parts related to the in-game economy - coins earning rate, starting currency values, purchase conversion rate etc. We don’t go to the point of A/B testing individual item prices yet though, but that’s the direction. Running tests has helped us increase monetization while not affecting retention (not always the case), and it’s something we’re going to dive into even further.

These tips are certainly not rocket science and not the first time they have been used in games.That said, keeping these fundamentals in mind when designing your next game ensures you’re getting biggest bang for your development buck. And that makes everyone happy.