Delivered at Casual Connect Europe 2017. We'll examine lessons learned from having limited-time events in DragonVale during it's 5+ years in the market. We'll look at pre-event and post-event metrics, discuss A/B/n testing, the difference between an engagement and enrichment event, re-engagement of lapsed users, figuring out proper event cadence, the importance of community management and I'll sprinkle in some of my disastrous failures along the way.
3. Defining an Event
• Engagement Event
• Speaking from the perspective of mobile, but an Engagement
Event should NOT require a new binary or version download.
• These types of events are generally shorter in duration and require
little energy/time from the player.
• Things should be skewed in the player’s favor.
• Monetization should NOT be the primary goal.*
4. Defining an Event
• Engagement Event - Examples
• Kairos’ Birthday
• Om of Noms
• Twin Weekend
5. Defining an Event
• Enrichment Event
• Can (and should) require more effort
with commensurate rewards.
• Unique currency/content.
• Limited time.
• Greater sense of urgency,
still balanced for fun.
6. Defining an Event
• Enrichment Event - Examples
• Light/Dark Event - Community Based
• Seasonal/Holiday Events
• Important note. Feel free to make stuff up.
7. Impact of an Enrichment Event
Enrichment Event Data
Magic Holidays '13 Eggs '14 Fireflies Candy '14 Holidays ‘14 Roses '15
Est Revenue Lift
107% 184% 209% 165% 155% 331% 189%
Est DAU Lift
36% 26% 39% 24% 23% 34% 27%
ARPDAU Lift
52% 126% 122% 114% 107% 220% 128%
8. Impact of an Enrichment Event
Even more tiny numbers no will be able to read
Eggs '15 StarFall Faire Candy '15 Holidays ‘15 Roses '16
Est Revenue Lift 148% 67% 59% 96% 352% 168%
Est DAU Lift 25% 9% 14% 11% 60% 14%
ARPDAU Lift 98% 53% 39% 76% 182% 135%
9. Balancing an Event
• What are your goals, both as a product and as a business?
• Do you want more people to spend, or people to spend more?
Obviously the answer is both, but what is the actual target?
10. Balancing an Event
Sessions
1 3 WKND MAX
How many times do you visit others? 0 2 0 5
What place do you recive in the colosseum? 3 2 3 1
How many Clearables do you clear? 0 0 0 0
How many Harvests do you perform per day? 5 11 5 75
How many Habitats do you collect from per day? 10 20 10 75
How many gifts do you get from friends? 0 3 0 7
How efficient are you at finding special NPCs? 15.00% 25.00% 15.00% 100.00%
How many times do you complete quests? 0 1 0 3
How many times do you breed dragons? 1 3 1 5
13. Stupid Mistakes
• Lack of Urgency - Hoarding in the Summer Event.
• Poorly communicated times, especially for limited time content.
• Accidentally gave away TRILLIONS of our event currency.
• Accidentally ended the event early. Twice.
• Forgot to account for Daylight Savings.
• Typo that gave away $3.4mil in premium currency.
Hinweis der Redaktion
So I can properly set you up. Think of this as the first fast and the furious movie. Set your expectations abysmally low, and we’ll probably have fun.
There are some people who are ninjas at slide decks. Brian Sharp comes to mind.
I.. am no Brian Sharp. This will be relatively straight-forward so I can get to the part where I tell you stories about my failures and hopefully there’s at least one question.
As far as who the hell am I. My entire tech career has been mobile. I did a bunch of other weird stuff before that, I’ll be happy to tell you sometime… but to tease that list, Lead Singer in an 80’s cover band is the not the most surprising job I’ve had. :)
It is important when talking about a specific thing, to define that thing. This definition comes from me, although some credit must be given to the talk I saw at GDC about re-engagement of lapsed users by Phil Mansell off Jagex Games, the makers of RuneScape.
i break events into two categories. Engagement and Enrichment. This does not mean that they cannot overlap.
* That doesn’t mean you never monetize on an engagement event.
Kairos in our game is the Lord of Time. He speeds things up. He decided when it’s his birthday, and everything in the game speeds up.
Om of Noms is our event near the American Thanksgiving. It’s about food and treats. We add items to the farms that are purposely skewed for the players benefit.
Twin Weekend is something that there’s a slim chance of getting when playing the game socially. During Twin Weekend, every time you play socially, you get the twin result.
These are the ones we change the icon, we contact Apple, Amazon and Google Play and aim for promotion. We ramp up UA spend right before an event because we’ve found that players who join right before an event, stick around and are more likely to be players who make a purchase.
To be clear, not every feature update needs to be in an event. We have Tiamat and Bahamut joining the pantheon of DragonVale dragons, and there’s no event involved. It’s going to be awesome.
BUT… if you’re even remotely scared of a new feature’s impact on the balance of your game, introducing it in a way that encourages the players to expect it to go away is super helpful. EXAMPLE: 3rd Breeding Cave.
We can make up a holiday or a Eason to do whatever we want. It’s our game in our world. have some fun.
We changed methodologies, technologies.
We tried linear prizes, we tried a free for all, we tried adding unlockable tiers, we drop content in. We paired sales with new content, ran them separate.
Knowing which way you want to lean in this question is important. Do I want 1000 people to spend $1, or I do I want one person to spend $1000.
This also helps your designer know how to balance something.
Credit to Chulski. MENTION CHULSKI.
We pay attention to our player behaviors and patterns and continue to improve. For our last holiday event, we had the best month the game has seen in 3 years. That blows my mind.
Test. Test. Measure. Test.
Treat it like a science experiment, Failure is just a point of data.
CADENCE
I was gonna try and stretch to be something about it not being fatal… but really? I just wanted a reason to put tombstone up in this presentation.