But the ways in which players can earn currency in your game’s virtual economy is even more imperative. What you sell is a very important aspect. Never start picking their pockets right from the get-go.ĭon’t get me wrong. As for spending (be it game currency or real money), it should be intuitive and inviting to access, fun and effective, so the player feels it makes his gameplay better. You have to give your users goals they wish to achieve, and for which they are accumulating funds. However, that, on its own, gets old pretty fast. You must ensure your sources (a user’s buy + earn) are in optimum balance with your sinks (a user’s spend), and that the game’s buy/earn ratio is at its optimum, as well.įocus on their earnings and not on your sales. The more options users have to gain in- game currency, the better. Let the user earn, and make it fun and effective to spend.Įarning a sum is a pleasure on its own, and watching your in- game currency pile up is rather gratifying - so give your player the ability to enjoy it.
An imperative key to building an enticing game economy is balance. When you implement both hard and soft currencies, and multiple sources (through in- game achievements, user actions and in- game ads), you not only make your mobile game more interesting to play, but it also provides your users with more ways to spend time in your store.īalance your sources and your sinks. Your paying users will continue paying, allowing them to obtain a significant advantage by doing so, but the remaining ~95 percent are a monetization force to be reckoned with, and can make you heaps of money, if you let them. Instead, try implementing more than one possibility to monetize your game, and enable your users with more than one type of currency to spend. Add to that the fact that only about 2-7 percent (on a good day) of users are willing to spend out-of-pocket, and you’re pretty much setting yourself up for failure. If you are using only hard currency in your game, you are literally forcing the user to pay out-of-pocket for any advantage he wishes to obtain for himself within the game, yanking him out of fantasy land and causing him to calculate his/her steps, time spent and actions within your game. Using only one type of currency limits the user’s spend flexibility. If we look into it, the majority of the top revenue-generating games use more than one currency. As mentioned, most F2P games are based on a dual-currency mechanism, and for good reason.
Give the user more than one currency, and multiple sources. When you reach the perfect moment when a user is immersed within the game so that he’ll be willing to pay or be monetized to get ahead in the game yet is still able to play but will have a harder time without the benefits - then you’ve hit gold. Moreover, focus on user LTV! Identify those stages within your game where the “tension” created is at its best - not too early, as you will “dis-convert,” not too late - as you will “miss-convert.” You need to get it just right.Īccessibility, accessibility, accessibility. Never start picking their pockets right from the get-go. Then, and only then, gently introduce them to the different monetization options. Get them engaged with and hooked on the game. Based on micro transactions, F2P games often introduce a dual-currency mechanism, thus allowing the user to further himself within the game using both real-money currency (AKA hard currency), as well as virtual currency (AKA soft currency). The game’s economy is the heart of the game’s reward structure and is imperative to its success.
Different game economies will structure different players’ behaviors within the same game. Let’s start with a bit of an introduction.Ī game economy is a virtual economy that configures all game loops in the game (currencies, time loops, XP, levels, pricing, etc.).