How to increase ARPU 150 times in match-3 — HeroCraft experience
A year ago, the three-in-a-row Season Match Puzzle Adventure was released. Since then, the ARPU of the game has grown 150 times. Denis Sedovich, producer of HeroCraft publishing house, told how such dynamics were achieved.
Denis Sedovich
Season Match was created by Urse Games studio based on the 2007 game of the same name and released specifically for mobile platforms. Initially, it was a classic three-in-a-row with a simple meta.
Users praised the game. The project had good retention rates. However, the number of paying players was small.
Retention peaked in the first months after the release. Back then, players didn’t need to make in-game purchases. Users had 300 levels that could be completed without feeling a shortage of moves and boosters.
At the time of the beginning of cooperation between Urse Games and Herocraft in May 2017 , the picture was as follows:
Rolling retention before making gameplay edits
At the same time, the ARPU of the game was only $0.02-0.04 cents. It was a good start, but we couldn’t afford to keep pleasing users for free.
After a year of working with the project, ARPU has grown to $3 in the USA. But it had a price. The retention level dropped by about 10%:
Rolling retention, when key innovations were implemented
Despite the drop in retention and even the rating of the game, a 150-fold increase in revenue made paid user engagement profitable and brought the project to a whole new height:
Graph of growth in the number of purchases made by users
How did we achieve this?
I highlight five key positions.
1. Increasing the range and importance of in-game purchases
In the initial version of the game, moves and boosters were available for purchase. The standard story for games in the match-3 genre. The problem was that the players didn’t see any use in them.
There were characters in the game from the very beginning. Initially, they had no functionality.
We did the following.
Firstly, they gave each character a unique ability, thereby creating a permanently charged booster.
Secondly, we have added the ability to collect and upgrade characters.
Menu with characters
Thirdly, taking into account the innovations in mechanics, the balance was altered to increase the shortage of consumables.
As a result, in the course of numerous iterations, we managed to achieve such a complexity of episodes, which, on the one hand, significantly increased the need for consumables (and hence profit), but at the same time did not scare off the bulk of the players.
We would not have been able to achieve this result without custom analytics that showed user behavior in detail. We were also greatly helped by the adaptive complexity added later — a system that studies the skill of the player and selects the optimal difficulty for him to pass some levels.
User behavior at the beginning of the game
2. In-game purchases, special offers and discounts
Previously, the game had a simple store. We turned it into a supermarket: we reworked the entire range and prices.
It was and became
The game has starter packs, as well as special offers. The latter are based on the progress of users: for those who have been playing for a long time, the game is more loyal in terms of prices for goods.
Contextual discounts have also been added to reduce the barrier for the first purchase, increase the conversion to paying customers.
Special offer for new players
3. Improving the interface and UI
To show that there are really a lot of levels in the game, we made buttons for switching locations. A free game, even at the start, should look so that the user understands that the project is developing, you can play it for a long time. In free-play games, this is one of the main conditions for investments, it successfully converts loyal users into paying ones.
930 levels will take a lot of time to complete
There were other interface edits. For example, its colors. It was originally pink. However, after we found a study that showed a difference in the perception of colors in male and female audiences, we decided to change it to a more universal one. So he turned purple. An infographic with the results of the study can be found here, and a suitable blank of the interface was purchased at the stock.
It was and became
We also added indications of the difficulty of the levels. Thanks to this, retention has slightly increased, as well as the overall rating of the game.
4. Game Design changes
We added new modes (boss levels, “growing jelly”) and redesigned the first episode to increase the difficulty, which increased the retention of the first day by 3%. The addition of new chips, boosters and bonuses also increased retention.
Free loot boxes have also been added, which are opened for viewing ads. So we raised the number of views and increased the receipt.
Since many levels have been and remain challenging, we have added the ability to win resources if a level is lost. The outflow of users after the introduction of this mechanics has decreased. We explain this by the fact that frustration from failures is easier to bear in this case.
You can lose and get a reward for it
5. Adding social mechanics and special events
The addition of the “Marathon” mode to the game (a competition between users in the table for a reward) and a leaderboard made it possible to increase profitability on weekends.
Competition gives a strong motivation to improve the result. If a player wants to achieve a result faster, he needs to pay.
Marathon
Players like to feel that the game lives with them, so special events in honor of the holidays allow you to temporarily increase profits. Halloween, Easter and Christmas are perfect for this. The game temporarily changes its design, new levels appear with a new plot and a new reward.
Event
Difficulties in implementation
It was not without problems. For example, we unsuccessfully conducted an A/B test with a new chip graphics. We tested them not on new players, but on an old audience that got used to the old graphics. The audience did not accept the new chips.
The fact that the game is no longer available to devices running on Android up to 4.4 version caused a slight drop in organics.
Sometimes Google paid very close attention to the creatives of the game and blocked updates. For example, one day we couldn’t upgrade because one of the characters was shown with a pipe in his mouth.
Plans
We plan to improve the game further. Now the A/B test of a new meta-game with the construction mechanics popular in the genre today is in the queue.
Screenshot of the new meta
In addition, we are constantly working with ASO — with icons, screenshots, videos.
At different stages of the game there were several variants of icons. The current one showed the best conversion results. However, we continue to make new ones.
History of Season Match Icons
All promos are continuously undergoing improvements and A/B tests. Now we are experimenting with new chip graphics again, and we are also working on improving the graphics of all components of the game, including the logo.
The UA department is also actively working. He tests new advertising creatives every week. This, as well as the high level of LTV (now it is higher than the cost of the installation), allows you to effectively purchase traffic.
As a conclusion, I want to note that the main component of success is still the Urse Games team, the game developer. The team adequately perceives feedback, and the development itself is fast, organized and professional.
