The success criterion is the average number of daily sessions

How often users launch the application correlates with the level of retention and engagement of the project audience, says Pocket Gems executive director Ben Liu in an interview with Pocket Gamer.

In Pocket Gems, the level of user retention is measured using a special audience analysis. Developers track a sample of users who have started playing in a certain period of time, and compare their performance with those who play longer than them. This method allows companies to evaluate how successful the updates made to their games after the release were.       

Ben LiuSeveral thousand users are needed to conduct it.

However, if you need the simplest, bimodal results (do users pay or not?), the amount of audience required for research may be less. 

Liu called five a good number of daily sessions. If, on average, the game is launched five or more times a day – it’s great, it’s a success. However, this parameter does not directly correlate with the amount of money spent on the game (by users). But it correlates with involvement in the future. In other words, the more time the user spends in the game, the longer he will stay in it.

Paradise Cove – the main hit of Pocket GemsBen also noted that Pocket Gems is no longer thinking about monetization, but about engagement, about how interesting it is to play the project, for how long?

The number of sessions correlates perfectly with all this. Moreover, the duration of sessions is not as important as the number of daily calls to the game.

The interview can be found here.