Playkot: players should be divided according to how they pay, not how much
During the White Nights 2015 conference, Playkot studio game designer Yulia Musienko told how to segment players by payments, using the example of the game SuperCity.
SuperCity Builder received an award from Facebook in 2014 as the best new game of the year. Its audience in the American social network is 7.5 million people. The game ‘s MAU is 1.5 million . It occupies the 37th position in the ranking of games on Facebook.
When the game was just starting, the Facebook team gave it a review. There were practices to improve virality and monetization, Yulia notes. The most useful section turned out to be about segmentation, that is, about the division by characteristics that help to improve the bank, virality, and so on.
Based on these materials, the SuperCity team has developed its own principle of segmentation of players. Users are usually divided according to the principle of how much money they bring to the project. That is, for paying large sums (“whales”) and “everyone else”. This is unfair and wrong, Yulia is convinced. It is necessary to divide the players according to the principle of how exactly they pay.
The SuperCity team finds out the payment segment that is comfortable for the player by the average payment. And, based on this data, determines the boundaries of the bank’s packages. That is, those who are more comfortable paying relatively small amounts are shown a lot of offers with a small step of the difference between payments. Those who are used to spending big, see other, more expensive packages. This tactic, Yulia claims, has raised the profitability of the game by 30%.
Julia advises starting with special offers. They are the most convenient way to test ideas about who is willing to pay and how much.
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