New School Fun

ENTER, MOBILE GAMING

As time whizzed along, games evolved from the arcade to the TV to the computer and finally, to the smartphone. All along, I would ask myself; how could these games be smarter? As the mobile app market exploded, I noticed the biggest surge by far was in gaming, with skyrocketing revenues and rags-to-riches stories popping up daily. Immediately, I dove in head first — and still haven’t come up for air. I began downloading every game request that showed up in my Facebook notifications. I poured over the dynamics and structures of each game. As time passed, I studied all the games that had gone viral to determine what they had in common.

As much as the games and mediums have evolved so quickly, the factors that drive people have mostly remained the same; the fun, the competition and the rewards. As I dug into my research further, I noticed two distinct problems in the market.

PROBLEM #1: THE GOLD RUSH CREATED A MESS

The growth of mobile gaming was similar to the gold rush of yesteryear. Once the success stories got out, droves of developers migrated to this new frontier and cashed in on substantial numbers of users, and with little competition.

Overall, the market was saturated with an “if I build it, they will come” -mentality. Lots of style, very little substance. While many of these apps were built with limited knowledge of game mechanics, the more successful ones had something in common. They allowed users to “mine” each user’s social contacts to invite competition, giving these games the best chance to go viral.

I wanted to create a rich network of games that Could maintain and grow the gamer’s interest while rewarding them for 3 things — playing, performing and referring others. As each gamer plays, performs and refers others from their social contacts they would be rewarded in multiple ways. (We’ll dig into the details and psychology behind those rewards in a follow up blog in a few days.)

PROBLEM #2: SKYROCKETING CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COSTS

The mobile gaming industry continues to explode at an incredible pace and industry revenues are projected to rise steadily every year over the next decade. The small to mid-size game developers are getting squeezed as big game developers enter the space with giant advertising budgets for user acquisition.

As a result, according to the 2017 New Zoo Global Games Report, Customer Acquisition Costs (“CAC”) have skyrocketed in the past 24 months to almost $3 per download — $2.90 to be exact. Now that may not sound like a large number, but consider this — in a freemium marketplace, it takes over 400 downloads to get one paying user.

Games that include competition as their primary “gamification” component compel each player to dig into their social contacts and invite their friends, family and followers to play with or against them. This method dramatically reduces Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC).