How to conduct effective events in mobile games to get high engagement and ARPDAU, — Louise Lu, Assistant Product Manager at Tilting Point, told on the example of Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest. We have selected the main tips from the material.
Lu shared her recommendations on the publisher’s official blog. In total, she identified three key points to focus on when organizing in-game events.
The event should be short
Short events can boast much more engagement than long ones. It’s all about the mood of the player, says Lou. If the event in the game lasts a day, or even two, the gamer can postpone participation until the last, doing everyday things, or not join it at all. But small events keep the user in good shape and motivate them to try not to miss the event.
The developers of Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest were convinced of this when they experimented with the duration of Infernal Events. They held several events of 2, 6, 12 and 48 hours in length and found that the shorter the event, the stronger the intensity of emotions among the players. The authors of Warhammer got the most vivid example when the same event was declared as 2-hour and 48-hour. The involvement of the short event was 19% higher.
Hold events regularly and often
According to Lu, it is possible to achieve a high ARPDAU by increasing the number of regular events. As an example, she cited another experiment by the Warhammer team — this time with the frequency of Infernal Events.
For three weeks in a row, the developers added more and more new events to the game. Moreover, these events had to take place twice a day so that players from different time zones could participate in them.
That’s what it led to:
- Week #1: Organized an event on Thursday — ARPDAU increased by 5%.
- Week #2: added an event on Tuesday — ARPDAU increased by 20%.
- Week #3: Added four events over the weekend — ARPDAU increased by 46%.
For high—level players – separate events (and awards)
As Lou explains, Infernal Events was supposed to significantly increase traffic to Warhammer. To do this, the developers motivated the participants of the events with special prizes in the form of popular in-game items. Everything went well for the first few months, but then the interest of gamers in the event began to decline.
Then the authors of the project decided to do two things at once to return the indicators to the previous level. Firstly, they staged two “expensive” events in which players received twice as many awards as usual. Secondly, at the same time, the developers launched an in-game sale in Warhammer.
The result was not long in coming — ARPDAU increased by 143% compared to the previous month.
But offering a high reward to players may still not be enough. Lu also advises dividing such “expensive” events into two types: for ordinary and top gamers. Players who have already achieved a high level in the game should be rewarded with even more valuable and unique prizes. This will not necessarily affect engagement, but it may increase ARPDAU more.
For example, the ARPDAU of the high-level Warhammer event turned out to be 39% higher than the ARPDAU of the event for ordinary gamers. Despite the fact that their involvement was about the same.
