The worldwide release of the free version of Running with Friends took place in mid-May. Just yesterday, a soft launch of the paid version of the game started in Canada. So it’s time to sum up the preliminary results.
At least, that’s what Pocket Gamer thinks, noting that 18 months have passed since the genre (the appearance of Temple Run).
We, in turn, have long been tormented by the question: does it make sense to create such projects (with very low ARPU, with high competition in the market, but with a good level of user retention) now?
Of course, Zynga asked itself the same question. It is possible that she was also interested in how you can distinguish your runner from the host of existing ones? What kind of “trick” is needed for this?
The answer, looking back at the release, was not buried so deep. Like the authors of Subway Surfers, the developers of Running with Friends have bet on PvP. Only they expanded it by adding a full-fledged asynchronous multiplayer and the ability to challenge a friend to a duel.
This, in theory, allowed us to immediately solve the problem with monetization. Do you want to win competitions? Pay for extra lives, which cost a certain number of crystals and which can be bought for real money.
But did these decisions make the game a box office hit?
Judging by the American top, no. In the top-grossing iPhone applications, the game occupied the 15th position at most. On the other hand, this is also very good, especially considering that Running with Friends is consistently in the box office top twenty. However, will she be able to demonstrate the wonders of endurance in terms of downloads and compete with Temple Run 2 and Subway Surfers in the future?
We doubt it.
One of the advantages of the two main runner hits (Temple Run 2 and Subway Surfers) was their unobtrusive monetization, the need to log in via Facebook. In this regard, Running with Friends is annoying. On the one hand, as we see, it brings money, on the other, it scares away users. And it is unclear how this will affect the project’s performance in the long term. It is clear that Pinkus will be able to constantly inject traffic into the game, but then what will be the ROI?
Probably, starting from this thought, Zynga, as if specially for the timid, is going to launch a paid version of Running with Friends (it can already be found in the Canadian store). However, the initial price, to put it mildly, is frightening – $ 4.99. Who needs a runner for that kind of money?