Kingdoms At War by A Thinking Ape ranked 8th in the iPhone box office top in 2010, 13th in 2011. Then the game spent a couple of years in the top 40, and a month ago broke into the top twenty. How does this ancient project still manage to make a profit?
Half of the players who launched Kingdoms At War for the first time return to it within a couple of days. And everything would be fine, but by day 30 only 10% continue to play. And then the magic begins.
“Kingdoms at War is characterized by a low level of user retention,” said Derek Yip of A Thinking Ape. “But on day 30 it levels off… the title stops losing players.”
That is, A Thinking Ape can invest heavily in acquiring users who will ultimately ensure the effectiveness of the investment by launching Kingdoms At War over and over again in the long run.
The guys have an interesting approach to promotion – these are screenshots of the game from the App StoreThe reasons for such loyalty are not so much in graphics, design, gameplay or content.
A Thinking Ape highlights Kingdoms at War as the most social of its projects. The level of interaction between users is incredibly high: messages, group actions, chat.
Apparently, it was the social aspect that caused such a long-term interest in Kingdoms at War.
And now, according to Think Gaming, 4 years after the launch, Kingdoms at War still brings in $15,000 daily only on iOS. Not such a bad result for an independent studio.
Source: venturebeat.comA Thinking Ape is a small team of indie developers from Vancouver.