Last week, the clicker “Heroes of Utopia” from the Russian My.com got a big update. In connection with the update, we talked with the company about what the project has achieved in more than six months since its release.
Olga Zagorskaya, Deputy Head of the mobile direction, answered our questions My.com .
Olga Zagorskaya
Hi! Let’s start with the question about the achievements of the game in the first six months since its release?
I would attribute several points to the achievements of the game.
First of all, these are, of course, the business indicators of the project. The game reached the payback point faster than all our other games.
Secondly, from a technological point of view, the project was also significant – we went to the Apple Watch platform, which is completely new for us, integrated a new advertising format, wrote an engine that is unpretentious in operation and easily scaled.
If we talk about user experience, then I would attribute to the achievements of the game the functionality of perks – special bonuses issued after each rebirth. They make the gameplay variable, and the replay is interesting. In my opinion, the update with this functionality has contributed to the development of the “clicker” genre as a whole.
In December 2015, when the game was released, the head of the mobile direction talked to us My.com Alexander Enin said that at that time 60% of monetization mechanics were implemented. Have you already implemented everything planned?
Probably, it is impossible to implement everything. Any grocery developer will say that. There is no limit to perfection, and one day you need to stop. But in general, yes, we have implemented almost everything that we planned.
If we talk only about new monetization mechanics, then I would note two: offers for non-paying and a lottery with biofuels.
The offer for non-payers is that the number of gems received upon purchase doubles if the user pays for the first time in the game. As a result, we received a larger tail of payments by levels, which initially fell on the appearance of the first stock, and then fell sharply.
The lottery for the exchange of biofuels consists in the fact that we divided the previously single pack into 5 parts and added a random bonus from x1 to x10 to each part, followed by an offer to double the result for 90% of the original price. The percentage of players who use this service has not increased much, but almost 35% of the players who used it began to double the result.
What new mechanics have been introduced?
Of the new mechanics, I want to mention the perks – these are various bonuses that remain with the player for a while before the rebirth. To get such a bonus, the player must complete the chapter and terraform the terrain passed. Some time after the terraforming is completed, the player is offered a choice of 1 of 3 perks that affect the gameplay, ranging from increasing damage or weakening monsters at certain times of the day and ending with bonuses when exchanging biofuels or simply receiving game currencies to his account. Thus, each rebirth in the game becomes unique from the point of view of user experience, a sense of intrigue is preserved due to the desire to correctly use all the falling perks in each rebirth.
Can you tell us what metrics these mechanics were focused on and what they managed to achieve with their help?
The meta-gameplay of most successful clickers is an endless chain of rebirths. The player needs to be reborn every time, because he rests against a wall of too “thick” enemies, which can only be overcome due to the rebirth bonus. Each such replay for the player is no different from the previous one. As a result, the gameplay becomes monotonous and predictable, which is why the interest in the game is quickly washed away from a wide audience.
We solved this problem by introducing the perks functionality.
Initially, this functionality was aimed at improving the retention rates of the 14th and 30th days. The indicators have grown, as expected. Revenue from video advertising has grown proportionally.
But the most interesting thing is that as a result of the introduction of mechanics, the number of payers on all platforms increased by 0.2%. In the first days after the update, for example, we saw a lot of purchases of terraformers from the UAE.
In the total revenue of the game, what share is accounted for by advertising (as well as which monetization points in the game have shown themselves to be the most effective)?
We are trying to bring the share of advertising revenue to 45%. And we consider these to be very good indicators.
If we talk about the classic game monetization, then the most effective actions were on premium satellites and on one of the currencies (data disks). A lot of currency is needed, and it gives a clear and obvious increase in the player’s power. Up to 7% of players take the first premium satellite and up to 20% data disks.
On the 2nd place, the exchange of gems for biofuels.
The offer to buy biofuels for a one-time upgrade of satellites makes money not bad.
But we get the most revenue from one-time offers for $5, subscription offers for $7 and a minimum payment of $3. A hacker talent is also popular, which increases the reward for advertising and allows you to receive it without viewing. It costs $4.
Game downloads have reached 2 million. Can you tell us how the downloads were distributed across the platforms?
At the moment we have 650 thousand registrations on iOS, 2 million 100 thousand registrations on Android.
As far as I know, the game promptly received a branded page on the App Store. How much did this increase the conversion of page visits to installations?
We received a custom page on March 21, 3 months after the global launch. Of course, it was a big event for us. Any developer is pleased when his product is noticed and noted by the platform.
According to the results of a comparative analysis of conversion rates in installations for the period before and after the appearance of the custom page, no significant deviations were detected.
One of the important features of the game is that it can be played on an Apple Watch. Can you share your experience of running a project for such an unusual platform? How much did the watch support justify itself at all?
It wasn’t easy to master the Apple Watch, but it was worth it.
According to reviews from many of our partners and users, we made a very good game on the Clock. The gameplay itself fit perfectly on the Clock, and we took advantage of this opportunity to organically fit it in and beat it on this platform.
And the result was not long in coming. We were featured in the Apple Watch store for several weeks in a row, and, according to our data, half of all organic products came to us from there.
Earlier you said that “Evolution: Heroes of Utopia” was created not to “milk”, but to strengthen the franchise. Nevertheless, the projects probably support each other in some way (in terms of traffic). The question is how tangible. Can you tell me about it?
Yes, projects of the same franchise support each other in terms of traffic.
In “Heroes of Utopia” in the settings, we made a banner button with the background of “Evolution” and a link to the product. On this button, 5 images are rotated, pulled up from the server, depending on what the user has already seen. The prototypes of these images were the most CtR-true banners with the purchase of traffic for “Evolution”. Unsurprisingly, the story banner conversions turned out to be significantly higher than our average conversion rates. But the most interesting thing is that the ARPU of those who came according to the plot is 2.5 times higher than the ARPU of organics. This suggests that the user who is interested in the plot feels good in both products, despite their different genres.
In general, we do not have the task of transferring N users over a certain period of time, so in terms of cross-promo, we do everything as non-aggressively and accurately as possible. This is the core of our audience, which we respect very much.
The Evolution franchise will continue to develop. We are currently working on two products in this universe. So we are all waiting for an exciting sequel to the “Battle for Utopia”.
Thanks for the interview!
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