Hey guys, I really like this forum and the people who are sharing all kind of information, but I couldn't help but notice that for a game developers' forum, it lacks some deep discussion on the most important subjects of game development. For example, I haven't found a single thread dedicated to game retention. With the sole exception of a thread I had created a while back, which did not get any helpful attention and tips. Every time I ask someone about their game's retention, they carefully avoid to answer. And even though I respect that, I don't quite get it. Yes, some people have signed NDAs and such because they are not self published, but the other ones? I mean, it's not like I am trying to copy your game or anything. I am just trying to figure out what a good retention is and what my testing numbers are supposed to be in order for my game to be viable, based on other people who have had success with their games. We are all investing money here, so some advice and information from other people's data would be nice. Also, game session duration. Yesterday a testing campaign for my game came to an end, showing me an average game session of 125 seconds. And I am here like, is this good, is this bad? I tried searching around the web for some answers, but the generic articles out there are useless. They imply that the average mobile game duration is like 5 minutes, but I doubt this is the standard for our hypercasual games. So, if anyone could give me at least a bit of inside, that would be nice, you know, for a change.
As a guide Voodoo are looking for the following KPIs: Day 1 retention in average above 55% Day 7 retention in average above 22% Over 250 new users per day on average (for 4 days)
These discussions are mostly held private. You don't want to put out metrics about your games because there are so many cloners out there and Buildbox is known as the clone engine. Heck, even the encryption can be broken. It's not necessarily you but others see this thread too. The entire forum is public. So always beware of cloners. And even private, myself for example, I share this information only with people I highly trust. I don't care that much about the cloning part but rather from my humble point of view, this information and its analysis makes only sense to me if I get information, knowledge and experience back. And I'm saying that knowing were you come from. When I started making games I didn't understand either why nobody would talk more openly about their business. For your question about the game session... this depends on many many factors that for us indies are normally too complex to analyze. But 125 is good I think, that's 2 minutes. More would be good of course, if you can get a game above 5 minutes (including hyper casual) then it means you have yourself a winner that is very monetizable. It depends as well how many sessions though and with each session, how many game rounds you get per user. It's part of the monetization which most self publishers do not work with but are very important when it comes down to user acquisition. Generally speaking, try with every game to improve on each previous number. This will get you to success. Hope that helps.
Hey @Christoph . First of all thanks for your reply. It really clarifies a few things. I guess that not everyone wants to share their hard earned and expensive findings with everybody else. It makes sense for the most part, but I can't help the bitter sweet feeling running through me. I mean, for the first time in my life I have the opportunity to create games (I am not a programmer) for not that much money, even though 100$ per month is not something I can keep doing for much longer. And in this forum many technical things are explained down to the last detail from people who have struggled with this software for months/ years. However, I came to the realization that 100$ per month are not even remotely enough to make it work. And that is because I need to spend many more hundreds if not thousands in marketing, ads, targeting and doing multiple tests in order to see what works and to what extend and what doesn't, what is efficient and what isn't, what will increase the retention and the revenue and what will not. And frankly, now I get it. Since you have spent so much money over time to figure out all the answers, why would you share all this valuable information with someone who hasn't spent that nearly that much? - ofcourse you wouldn't. I feel a bit disappointed. I just don't have the money. And I am struggling in life at this point. Not to mention that I have near to zero free time. Meanwhile, I create a game, I then proceed to advertise it with facebook ads (just to get a couple hundred of downloads to obtain the metrics I need -retention, game session duration etc), and I only get 14 downloads. And since there is no open discussion about advertising (and I mean some really deep analysis) I don't know where I am falling behind. Am I targeting the wrong audience? Is my ad too boring? Is just my game not attractive enough? Is my ad format wrong? Should I have gone with Instagram? I will never know. Or, if I really want to know, I should keep throwing money and create a million different ad sets, each one with one factor changed at a time. Very efficient. I came to this place because I don't have money. But I thought, if I put every second of my free time working, making games with buildbox, then maybe one day I could make some money back. But sadly I realize that in order to achieve that I need more and more money. I am sorry, can't do this anymore. And I am not saying this with a light heart. It's been nice while it lasted. Thanks for everything!
Yes. You sum it up pretty well. The dream of making quick money with games that is sold by Trey when advertising Buildbox is not true in 99.9% of the cases. It's [the sales department] one of the main points I criticize because I felt into this wrong idea 3 years ago myself. But you learn and you go on. The game industry is one of the most difficult I have been in (and I come from the film industry). It's heavily competed and heavily elite oriented. If you start without money you'll have a hard time. You need to learn so many things because making games is versatile: the Software, Animation, Design, UA Design, Game Design, Level Design, ASO, Publishing, Target Audience Analysis, Marketing, User Acquisition, the list goes on and on. Trey has a point saying that the best way to succeed is to go with a publisher. And this is what I would suggest you to do in your situation. Nowadays publisher will really work with you to help you out if there is potential (not like when I started and publishers were s**t). Send your game to one of the real publishers (the ones that are doing UA). I recommend you to send your game (a short gameplay video) to Voodoo. If they see potential in it, they will gonna test it. This means A) you won't be spending any money with UA test and know the potential of your game and B) you will slowly learn about the Hyper Casual market they are in (since they have learning videos on their dashboard). The other thing I can try to convince you is: don't give up! Ever! I'm saying 'trying' because I'm in this struggle myself. It's hard, definitely, but once you start to see results, it's very satisfying.
I really don't believe that the issue is people not wanting to share. I think the issue is that requirements, what is considered good and not good, changes and has several factors, especially when it comes to UA and retention. Every situation differs, including what is and what is not acceptable metrics for each publisher and each developer. Some people want to see 33%, some want to see more (well really everyone wants to see more). Several other factors have to be considered as well, returning users, new user rate, session lengths, etc. As for your frustration with advertising, I think every indie developer has or does feel your pain. For this reason alone many great games never get seen, and for this reason alone many developers may have chosen the route of using a publisher. Publishers make it look easy when it comes to UA, but it isn't as you are now aware of. Really have to agree with @Christoph statements above. The key is to not give up, if it is your passion to create, then create. If you are looking for income to survive, then open your mind to some other avenues; sell game templates, use a publisher for your game, release on your own and continue to gather a following, continue learning advertising/marketing specifics for your genre. None of it is easy, but it is doable, but will take patience and a desire to succeed, not to mention overcome some major obstacles.
