INDIE XP
E-BOOK
Indie XP: Building
a live service and
measuring success
Creating a modern live service model and building effective
analytics into your mobile game
Contents
Build a live service and measuring success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Making your game a live service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Analytics and key metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Build a live service
and measuring
success
Congratulations, you launched your game and players
are having a great time, but there’s a catch: They
want more.
If there’s one thing that surprises game developers time and time
again, it’s how quickly players go through game content. You’ve
likely been there yourself, finishing an amazing game and wishing
there was more.
If you’re working on a mobile game (especially free-to-play),
chances are you’re starting to think about how to keep players
engaged after launch.
In this section, we explore how to build a modern live service into
your game, approach live content, and improve player retention
and engagement. However, even the best plans benefit from a
strong understanding of using analytics to measure success. Our
last component will focus on the key numbers that matter in your
game, what they mean and how to measure them.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Build a live service and measuring
success —
“Launching your game is not
the end of your journey, it’s the
start.”
— Robin Gazaille,
Senior Product Manager, Unity
Making your game a
live service
The rise of free-to-play games has created a system where things are now
equally part game and part business. With the barrier of accessibility down,
there are more options than ever for mobile players – but how do free-to-play
games turn a profit and keep the lights on?
The answer is live operations.
Live operations
Live ops starts the minute a player enters your game. Before launch, you’re
operating on assumptions and educated guesses for many aspects of your
game. Now that you’re working with live users, everything needs to feed
back into your core live ops loop. This means that new content, features, and
gameplay updates will directly impact your players.
How does live ops work?
Running live ops boils down to three main steps: Operate,
Analyze, and Update
It all begins with how you operate your game, your user
acquisition strategy, in-app purchases, events, and more.
Next, you analyze everything and crunch the numbers on
data gathered from operating your game. You’re looking
for what works, what didn’t, and where you can improve
– this ultimately determines your roadmap and what your
updates will look like.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
Operate
Analyze
Update
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How do you prepare for live ops?
Planning your live operations is something that starts well before you launch your game.
The first thing is to figure out your development constraints – the scope, time, and resources
available to you. This lets you estimate how quickly you can develop features, create content, and
update your game. Understanding your capabilities as a development team is especially important
when you start a “rolling” development calendar after launch, working to create new content and
features as part of your live service plan.
Before you set your own live ops plan in motion it’s important to understand your competitors. Using
services like Sensor Tower or App Annie, you can check out metrics such as downloads, revenue,
and retention from competing games in your category. Learn what these games do well and what you
can improve on, then understand the factors that contribute to the success of their live ops.
Understand why people play your game
Image courtesy of Quantic Foundry
Prioritize feature development
One thing we strongly recommend before developing
your live ops is feature planning. This simple exercise
works to create a wishlist of the features you want in your
game, and then turn them into a live service development
roadmap.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Keeping your game updated
Now that you’ve gone through soft launch and launched your game worldwide,
it’s time for updates. Regular updates are essential for keeping players engaged
with your game, and will be your main method of publishing new features and
content.
Unity insights
Creating new content to delight
and engage players should be a top
priority for game developers. On
average, large new content updates
for live games resulted in peak
concurrent user spikes of over 11%.
One big consideration is the impact regular updates have on your development
team. To keep things reasonable, we recommend the “Tick Tock” development
method. This is where you alternate between larger featured content updates
and smaller quality of life improvements. Also consider adding a prompt that
encourages players to keep their game updated, otherwise you run into issues
with supporting multiple versions at the same time.
Events
Let’s face it, even the best games can get old without regular content updates.
To deliver new content and improve your retention, events are always a great
option. Events create strong replay value and act as a way to keep gameplay
fresh and exciting. A well-planned events calendar gives purpose to daily
gaming sessions throughout the week and keeps players coming back to your
game. Special events on holidays or weekends are also great for introducing
new features, content, and driving revenue.
Once your game reaches maturity, events will likely be a large (if not the
largest) part of your live ops strategy. There are many ways to build events into
your game, and it’s important to test different durations (hourly, daily, weekly,
seasonal) and schedule events regularly so players know when to expect
them. It’s also key to make sure your events match the player motivations in
your game. Example: Does your game involve collecting items? Make sure your
events contain those elements.
Quality of life improvements
Frustration from bugs, glitches, and other technical issues are a major reason
why players will leave your game. Having a buggy game can significantly hinder
your growth potential, and players that leave need to be replaced.
Make sure you’re always checking out your app store comments, social media
pages, and communities like Reddit for player feedback. Taken individually
these issues don’t seem like a big deal, but together can be a major factor for a
player’s decision to leave your game. When using the “Tick Tock” development
approach mentioned above, you should still always dedicate some time to
squashing bugs every sprint. Another source of information is to check out how
your crash rate compares to similar apps on Google Play.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Community management
As an indie developer, you may not be able to afford a community manager
but your community is important to your users and game. Curating a sense of
belonging helps retain users and you can leverage your community in a few
unique ways.
Make social media
pages
Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Reddit
– find out where your players hang
out and start posting content. This
is a great way to promote your live
service updates and bring new
players into your game.
Launch updates on
community channels
Social channels can be a great way
to release updates and keep players
informed of what’s going on in your
game. While you don’t want to
just spam promotions, community
channels are a huge factor for
building momentum around events
and major updates.
Interact with players
Facebook page of Cartoon Crush by Zenith Games
This should go without saying, but
a healthy community is always
dependent on frequent interaction
from the developer. Always make
sure to pop in, answer questions, and
interact with the community.
Community initiatives should always be approached with care - you don’t want
to come off as if you’re only there to promote your game. Genuine interaction
with your fans and transparency with your development process go a long way.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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In-app purchases
In most free-to-play mobile games, IAPs are an important method for generating
revenue. While the type of IAP and how it’s designed are highly dependent on
your game genre, there are some tips and tricks that apply widely. It’s also
important to consider that how you use IAPs is highly dependent on your type of
game – the more casual your game skews, the less need for a complicated game
economy.
Unity insights
In 2020 we saw IAP revenues take a
larger percent of total game revenues
when compared to 2019. However,
when broken down by region,
developers in APAC countries ended
up deriving more revenue from ads
when compared to last year.
IAPs should always be designed to provide players with something valuable –
currency or bundles containing a mix of useful items. It’s also typical for players
who purchase something in your game to have much higher retention rates, not
to mention they are more likely to purchase again.
Bundle
Designing your IAP strategy around specific bundles in your store is a great way
to add structure to your economy while providing players with valuable content.
Having a valuable and well-priced starter bundle is one of the best strategies for
kicking off your IAP.
Decoy
Having “decoy” bundles in your
store is a strategy used by almost
every major mobile game. Combined
with valuable starter bundles and
other items, decoys act as a more
expensive or less desirable purchase,
making the main bundle more
attractive for players.
Anchor
An anchor is typically regular currency
or premium items like gems that help
provide context for your IAP bundles.
For example, if a pack of 200 gems is
priced at $1.99 and you include the
same amount in a bundle for $1.99
alongside other items, the value is
more obvious. This works especially
well if the bundle, decoy, and anchor
are all shown on the same screen.
Cards, The Universe and Everything by Avid Games
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Store layout
First things first, don’t reinvent the
wheel. There are many examples
of successful mobile game stores
available, most likely even in your
same genre. Gathering information
from competitors is a great way to
find out what’s working, and what
isn’t, in their stores. While there are
many factors to consider, here are
some general points that apply to
almost every mobile game store.
Show clear
offerings
Stick to 6-8
different offerings
Don’t overcomplicate things with
extra text or images, make sure
your store is simple, clear, and
easy to navigate.
If you have more, your store can
start to feel overwhelming. If you
have less, it starts to feel like
there is not enough value.
Give players what
they want
Tracking
everything
This takes some time to
research, but make sure your
store contains exactly what
your players want – anything
from currency to bundles of
consumable items. You can
identify this by understanding
the main reasons why players
install and stick around in your
game. Is it the collectables?
The puzzle-action gameplay?
Knowing the main motivations is
an important part of discovering
what players want in your store.
If there is one thing you need
to track, it’s transactions. This
will determine if your store is
successful or not, and can help
you make adjustments.
Test different price
points
You may find that players are
willing to spend at a specific
price point in your game, and
your items are priced too high (or
too low!).
Explore special
offers
These can be subscriptions,
time-limited offers, custommade starter packs, or
something specific for your
genre.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Usability tests
A great way to understand how players are going through your game is to run
some usability tests. These are essentially interviews with players where you go
through parts of your game, ask questions, and identify pain points. Using a tool
like Playtest Cloud, even limited sessions with small groups of players can help
inform user experience, feature development, and content updates.
Observe gameplay
Make sure you have players livestream their session (privately!) so you see how
they move through your game.
Ask players to talk out loud
This is a great way to understand how players are thinking about each part of
your game, while making pain points obvious.
Ask questions with measurable answers
Structure questions like “How would you rate this feature out of 10” to ensure
you can quantify answers.
WATCH
Unite Now 2020:
Make your indie game a live
service
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Build a live service and measuring
success —
Analytics and key
metrics
We’ve explored how to plan pieces of your core development, test important
features, launch your game, and create a modern live ops plan. Now it’s time to
explore the magic that ties it all together - analytics.
Knowing how to leverage analytics tools to measure success is one of the most
important factors in game development. We all want to make players happy and
deliver an amazing experience, but how do you know what’s working (and what
isn’t)? With analytics there’s a lot of ground to cover, but we break it down into
four key areas.
1. Find your valuable users
This can change depending on your game genre – some genres favor IAPs, and
others rely on shorter sessions with ads. Identifying the valuable users in your
game is the first step in the journey to long-term success.
2. Identify successful channels
Once you find valuable users, you need to identify which channel(s) brought
them in and work to replicate it for more users in the future.
3. Monetize
Structure questions like “How would you rate this feature out of 10” to ensure
you can quantify answers.
4. Track the right things
The final step is to build in systems to measure these valuable users. This makes
it easier to understand their likes and dislikes so you can build a better game
experience for them.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Which metrics
should you look at?
There are four main types of metrics you should
be looking at in your mobile game. While these are
certainly not the only metrics to consider, these four
areas will give you a high-level understanding of
what’s important.
Engagement metrics
Overall, these metrics show how engaged players are
inside your game. In a simpler sense, engagement tells
you if the core gameplay, features, and content are
working to keep players interested.
Daily active users (DAU)
Churn rate
These are the number of unique players
coming into your game during a 24-hour
period.
This is the opposite of retention, the number
of players that stop coming back to your app
after a certain amount of time.
Monthly active users (MAU)
Uninstalls
These are the number of unique players
coming into your game during a 30-day
period.
Relating to churn, how many players are
completely removing your app from their
phone.
Stickiness rate
If you divide your daily active users by your
monthly active users you get this metric. This
tells you how often per month a user interacts
with your game on a daily basis, essentially
how often they are coming back to play.
Conversion rate
This can be a percentage of users coming
into your game from a marketing campaign,
performing an action like levelling up in your
game, or purchasing an item from your store.
Day 1, 7, and 30 retention
(D1/D7/D30)
The percentage of players that have opened
your game X number of days after installation.
If a player sticks with your game, the
higher their engagement and likelihood of
monetization.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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In-app purchase metrics
Using these together is a great way to figure out how much
money you’re making overall and which you need to focus on.
% payer conversion
This is the percentage of players from your total player base
that make at least one purchase. Most games have less than
5%.
Average revenue per paying user (ARPPU)
This is the average revenue per payer in your game. Not to be
confused with average revenue per user.
Average dollar per transaction
You can substitute with your relevant currency, essentially
the average purchase price per transaction. This can be used
to identify purchase “sweet spots” and determine how much
players are willing to pay for something in your game.
Average number of transactions per payer
Cartoon Crush by Zenith Games
This is the average number of purchases per paying user and
helps you determine purchasing behavior in your game. Example:
Do your players typically buy multiple smaller items or one large
purchase and that’s it?
Ad monetization metrics
With most users not typically buying in-game items or premium currency, ads make it possible to monetize the non-paying
majority of players in your game.
Effective cost per mille
(eCPM)
This the amount of dollars you
generate per 1,000 ad impressions
in your game. Example: If you have
a $10 eCPM, you get $10 dollars
per every thousand ad impressions
– which means every single ad
impression is worth around 1c.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
Percentage use rate
Fill rate
This is the percentage of your players
that will watch at least one ad. The
use rate is important because it
shows the entry into the rest of your
ad funnel. If nobody is watching an
ad, you won’t be able to generate
an eCPM. This can be higher for ads
like interstitials, and much lower for
something like a rewarded ad that
requires a player to click and watch.
This is the percent of time an ad is
filled by an ad network – ideally as
close to 100% as possible. Most ad
networks have great fill rates, but can
drop off in less popular territories.
Working with multiple networks at the
same time allows you to have more
global coverage.
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User acquisition metrics
These are important because they represent what it
costs to bring a new player into your game.
Installs per mille (IPM)
This represents the number of
app installs per one thousand
ad impressions.
Cost per install (CPI)
Conversion rate
The amount of ad investment it
takes to get a player to install
your game..
This is the amount of times a
player will install a game/app
or purchase a product after
seeing an ad for it. If this is
high it means your players are
high quality.
Understanding lifetime value (LTV)
LTV is essentially how much a user is worth over time, and how much they are likely to spend in your game. This lets you
estimate how much revenue will come in over a period of time, and what you need to do to increase this number. One of
the major advantages of having a strong LTV is it lets you set longer-term budgets with less risk.
Usually when launching your game it’s important to focus more on the top-funnel metrics mentioned above, however LTV is
always something you want to be working towards.
Simply put, LTV is the amount you earn from an average player during the entire time they play your game.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Tips and tricks for
improving your metrics
Retain your players
While it may seem obvious, we can’t stress it enough – you need to keep players
in your game as long as possible. On average, retained users are much more
valuable and engaged with your game than newly acquired users.
•
80%* of players on average will churn after Day 1, and you have around 6
days to bring them back into your game.
•
Players that opt-in to push notifications have 2x the retention rate on
average.
•
Players that stick around in your game have a 152%* higher engagement
rate.
Analytics recap
(TL;DR)
•
Use metrics to understand
when and why players are
leaving your game, and what
makes them come back
•
Bring players who leave
back into your game to
increase lifetime value (LTV)
and retention rates.
•
Once you find which
channels are working for
your game, you can increase
your return on investment
(ROI).
•
Understand where players
fit into your funnel by
creating highly targeted
audiences.
•
Use a CRM system to power
your engagement strategy
by tracking uninstalls and
reinstalls.
Find your sweet spot
Every game has a “sweet spot” and it’s important to analyze where that is for
your players.
•
Using cohorts is a great way to identify the average lifespan of a player in
your game. This allows you to segment users and determine who’s leaving
your game, as wella as what it costs to keep them around.
•
Cohorts allow you to dive into user segmentation, highlighting which players
are most likely to convert to specific actions in your game. This allows you
to focus on winning campaigns to drive growth.
•
The Segment Builder in Unity Analytics is a great way to get started with
segmentation and cohorts.
Dealing with churn
Even if someone leaves your game after the first day, there are always ways to
bring them back. Players come back for a variety of reasons, and it’s your job to
identify the ways in which they will give your game another chance.
•
You have 6 days on average before a player loses interest in your game.
This is your window for winning them back.
•
Around 40%* of players who remove a game will actually install it again.
•
11%* of players will come back to your game after a three month break.
To help deal with churn you need to start understanding the major pain points
in your game. Is it a specific difficulty level, or technical reason? Once players
reinstall your game, you want to measure what made them come back such as
an engaging push notification.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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Summary
Our goal is to equip you with the right tools to take your
creative vision to the next level. In this ebook we’ve explored
seven essential topics that work to make your indie mobile
game a success.
Building your mobile game into a successful business is
challenging, and the right tools, services, and strategic
approach makes all the difference. We hope this ebook served
as a solid initial guide into your journey as a successful indie
developer and we encourage you to share your feedback with
us.
© 2021 Unity Technologies
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