Hey guys,
We have a pretty successful game on google play with over 700K downloads. I would like honest opinions on it and some thoughts on our monetisation model.
The thing im really looking for is ideas on our IAPS. Currently we have around 5-8K downloads per day but only get around 15-20 iaps per day.
So any ideas, help, constructive criticism would be very much appreciated.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sportier.minigolfparadisesportworld&hl=en_GB
Im in a helping mood and I like new things so Im downloading it now. I will give you a full what I think in the morning.
First impression: Actually looks fun, like something I would play just from the store page. I have to say both ads and in app purchasing simultaneously turn me off a bit. Charge me for stuff and make money from adds too…ouch. I only say this because I know you want to hear how I actually feel and not just hey great game. I’m going to attempt to give you honest useful feedback in the hopes karma will return the favor when I release. It may turn out your ad placement and the way you utilize iap are not a turnoff at all once I play it. It all depends on how you did it That was just my honest initial reaction to the store page. I’m looking forward to trying and I will update you soon.
Ok that didn’t take as long as I thought. Sorry.
Background on me so you know your audience. Im 37, been playing games for a few decades. I’m new to game dev but have a slight previous knowledge of programming. I like this style game. I dont play alot of mobil games maybe try a new one once a month. I’m not likely to spend cash on a game until I’ve played it long enough I feel I owe you for the good time and then I will purchase whatever iap I see for the price I feel is right, odd I know. I play on an old samsug tab4.
I want to start with what I liked about it. Its completed and released, that is a major hurdle. I like the power control being pinball style instead of tapping twice to time it at the right power. This feels better to me because I can pull back and adjust power without letting go, seems accurate, and the release is satisfying just like on a pinball table. The ball seems to behave properly which matters more than graphics any day. Daily bonus, sweet, reward me for coming back. I like it. Aiming the camera while the ball is in motion is great, good idea. From a strictly gameplay standpoint with nothing else factored in this is a game I would play and maybe spend a few bucks on.
Ok here comes the bad. This may be the fault of my aging tablet but it crashes frequently. The ads are bad and alone would kill the game for me. I can tolerate some advertising if the game is fun and the ads aren’t interrupting me bad enough for the “hey this is fun” to wear off. Im not a fan of watching a 30 second video after issuing one command and watching a 15 second level play out. I wouldnt mind a still ad with a 5 second timer after every level. I did happen on a couple still ads but one of them was quite confusing and crashed the game when I accidentally tapped it not realizing it was an ad. The ad was for another minigolf game that looked very similar. It showed a level and a big play now button. I got this ad and thought it was the next level ready to play. I hit play now, obviously I see my mistake. I guess it was my fault for not paying attention. The camera fly through at the beginning of a level clips through scenery badly and just blinks colors until the camera stops. There are little graphics glitches everywhere and objects tend to blink. This may also just be my hardware showing its age.
Final thoughts. It seemed to me that the in app purchases would be fairly easy to obtain with regular play. In a way I like that from a players perspective but I also think I wouldn’t be likely to buy anything. Maybe have more purchases and a way to make them harder to achieve without paying some cash. Im ok with only getting the best stuff if your absolutely a hardcore gamer or spending a bit as long as its possible to still get free if you are good enough and spending time on it. These are usually purchases I would make because I’ve played long enough to know I like it and feel like I sould have bought a game so I do. I will spend usually 10 to 15 bucks once and get some decent content out of the deal. Ads would be ok if they were less intrusive. I could deal with the graphics glitches if it just wouldn’t crash every 2nd time it tried to load a scene. Overall could stand some work on presentation but with the ads toned down to tolerable and the crashing problem solved I would leave it in play for a while. With the graphics glitches fixed and some camera and presentation work done I would spend a bit after a while in play. As it is now im uninstalling it.
The first thing you need to look at is your retention… you are tracking analytics aren’t you? If so what sort of 1, 7 and 30 day retention are you on here?
Players are not going convert to paying users if retention is bad. Looking at some reviews I’m already seeing some complaints about ads.
Remove forced video, popups and banner ads (these kill retention), and put in incentivised rewarded video at the end of each game.
Is your game multiplayer? The top-grossing golf game at the moment is Golf Clash, which uses a Clash Royale style monetisation strategy with some tweaks. Unfortunately if your game isn’t multiplayer, that will further hurt retention.
I’d suggest taking a long look at Golf Clash to see why its doing so well…
For mobile/f2p, this is flat out the most important metric.
Thanks everyone. Our game really doesn’t have much retention value atm, it was more a test piece that seemed to have took off. So we are currently redoing the game and looking into other changes we can make.
Again thanks for the replies and FrankenCreations thanks for taking the time to write something so large and detailed very much appreciated!
Whenever you are launching a mobile game you should soft launch it in one or two regions and make your improvements based on the data in the soft launch period until your game is showing decent retention, then do a global launch.
It seems now you have put the cart before the horse, you have had all these downloads, but now won’t be able to capitalise on them, and those are players that will never come back.
You are completely right mate and that’s the part that is hard to swallow.
Impressions without playing the game.
Graphics look acceptable, physics seem to perform pretty good, though the courses seem to be very long - which might mean the physics have to be exaggerated to accommodate for that.
Are you taking input from the players? Upon reviewing several pages there is one glaring request - to turn off ads completely. If the customers are paying a one time fee to turn off ads - they should not be seeing ads in the game.
Agree - and from feedback from users on the game page - there is an IAP to turn off ads, but it does not turn them off completely. - Why? Seems like an oversight - and one that customers do not appreciate if they pay for having ads removed.
For IAPs - what are you currently selling?
At this point in the games life cycle - some ideas could be visual improvements or additional courses.
The ball has a follow ribbon. You could offer different visuals for that, see if some players would buy it. Maybe a couple different ball - skin packs. Packs because you probably want to make the purchase at least $1.00, and no body in a right mind will buy one sphere skin for a dollar.
Additional course packs could also be an option.
And - I didn’t see any explosions - so - yeah - one star! 
Gotta add explosions!
Amen brother
HAHAHA i should add explosions! As for the ads yeah that was a bug but was fixed the minute it was brought to my attention.
We would love to do this as an IAP only game but right now the ads are making money, IAPS are avg of around $6.09 a day, where as ads make a lot more. So to balance this out is going to take some time for sure.
To increase retention we are taking the advice and making the game multiplayer
user acquisition, you need to invest in targeted advertising / user acquisition and be constantly increasing the amount of users your getting.
introduce analytics and begin monitoring everything so you can more easily answer these questions. the only real people who can tell you what will work and wont work is your players, so monitor them!
Generally though, you should be getting around 1-2% conversion rate for IAP, less than that and you need to go back to the analytics board and come up with a new marketing strategy and better value IAP
This only makes sense if your user LTV is greater than your UA cost, which right now in this title, wouldn’t be the case.
I can’t help but wonder if this is shooting yourself in the foot, taking short term gain over long term profitability.
I’ve certainly ditched plenty of games from my devices for showing too many ads. On the other hand games that show fewer ads stay around and get played for longer. Over the lifetime of the game I’ll end up watching more ads on a game that shows them less frequently.
I’m sure you can get some actual analytics to demonstrate this effect.
That is exactly the case our LTV is 0.014 based on users over revenue
We did run a test on this over 1 week and we lost around 80% revenue. The games rankings are still good, it still climbs the charts and holds its place. Right now we are truly stuck on “emm… What do we do now to make the most over the next year”
Well if your players aren’t coming back after a day then it doesn’t matter if you run it over a day, a week or a month. Of course you’re going to see immediate short term losses if you show less ads.
Did it do anything to retention?
It still sounds like you are prioritizing short term revenue. Fine if you want to run with that approach. But its probably not going to get you the maximum return over a year or so.
I don’t really like encouraging ads because I pretty much detest the infestation into our industry, however in this case the short term revenue might be all that is left to get. I think it will probably be the maximum return the game can earn over a year, because the analytics seem to be showing dwindling numbers.
Since there is no story to follow, a person is not compelled to stick around after they’ve experienced the gist of the game.
Initial appeal of the title followed by numbers falling off from ads not turning off after a purchase to turn off ads was made. Retention isn’t great although the numbers still seem high, so a lot of new players playing for a while then uninstalling.
When was release? When was peak user install? How long has the install base been shrinking?
Not to be pessimistic - just realistic - I don’t think multiplayer nor changing from ads to IAP will improve the down turn.
What is your next title?
Hey fella, the user base isnt shrinking we are staying around 8-10K downloads a day, In our peak (We got featured) we where getting around 25K downloads a day with a rank position of 9 in top overall sports.
We released in june and our peak was mid july,
Our retention is a measly 2% 