Social Games: Earth is in danger!
One day in November 2009, an artist, a unixoid and a flasher gathered in one room. They were united by the fact that they were suddenly left without work, so the main question sounded classically: who is to blame and what to do? Having dealt with the first part of the agenda of that day, we moved on to the second - what to do? Of course, it was decided to make a game for social networks, since we had enough experience to do this.
There was little time to think and what game to do was decided quickly. Farms, tamagochiki and razvalki cities we all were already in the liver, so we decided to take a chance. Recalling some successful attempts to swim against the current in browser games (for example, at that time we were inspired by the Technomagic browser), we decided to develop the ideas of casual battles between live players. So there was a game called “The Earth is in danger”, based on the battles between real players “on pebbles” and ... in the sci-fi setting.
The “plot” was as simple as two kopecks and consisted of the following: aliens flew to our planet and began to capture it. A player could join earthlings or aliens in order to gain experience in endless battles, buy weapons for earned money, recapture territory from the opposite faction, etc. Looking back, it can be said that it was a very (even perhaps too) bold decision that brought a lot of rake to our heads afterwards :)
Links to the game: on VKontakte in MoyMir
')
Having drawn up a business plan and looking at familiar and old connections, the question of where and what to do the game was resolved quickly enough. The work began to boil in November and for the new year the first beta version for VKontakte and My World was ready. Here the first disappointment befell us: the game itself did not grow as much as we wanted. Having relied on popular methods of viral attraction of players, we didn’t even admit that there would be problems with it, however, despite the fact that players came and stayed, the growth rates were far from planned. Continuing work on the game itself, we began to think where to get the “traffic”. First of all, we took advantage of the offer of MyWorld: the starter package of advertising (banner displays) for all new applications. But it turned out to be a little confusing to him: the CTR of the displayed banners did not exceed 0.04%, which made 21,000,000 impressions into several thousand installations. Rejecting the idea of ​​buying advertising with such an "efficiency", we were faced with the only choice: to make small free toys that would promote the main paid application (our game in this case). It is said - done: a week and a half to the game - and we have laid out simple but addictive toys Polyanka and Yevleherka , which, on just one beautiful banner under the game itself, brought quite a lot of new players to Earth at risk. The flow of payments began to grow and the future was beginning to turn pink again. But again, not for long. The influx of new users did not last as long as we would like - about two weeks after launch, each game stopped bringing players and the situation returned to its original position.
Meanwhile, the end of February came and it was time to sum up the interim results. Despite the positive trend, revenues and installations differed from those planned in the business plan (not in our favor, of course), but we already had one working strategy: the mini-games of “traffiogenogen”. Having pushed the improvement of the main game to the background, we decided to switch to mini-games completely and did not lose. The following our toys were able to improve the situation again, but about one game - “Build your castle” ( link ), I want to even mention separately. In my opinion, it is still behind her that an absolute record in the number of installations of a single game “per day” in My World. Immediately after putting out the first day, the game was added by almost 100,000 people ( prufpik! ), Which was a pleasant surprise for ourselves, and our only server almost broke from the load (but withstood).
Having dealt with pressing problems of attracting new players, we decided to try to go west and to be honest the results of this decision are not clear to us so far: after spending about a month, we, on the one hand, saw that even without a penny of advertising, games could still be there to grow on their own, but getting people to pay is even more difficult than on VK (payment acceptance is a separate problem). True, it is still too early for us to sum up the results on Facebook: let's see how it will be in the future, there are interesting trends.
In addition to Facebook, we tried to work with Odnoklassniki, who opened their API in the late spring for the masses, but their contract brought familiar lawyers to such a shock that the attempt to conclude it was abandoned until better times. To be honest, it is very incomprehensible why Odnoklassniki, with all their staff of intelligent people, could not yet compose a normal contract under which you can work honestly (well, this is a personal opinion, of course).
At this the story of our startup does not end, but I think it's time to round out this story. I hope someone can learn useful lessons from this article.
Although not a penny was invested in the advertisement, more than 2000 people “simultaneously” regularly play in our game (with each other, that is); revenues already cover expenses, but there is still much to grow. Therefore, we are currently looking for partners for the development of the game on VKontakte, and of course we are open to any other offers, of course :)
In contact with.
The audience is fastidious and has already seen a lot in its path, is more hardcore, and therefore is not particularly ready to pay. Legally it’s not easy to work with them: the contract is only with those who earn at least 200,000 votes per month (according to rumors of such applications, only a couple of dozen for the whole Vkontakte now).
My world.
It doesn’t have as many visitors as it seems, apparently there is a large part of people who simply cannot be reached with a “virus” - they have no friends and can only be lured by advertising on the site, but are paid more actively than Vkontakt’s people. Legally, it is most easy to work with MyMir: a competent offer contract (although not without subjective shortcomings), there is no commission on income.
Classmates.
Although there is very little competition between games at the moment, however, in order to work “white” with them, you need to be a very brave person - some clauses of the agreement look strange. In addition, the process of playing the game is non-trivial. The solvency of the audience according to rumors does not exceed the "average".
There was little time to think and what game to do was decided quickly. Farms, tamagochiki and razvalki cities we all were already in the liver, so we decided to take a chance. Recalling some successful attempts to swim against the current in browser games (for example, at that time we were inspired by the Technomagic browser), we decided to develop the ideas of casual battles between live players. So there was a game called “The Earth is in danger”, based on the battles between real players “on pebbles” and ... in the sci-fi setting.
The “plot” was as simple as two kopecks and consisted of the following: aliens flew to our planet and began to capture it. A player could join earthlings or aliens in order to gain experience in endless battles, buy weapons for earned money, recapture territory from the opposite faction, etc. Looking back, it can be said that it was a very (even perhaps too) bold decision that brought a lot of rake to our heads afterwards :)
    |
Links to the game: on VKontakte in MoyMir
')
Having drawn up a business plan and looking at familiar and old connections, the question of where and what to do the game was resolved quickly enough. The work began to boil in November and for the new year the first beta version for VKontakte and My World was ready. Here the first disappointment befell us: the game itself did not grow as much as we wanted. Having relied on popular methods of viral attraction of players, we didn’t even admit that there would be problems with it, however, despite the fact that players came and stayed, the growth rates were far from planned. Continuing work on the game itself, we began to think where to get the “traffic”. First of all, we took advantage of the offer of MyWorld: the starter package of advertising (banner displays) for all new applications. But it turned out to be a little confusing to him: the CTR of the displayed banners did not exceed 0.04%, which made 21,000,000 impressions into several thousand installations. Rejecting the idea of ​​buying advertising with such an "efficiency", we were faced with the only choice: to make small free toys that would promote the main paid application (our game in this case). It is said - done: a week and a half to the game - and we have laid out simple but addictive toys Polyanka and Yevleherka , which, on just one beautiful banner under the game itself, brought quite a lot of new players to Earth at risk. The flow of payments began to grow and the future was beginning to turn pink again. But again, not for long. The influx of new users did not last as long as we would like - about two weeks after launch, each game stopped bringing players and the situation returned to its original position.
Meanwhile, the end of February came and it was time to sum up the interim results. Despite the positive trend, revenues and installations differed from those planned in the business plan (not in our favor, of course), but we already had one working strategy: the mini-games of “traffiogenogen”. Having pushed the improvement of the main game to the background, we decided to switch to mini-games completely and did not lose. The following our toys were able to improve the situation again, but about one game - “Build your castle” ( link ), I want to even mention separately. In my opinion, it is still behind her that an absolute record in the number of installations of a single game “per day” in My World. Immediately after putting out the first day, the game was added by almost 100,000 people ( prufpik! ), Which was a pleasant surprise for ourselves, and our only server almost broke from the load (but withstood).
Having dealt with pressing problems of attracting new players, we decided to try to go west and to be honest the results of this decision are not clear to us so far: after spending about a month, we, on the one hand, saw that even without a penny of advertising, games could still be there to grow on their own, but getting people to pay is even more difficult than on VK (payment acceptance is a separate problem). True, it is still too early for us to sum up the results on Facebook: let's see how it will be in the future, there are interesting trends.
In addition to Facebook, we tried to work with Odnoklassniki, who opened their API in the late spring for the masses, but their contract brought familiar lawyers to such a shock that the attempt to conclude it was abandoned until better times. To be honest, it is very incomprehensible why Odnoklassniki, with all their staff of intelligent people, could not yet compose a normal contract under which you can work honestly (well, this is a personal opinion, of course).
At this the story of our startup does not end, but I think it's time to round out this story. I hope someone can learn useful lessons from this article.
Results
Although not a penny was invested in the advertisement, more than 2000 people “simultaneously” regularly play in our game (with each other, that is); revenues already cover expenses, but there is still much to grow. Therefore, we are currently looking for partners for the development of the game on VKontakte, and of course we are open to any other offers, of course :)
Impressions from social networks.
In contact with.
The audience is fastidious and has already seen a lot in its path, is more hardcore, and therefore is not particularly ready to pay. Legally it’s not easy to work with them: the contract is only with those who earn at least 200,000 votes per month (according to rumors of such applications, only a couple of dozen for the whole Vkontakte now).
My world.
It doesn’t have as many visitors as it seems, apparently there is a large part of people who simply cannot be reached with a “virus” - they have no friends and can only be lured by advertising on the site, but are paid more actively than Vkontakt’s people. Legally, it is most easy to work with MyMir: a competent offer contract (although not without subjective shortcomings), there is no commission on income.
Classmates.
Although there is very little competition between games at the moment, however, in order to work “white” with them, you need to be a very brave person - some clauses of the agreement look strange. In addition, the process of playing the game is non-trivial. The solvency of the audience according to rumors does not exceed the "average".
References
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/96840/
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