Friday, July 11, 2014

Marvel Puzzle Quest: A Look Behind The Scenes

For about a month now, a bunch of us Sons have been addicted to Marvel Puzzle Quest, available as an app on the iTunes store. We've created a small group of us (an "alliance") that involves four Sons, an extra guy, and SoSG regular QuadSevens. You'll be happy to know that our alliance is trucking along pretty well in the game (and if any SoSG regular wants to join please drop a comment in this post; not sure if we have the money right now but we may be able to scrounge some up).

I've already dropped $15 on this "free-to-play" app: $10 to expand my roster of characters, and $5 to expand the alliance to include a sixth member. I think AC has spent at least $10 as well.

The game is pretty well-designed with retention mechanisms to keep coming back. And in goofing around on the net, I found a series of articles by the Demiurge CEO, who described their path from a game developer to a mobile free-to-play developer, and how they're constantly modifying this game in order to keep people engaged. It's pretty fascinating how analytic it all is behind the scenes; sort of like Moneyball, for apps.

One thing our alliance has noticed is that leaderboards do not seem to be unique. In other words, there have been a couple of us working iwthin the same alliance who have finished in the "top 10" individually, but we've noticed that we don't see our other alliance members' names in the top rankings. Demiurge seems to acknowledge that there are actually multiple leaderboards being used by their servers:

Leaderboards: When players join an event, they’re assigned to a leaderboard. These leaderboards are queried by the game engine to show player rankings and hand our rewards.

Rewards: Leaderboard placement is used to send players rewards during the events and at their conclusion. We follow the now-standard structure for our events. Players engage with the event and earn points that enable them to earn “progression rewards.” At the end of an event, players receive a set of “placement rewards” based on their ranking relative to other players on their leaderboard.

Interesting. But these guys have it down. Here's some notes on team-ups, and how they use them to seed future character purchases:

Certain missions called “team-ups” offer players a “loaner” version of a new character. These missions give us a chance to show off how fun it is to play with a particular character. By clearly presenting the value to the player, we hope they’ll spend some of their currency to purchase that character to have for future missions.

These missions also enable us to have a soft gate on progress. By giving the player a low-level version of the character, we make the mission more challenging unless they have their own, high-level version of the character to swap in. Players can overcome these challenges by having a high-level version of other characters or, more easily, by having a high level version of the team-up character.

And on alliances, it's a pretty thoughtful revenue-driving mechanism. Too bad we didn't get in earlier, when it was less costly to make huge alliances (which are now dominating the game):

The goal of alliances

While this series focuses on ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user), the reason Marvel Puzzle Quest is successful is that our game does a good job of encouraging spending over a very long period of time. We like it that way — rather than fostering an ecosystem of whale-centric burst spending, we covert players steadily. We believe we’re providing a valuable service to our players, and they reciprocate by throwing us a few bucks every week. The data bears this out — about 8 percent of our players in March spent money in the game, and a healthy portion of our revenue is coming from players who started playing way back in October.

At the same time, our position in the market wasn’t defensible. We want players to be enjoying Marvel Puzzle Quest for a year after they started playing, but we built a game that achieved stickiness because it was “addictive”. There’s plenty of other “addictive” games out there. If we’re going to build truly long-term value, we need other reasons for people to keep playing and social connections are one of the best tools we have as developers.

As you can see, user acquisition remains a challenge for us as much as everyone else in mobile. You might think the Marvel license alone would peg us in the top-100 most-downloaded games, but there are many Marvel games out there. Aside from a simple Facebook sharing mechanic, we had no in-game systems for players to ask their friends to start playing.

Anyway, it's a good read. I'm sure I'll stay addicted to this for a little while longer. It's pretty good fun.

The whole eight-part series can be accessed here.

15 comments:

Dusty Baker said...

But what is the actual gameplay?

I just want to killKillKILL!!!

QuadSevens said...

If you're patient (or cheap) and can sneak in a few games throughout the day, you can build up a pretty nice roster without making any in game purchases.

Plus there's satisfaction in building up some strong characters without resorting to buying the power ups.

QuadSevens said...

And killing really is the most fun part of the game!

Hideo Nomo said...

I feel like I'm the slacker of the alliance. I've only got three guys up to about level 22 and just keep using them over and over. I liked the "Heroic" stuff, but that seems to be gone now.

Fred's Brim said...

what?

Orel said...

Jeremy Lin is a Laker

Franklin Stubbs said...

what?

Steve Sax said...

I'm done with Lebron and all of the circuses around his "decisions". He is in love with hype about himself. I'm surprised his last name isn't Kardashian.

QuadSevens said...

I thought he was going to make his decision known by wearing his new team's jersey at the World Cup Final. At least he didn't take over ESPN this time around.

spank said...

killKillKILL Jim Buss!

Alex Cora said...

This game is taking way too much of my time. Between this and the Dodgers, it has been a "productive" summer so far.

Pride of Dong said...

I'm getting awesome by replaying missions. I'm like cartmen on the world of Warcraft episode, killing board!

Steve Sax said...

@Pride: need an alliance?

Pride of Dong said...

Sure, I am a free agent right now...

Pistol Pete Reiser said...

I've become addicted. Fucking great. First heroin, now this. Fuck me.

Can I join your alliance? I'll help pay for any alliance expansion or whatever. What's the alliance name? Sorry if that's been posted already.

And fuck the giants.