Mobile gaming is huge. It’s huge for people who enjoy the jump-into, jump-out-of games they can play while riding the train, waiting to see their doctor, scarfing down their lunch, or waiting on line. But it’s popular with developers for a whole different reason: impulse buying.
When you’re in the middle of a challenging level and you lose, but just one dollar could give your a few more chances, the part of your brain reserved for avoiding risk clicks off. You think to yourself “One time won’t hurt.” Until you do it again, and again, and again. And even if you only spend five dollars, if you and a few thousands of other people are doing the same thing at around the same time, that’s a few thousand dollars the developer of the game has just earned.
Mobile gaming is huge for two reasons: it’s accessibility and its simple yet effective monetary system.
A “casual game” doesn’t need the budget and star power of its big brother console brethren. It doesn’t need a few million dollars and a team of two hundred developers and more to function. It doesn’t need 1080p graphics or twenty hour campaigns or international multiplayer servers. A simple but addictive casual game only needs a good mechanic and microtransactions, where a dollar here or there adds up over times into millions. Or small purchases of sister apps through ads builds up revenue over time.
Thanks to a report by Ella Gati from the SOOMLA data science team, data shows that studios of developers are concentrating their efforts on particular times of day where optimize retention is high, and in turn, so is revenue. And now mobile trends could help developers decide when to target players for purchases, analyzing data of 250 games from 17 different genres and 188 countries over the period of one year. The sample also contains over one million purchases from over 240,000 users.
What The Data Shows:
Gamers prefer the evenings to play. This isn’t to say that’s the only time of day that they play–gamers play at any hour of the day. But the times that they are most likely to make in-app purchases is between 3pm and midnight, with peak times between 4pm and 8-9pm specifically. The report says it’s most likely due to longer play sessions that lead to points where they gamers are willing to pay.
Sales peak in the US at 8pm before they start to drop; in Russia, the peak is around 9-10pm. In other countries like Great Britain, sales go up more slowly throughout the day, with a peak more around 4pm to 6pm, and a decrease following afterwards. Users are most likely to play and pay on Saturdays, Sundays and Fridays, in that order, and players who purchase more than once are more likely to pay on the same day in the same period of time.
What Does This Mean For Players:
Expect developers to target user sales and discounts in peak hours. With the Grow Insights that allows developers to see what specific times users pay in real-time. With that in mind, developers can even experiment with how and when they offer things to see what affects happen immediately afterwards.
Developers can even send more in-game messages and offers knowing players will be more receptive during this time. Developers may even create “special” weekend offers, which sound like rare special deals to players, but are instead targeted focus peak times for sales. This may explain why PlayStation offers super cheap Flash sales on the weekend: gamers are more receptive to $1 to $5 sales during these peak times.
Is this a bad thing? Is this deceptive? No. Companies need to be smart to survive, especially what may be small time developers trying to earn an honest buck with a game they put blood, sweat and tears into. But that’s why it’s also up to consumers to be educated on these trends, and prevent themselves or family from impulse buying their way to debt if they can’t control themselves.
Source: Ella Gati, SOOMLA blog, via Gur Dotan, Gamasutra