How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
1–10 of 88 posts
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#2I luckily grew up in the time of BBS text games (TradeWars, Legend of the Red Dragon) and never got into the MMORPGs...but from my reading of articles about UO, WoW, and the like, I thought the average casual player could not stomach PvP? And yet in the OP, it sounds like a key mechanic in the game is to prey on players who don't log in as frequently. So while that's fun for the hardcore players, I would've thought that would drive off a large part of the target audience (i.e. casual gamers with iPhones).
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#3I luckily grew up in the time of BBS text games (TradeWars, Legend of the Red Dragon) and never got into the MMORPGs...but from my reading of articles about UO, WoW, and the like, I thought the average casual player could not stomach PvP? And yet in the OP, it sounds like a key mechanic in the game is to prey on players who don't log in as frequently. So while that's fun for the hardcore players, I would've thought t…
That's the beauty of the setup: since things are cheap on the lower levels, raids aren't really a problem, you can earn enough anyway. It's only when you reach the higher levels that they start to become a major pain.
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#4There is one quote that explains everything:
>> Jorge Yao, the game’s undisputed champion, figures he has spent north of $2500 in real money
>> on buying gems, and according to back-of-the-envelope calculations, the cost of fully fitting out your virtual
>> village is on the order of $5000 when you include walls. It’s little wonder the top clans leaderboard is full of
>> players like “>>> ruling House of Khalifa).
So just make game interesting for this Kuwaiti guys and you are bathing in gold.
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#5I luckily grew up in the time of BBS text games (TradeWars, Legend of the Red Dragon) and never got into the MMORPGs...but from my reading of articles about UO, WoW, and the like, I thought the average casual player could not stomach PvP? And yet in the OP, it sounds like a key mechanic in the game is to prey on players who don't log in as frequently. So while that's fun for the hardcore players, I would've thought t…
That's the beauty of the setup: since things are cheap on the lower levels, raids aren't really a problem, you can earn enough anyway. It's only when you reach the higher levels that they start to become a major pain.
And so by then, the habit is strong enough to get the casual player to start forking over money? I wonder what the balance there is...I would've guessed that users who were used to playing consistently without paying would have a strong psychological reaction toward having to pay...but I guess if you warm the water in the cooking pot slowly enough....
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#6There is one quote that explains everything: >> Jorge Yao, the game’s undisputed champion, figures he has spent north of $2500 in real money >> on buying gems, and according to back-of-the-envelope calculations, the cost of fully fitting out your virtual >> village is on the order of $5000 when you include walls. It’s little wonder the top clans leaderboard is full of >> players like “> >> ruling House of Khalifa). S…
Zynga had (and I assume still have) a 'platinum purchase program' that let players deposit money for in-app purchases via direct bank transfer. It was kept rather hush-hush, but it was definitely targeted at those spending thousands of dollars. It also offered things like referral schemes. A sort of 'high rollers club' for social games. I wouldn't be surprised if Supercell (who make Clash of Clans) had a similar thing going.
Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-secret-dealer-for-farmvil...
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#7And how much more awesome would Clash of Clans be if the effort of squeezing every last cent out had been put into improving the game itself instead?
Depends. If they were aiming to earn $182 million a year, then it's clearly pretty awesome. If they were aiming to build a great game, then perhaps not as much.
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the beauty of the setup: since things are cheap on the lower levels, raids aren't really a problem, you can earn enough anyway. It's only when you reach the higher levels that they start to become a major pain.
And so by then, the habit is strong enough to get the casual player to start forking over money? I wonder what the balance there is...I would've guessed that users who were used to playing consistently without paying would have a strong psychological reaction toward having to pay...but I guess if you warm the water in the cooking pot slowly enough....
Again, the psychology is clever: you're not being asked to pay to complete one specific thing, you're given the option of using gems for a huge range of things. So it's not "I need to pay $6.98 to upgrade my Wizard Tower" (which would make most people balk), but "if I let them charge my iTunes account a bit, I get this pack of 1400 gems, which lets me skip some tedious grinding and get all sorts of cool stuff quickly".
Also, a lot of people get a single Builder early on for 500 gems ($4.99), and when you've done that once, the barrier to doing it again is lowered.
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#9I think League of Legends or maybe Team Fortress 2 are about as good as it gets in terms of over-delivering value and not overselling their micro-transactions. Not everyone is going to be so successful with the same approach though.
Re: How Clash of Clans earns $500,000 a day with in-app purchases
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
And so by then, the habit is strong enough to get the casual player to start forking over money? I wonder what the balance there is...I would've guessed that users who were used to playing consistently without paying would have a strong psychological reaction toward having to pay...but I guess if you warm the water in the cooking pot slowly enough....
Again, the psychology is clever: you're not being asked to pay to complete one specific thing , you're given the option of using gems for a huge range of things. So it's not "I need to pay $6.98 to upgrade my Wizard Tower" (which would make most people balk), but "if I let them charge my iTunes account a bit, I get this pack of 1400 gems, which lets me skip some tedious grinding and get all sorts of cool stuff quickl…
Yep, that first builder is hard to avoid.
"I'll never pay for anything in this game. What, 50% increase in output? Well, I can reward the devs a bit I suppose..."
And thus begins the gemming.