Hello, I'm here to talk about
monetization. It's let's go whailing. It
is about a a summary of a huge bunch of
uh behavioral psychology. So the the
tricks on on how to monetize a game.
Well, some of you will probably u be
slightly shocked by what all the tricks
I have listed here, but I'll leave the
morality of it out of the talk. We can
discuss it uh if we have time later.
So let's dive right in. Uh first off,
Wall Street trader and oil shake got
into a fight. Who won? you guys did.
This is to remind you that a lot of the
spend comes from from the high high
paying guys, the whales. Um, and the
very best way to get these guys to spend
is to get two rich competitive guys to
fight each other and tell them, "I'll
give you a slight upside if you pay me."
Next off to remind you that the best way
to make sure of both your retention and
your monetization is to make sure you
have enough of an in-game economy in
there. Uh the thousand up there is
actually clearly lowballing it. Top
grossing games have in-game economies
worth tens of thousands. That's how you
can uh keep people in there. They have
lots of things to do to to stuff to
upgrade to progress along and that's how
you can can make them them spend a lot
as well since you can for instance uh
give a huge uh discount on something you
know uh this stuff is worth 150 uh euros
but now I'll give it to you for five. If
your whole in-game economy is worth less
than 150 you cannot do that of course.
So now a few of these um like frameworks
on how how to think of stuff. I've seen
suggestions to model what you sell
according to bartle types. I assume
you're all familiar with bartle types.
Uh the achievers want to progress in the
game. The socializers want to speak to
other people. The killers just want to
uh compete and kill each other. And the
explorers are the guys who are after
stories and and uh experiences.
So this is from Will Luton's uh
suggestion to you sell convenience to
the achievers which really means faster
progress customization to socializers
uh hats and stuff uh competitive
advantage that is pay to win for the
killers and content for explorers. Now
the reason I highlighted convenience
over up there or or progress is that
most of your sales will be here. uh
customization hats and stuff, they're
nice, but you you'll have a singledigit
percentage of your income coming from
that if you do both that and progress.
Uh competitive advantage is good, but
you can go overboard with it and have an
unbalanced game. Uh which is if it's too
clearly pay to win, people will stop
playing. And content, it takes a lot of
resources and time to do that. Uh
selling content is very expensive.
Hardly any team can keep up producing
content in in the uh at the pace needed.
This one I like a bit bit better. Um
hook habit hobby. This is a a uh model
from Dimmitri Draano of flare games. Uh
it's a model for how people progress in
a game. The hook is what gets you into
the game to try out a free-to-play game.
Then you build it into a habit that you
play multiple sessions every day and
then at the end it's the hobby phase
where where people uh see it as their
one of their main hobbies and they put
put lots of time and resources into it.
Now if we look at this from a
monetization perspective the hook is
where you put up an icebreaker. You want
to give a really really good deal
something that's a no-brainer. You would
be crazy to turn it down as a player.
The reason to give a really good deal up
front is by making people spend up
front, they are also emotionally
committing to your game. Their retention
will go up and the first spend is uh it
breaks the ice. Then they think of
themselves as spenders in the game. It's
okay for me to spend in the game. Uh
lots of people are otherwise have this
wall up. I will never pay for a mobile
game. So you need to break the the wall
first. The habit is like the main meat
of the game. This is where you sell the
faster progress as we just discussed.
And the hobby is for the guys who have
already maxed out. They're the guys who
have uh all of the Clash of Clans
building at the max level. They they are
already there. So you can no longer sell
progress to them. You have to sell
consumables. This is where you're
selling uh the faster healing times or
or faster build times of armies. Uh this
is also where you get basically
unlimited upper spend. There's no limit
to how much you can spend in, for
instance, Clash of Clans. So, let's go
down into some of of these more tricks.
Uh, gachas. Who hasn't heard of gachas?
Excellent. Uh, most of you have. So,
gachas,
uh, they're named after gacha pon, these
Japanese machines, which are sort of
slot machines that give you collectible
stuff. on random you get collectible
stuff but it's really the same mechanic
that we have had in in western markets
for for collectible playing cards like
uh Magic the Gathering for ages. You
cannot no matter how much you spend you
cannot directly get the card you want.
you have to over and over again pay to
get uh a bunch of random cards and hope
that the thing you wanted is in there or
then you like trade them somehow uh if
there's what wasn't what you hoped for.
Um these are great for for again both
monetization and retention because
people like uh the um the lottery part
of it. Uh if you want look it look up
Skinner box to know why. Um, it's really
a lot more exciting and you give get
more content because people cannot
immediately progress to the stuff they
want. They have to keep trying a few
times. So, it really takes like five
times as long to get the collection that
they need compared to just progressing
and collecting soft currency and buying
it straight off.
Okay. Then think about uh how you want
to get get to um get to your millions.
Do you go the king route of having a
huge volume of players and a fairly
modest lifetime value for each spender?
Or do you go uh the machine ser route of
having a very hardcore game that uh like
95% of the population is going to look
like what is that? But the 5% that
actually do play it, they will spend a
lot. Just know where you stand on this
hot state. There's an excellent uh book
about um behavioral psychology called uh
thinking fast and slow. Uh this is the
fast thinking. I'm telling you that the
fast thinking mode is what you want. The
slow thinking is is your analytical
brain. Uh what's 12* 47? I'm sure all of
you can answer that. But you have to
start your actual thinking brain to do
that. Uh now if I say complete the
sentence bread and
everyone's got butter.
So that's the fast thinking. Our brain
works in these two modes and starting
the analytical part of your brain is too
much to ask for a spend. How it applies
to games is make stuff immediately
useful, immediate gratification. If you
have u a level based game and you sell
some boosters up front, for instance, a
coin doubler or or uh some other stuff
that will help you, people will have to
analyze and think it through these
things are good for me. These will help
me progress before they do it. And they
won't do that. If on the other hand you
do like for instance in this uh temple
run once your game is over save me I
have a few seconds to spend hard
currency and and I get to continue or
similar in Candy Crush Saga at the very
moment that I lost uh I can see I just
played a bit more I can pass it make it
immediately useful
loss aversion this is uh people are much
more attached to the stuff they have
than an equal amount of things that they
can gain. Which means that um if I give
you an an offer, um I'll flip a coin. If
it's tails, I'll take €100 from you. If
it's uh heads, I'll give you €120. Who
would take the take the bet? No one. No,
we want we need more gain to offset the
loss is felt more strongly. uh we need
like 200 against 100 loss, 200 gain
against 100 loss, then we'll take the
deal. Uh in games, you can apply this by
giving people stuff that feels is in
their pocket and then threaten to take
it away unless uh they pay up. This is
lots of level based games do this. Uh
there are collectibles in in things like
Puzzle and Dragons. You collect along
the way. If you didn't finish the the
level, they'll take it from you. Now pay
to continue a bit.
Office and scarcity uh plays into the
loss aversion. If there are um rare
cards up here and you see see the goblin
going with these clocks tick tock. I'll
take it away from you. I'll take it away
from you. Uh they they are scarce. They
go away. This is a brilliant way to to
uh get more people to to spend more
subscription. Does anyone recognize the
guy? He's the builder from um uh Clash
of Clans. The point of this is the
builder h has a very specific way of
working. If you spend your hard currency
on this guy, you will only get the
benefit from him if you then keep coming
back to the game very often. So it
drives both retention and uh
monetization. Build stuff that that uh
makes people come back to your game a
lot in order to get the value out of
that.
The IKEA effect
uh this is to say stuff that we put work
into we value more highly. Uh you know a
really sells you cardboard stuff. It's
but you value it still somehow
slightly higher because you actually
built it yourselves.
Uh the model over here is from a uh
psychology book called Hooked, how to
build uh uh hooking products.
Uh this is how we build build habits. Uh
there's a trigger to remind us to do
something. Then we go do an action. We
get the variable reward just like the
gachas. we we get uh the lottery ticket
and then to really hook it down, we need
to ask people to do something for us, do
a little bit of work because then they
become emotionally attached to that and
then we set up the the next trigger
either internal or external. External
trigger means uh really a notification
in our case internal to that people have
in their minds that you know I started
building uh uh that tower or I planted
pumpkins that means I need to come back
in 8 hours. So that's the trigger and
then we go go round and round and and we
have the habit.
Anchoring is fun. Anchoring means that
when we don't know the price of stuff,
the first price we hear suggested for it
becomes our anchor and then we compare
everything to that. Uh for instance, an
iconic example, black pearls. Black
pearls when they first came on the
market, no one wanted them because
they're dull and black and don't look
very nice. Uh they were the guy who had
them told his his um summer traininee or
whatnot to to just dump the price of
them and get rid of them. Uh the summer
trainer understood it wrong and actually
hiked the price by 50 50% or 100%.
And then suddenly they beca became uh
these objects of desire.
Uh even more um special I think is this.
If I ask all of you to write down the
last two digits of your social security
number and then I have an auction like
uh imagine this is a fancy bottle of
wine and you get to bid on auction here.
The people like me, my last two digits
in my social security number are 99. I'd
bid a higher price on this than the guys
who who have uh like 10 or 05.
just because I wrote down a high number
on a paper will anchor my my thinking on
on what goes next. So, how to use this
in a game? Some games immediately uh
when you're in in the tutorial, they
suggest to you you should buy this good
for €50 or or something like that. I I
go like, "Oh, that's expensive. I'll
never do that." Of course, no. And I
expect them to say no. Then again I come
back back like uh a few se sessions
later and suggest they buy it for for 15
and I say that's a good value because my
anchor was at 50
social proof. Uh so this is we are herd
animals. We tend to do what all all the
others do. U you all sit quiet listening
to me because that's what all all of the
other guys do do here. So
uh especially when people are similar to
our to us this means that uh you should
have uh the socially accepted way of
behaving in your game should be paying.
You want to tell people for instance
their when a clan member of theirs spend
money you want the whole clan to know
because then that becomes the socially
acceptable way of behaving. uh you by
absolutely do not want to tell them that
the majority of people in your game
never spend money. That's poison. Never
tell them that.
Availability means that the stuff we
hear a lot about is the stuff we judge
as uh likely to happen. This for
instance can tie into gotas. Uh if there
are rare gachas, not every player will
see them every session. That's like the
definition of rare. which means that
they will think that it's not likely to
happen that they get one of those. Which
means that you should tell them about
it. Which means every time a clan member
gets one of the rare things, you should
broadcast it to to all of the others
like your friend got this rare or
legendary thing. Then they will judge it
more more um likely.
The right amount of choice. This is a
famous jam experiment. Uh they put up a
stall in a supermarket with 20 different
jams. Uh you know the ta have a taste
here then then you you have a a discount
go buy some. And then they had a control
group who had only five jams to taste.
Now for the one with 20, a lot of people
stopped by and tasted the jams. But for
the one with six, a lot more people
bought because they they know that
that's the best one. That's the one I
want. If there are 20, there's too much
choice. We just get get anxious. We
choose nothing.
There's a bunch of data on uh this that
whales take longer time time to convert.
This is just another reminder for you to
have content for a bloody long time.
the core loop go through through the
store. Uh have an example, Hill Climb
Racing because it's so fantastically
minimal and nice. You do your action,
your your in-game uh your core game
there and you go straight into the to
the meta game where you you do the
upgrades and then back there. So the
loop always go through the meta stage
where where your store where where
you're you're spending money. Labeling
technique. I haven't seen this actually
done in a game, but it's uh interesting.
it should work. If we tell people they
are a certain way, if we compliment them
on on being nice, good citizens, they
are more likely to behave as nice good
citizens. So, you should actually tell
your players that they are uh generous
individuals who who have a a taste for
good art and and uh want to support
their um their game developers by paying
you and buying APS.
related to that also to te telling
people the reason to do something makes
them much more uh likely to actually
follow follow through and and do that
spend because reasons the reasons don't
don't even have to be that good in order
for this to work
and last here are uh remember there are
four ways of progressing in in games in
general you can have a skill game based
game you can have a luck based game you
can have a game where you just progress
by grinding or you can pay to uh to
progress.
Make sure that your games aren't too
skill-based. I made that mistake myself.
A two skill-based game, you don't get
people to pay pay you because there's no
reason to. So, make sure grinding and
paying are legitimate versions of
progressing in the game. Thank you.
That's it. A few questions.
Any
questions tool?
Nope. Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Thanks. I'll give one more in case you
didn't have questions. Um,
reciprocity is a very very strong
mechanic. If I give something to you,
uh, if you give something to me, I feel
obliged to give something to you. To
trigger that. However, we need three
different uh criteria. The gift needs to
be unexpected,
personal, and significant. Not it can't
feel like something I gave to to to
everyone, which makes this a real
challenge to do as part of the game. But
I think you can incentivize your players
to trigger reciprocity between each
other. But that's a challenge for you
guys. Thank you.