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Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category

  1. CPA, CAC and Customer Acquisition costs

    December 8, 2011

    The costs of acquiring customers for Facebook, browser and mobile games is soaring. At the same time, virality is ever more elusive as Facebook shuts down spam messages and mobile has still not harnessed the social graph on a technical level (although word-of-mouth is still very effective).

    The cost of acquiring a customer (often called CPA – Cost Per Acquisition – or CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost) is definitely rising. But how far?

    That’s a very difficult question. Not least because the difference between CPA and effective CPA (eCPA) is so critical.

  2. What share does the platform take?

    November 30, 2011

    The GAMESbrief revenue forecasting spreadsheet is aimed at forecasting gross revenues. Many people have asked me to include the cut taken by the platform holder since, in effect, these costs are always taken out.

  3. Bigpoint does sell the Tenth Drone for 1,000 EUr, but may not have made EUr 2 million from it

    November 25, 2011

    My post earlier this week quoting Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz and DarkOrbit producer Simon Davis on the success of the sale of the 10th Drone got a lot of Internet attention.

    A lot of people just flat out didn’t believe it. Others called it a hoax, a PR stunt or just me being gullible.

    All of this is good. It has helped to get at the truth by following up further with Bigpoint. And the truth, disappointingly, is that Bigpont may not have made €2 million from the 10th Drone.

  4. ARPPU in freemium games

    November 23, 2011

    Most media people think in terms of normal distributions. If the price of a game “averages” £15 over its lifetime, total revenue = number of units sold x average price. The entire industry therefore fixates on number of units sold. In the free-to-play world, revenues don’t follow a normal distribution. They follow a power-law curve. (Or, to put it another way, the handful of whales – people who distort the spending average in the way that Bill Gates distorts the wealth average – are critically important.)

  5. Bigpoint sells 2,000 spaceship drones. For 1000 euros each. In just four days.

    November 23, 2011

    If you needed evidence that whales exist in online gaming look no further than Bigpoint.

    The company is on course to deliver €200 million in revenue from virtual goods in 2011 from over 215 million registered users.It’s secret is not to make about a year from each customer, but to allow many people to play for free while allowing those who love their games to spend a lot of money.

  6. Whales, Dolphins and Minnows – the beating heart of a free-to-play game

    November 16, 2011

    The secret to a free-to-play game is not volume. It is not about getting millions of users and relying on only a tiny percentage of that enormous volume to cover your costs.

    It is about understanding the power-law. You can read more about the concept in my post How much is your game worth? but the secret to success in free-to-play is this…

  7. Four ethical principles we used when making Forever Drive

    November 15, 2011

    “Free-to-play” games have caused intense reactions in the gaming community, with strong views on whether it is an ethically sound way to design games or whether it is slot machines in disguise. When we designed Forever Drive, we saw the opportunity to experiment with this business model for the first time. More importantly, we took it upon ourselves as a challenge to create a game that was free of any unethical mechanisms.

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