Stats, Best Practices and
Common Mistakes for F2P Games
David P. Chiu
Vice President

Who Am I?
• 5+ years at Intel in Gaming Developer Relations & Business Development,
Gaming Consumer Marketing and Campaign Strategy
• Former Senior Director of Business Development and Developer Relations at
Kongregate heading BD worldwide for Kong web and mobile
• Worked with hundreds of developers on F2P games
• Currently Vice President of R2 Games USA

Reality Squared Games
• R2Games is a leading international publisher of free-to-play
browser and mobile games for core gamers
• 300+ employees with offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai,
Shenzhen, Seoul and the San Francisco Bay Area
• CEO Jared Psigoda named Forbes China 30 Under 30

CEO Jared Psigoda
Forbes China 30 under 30

Reality Squared Games
• R2Games is a leading international publisher of free-to-play browser and
mobile games for core gamers
• R2Games.com is a leading platform for F2P games serving 42M+ users in
9 different languages worldwide
• Browser games include Wartune, League of Angels, Dragon Pals (top
monetizing games on Kongregate.com, Kabam.com, etc.
• Mobile games include EZ PZ RPG, Clicker Heroes, Bigfoot Hunter and
Shards of Magic

R2 Games Portfolio

The Mobile Landscape
• F2P is the dominant business model
• Usually only 1-2 paid games in the iOS Top 150 Grossing
• Currently only one paid game: Reigns (Editors’ Choice)
• Mobile players used to downloading free games now
• Free games offer minimal barrier to entry and yield
much higher download rates

Mobile F2P vs Paid
• Threes was an original puzzle game priced at $1.99
• 2048 was a copy of a clone of a clone of Threes and was free
• Threes found moderate success while 2048 became a worldwide
phenomenon
Creator of Threes:

Mobile F2P vs Paid
• Difficult for paid games to compete with free games
• And F2P is complex
• Takes time and live servicing a F2P game to really learn
• Particularly difficult if you are used to making paid games
instead of games-as-a-service

Mobile User Acquisition is Expensive
• Need solid grasp of F2P to have high monetizing game
• Need a lot of capital to do paid UA

App Store Features are Incredibly
Powerful
• Minor feature: 10k to 100k+ installs
• Medium feature: 100k-300k+ installs
• Major feature: 300k to 1M+ installs
***For F2P games, not paid

Best App Store Features Are Hard to Get
# of Apps 1.96M
Approx. # of apps each week ~9k
# of Games 439k
Approx. # of games each week ~3k
Promo slots of new games 16

The Mobile Landscape
• Mobile distribution is very challenging
• Competition is fierce:
o 439k existing games and thousands new
games each week
• App store features are hard to get
• Viral hits are rare (Flappy Bird)
• User acquisition is expensive
Your game needs to retain and monetize very well to succeed!

• I can now tell you that the giant bubble on the top right is a
Chinese MMO game called Wartune, published on
Kongregate.com by R2Games
• 36+ months since Wartune launch and still #1 top grossing
game on many platforms
• Lifetime ARPPU has increased to $700 (08/15/2016)
• Why is Wartune so successful?
Graph From Previous Talk
R2Games
Source: Kongregate, Nov 2013
Wartune
(published by R2)

Source: Kongregate
Long Term Retention Matters

• The more someone plays a game, they more likely they are to convert from a player to a buyer.
• Becomes a hobby and most committed fans can choose to spend
• Real world example: You can watch baseball for free on TV but hardcore fans choose to spend money on tickets
Long Term Retention Matters
Wartune Lifetime % Buyers by Monthly Cohort

• The more someone plays a game, the more they spend
• More time = More transactions
Long Term Retention Matters
Wartune Lifetime ARPPU by Monthly Cohort

• Therefore, user LTV increases with time
Long Term Retention Matters
Wartune ARPU or User LTV by Monthly Cohort

Majority of Spending Comes From Most Committed Players (Wartune)

Best Practices for Increasing Retention

• MMORPG with turn-based battles, city-building and isometric-perspective exploration
• Top grossing game in China before making it to the West
Wartune Quick Intro

• Solo and team PvE
• Solo and team PvP
• Asynch raids
• Guild battles
• World boss raids
• Farming
• Fishing
• City Building
• Weapon/Gear
• Synthesizing & Upgrading
• Astral Collecting and
• Combining
• Etc.
Pace the introduction of new features/gameplay modes to not overwhelm players with a long and intimidating tutorial.
Keep Players Busy!
More things to do = more players staying

• Simple Daily Tasks to earn rewards
• Scheduled Limited Time Events
• Daily Quests
Keep Players Busy!
More things to do = more players staying

• Daily play bonuses are good to get users coming back regularly
• But improve on the typical 5-7 day daily bonuses
• Wartune players get a stamp for every day of the month they play the game
• Rewards for playing 2 days up to 26 days
• Incentivizes longer term play
• Doesn’t “punish” players for missing a day
Keep Them Coming Back

Keep Them Coming Back
• Shards of Magic’s daily log-in screen
• Stacks daily rewards and cumulative
rewards

• Motivate players to get to the next milestone
• Leveling up unlocks features, content, rewards
• Positive reinforcement for progressing
Aim for the Stars

• And tap into their sense of competition
• Leaderboards for everything
Aim for the Stars
• Lifetime, daily gain and weekly gain
• So players can compete in many ways

Best Practices for Increasing Monetization

Depth of Spend
• The longer someone plays your game the more likely they are to buy and the less
price sensitive they become
• Give committed players the ability to spend at $1,000+ if they want
• Have lots of items that are appealing and useful to all players from beginners to
elder players who have played for months or years
• Unlock new items to buy as players level up
• But must also create reasons to want the elder items
• Don’t create a situation where spending is capped by availability or utility.

• Location, location, location – make the store easy to find!
• Show balance of hard currency (Balens)
• Shortcut to buy more (Recharge button)
• Make it easy to find the what you want
o Meaningful categories and item descriptions
o No massive scroll bars
Make the Shopping and Buying Experience as Frictionless as Possible

• Bonuses % or/and items for larger hard currency packages
• Clearly call out bonuses of larger packages!
• Make all packages visible in one page for easy comparisons
(no scroll bars)
• Hide large packages until after first purchase
Buy Currency Screen

• First time buyer/ Starter packages
• Seed players with some paid/hard currency and guide “intro purchase”
• Deals/events to get people into the habit of spending regularly
• Offer items that enhance the gameplay experience (not just speedups)
Make the Shopping Experience Interesting
• Intro the right items at the right time
• Lvl 1 players should not be shown the lvl 100+ holy sword that’s on
sale for $100)
• Keep them coming back – keep store fresh by adding new items,
unlocking items as players level up and featuring seasonal and time-
limited items/ sales

Create Sense of Urgency

Ad Monetization
• Ads offer an opportunity to monetize the ~95% of players
that will not spend on IAP
• Clicker Heroes features rewarded videos for hard currency
• Player opt-in and reward leads to a better user experience
• Banner ads and interstitials videos can be disruptive
• Use mediation layer and multiple ad networks to maximize
eCPMs
• ~40% of Clicker Heroes revenue is from ads
• (Clicker Heroes peaked at Top 104 Grossing in the US)

Other DO’s and DON’T’s

Timing is Everything: Server Times
• F2P: games-as-a-service with players all over the world in different time zones
• Don’t let players wondering what time zone the game is in
• Specify time zones or set a server time and have it be visible so there is no confusion leading players to miss events/sales
• Minimizes confusion and player frustration
• Bar on top of all of R2’s games clearly lists:
• The server time
• The next event’s start time and a countdown to it

Timing is Everything: Server Time Zones
• DON’T do separate servers if your CCUs are too low
• DO ensure the CCUs are high enough for competition, and merger servers if needed
• DO have at least 2 instances of an event if you do not split servers by time zone
• For event-centric games, consider separate servers by time zone
Wartune (English) servers
• DON’T forget to make adjustments for Daylight Saving Time
changes

• Events drive up player engagement
• Schedule events during periods of highest CCU
• For core gamers, primetime is in evenings and weekends
Timing is Everything: Primetime
Monkey King Online PCU by day

Getting to Market

Self-Publish?
Evaluate your game and team:
• What are your goals for the game and studio?
• Does your team understand F2P?
• Do I have the key talent to do a F2P game?
• Do you have enough runway to learn F2P and iterate game in test markets?
• Do you have enough capital for paid UA?

Is a Publisher Right For Me?
• How can a publisher help me?
• Allow you to focus on the game while they handle:
• Marketing (screenshots, ads, videos, ASO, split tests, PR, etc)
• App store relations and featuring
• Analytics
• Customer Service and Community Management
• Functional QA Testing
• Localization and localization QA, etc.
• Royalty advances to help you finish the game (not all publishers do this)
• Or/and provide marketing guarantees (not all publishers do this)
• May help negotiate and secure IP for the game

Is a Publisher Right For Me?
Evaluate the publisher:
• Are your goals and interests aligned?
• Are they putting some skin behind the game (advances, marketing, resources for
localization, QA, analytics, etc)?
• Potential for long term partnership (e.g. strategic investments)
• Do they understand F2P and have a track record of success?
• Do they have the right talent at the company?
• Does the publisher have 1st party and 3rd party games?
• Does your game fit into their audience and portfolio (casual vs core)?

CLICKER HEROES
The idle RPG that started the subgenre!

Apple’s 10 Greatest Clickers

HOW IT ALL GOT STARTED
• First game to combine idle and RPG mechanics
• Originally developed by developer Playsaurus as a PC browser game and it took the
internet by storm!
• Ported to Steam and became an instant hit!

GOING MOBILE
• Playsaurus partners with R2 Games for mobile version and all future platforms
• The mobile journey begins!

GOING MOBILE: CHALLENGES
• Clicker Heroes originally built as Flash game
• Convert to AIR for mobile
• PROBLEM: Vector art performs poorly on mobile processors
• SOLUTION: Use Dragonbones and covert to bitmaps
• PROBLEM: Few 3rd party SDKs support AIR (SDKs for attribution, analytics, push notif, etc)
• SOLUTION: Create custom AIR native extensions (ANE) and plug-ins and let the developer
focus on actual game development
• PROBLEM: Many clones launched on mobile before Clicker Heroes mobile even started
development
• SOLUTION: Improve the game experience and add new differentiating features
• PROBLEM: Many stolen copies on the app store and websites, especially in China
• SOLUTION: R2 Legal team in China took down all IP-infringing copies

GOING MOBILE: NEW MOBILE FEATURES
• FTUE
• Cloud Saves
• Rewarded video ads
• Mobile UI

GOING MOBILE: NEW MOBILE FEATURES
• Clans and clan-based battles against Immortals

GOING MOBILE: LOCALIZATION
• Clicker Heroes originally only in English
• Added language support for:
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Russian
• Portuguese
• Simplified Chinese
• Traditional Chinese

SOME LOCALIZATION TIPS
• It’s not just about translation/localization but also culturalization
- Jokes/puns, pop culture references, events/holidays, etc.
- Adjust UI
- Adjust Economy
- Adjust difficulty
• Avoid subpar translations/localization. Work with localization experts that are:
- Gamers that understand gaming lingo
- Native speakers of the target language
- Have played the game and translate in the context

Featured by both Apple and Google App Stores
Clicker Heroes Global Launch
US Apple App Store
US Google Play

Clicker Heroes Global Launch
Featured in 122
countries by the Apple
App Store!
Russia France
Germany
UK Italy

Featured in
122 countries
by the Apple
App Store!
Clicker Heroes Global Launch

iOS Best of August
iOS What We’re Playing

Press Coverage

Top #1 Adventure Game!
Top #1 RPG!
Clicker Heroes Global Launch (iOS)

Clicker Heroes Global Launch (iOS)
Top #3 Downloaded Game on US iPhones!
Top #10 Downloaded App on US iPhones!

Clicker Heroes Global Launch (iOS)
Top #3 Downloaded Game on US iPhones
Top #104 Grossing Game on US iPhones

Clicker Heroes Global Launch (Google Play)
Top #4 Downloaded Game on Google Play (US)

Clicker Heroes Global Launch (Google Play)
Top Downloaded Game and App on Google Play!

Top #2 Downloaded RPG!
Top #34 Grossing RPG!
Clicker Heroes Global Launch (Google Play)

LEARNINGS
• Clicker Heroes has pretty crazy high retention #s
• Mobile vs web 30-day LTV: 3x
• High retention games are ideal for ads
• Rewarded video ads are a better UX vs. interstitials
• Find a good ad mediation partner with a robust real-time dashboard
• Good localization helped get great app store features in other countries
D1: 66.7%
D7: 42.8%
D14: 32.9%

Thank You
Questions?
david@r2games.com