Today the success stories of top gaming companies keep iterating the fact that the primary focus is on 3 major aspects:

• Create a strategy for app monetization right at the beginning
• Invest heavily on good and Actionable Real-time Analytics
• Focus on Daily User Engagement for better retention and Virality Campaigns

My awesome job keeps giving me the opportunity to discuss with Gaming Studios about their projects when they are still conceptualizing the game and I am amazed at the new features they try and bring to the games we play every day.

However, I most often end up noticing that the focus is heavy on frontend and less on the analytics and engagement part. Yes, user experience is of utmost importance but you can’t just ignore monetization even if your game is in the initial phases of development.

Out of the thousands of apps running on ShepHertz App42 Platform, a good chunk uses AppWarp and comes under the category of strategy games. Based on my understanding, here are a few things you should be doing to make your game the next sensation 🙂

Let’s first try and clear our basics of what a strategy game is: In a strategy game, everything revolves around harvesting resources, using which the player can build or battle before repeating the cycle.

Focus on Seamless On-boarding and Free Marketing:

Yes, it is almost imperative to ensure the gamer is on-boarded smoothly – when a new user joins the game, send them into a tutorial and ensure that they avoid the complicated aspects of the game.

Also, as a budding gaming studio, paid marketing might not be always a great option since your marketing budget would straight away get affected with the cost of customer acquisition. Instead, you should just allow your users to market your game and drive installations. Few ways to do this are:

• In-game prompt to user allowing sharing of Leaderboards, Score beaten of a facebook friend, Levels crossed, Achievement earned, Avatar, Hidden Items found, Items purchased from store on social media (Learn more about Gamification)
• Push/In-game prompt to user if they are falling short of gems/gold, ask them to share with 50 friends on Facebook and be rewarded with 500 free gems/gold

Investing on Analytics:

DAUs, Current Active Sessions, Avg. Sessions by an user per day, Returning Users, Daily Revenue from different items, Daily Spends by an user, Predict Churning Users, App Remarketing are few metrics over which you should be losing your sleep!

Accordingly, it comes becomes highly important to select a tool which not only offers these Analytics but allows it to be Actionable too.

Make Daily Engagement Core to your Game:

Your game definitely needs well designed habit loops to bring people back. Consider these scenarios for your strategy game and see if they make sense:

• Suggest users with a Push to upgrade Level 1 Castle with Level 2 Gold Storage
• Send a Push to highlight time remaining to complete a building or suggesting that the building will be ready in next 2 minutes
• In-game prompt to purchase shield and defend castle from attack
• Push to highlight that a facebook friend is offline and his village could be attacked
• Reward users when battles are won or current active session exceeds 10 minutes
• Incentivize users when items are purchased with discount coupons for next purchase or a cash back or free items
• Add an In-app chat feature allowing users to interact and create a community
• Send Push to users recommending other users based on similar skill levels or nearby location with  whom they can team up to raid a village
• Recommend users to purchase 2 or more In-app store itemswhich are purchased together by the other users / top players / users’ friends
• Trigger a Push campaign to notify that the users’ establishment could be attacked, if you notice that the user is inactive for 2-3 days

I am sure there are 1001 more scenarios in your game and my attempt is only to give you a subtle hint of how much you can do with it. Additionally, feel free to share feed/suggestions here. Also, if you have some cool ideas, hit me up and it will be fun brainstorming together! Should you have any query of what can be done with your existing/under-development game, write to us at support@shephertz.com and our customer success team will be happy to assist you.

Till next time 🙂