Securing a coveted spot in the top charts can be a game-changer for developers. It opens doors to increased downloads, revenue, player engagement, and long-term success in the competitive mobile gaming world. To help you navigate the complexities of app stores, we developed the Store Intelligence platform.

Store rankings are not just empty metrics; they provide valuable insights into player preferences, market trends, and the factors that drive a game’s success. Access to such metrics is especially important for developers and studios aspiring to get to the top, who do not have the resources for expensive data solutions and data scientists to help them translate acquired data into actionable insights.

Together with our Benchmarks, Store Intelligence presents a tangible opportunity to understand your competitors’ strategies and how they turn them into engaging gameplay mechanics, monetization strategies, and more. The biggest advantage? Store Intelligence allows you to apply granular filters, such as store type, game category, date, and rank change, or focus on paid versus free games. That means you can view similar titles to yours and follow their development.

Consider this guide your first step in optimizing your games to increase their visibility in the stores:

Identify high-potential keywords

One of the keys to discoverability is understanding the keywords or search terms that lead players to top-ranked games. You might have heard about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a marketing strategy to rank a website on the top of search engines such as Google, attracting organic (not paid) traffic.

With Store Intelligence, you can pinpoint which keywords effectively drive this traffic. You can then optimize your game title, description, and metadata to increase visibility and attract more players.

Competitive analysis

Top-ranked games didn’t get there by chance. With Store Intelligence, you can analyze the ranking positions of successful games in your category and genre to uncover valuable insights. You can then use their gameplay mechanics, art styles, and user reviews to identify common elements across successful titles that resonate with players. This information can guide your game development decisions.

Pricing and monetization

Successful monetization strategies often align with higher rankings. With Store Intelligence, you can analyze store ranking fluctuations and their connection to in-game monetization to optimize pricing models and in-app purchases, driving more revenue. This approach can help you optimize your monetization strategies.

Promotion strategies

Studying the promotional strategies employed by top-ranked games can offer valuable lessons. Investigate their advertising campaigns, social media engagement, influencer partnerships, and other marketing efforts. Understanding what works for others can inform your own promotional initiatives, with Store Intelligence as your guide. Here are some tools to help you out:

• Google Ads Transparency Center: Find active ads published through Google (FREE)
• AdSpy: Searchable database of Facebook and Instagram ads
• Moat by Oracle Data Cloud: Search for specific ads and view their performance metrics.

Timing and seasonality

The game’s popularity can also be influenced by the time of the year. Use Store Intelligence to analyze how this factor impacts rankings and player activity. You can then plan game releases, updates, and events to align with periods of increased player engagement or holidays. Guided by Store Intelligence, strategic timing can give your game a competitive edge.

Store ranking data is a goldmine of insights that can propel your game to the top charts. These 5 strategies are just the tip of the iceberg regarding its power. We encourage you to go ahead and explore our Store Intelligence on your own. Although users of our core analytics can access this tool, they will realize that access to some features might be restricted. For unlimited experience, we suggest you update to GameAnalytics Pro.

Achieving success when creating a game requires more than creativity and innovation. Knowing and correctly interpreting your KPIs is undoubtedly the foundation of making educated decisions during game development. And to support you on your data journey, we compiled a list of the 22 most essential metrics to keep an eye on.

But while paying attention to your game performance cannot be overstated, it is equally important to deeply understand player preferences and industry standards. From performance comparison to trend identification, game industry benchmarks offer a grand scale to set realistic goals and expectations.

Providing data and insights from over 140,000 game studios and developers, our Benchmarks are a powerful ally for game developers. The tool offers a wealth of information on key metrics such as retention, monetization, engagement, and advertising, enabling developers to understand player behavior and market trends better.

Before we delve into concrete steps to guide you through interpreting the benchmark data, learn about various benchmark tables, associated metrics, and filtering possibilities:

How game developers benefit from industry benchmarks?

When comparing your game to other studios and developers, holistic data about player retention gives developers insights into how other games retain players. This data is valuable for understanding how players engage with games over time and allows developers to benchmark their game’s performance against industry standards.

You can, for example, analyze retention trends within your game’s genre to understand player behavior patterns unique to that category. Similarly, by examining retention benchmarks over different time periods, you can track player engagement changes and identify potential improvement areas. Such analysis can help identify correlations between different metrics and provide insights into player engagement and retention strategies.

Relying solely on individual benchmarks may provide a limited perspective. Instead, we recommend a holistic approach by comparing and contrasting several benchmarks to unveil deeper insights. Such multifaceted analysis enriches your understanding of player dynamics and allows you to refine your strategies.

For instance, by analyzing how changes in session length correlate with retention rates, developers can pinpoint optimal session durations that keep players coming back for more. Similarly, understanding how playtime affects retention can inform decisions about game pacing, content depth, and progression mechanics to enhance player engagement over time.

Insights into monetization trends

Monetization benchmarks are essential to measure the effectiveness of in-game monetization strategies and assess the overall financial performance of their genre. These benchmarks provide insights into key revenue metrics such as conversion rates, average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU), and average revenue per paying user (ARPPU).

Once again, comparing with other benchmarks will only deepen your understanding of the market. For example, comparing monetization benchmarks to engagement metrics involves analyzing how revenue metrics like ARPDAU correlate with key engagement indicators such as session length, session count, and retention rates. If higher ARPDAU coincides with longer session lengths or higher retention rates, it suggests that players who engage more deeply are more likely to spend. Conversely, if monetization metrics are low despite strong engagement, it may indicate opportunities to optimize monetization mechanics or offer more compelling in-game purchases. By identifying these correlations, you can refine your monetization strategies and maximize revenue potential while maintaining a positive player experience.

Focus on your target player and keep testing

Segment analysis is a powerful strategy for deriving actionable insights from GameAnalytics’ Benchmarks. Filtering the data based on various parameters, such as time period, genre, region, or platform, will allow you to customize game features, content, and monetization strategies to suit specific player groups better.

To achieve the best improvements possible, you can conduct A/B tests to experiment with different game features, mechanics, and monetization strategies. GameAnalytics Pro allows you to roll out a discovery you made through A/B testing, target users in a specific country, build or operation system version, and set a config to switch ON/OFF at a specific time directly in the tool.

GameAnalytics’ Benchmarks are simply a treasure trove of data-driven insights for game developers. By leveraging its comprehensive dataset, you can refine the entire portfolio of your games, optimize engagement and monetization strategies, and ultimately scale the games for success.

When it comes to game and mobile app analytics, there are hundreds of metrics numbers to track. There are metrics like downloads, sessions, or DAUs on one end of the spectrum. These numbers are relatively straightforward and measure concrete actions. More complicated metrics include user churn or Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU). These are less intuitive to interpret and might raise more questions than answers.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all policy for game analytics, some useful metrics can help shed light on how you can improve your mobile game. To better understand how these metrics relate to each other and provide comprehensive insights into your game’s performance, we divide them into three main categories: engagement metrics, monetization metrics, and advertising metrics. Each category focuses on different aspects of player behavior, revenue generation, and marketing effectiveness, allowing you to optimize various avenues of your games.

Let’s dive into the first category.

Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics refer to key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure how actively and deeply players interact with your game. These metrics provide insights into player behavior, preferences, and satisfaction levels, helping developers assess the efficiency of their game infrastructures, evaluate player engagement levels, and optimize their games to enhance players’ experiences to maximize their retention.

• DAU and MAU: The daily- and monthly active users ratio measures the percentage of monthly active users who engage with the game on a daily basis, providing insights into the game’s stickiness and popularity over time. A high DAU/MAU ratio indicates strong user retention and frequent engagement, while a low ratio may signal potential churn or disinterest among users.
• Retention: Retention tracks the number of players who continue to engage with the game over time, typically measured at various intervals such as day 1, day 7, and day 30. High retention rates mean players find your game compelling and will likely return. On the other hand, low retention rates suggest issues with gameplay, onboarding, or overall user experience.

Read more: Decoding players’ patterns with engagement tracing

• Playtime: Playtime refers to the total time players spend actively engaging with the game across all sessions. It provides insights into player engagement levels and the overall appeal of the game’s content and mechanics. Monitoring playtime can help developers identify popular game features, optimize gameplay experiences, and tailor content to meet player preferences.
• Session length: Session length measures the average duration of a single gaming session, indicating how long players typically play the game in one sitting. Longer session lengths suggest high player engagement and enjoyment, while shorter session lengths may indicate issues with pacing, content depth, or player frustration. Analyzing session length trends can help you fine-tune gameplay mechanics, level design, and progression systems to maximize player satisfaction and retention.
• Session count: Session count tracks the number of gaming sessions initiated by players within a defined timeframe, providing insights into player engagement frequency and habits. Higher session counts indicate strong player engagement and interest in the game, while lower session counts may signal waning interest or competing priorities. Understanding session count trends can help developers identify opportunities to enhance return visits, introduce new content, or enhance social features to keep players returning for more.
• Churn rate: Churn rate is when players stop engaging with the game over a specific period, indicating the number of players who churn or disengage. A high churn rate suggests issues with player retention and overall game satisfaction, while a low churn rate indicates strong player loyalty and satisfaction.

Read more: Retention Rate Secrets to Reduce User Churn

• Player count: Player count refers to the total number of players engaging with the game within a specified timeframe, providing insights into overall player interest and adoption.
• New users: New users represent players who have recently installed or started playing the game for the first time within a defined timeframe. Monitoring new user acquisition rates gives you insights into the game’s appeal to new audiences, the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, and overall user acquisition trends.
• Installs ratio: The installs ratio compares the number of game installs to other relevant metrics, such as ad impressions or clicks, providing insights into user acquisition campaigns’ effectiveness and marketing channels’ effectiveness. A high install ratio indicates efficient user acquisition and conversion rates, while a low ratio may suggest inefficiencies or issues with campaign targeting, messaging, or creatives.

These metrics are crucial to developers who want to understand how the players engage with their games. But knowing how your games compare to the market is equally important. With data and insights from over 140,000 game studios and developers, GameAnalytics’ Benchmarks are a powerful ally for game developers. Further, our Store Intelligence provides insights into store rankings, including historical data. Both these tools are carefully packaged in a tool we call GameIntel, and their unlimited potential is a part of the Pro subscription.

The next category of metrics relates to a product or service’s financial performance, particularly in revenue generation.

Monetization metrics

Monetization metrics KPIs focus on assessing the effectiveness of in-game monetization strategies and measuring the revenue generated from player interactions. Some common monetization metrics that we offer in our analytics solutions include:

• Conversion rate: Conversion rate measures the percentage of players who take a desired action, such as making in-game purchases, subscribing to a premium service, or completing a specific level or task. A high conversion rate indicates effective monetization strategies and a players’ willingness to engage in these revenue-generating activities.
• ARPU (Average Revenue Per User): ARPU calculates the average revenue generated per user, providing insights into the overall monetization effectiveness of a game. By dividing total revenue by the total number of active users within a specified period, you can calculate the average value of each player and identify opportunities to increase revenue through targeted monetization efforts.
• ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User): ARPPU determines the average revenue generated per purchase user, excluding non-paying players from the calculation. It offers insights into the spending behavior and value of paying players, helping developers optimize pricing strategies, in-game offers, and monetization mechanics to maximize revenue from paying users.
• LTV (Lifetime Value): LTV estimates the total revenue generated by a player over their entire engagement with the game, including initial and recurring purchases. By forecasting the long-term value of players, you can prioritize user acquisition efforts, optimize retention strategies, and calculate the return on investment for marketing campaigns and user acquisition initiatives.
• IAP revenue (In-App Purchase Revenue): IAP revenue represents the total revenue generated from in-game purchases, including consumable items, virtual currency, expansion packs, and other digital goods.
• ILRD (IAP Lifetime Revenue per Download): ILRD measures the lifetime revenue generated per download from in-app purchases, indicating the revenue potential of each acquired user. These metrics allows you to understand the average revenue generated per user acquisition and evaluate the effectiveness of monetization strategies in converting downloads into revenue.

Advertising metrics

Advertising metrics evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising campaigns. In the context of game analytics, advertising metrics focus on assessing the performance of advertisements used to promote games and drive user acquisition. Some common advertising metrics include:

• CPC (Cost Per Click): CPC represents the average cost of each ad click, indicating the efficiency and effectiveness of ad campaigns in driving user engagement. Lower CPC values suggest more cost-effective advertising strategies and higher engagement rates among target audiences.
• CPI (Cost Per Install): CPI measures the average cost associated with acquiring a new user through an advertisement, providing insights into the efficiency and return on investment of user acquisition campaigns.
• CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): CPM calculates the cost per one thousand ad impressions, representing the cost advertisers pay for every thousand times their ad is displayed to users. It is a common pricing model used in online advertising, with higher CPM values indicating greater demand for ad inventory and potentially higher advertising revenue for publishers.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): CTR measures the percentage of users who click on an advertisement after viewing it, indicating the effectiveness of ad creatives, messaging, and placement in driving user engagement.
• Fraud Share: Fraud share represents the portion of ad clicks or impressions that are deemed fraudulent or invalid, often resulting from click bots, fraudulent traffic sources, or ad stacking techniques. Monitoring fraud share helps advertisers identify and mitigate fraudulent activities, protect advertising budgets, and ensure the accuracy and integrity of campaign performance data.

Both monetization and advertising data is available in our Benchmarks.

While there is no magic recipe for game analytics, the above metrics are standards that can help you get started in the world of analytics. The most important part of mobile game analytics is to get started and establish benchmarks for your own games. Once you understand how your users behave, you can measure things like the impact of a game update or changes to your user acquisition strategy.

If you like challenging yourself, we encourage you to explore advanced analytics concepts like segmentation, funnels, or custom events. GameAnalytics makes accessing this data easy and provides you with a set of actionable insights to help you optimize your games – no data scientist needed.

Out of all the many mobile industry benchmarks, it’s important to keep player retention rates top of mind. Retention allows marketers to understand when, and perhaps why, a user leaves their game — which gives you the ability to slow the rate down and keep your users around.

In this article, we’ll cover the basics of mobile game retention rates and some of the secrets game marketing pros deploy to reduce churn, as well as look at how you can learn from your retention metrics.

What’s The Point of Retention Rate?

Retention rates are a key indicator of game growth and its health. Not only does a game with better retention likely mean players enjoy using it, but good retention also means it can generate revenue quickly. In the meantime, low retention means rapid user churn, lower user reviews, and a lessened likelihood of conversion.

Retention rates are a useful tool for understanding why users disengage from games. Combined with a cohort analysis, retention rates can help marketers pinpoint if there’s an area in your game that causes churn. These are all key reasons why marketers keep an eye on retention along with other key metrics.

What Is a Good Retention Rate?

By what criteria should we compare whether retention is good or bad? Though you might have internal benchmarks for this, GameAnalytics provides industry comparison as a part of their Pro offering.

In the player retention report from 2019, GameAnalytics found out that the top-performing titles have a retention rate of 40% for Day 1, 15% for Day 7, and 6.5% for Day 28. Be mindful that these rates are for the best games — some genres have retention as low as 1.5% by Day 28. And this is by no means a rare occurrence.

It’s also worth noting that benchmarks for retention change depending on your game or app category. Generally, travel apps have vastly different use cases versus a music app, for instance. As such, benchmark retention with a degree of caution.

Should Marketers Focus on Retention?

For most marketers, keeping an eye on retention is vital. But how high of a priority should it be for you? Amongst user acquisition, in-app conversion, and monetization metrics, retention might not be a marketer’s primary issue, especially if you try to apply paid user acquisition as a remedy.

After all, most churn is likely to occur when a user finds they no longer desire to play the game. Players might churn through forgetting, boredom, or (in small part) frustration from a lack of fulfillment of their needs.

As such, marketers need to identify not just where users churn, but why. In such cases where:

• The game is enjoyable, but users haven’t gotten past the tutorial.
• New functions are released.
• Offers for in-game purchases go live.

Paid re-engagement campaigns to boost retention are a great tool. However, if players are switching off because of boredom or lack of ongoing features, you may want to turn to organic methods that require more cross-collaboration within your company, such as making good use of loyalty programs that provide differentiated benefits to VIP players, or elements that grant levels and badges when certain goals are achieved.

With these tools, you can increase long-term interest by allowing players to reenter the game independently without continuous paid marketing actions, reducing the cost as well.

Going Organic to Find Retention Boosts

There’s more in a marketer’s toolbox than you might realize. In addition to advertising, it is important to expand the inflow of organic users through owned channels.

The retention of users who install organically is often higher than that of users who come through paid media. As such, channels like SEO, ASO, and other owned channel management need to be given some attention.

SEO, for example, is often viewed solely as an acquisition strategy. But if you make it a priority to study retention and learn about your long-term users, you might find the keywords that lapsed users may be searching for outside of your app, if they’re looking for an alternative. By creating content that targets such keywords you might be able to get users back by helping them discover features they may have missed.

Collaborate, Communicate, Convert

The real secret to improving retention is that your marketing organization, which is placed at the forefront of dealing with players, needs to play a key role in digesting external feedback from them and effectively conveying that feedback to product teams. This relationship can result in better retention, allowing the metrics related to your success to flourish.

In the process, a marketer’s communication and collaboration skills become core competencies. Understanding different points of view and communicating well is fundamental, especially as marketing and product teams move closer together. None of this happens automatically, and it requires a lot of skill. But ultimately, it is possible to make vast improvements to retention rates by working cross-functionally to get things done.

Roamer Games is the new kid on the game development block. They are all about creating a mid-core strategy game that would give you the thrill of Civilization in just a five-minute gaming session. Early in the production, their team figured that to create a hit title, they needed to understand players’ behavior on a granular level. That’s where GameAnalytics’ data tools came into the picture. This case study breaks down how Roamer Games used GameAnalytics combined with AI technology to level up their game development.

Understanding Roamer Games’ Needs and Challenges

The game Roamer Games had in mind was a cross-platform but mobile-first marvel. Think iOS, Android, and WebGL. It’s a blend of Civilization and Clash Royale – a strategy with a dash of action.

The studio needed the lowdown on how gamers played their game right from the early stages of development. They wanted to know everything: retention, how long gamers played, how often, where they dropped out, and even what they thought of the first-time user experience. And later, they became set on understanding how players who used Real-time PVP feature compared to those who skipped it.

Roamer Games uses the Unity engine for developing their game. And before integrating GameAnalytics, they also used Unity’s analytics. While it was initially sufficient, they quickly realized they needed more. After reviewing and comparing different analytic tools, they decided to run with GameAnalytics. David Smit, CPO of the studio, comments:

WebGL was a major driver for our choice of analytics provider. That and the ease of setup early in the product development process made it a clear choice to go for GameAnalytics. Their data warehouse offered us a platform to go deep and granular with the data, while the dashboard gave us quick insight into the most important daily metrics.

Lastly, he appreciated the quick integration:

Setup was surprisingly easy. Install the SDK, create a game on the Dashboard, and link the two. Now you are good to go.

Combining GameAnalytics and Artificial Intelligence

The dashboard was the go-to for Roamer Games. It gave them the initial insights they needed every day. They even saved common queries to track player progress, where players dropped off, and Cohort data to understand how players hung around.

The data export options from GameAnalytics allowed Roamer Games to go even deeper with their data, unlocking player and event-level insights. The data tools that GameAnalytics offer are incredibly powerful. We now have access to an enormous amount of data through BigQuery. It requires some good knowledge of SQL, but it’s the way to go if you want to dig deep into the product and what happens to these users. Once you understand the different databases and workflow, you can get incredibly granular and hone in on any specific point in the game.

Since the studio does not have a dedicated in-house data scientist, the team didn’t shy away from using AI – specifically ChatGPT – to form and optimize complex queries. They simply specified the data sets and tables available and asked ChatGPT to write the queries. The team was aware of occasional hallucinations and inconsistencies, and when they found some, they asked for a revision, and the chat would fix things for them.

Here is an example of a prompt Roamer Games used to build a query:

This is Table X about the player state: *paste the structure of that data set and table*.
This is Table Y about the daily checkpoints: *paste the structure of that data set and table*.
Give me a query that returns the following information, split by build, of the last six months.

This is a query generated by ChatGPT:

However, BigQuery returned an error as it tried to grab a field ‘Build‘ that does not exist in the design_event table (highlighted in red). On top of that, the warehouse attempted to split by build while already filtering by a specific build, leading to a meaningless split.

The team simply prompted ChatGPT with the error: “error: Unrecognized name: build at [5:7]”, and AI provided an improved query. Now, Roamer Games received a meaningful query:

Optimizing the Game with Key Findings

Here is what Roamer Games learned about its game after integrating with GameAnalytics. The studio discovered that players who dived into PVP had a 50% better Day 1 retention. This allowed Roamer Games to understand the value of the feature in their product very early.

Plus, they figured that most players picked to play as Vikings. This led the studio to prioritize not only the starter pack but early unit creation in general. The team made sure that they focused on creating a whole set of crowd-pleasing units from the Viking era first.

Last but not least, they also noticed gamers were spending more time playing the game:

We measured progression between levels a lot. The number of core games someone played was the main indicator of their progression. We found that after level 3 or 5, players dropped out in large numbers. Thanks to this insight, we could easily pinpoint the issue and quickly improve the balancing of these levels.

Discover, improve, optimize

Roamer Games leveraged GameAnalytics to delve into player behavior and optimize game features. Despite not appointing a dedicated data scientist, the studio was able to translate data from Raw Export to meaningful queries using artificial intelligence and further gain valuable insights via the BigQuery warehouse. As a result, the studio improved the game’s starter pack and other units by prioritizing Viking characters, enhanced level progression, and created data-driven, player-centric gaming experiences.

GameAnalytics can help you squash bugs and make data-driven decisions about your own titles rather than guessing in the dark. Check out our SDKs and start using our free tool today.

This event design guide is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to make the most out of their data within GameAnalytics.

Data tracking is complex, requiring meticulous effort to ensure that downstream data is valuable. This guide introduces you to the concept of a ‘Tracking Plan’, a strategic document that helps bridge the gap between data collection and analysis.

What’s Inside?

1. Brainstorm Your Burning Questions: Identify key game-related questions to guide your data tracking.
2. Create Your Events: Learn to design trackable events for thorough data collection.
3. Define Your Dimensions and Attributes: Understand the role of dimensions and attributes in enriching your data.
4. Plug in Your Game: Integrate your game with the tracking plan to gather meaningful data.
5. Keep Updating Your Plan: Emphasizes the necessity of adapting your plan to remain valuable.

By following this guide, you will develop a comprehensive, adaptable data tracking plan that ensures robust, valuable data for precise analysis and better insights within GameAnalytics.

The answer to this question depends on which metric you are taking into account. Based on our data in 2022, the ad networks with the highest average LTV were ironSource on Android, and Apple Search Ads on iOS. We delve into detail on the best ad networks to advertise hyper and hybrid casual games based on different metrics such as Ad LTV, IAP LTV, total installs, D1 and D7 retention in this blog post.

In this blog post, we expand on some of the highlights from our video interview with Korhan Cabalar – Founder of Voyager Growth.

Which hyper-casual industry trends from our report have been the most surprising?

“I am actually surprised that the number of IAPs increased by 34%. Due to the recession in the US, I would have expected to see a decrease in IAPs. I also think that this is a strong indicator that mobile gaming companies should switch to hybrid-casual games. I would expect IAPs to continue increasing in 2023.”

The illustration above depicts the trend of IAPs based on Tenjin’s 2022 data set. See the full report here.

Tenjin’s 2022 data set not only indicates a rise in in-app purchases (IAPs), but it also highlights a declining trend in eCPMs. This reinforces the need for gaming companies to transition from hyper-casual to hybrid-casual games in 2023.

The illustration above depicts the trend of eCPMs based on Tenjin’s 2022 data set. See the full report here.

What advantages does increasing your IAP share offer in your monetization strategy?

“Increasing your IAP share in your monetization strategy would mean you should go for blended ROAS campaigns, which account for both ad revenue and IAP revenue. This would allow you to scale more in terms of your ad spend – which is a really good indicator for mobile games. ”

Which channels should hyper-casual studios utilize in 2023 to expand the reach of their mobile apps?

“If you have a really low CPI, I suggest that in the first stage you should go for TikTok. This would help you scale a lot. Meta could sometimes also be a good option for this stage, but TikTok works better. You should also support this UA spend with SDK networks such as Applovin, ironSource, Unity, Mintegral, and so on. In my experience, TikTok and Applovin are the best combination. But it depends on your metrics.”

Would there be significant changes in the user acquisition (UA) channels for those transitioning from hyper-casual to hybrid-casual games?

“In my opinion, the first thing you should do when transitioning from hyper-casual to hybrid-casual games is to change your campaign structure. As I mentioned earlier, if you have revenue from advertising and IAP, you should start with ad ROAS campaigns in the first stage. If you are generating a lot of revenue from IAPs, you should go for blended ROAS campaigns that focus on both IAPs and ad revenue. There are many channels in the market that you can advertise on. As long as you have a positive ROI, you can launch these games on any platform. One big difference between the two genres is that with hyper-casual games, it is less likely for people to spend on Apple Search Ads (ASA). However, with hybrid-casual games you can find an opportunity to spend on ASA as well.”

What are the most common mistakes developers make when they transition from hyper to hybrid-casual games?

1. Focusing only on CPI numbers

   “Previously, with hyper-casual games and their low CPI, money could be recouped within 4 days, sometimes even within 2 days. However, the landscape has changed. Now, it typically takes 15 to 45 days to regain the investment. When transitioning, it’s crucial to shift focus from CPI alone and prioritize retention metrics. Rather than making a hasty decision to abandon a game based on slightly higher CPI, developers should examine retention metrics such as D7, D10, D14, and D30. If these metrics show strong retention, the higher CPI can be offset. Multiple factors, including Retention, Play time, the difference between Ad revenue and IAP revenue, among others, should be carefully considered before deciding whether to discontinue a game.”

2. Putting too many interstitial ads within a game

   “Another mistake is to put too many interstitial ads within a game. The aim is to have a good retention to sustain strong growth over time. This means you need to adjust the time between interstitials. Rather than putting too many interstitials in the first few days, people should focus on the long term return.”

3. Underestimating the power of creatives

   “I also see that many mobile gaming companies also underestimate the power of having a creative strategy. I think creatives are one of the most crucial aspects in the mobile gaming industry. Hiring an experienced creative professional can do wonders to your mobile games profitability.”

Which genres should be explored beyond hyper-casual games?

“I believe hyper-casual games are not dying, but evolving. You just need to adjust your focus strategically. If I was a publisher, I would definitely go for hybrid puzzle games. A good hybrid puzzle game can sustain growth and income for more than 3 years.”

In May 2021, Anime Dimensions leapt from 122 unique users to over 10 million within 60 days, with around 200 million unique sessions. It was one of Roblox’s best launches ever, and they managed it with just three months of development. Since then, it’s reached over 31 million users and 680 million sessions. We spoke to their founder, who goes by the username Coolbulls, and they very kindly agreed to share what they learnt along the way.

Coolbulls explained that they have been using GameAnalytics since 2017, and they were one of the first Roblox developers to integrate our Roblox SDK, even back in May 2021 when they had just 122 users. They added that “learning to use analytics was a key skill as part of my developer journey.”

So let’s explore their journey and find out what first-hand experiences led to such meteoric success.

Massive hits can be made in three months

In late March of 2021, Albatross Games began working on Anime Dimensions. The game itself is akin to an action RPG like a souped up Diablo. Players traverse through dungeons (called dimensions), upgrade their character, and switch out abilities.

“The game is also multiplayer, with up to 50 players at once,” explained Coolbulls. “I think what made it successful was its accessibility. It’s very simple to pick up and learn compared to other Roblox games in the same niche.”

The game launched just three months after they started developing. Through Roblox, they were able to launch on PC, mobile and Xbox. This likely contributed to the fact it was an instant success – hitting over 90,000 concurrent users in the first week, and over 200 million sessions within the first 60 days of launch. It holds the record for best review scores of any game launch in Roblox’s history. And it has now been played over 680 million times.

A large part of this success also comes from regular updates, Coolbulls explained. Since the launch, they’ve released 30 updates – and several of these have boosted engagement back to levels they saw at launch, keeping Anime Dimensions an ongoing success story.

Experience matters, not team size

There’s an apocryphal story that Pablo Picasso was once approached by a woman in a restaurant and asked for a drawing. Picasso scribbled on a napkin and asked for $10,000. Furious, the woman complained that it only took Picasso thirty seconds to draw.

“No,” Picasso apparently said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”

The same seems true of making Roblox games. With a team of only two – Coolbulls and a 3D modeller called d5no – Albatross Games was able to create a hit title with just three months of development time. But Coolbulls has been making games on the platform since 2008 – back when developers did it purely for the kudos.

“My first popular game was a war-themed tycoon I made in 2009,” they explained. “And I’ve made a few more since then that have become hits.”

This experience – of developing and playing on the platform – is how Coolbulls was able to spot an opportunity. They were inspired to create Anime Dimensions because of two games that launched earlier in 2021. Those two games were unpolished and the developers abandoned them – but it meant that Coolbulls had spotted a gap in the market. People wanted something like Anime Dimensions.

Learn the culture of Roblox

“It’s worth remembering that Roblox is a completely different culture than you might expect. The game engine, virtual economy and publishing platform are all within the same ecosystem,” Coolbulls said. “It’s easy to reach tens of millions of people by just clicking publish. And this makes it simple for younger developers.”

But while it’s easier to develop on Roblox – and possible to develop much more quickly – newer developers often misunderstand the culture.

“Nearly every company I’ve seen come onto Roblox does so believing that their experience will translate over,” Coolbulls explained. “It doesn’t. Because of Roblox’s closed ecosystem, a unique culture has formed and you need to adapt to it to succeed. Long-time Roblox developers are going to have a significant edge over you in understanding what works and what doesn’t.”

So it’s best to go in and assume you know nothing. Go through all the top games and see how they’re made and what styles appeal to the players. It’ll take time before you’ll understand the culture.

Hire and talk to Roblox developers

The best way to learn that culture? Speak to the developers themselves. The community is friendly – and always willing to help. And you’re going to need their expertise.

“Bringing in developers from outside of Roblox has a big culture gap,” Coolbulls said. “While Roblox isn’t as difficult to pick up as other game engines, the intricacies of the platform and the design of the games themselves are best understood by those who’ve been playing since childhood.”

If you can, try and see if you can hire successful developers. However, Coolbulls points out that this might be difficult.

“The most financially successful developers won’t be for hire,” they said. “And those willing to be hired usually don’t have knowledge of how to make a financially feasible game.”

It’s a fair warning. So what to do? Instead, make sure to speak to many different developers. And make sure you’re giving the correct incentives if you’re trying to hire those that have been successful. They’re going to need a good reason to come to you.

Understand the competition

Your competition – and the players themselves – are much younger than you’d expect. Over half of Roblox’s players are under 12 years old. This presents a strange challenge, as there will be fads and ideas that you won’t be privy to.

“It can seem enticing to think: ‘If all these kids are making money, why can’t my team of professionals do the same?’” Coolbulls said. “But this young mindset presents a unique form of competition. They understand the audience better – their taste in games, what’s trending, and what’s on social media.”

It’s also worth remembering that younger developers have less financial responsibility. These games could be a passion project they work on after school or college, while they live at home. They don’t need a stable paycheck to survive.

“This lets them take more risks and spend more time on otherwise financially unfeasible projects,” Coolbulls added.

Instead, Coolbulls has noticed that companies have needed to find large brands to sponsor their game or they’ve had to buy out established games if they’re ever going to compete against the local developers.

Use metrics to take the next step

Much like the other younger developers on Roblox, Coolbulls started out adding whatever they thought was fun or cool. But over time, they realised that it wasn’t quite working.

“Analytics has completely reshaped the way I think about and design games,” Coolbulls said. “Now, I focus on what’s lacking from looking at the analytics. It lets me track how much a feature gets used, or whether or not something was successful. It lets me learn and iterate much more effectively than what I’ve done in the past.”

Using analytics to track metrics and test their ideas, Coolbulls has been able to get an edge over other developers on the platform.

Start your Roblox journey

If you’re considering developing a Roblox game and want to make sure it’s the best possible game you could make, make sure you’ve got your analytics set up.

“GameAnalytics was easy to set up, easy to learn, and was – most importantly – free,” Coolbulls added. So make sure you try out our Roblox integration for yourself.

A central location to come home to

After launching You Suck At Parking, Happy Volcano wanted a central home for their analytics data. David Prinsmel, Happy Volcano’s game director, and their data engineer, Rahul Jani, found that Player Warehouse let them be more flexible around storing and processing their data. They could pull it all into one central location and then create their own visualizations off the back of that information.

Here’s what they found along their journey.

Focus on your onboarding process first

If you want players to stick around, you need to make sure they feel comfortable in your game. So your onboarding process is vital to your success.

Through their data, Happy Volcano realized that people were far more likely to drop off if they didn’t play through some of the single-player races before hopping over to multiplayer.

“It makes sense when you think about it,” David said. “As a player, it’s frustrating to join a multiplayer race and get absolutely thrashed immediately. You just end up leaving. So we’re now working on how we can improve that journey. The opposite is also true – If player finishes the single-player campaign but never plays an online race, they’re going to leave after the campaign. Using the data, it’s now clear which day we need to convert them to multiplayer.”

Of course, every game is different. But for Happy Volcano, they want to encourage players to move over to multiplayer eventually, which is why those are the metrics they put the most weight on tracking.

Stick to your gut

“Fun is key, first and foremost,” David said. “You want a really simple, fun concept at the core of your game. Make sure you can describe it in a single sentence and make a prototype. Then build on that one core mechanic that’s unique – because that’s your hook.”

But remember, prototypes are never perfect. Sometimes, the data can show that a prototype isn’t working as well as you hoped. But that might indicate that you simply need to refine the idea, rather than scrap it completely.

“It’s really important to have lots of different perspectives early on,” David said. “But it’s also important to know which of those perspectives to listen to. A prototype should show you whether an idea has legs and is fun to play, but it definitely won’t get the retention of a properly polished title.”

So if you test your prototype and you find that the feedback is good, but that there are problems – that doesn’t mean you should kill the idea completely. Maybe the controls are too confusing, maybe the learning curve needs sanding down, or maybe there’s a missing element, like a progression system. Data can help point you in the right direction, but won’t give you the answers upfront.

Give your game time to grow

“I’ve seen that some people don’t give a game a chance to breathe,” Rahul said. “They try to close the project too early. Or they sand off the edge, which actually makes the game different.

“Emotion comes before data,” he added. “So include data early, but don’t listen to it too soon. It might just be the magic sauce that makes your game fun.”

With You Suck At Driving, Happy Volcano realized that, while they had a battle pass and players could unlock cosmetics, there needed to be another sense of achievement – a big horizon for players to earn. New items, a new currency, and less focus on monetization.

“We realized that we had all the winning cards in our hands. We just didn’t quite play them outright,” David said. “For example, our last update included far more for the players to strive for – it was essentially a completely free DLC.”

Capture everything you can for later

While it’s important not to overload yourself as a designer, a new data engineer will want to capture far more of the data points. Not only will this help them create a benchmark, but it’ll help them learn the tool.

“From my point of view, I learnt a lot about how GameAnalytics is set up by making sure I was tracking everything I could,” said Rahul. “If I hadn’t tried to capture all that data, I wouldn’t understand the tool as much as I now do.”

Now that Rahul understands how the tool works, it is much easier to rely on the data.

“One of my major frustrations is that the way that data that comes in keeps changing between different hardware or consoles. So it might be different to the same data collected from another platform. You end up working with a lot of black boxes,” said Rahul. “But GameAnalytics is my rock. I know how it works, and I can trust the parameters that I’ve set up with it. It’s nice to have something to come home to.”

You don’t need a huge team to do advanced analytics

Even if you’re collecting vast amounts of data, you don’t necessarily need a huge team. Happy Volcano uses our Player Warehouse – which brings all their data into one central location – to make sure they capture everything they can.

“If I didn’t have access to Player Warehouse and that data, I wouldn’t be able to output anything useful,” Rahul said. “But the fact that I have access to that means that I don’t have to set up a database on our side.”

This simplicity has meant that Happy Volcano has been able to keep their team numbers down, while still getting the information and insights they need.

“You’d usually have to have another data engineer to sort out the analytics pipeline,” Rahul added. “Using a data warehouse means that you can just hire one person to manage this one tool and use that raw data.”

Get your engineers and developers talking early

Setting up your analytics can take time. For example, Rahul described how he learnt that it’s important to know in which format your game engine is outputting your data – is it consistent with other platforms? How are the variables coming in?

“You’re probably going to need to clean up the data in some way, because if the strings aren’t in the right format, it’s not going to work,” Rahul added. “An analyst will, of course, need to sit down with the developers and see how these strings are coming in.”

Give your analysts time

Starting early will make sure that your engineer has time to get everything set up properly and to completely understand the tools. But it’s also key to making sure that they can discuss with the developers what’s happening inside your game.

“Put aside time for analysts to learn what your tool does and think through all the consequences of the different data that you’re capturing,” Rahul said. “How it ends up in the final warehouse is really important, because you’ll eventually need to output in some way.”

For example, you might output that data and create a historgram graph needing timestamps. Or you might want to process funnels or design event interaction using a more complex business intelligence tool.

Pick out a few key metrics for your designers

When you’re first capturing data, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. As a designer, it’s important to pick out just a few to start with and start expanding from there.

“The toughest part of using analytics was figuring out where the focus should be,” David Prinsmel explained. “We ended up with about 80% of stuff that wasn’t particularly useful at this stage of the game. Instead, it was much more important to look at metrics like where players were dropping off in the journey.”

It was key for Happy Volcano to gather all that data, but just as important to filter out what was relevant to them. By focusing on a few key metrics, such as retention rates and whether the player joined a multiplayer race, Happy Volcano could spot the hurdles their players were facing.

Start your analytics journey

If you’d like to get started making sure you’re ready to find those insights that will improve your game, check out our SDKs and start using our free tool. And if you’re ready for more advanced analytics, check out our DataSuite.

Learn how successful publishers evaluate hundreds of games per month, to find the next hit game.

What’s inside?

One of the questions we get most often at GameAnalytics is: “How does [super successful publisher] evaluate hundreds of games and find hit after hit? We want to do the same thing!”.

The short answer: in-house data tools, which is exactly what we go over in this report. What the best setup is, key techniques you can use, and how to get started.

Catching 80% of their bugs

One of the main reasons that Splitting Point integrated GameAnalytics was because of our bug-tracking capabilities through our error reporting dashboard. This was particularly important to the studio as the Roblox platform is extremely fast-paced. They would be updating their game every week, and finish the changes two hours before the deadline.

“We were pumping out updates every week on a Friday – and probably about 80% of the bugs we caught were because we were using GameAnalytics,” Janzen Maden, founder at Splitting Point, explained.

Quite simply, there was no time for quality control. And it was also too complicated with such a small team. Soon, Splitting Point realized that they could find more than just bugs. They could check logical problems in the game design itself by using custom design events.

“With Field Trip Z, there are like 30 different outcomes you can have and it’s just impossible to test all those variations on our own. You have to rely on the data,” Janzen added.

Expanding the reach of their data

Now that Splitting Point had the data they needed, they were able to fix bugs and game design issues with every new update. Then, they could start to explore how else their data could help.

“In another of our games – Wacky Wizards – you create a bunch of different potions, which might turn you into a giant marshmallow or a troll,” Janzen explained. “Now, are players figuring out how to make these potions? Do they drop out before they finish? We could look at all these things in the data and make sure that the players were sticking around.”

This is particularly important on a platform like Roblox. The playerbase is young and are prone to jumping off a game as soon as it starts to bore them. Unlike other platforms, the ease of switching from one game to another makes Roblox players particularly fickle. Using their data, Splitting Point was able to minimize that effect.

Building out difficulty using data

Splitting Point didn’t just use the data to keep their players around – they used it to make better game design decisions, too. Rage Runner is a game where the player races along a speed course. But Splitting Point was having trouble with some of the sections.

“In Rage Runner we have a bunch of prefabricated sections. And we’d track which sections people failed on, which they found easy, and which just nobody got past,” Janzen said. “In the end, we were able to start tagging these sections with different difficulties and balance out our maps.”

Using funnels, Splitting Point was able to see completion fails at particularly difficult points along the track. They could then tag and reshuffle these sections to easily vary the difficulty for players. Did Splitting Point want to add a hard track? Add more of the difficult sections. Easier? Sure thing. It all depended on which prefabricated sections they added to the course. And the only way Splitting Point knew which were needed was through the data they were able to collect.

Dive into your own games

If you’re struggling with fixing bugs or polishing your Roblox game design– make sure to integrate GameAnalytics. Check out our SDKs – we have over 20 available,  including one for Roblox. And if you want to learn more tips from Splitting Point Studios, check out our interview with Janzen.

GameAnalytics gave a voice to Redcliff’s silent majority

Eric and Tae discovered early on that most developers can end up only listening to a few very vocal players. But those players often aren’t representative of the entire player base. For one, over half of Roblox’s players are under 12 years old. Not exactly the sort to engage with a developer or fill out an online survey. In fact, under most privacy laws — a developer isn’t even legally allowed to collect that information, as it could reveal personal information about a minor.

“It’s not the user’s responsibility to tell you what they want, though,” Eric explained. “It’s our responsibility as developers to figure out what the player wants and needs in the game. But you need to be careful. It’s very easy to set up a Discord server and get stuck in an echo chamber of a vocal minority who end up controlling everything. Nothing speaks for the silent majority better than data.”

Tae and Eric quickly learnt that they needed to incorporate analytics into their game. Otherwise, they could easily start heading off course – and making changes their community didn’t really want.

“Data is the canary in the mine,” Tae said. “Canaries hint at a sign of danger. They’re the first ones to know when things are going wrong. Sure, it might not always show you a problem, but they’re the early warning sign that we desperately need.”

Data can reveal insights

Roblox has only recently released analytics into its platform – a dashboard that simply tells developers their MAU and DAU. While useful, it doesn’t dig deep enough for Trihex. And – at the time – it wasn’t available. By incorporating GameAnalytics’ SDK, they were also able to get the insight and depth that they needed.

“GameAnalytics really helped us bootstrap and has been a key part of our journey,” Tae said. “Free analytics is really good, especially for teams starting out. It’s done so much for us.”

Now, with our Roblox SDK, Trihex games could get all the metrics they needed, like retention, gameplay, and custom events such as resources and progression. For example, they could design an event called ‘visited_store’ to whether the player spawned a house when they first joined the game. This can reveal whether the changes Trihex made were actually working.

“GameAnalytics provides all this data in real-time,” Tae added. “So they’ve been absolutely amazing, especially for Roblox members. The GameAnalytics SDK for Roblox is a community favorite. Even with Roblox’s changes, it’s still an essential staple.”

Want to learn more about how Trihex reached these huge levels of success? Well, we’ve got you covered. Check out the full interview with Trihex Studios here.

GameAnalytics is kidSAFE

It’s worth remembering that Roblox’s audience is so young. This can make it difficult for most analytic tools to collect any information about their gameplay.

However, GameAnaltyics never collects any identifying information. No names. No ages. No emails. Nothing that could be used to identify a player. All the data is completely anonymous. In fact, we’re certified by kidSAFE and meet their standards.

Give a voice to your silent majority

It’s not just Roblox that we support – we have integrations for Unity, Unreal, Meta Quest 2, Godot, Gamemaker and more. Check out our full list on our integrations page. And if we’ve missed the engine you’re using, just drop us a message. And we’ll look into adding it to our pipeline.