Giving users new levels for watching an ad

Total newbie here. Question for you folks.

The game I'm working on now will have lots of levels/maps, and would come with several free levels/maps to start. What are your thoughts on giving users new maps every time they watch an ad? I'm thinking maybe you unlock 2 levels every time you view an ad. Too few?

Is this a viable business model, or do you think it would just be obnoxious? I have no idea what kind of revenue I can expect for a single ad view, so maybe I'm selling myself short, or maybe I'm giving myself some other headache I haven't thought of.

Thoughts?

 

I think it would depend on how short the levels are. If I complete the levels in under a minute and then have to wAtch a 30 second ad right afterwards to keep playing, I'm not likely going to want to wait that long to continue playing.

 

Only if the game was a LOT of fun (to me) and the ads were only a few seconds long. Otherwise I wouldn't bother.

 

Even though from a developer point of view it seems reasonable, from a business point of view, it seems abysmally useless, I'd argue from a consumer's point of view it's worse - I forsee that coming off as lazy in the extreme.

Why not simply allow players to unlock levels by playing the game? Why not put the advertisement in a "good" place (for instance, @Gigiwoo's game Block64 has ads run before you get shown your feedback after a play session, and to me that seems like a very good and obtrusive decision.) Why not put a small price on your levels (e.g. $0.19 - $0.29 for a new level, for instant access?)

Ads under normal circumstances are clumsy at best. I think you may want to consider doing an A/B test with a limited audience - have group A play a version of your game that uses a traditional approach, group B use the ad method, and a control group that unlocks levels through normal play? If possible, post the results of your research, too, I know I'd be interested to see the real results of such an experiment.

 

The hideous AAA strategy to employ here is to make coins in your levels that the user can collect to buy other levels. Then you can offer large coin rewards for ads / sell coins directly with in app purchases.

People will put up with this proven formula for a business model, feel free to borrow it from the freemium giants.

 

This model works, but like most monetisation methods it requires a large user base. Without the large base you are better off foregoing monetisation altogether. The time you spend on implementing ads will hardly be worth the few dollars you get in return.

 

This is my suggestion on how you could do it... (Judging by your question, I'm assuming your talking about a mobile game. If it isn't a mobile game, ignore the part below and my suggestion would be just to skip ads entirely.)


Don't have any ads. In my opinion, they make the player stop playing the game unless they are only infrequently shown. However, this would mean that you collect even less money than you begin with, which is not much from what I have heard.

Instead, you could have each level, (or group of levels), locked for a certain amount of time when the player completes the previous one/s. The player can wait until they are unlocked or spend real money to unlock them instantly. The more you play of the game, the longer the level or group of levels take to unlock. This method is used in many, many, successful and popular mobile games that I know of.

I think it would be an effective yet unobtrusive method of gaining profits from your game, with it being very likely that the player is already familiar with this business model.

 

Can you tell me some games that are doing this? That seems like an interesting approach.

 

@BudgieKnight's idea sounds pretty similar to "energy". Think of farmville and other freemium games. You don't need to pay to do well, but playing consumes energy and you can pay to increase it or wait. The longer you wait, the more energy you'll get back before you play again. In the same sense, the more you play at once, the longer you have to wait before you can play again (to really get anything done).

For a bigger example, Hunter Blade (monster hunter knock off) has such a fun and great game... yet each zone you enter consumes a variable amount of energy. When you start to run low... do you play 3 easy zones for 1 energy each or do you play 1 medium/hard zone you need for materials once for 3 energy? Or do you simply give in and pay to reset your energy limit. In other games (maybe even hunter blade if I'm remembering wrong), this system is called stamina.

 

@randytayler Here are three popular games that I can think of. They all use the core element of "wait or pay". From what I know, this business strategy is mostly in free games, but you can find it in a few games that you have to pay for.

Crossy Road (Endless Runner): Everyday or so, you will receive some in-game currency. With that currency you can purchase a random character. However, you can be given a character that you already own, so the more you play, the less likely it is that you will recieve a new character. Then you also have the option of paying to unlock any new character that you want, plus there is one character that gives you a bonus that you can only buy with real money.

Clash of Clans (MMO Strategy): The core part of the game is to construct defenses and other buildings with your builders, with constructions taking a certain amount of time to complete. The more you play of the game, the longer buildings take to complete and you are limited by the amount of builders that you own. However, you can complete constructions instantly and purchase more builders with real money. The competitive aspect of the game makes paying money and getting ahead of other players very tempting, with this being the most successful mobile game out there.

Skyforce 2014 (Side-scroller, Shoot 'em up): In Skyforce, upgrades are essential to be able to defeat the increasingly difficult levels. The more you play of the game, the longer the upgrades take to complete. You can spend more in-game money on instantly finishing them, however the game is very "grindy", so you probably won't have enough money to do so. The developers give you the option to pay real money to double the amount of in-game currency you recieve through playing, which dramatically reduces the long waits your put up with.

Although all of the games that I have mentioned are very different in gameplay, they all share the "wait or pay" business model. They are also free, so check them out and see what you think of them.


-BudgieKnight-

 

Man, while I get the point of this thread, it makes me sad to see even small developers going this route.

As a gamer, I hate the energy meter / build timers system. I was hooked on Clash of Clans until I realized I wasn't even having fun with it... I had just invested so much time already that I wanted to keep going to make it "mean something", which of course, it never did. Because all progressing got me was longer wait times.

More on topic, I side with @BoredMormon in this instance. Each individual ad view revenue is so minute, that unless the game is hugely popular, implementing a system like this can't be even close to profitable. And monetizing it in such a way early on may be a factor preventing you from even becoming popular in the first place. I think it'd be better to use a normal progressively unlocking system (complete levels to unlock levels), or to release them in small DLC packs (if the base game costs $5 and includes 100 levels, release level packs of 20 for $1 each or something).

Just my opinion, though.

 

@Schneider21 I agree that stamina / energy is a terrible system, but eh, some people just need to crash and burn

This is all games like that are. A not very fun cash grab. And at some point in time, I do truly believe that people will recognize this and force the industry to change.

 

I would love to believe this, too. The problem is, for every Minecraft (great games will rise to the top), there's 5 Flappy Birds (garbage/clones/cash-grabs/freemium) that make people believe in this system. And as much as I love the democratization of game development, I also kinda wish there was a higher barrier of entry to publishing, as it would limit the amount of garbage cluttering the app stores, and help get consumers out of the mindset that apps should be free and nickel-and-dime you to death.

Maybe costlier publishing licenses aren't the answer, though, either. Maybe it will just happen on its own as consumer purchasing intelligence advances.

 

I don't like this idea, if it means that you can't get to the next levels without watching the ad. That's like forcing people to sit through ads they don't want, which will put a lot of people off and make them quit. Ad-watching should IMO be optional. By all means have it be that IF they watch they gain something they might want (like getting extra characters in cross road etc).... but not something that totally blocks the path and is essential.

 

Lots of people accuse blizzard of doing that with Diablo 3, arguing that some of the content is necessary to play. There's also little things like planned content that was cut before release and offered in the expansion lol.

You would think so, but also consider just how long this is taking with the very important context that it's being marketed through the internet! It's not hard to find gameplay videos / non-fake ratings, yet this junk not only sells but people praise it lol.

Every now and then, 1 or 2 of the 60 flappy birds will be good. Ever try the flappy bird mmo? It's actually good, haha. Sometimes clones (or clones of clones) succeed. You could arguably call cities:skyline a clone of that awful EA game, but it's doing pretty great and being praised about how much better its launch is going than EA's. It's not a feasible business model to continually put out bad games (see Jim Sterling's videos regarding DigitalHomicide), so I think that one day the market will fix itself just because all the bad developers trying to make a quick buck by selling incomplete in-app-purchase-simulator-2015 will not have the money to continue.

 

Awesome, awesome thoughts, folks. Thanks. Sounds like the consensus is NO, and that I should just focus on making a good game, with purchasable DLC if I really want to try monetizing it.

I hate in-app purchases, personally. Maybe I'll -- and we're still talking as if I'm going to finish this game, which may or may not happen -- release the free levels version and the paid app version. As a parent I don't generally bother downloading a free game if it says it has in-app purchases, but I will spend money on BUYING a game.

I also don't LIKE ads in games. They bug me. I don't trust that they'll always be appropriate for kids, either - I don't need my kids seeing Kate Upton bosoming towards them. So thanks for waking me up.

 

I had an exciting idea for a game with mandatory ads, where the game was structured episodically in that each mission had the flow of a television drama episode. Each mission would have a defined structure, and at determined points throughout, there'd be "commercial breaks" just like on TV. The idea was to enforce the idea that you're playing a TV show, not to try and force ads on people. It would be mandatory before each break to set up the suspense for the break, and that brief "recap" when you come back from commercial to set the stage back up.

This is the only way I could think of creatively including vid ads that wasn't just bending my intended consumer over the barrel and forcing ads on them. The only way I could think to improve on that idea, though, would be to have fake commercials in keeping with the time period, a la MGS4 (but not as whacky). Which made me realize that if the best part of using commercial-break-style-ads was to remove the actual advertisements, I probably shouldn't use them.

 

I had an idea I never used which I wouldn't mind seeing tested, if you're curious.

Add an easter egg ad in which to 'rest' for bonus stamina in the next run, the character goes home and sits in a couch and watches Tv. On the Tv, have an ad run with the character giving variable reactions (laughing, shouting in terror, etc). This is relaxation for the main character, and Tv in that universe is nothing but advertisements.

 

That's a pretty funny idea - "Ha! Look, they're putting an ad in the game AS PART OF THE STORY!" -- but I think the novelty would wear off before you'd earn anything substantial from it.

 

Probably, haha. You'd also make less per add by only being able to run adds that fit into at most half of the screen so you can have the character still visible. Maybe the ad related stuff could be a side option to earn premium currency.

$1 = 100 or 1000 premium game coins
1 ad = 50 or 500 premium game coins

If you make that enough to purchase an entire set of items (cosmetic or otherwise), people will probably do it lol. Just check out maplestory. A little money is a lot of NX and when certain packages go on sale, you can get a bunch of stuff for very little.

 

I too find ads sometimes a bother, and at the same time, know this is a viable business model which can help a studio make more of the games I like to play.

Something to note.. ad servers have a place, but some players have trouble with the TapJoy ads like fill-out-the-survey or other business. Sometimes the players don't understand why they didn't get the "premium currency" for almost completing an action.. not realizing that some other action or connection needed to take place.

If ads are involved, the more a player feels like it was meant to be there or was their choice to view, the better. Plenty of ad-companies offer the lure of revenue from their product, but keep in mind how the game plays.

Short games can do well with short ads after a number of restarts.. in fact if that was planned, this can really work. The players has [5] ad-free runs then if they want to keep running, then they watch an ad before running again. The ad-free energy recharges after a time... Now a lot of players might sit thru an ad or two because your game has already delivered the ad free fun and they want to go a couple more times instead of forcing a player to sit thru something.

Now to make the ads more a viable action in that senerio... a limited time contest taking many repetitions quickly uses up the [5] ad-free energies if they want the special stuff.

I personally like it when the game offers a purchase to turn-off the ads.

The target level of immersion makes the difference. If the gameplay is more drawn-out then ads get to be more distracting because of the time length between gameplay the game is delivering (like a RPG). Things that remind the player (like an ad) that they are playing a game, ultimately causes damage to the immersion delivered.

So designing... ask yourself what kind of immersion and how much of it are you seeking...
- Tactical immersion (second to second gameplay)
- Strategic immersion (player short/long term goals)
- Narrative immersion (the Story you may or may not be delivering)

I've found it easier / more favorable to digest by a player to conclude their immersion(s) before making an ad-view or other distraction from the game.