New Dogs, New Tricks

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New Dogs, New Tricks

• Breeding Social Networking and Virtual Pets

Matthew Roberts Producer
Andrew Stern Creative Director, Engineer
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Outline

• Shipping v1.0
• Going Free, and Life in the App Store
• Monetization
• Engagement
• Referrals
• Live Design

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Shipping 1.0

• A founding product goal of ngmoco)
• Native virtual pets
• Studio talent
• Stumptown Game Machine
• Over 1y in development
• Team
• Lead Designer
• Andrew Stern
• 2 Full time client engineers
• Bernie Rissmiller, Corwin Light-Williams
• 1 network programmer / sysadmin
• John Worsley
• Lead Character Animator
• Jeremy Cantor
• Ngmoco Production
• Matt Roberts, Chris Plummer, Brandon Fischer
• Additional team members 3 PT engineers, 10 PT
  artists
• Hernan Silberman Network scalability
  consulting

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Designing for a wide audience

• Casual play
• Free play simulation sandbox
• Petting, water, fetch, chasing, agility...
• Clothing, dress up, pet store, caring
• Directed play
• Careers, Daily Goals
• Multiple XP tracks
• Caretaking, Training, Socialization
• 13 unique behavioral stats
• Earn puppy bucks xp from playing, unlock and
  buy stuff

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The premium 3d virtual pet game on iPhone

• Early 2009 wanted to charge 9.99 -gt 19.99
• Mid 2009 4.99 -gt 9.99
• End of 2009 Free(mium)

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Why Free?

• How to sell the game?
• High pricing pressure on paid category
• Low average price, hard to sustain position in
  chart
• Acquire largest audience possible
• Monetize deep players
• Let players tell us the price
• Free -gt 39.99

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Average paid app prices in Top 100
Source Pinch Media
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The Three of Free

• Monetization
• Engagement
• Referral

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Things we didnt do to monetize (at first)

• Surveys
• Pure virtual currency
• Real money (in-app purchase) for virtual goods
• Advertising

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Monetization design Dog Food
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Dog Food day one

• 31-Oct, 2009 - Launched in Canada only
• Similar market, but smaller. Estimate its 5 of
  global
• Six SKUs Free to 39.99
• Good news Servers perform well
• Dont underestimate challenge of app store
  position spike
• Bad news players really dont like dog food
• Bad player reviews on iTunes
• Angry emails
• General hate
• But
• We can change settings on the fly!

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One Players Feedback

• You buy food bowls but guess what you still
  have to pay for them first and how much were
  they? I think not! such a scan imagine if u gave
  it to a child to play with and they bought i
  dunoo loads of bowls and ur account got charged
  loads and u were poor but you only got the ipod
  for winning a competition and u got an overdraft
  on yout account and were charged loads of
  interest and your house got repossessed nice life
  that would be this is disfraceful and im
  surprised at apple for letting this app go on the
  store what a rip

Source iTunes App Store Comments
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Tuning the game live

• Dog food replenished over time
• Launch 1 bowl / 3 hours
• Cut refresh time in ½
• Cut it again
• Cut it again
• Current free bowl refresh time 15 minutes

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I have to buy -ing dog food?

• Dog food regulates play
• Dog food can be converted to Puppy Bucks
• Regulating play vs. Virtual goods
• Maslow predicts it...
• Players choose to feed dog before spending on
  virtual goods, but resent having to do so
• Solution Server side, award free food more
  frequently so players use food to buy stuff
  instead
• Lesson Understand your monetization strategy,
  dont overload mechanics
• Lesson Be careful about getting too close to
  core gameplay fantasy when considering
  monetization design

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Continuing to iterate on monetization

• Added direct purchase of virtual goods (In-App
  Purchase)
• Better value proposition for some customers

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2 - Engagement

• Deep behavioral sim tons of unique behavior
• Careers
• Tons of unique items and clothes
• Players level from 1-1000 on three tracks
• Unlock items / careers with XP
• Earn to spend in store
• Daily goals of care, training and social
• This was the easy part
• At least, the part with which we were most
  familiar

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Engagement get native

• Whats native?
• Touch, accelerometer
• Network connection
• Friends using it too

• Touch
• Accelerometer
• 3d
• Native UI

• Always connected
• Friends have it too
• Updates / digital distro

Long term engagement
Long Term engagement
Wow factor
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Touch Pets whats native?

• Whats native?
• Touch, accelerometer
• Network connection
• Friends using it too

• Gestural training, accel toys, touch to pet
• Rich 3d character animation, environments

• Touch Pets network
• (Plus)
• Playdates / Cooperation
• Events / News / Relationships

Long term engagement
Long Term engagement
Wow factor
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Playdates

• Original idea Dog jumps from device to device
• Final implementation Network of friends and dogs
  that can visit each other
• Dogs form relationships
• Acquaintances, friends, in love, break up, get
  back together
• Earn from playing with your dog or other dogs
• Cooperate to complete career challenges
  together

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What worked about playdates

• Limited amount of earning potential per day with
  your own dog, have to go to friends to earn more
• Used push to notify players about playdates that
  happened while they were offline
• Develop relationships with other dogs to
  reinforce depth of behavior

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What didnt work about playdates

• Players grind on network dogs
• Social interface not primary in UX
• Didnt think virally enough
• Obligation to invite other players can be
  powerful

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3 - Referrals

• Players refer other players
• I am playing this, come play it with me
• 3rd Party referrals
• Apple Charts
• Advertising

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Getting social on the app store

• Its hard
• Moment of acquisition is important and Apple
  controls it
• Think like a player
• Push
• SMS
• Email
• Asynchronous
• Dont make me think about how to connect to
  friends

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The Charts

• Biggest referral engine Apple
• Getting in the charts snowballs success
• Economic games create virtual goods scarcity
• Giving away stuff can increase exposure, but can
  hurt monetization
• Need to find a balance between freebies and
  economy

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The Charts (cont)

• 100 spots for 160,000 apps
• Top 50 spots much more valuable
• Why? Everyone shops on the device
• Cant buy your way there
• Traditional advertising doesnt work well
• Apple has editorial policy on whats featured
• Press coverage helps, but doesnt make or break
  you
• This is a reality of the App Store
• Not necessarily a reality of mobile in general
• Work with a partner
• Plus publishing, smart networks

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Live Design

• What do players like? How do you know?
• Stats / metrics
• Reviews
• Customer support
• Listened to players made more of what they like
• Careers
• Released more SKUs
• Reward for installing the game or telling friends

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Live Design (cont)

• Talk to players
• Messaging system
• (Careful) use of push messaging
• Keep game fresh within terms of SDK agreement
• Build pipeline to tune key systems live (and use
  it)
• Keep designing the game
• Fix broken features
• Innovate on content
• Cut underperforming features or content if you
  can
• (we probably should)

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TPD 2.0

• Continuing to iterate on monetization and social
  design
• Front loading social with Town View

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Questions?

• Matt Roberts
• matt_at_ngmoco.com
• Andrew Stern
• andrew_at_stumptowngamemachine.com
• (we are hiring!)