Game Digest #4: Homescapes + My home- Design dream+ Matchington Mansion (Part2)
Dynamics - Metagame:
As I mentioned earlier, the metagame is what makes these games more midcore and indeed makes people stay in the game longer. The most common metagame started by Playrix is customization, comprising of entire house makeover or interior design. It usually blends with an interactive story in the gameplay as well. The storyline develops as the player progresses In order to unlock new rooms to decorate, players need to play more levels and gain coins or stars in the game.
As for the progression of the game, it’s typical to customize the room using rewards from finishing puzzles. While the specific design of the system varies from game to game, they all have two main currencies in the game.
For Homescapes and Matchington, players are rewarded with both stars and coins (one star per level). The coins vary depending on how many extra steps are left. Stars are used as the basic currency to progress the game, while coins have more advanced usage either in the main gameplay (more steps after failing a level, buying extra boosters in a level) or in the metagame ( instant build, extra choices in the decorations).
In Matchington Mansion, players can use coins to pick some special items.
For My home, players will only receive coins by finishing a level. Coins are directly used as the basic currency to progress in the game. There is also a secondary cash currency used to buy in-game boosters, or continue with extra moves when running out of moves. The cash is only given to players as rewards after completing certain levels or finishing some daily tasks.
In Matchington Mansion, except for the main storyline of decorating the house, players will be given some special themed rooms to decorate from time to time, like the one below.
The social functions are weaker in match3 hybrid games compared to multiplayer games but stronger than most of puzzle games I played. The most basic one is asking/ giving lives to your friends in the game. Players can start/ join a team so they can attend a team challenge or finish team tasks to win an award. In some match3 hybrid games ( like Matchington Mansion), you can get new furniture by visiting a friend's home.
What I also noticed is that the elements used in the main gameplay and metagame are all related, like the shapes of cup, plate, lamp and candles are associated with the home design theme in My home. This helps create a more immersive game environment.
LiveOps
The purpose of all liveops events is to increase the engagement with players as well as drive in-app purchases for F2P games. There are three common types of campaigns found in all these three match-3 games:
First one is the win-streak campaign, which is to get a bunch of headstart boosters when players get winning streak levels. So players will likely pay for their revival when they lose a level, especially after they have the full set of headstart boosters. (eg: Hot Air Balloon Trip in My home)
Second one is the leaderboard challenge, so the goal is to play more levels to get on the leaderboard under a certain timeframe to win an award. This motivates players to play more levels in the game to win the campaign. (Teamboat race in Matchington Mansion)
The third is the decoration challenge. Collect the special campaign coins for the special theme collections or special room decorations. This gives players the chance to access more levels as the game gives out double rewards after a level is accomplished. (eg: Wild West in Homescapes)
Aesthetics
Match3 hybrid gameplay is a type of low stakes games (such as SimCity, Animal Crossing and Minecraft), which is less stressful and allows people to take their time to explore the game. Since there is no rush to finish levels or explore new rooms, players could play at their own pace. Some players like to play 100 levels before exploring the metagame to decorate the new room and continue the story, while other players would like to explore the story along with playing new levels. It’s purely up to the players. Different from MMO games, players who like to play this type of game are mainly looking to kill time and don’t want high pressure from games such as battle royale or FPS. Thus what the game can offer to players is exploration without any time boundaries. At the same time, they also provide goals and challenges in the game for players to maintain their interests.
Players can challenge new levels in those match3 games, and they can take time to decorate their house after they accumulate enough stars or coins. There is no time rush in finishing all the rooms under a certain timeframe. Or some people who just enjoy the match3 games can totally skip the metagame.
Game Economy
The hybrid play also brings in hybrid monetization. Though these games are all free to play, they utilize both in-app purchase (IAP) + in-app ads (IAA) to monetize. In general, most match3 hybrid games still treat IAP as their dominant income (more than 70% from IAP), but games like My Home are using more aggressive ways in leveraging ads to monetize the game (as high as 50% from IAA). The design of each game varies depending on their own monetization strategies.
IAP per install shown below is calculated by all time revenue divided by all time downloads (all time unified data from AppAnnie).
Homescapes:
IAP package: coins, coins + in-game boosters
IAA: Watch a video for free coins
IAP per install: $3.00
My home - Design Home:
IAP package: cash, cash + in-game boosters
Monetization with ads:
Watch video to green free credits cash (10 per time, for 5 times a day)
watch video for some furniture/ instant delivery (using cash)
Interstitial ad ( after level 17, between every level)
Daily task, claim reward, watch an ad to double the reward
Flip one of three cards for a reward, watch a video to keep flip
Free credits: watch a full video to get free credits - 10 (5 per day, 3 mins cooldown)
Try again with life, or watch an ad
Watch an ad to start with booster
IAP per install: $0.32
Machington mansion:
IAP package: coins + in-game boosters
IAA: Watch ads for free headstart boosters
IAP per install: $2.86
One last word about monetization strategy when we look at the graph below. Playrix is the first one in the match3 hybrid field and most of their players from Homescapes came from Gardenscapes, so they have maintained a very strong revenue stream from the beginning. They didn’t even have ad monetization when they first launched and only added one placement after one year. Their IAP per install is the highest among all three ($3.00).
Matchington Mansion came second and was very cautious about ad monetization in the beginning as well. There is no doubt that they have cannibalised Homescapes revenue in the beginning but it also gave Homescapes strong motivation to improve its content and liveops to drive IAP. Their ad monetization is only added in front of each level, which is also different from Homescapes, which is in the meta game. In this way, they drove more revenue from ads comparing the Homescapes (not shown in the diagram below though).
My Home has adopted a distinct strategy from the other two. For most places which require hard currency, the game will provide an option to watch rewarded video ads. That’s the main reason why IAP per install is the lowest among three games ($0.32). Adding interstitial ads will drive away some core players, which may further lower its IAP. Though from the ads revenue side, we still see strong revenue increases over time. So from the player segmentation perspective, My Home is targeting lower-end devices and more casual players who would like to spend longer time playing games.
Revenue from 2017/7 - 2020/5