Game Digest #5: Call of Duty Mobile

I’m not a person who normally played a lot of FPS games (if you check the previous posts I wrote), like CS, half-life or Doom. Especially for me, either the game scene is too violent or the gameplay is too tactical. I don’t get as much enjoyment compared to other simulation or customization games. Call of Duty Mobile is a well-known FPS game, and the popular game play mode - battle royale is the most I’ve ever gotten into an FPS game, on average 2-3 hours everyday for the past three months. So today I want to focus on the game analysis of COD Mobile with an emphasis on their battle royale mode. 

Battle royale games are nothing new, it’s a very popular genre with a blend of survival, exploration, scavenging elements and last-man standing game-play. From PUBG to Fortnite, people have a lot of mainstream battle royale games to choose from. So when a new battle royale game comes out, the competition is even more fierce and games need to have far beyond average quality to stand out in the market. Luckily, Call of Duty has a lot of loyal fans from its console and PC platforms, so it’s been a top ranking title since it first released on mobile. 

Mechanics:

The basic mechanics/ gameplay in Call of Duty mobile, battle royale mode is comprised of: 

• Jump out from the airplane to start the game (the airplane will fly in different directions from the map each time and players can choose where they want to go depending on the flight route) 

• Gather elements: including weapons, vest, health, different attachments to the weapons, grenades and tactical gears 

• Eliminate other enemies by shooting or throwing grenades at enemies.

• Drive vehicles in the game: motorbike, car, boat or helicopter. 

• Last man standing gameplay: stay live till the end to win the game.

• Different weapons in the game have its own strength and weakness over distance, firing speed, damage, accuracy and speed of moving. Players can carry at most two weapons in their own combinations.

Dynamics:

• Multi-player Each game has 100 players in the beginning and you can choose to play solo/ dual/ squad mode. When playing with a team, your teammate can revive you as long as someone in your team is still alive and before the last revival flight. 

• Map system includes: 

  • 24 zones on the map now (with 7 new areas added in the latest season 7).

  • High tier: some random areas on the map with better loot indicated by an orange box on the map. 

  • Aerial platform with better loot ( randomly shown in the game) 

  • Chip upgrade terminal: Player perk abilities could be upgraded when the chip terminal is ready (normal after . 

  • Airdrop

• Safe Zone: The safe zone shrinks every couple of minutes, and each time the safe zone shrinks faster and damages players faster if they are outside the safezone. So players must stay in the safe zone to stay alive. 

• Class system in the game, before entering into the game, there are 11 skill classes for you to choose from.

  • Basic ones: defender, mechanic, scout, clown, medic, ninja

  • Advanced ones (can only be used after unlocking): Trickster, Airborne, Trap Master, Smoke bomber, poltergeist.

• Boss system: you can fight with the boss yourself or with your team. Defeating the boss will drop rewards like weapon upgrades. ( Boss is only set in the farm right now)

• Rank system: Winning xp after each game. Level up rank by gaining more xp in the game and unlock more rewards. 

• Battle pass system: In each season, there are 50 tiers. In the past seasons, there were two sets of battle pass: premium pass and free pass. In their newest season, they are combined together into one set. So except for the free ones, players need to buy either “premium pass” or “premium pass plus” to get new weapon skins and new characters. 

• Clan system: Players can form their own clan and add friends to play together. There are clan task and clan rank. Players will get more rewards when they finish clan task or achieve higher rank. 

Aesthetics

A psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined the term “flow”. Players will enter into flow states when skill and difficulty are roughly proportional. 

This is perfectly demonstrated in COD mobile. Csikszentmihalyi also outlined four characteristics found in tasks that could equilibrate task and difficulty. I will elaborate how the design of COD Mobile meets these characteristics below.

Characteristic 1: Games should have concrete goals with manageable rules.

The one and only one goal in the battle royale game is to survive till the end. So during each game for about 15-20 mins, players just focus on killing other enemies and run to the safezone. Regarding manageable rules, players can try different game play strategies with the combination of jumping to the aerial platform to get advanced gear, using skill class, getting skill upgrades, picking up airdrops, driving vehicles around in the game. All these gameplays work together to achieve the final goal. 

For example, getting advanced  gear from aerial platform or airdrops will help players to kill the enemy easier; driving the vehicle will get the player into the safe zone in time faster to survive ; using skills at the right timing can save the player from being killed. If players perform all these tasks perfectly and last till the end, they will win the game. All these small rewards experience create the goal-achievement- reward cycle which hooks players to play longer. 

Characteristic 2: Games should only demand actions that fit within a player's capabilities.

What does it mean? Players will leave the game if it’s too difficult. 

And that what happened to me when I tried to play CS on PC a few years ago, the complicated operations which require a lot of eye-hand coordination as well as fast reaction just frustrated me all the time. I stopped playing after a few tries until recently I started playing COD mobile.

So what has changed in the game to make me start playing it and into flow status?

1. Two operation modes: easy and  advanced. I used the easy option when I first started because it could auto fire, so I only need to focus on finding position to shoot and aim enemies. Not many people are good at running, aiming and shooting at the same time, especially in the beginning of the game. Therefore the game design could provide various options to meet the gaps of players with different levels. The “easy” operation helped me lessen the stress from too many operations in the beginning and enjoy the game flow status earlier. 

2. Use AI bots to help players build more confidence in the beginning of the game. The positive feedback can reinforce positive game experience of players and keep players in the game. AI that adjusts the difficulty level dynamically based on the player level is crucial to the game experience. 

3. Matching algorithm, as we level up, we team up with more experienced players. The difficulty level of the game progressed gradually based on the level of players. So we will constantly feel challenging by the game as we play more. 

4. There are 6 basic skill classes and 5 advanced ones. Though all these classes are balanced well and each has different pros/cons, some are easier for beginners to choose. When I first started playing, I chose defender or medic, more for defensive purposes. As I played more, I started trying different combinations based on my strategy. For example, if I want to play sniper, I will usually choose airborne and try to get a sniper( Arctic. 50) in the game. The skill class system in Call of duty is a perfect example explaining the second characteristic. Players can start playing the simple class and gradually learn to use the advanced ones as they progress.

Characteristic 3: Games should give clear and timely feedback on player performance.

The average reaction time for humans is 250ms, so feedback that occurs directly after 200-400ms of an action leaves the best experience for the players. This means that if the game server is laggy and players don’t get instant response after they shoot people, it’s harder for players to play this game long. So COD mobile has also added a lot of sounds effects like “getting the enemy”, “enemy down”, “ enemy is killed”,  in addition to the visual effects of gunshots and simulated blood from enemy (if close enough). These all help provide players feedback in a timely manner. Other secondary weapons like concussion grenades, smoke grenades also create both visual as well as sound effects to let players know what they are doing. This will drive player engagement and help them immerse further in the game. 

Characteristic 4: Games should remove any extraneous information that inhibits concentration.

All gun details or attachments details are not shown in the gameplay. Players can auto-pick weapons as well as attachments in the game when they have less than two guns and still have space in their backpacks. If a player wants to change any weapon or use health, they can change it quickly from the bottom icons on the screen without clicking to open the backpack. The simplicity of the design help players to focus on the main goal in the game

Another UX design change in the latest update helps to explain this point explicitly.  They increased the size of weapons and loot for players to spot them easier. Players only have limited attention as well as information processing, so they’ll need to focus more on the location of the enemy rather than the guns. 

Game Economy & Monetization

COD Mobile has two types of in-game currencies: Credits(C), which are earned through playing the game, and COD Points(CP), which have to be bought with real world money. Players can use credits to buy limited weapon skins or characters. There are some in-app items that can only be purchased using COD points, like rename, fancier skins, crates (with special skins and characters), weapon cards (to upgrade the weapon, but not in battle royale mode). The battle pass launchd each season has a huge positive impact on the revenue. As we can see from the graph below, downloads maintain stable except for the huge spike in the beginning of launch, the revenue rises up in june because of the new season release as well as the battle pass. 

Downloads by country ( last 12 months)

Revenue by country ( last 12 months)

With the launch of battle pass, not only it increases the revenue but also play time as players need to play more to receive more items. DAU maintains the same which means this mainly drives old players play time rather than attract new players.

DAU by country ( last 12 months)

Average Time/ User

The calculation below includes both iOS and Android and 

The revenue/ download in the US is $2.89 (31.9m all time downloads and $109.8m total revenue).

The revenue/download globally is only $1.2 (200.9m downloads and $244.19m total revenue), which is lower than PUBG mobile $1.54 (587m downloads and $901.6m total revenue). 

This number may not imply that COD has lower monetization compared to PUBG mobile since PUBG mobile published one year earlier than COD. As long as the players stay in the game, the revenue will still go up as the old players pay more.

Other than the main currency system in the game, there is a secondary currency system which is supported by ads. The ad monetization system use both chips and coins. Watching ad will reward player one chip per time. The chips could be used to draw from the lucky board. There are some chances to draw the skin directly or win coins to buy these skins in the store. Player can buy the new character for 300 coins which is equal to watching 300 ads. 

Making ad monetization system totally separate from the main economy system has pros and cons. The biggest advantage is that game developers don’t need to worry that implementing ads will cannibalize IAP revenue. But the challenge is how to drive more players to watch ads from the beginning. It depends on how attractive the rewards are for those players. If players really like the character or skin in the reward list, they will probably watch 300 ads to get it. Otherwise, they will not watch any ads. 

What game developers can do is to set a benchmark for rewarded user percentage and track the number to see whether the reward is attractive enough to meet their expectation, and refresh with new contents/ rewards after certain time to keep players engage. 

Ad monetization system - Lucky board

Ad monetization system - Store page

Last but not the least, battle royale games are mostly social and community-based game with large DAU, most players who are playing don’t necessarily pay in the game all the time (or only purchase some special themed skins ). Using hybrid monetization is critical, so games can empower free players with new skins and characters with ad revenue.