Intro
Agony: the portal is a single player RPG/action game that recently integrated to the Heyzap Payments, Heyzap Viral and Heyzap Analytics. Since launch it has hit the front page of Kongregate, Newgrounds, ArmorGames, EbaumsWorld and many other great sites; receiving millions of game plays and making good money for the developers of the game. This article sets out to analyze the early results that have come through in this groundbreaking implementation of microtransactions and virtual goods into a simple, single player flash game. We have a Q&A session with the developers, OneExtraGames, about how easy it was to get started.
Summary Figures
Game Name: Agony the Portal
Launch Date: August 9th
Featured: Front page of Newgrounds, Kongregate, Ebaumsworld and many other portals.
Integration: Heyzap Payments
Net eCPM for developer: $5 eCPM
Number of Virtual goods used: 39 items
Integrating to the API
Heyzap: How difficult was it to integrate to the API?
OneExtraGames:
“Even though we had never used Heyzap’s API before, it was quite simple!”
Heyzap: How did Heyzap respond to your feedback?
OneExtraGames: At the beginning there were a lot of questions and small glitches, which were fixed very quickly by James! We updated the API three times one night! So the cooperation was very tight, since both sides were eager to try out the new API (; .
Heyzap: How many virtual goods did you use?
OneExtraGames: We have 39 items (you can buy each at a normal price or if you like with a 50% extra donation). Also there is an all-inclusive pack that allows users to buy a complete pack of all the virtual goods.
Examples of the virtual goods sold in Agony
Heyzap: Users really enjoyed the creative virtual goods you added, how did you make them so original?
OneExtraGames: There’s 2 important points to be considered when selling items: First, they give you some ingame advantage. In our case, most of them cast spells. Second, they are visually more appealing. Some weapons are also animated (rotating, burning). We’ve called this type of item – a “Mythical Item”. To make sure users understand that Mythical Items are desireable, it was important to let them play with some for free. We implemented this idea by introducing a Mythical Item after each boss level. Additionally, we incorporated this idea into the Free-First-Item strategy which should be used in every game. The Free-First-Item strategy is to give the user an item for free if he signs up. This way, the user gets one step closer to buying a real item. For example, in Ninjakiwi’s SAS Zombie Assault 2 users get grenades for signing up. But in our opinion, it’s better to let the user chose the first free item. There’s an advantages with that: Each user will chose the free item that he would enjoy the most. If the user enjoys the free item, he’ll buy more. If he does not really enjoy the free item he’d maybe think that other items are not desirable as well. Besides, in our case we let the user choose one free item for each new character he creates. This way, users get some additional replayability value.
OneExtraGames Key points: Make users clearly recognize something very special in those extra items in comparison to free items given in the game. Don’t neglect the visual part. And never sell core features, i.e. the continue-feature as seen in SAS Zombie Assault 2. That’s terribly annoying and a rating-killer. So if you’re just a developer without a big portal in your hands where you could feature your game permanently(or don’t have ratings), that’s not the way to go.
Heyzap: How did you make the virtual goods compliment the game play and not wreck the balance of the game?
OneExtraGames: That was quite easy, we finished the game long before planning to integrate the virtual goods. Afterwards we added new items to the finished game, instead of ripping out existing features. Because of that it always sounds a bit harsh when players start to complain about ‘not having the full game’. However, you should plan to use microtransactions in your game from the beginning. We’re just saying that you’ll have to add extra features to the game rather than selling core features.
A virtual good becomes unlocked
Lessons Learnt
Heyzap: We’ve learnt that using free items was a great way of getting users used to the payment system. Also, offering additional complete packs for bundled virtual goods was a good way of maximizing profit. What was the biggest lesson learnt during the making and launching of this game?
OneExtraGames: One of the main lessons is: Don’t show the shop to players who don’t like the game. There are always people who don’t like the game – they play it for 5 minutes and then leave. By adding a shop right on the first level these people will downrate your game, regardless of the fact that they haven’t played it.
Waiting a few levels before offering the shop increased our ratings significantly.”
A second lesson is to offer a taste of the acquirable features beforehand. Some people won’t buy because of their principles – so we offered a free item for every new character in the game. That way, these people weren’t turned off and kept playing! One more important lesson learnt: Some people will love your game and want to support you. Give them the opportunity to do so! In our game about 5%-10% of the items were bought with a donation (50% more expensive). However, it’s up to the the player to donate or not to donate. Also don’t hesitate to set a high price for certain items (like the all-items-pack), they are bought by people who want to support you in making a sequel or other games! Thanks to all our supporters!
eCPM rates
Heyzap: What was the eCPM rate that you received as a developer for Heyzap Payments?
OneExtraGames: eCPM rates really depend on your traffic. Traffic from USA/UK is far more valuable than from Asia. We had days with way over 10$ ecpm and days with much less. Yet the mean eCPM for the last 2 months is nearly 5$. The eCPM rate we’ve reported here is referring to our net income. But if you’re reading about eCPM rates, always be sure you’re understanding these numbers correctly: First, there’s some fees involved (Paypal, Mobile etc.) and the cut with your payment provider (30% with Heyzap, even 40% with Mochicoins). You should make sure the developer is talking about his net income. Second, eCPM is your revenue with respect to the number of impressions, not gameplays. There’s a lot more impressions than gameplays because people land accidentally on your site and close the window immediately. And there’s gameplays from people who just play the game for a minute and close the window again for some other reasons. It’s the same with MochiAds eCPM. You can not just multiply this number by the number of gameplays to get the revenue. Just keep this difference in mind when reading eCPM rates
Heyzap: Which has made more money for you, advertising or virtual goods? Note: both were used.
OneExtraGames:
“The Heyzap payments made nearly 6 times the advertising money!”
Optimizing the game
Heyzap: What did you do to optimize your game hits and revenues?
OneExtraGames: For game hits, we constantly grazed all game related sites with alexa ranks over 100,000 and kept submitting the game wherever possible. Of course, some of them also had a general problem with MTX in games but that’s going to change in the near future. If your items are not selling, consider lowering the price. If your items are selling well, consider raising the price. We’ve adjusted the price for our complete pack several times, which made a lot of difference! There’s much room for optimization left and we did not optimize our prices well. We think that our single item prices were generally too low. We’ll definitely do better next time.
Game life cycle
Heyzap: What could be done to improve your game lifecycle?
OneExtraGames: Achievements, medals and contests would be great. Also a game should allow different styles of playing it. Make as many possible ‘branches’ in the gameplay as possible. Agony: The Portal could be played with a magic or a melee character but this didn’t matter since you would get all skills if you play for long. We think that by separating these two playing styles we could have improved replayability. Also there are some other game specific improvements planned for the sequel to decrease repetitiveness. However, the game needed to be long so buying items would make more sense compared to a game where you beat the campaign in 20 minutes.
Heyzap Payments Popup
Virtual goods
Heyzap: What was your best selling virtual good (most grossing) and why?
OneExtraGames: The best selling item was clearly the all-items pack. It’s cheaper than all items together and sold way less frequently but from the monetary point of view it was clearly the best. There’s also some understanding of supporting the developers involved when users buy the pack. Of course, users are also more comfortable with having to pay only once instead of bothering to pay over and over again.
So it’s not just about saving a bit money. Besides, the “Eye of the Dragon” for 300 coins was one of the best selling items in the game. Not only the spells make this item special – it’s also the fact that it’s animated and thus visually more appealing.
Heyzap: How did you set the price for the virtual goods?
OneExtraGames: We just carpet-bombed the whole price range and had items for 60 coins reaching to items for 900 coins (;. However, we think our prices were too low. We’ll consider a more sophisticated approach for our next game.
Heyzap: What could be done to increase your revenue for virtual goods?
OneExtraGames: There are quite a few things we noted in the Heyzap forums. The payment process could be integrated deeper into the game. The prices could be adjusted dynamically based on demand. We’ll do some of this stuff in our next game.
Working With Heyzap
Heyzap: How did you find working with Heyzap?
OneExtraGames:
“Working with Heyzap was very uncomplicated and direct – a nice contrast to the ever-silent portal owners in the internet! You are doing a great job, keep it up!”
Heyzap: What kind of advice and support did they give you?
OneExtraGames: Heyzap helped us distribute the game. For example, we’d never be featured on EbaumsWorld without that help! The first day as a featured game on Ebaum’s was so far the day with the highest payout!
Conclusion
Agony: The Portal has demonstrated that even relatively simple single player flash games can make money from virtual goods and microtransactions. There is still a lot to learn in this space and techniques to be used to increase eCPM for all.
Get started on integrating Heyzap’s features into your games today.
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