Social Gaming Ghost Town ~ How engaged are your players?
When building a social game you need to make sure your DAU/MAU metrics measure up if you want a successful or sustainable game. You get it wrong and you will have to put a screen of death up, saying that your game has been removed. DAU/MAU needs to be correct before… heavily investing into marketing.
DAU = Daily Active Users MAU = Monthly Active Users DAU/MAU = Engagement
- DAU/MAU measures the people that come to your application everyday. If your DAU/MAU is .2 (or 20%) then 20% of your total users are coming to your application everyday.
- DAU/MAU is a great measure of game design quality. It shows how engaging your game is or how addicting. The more often a player return to your game the more likely they are to spend.
- Try to achieve 20%+ is a good rule of thumb for a sustainable free social game. 20%+ shows strong user retention and monetization. Getting 20%+ is easier said then done though. The top games get 15% to 30%.
- Your game being fun is not good enough. The application market is saturated. There are 100+ fun games. If I played your game yesterday. There should be specific reasons that I feel obligated to play your game today and tomorrow.
- Create your social game so players want to visit your game everyday. The quality or virality needs to made into the game design start from 1 day. Game design should be high quality. You should ask yourself “why will people come back to this game everyday?” in the very early stages of application development.
