Social Gaming DAU/MAU ~ Measures your Game Design

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.

Engage the player 1st, then monetize. Engagement is the heart of your game

Why should I care about engagement ?

• The more often a player visits your game, the higher chance of them spending
• Engagement supports all parts of your game (retention, reach, monetization, virality, etc)
• Engagement keeps traffic flowing into your game and keeps it alive.

Social games are free, you haven’t collected the $50 upfront fee like the console guys. You are not in console gaming, they don’t depend on players bringing their friends. Social gaming business model depends on virality, engagement, and retention. Engagement is a key metric.

Can we use “Viral Marketing” to save your game from dieing? No… Successful viral games don’t have viral marketing fixed on once the product has been developed or launched. It’s not a marketing strategy. Instead, virality should be designed into the product from the very beginning as part of the fundamental architecture of the experience. Viral Marketing is not a strategy.

No single product feature determines the viral success of a product (application)
On Making Changes and Being Data-Driven

Game design is similar to policy making:you should only use intuition (ideology) when you don’t have data to drive decisions

A few ways to drive your DAU/MAU up, and get people back to your game

Can you raise your high score? (Bejeweled Blitz)

• Can I become more rich or raise my high score? or make it to the next level, stage, etc. This is the main reason people visit games like SongPop, Tetris Attack, and it works because the game in theory only last a few minutes. (But will play several times) Produce your games so players have long term incentive to play.
• Collect your daily treasure or money. Some games have daily or sub-daily salary to be collected each day, if they show up to your application to collect. Give players daily incentives to collect daily. Frequent visits = better performance ingrained in the players psychology.
• Avoid lose of progression or punishment. If you add an element that the player lose a bit of his overall progress if he doesn’t play regularly, it’ll force players to come back and become dedicated. Examples: Rotting crops. (Farmville). Dying fish (Happy Aquarium).
• Limited Energy. You have ration your energy. Once you run out you have to wait till you can play again. To perform optimally you have to use energy as soon as it available, before its maxed out. Ration how much players can players can play keep them hungry  (check game pacing if you interested in this more).
• See whats happening when you have been gone. Design games where “things happen” while the player is away. So they chronically check back to see what is going on, in a way similar to people check obsessively check their email.

Obviously your game being slightly fun is also important. DAU/MAU and the other tactics talked about here are only a few pieces of a big puzzle. Don’t think you’ll succeed if you only bother with DAU/MAU. (unless you go back to 2007 or 2008)