Stop Believing Benchmark Metrics for Your Game

[Music] hi everyone so I'm going to talk about benchmarks I've been in the games industry it feels like forever probably 20 odd years or something like that definitely in mobile since it all really kind of started with with apps or something like 2012 2013 when when it really started to take off and I've seen a lot of benchmarks float around I've seen lots of numbers being circulated lots of people talking talking the talk so I want to kind of deemed debunk a few things there so no

tools or anything like that that I'm gonna try to sell you this is really just like what I've observed over the last I'd say six seven years or something so if you if you go to google and type in good mobile game retention you get some metrics guess what so this is what you get as as the top search result traditionally good retention rates are day 1 retention 40% day 720 day 28 10% now that's kind of confusing because if you have like a hyper casual game and you want to get it published by quali or Vudu if you have these kind of metrics they will probably not publish your game so why are traditionally good retention rates for T 2010 that somehow it doesn't really make sense and yeah it's it's

kind of a weird benchmark because for some games that might totally apply and for others this is kind of will will mean nothing the more casual you are probably the higher your retention rates just naturally are and I've worked with games where you know day 28 or day 30 was like close to 20% and still they were not the big rocket ship and I'll come to that so I'm trying to tell you like forget these benchmarks they they they actually don't mean anything because retention let's start with that what does that actually mean you know there are all sorts of different ways how people look at retention there is there are things called rolling retention like you know whoever comes back after X days there are like the so-called classic retention

so people coming back exactly on a certain day day 0 day 1 day 2 day 3 exactly on that day but then there are also providers that measure this in like hours and depending on where the user is in in in the different time zones you know it may may get completely different numbers so you know retention is is is certainly one of one of the things that are critical and there are important and you know for T 2010 is not a bad metric in that sense you know if you if you if you can get those kind of metrics you know you might be onto something but maybe you're not so on its own kind of retention is somehow a little bit of a venue vanity metric and it really depends on what it is that you want to get out of it the other thing is like Abdo usually you know a lot of people when it comes to like success of a game

you kind of put these two metrics together you look at retention and you look at our bow and try to kind of estimate like okay are people going to stick with this game and are we gonna make some some money from that so again there is there is some confusion I've seen companies even working like with with gross revenues when they have a lot of inner purchases and then wonder why why it the equation like having a lifetime value of a user being some somewhat higher than what you spend but some still doesn't add up because they forgot that they still have to pay like 30 percent to our friends at Google and Apple so here's is like a very practical example so if you have like forty twenty ten as like your your your retention metrics and you have about like five cents net exclamation mark as you're up

there that would do in like a hundred eighty days you know a lifetime value for a user of $61 cents so if you if you would compare that with something that is you know according to Google not a good retention and you have like thirty five sixteen eight as an example you know if if you have like a slightly more mid core game and you're making maybe fifteen cents AB doll then actually you know you get to you get to a lifetime value of a dollar 45 in 180 days so that's kind of confusing right so somehow these these these benchmarks actually on their own are a little bit hard to take in and you know my my key message is that you have to kind of figure out for yourself actually okay what is it that I that I

want to actually expect from this product what is you know revenue that I want to get out of this game on a daily basis that kind of can sustain my my team that is good enough and that may be very different what you want then if you let's say go to a publisher who maybe wants to scale this in their portfolio to like a big multi-million dollar product they will have very very different benchmarks that they would see is is success there's also one other thing that I do want to raise about around these kind of LTV models you know some games have like you know consistent growth in in in the time value basically after a long period of time people can still spend money in the game and it still makes sense or consume ads in the game and it still

makes sense but for a lot of games you know once a player reaches a certain certain day they have figured out all the economics of the of the app and basically don't really spend anymore or they've basically come to the end of the game in a way and don't really find it find it very interesting you know a very hyper casual game maybe something that people after like 30 60 days really have enough of it and and rather move on to the next game and then basically you can you can model all sorts of wonderful things but you know there may be a point in time where this falls completely flat and you have to you know make your money back especially if you're kind of spending in in marketing before that point in time so you have to be very very aware also how how your users actually perform over time but so I would like you to like to invite you to

kind of really think about like what is it actually that really matters what is actually a good mobile game and for me the the the key things for any team or studio is like really to think about like okay how many how much revenue is actually good you know is this what is like how does success look like sure it can always be this million dollar project but what is actually what is OK for us as a team and that depends obviously on the size of the team on the on the size of the company all these kind of things matter so much more then the other questions is how many installs can I actually get do I have to kind of go into advertising or is there like a natural interest in in the market I still believe there are some pockets of games or game genres that are probably still not fully exploited and there you

can maybe get even like organic installs at scale and then the other key question how many days do people actually play there the the the key number that you get out of modeling your your retention and what do what is my opt out because at the end of the day I put that there small you know you can actually calculate your daily revenue out of that so if you take your app doll and you look at the the daily installs that you get and the number of days that they will retain over a year's time you can actually estimate what your daily revenue will be and that actually can can also answer then your your first question and you can look at it like okay either I need to get more daily installs or I need to increase my up/down or I need to kind of retain more more players so you have like these these three metrics actually that can

determine you know how success looks like I'm gonna give you an example so you know at lockwood when we initially started at some point you know we we we looked at our our metrics especially if you look at our bow and retention and these kind of things you know they were they were terrible especially retention and you know for the but we kind of we kind of continued because we felt like okay we have this unique opportunity we're getting all these installs every day our retention was really bad and normally I've seen a lot of games normally you would kill such a product in in soft launch if you have like 28 for day one 7% for for day 7 and 3% for

day 30 you're like okay this is a this is a dog this will never never really make it on our doll we were as you can see from these numbers we were also not really anywhere you know four cents is like a decent hyper casual game these days but there is one metric that was surprisingly great and that was the the daily installs and you know we were just already after probably six months to a year already getting like consistently without any UA or anything consistently getting about 25,000 installs per day and if you if you put that into into a into a nice formula you come up with with something where you can actually do something you know 140 thousand dollars a month that's not that's not nothing now that's nothing for a very very big studio but you know at that time we were maybe like 15 to 20 people so then it's it's it is

quite something today these metrics are very very different especially on retention we've we've worked and worked and worked and now the these these metrics are very very different also the number of installs per day is now more like 200,000 but it's taken many many years but there was you know something at the beginning and for us if we would only look at like retention numbers they were terrible if you look at abdon numbers they were at the bottom and I would say you know you would normally give up but you know in an equation actually this this then starts to make sense and there is something that you can build on top so benchmarks are really great but in essence you really have to define for yourself like okay for my project what kind of revenues do I actually want to get out of this what is actually good what is a success that may not need to

be the the big you know top 10 title or or anything like that to to kind of make my make my team and my my studio successful yeah that's it from me thank you very much you [Music]