Compass Point: West

Superstar Session: Scaling Joy – Crafting Games for Everyone In The Room - Saara Bergström.

Saara Bergström, Managing Director of Next Games, presents the studio's journey from a free-to-play mobile developer into a first-party studio within Netflix.

Next Games' top tips for making money from incentivised video ads

Next Games’ strategy for monetizing the mobile title Compass Point: West centers on the effective integration of incentivized video advertisements.

• Integrating incentivized video ads as a core game feature in 'Compass Point: West' resulted in 75% of daily active users watching at least one ad, generating $0.06 in ARPDAU from ad inventory alone.
• A/B testing revealed that players exposed to incentivized ads showed a 20% increase in repeat purchases and a 15% higher conversion rate compared to non-exposed players.
• Next Games successfully incentivized non-paying users by offering rewards valued at approximately $0.30 in exchange for 15 seconds of engagement.

Monetizer: Compass Point: West

Compass Point: West, a mobile strategy title developed by the Finnish startup Next Games, serves as a case study in hybridizing established genre mechanics.

• Next Games developed Compass Point: West as a hybrid mobile strategy title that merges Clash of Clans-style base-building with card-collection mechanics for unit management.
• The game replaces traditional unit training with a card system where players collect, upgrade, and merge cards to improve combat effectiveness.
• Monetization relies on a dual-currency model using gold/goods as soft currency and diamonds as hard currency to accelerate timers, bypass wait times, and purchase card-draw boosters.