Mobile Game Monetization, Chapter 1: Head Ball 2 (Part 1)

Welcome to the very first post on mobile game monetization. I anticipate that these posts will be be very important to the developers who is looking for earning strategies for their mobile games. So, I will pick one successful game every month. After playing it through the month, I will write about it. That’s the idea.

Mobile game monetization is something you must think carefully. You should think it before creating the game or during the design of the game. How to make money from your game is not a question to keep as a last thing. Of course, I am not here to give a lesson about mobile game monetization. I am here to analyze how some games are studying it according to my understanding.  

For the last days, I have been playing Head Ball 2. It is a fun game. They took all the FIFA Mobile experience and fit into something simpler. This game is worth to write about, because I paid twice for the packs of it.  

A Few Notes

In order to ease of following the post, I would like to make a few notes. I will make three or four posts for this game. My analysis won’t be so complicated.

It will start with a brief introduction of the game and its genre. Then, I will question availability of spending money for the player. This is very significant factor in mobile game monetization. After that, I will make some points on profitable multiplayer games based on my research. As a last thing, I will elaborate how this game balances the fairness for the paying users and non-paying users.

The posts are going to be revised, since this is a learning journey for me as well. Game monetization is not a simple task, so I think it requires a lot of research on other successful games. So, let’s start this one.

Head Ball 2 in the Nutshell

It is a multiplayer game where you have plenty of characters who makes one to one, 2D side-view football matches. You can improve your characters with costumes and you can use power-ups during the matches. For more details you can visit their website and try to play the game.

Important characteristics of the game;

• Multiplayer
• Linear but content is progressive
• Costumes and consumable power-ups
• Leader boards
• Multiple in-game currencies

Mobile Game Strategies of Head Ball 2

Availability of Purchase

Once you start the game, a nice tutorial teaches you how to play the game. Besides, it teaches you how to use power-ups. Power-ups are important because they provide a great value which can change the result of the game.

Starter Pack

The game instantly shows you the Starter Pack. It has a good value. Instead of starting with a less skilled character, it allows you to have a better character. Besides, you also have some freedom to buy in-game packs. This is a good practice to have. You should also create a starter pack for your game as well.

Remind User to Spend Money

Players are able to make a purchase at most on 3 taps. This is amazingly easy. However, even though it is easy to buy something, it is also easy to forget it. So the game should remind user that you can buy things. Whenever I play this game, I see at least 2 offers. So it is very hard to forget that I can buy things and create advantage for myself.

Create Long Term Relationship instead of Short Term Revenue

Creating short term revenue will provide you some income. However, you will lose the chance to earn more. Researches show that most of the income comes from the veteran players.

Head Ball 2 tries this so aggressively. However, they don’t play fair. That’s why players are stopping to play it. Including myself. The game uses quite annoying and obvious bots to keep the players in the game. So there is always a game you can play. However, if I play 20 games per day, 10 of them are bots. So I have stopped playing it. They got short term revenue on me, but I left it while I can spend more.

However, they do some certain things correctly;

• Daily rewards: So you can visit the game every day
• Push notification to remind the rewards, game events.
• Progressive content and levels on a linear game
• Weekly table which you can easily promote to the higher table

These are some factors of the successful mobile game monetization as a player’s thought. In the second part of the this post, I will elaborate about what makes a multiplayer game better in mobile platform and how Head Ball 2 is doing.

Links for the next posts will be here once they are published. Please criticize the content, so the next posts can be better.