One of the challenge many game developers face after launching their mobile game is to acquire their players. After a player has downloaded the mobile game, it is even more challenging to turn them into loyal and engaging players.

Fortunately, there are ways to build a player base with acquisition and maintaining with retention. The following will discuss on the steps of achieving it.

Due to the depth of the topic, this article will be separated into Part 1 & Part 2 on the steps to build a gamer base.

Know Your Audience

Before developing your game and acquiring gamers, you need to understand who are your target audience. Because if this is not thought of initially, it will be very costly to change certain features to target another audience. There are several things to know about your audience.

Needs and Preferences

Understanding your audience is to understand what are their needs and preferences. What sort of features will appeal to your target audience? What kind of message will capture their attention? Your target audience might be adults whom do not have much time. Thus, your game should be designed for options of a short game loop which encourage short play time and constantly visiting the game.

To understand your audience, you can also analyze how other games are successful in acquiring their loyal users. You can look at how do they make their game stand out from other competitors and how do they stand in the view of their users. Industry forums and blogs with case studies are also a good way to find out the latest trends of gamers.

Apart from knowing your audience based on age and gender, you can also target based on their behavior and interest. Some gamers will prefer a certain game genre such as arcade as they may have a competitive nature in them. They might also love to compete with their friends or collect collectables they could admire. Sometimes they may even be both! Thus, understanding your target audience’s needs and preferences is the basis to help create a loyal gamer base.

Monetization and Price model

Every game will be financially unsuccessful if it doesn’t have any sort of monetization model in it. Even if it has millions of downloads, it will be useless. Some audiences you are targeting have a more preferred method of monetization. Gamers that wants a deep and enjoyable experience will not mind paying the price of a full game rather than constantly watching ads or making in-game purchases to progress. On the other hand, some gamers will not prefer to pay an upfront price of the game but rather prefer to only watch advertisements and sacrifice more of their time.

To build your gamer base, monetization and pricing is not something to overlook as it could make or break the interest of your player. Thus, you should take all kinds of monetization into consideration and use the ones that appeal to your audience the most.

Focus on Obtaining High LTV Users.

Focusing on creating a high lifetime value gamers is important for creating a loyal gamer base. In other words, you will also need to create an engaging game. Usually viral games that are unique and addictive will eventually have a high LTV gamers. But if you do not have it, you will need an optimized campaign to do it.

Optimize Campaigns

Before obtaining high LTV users, you will need to know how to identify them. Some users with a specific attributes may contribute to a higher possibility of LTV users. It can be interests, age, gender and so on. This data could be source out from external portal or even your own internal metrics in your past games.

Retarget on actions

Showing ads to players that can make an action within the game brings more value than a new player installing it. Engaging your high LTV gamers who have already installed your game but stopped playing is effective in building a good gamer base. You can remind your player to return to where they left off if they stop playing your game for a while. It doesn’t just have to a friendly reminder, you could also offer more in-game content to encourage them to return. Retargeting on existing player is a cost-effective way to maintain high LTV gamers within the game.

These are some of the steps to build a gamer base. If you want to know more about developing a successful game or gamifying your business, reach us at Gameka.

Click here for the next article, Building a gamer base: Part 2.