Candy Crush Saga has ruled the casual puzzle game segment on mobile since its launch in November 2012. It's definitely a benchmark for every developer who aims to create a great puzzle game. Actually it's so strong of a benchmark that developers have problems to improve and are simply content to play around with different themes. 

Jelly Splash

is

Wooga's

attempt to re-conquer (remember

Bubble Island

and

Diamond Dash

) the puzzle segment. They follow carefully the mechanics that made Candy Crush Saga successful while at the same time offering something new in terms of different game mechanics. 

In this post I'm not going to deconstruct Jelly Splash. If you're interested in that, please just read

the deconstruction of Candy Crash Saga

. Instead I'm going to explain why the use of hard currency will enable Jelly Splash to monetize significantly better than Candy Crush Saga ever did. 

Hard Currency

Jelly Splash introduces hard currency in form of Coins. Coins allow players to buy more moves (pay-to-continue mechanic), refill lives (energy mechanic) and instant access new content instead of sending requests to their Facebook friends. 

Replacing direct payments with hard currency might look like a minor tweak but in my opinion it improves the game's KPIs significantly in the six following ways:

1. Increased Size of Average Purchase

Say you want to instant unlock new levels and it costs $0.99. Without hard currency you’ll just pay the even sum directly and continue playing. Hard currency allows developer to set up the smallest price point to

$1.99 and just give players twice as much hard currency. Simple tweak and you've just significantly increased your revenue. And I wouldn’t worry about doubling the lowest price point. In my experience the price elasticity is non-existent between $1 and $2.

Hard currency is a great way to increase the size

of an average purchase. Just increase the smallest

price point and implement volume discounts.

2. Increased Retention

When players are forced to purchase more hard currency than they actually need it creates what I call money-in-the-bank situation. Players are incentivized to come back to the game and continue playing it because they have hard currency, which they paid for.

Having hard currency player has paid for in a game encourages

to return - at least till they've spent all of it. At least...

In my opinion player behaviour is a bit different than with paid apps. Once you pay for an app in advance it’s a sunken cost. Players who pay to progress in a game are much more engaged with the game as their purchase decision was made after reasonable amount of gameplay, thus a situation where they have hard currency on their account tends to increase short term retention.

3. Decrease Purchase Flow Drop-Offs

There’s usually a significant drop-off between making a purchase decision and actually completing the purchase. With hard currency player isn’t forced to go through the purchase flow every time they want to spend to progress. 

There's a significant drop-off between initiating a purchase and

actually completing one. The more confirmation popups you

show the more players will cancel the transaction.

4. Incentivize Players

Hard currency is a great way to incentivize players to complete various in-game actions. Tournaments, missions, daily bonuses, challenges, events, you name it. Giving players the opportunity to earn something worth real money is a very nice way to increase retention and sometimes encourage spending.

5. Incentivized Video Ads

Another great way to increase monetization is to implement incentivized video ads, which reward players with hard currency if they choose to watch an ad. But before implementing ads do make sure that they don’t interfere with gameplay and that the player gets actually asked whether they want to watch the ad or not. Also A/B testing the reward size and performance of player cohorts (ad shown vs. ad not-shown) should be carefully followed.

Hay Day has one of the best integrated video ads in the industry. 1) Player discovers a shining movie ticket on their farm 2) collecting the movie ticket gives an instant reward and opens up the movie theatre popup 3) if player chooses to watch an ad they will be rewarded with hard currency after the ad ends

6. Take the Most Out of the Game When Off-Line

Finally hard currency allows players to take the most out of the game when off-line. Say you’re on a plane. You probably have time to play few more games than what the 5 lives give you. Well, then before you take off make sure to fill up on that hard currency and buy more lives while off-line.

Break Down and Optimize

In the end it's pretty much about breaking down the monetization. You have three key variables. First one is the amount of daily active users (DAU). Second one is the conversion aka. the percentage of daily users making purchases. Third is the average revenue per paying user (ARPPU).

Wooga had the formula for daily active users. I mean not only did they take a page (or few) out of King’s book but they also had the experience in making those super casual high DAU games such as Bubble Island and Diamond Dash. Conversion in casual puzzle games is also something that King has taught us by planting itself on top of the grossing list for months and months. But maximizing revenue is something that maybe King thought they knew till Wooga started giving them a lesson.