I was truly excited when Bethesda's Fallout Shelter launched. Finally, the franchise that I first played 18 years ago on my IBM computer had landed on mobile. And most importantly, Fallout Shelter delivered. The retrofuturistic atompunk theme, the characteristic dark humor, and the Vault Boy were all there. The game felt familiar yet new and it lacked all the infuriating monetization mechanics that destroyed the mobile reboot of my other childhood favorite, Dungeon Keeper(link: Will EA learn from the terrible Dungeon Keeper mobile game?). It was a great game that instantly climbed to the top of the charts.

Yet after only a weekend of non-stop gaming, I was done. There was nothing left to pull me back into the game. I had cleared the challenges and my vault was full of happy dwellers just doing their jobs and leveling up their skills. There was no further aspirations nor need for me to return to the game. A couple of weeks after I lapsed, the game started falling from top charts it had so quickly occupied. 

This deconstruction examines how Fallout Shelter was able to conquer the absolute top of charts so quickly and why the game had little staying power.   
 

The Pop

It is very rare to see a game that after its launch instantly takes a position in the top 10 grossing games. Fallout Shelter did this and stayed in the top ten grossing apps for three weeks as well as hit top ten most downloaded games for four weeks (all figures on iOS). I believe that the unexpected rise to the top was mainly due to three reasons:

1. Bold Launch Strategy

Fallout Shelter had probably the most high-risk/high-reward launch strategy I’ve ever seen in mobile space as the game was launched during the world premiere of Fallout 4 at E3. No soft launches. No teasing through media. No announcements. In fact, it was very Applesque style launch where Bethesda Game Studios' Todd Howard introduced the new mobile game through various gameplay captures and ended the presentation by saying that “this game is coming out in App Store tonight”.

Watch Todd Howard announce Fallout Shelter during his Fallout 4 premiere at E3 (video: Fallout Shelter announced at 19min mark ) 

Announcing a same-day worldwide release right when the hype around the game Fallout series is at its peak was a very bold move that clearly paid off. It’s also important to keep in mind that Bethesda had full support from Apple, which provided a major worldwide push to Fallout Shelter, for exchange of limited time exclusivity to App Store. 

2. Strong Benchmark Games

The top performing mobile games are either iteration of social web games or iterations of other top mobile games. Trying something totally new is a huge risk in a highly competitive touchscreen market that seems to demand always something same but different.

You could describe Fallout Shelter as Tiny Tower meets Faster Than Light in Fallout world

In my mind, most of the console game developers fail on mobile because they’re arrogant. They simply refuse to learn from competitors and they don’t have the skillset to design broadly accessible games. Developers at Bethesda, even though taking shots at current best practices on mobile, were humble enough to learn from games paid games like FTL and freemium games like Tiny Tower to come up with a game that feels familiar yet offers something new. 
 

3. The Right Type of Monetization

I wouldn’t be writing about Fallout Shelter, and you wouldn’t be reading about it unless the game had made a major splash in the top grossing charts. What makes the initial financial success of the title even more impressive is that the game has neither paywalls nor building timers. Personally, I believe it’s the combination of two key elements why the game was able to convert players into payers so well:

First and foremost it’s due to the amazing game design. In Fallout Shelter, the player takes the role of shelter overseer. The starting shelter is very small and has barely any population. The player is constantly balancing between the production of electricity, water and food and getting set back by accidents as well as raider attacks. Most of the mobile games are afraid that a failure state will cause players to quit playing, but Fallout Shelter proves that this is not true. Failure state on the contrary forces players to play and overcome the puzzle.

Secondly, once the failure state is established, Fallout Shelter offers an opportunity for players to improve the situation of their vault just a bit faster. Bethesda was smart when they didn’t implement the much-hated building timers with speedups or even direct sales of missing resources. Instead, they took a page out of Blizzard’s playbook by choosing to monetize by selling packs of cards. Each card is a random loot of resources or items and each deck, or lunchbox, has five cards in it. What Fallout Shelter does for monetization is simple, repeatable, effective and most importantly, not despised by players.

Fallout Shelter uses the exact same card deck mechanic as Hearthstone for monetization

The Drop

Three weeks after launch Fallout Shelter started dropping from the top grossing charts. A week later the same drop followed in the downloads chart. In my opinion, the drastic drop is due to the following three reasons:

1. Lack of Content

In the release announcement of Fallout Shelter Bethesda’s Todd Howard proudly declares few times that there’s no soft launch for Fallout Shelter. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as tired as anyone else of building timers and overly aggressive freemium monetization tactics on mobile but soft-launch has little to do with that. Soft launching a game in a geo-locked area allows the developer to test the size of demand for the title, tune the game economy and tutorial, build a release plan for future content, work on bugs, improve stability, test scalability of servers and optimize marketing. Soft-launch is about making the game better before giving it to players.

Because Fallout Shelter was never soft launched Bethesda was unaware how long the game content would last in the real world. It also didn’t help that there’s no cut-off to a session, which essentially reduces the time it takes for a player to go through the content. Building timers might have been wrong for this game but I can see tuning in resource production cycles and rushes as something that could have helped with session cutoffs. 

The player is incentivized through content unlocks to get up to 100 dwellers in their vault. Yet new rooms unlocked with an increase of population don't add anything new to the game. New resources and rooms that produce these resources would have really helped to at least encourage more players to go through all of the existing content.

Fallout Shelter is a great game that players can pretty much finish in a weekend or so. And after a weekend they want more. And when they can’t get more they switch to another game. Sure, Bethesda can add more content to the game but it will most likely be too little and too late as they’ve already used the rocket fuel of Apple featuring.
 

2. Lack of Social Gameplay

When players collaborate and/or compete with each other in a game they are bound to compare each other's' progress. Comparing progress leads to two kinds of feelings. Firstly, those players who are clearly lagging behind will want to progress and catch those ahead of them. On the other hand, progressed players will feel good about themselves and won’t want to lose the feeling of being ahead and above. 

It's safe to say that encouraging players to compare their progress in the game to the progress of other players is very important. To solve the issue of progress measurability we employ social mechanics. 

There’s no social gameplay in Fallout Shelter whatsoever. When the game launched we were all excited at the studio and showed off our vaults to one another. This encouraged those lagging behind to pick up the pace while the best overseers with biggest vaults got to bask in the admiration of their colleagues. Our behavior proved that the content of the game was share worthy yet there were no in-game systems to allow or encourage this or any other kind of progress sharing between players.  

In their first and currently only update Fallout Shelter added ability to share photos of player's vault. This is more like an old school virality that true social system.

Personally, I believe that Fallout Shelter would have benefited tremendously from a player versus player battles. Allowing players to raid each other would have not only created a strong sink in the game economy and thus prolonged the game but also inserted much needed social gameplay as players would have seen each other's’ vaults.
 

3. Lack of New Players

Finally, I believe that Fallout Shelter dropped out of the top charts because Bethesda doesn’t have the resources to upkeep chart position through systematic and efficient player acquisition once the organic installs taper off. A drastic drop in new players installing the game combined with quick burn through of content is a very tough combination to handle no matter how great your game is.

Drop in revenue after 3 weeks was quickly followed by drop in installs. New update on fourth weekend after launch wasn't able to stop the slide as it didn't provide new content.

Hopefully First of Many

I'm pretty sure Fallout Shelter was a bigger success than Bethesda or anyone else anticipated. Not only did it generate a significant amount of revenue in a very short span but, perhaps more importantly, it introduced the Fallout universe to millions of people who downloaded the game. 

I sincerely hope that other top console studios will be encouraged by the success of Fallout Shelter. By building mobile games themselves these studios can ensure top notch quality and deliver titles that not only attract new players but also cater to their existing highly critical player base.