How Kabam's Contest of Champions Made $100 Million in Seven Months
Guest Post by: Vinayak Sathyamoorthy
Contest of Champions is part of Kabam’s overall company strategy to create triple-A titles for mobile, and it’s a strategy that is already working. This past summer, Kabam announced that Contest was the company’s fastest game to reach $100 million in revenue – and that was before it launched in China. Contest is a refreshing addition to the App Stores’ top ten grossing titles, which have for long largely consisted of match-three and base defense games.
How has Contest succeeded? I’ll first explain how the game works (Core Loop, Controls, Character Design) and then talk about the 4 primary ways that Contest monetizes. I’ll wrap up by talking about how social holds the game together.
CORE LOOP
The first battles are very straight forward in Contest – the player starts by battling in “Story Quests” against AI opponents to get resources to upgrade champions as well as to unlock new champions.
Story Quest's battle map
Fighting a battle in an instantly recognizable PvP interface
A single Story Quest consists of a chain of battles, with each battle giving rewards and completion of the Quest giving the “ultimate” rewards. Battles naturally take Energy, which is refilled over a timer but can also be purchased with premium currency.
The "basic" core loop, which feeds the meta-goal of Upgrading Champions and Collecting New Champions ("Build") by using Story Quests and Daily Quests ("Battle")
Build
- Upgrading champions use Gold and ISO-8. These are used to “level up” champions, which increases their offensive and defensive capabilities. Upgrading champions allow players to beat gradually tougher opponents. After leveling up 20 levels, characters hit a ceiling at which point they need to “rank up”, which additionally takes a new set of resources called Catalysts.
- Collecting new champions use the game’s premium currency, Units. Units are doled out quite liberally in the early game’s Story Quests and are dripped steadily in the game’s subsequent modes. Units are used to buy Crystal Packs, which unlock champions. Crystal Packs are Contest’s gacha mechanism, providing a “mystery” champion ranging from common to rare.
Battle
- In addition to Story Quests, the game has Daily Quests, which are refreshed every 24 hours and are the primary way to collect Catalysts, which are needed to “rank up” champions.
Meta-Goal (Aspiration)
In Contest of Champions, your meta-goal is to collect all the champions and upgrade them to be the most powerful amongst the Contest community. (I’ll mention this meta-goal several times in the ensuing deconstruction) To that end, the player participates in a variety of quests/events through which you battle to get upgrade resources.
The "expanded" core loop; building a team of champions is accomplished by battling in different game modes
Like in base-building games, first battles are not against or with other players, but instead the AI (Story Quests, Daily Quests) – allowing the players to understand the game and fail on their own terms. Other layers, like Versus / Duels (battle against other players) and Alliance Quests are introduced later as the player starts feeling comfortable with the game.
CONTROLS / GAMEPLAY
Swipe controls create easy to learn Arcade-style gameplay that innovates on mobile
Controls boil down to two gestures: taps and swipes. Swipes are always movement, and if you swipe your champion onto another champion, that’s a hit. Taps are a little more distinguished – the screen is essentially divided in half. Any tap on the left half of the screen is a defensive block. Any tap on the right half of the screen is a strike.
A tap using the right side of the screen creates a strike
A right-to-left swipe that combines movement and strike
Battle XP accumulated during the match goes into a Special attack meter – pressing the Special Attack button at the right point in the match will deliver the goods in hit points. The Special Attack animations are also unique to each character (for example, Storm while rise into the air and deliver a thunder bolt shock to her opponents).
Contest of Champions strips away the complexities of console controls and streamlines them to work on mobile
Contest doesn’t bother with creating intricate movements like jumps, kicks vs. punch attacks, ducking, and button combos. You would think that you’d miss all this, but it actually works out great without the specific buttons.
Light strategization of battle is entertaining and lasts for hundreds of battles
While it may seem like a lot of options are taken away by streamlining controls and moves, there is still quite a bit of strategy when it comes to battling. Player chooses when to use Special Attacks – you can use it when the meter is partially full, or 100% full – and the subsequent attack is more and more powerful as you fill it up. Your opponent cannot block a full Special Attack, so it’s particularly potent in a match.
Certain special attacks also come with special attributes, like Vision’s Power Steal which takes away Special Attack Energy from the opponent, or Juggernaut’s Unstoppable, which makes him invulnerable to attack for 2-3 seconds. Walling yourself up with defensive blocks is critical at key moments in the match, but can also be broken down if your opponent uses a Strong Attack. Using a Strong Attack makes a player vulnerable, so it too can be exploited – there’s fun to be had in learning the systems and timing your attacks precisely.
CHARACTER DESIGN
With a game about collecting champions, character design becomes incredibly important in offering players a deep roster of champions to collect, who all exhibit unique attributes that make collecting a worthy pursuit.
All champion attributes, displayed in-game
Star Rating
Champions are available at a 1-star rating all the way up to a 5-star rating. Star rating affects how high you can upgrade a champion – for example, I have been upgrading my 3-star Storm champion, and have now reached its maximum hero rating of about 1600. However, a 4-star champion can be upgraded up to a 3000 rating.
Hero Rating
Hero rating aggregates health points (HP) and strike points. As you increase your champion’s hero rating, their health and offensive capabilities increase.
Classes
Champions are divided into six “classes”: cosmic, skill, tech, mutant, science and mystic. Each champion class has a class that it is “strong” against and one that it is “weak” against. For example, a Tech champion (e.g. Iron Man) is strong against a Mutant champion (e.g. Wolverine), but weak against a Cosmic Champion (e.g. Thor). When going into a battle, part of the strategic decision-making is about which class champion to use.
Levels and Ranks
Upgrading champions is a big part of player aspiration, and there is a tiered approach to this system. As mentioned earlier, players level up champions using Gold and ISO-8 and rank up champions using Catalysts. After the champion ranks up, they can continue leveling up to a certain point.
Signature Abilities
Contest champions are all equipped with unique “Signature Abilities” that aid them offensively or defensively during a battle. As mentioned earlier, an example is Vision’s ability to do a Power Steal and take away an opponent’s Special Attack energy.
4 WAYS CONTEST MONETIZES
Monetization Driver #1: Gacha Packs
The only way to get new champions are through “Crystal Packs”, which as mentioned is Contest’s version of Gacha Packs. Contest makes giving away “units” (the game’s premium currency) a key part of the core loop – grinding into story quests and other game modes rewards with units. It works because players can sink large amounts of units into the game’s gacha system – crystals – and vie for 4 star champions.
Buy page with "Crystal Packs", through which you collect Champions
Every draw is a win
The Contest Crystal Packs contain an assortment of champions with different classes (mystic, tech, skill, etc.) and different star rating. Opening new packs works towards the meta-goal of collecting new champions. Of course, everyone would prefer that their new Iron Man or Star Lord be 4-star champions; but that doesn’t mean drawing something else is a waste. If it was, users would monetize early and then churn out quickly; but that’s not how it works.
Regardless of what a player draws from the Crystal Pack, there is always something useful in the pursuit of your meta-goals
Drawing one-star champions isn’t fun, but you can always “sell” the champion and get back ISO and Gold, which can be used to upgrade champions. Selling champions also provides “crystal shards” that can be fused to make new champions – so you can sell two-star champions to get three-star champions, and three-star champions to get 4-star champions.
Drawing a duplicate champion from a crystal pack is actually one of the most fulfilling experiences – players are given an abundance of ISO and gold, and duplicates are the only way to “awaken” certain signature abilities for a champion. When I drew a duplicate 3-star storm, I got enough ISO to take the champion from level 17 to level 25 instantly. (an activity that would have taken me battling for days, maybe a week, to otherwise do) Additionally, I unlocked her signature ability “Conduit”, which deals double the damage to enemies on Special Attacks.
Big wins happen, but rarely
The potential to draw a 4-star champion is the ultimate aspiration when opening crystal packs, and is the core of gacha. As one would expect, big wins happen in Contest, but rarely.
Opening Crystal Packs most frequently draw one or two-star champions, but look out for the real treasures
From crowdsourced data of hundreds of players’ pack-opening activities (as well as looking at the currency values of 4-star champion special offers), we can tell that getting a 4-star champion is rare and occurs in the low single digits. But when players do, this news is sure to show up in your alliance’s news feed – and just like in a casino, makes it feel like there is a higher chance of getting these big prizes when loudly announced.
Collections are rewarded
As mentioned several times before, collecting champions is a key part of the meta-game – and Contest reinforces that belief by rewarding those who play into the collection game.
The three primary ways that Collections are rewarded in the game
First, collections are important in order to maximize on “Class Bonus”. This means that going into battle, I can choose a tech champion to fight a mutant champion, or a skill champion to fight a science champion, in order to optimize my odds. When choosing the right class, my hero rating (and therefore offensive hit points and total health) increases AND my opponents’ decreases.
Second, teaming the right characters together when going into a story quest or daily quest gives me the opportunity to get a “Synergy Bonus”. For example, teaming my Captain America and Iron Man together means that I get a teammate bonus which increases both players’ hero ratings. Finally, as mentioned before, unique champions have unique signature abilities, which gives players a reason to continue getting new champions.
Champions are never guaranteed in Crystal Packs so keep opening them!
Crystal Packs only offer the chance at a hero, but never guarantee them – so if you want to get the special “Marvel Now Magneto”, you spin a Crystal Pack. You want the “Symbiote Spider-Man”, you spin a Crystal Pack.
The only guaranteed way to get a champion is when the game releases a new one, and you need to compete in the “Versus” arenas. These are competitive arenas where you need to RANK at the end in order to get the special prize, and these champions are then reserved for the top 5 to 10% of people who participate in the event worldwide.
Monetization Driver #2: Events and New Champions
New champions are the engine that drives most new content in Contest. This approach does a great job of increasing engagement that leads directly to monetization.
Typically when Contest releases new champions it is supported by promotion in all aspects of the game to drive player compulsion towards them. New champion releases are supported by brand new event quests (featuring the new champions as opponents) and new Crystal Packs. These limited-time Crystal Packs feature the new champions, and cannot be earned through regular Crystal Packs – and are therefore priced at a 50% premium over regular packs.
New character Guillotine introduced in a special "Malicious Crystal"
Shortly after the release of the Crystal Packs, the new champions appear in special “Versus” arenas that run over the course of 2-3 days, where you can grind and battle and try to “win” the new champions.
Contest monetizes here by getting players to spend on multiplier bonuses (earned by going on winning streaks, and difficult to maintain unless you spend) as well as energy refills (you can use one champion in the Versus arena for one battle, and then there is a 2 hour cooldown).
At the end of a recent arena, the top 1-5% of players won a guaranteed new 4-star Ant-Man champion. This gives players choice in how to pursue the best champions – open crystals for a chance at a great champion, or to battle as religiously as other players to compete and win awesome champions. Not surprisingly, success often has to do with how much real-world dollars you choose to invest in the game.
Eventually these new champions make their way to the regular crystal packs, where Contest finally monetizes users who are unwilling to pay the 50% premium for first dibs at the champion.
New character Guillotine also available as a prize for winning in the Versus Arenas
Monetization Driver #3: Grinding for Rare Resources
I will borrow liberally here from Miska from his deconstruct of World of Tanks Blitz:
Progression is the driver of monetization in free to play games. On a high-level monetization is achieved when a player wants to progress faster than the game allows. Thus, creating a pinch point for monetization is simply slowing down players’ progress and encouraging players to play more or to pay to progress faster.
As stated in the Core Loop section, progression is about upgrading your champions – leveling them up to increase their player rating, which makes them more effective in battles. When a champion reaches a max level, they need to be RANKED UP in order to increase their player rating any further. The Rank Up resources are the major “mountains” that need to be climbed in working towards the overall meta-game of creating the most powerful champions.
Example of a 3-star Cyclops: the "hills" are leveling up, which take resources and time, and steady progress is made in hero rating; whereas the "mountains" are ranking up, which are very difficult, take a disproportionate amount of resources and zero progress is made in hero rating until the hurdle is overcome
Recently I was trying to rank up a 4-star Iron Fist champion that required a lot of resources – the most trying of which was an “Alpha Catalyst”. This catalyst was only available upon 100% completion of a series of event quests – a slog of a grind that took me a whole week, and more than 200 units (little less than $10 of real currency spend). I had to spend in order to revive my champions in the event quests, because of the incredibly difficult opponents who were knocking me out left and right.
Smartly, Kabam does not provide an option to “buy-thru” to purchase an Alpha Catalyst by itself. Sustainable monetization is achieved by allowing players to pay to play more instead of allowing them to pay to not to play.
Monetization Driver #4: Time-Bound Special Offers for Rare Resources
At key moments of gameplay Contest will try to sell you resources that are otherwise unavailable in the game, and offer them as limited time purchases. For example, while in normal gameplay a crystal pack is the way to try for a 4-star champion, occasionally the game will offer an opportunity to buy a “4-star Crystal Pack”, that guarantees a 4-star champion.
The holy grail of Crystal Packs, the 4-Star Champion Crystal Pack
As the screenshot shows, the 4-star hero crystal costs 2500 units and is only available for 1 hour. In order to afford this crystal, you will need to purchase the $100 unit package (which will give you 3100 units)! Let’s do some exceedingly simplistic math: assume that Contest has a million users daily, and 10% of users are shown this message, and only 2% of those shown this message convert and purchase, this offer could net $200,000 a day. (this of course makes some major assumptions about cannibalization of spend on regular crystal packs, revenue attrition as users consume this offer and stop spending on it, etc.)
Contest also offers a variety of “just-in-time” deals at key moments in the game – I recently got a 4-star champion from a regular crystal pack. The game immediately surfaced a “rank up” package which gave me a slew of resources to upgrade my 4-star champion, for only 1500 units (about $48). What’s powerful about offers like these is that it comes at a “win” moment, when the user is feeling pretty good about themselves (got a 4-star champion!), giving them the push to make a decision and buy before the offer expires.
Rare resources like catalysts also make their way into Special Offers
SOCIAL
What I really enjoy about Contest is that it treats the game as a true platform for social collaboration and co-opetition, and doesn’t even bother with integrations with Facebook or other social media networks. Contest prioritizes the in-game communities and all social ties that you form with committed members of the game.
The heart of social play is co-opetition, which require heavy coordination between players in order to reap the rewards
Because Contest is an asynchronous battler, it can’t have the same social mechanics as a game like Hearthstone to make it feel alive and full of people. The game solves it by creating “Alliance Quests” that require players to get into an alliance and work in a group of up to 30 people to finish quests. Quests are visually represented as a spider-web of nodes that are tangled and interconnected – some nodes are boosted by other nodes, which means that players need to rely on their teammates to battle and shut down nodes so they can advance.
An alliance quest map with nodes showing enemies; in this example, beating the Daredevil "boss" will take way the boost provided to the Ultron "Boss"
I have been playing with a very active alliance that uses the group messaging app GroupMe to coordinate all the alliance activities – there are multiple discussion threads to coordinate and discuss strategy. Contest also reinforces core loop gameplay in alliances by creating “alliance events”, which encourage members to grind into the core loop and get rewards for total alliance participation.
Co-opetition mechanics work, but true player vs. player is a less fully developed area to explore
Alliances are a great place to bond with other members of the Contest community, where you can chat, participate in alliance events (which reward alliances for everyone participating in the game’s core loops) and finally participate in alliance quests. Alliance quests are Contest’s take on co-opetition, as described above.
Co-opetition is great in that it fosters teamwork and communication to achieve goals, and unlock rewards for everyone in alliances. But because of the asynchronous nature of battles in most mobile games, it becomes difficult to nail the true thrill of head-to-head fighting games like Super Smash Brothers.
In Contest’s “Versus” mode, you are technically playing other players – but it is really you playing AI using another team’s players. This doesn’t feel like true social competition. In my review of Madden Mobile, I highlighted the “Challenge” mode as a great way to get the head-to-head feeling in an asynchronous environment by using turn-based combat. Unfortunately, something like that wouldn’t work in Contest.
I would love to see a social competition mode where turn-based combat could work. A mode where using your champions to amass the most number of points in a given time period against an AI system would be very cool. It could be something akin to Street Fighter II’s mini-game between real battles, where you beat up cars or tires to get the most points. But the added take on it is seeing if you can beat the points earned by someone you’re challenging on the same feat. In this mode, having better champions with better abilities makes the difference in winning or losing.
Street Fighter II's mini-game between fights, which reward points for beating up on junky old cars
ODDS AND ENDS
An abundance of reward types makes it easier to make every session feel like a “win”
One of the more challenging aspects of F2P mobile game development is creating enough compelling reward types to keep users engaged and have them playing your game not only for few days or a week but for months and more. Kabam has done a great job at creating several tracks of rewards: crystals and crystal shards for new champions; ISO and gold for leveling up champions; catalysts for ranking up champions; XP/HP boosts, energy refills and revivals for story quests, and on and on.
A sampling of all the different resources available as rewards in Contest
At the end of every game mode, the user is presented with a smattering of rewards that make it feel as if they made tremendous progress. The reality is that champions demand more and more of these resources as you make progress, and progression slows down considerably over time.
Rewards screen at the end of a story quest gives a user a real sense of accomplishment, motivating them to continue grinding into game (and retain)
“Contest” shows the way for new types of gameplay in F2P mobile
The truth is Contest’s success hasn’t been overnight, but a strong and steady march using highly refined gacha mechanics and well-architected cadence systems to introduce new champions regularly that fit right into the core loop.
Contest is clearly a very deep game, and makes full use of its brand IP to slowly introduce the multitude of characters – 60 years worth of them – to make the game fresh and relevant to the most elder of game players. Kabam has deeply understood that slapping on an IP will not be enough for its player base, but what it will do is make for good marketing to get players to install and then make for strong aspiration to unlock characters that have been fully fleshed out in other mediums, like movies and comic books.
I fully expect more top mobile game makers to embrace gacha as the primary way to collect heroes/champions, as it is a fantastic way to monetize in a free-to-play-market if implemented well.
In future releases, Contest has hinted towards “base defending” types of gameplay for alliances to deepen the social / co-opetition aspects of the game, which will be interesting. As I mentioned, for players who want to show off their status after a certain point, I’m still very interested in gameplay that will truly allow me to pit my players against others in turn-based gameplay – or the true game changer – real-time, synchronous combat.
