Playrix is one of the powerhouses in the puzzle genre thanks to Gardenscapes and Homescapes’ current success. And while those two titles dominate the top charts, Playrix road to the top started a long time ago with a non-assuming little game know as Township. The game was launched in 2011 as a freemium social game first as Google+ (!) exclusive and then on Facebook canvas. Township has been on mobile platforms since 2013 and generated around a Billion Dollars in life-time revenues. 

In many ways, Township has been the cornerstone for Playrix’s success as a title that allowed the company to build experience in live ops, analytics, and user acquisition. This deconstruction will explain how Township consistently grew and blossomed into a game that boasts an astonishing $200M yearly run rate 7 years after it was originally launched. 

You’re probably itching to find out all the tips and tricks that allowed Township to grow for 7 years straight. We’ll get into that in a moment. But before that, lets talk about the mammoth in the room, Playrix.

Playrix - True Behemoth of Casual Mobile Games

Founded in 2004, Playrix entered the industry by making premium Match-3 and Hidden Object games. As a result of growth of app stores in early 2010s they switched their focus and decided to jump onto the free to play mobile games in 2011.

Currently Playrix employs more than 2000 emoployees located in 5 countries and 14 offices. In 2019, they had a record high revenues reaching staggering sum of $1.7Bn. The company has also one of the largest audiences with over 40 millions daily active players (DAU). 

With the start of consolidation in the mobile gaming market in recent years, Playrix has been also very active in M&A and investments. They acquired 11 companies since 2018 and invested into companies like Vizor (creator of Klondike’s Adventures) and Nexters (developer of Hero Wars - the game where you probably noticed their ads, saving a hero by moving pins and solving the puzzles similar to other Playrix titles’ playable ads)

Playrix has great games in its portfolio for sure but great games are not enough to become a top publisher in less than 3 years. Their success also relies on how they do performance marketing which allowed them to outrun the competition in this fierce market. 

From shockvertising to fake-ads, Playrix has been at the forefront of (often controversial) performance marketing practices. And you can hate on these practices as much as you want but you can’t deny the power that these controversial methods have. Just look at the graph below. After thorough creative optimization Playrix titles rocketed from 10 million monthly installs to over 40 million installs! And revenue followed suit…

The Playrix Approach of Performance Marketing

This topic is explained in some of the articles posted in Deconstructor of Fun but at its simplest, there are 2 metrics that we look into to understand how high we can scale a game, CPI (Cost per Install) vs ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). If we look at the equation below, CPI is subject to 2 metrics, CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) and IPM (installs per 1000 impressions). 

What Playrix excels in optimizing the IPM. Their performance marketing teams are clearly involved in the product development process and seem to even sometimes give direction based on the market trends to maximize the acquisition of new players.

Here’s how Playrix improves the marketability of their games:

1. Mastering of ad creatives: Playrix regularly tries out new creatives (mostly playable ads)  based on the popular and trending ad creative themes or gameplays (even fake ones). This allows them to optimise the number of clicks and app store visits resulting in higher CTRs (Click Through Rates)

2. Optimization of the storefronts: After a “hero creative/or the main playable ad” is selected, Playrix changes the app icons and the first screenshots in the app stores to reflect a similar message with the ads. This leads to a higher CTI (Click Through Installs) and conversion rates in app stores since the players who viewed and tapped the ad see a similar content in the store page - even though the ad originally was just a fake gameplay. 

3. Retaining the acquired users with a mini-game: If the hero creative/or playable ad involves a fake gameplay, it is added as a minigame to the events or core mechanics until the player is hooked in with the real in-game content. After these players are retained for a few days the LTV is optimized through successful live service management aka. product management.

Let’s look at Township as an example. Playrix has been trying out many interstitials, banners, videos and playable ads based on solving puzzles/saving animals by moving the pins in the right order. This is what we call “fake gameplay” - meaning depiction of gameplay that doesn’t portray the game marketed in any way or shape. The following playable ad and their variations were the best performing ads in all networks and running for 2 months since July. 

Most of us know that fake ads are not performing great in terms of retention and many players churn after they realize that the ad they have seen has nothing to do with the real gameplay. But Playrix has essentially de-faked the fake ads by implementing these playable ads into their games. 

In Township, when players first start the game, in their first days/levels, they will get some special helicopter orders. These are some minigames exactly matching with the playable ads we mentioned above (where players need to save a lamb from a tractor by moving the pins around or completing a series of puzzles with 2 options. As players progress past first day these orders based on the playable ad disappear.

Playrix is also trying to tie its titles into one common universe. You can see for example Hal from Gardenscapes and Homescapes requesting some materials from you so they also leverage the cross promotion opportunities with their successful titles.

We briefly explained what Playrix is and had an idea about their titles and investments. Now, let’s take a look at the Tycoon/Crafting market and how Township claimed the top position starting from 2019.

Genre Analysis - after 7 years Township finally surpassed Hay Day

Tycoon/Crafting sub-genre has been solidly strong since the birth of app stores. It corresponds as the 3rd biggest subgenre in the casual category with $720M market size and 22% growth in 2019.

Even though it is a lucrative market, there has not been many changes in the top games until 2019. The market was dominated by Supercell with Hay Day since 2012 but starting from early 2019, there are 2 publishers standing out in competition:

1. Playrix - Township: Skyrocketed in installs not just with Township but all successful titles in their portfolio by following a new UA and creative strategy. Playrix managed to get more than 850 million new installs in 2019 which was higher than the sum of all previous years. (Finding the high performing creatives with multiple iterations and then creating playable ads supported with the relevant in-game content and store page changes)

2. Vizor-Klondlike Adventures:In August 2019, Vizor received an investment from Playrix and built a strategic partnership. After that, they started to follow Playrix’s playbook; and with the production and marketing expertise along with the funding to carry on marketing activities, Vizor doubled Klondike’s monthly revenues from $7M to $15M. 

Core Loop and Gameplay

Township is a typical farming game with a production puzzle core. Planting and harvesting crops are the starting point of all the actions. Harvested crops are produced into goods that later can be used in different ways to earn coins and experience. On top of that, almost every action grants experience points. This allows players to not abide by a single way of progression, do anything and still continue to level up and unlock new content.

The main loop can be simplified into; plant/harvest crops > craft goods > send them away with trains, planes or zoo orders to collect coins > upgrade your buildings > expand your territory to unlock new crops that produce goods that sell for a higher price.

The game evolves as players gain experience, level up. Leveling up unlocks new mechanics, interesting in-game activities, more fields to plant crops, farms, new types of crops, factories where players need to manufacture more complex products. Player is encouraged to progress as it changes how they play the game.

Materials and products are straightforward and relatable. For example, "wheat", which is the first crop available, can be used to produce dozens of different products from animal feeds to simple bread or more difficult products like ravioli to honey gingerbreads. Even though this is a casual game, there are 250+ goods players can harvest or produce. But still, it is  not overwhelming players since everything is logical and easy to memorize.

Do you wanna have a pizza? Just bring some cheese, tomato and wheat, you are all done!

When it comes to the city building aspect, houses and community buildings have the biggest impact as they are needed to increase population and population cap. 

1. Community Buildings = Higher Population cap: Needed to build more houses. 

2. Houses = More population: Population increases when players build houses which are needed to build factories, expand your land and put on extra fields to plant your crops.

Township is not really a city building game because the layout and city planning does not have any impact on the outcome. Smart city layout can makes it easier to navigate through the production between farms, factories, fields and other core buildings but it’s equally complicated as setting up your layout in a farming game. Players don't need to think about if roads are connected, there’s no need for fire stations or police stations and you can place a factory right next to a house with no gameplay feedback.

In my opinion the fact Township has not added the city building gameplay is the correct choice. The game has already a complex and engaging set of game mechanics through the ever evolving production puzzle of crafting items. The challenges brought by an evolving layout puzzle, which characterizes city builders, would simply make the game more tedious.

Nevertheless Township has one of the most extensive decorative lists. There are limitless combinations and layout options so no city is similar to one another. Extensive opportunities to customize without the necessity to obey city planning rules seems to be exactly what the more mature female audience is looking for.

Game Mechanics

Township offers a production puzzle to the players. The puzzle starts from an order. Player’s goal is to figure out what she needs to produce to fulfill the order. As players progress (level up by completing orders) they will be asked to deliver new type of goods via orders. These goods will have them build new production facilities as well as utilizing the ones they have.

In other words, as player keep playing, the production puzzle becomes ever more complex and thus ever more engaging all while rewarding the player with visual progression in the form of the growth of their town.

Filling Orders

Orders are the main source of coins and the biggest sink for your crops and produced goods. You can request help from friends for the missing goods you need for the orders, which kicks off the social loop in form of visitations. There are 4 types or order boards in Township:

Helipad orders: Pretty straightforward orders that will stay permanently on your town map if not canceled manually. Order rewards are balanced between the time it takes to manufacture them and the XP and the Coins. What’s interesting is that some orders lean on rewarding more XP while others more Coins. This allows players to choose whether they want to push for a new level or more Coins to build what they have unlocked.

Train orders: Main mechanic to collect the materials for the two bottlenecks in player’s progress path, the Barn (storage) and the community buildings. Train stations unlocks early in the game (Level 5) and players can have a total of 3 trains. After sending off the trains, players need to wait for them to turn back in up to 5 hours.  Later on players can upgrade the trains to reduce their travel times. 

Airport orders:  Another station with time-limited orders. Airplanes have 2-3 crates that need to be filled in each row. Players will get a reward for each crate but there are extra rewards for each row they complete. When all 3 rows are filled, will get a mystery chest containing Gems, which can be used to activate boosters/temporary buffs (ex. twice the amount of crops or shorter timers for factories etc.) for your town in a special building called the Laboratory.

Zoo orders: Each order requires only two goods but players don't have to fill them at the same time. After completing an order, a new one will appear in 3 hours. Players can fill a maximum of 8 zoo orders in a day. As a reward they will receive a container containing animal cards/decks for every 12 orders completed.

Mastering the Content Treadmill

Early Game: Events

Players are introduced to events at very early levels and I can clearly say that events are very well executed in Township. Each event is unique and they introduce a new type of mini-games with a leaderboard, special event currencies, new recipes to produce in your town, and new decoratives/cosmetics.

Events are popular in Township because they are always novel and because they are not constantly ongoing. Usually, an event duration is 7-10 days and the gap between events is around 2 weeks, making sure that players don’t burn out. These events also engage players in the core gameplay. Every event centers around production, so players need to carry on with the usual gaming mechanics.

The mini-games are delivered in such great quality that I think some of those can even be standalone games if developed a bit further. They all incorporate trending casual and hypercasual mechanics from the top downloaded games in app stores and this clearly helps them in their UA strategies as well. These events are usually "short games" outside of your town screen and each new one has a new unique challenge.  Delivering these high-quality events in 2-3 weeks cadence must also require a huge team size. Bigger teams that are backed up with stronger marketing capabilities explain how Township and Klondike solely make up 40% of the addressable tycoon/building market.

Each mini-game session lasts for about 1–2 minutes and uses an energy mechanic that can be refilled over time or with a purchase of event-related offers. This time frame doesn’t consume players’ attention for too long while engaging them enough to launch a series of mini-games in a row. (Such as running your own restaurant in a town festival with time management/cooking games core gameplay or building bridges to help your delivery trucks that resemble popular hyper-casual games with tap and hold mechanics)

In some of these minigames, there are fail cases - for example, you try to pass intersections in crowded highways to reach the town festival with your delivery trucks. If you hit another car, you lose and don't get any rewards from that minigame level. It is possible to continue the level by spending hard currency which you will be tempted to if you are close to finishing the level

Mid-Game: Mines, Ingots, and Levelling up your buildings

When players reach level 21 after a few weeks of active gameplay, they can restore the Mine, which is a new type of building that takes more than a day to rebuild. After that, players can go into the mine and use destructive tools to dig deeper to find ores, hidden chests, coins, artifacts, secret treasure rooms, or even messages in bottles from their friends. The goal is digging deeper to find more valuable ores but even without the rewards, it adds a satisfying "Exploration" element. Players need to use one of the three mining tools to make the dirt, stones or rocks go away to reveal the hidden rewards. These tools are:

• Pickaxes: Destroys 1 tile and makes adjacent tiles visible.

• Dynamites: Destroys a row of tiles and makes bottom and top rows visible. 

• TNTs: Destroys 8 tiles around it (3x3). Effective against stones and rocks.

Players can combine 5 ores to produce "Ingots" which can be used in the "Academy of Industry" to level up buildings. Leveling up leads to reduction of production times, increase of output and various production improvements such as extra crafting slots. Mining is a feature that adds an additional layer of progress to the buildings and deepens the players’ city building aspiration.

End-game: Zoo, Islands, and Regattas

Zoo was added in October 2015 and came out as another progression vector separate from your town. It can be considered as a feature targeting high-level players because it is overwhelming to develop both your town and the zoo at the same time at early levels. We can consider this feature an attempt from Playrix to add a layer for players that are driven by the motivation to collect and complete.  Animal cards and the deck systems are taken from games with RPG meta (gacha, character rarities, collecting a number of cards to unlock, etc.) but in a very simplified way to avoid overwhelming the casual audience. 

It has slightly different gameplay but it is still interwoven with the main game mechanics of production. Players still use the same materials and items to upgrade their zoo and to fill the customers’ orders visiting the facilities.

Additionally, there is a big card collection feature attached to the zoo. Players need to collect "Animal cards" that can be either collected with the zoo orders or chests arrived from balloons, mini-games, mines or other reward mechanics. On top of that, you can directly buy these cards from the store as well.

The main loop of the zoo is that players sell city products to zoo customers, gaining “popularity points”, which is XP for the zoo. Players are rewarded with a loot box for every 12 orders they complete containing new animal cards. You can also name your animals and place animal enclosures in any way you want similar to your town. 

The zoo might not have delivered the performance the Township team desired as new content but all the improvements and work didn't go in vain. Playrix launched a new match 3 game called Wildscapes - a follow up to Gardenscapes and Homescapes with a Zoo theme. If you play both games, you will notice many characters, enclosures, or characters from the Township’s Zoo inside Wildscapes. It’s clear, based on the narrative, that Wildscapes aims at luring in Township players.

Ships & Islands

When you level up further, you can restore the port to send off ships to islands to collect island goods (fruits, fish and tropical goods, etc). These materials can be used in production facilities to produce new goods such as fruit jams, fish meals, etc. Additionally, you will get one treasure chest every 24 hours. 

Players can have up to 4 ships and each ship may carry up to 3 crates. Your ship will return with 1 crate with 100% probability but there is a lower chance for 2nd and 3rd crates. In order to increase the probability of getting 2nd and 3rd chests and chance of getting rarer goods, players can use ingots gained from the mines. The use of ingots is an important sink because even in a situation where a player completes all the building upgrades in Industry of Academy, the Mine and Ingots are still needed since they are useful for island expeditions. This is a great example of how Township keeps all the game mechanics relevant throughout the game.

Regattas

Regattas are a periodic competition against other Co-ops/teams for rewards and global ratings. They’re also a way to practice strategies, planning, and coordinating large teams of players. In Regattas, team members need to pick a task and complete it in a given time to collect points. It is also possible to reserve the tasks you want to complete after you are done with the initial task. 

Even though regattas can be done solo, it really changes the gaming experience when you’re part of a big Co-op. The more actively your Co-op members participate, the tougher the competition, and the bigger the rewards and feeling of accomplishment. You have to have a full team (30 active players, regardless of their levels) to compete for global leaderboards. 

It is the main feature that keeps high level and active players engaged in the game. In every season, thousands of players try to reach the global top and optimize their strategies to beat the others.
 

Social Gameplay

Township covered a great distance in becoming a social game over the years and Co-ops (aka Clans, Alliances) are the main drivers of the social gameplay. After you join a Co-op, you can help each other by sending or requesting materials, share tips & tricks, and give advice. 

Of course, there is an in-game friend system and Facebook friend invitation features to expand your friend lists apart from your Co-op.  There are some small incentives as well to motivate players to invite more friends. Such as seeing balloons carrying rewards and flying over your town or finding secret bottles in Mines with small rewards.

But here’s the thing, if you are not a social person, there is still an option to play the game alone since the social aspect isn’t in any way mandatory to progress.

Monetization

Importance of Time Management

Time management is an essential part of the gameplay. Every building upgrade, material production, crops, sending off trains/planes are all tied to a timer. Since production usually requires multiple actions or multiple goods, it is important to arrange good timing and coordination between production facilities. This results in a production puzzle as players have to think about what they produce in which order and when they need to come back to the game to progress the production.

Players can always skip the timers by spending hard currency. which drives the repetitive spending and by melting away players’ hard currency balance through numerous small transactions. 

Especially construction times of special buildings can take up to a few days even at early levels. It is a bummer to wait for days in order to get a taste of new unlocked content. These longer timers are designed to drive conversion. Maybe the player can wait for an hour or two. But how about a day or two when you just got into the groove of production?

Conversion Mechanic aka. the Barn

Although it is an upgradeable building like others, I wanted to mention it separately because it is undeniably the most important building in the game. The Barn sets the capacity of all items a player can store and it will fill up very quickly as you level up. You will have more variety of materials, produced goods, items, etc. and the activities will require a higher number of products. This leads to a designated problem where your Barn is always at full capacity and limits the flexibility of things you can do. Without noticing, you will find yourself always giving priority to Barn upgrades.  But the moment you upgrade it, you will reach the new threshold within hours and start facing the same pressure again. 

There are 2 ways to upgrade your barn:

• Collecting enough construction materials: These materials are mainly gathered from trains so you should continue focusing on the train orders to upgrade your Barn consistently. Additionally, you can buy these materials directly with hard currency or wait for special offers or discounts in City Market.

• Barn Upgrade Ticket: This rare item can be acquired as a reward from the events or included in offers. 

It is tedious to progress without easing off this bottleneck and I think that this pressure is used as one of the first conversion mechanics, by pushing players either purchasing an offer including Barn construction materials /or upgrade tickets or topping up the missing hard currency.

Conceptualizing the monetization in Township

 1. Pursuit of comfort:

Upgrading the barn (i.e. enlarging its space to store more goods), expanding territory, buying more production slots, or hiring a market dealer. These are the simplest way to make the game process easier for a moderate amount of hard currency. 

Especially the market dealer is very useful to buy the missing goods that the player needs. Players can hire the market dealer from the “City Market” building for 1, 5, or 10 days by spending hard currency or a hire ticket. After the player hires the market dealer, he will offer new goods for 6 hours. Players can also get offers from the dealer for a specific item every hour. It is possible to refresh the list or expand the offerings by spending some hard currency. During the event periods, you may see discounts on event-specific materials or goods.

2. Fear of Missing Out

There is always something that feels like you will miss the opportunity if you don’t spend it at that moment. Such is the case with:

• Limited time special offers

• Investing more on temporary events to collect all rewards before it runs out

• Opening treasure chests that you find in event mini-games or from the Mine with a small cost of hard currency for a random reward.

• Gold Pass (will be mentioned below in detail)

Piggy Bank:  This is a form of monetization first introduced in slot games but later implemented in almost all the leading F2P games. It gives you an opportunity to buy Township Cash for real money at great prices. While the offer is on, you'll get additional Township Cash in your piggy bank every time you send off trains, planes, and helicopters.

3. Self-expression

Even though the customization and decorations have no impact on the gameplay, it is still a strong monetization driver among higher level players who would like to brag with their developed towns. Other players can see your city and check out your designer skills when they visit you to help (load trains and planes). Also players post screenshots of their cities on social media, sometimes just to brag about a new decoration they got during the last sale.

The Gold Pass (Professor's Experiments)

Township has a pretty straightforward season pass where players need to complete a list of tasks to gain points and unlock rewards based on the reached points. 

It is delivered with Professor's Experiments, one of the main characters in Township - Professor Verne requires "Electric Charges" (points that need to be collected) to conduct his experiments, a 28 days long event with an option of a Gold pass that costs $5.99.

Every day, players can complete 3 simple random daily quests that reward 10 electric charges. In addition to that, there are sets of tasks (new ones unlocked as you progress through the event - almost every week) such as harvesting crops 30.000 times or sending 50 train orders, etc. Players are rewarded for every 100 electric charges they collect and they get the final reward at 3.000 points. (30 rewards) If you buy the gold pass, you get extra rewards for each bracket, generally containing unique decorations, premium items, cosmetics, and other valuable rewards.

Everything is similar to "Battle/Season Pass" systems that we see in other games but Township's Gold Pass has few additional features that make this a no brainer purchase:

1. On top of the rewards you get from the reward path, players get valuable perks during the Gold Pass duration. For example, an extra 30% Barn space which is one of the main bottle-necks and a building that requires upgrading all the time, 30% more coins from orders and getting a bonus from airplane orders, etc.

2. Irregular timing: You never know how soon you will get another Gold Pass so it is very attempting to not miss the available one. Although looking at the past events, we can say that there is a 2 months cadence for the Gold Pass.

3. Skins for game elements. Before the gold pass, the town’s appearance could only be changed as a part of holiday decorations (Halloween, Christmas, etc.). The first season allowed players to turn an old helicopter into a flying saucer with shiny new effects and sounds.

You can use your hard currency to skip any timer, top off the missing coins, or get the missing goods. One interesting approach is that even though coins are the soft currency, the only option to purchase more coins is spending money. No option to spend your hard currency to buy coins (unless you miss some amount for building upgrades or any action that require coins) 

It can be seen from the above chart, 1st Season Pass had a good conversion since it was a fresh new type of activity and an offer. The 2nd one performed worse since there were not many improvements but going forward, the team added more cooler cosmetics and more perks to the later ones in order to make Gold Pass more attractive. It is very compelling to have the Gold Pass active during the event period considering all the life-saver perks, the permanent decorations/skins, and extra items you get. I must say that it is not an easy task to unlock all reward tiers, completing almost every task to reach there is very demanding. But still, even if you are a late joiner, Gold Pass is still worth buying because of the free barn upgrade ticket itself that you get in early tiers.  

Playrix’s new playfield - Stronger than ever!

Township is a great example of how successful cross-discipline work and ambition can grow even a legacy title to a $200M annual run-rate. We know that this was an incredibly long analysis to read (+30 pages), so for all of you who read it, we salute you. And for all of you who skipped it, here are the main takeaways:

Improve the core consistently with analytics and player feedback: Playrix removed mechanics like collecting rent from community buildings, repairing houses, plowing fields after gathering crops, etc. to make the gameplay smoother over time. They also recreated the Zoo feature from scratch as well based on player feedback and engagement data from the Zoo activities. 

Implement social gameplay features for collaboration, communication, and competition: Co-ops and Regattas were the first concrete steps to boost the social aspect of Township, and chat is added later on as a request from the players to be able to communicate with each other.

Constant improvements on live ops: Initial events had very basic rules and simple mechanics. But over time, Township introduced unique, fun, and high production quality events mimicking core mechanics of hit casual and hyper-casual games as mini-games. These events were supported by the sales campaigns allowing for player segmentation and leading to personalized offers.  

Synchronized UA and product development teams: Township started to scale higher in recent months after implementing highly performing UA creatives into the gameplay. Playable ads that are playable in the actual game. This strategy is applied to not only Township but can also be seen in Homescapes and Gardenscapes as well as other Playrix associated companies such as Vizor (Klondike Adventures) and Nexters (Hero Wars).

Content is king - and let’s be honest here, Township is HEAVILY inspired by Hay Day. Nearly all of the key features that are in Hay Day can be found in Township. Yet one could argue that Supercell got complacent. They didn’t invest in growing Hay Day choosing instead to place their bets into new games (which paid off in Clash Royale and Brawlstars). Meanwhile, Playrix worked hard and in the end, they didn’t only out-market the king of farming but also outworked the small and super talented team working on Hay Day. Ironically, years later, Supercell released a puzzle game (read: Can Hay Day Pop Solve the Puzzle) to challenge Playrix on their home turf.

We believe that Township will continue to lead the Tycoon/Crafting subgenre with a dedication to keeping the game on top, as well as developing and implementing new ideas while providing the highest quality experience. Rivals, such as the upcoming Farmville 3, will need to invest significantly in content creation and performance marketing to even attempt to challenge the king of crafting.