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In-game currency.

Designed and launched in 2020

Could a new in-game currency for certain features mitigate the cannibalisation of the main level progression?

In 2020 I was part of a team that set out to learn more and founding a solution to the question above. All of this took place in the mobile game Candy Crush Soda Saga.

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Agenda

Purpose of the project.

Result and what we accomplished.

Approach of how I worked

Visuals of what I delivered.

Purpose of the project

The reasoning behind this project was to see if we could mitigate the cannibalisation that other features within the game created to the main progression. This had become a problem because all experiences a player could engage with cost a heart-life. Which made them have to choose where to spend their limited resource, therefore we began exploring to add a new in-game currency which we later named Energy.

Hypothesis

We assume that players

will play more levels if we have a new in-game currency for side-content

We intend to prove this by

building a production prototype of a side-content feature where we give players the new in-game currency instead of the regular lives

We know we are right when

we see an increase in the number of levels played for >60% of players without any loss of gross bookings

Result and what we accomplished

The project was a success of how it performed in the game but also how we delivered it.

This new in-game currency that we named Energy performed well in the feature we began testing it in. The best A/B-case had an increase in both the number of levels played and gross bookings.

Our development went great because we met the deadline and it was a scalable solution. This created the foundation of having more areas of the game using Energy.

Key metrics

The signals we were looking for were two things, the number of played levels and the gross bookings.

When it came to the number of played levels we saw an increase between +1.2-1.4% in one of the A/B tests.

There was also an increase of +1.0-1.2% in gross bookings.

This made the in-game currency, Energy, being brought out to more and more players. By now 95% of players have Energy and it's recognised as a valuable resource seen from both a player perspective and a business perspective.

Approach of how I worked

The work I did for this project can be described in three words; iterative, collaborative and transparent.

Iterative

The reason, why I use the word iterative, is because I started making early, simple and fast concepts. This approach helped me communicate and often align the team with what we were creating.

Collaborative

One of my goals when working together with other people is to create a feeling of having momentum. This is only achieved if you can collaborate and trust your peers. A way of including and collaborating was the regular feedback sessions that we had during the whole project.

Transparent

Everything I did was being made in software and tools that everyone had access to. The work could be viewed at all times and I invited people to add comments, thoughts, and ideas.