Over the years, through tests on RealNetworks’ consumer facing sites (RealArcade, GameHouse, Zylom, and Atrativa) we’ve collected a massive amount of data about the science of game releases, ranging from how many games are released to what frequency and how aggressively each is promoted. Put simply: We know quite a bit about what works and what doesn’t.
Weekly Releases
We’ve experimented with releasing between one and four games per week and watched how they perform in our ecosystem. Time and time again, we’ve found that releasing two games a week yields the most revenue for developers as well as Real.
Consumers can only download and play so many games a week, and increasing the number of games released hurts revenue in two ways. First, providing excessive free trial time prevents people from thinking about a purchase to fulfill their weekly game play needs. Second, not all games are good games. Most often, the third or fourth game released each week tends to be of lower quality. For people who do like to venture out to a third or fourth game in a given week, we find it more productive to have them download a great title from our back catalogue (preferably one that strongly converts to purchase). There are exceptions to the rule of course: sometimes we have three fantastic games and we know that all three will do better than existing games in our back catalog.
Game Selection
Selecting games from a vast assortment of choices is a two-part process at Real. Our content group generally makes one round of cuts right off the bat based on game quality and market viability. Then we send the potential new titles (including games we aren’t sure about) to several thousand beta testers. Each week, they play the selected games and answer questions designed to determine market potential. Based on their feedback, we gain a surprisingly accurate prediction of how much revenue a game will yield in its first 30 days. In fact, the predictions prove accurate nine out of ten times.
Promotion at Launch
Promoting the games we release is structured in a programmatic approach. Each game receives the same “love” during its first week in our service. After that week, a game has to stand on its own based on revenue. Although we do have a few remaining legacy deals with partners that depart from this method, we are working actively to change those agreements because we have found that when we deviate from our methodology, we rarely see the same level of success.
Our goal, of course, is to help as many games as possible reach the Top 10. This list has yielded some interesting data over the years. We’ve learned that games launching and performing in the top two slots have provided triple the revenue of games that launched in slots 7-10. Games in the middle tier earn double the revenue of the games at the bottom of the Top 10. Furthermore, games achieving the top two slots at launch have lasted in the Top 10 for eight weeks on average. By contrast, games that launch in the middle average five weeks in the Top 10, while games that launch in the bottom of the Top 10 last an average of only two weeks. Games that do not reach the top 10 on launch will normally never reach the top 10. Since the beginning of this year, 45 percent of all games launched on our service have made it in the top five (of the Top 10) during their first week.
Not only do these processes generate more revenue, they also keep our site fresh and interesting for consumers with both high quality games in the Top 10 and a deep catalog of well-loved existing games. Ultimately, of course, it’s the gamers themselves who decide which games rise and fall, which ones settle into the Top 10 for a lengthy stay and which ones quickly disappear. Our job is to provide an equitable process through which every developer gets a fair shot at success.
Erik Goossens (email)
As Vice President of Game Content at Real Networks, Erik manages the overall PC-based content strategy for the games group including Real Arcade. He also oversees publishing and licensing content for Real’s studios -- Zylom and GameHouse -- as well as Real’s South American casual games destination Atrativa.
Prior to joining Real, Erik Goossens gained experience in casual gaming at Gamegate.com. He left Gamegate.com to co-found Zylom, which grew to be the largest casual games destination in Europe today. Headquartered in Eindhoven, Zylom was acquired by RealNetworks in 2006. Erik holds a business degree from the Eindhoven University.
