In many early massive multiplayer games, inflation was a noticeable problem for game economies. So why have two currencies and not one? The simple answer is that a dual system allows Zynga to separate high revenue actions from low revenue actions more easily, so that one can spiral with inflation while leaving the other untouched. Game coins and game cash, on the other hand, are used to buy stuff. Reputation and experience go toward accumulating social and game levels, while goods are for resupplying existing buildings. There are actually five different number quantities that the player earns ( reputation, goods, experience points, coins and cash) but only the last two are currencies. In CityVille’s case, that something is game cash.ĬityVille, like many online games, has two virtual currencies. This means that a social game needs something to sell. The longer and louder a game booms, the more paying customers you will find. But it tells a story, and that story is that games-as-a-service is both a real opportunity, and one that is reliant on both visibility and retention (as already discussed in the first two parts of this article). ARPU is low (lots of players never pay at all) but sustainable over the long term, unlike retail.Players will spend as much on intangibles (gifts, objects of status, virtual Christmas trees) as on tangibles (gameplay benefits).A small (0.1% or less) percentage of users will become heavy users (the unfortunately named whales).Somewhere around 20% of users of a game will pay once over the course of their lifetime of play.Somewhere between 1% and 3% of users pay in any given month.Another way of saying that is that the average game makes $0.03 per DAU per day.The average game makes $0.25 per MAU per month in revenue.The most common executive-summary pieces of knowledge or social games go something like this: The general consensus seems to be that the answer is: A Lot. There is only guesswork, analysis of second hand information, anecdotal stories, correlations from other companies and data points around the web. Nobody knows exactly how much profit Zynga makes from their games.
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