Even a K-Factor of 1.01 is a good K-Factor as it means that a game will keep spreading, even if it takes a long time to so. This means that to achieve true “growth,” a K-Factor of greater than 1 is the target. Working through cycles this time, we see that after 5 cycles, the number of players stops growing. Now let’s adjust the values and change the conversion rate to a more reasonable 5%, which changes the K-Factor from 2 to 0.5: In terms of talking about going Viral, this would be viral growth in action! This cycle would be self-perpetuating meaning that my game would grow at a phenomenal rate attracting millions of new players over time. If you follow this example case through, we can see that after 10 Viral Cycles (more on that in a minute), we have gone from 10 players to 20,470 players! All without spending any money on marketing to attract these new players. So the total customers after the first cycle will be equal to the starting 10, plus the new 20, which equals 30. The percentage of invites that convert into customersĪpplying this to the K-Factor calculation, we get 10 * 0.2 = 2.Īs we go through the first cycle of viral “growth”, our initial 10 customers will each send out 10 invitations, and successfully convert 20% of those (i.e. No of invites sent out be each new customer Let’s work through this calculation using example values: Variable Name We measure the average number of invites each player will send and multiply it by the conversion rate IE the number of new players that decided to play the game as a result of receiving the invite. Looking at the equation, we apply it as an average amongst all players playing the game. This cycle can potentially go on ad-infinitum, bringing lots of new players into the game. Some of these people will try the game for themselves (Set B) and if they too like the game, will also start inviting their friends to join, some of which will be people that were not part of Set A. By adding these features, if my game is well designed, the goal is that some players (we’ll refer to this set of players as Set A players) will like the game enough to use these features and will send invites to several of their real-life friends. Through in-game functions and features, it’s possible to add friends and send requests to players who have not yet played the game. In the world of F2P games (and online web services), viral growth is measured using the “K-Factor co-efficient.”Īs an example, let’s imagine I release a game and want to acquire new players through viral growth. In this post, I’m going to look at the basic principles involved with Growth and going viral, how to measure it and how best to apply it in games. There are spectacular success stories like Facebook and Twitter that have insane amounts of users and that have managed to grow from very few users to becoming ubiquitous every-day services that millions (billions in the case of Facebook) use every day. As such when designing a F2P game or app, we often talk about “Growth” and the ability to go viral. Many games, apps and services fight for your time and want to be the next big thing in not only your life, but those that you know too. Although relatively young in comparison to other business models in gaming, the Free To Play marketplace is already fiercely competitive.
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