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By Munira Rangwala

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Interaction, immersion and enjoyment form the three key aspects of a wholesome mobile gaming experience. By driving player engagement based on their behaviour and user patterns, understanding a player’s wants/needs and targeting them with just the right thing becomes critical in developing your next successful game.

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A quick glance at the market - Netflix Game rolled out the creation of game handles in 2022 to jumpstart a tailored gaming experience for the users. While personalisation of reward for Jetpack Joyride through Remote Config and Firebase ML saw a 36% increase in conversion for their rewarded video ad. 

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Why is mobile game personalisation the need of the hour?

1. It boosts in-app purchase

Want to boost your in-app purchases? Personalising your gameplay is the answer. Let’s understand this better with an example.

There are two types of players. The first type shows more responsiveness to the temptation of buying new tools and gears through in-app purchases just because they prefer to remain loaded.

The second type opts for an in-app purchase only when they need to buy coins to continue playing or when their resources get emptied. You cannot address both these audiences with the same in-app purchase offers. That’s why you need to personalize in-app ads and merchandise.

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2. User Retention

If your app’s primary monetisation is via subscription, you need to be able to retain your users for as long as possible. The only way to keep your players around is by building a highly personalized relationship.

How can you do this? Push Notifications are the best way to make your users remember that your app exists. The trick is to avoid generic messages and personalize them to your audience instead. For instance, if an activity or goal requires multiple sessions, use push notifications to encourage your players to return by alerting them about how many minutes they have remaining to move to the next stage.

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3. App Loyalty

Do you know? Most people just click on ‘Dropbox’ or on the ‘Evernote’ app when they need to save a file on their mobile or take notes. This is app loyalty. 

Make your mobile game a part and parcel of your user’s daily life. And the only way to achieve this difficult feat is via personalisation. Badge and performance charts are a visual representation of users’ achievements. Introducing new levels challenges users to keep playing. You can also send your users a digital gift, such as points they’ve earned. This pulls the user into the app to redeem the gift.

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What are the different ways to personalize a mobile gaming app?

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1. Use data to segment your users

When you segment your users according to their online behaviour, you are able to deliver a better personalised experience. You can segment users according to different categories - device, location, space, amount of purchases, and time spent.

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2. Leverage push notifications

Too many generic-sounding push notifications is the number one reason why most users abandon an app. An average user receives 46 push notifications per day, thus cutting through the noise becomes even more important. Personalized push notifications are the best way to achieve this.

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3. Be smart with your user onboarding

As you’re probably aware, the first few days after app installation are crucial. If your user likes your app in the first few days after installation, it is likely that they’ll convert into a long-term user. Onboarding is the simplest yet smartest way of app personalisation. Here are a few tips for successful onboarding.

• Ask the user’s name and use their name to communicate with them.
• Provide them with discounts of free trials for the first 3 to 7 days.
• Encourage them to use the app immediately after their onboarding process is complete. 
• Don’t ask too many personal questions (example: phone number) unless that information is necessary.

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4. Tailor your recommendations

You know why tailored recommendations are so popular? It’s because they show your user that you not only understand them, but also value their presence.

Send smart recommendations using a method popularly known as ‘collaborative filtering’. In this, you use one user’s data to predict what a similar person would like. Another method that you can use is ‘content-based filtering’. This method produces recommendations to a user based on their history and behavior. Both these methods are easy ways to send users accurate and relevant recommendations that they’ll like. 

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5. Personalisation for core, mid-core, and casual games

Different gameplays require different personalisations. For instance, core and mid-core games focus personalisation on character aesthetics such as hair colour and clothing. These games also develop gameplay in a way that allows users to take the story in different directions depending entirely on what they want from the game. 

In the XCOM franchise, players don’t just take random squaddies into combat. Instead, they develop a crew of people they get to know. Witnessing the success of XCOM 1, the developers of this game further personalized the ‘character editor’ in XCOM 2 - Players were now able to save the characters they created for future playthroughs.

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On the other hand, in the hyper casual gaming market, millions of players engage with a game thus providing enough user data. This data is then used by machine learning to better engage with users. This could include serving monetisation opportunities that users respond well to or varying the difficulty of levels depending on the user’s ability, both improving retention rates and increasing ARPU.

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Case Study: Halfbrick Studios

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Australian game developer - Halfbrick Studios - with popular titles like Dan the Man, Jetpack Joyride, and the instant-classic Fruit Ninja which has now been downloaded over a billion times! Halfbrick used Remote Config Personalization to optimize three key metrics: ad frequency, time to unlock a new level, and the timing of a ratings prompt. Personalization helped them increase engagement with the rating prompt by 4% and the number of positive ratings by 15%. Personalization also helped Halfbrick determine the right amount of time to make each player wait to unlock a new level, increasing the overall amount of time they spent watching ads.

The Result?

+16% in Average Revenue per Daily Active User (ARPDAU)

+15% in positive app store ratings

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With so many games vying for their attention, mobile game users expect personalised experiences - both in terms of content and notifications. But at the same time it is also important to respect user privacy by being transparent about data collection. Always obtain user consent and comply with privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. 

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