Questions about monetarization

[Sunchaser]

I have some questions on monetarization:

1) How can i calculate MAU and DAU?
2) To calculate ARPU i am dividing the average income by the active users after a year. Is it correct?
3) What is a good ARPU value for a game?
4) Anyone has suggestions to improve ARPU?
5) What is a good value for retention after 30, 60, 120 days?

Thanks

[Chris]

DAU - last on in 24h
MAU - last on in 30.5 days
ARPU - Why after a year? Just any period, it should be more or less the same no matter how long. Anyway, there is no hard definition of this.
Retention rate - check GameOwners board, we posted our data there (also I suggest you get the script and share your data too )

Anyone has suggestions to improve ARPU?

If anyone has, tell me too

[saljutin]

1) use cron to see how many people logged in last 24h and write that number to table - you can make graph of DAU then and after time you will have MAU
2) year is good but you can always make it like this - calculate sum of earnings in 1 month (from 1st to 30th) and divide it by average active users from that previous DAU table and you have monthly stats ... yearly would be yearly sum divided by avg(MAU)
3) depends on what you sell and how ... if you want to earn big by giving unlimited ingame goods for money then ARPU should be big because your game wont last long if it is persistant where people pay like 2€/month to be Premium then I think 15% of Monthly Premium price would be great income
4) depends on your game - my ideology: "force" users to pay by providing them better, faster and easier solutions BUT NOT with ruining whole game economy/status
5) dunno

[Chris]

It seems the standard is ARPU based on DAU and on MAU (the one based on MAU will be obviously lower).

Here Zynga stats http://www.quora.com/Average-Revenue-Per-User-ARPU/What-is-Zyngas-ARPU-ARPPU (so ARPU(DAU)=$10 and ARPU(MAU)=$2.7 means you are doing like Zynga during their best days; I have never seen anything near these numbers through )

[saljutin]

this makes me think...how much money did some players spend on farmville ... coz I know gazillion that didnt spent a buck and they were DAU

[Chris]

$1-$2 ARPU (MAU, not DAU) is considered successful.

http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/successful-mmogs-can-see-1-2-in-monthly-arpu/

[Sunchaser]

Sorry if i revive this topic again...

I am starting to compute DAU;

To compute ARPPU how i can calculate paying users? I mean, I should count all the users that have paid in a certain month or all the users that at least made a payment?
(I think the first option is correct).

Thanks

[Chris]

To compute ARPPU how i can calculate paying users? I mean, I should count all the users that have paid in a certain month or all the users that at least made a payment?
(I think the first option is correct).

It's an interesting question. I would count 3 ARPPU:
- those that REGISTERED in the last 3 months and paid something (the most useful for checking how your game is doing right now, since the ancient players "from the good old times" are excluded)
- paid in the LAST MONTH regardless when the user registered (probably the best for comparing with other sites)
- paid total anytime (just because )

[Sunchaser]

I am computing metrics following this article.

http://globaldecision.com/blog/online-gaming-analytics/arpu-arppu-arpmu-ltv-cac-cpa/

Basicly i have a CTA = 0 (i got subscription from topsites) but i think i have a very bad LTV. This is because ME gives very little personal rewards and it is mainly a collaborational game, need to improve personal rewards.

[Sunchaser]

I am a bit confused... I have a average DAU of 491 players. Let's say the monthly income is 1000 Euro.

a) In this case, what is ARPU? I don't understand why i should take as MAU the average of DAU. If i count players who last logged in in february I have about 1300...

Thanks

[Chris]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_revenue_per_user
You define the unit (players) and period (day/month). That's what ARPU is.

I think there are 2 used, the daily - ARPDAU (or average revenue per daily active user) and monthly (should it be called ARPMAU?)
http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2011/07/05/zynga-arpu-arpdau/

From googling Zynga has $0.0443 ARPDAU and $0.33 ARPMAU (no clue why such disparity). With your example figures you would have $2.03 ARPDAU (much better than Zynga) and your ARPMAU $0.76.
Or maybe we should divide the income by the proper period (like ARPDAU = month/30.5 and ARPMAU = month)? In such case your ARPDAU would be ($32.7 daily income) $0.06...

Confusing indeed


EDIT:
Found these two very interesting sites:
http://www.iesherpa.com/?p=618
http://www.gamesbrief.com/2010/07/glossary-of-online-games/

[Sunchaser]

Thank you Chris. I will create a google spreadsheet; it would be a nice thing if the community collaborate so we can share an easy and understandable template so any gane owner can calculate some metrics.

[Sunchaser]

I created the following Google spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgpRfco82JokdEZFclNWVVFSalNiNXFoQXJ2S0ZjZnc

It is a starting point from where we can create a common template to calculate game metrics.

We need to agree on terms and how to calculate parameters, if we collaborate we will have a common tool useful for everyone.

Thanks.

[Chris]

According to what I read so far the industry standard is:
- ARPU - always monthly income and MAU (so it is used as ARPMAU), it's because this term was coined in telecomunication industry and they used it as monthly
- ARPDAU/ARPDU - daily income per DAU so the "ARPDAU - monthly income/DAU" would be wrong, should be "ARPDAU - monthly income/30.5/DAU".

Using the inustry standards (assuming I understood these correctly, someone please check it) is better since it allows us compare with big companies like Zynga.

"Total Registered Users" - is a completely useless metric, in Lords I have 180000 because it is an old game. But it means nothing... Also, some games delete inactive users after some period, this changes this and several other metrics heavily. Check the retention rate topic, some games have simply no data of inactives after 45 days.

"% of paying users" - again problematic, at the beginning my Lords were without any payment options, so I would have this number artifically low. Also, if you allow players to transfer funds to others you might be unable to track who paid and who donated (and should we tread those who made others to pay for them count as donators or not?)

Read about "conversion rate", it could be a nice one to add.

"New Registered users" - rename to "New Registered users (monthly)" because it is not obvious at the first glance.

[Sunchaser]

According to what I read so far the industry standard is:
- ARPU - always monthly income and MAU (so it is used as ARPMAU), it's because this term was coined in telecomunication industry and they used it as monthly
- ARPDAU/ARPDU - daily income per DAU so the "ARPDAU - monthly income/DAU" would be wrong, should be "ARPDAU - monthly income/30.5/DAU".

OK, fixed.

"Total Registered Users" - is a completely useless metric, in Lords I have 180000 because it is an old game. But it means nothing... Also, some games delete inactive users after some period, this changes this and several other metrics heavily. Check the retention rate topic, some games have simply no data of inactives after 45 days.

I would like to keep it. It tells me if my toplists/adv choice are ok. (I check the delta of registered each month).

"% of paying users" - again problematic, at the beginning my Lords were without any payment options, so I would have this number artifically low. Also, if you allow players to transfer funds to others you might be unable to track who paid and who donated (and should we tread those who made others to pay for them count as donators or not?)

Looking around, it seems a valuable statistics. Maybe it should be calculated for each month. I agree it should be defined better.

Read about "conversion rate", it could be a nice one to add.

Will do.

"New Registered users" - rename to "New Registered users (monthly)" because it is not obvious at the first glance.

Fixed

Thanks, keep feedback going!