Only one in ten mobile games succeed.

The business reality is that since 2011, Free-to-Play (F2P) games have been making more money than their Premium counterparts.

Although still essential – today’s games must be more than just fun – they must effectively employ F2P monetization to succeed.

An effective Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) is an essential lubricant for the free-to-play economy. Here are 5 key ways a great Backend can ignite your free-to-play revenue:

1. Go Cross-Platform – adding platforms adds audience, which feeds players into your F2P engine. An effective Back-end makes it easier to offer the same features across diverse platforms.
2. Enable Cross-play – allowing your players to continue their play across devices encourages play when and where convenient, increasing engagement and forming habits
3. Add social competition – social competition is an excellent way to give players additional objectives in your game, increasing engagement (and virality)
4. Reduce cheating + theft – utilize server-side receipt validation to remove in-app piracy and increase your revenues.
5. Grow/Retain your VIPs –  utilize an automated promotions engine to help push players through your funnel, and retain the VIPs that you have (increasing $ spend)

* Player segment definitions (below) courtesy of Emily Greer’s presentation at Casual Connect ’12.

For more details, check out the slideshare presentation below – and while you’re at it, be sure to check out brainCloud – it’s free during development, and starts at just $25 / month once you go live!

 

  5 Steps to Ignite your Free-to-Play Revenue (without Advertising)  from Paul Winterhalder 

Note that this content is from a presentation that I originally gave at the Montreal International Game Summit in Nov 2014 – used with my permission. 🙂