“Actually,
there was enough market potential for idle gameplay and
simulation games at that time. But
now, the CPI of the entire simulated games market overseas is
much higher than
before.”.
Project set-up is extremely critical. The earlier the test, the
sooner the market situation
and the product development direction will be realized.
Therefore, the XTiming team helped
the product perform the CTR test in Europe as soon as the
evaluation was over, and the
result verified the market forecast.
The CTR of "Dinosaur Museum" is about 10% higher than that of
similar products.
"The difficulty of the CTR test is whether the material directly
reflects the attractiveness
of core gameplay or graphic style of the game, and whether the
product matches the target
user of the target market. XTiming has helped us solve these two
problems."
After obtaining the test data, Luo Linzhi verified the CPI and
eCPM. Comprehensively
considering eCPM and CPI, the strategy of overseas publishing
was preliminarily determined
to try the US iOS market. At the same time, the development
direction was further determined
based on the analysis of the data.
It can be said that the early game evaluation plus the CTR test
created a bridge between the
game and users, and Luo Linzhi also drew on the experience of
the project development.
Uncertain elements are best tested in the market as soon as
possible to get users feedback.
"We have fell into a lot of different traps, so later on we
decide to test first, such as
new package testing, so that users can experience the game
earlier and give important
feedback.
This is a very important to make a UA test as soon as possible,
and continuously optimize
your game according to the data and update the version
accordingly. Don’t work just behind
the closed doors, because there may be no positive results after
repeated adjustments
without a clear direction. The more you invest in the early
stage to understand your game,
the more clear it will be to see if the game is worth to
continue developing in the later
stage. Hence, do the test first, analyze the data to see whether
the project is worth
investing that much in the beginning, and don’t waste your time
and money.”
Developers are often very concerned about how to start a
project. Everyone is discussing the
methodology of projects set-up, but in fact, only users can
answer this question, because
the game needs to have the feedback, target, and interaction
with the users, and whether all
of the information is accurate depends entirely on the users.
It is the users that determine the final market performance of
the game.
Developers need to consider whether users can smoothly
understand the design and logic in
the game, whether the design of the game is clear enough for the
target users, and what the
player's real needs are.
Based on this idea, "Dinosaur Museum" created a variety of ad
combinations for the UA test,
and unearthed many unexpected problems. Luo Linzhi concluded,
“For example, we found it
difficult for users to understand some of the things we designed
before. Even some features
we thought were very simple functions, users still couldn’t
understand them. So we had to
see the problem from the users perspective and optimize it
accordingly."
Nowadays, many games have unexpectedly achieved breakthroughs
with clever core gameplay,
delicate art styles, and novel game themes. Excellent content is
scarce and has the most
market opportunities. From the beginning of the project,
developers can think about product
strategies from the perspective of users.
