Document

Case Study

MY DINO PARK

Cool Real "MY DINO PARK" interview: Is it now Good times? Or Bad times?

In 2020, with the epidemic, and the increased competition once again put the topic of launching a game as priority. Is the pandemic offering an opportunity for growth or a new challenge? What games will be able to withstand the test of this new reality?

The global gaming market is developing, and in the era of content dominance, there are more opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses.

The market is changing too fast. One day you are on top of the world, and the next you can't cope with the changes in the market: “users are much more picky than we imagined”, "different market variables make it difficult for accurate predictions", "revenue fell below the red line, and cannot find the problem".

"MY DINO PARK" and XTiming are teaming up on the launch campaign in this era.

1. Game Evaluation.

Break the information gap, explore the road to optimization.Even in the internet era, it’s difficult to avoid an information gap.

In August 2020, the game was selected for the ”Tencent Casual Games Program” and reached over 100 million downloads and 4 million DAU. Although the game had already achieved success at home, it was difficult to understand whether it will attract international players.

The market in Europe and the United States has a completely different cultural background compared to China, and players preferences differ significantly.

The design of the game interaction directly affects the user experience.

According to the analysis, "MY DINO PARK" is more suitable for the European market and the United States market. Users there have high requirements for the interactive design of the game, so this is the main direction of optimization.

At the early stage, "MY DINO PARK" had a pretty complex UI design. The XTiming team offered a step-by-step plan to optimize the design. For example, at the beginning of the game, the [check-in interface] [collection interface] [Store interface] and other buttons should be set on the main interface or in the secondary menu, the [dinosaur] build should be set to multiple UI interactions or one UI interaction, and so on..

During the collaboration, XTiming prepared a detailed UI optimization plan, combining the developer's point of view with information about users of specific markets.

Localization

If the game is full of content, then language is the main means for transmitting it.

This is the main reason why localization is so important when it comes to mobile games.

Using the wrong words on your labels cause user confusion, it could negatively impact UX.

CoolReal and XTiming took this problem seriously, XTiming urgently created a special team to provide feedback on the game, to fix localization problems and research.

XTiming helped to optimize the localization of content, made conclusions about what problems should be eliminated on entering the overseas market in order to save time and money before testing.

In addition to daily two-way communication based on game design issues, the XTiming evaluation report provides information in as much detail as possible-data on US market user volume, revenue trends, competing product performance.

"MY DINO PARK" itself is an excellent game but when facing the unknown field of overseas market, XTiming through the evaluation helped CoolReal explore product optimization.

2. UA Preparation

After almost a month of Evaluation and Optimizing, "MY DINO PARK" officially launched in the United States.

From the very beginning, XTiming prepared detailed technical documentation for CoolReal, this is based on many years of AdTiming experience and has formed a technical team of professionals who monitor the entire process to provide the necessary service support. In less than 48 hours, the integration was completed.

In addition, in cooperation with two teams, all the steps of preparation for the launch were executed, such as the integration of attribution platforms, the preparation of ad creatives, the creation of advertising accounts and the design of fan pages.

After The process of preparing for the launch is always full of twists and turns, fortunately, with the help of the XTiming team, the preparation was faster than expected.

3. UA Test & Data Analysis

1) Gold. At the beginning of the game, the gold revenue is too high, the player will not feel a lack of gold, so therefore will not click on ads.

2) Diamonds. The non-linear distribution of diamonds in the game makes the player feel their use is meaningless.

“We need to optimize the game value based on the problem reflected during the soft launch test, find the balance between the user experience and monetization, and ultimately achieve long-term stable income, but only accurate data analysis can help us achieve our goal” ShangDi, CoolReal Product Director

In terms of improving game monetization, XTiming once again embodies professionalism.

The IAA revenue of the game is affected by the fill rate and eCPM.

How to sell limited traffic at a more reasonable price? To improve advertising revenue one needs to constantly optimize the waterfall.

During the test, XTiming found that the average eCPM of the game was much higher than the default reserve price, and the fill rate of the higher level remained at 25% (above average). Based on this, XTiming determines that the game while maintaining the fill rate, there is still room to increase the higher level and enhance the IAA monetization income.

"XTiming’s test data is very detailed, the analysis of a variety of dimensions, support us to quickly adjust the ratio of IAA, IAP, and improve game revenue,”ShangDi said,“in terms of advertising monetization, we can also learn a lot of optimization strategies, learn from the perspective of advertising design to understand the game."”

“Good times? Bad times? CoolReal believes that no matter what is going on around, if you put your heart into the game, you will definitely get a really cool thing.”

Ku Zhen, Shanghai

4. Concluding remarks

Ku Zhen named his studio “CoolReal”, because he believes that no matter what is going on around, if you put your heart into the game, you will definitely get a really cool thing.

In our time, the lack of resources and information makes the entire process of launching the game full of unknown risks, the slightest mistake and months, or even years of effort will be in vain.

XTiming believes that there are many incredible indie games made by indie developers, worthy of being seen around the world. We want to give teams that really love making games a chance to turn their passion into a source of income and development.