Soft Launch of Mobile Games

Adam Telfer, Wooga’s Product Lead, gave an insightful talk at GDC entitled “What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Soft Launch.” With an intense mobile games market, testing a game’s performance in secondary markets before its primary release is critical to maximizing sales and user acquisition during its initial release window. Telfer discussed Wooga’s approach to soft launches, noting that time and cost have increased. The typical timeframe for a game spent in soft launch is four to six months. Games, Max Ammo and Futurama: Game of Drones, spent five months in soft launch with marketing costs to acquire users totaling $283,000 and $250,000 respectively.

Wooga has a two-step approach during a soft launch: (1) test the technical aspects of the game, and (2) validate/grow the game’s metrics. In the first step, Wooga targets countries with a lower cost-per-installation (CPI), such as Philippines or Mexico, to test the technical aspects and remove bugs. In the second step, Wooga targets countries like Sweden and Canada to validate the game will achieve and retain high-quality users (LTV > CPI) once released. As the marketing channel mix can greatly impact the quality of users brought in, the best way to test if changes to the game’s features have a meaningful impact is through A/B testing which, due to low user numbers in a soft launch, can take time. While he’s seen monetization grow after a game’s launch through events, sales and seasonal content, he reported that retention is difficult and slow to grow. The largest bumps in user retention came from funnel optimization and addressing user drop-out points, optimizing tutorials and adjusting the game’s overall difficulty and progression.

Adam Telfer’s summary and slides can be found online at his website mobilefreetoplay.com.