Bitcoin Billionaire Case Study [Fizzpow Games & Noodlecake Studios]

© 2015 Tilting Point Media LLC. All Rights Reserved AUGUST 2015

CASE STUDY BITCOIN BILLIONAIRE DEVELOPER: FIZZPOW GAMES

PUBLISHER: NOODLECAKE STUDIOS

®

© 2015 Tilting Point Media LLC. All Rights Reserved

THE GAME


WHAT IS BITCOIN BILLIONAIRE? 3

IDLE CLICKER WHERE EVERY ACTION IS INCENTIVIZED AND CELEBRATED

Source: iTunes, August 2015

CORE GAMEPLAY Tap the screen = get bitcoins. Spend bitcoins on stuff. Get more bitcoins. Get better stuff.

WHY IS IT SUCCESSFUL? Tickles the yearning for more and constant feeling of progression.

Provides entertainment without a skill barrier by overwhelming you with visual fireworks & feedback (but requires a specific mindset to enjoy it).

It’s shallow, stupid, yet incredibly irresistible and habit-forming if you have a certain mindset to enjoy that type of games.

Clever use of ad-based incentives and rewards + mix of temporary & permanent IAPs to cover most types of play styles.


WHAT IS BITCOIN BILLIONAIRE? 4

TOP IN-APP PURCHASES FROM iTUNES

IAP Cost

Premium Spin (casino ticket, luck-based) $0.99

50 Hyperbits (hard currency) $1.99

Auto Miner 1.0 $1.99

150 Hyperbits $4.99


Cat (boost) $0.99

Coin Doubler $4.99


250 Hyper bits $7.99

Permanent upgrade

Hard currency

Other

Source: iTunes, August 2015


MONETIZATION


MONETIZATION TACTICS 6

CASINO SPIN: MONETIZATION & RETENTION This feature was not available at launch, but added with subsequent updates.

Every day, the game rewards you with a free standard spin. You can purchase additional spins for 10 gems (standard) or $0.99 (premium), which dramatically affects the winning odds (see last screenshot above). Premium spin is the game’s top in-app purchase.

The clever part is that it functions exactly like a casino and you can virtually not “lose”. You pay $0.99 for a spin, and get a chance to win anything from 25 gems (equivalent of $0.99) to 500 gems (equivalent of around $15). Worst case scenario: you paid the normal price for hard currency (which is $1.99 for 50 gems, making the casino spin the lowest-priced cash IAP in the game).

GATCHA SLOT MACHINE SPIN



COIN DOUBLER ($4.99) Benefit: acceleration of progress Reason to buy: impatience

PERMANENT UPGRADES

AUTO CLICKERS ($1.99 for Lvl 1, then $3.99 for Lvl 2, Lvl 3, and Lvl 4 – Total: $14) The “Auto Miner” removes the need to tap tap tap frantically on your screen, by giving you the ability to simply hold your finger on the screen, and automatically counting this as 15 taps / seconds (Lvl 1).

Main benefit is obviously to avoid carpal tunnel.

Upon purchase of Auto Miner Lvl 1, the game mentions that there are actually higher levels for extra cash (30, 50, and 75 taps/sec) and the item appears in the store. There is no way to know how many times you can upgrade this item until you reach Level 4.0 (the last one) and nothing happens.



CAT ($0.99) Benefit: +30% coin bonus. Basically another type of coin doubler, except with cosmetic benefit of being a pixelated cat that is cuter than a button.

Used to be sold for 50 gems or $0.99 (second screen above), now sold for 100 gems (third screen above). You can purchase 150 gems for $4.99 or 50 for $0.99 (price was doubled since launch).

PERMANENT UPGRADES

DAILY GEM DOUBLER ($9.99, used to be $4.99 at launch!) The game rewards you with 25 free gems each day. Requires the user to tap on a flying dino/robot that appears every 5-10 seconds. It drops a cardboard box, which can sometimes contain one gem. You can get up to 25 free gems a day.

This permanent upgrade basically doubles that limit to 50 gems a day, which is the equivalent of $1.99. Rationally, if players anticipate to commit to the game for more than 5 days, this purchase already makes sense.



5-MIN AUTO-CLICKER Gives you an auto-miner that taps 100 times per second, but expires after 5 minutes

TEMPORARY BONUSES

COIN BLAST Ability to purchase a flock of coins instantly, proportional to your current earning rate

TAP VALUE DOUBLER Multiplies your tap value by 200 for 20 seconds. The rest is up to how fast your potty fingers go

BUNCH OF BOXES Instantly opens 20 of the cardboard boxes. Basically saves you 100 seconds

BONUS INVESTMENT Multiplies your passive income stream by 10 for 5 minutes of not doing anything and making it rain



WATCH AN AD, GET A REWARD Every minute or so, the game pops up a bouncing email icon alongside a sound effect and a tempting “Open” call to action. Tapping on it opens a juicy ad-powered offer that rewards you with either a bunch of cash or a temporary tap speed multiplier.

Ad is most of the time a 15 or 30 seconds video. Sometimes, the offer asks you to authorize a small banner ad for 30 seconds at the bottom of your screen (see the last screenshot above, with an ad for the Depression Treatment Service, which offered a 15% discount for Bitcoin Billionare players).

AD-BASED REWARD SYSTEM

PURCHASES W/ INCENTIVE Purchasing hard currency packs above $9.99 also rewards you with a Bling Bot Pet, which unfortunately is just a golden robot that offers nothing else outside of being a golden robot.

EXTRA


RETENTION & INCENTIVES


RETENTION & INCENTIVES TACTICS 12

FURNITURE & DECORATIONS FOR YOUR APARTMENT Part of the core loop and major objective of the game is to unlock new pieces of silly furniture to enhance your office with, or just a better office altogether. These get unlocked as you level up your main BitMiner (which decides how much you make for each tap). You can customize your desk, your carpet, the background, your paintings, statues, even buy a Vacuumammoth (a mammoth that smartly serves as vacuum). Outside of the pets, you cannot purchase these room upgrades, they only get unlocked through game progress.

All locked items are visible prior to unlocking them and indicate which level you need to reach to unlock them, which gives a clear sense of direction and purpose. You can switch back and forth between items at any time. They have no impact on earning rate or permanent bonuses like the pets do.

VANITY UNLOCKABLES & THE CONSTANT FEELING OF PROGRESSION



VANITY UNLOCKABLES & THE CONSTANT FEELING OF PROGRESSION

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF VISUAL PROGRESS, FROM RAG TO RICH TO OBSCENELY RICH



TAP THE FLYING CARDBOARD BOX, GET A REWARD Every 5 to 10 seconds, a flying robot (or dinosaur) flies back and forth at the top of the screen and sticks around for 10 seconds or so until you tap it (or not). When tapping it, the robot drops the cardboard boxes it was holding. You just need to press and hold on the box and it opens the package with an instant gift, usually a bunch of coins, but you can get up to 25 gems daily that way (50 if you buy the permanent upgrade).

The rewards are much lower than the ad-powered email system from the previous page, obviously; but give you a good reason to keep the game open, at least for the next 5-10 seconds (‘momentary’ retention).

ENGAGEMENT EVERY 5 SECONDS



PICK A CARD LUCK-BASED MINI-GAME Once every 5 minutes, the game prompts you to choose one card amongst three. There is no way to close the pop-up, there is no way to keep playing until you’ve done so. Of those three cards, one is pretty much always a sucker, the other two are bonuses. You can also pay 3 gems to reveal all the cards, which is a feature that was not present at launch.

If you pick a good card you get an instant reward and you can decide to either double it for free by watching an ad, or doubling it by paying to gems. You can also do none of that and just cash it in as is.

The bad cards threaten your progress. They either cut your passive revenue stream for a minute or divide your fortune in half. You also have the option to accept the punishment as is, or to escape it by watching an ad, or paying gems.

ENGAGEMENT EVERY 5 MINUTES



ONGOING STREAM OF TASKS In the bottom corner of the screen, you permanently have a task that is either in progress, or a task that needs to be collected.

The rewards are pretty significant, lower than ad-powered ones but higher than the cardboard boxes. It’s a useful short term loop to keep you aware of what you can do if you get bored or uninspired or just plain lost which would be worrying for your mental sanity or level of sobriety because who truly gets lost in a clicker game, seriously?

TASK LIST



IS THE PLAYER STILL ALIVE…? Or is the player falling asleep with a finger on the iPad to make sure the passive investments and/or auto-miner do a good job overnight? Or are they just reading an article on the Internet vs. focusing on the essential in life (the game, obviously). Two mechanics are in place to keep this in check:

The “pick a card” screen that opens every 5-10 minutes prevents you from tapping or collecting cash until you’ve picked a card.

The sleep mode pops up every 10-15 minutes if you haven’t touched the screen at all. This is to deter the user from cheating the passive revenue stream (what you get even if you don’t tap the screen). By default, your passive investments only work if the game is open. Once you close the app, the income stops. You need to purchase upgrades through hard currency to enable offline earning. Basically, the sleep mode prevents users from leaving the app open and benefiting from passive income even without making the “suggested” purchases.

KEEPING ACTIVE PLAYERS ACTIVE



STUPID NEWS AND SILLY THOUGHTS The game does a great job at constantly peppering your experience with speech bubbles for your character, depending on what you unlock new items, or purchase furniture, or crush achievements, or if you stay idle, etc.

Second source of non-stop entertainment is an ongoing news ticker at the top of the screen, sharing tongue-in-cheek random breaking news about the world of the game. There are dozens of news and even though they become redundant after a few hours, they add a lot of charm to the game’s presentation. Example for the Prehistoric update: “Researchers at Habilis University have stumbled upon a startling discovery. They call it “fire” and as best they can tell, it can be used to turn your skin bright red and make it hurt. Additional tests are forthcoming.” You can tap on the newsfeed and share any of the news you’ve seen so far.

RETENTION THROUGH ENTERTAINMENT



FREE, HIDDEN GEMS The game rewards you for exploring its menus, options, and functionalities by giving you free “hidden” gems one at a time. Some ways to collect those hidden gems: opening the “credits” screen, completing the “help” slideshow, browsing random sections of the store, checking out your achievements, stats, and progress, tapping on the newsfeed at the top of the screen.

This isn’t a “retention” feature per se, but helps extend the first few play sessions (when you discover a few of those) and expose the gamer to all features and stores of the game, and feel inclined to look around.

ENCOURAGING EXPLORATION



ACHIEVEMENTS Nothing really revolutionary or exciting here. Just a bunch of behavior-driven achievements: how fast you tap, how much you invest, how many things you purchase, etc. Offers you a few hidden gems here and there when you check the new achievements. Since each achievement is layered into 5 tiers, the achievement notifications pop up quite often (third screen above) which does a good job at conveying a constant and satisfying sense of progression and patting on the back, especially since both the icons and achievement descriptions are dipped in wit.

ACHIEVEMENTS



LONG-TERM RETENTION INCENTIVE: THE REINVESTING LOOP Like Tap Titans or Clicker Heroes, Bitcoin Billionaire has a “reset” loop that’s essential for long-term retention of dedicated players. Note: this feature wasn’t present at launch but added through an update.

Once you make it past level 25 – which takes a solid 5-6 hours of play time if you purchased a coin doubler and auto-miner and actively open all emails and rewards – you can “reinvest”. This effectively reboots the game, but gives you a +20% coin bonus for the next round and unlocks a random, super-cool vanity item to decorate your office: a top-hatted dino, an Egyptian pyramid computer, etc.

Resetting also unlocks new pets (Dog! Dinosaur! Chinchilln’!) because the cat gets a bit boring after a few million taps.

END GAME AND RESET LOOP



TIRED OF MODERN TIMES? TRAVEL THROUGH TIME This was the first major content update for the game (August 2015). When you reach level 25, you can also decide to travel to another time area and “build a new empire” (mostly by tapping). It’s an entirely new set of backgrounds, items, vanity decorations, furniture, investment options, etc. Except it is now set in the Prehistoric Era, when software bugs were literal bugs.

Important note: the time travel feature can be unlocked when you make any in-app purchase, rendering it accessible (at a $0.99 cost or more) for new players, too.

END GAME AND NEW CONTENT


SOCIAL


SOCIAL TACTICS 24

“PLEASE LIKE US” FREE REWARDS Within the store menu, a “free stuff” sub-menu invites you to go and do a few social things to get free gems. Gems are awarded when returning to the app, they don’t care whether you actually did like them.

Like Bitcoin Billionaire on Facebook Follow on Twitter Invite Facebook friends > 2 gems per day if you invite 3 or more friends Subscribe to the reddit page (there is also a dedicated Reddit icon in the sub-menu) Enable push notifications (not social)

FREE STUFF FOR VISITING SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES


SOCIAL TACTICS 25

SHARE A SCREENSHOT AT ANY TIME Within the options // social sub-menu, you have the ability to “share selfie”, which is pretty much just taking a screenshot of your room, including the UI elements at the top. You can then save it on your device, or share it wherever you’d like and spam your friends profusely because you’re an influencer.

Some of the “emails” invite you to share a selfie to get a gem or other in-game bonus.

SHARE A SELFIE / SCREENSHOT


SOCIAL TACTICS 26

SHARE FUNNY NEWS The game has an ongoing stream of hilarious and self-aware news at the top of the screen. When tapping on it, you can share the current news or the previous ones. No reward.

SHARE EVERYTHING

SHARE YOUR STATISTICS Besides sharing your beautiful apartment (or cave) to envious friends, you can also taunt them by flashing your earning statistics. Behavior isn’t incentivized or promoted besides just… being there.


KEY LEARNINGS


OVERLAPPING ENGAGEMENT LOOPS WITH CLEAR SENSE OF DIRECTION AND PROGRESS

Always-on task list Always-on entertainment: silly newsfeed & speech bubbles Free bonuses every 5 seconds Ad-powered bonuses every minute Luck-based bonuses every 10 minutes that can be doubled through ads Level-based vanity unlockables & decorations (core driver)

DIVERSE MONETIZATION STREAMS Coin doubler Tiered “auto-clicker” (unusual but definitely something we should consider) Luck-based gacha premium tickets (most effective IAP) Powerful incentives to watch ads at every occasion

NOT THE MOST EXTENSIVE SOCIAL/VIRALITY FEATURES, BUT STILL… Take a selfie / screenshot functionality Incentivized social actions (visit pages, refer friends) Non-incentivized fun content to share (wacky news, personal stats) Leaderboards (but very limited and peripheral)

KEY LEARNINGS


Terms of service: http://tilting-point.com/terms-of-service. All third party products and services referenced in this independent case study are the property of their respective trademark and copyright owners, including FizzPow Games, Inc. and Noodlecake Studios Inc. Tilting Point is not affiliated with Bitcoin Billionaire, FizzPow Games, Inc. or Noodlecake Studios Inc

THANKS!

JEROME SUDAN DIRECTOR OF MARKETING [email protected]

®

Mobile

Bitcoin Billionaire Case Study [Fizzpow Games & Noodlecake Studios]