Monument Valley in Numbers | Hacker News Reader

Monument Valley in Numbers

blog.monumentvalleygame.com

95 pointsshawndumas18 comments

I love MV and I'm glad they made ~4x their costs, but geez, if you have to be a pantheon-level game to make a few million dollars, it's a bad sign for normal paid games. Mobile games are either freemium farming games or have an absurdly high bar to be financially successful.

Pretty much. A 4x return is great and all, but MV was likely the best reviewed and most Apple-hyped paid iOS game of the year. To only make 4x return off of it is pretty unfortunate for the platform.

They also got a ton of hate for being a paid game, with their expansion pack it was a total of $6 if I recall. This got them swarmed with a ton of angry people giving them one star reviews. That's very telling of what the mobile game market is like. Also I feel like part of why iOS turned out to be such a large chunk of the revenue is because of the large time gap between iOS and Android release.

They also managed to piss off many of their original customers by charging them for the Forgotten Shores levels. When the original was released, the main menu indicated that there were going to be more levels added in the future. Many people were under the assumption that the $4-5 they'd already spent on the original ten levels would've included the the cost of the additional levels that was advertised in the main menu. It didn't and then ustwogames got upset when they started getting one star reviews for their bait and switch.

In terms of revenue, they would still be making much less if they didn't charge for the expansion. You can see most of the revenue came from the initial release of the original and expansion. If the expansion were given for free it may be more like a 3x gain on their investment. If they added IAP for the new levels, they would probably still get the 1 star reviews.

The development cost didn't separate the ios and android releases, but I agree, it probably would only have been a marginal increase. Doubly unfortunate for android.

Anyone know how they achieved such huge sales the first day/week they released? From other app/game stories I've heard it often takes a while for people to notice new apps and gain traction.

It was Apple's Editor's Choice in the app store (across all apps, not just in games) in its release week plus a fair amount of pre-release hype. Though mostly it's about being Editor's Choice.

The put it out there and gain traction model doesn't generally work for any game project that's going to make money. Yes, if you're making $20 in revenue the first week, you might make a bit more in some other week, but probably not.

Typically you need to plan press, cross-promotions, and hit up those Apple app-store review contacts (basically, listen to their vague hints about what it might be good to do) to try to get a bump on day 1.

Apple was promoting that game pretty hard before release and they had a prominent place in the App Store. I think they got it because it was iOS only for a spell and apple played that up.

People don't pay up front for games anymore. They need to make a MV 2 that is free with a few levels + IAP to unlock the rest. That way more people can get hooked to the game mechanic and decide to upgrade.

Also, it still looks like android users expect free-ish games.

There is a group of people who want to pay up-front for games. It's a question of whether you can make this a viable business model.

I was chatting with the CEO of a company that makes kids' games, and he mentioned some interesting feedback from parents: The price of a $1 game isn't really $1, because they had to buy a bunch before finding one their kid liked. So, they would happily pay more than $1 for a trusted brand that's likely to satisfy their kids.

But why wouldn't that same parent prefer a game that was free to try and then have a single IAP to unlock the full version? I'm a parent and I'd love to not have to purchase lots of $1 apps. I'd rather try them for free first.

Wait, you can drown the totem?

I was wondering about that too. Doesn't he always drown in that one level (I forget which one). Maybe that's the number of players who completed that level?

Interesting that Google Play made 12.1% of sales and 13.9% revenue. Amazon Paid was 3.7% sales to 4.3% revenue.

That said, I really do find the success of this game baffling. It's 45 minutes of play time. The graphics are good, but the puzzles are simplistic and the story is... thin.

Their previous game - Whale Trail [1] - was fantastic. Offered a huge amount of gameplay, was a critical hit, but appeared to be a commercial flop.

Is it just the luck of the draw? A better PR campaign this time? Or something else?

Still - good luck to 'em!

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jakyl.whal... & https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/whale-trail/id450163154?mt=8

"45 minutes of play time" - slight exaggeration there.

It took me less than an hour to complete. I don't consider that great value for money.

How long did you take to complete it?

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