Name: Bar Fight! (http://apps.facebook.com/bar_fight/)
Description: Become a bar fighter and battle others for rank and peanuts. Use peanuts to buy better fighters or upgrade items like bottle openers, bar stools and hard liquor to increase your power and your odds of winning. Invite friends, create or join a pub and strive for the top ranks!
Monthly active users: 26,200 (Facebook, 6/5/09)
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What works:
Initial pricing structure enables but doesn’t spoil
Users start out with 100 peanuts, which is just enough to allow them to either choose from three slightly better fighters or stick with the most basic fighter, which would enable them to afford an upgrade item. This gives users 6 possible configurations to start with, but still requires them to play a lot before they can improve their character.
Achievement badges, individual and team rankings + leaderboards
Users enjoy recognition, and thus are more likely to strive for goals which will give them just that. In Bar Fight, badges are awarded for racking up wins, power, peanuts, friends, and even reward points (a sort-of second currency within the game, attained only through direct payments or offer completion). Similarly, dedicated tabs for leadership boards that show the top-ranked players and teams provide further motivation for users to compete and do whatever it takes to make it to the top (which realistically necessitates the user to make purchases).
The leaderboard page for individuals shows the top players ranked according to total power and total wins.
Exclusive items that can only be purchased directly
“Powerups” are items that increase a user’s standard daily fight limit, odds of winning a match, or odds of beating a hangover (something a user is sporadically allowed to do to get bonus peanuts). They essentially work like subscriptions, where the user is allowed to buy the powerups individually or in a three-fold package, for a duration of either one month or three months. These are beneficial to the user in that they enhance play, and beneficial to the developer in that they can only be obtained by direct payment.
What could improve:
Promote game store, powerups better
Right now, the store page is almost an afterthought in Bar Fight!. Instead of waiting for users to take the initiative to think of visiting the store on their own, the game should drive them there by linking to it on other pages. On the fighter and upgrade pages, for instance, a simple link reading: “Want more peanuts? Visit the rewards store!” would remind users who are looking at items they can’t yet afford that there’s an easier, faster way to get what they want.
As well, powerups aren’t mentioned anywhere in the game other than on the home page, where they’re tucked quietly away in a side column. Though these items have value to the user, if they aren’t made known to the users, they aren’t doing either party much good. Again, promoting these on relevant pages– e.g., when you’re shown your odds of beating a particular user, append a link (”Want better odds?”) to the powerups purchase page– would increase user awareness and item sales.
An example page where text could be added to promote the store or powerups.
Either make the secondary currency more valuable or do away with it
Speaking of promoting: there’s a link to the store on the home page, but it reads: “earn more points by checking out the rewards page”. This can be confusing to users who only know they’re trying to get more peanuts and power– what are “points” for?
If a game is going to have two currencies, there needs to be a good reason for it. In Bar Fight!, reward points can only be redeemed for the execution of three actions– gain more peanuts (the base currency), gain more fight attempts (which, if successful, builds rank and earns peanuts), and allow a user to increase their total collection of personal bar fighters by 1. The latter is mostly useless– users can’t even have more than one bar fighter until they’ve reached a power level of 100, and even then, it would take a fair amount of time and currency before they hit their standard limit of 10 fighters. Participating in more fights can actually be detrimental if the user loses them, and the only way to increase success in a fight is by obtaining a better fighter or more upgrades… which requires more peanuts. So really, the only valuable redemption for rewards points is more peanuts. This means users are being asked to purchase currency so they can use it to purchase another currency, which is overly complicated for such a simple game.
The dual-currency model can be extremely successful in more complex games, but for Bar Fight!, it just doesn’t make sense because it isn’t necessary. Let the users pay instead for peanuts, and make the other actions purchasable with peanuts (”20 more fights for 600 peanuts”) at comparable pricing points.
Implement “levels” based on game play and use them to unlock items
By requiring users to reach a certain level of play before they can access (regardless of affordability) certain fighters or upgrade items, longevity of play and user return are increased.
Make social activity more valuable
Having Facebook friends join Bar Fight! is only beneficial to a user in that the more friends they have in the game, the higher a percentage of “bonus peanuts” they earn whenever they win a battle. Before any friends have joined, the game informs the user: “Against your friends, you can win up to 10 peanuts.” You can win up to 10 peanuts, however, against total strangers– and the “bonus peanuts” numbers don’t seem right. If 15% is the maximum bonus (100 friends required) and the maximum amount of peanuts to be won in any battle is 10, the maximum number of bonus peanuts is therefore 1.5? This is hardly an incentive for a user to grow their in-game friend base.
Furthermore, there isn’t a readily apparent benefit to joining a pub, other than being able to display your membership on your Bar Fight! profile. Theoretically, joining a pub should improve game play in some way and induce camaraderie, making the user more likely to keep playing the game (also making the user that much more likely to spend money in the game), but it appears that participating in social activity within the game instead does nothing of any consequence.
What to think about:
Promote actions that lead to users buying
Don’t wait for your users to seek out the store on their own accord, and likewise don’t force your users to have to figure out why going to the store (or making a purchase in general) would benefit them. Make the value of buying immediately clear and remind them where appropriate of the buying options.
Use game levels to keep users coming back
A user who plays 10 minutes at a time over the course of months is worth more than a user who plays for 6 hours the first time and then never returns. Game levels keep users from burning out on a game and as well give you the ability to “lock” virtual goods until a certain level has been reached, further incentivizing users to return and keep playing.
Make growth valuable to your users, because it’s valuable to you
You want your game to grow in user base, and you want your users to get their friends to join as well; make your users want this, too. Give them valuable incentives to get others to play– either through awarding of extra currency or simply through an enhanced experience (i.e., make the game even more fun to play with friends)– and they will.
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