How Games2Win Monetizes and Optimizes its Gaming Titles for Maximum ROI

Growing at a compound annual rate of forty per cent, the online gaming industry in India is poised to be valued at $2.8 billion. This exponential growth in online gaming can be attributed to the success of homegrown game developers catering to a highly responsive market. KPMG estimates steady growth for the gaming industry and estimates the value to treble and reach $3.9 billion by 2025. 

Growth Maestros, hosted by MoEngage in association with AppTweak , aims to meet industry experts and business leaders from the most innovative, customer-centric brands. Tejas Shah, Head of Revenue & Monetisation for Games2Win, was a recent guest and shared his thoughts, learning, experiences and strategies to win in the online gaming market. Games2Win is one of the leading mobile gaming publishers with over 500 Million downloads and owns popular IPs like "Driving Academy, Decisions and International Fashion Stylist. Games2Win has succeeded in casual gaming formats like Parking, Driving, Dress Up, and Interactive story-based games.

Growth Drivers and Future of Gaming

The pandemic resulted in mobile gaming companies witnessing a download surge, with casual, hyper-casual and real money games growing by more than 30% YoY. Tejas explains that this period helped Games2Win expand its footprint in the global market and target new segments. He predicts the rise of non-hyper casual games, with more gaming studios developing innovative concepts and engaging games. According to him, gaming companies are leveraging ad monetisation better, although he sees a massive opportunity in the market to monetise games and grow gaming businesses. While multiple monetisation models, including ad monetisation, IPs and Ads + IPs, exist, Tejas believes that gaming companies leveraging in-game monetisation and benefits are setting themselves up for success in the long run.

Creating a market growth strategy is vital to finding success in this industry. Tejas believes that one of the growth drivers for Games2Win has been the effective segmentation of the market and increased focus on local growth factors. He explains how western markets, like the US, have higher growth potential with IPs, while markets like India have users looking for value from games they download. In the last 2 years, there has been strong growth in conversion rates across markets and user engagement growth in the gaming space. Tejas believes that in specific categories of games, personalisation and the uniqueness of the games have accelerated the growth of mobile apps. Comparing two major markets, US and India, Tejas shares that business models must adapt to user demands. Compared to this being a common practice in the US, the niche audiences of users in India paying to download games expect more value.

On the other hand, the volume of downloads Indian audiences can drive allows the ad monetisation model to flourish. Gaming companies can adapt to market conditions and user expectations to grow and succeed. Identifying user personas within the app, and segmenting them well, are drivers for growth.

Optimizing App Metadata for Success

Tejas believes that ASO (App Store Optimization) is vital for app growth. At Games2Win, 90% of app downloads come from organic user acquisition, while the remaining comes from paid UA campaigns. Being an early adopter of ASO best practices, for over 5 years, Games2Win has competed with top mobile app publishers and games and has carved their path to success. Tejas shares that it’s a standard practice at Games2Win to test multiple variations of app visuals (screenshots, feature graphics, icons, etc.) for multiple markets. The team A/B tests multiple metadata fields to understand the impact on conversion rates and visibility and has localised their metadata for regions and countries based on these experiments. The team also leverages AppTweak to perform competitive analysis, keyword research, and metadata impact analysis. A combination of these helps them find areas of opportunity and benefit immensely from a data-driven approach to success.

One of the key impacts Tejas has witnessed with A/B testing on iOS and Play Store is the increase in conversion rate. Conversion rate; the number of individuals who download the app/number of individuals who visit the page can be a strong metric to track to understand whether the app metadata effectively communicates the app's value proposition. By leveraging A/B testing and effectively tracking the impact of the same, Games2Win has seen a rise in conversion rate between 10% to 30%. Tejas believes that the dynamic and evolving nature of the gaming industry keeps him invested in growth.

Winning in the Global Market

Scaling up a game or an IP globally can be rewarding and challenging. Tejas shared that the industry is extremely adaptive to market movements. He suggests that localising the app metadata significantly impacts visibility and conversions if apps focus on the global market. He added that apps and games from Games2Win are localised for languages in each country. He quoted the example of countries like Brazil, where a localised listing helps increase engagement, monetisation, and retention. Over time, efforts to localise the listing, including text, visuals and app information, helped individuals resonate with the communication and increase downloads. This localisation resulted in an increase of 20% in downloads for Games2Win. 

Personalisation also has had an impact on monetisation. Personalisation can be implemented at two levels, one at the metadata lever for the geography, and the other would be personalisation for a specific cohort. Segmenting for a cohort, like users who like ads being shown to them, can be experimented with and optimised. Showing these users ads every 2 mins or 3 mins and changing the frequency can help determine which monetisation practice was better while considering engagement and retention. Personalising in-app purchases for specific cohorts can help communicate the value and exclusivity within the game.

Concluding Remarks

Tejas shares that he enjoys working in the online gaming industry. While many know how the gaming industry works, only some have the knowledge and know-how to succeed in monetising and creating a profitable business in this space. Besides being rewarding and challenging, he believes cross-industry collaborations will provide substantial value to users in the future. For example, car brands would be keen on integrating their cars' brand clues into car games to increase brand awareness and recall. Tejas is confident that specific segments in the industry, like esports, would continue to grow, especially with the high content consumption from streaming platforms like YouTube. The growth is also fueled by high engagement on social media platforms like Instagram. Tejas is confident that India is poised to be the largest gaming market by volume of downloads and revenue. He also believes the gaming industry would be a high-growth sector, driving top talent to build and engage audiences. 

Here’s a quick summary from the podcast, for more listen in to Tejas Shah and Shipra C. here;