Capitals Update Changes Nimblebit Strategy
When I reviewed Capitals a few days ago, I commented that it “may not be earning a lot of money for Nimblebit.” Looks like I was right, because yesterday’s update signals major changes in Nimblebit’s monetization strategy.
The initial release of Capitals worked by limiting the number of time you can start an online game. You had a reservoir of 3 starts, which regenerated slowly. Players could spend a dollar for more starts, or ten dollars for unlimited starts.
The system was friendly and non-intrusive. I play a series of Capitals games with a small circle of friends, and I never felt “stuck” for a game start. In a free-to-play economy where 99% of your players may never pay a cent for the game, non-intrusive is a very good thing.
However, this strategy only works when the 1% of likely payers have a good reason to spend lots of money on the game. And in all the games I’ve worked on, I’ve three good reasons emerge: convenience, competitive advantage, and creativity. In accordance with the Geneva Convention on Consultant Coining, I call these the “Three Cs of Monetization.”
Capitals and the 3 Cs
Let’s see how Capitals stacks up as a free game. It’s convenient to play, because you almost always have starts available when you want them. Each game runs for many rounds — my favorite opponent and I are currently round 37 of an epic battle that has ranged all over the board — so there has been plenty of time for the starts to regenerate between games.
Nimblebit may have anticipated each player having large networks of friends to play with, but word games are a niche pursuit. Most players are likely to have a couple of friends to play with, not a dozen.
There’s also no room in the design to buy a competitive advantage. Word games are tests of skill, and any serious player is going to frown on facing opponents with anything other than the contents of your brain. Any attempt to monetize there is likely to kill long-term retention, and Nimblebit has wisely stayed away from that arena.
That leaves creativity, and Capitals does offer some cute ways to customize your colors and icon. They could theoretically sell some cool skins for the game, a la Hearthstone, but the options are limited. There’s only so much self-expression you can add to an abstract board, and not many people to show it off to.
Faced with a monetization problem like this, some companies would panic. They would respond by sharply limiting play, or by burning free players with a paid competitive feature.
Nimblebit appears to be made of sterner stuff. Their Capitals update adds one new feature to completely rethink the monetization model. Instead of selling the game to the players, Nimblebit now sells the players’ eyeballs to advertisers.
Lives no longer regenerate. The player starts with a limited number, and gets more by watching ads. Players who don’t want to watch ads can still buy ten lives for a dollar or infinite lives for ten dollars.
There are many advantages to this model. In the short term, ad revenue is very predictable. Many free players are content to watch a short ad to get something they want, so retention loss should be minimal. Requiring an ad for every new game seems like an aggressive move on the part of Nimblebit, but it’s easy enough to give more lives for each viewing later.
In the long run, Nimblebit may still have trouble monetizing this title. Ad revenues come in small doses, and are only as good as the next contract. Ads can also run themselves into the ground and hurt retention if the player sees the same messages over and over again.
On the other hand, Capitals is the kind of game that can run for a long time with a minimum of new investment. A small stream of advertising revenue may be all it needs to thrive. We’ll know how it’s doing when we see Nimblebit’s next move.