Top Events of July 2024: Choose Your Reward in Coin Master, Travel Town, And Candy Crush
In our third edition of the Top Events column, we dive into the "choose-your-reward" events in three leading casual games: Travel Town, Candy Crush Soda Saga, and Coin Master.
— by Andrei Zubov
Welcome to the third edition of our monthly column, where we reveal top-performing LiveOps trends and dissect the latest events in the top-grossing mobile games. Trendy mechanics, profit-boosting events, and innovative update strategies: everything you need to enhance your LiveOps.
In this edition, we explore the events that allow players to choose between bigger or smaller rewards for completion.
As always, we got all the insights for this piece using one magic tool: the LiveOps & Updates Calendar!
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Without further ado, let’s explore the “choose-your-reward” events in Travel Town, Candy Crush Soda Saga, and Coin Master.
Why Let Players Choose the Event Rewards and Difficulty?
First things first: we call these events “choose-your-reward” for the lack of a better term. After all, this is basically what they do—give players the autonomy over choosing 1 out of the 3 options that will define both difficulty and rewards for completing the event.
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The events designed this way can be especially effective in increasing both engagement and monetization:
- Providing players with the agency to choose the complexity of the event adds responsibility for completing it and drives FOMO if failure is close.
- Design tricks and the players’ psychology are likely to nudge players towards choosing higher rewards, which will positively affect average spending.
Another great aspect of the “choose-your-reward” concept is its flexibility. It can be seamlessly integrated into the game, whether as a part of the core gameplay, a pass, or a diversion from the main mechanics. Let’s explore how this works!
Travel Town: 3 Hours of Heavy Lifting
TickTock Order from Travel Town is one of the most direct examples of a “choose-your-reward” event. The game seamlessly integrates its event into the core Merge-2 with orders gameplay. The event starts with a monkey arriving and placing their order, which functions like all other orders in the game, except the player can choose the level of effort they’re looking to invest.
Tick Tock Order lasts only 3 hours and requires significant resources to complete. The minimum energy needed for the easiest order is around 260, while the hardest order demands approximately 700 energy units.
Considering that players receive only 100 free energy units per day and can recover it at a rate of 2 units per minute, completing the event requires a substantial amount of resources indeed! Thus, players must either use previously accumulated bonuses or purchase additional energy with hard currency, which indirectly drives monetization by depleting their resources.
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To make this challenge more effective, developers add an element of unpredictability. While players understand that larger orders will require more resources, they can’t see the duration of the event or the specific requirements to complete it until they make their choice. That’s why they can opt for tougher challenges more often and spend more resources. A smart way to increase ARPPU, isn’t it?
But this would feel unfair if not for the rewards. To make the challenge fun and justified, the rewards should be proportional, and, in fact, they are in the Tick Tock Order event. For example, apart from energy boosters and a lot of soft currency, there is a rare album pack, which is a highly valuable reward. If you want to learn more about how the Album event works in Travel Town, check out our previous column!
Still, not all “choose-your-reward” events are as pressuring as this one. There are many subtle ways to engage and monetize using this mechanic, so let’s move on!
Candy Crush Soda Saga: Choose Your Pass
Candy Crush Soda Saga offers a unique blend of “choose-your-reward” and pass systems through its Rewards Pass event. Players have 3 days to complete one of the three pass options, each with a different number of milestones and rewards. Unlike in Travel Town, players earn rewards by reaching new milestones along the way, making the events much more friendly for casual players.
Here are a few tricks that allow this event to be monetized effectively:
- **Hidden prices: **When presented with the small, medium, or big pass options, players don’t initially see the prices of the premium passes. Once the pass is chosen, players see the price tag, ranging from $4.99 for the easiest to $12.99 for the hardest.
- “Popular” tag: The game encourages players to choose a more challenging path by marking the medium option as the most popular.
- Multiple attempts: If players finish the pass before the event ends, they can start another one with a different difficulty level.
Together, these features may be great for increasing ARPPU. For example, after choosing the medium or big pass (following the “popular” hint), paying players will pay a higher check. What’s more, after completing their first pass, they can opt for a cheaper version if they realize that’s the only one they have enough time to complete without overpaying.
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This flexibility makes the event more engaging and rewarding, catering to different player preferences and strategies without distracting players from the core gameplay. However, some developers prefer to intentionally divert players from the core experience to create a different type of engagement. Let’s get to the final event for today!
Coin Master: Taking the Event out of the Core
Coin Master offers another interpretation of the “choose-your-reward” mechanic with its Viking Quest event, which takes place outside the core gameplay. During the two-day event, players can spend their soft currency earned in core gameplay to spin a separate slot machine.
Unlike classic spins from the core that can’t be used otherwise, soft currency is essential for progressing through the meta. Letting players not only spend their soft currency but also bet on the amount spent to potentially earn even more adds an interesting dynamic and a certain risk management element to the gameplay!
The luck element is what drives player spending here: throughout the gameplay, you bet and wait for the lucky spin, which can lead players to make impulsive purchases of soft currency to keep spinning.
In terms of rewards, it’s an all-or-nothing system similar to Travel Town: players need to complete the event by reaching the set winnings benchmark to claim all the rewards. This combination of FOMO, strategic betting, and the lure of a big win keeps players engaged and can drive them to spend more to achieve their goals.
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What we find particularly cool is how the developers use the “popular” tag to nudge players toward more difficult quests. They placed the tag near the biggest reward and even added an exclamation mark next to “HUGE”. Such a casual casino thing to do, right?
Key Takeaways and Best Practices
“Choose-your-reward” events are becoming increasingly popular in top-grossing casual games. The three examples mentioned above are just a few of the many featured in our LiveOps & Updates Calendar.
Here are some of the key practices and main ideas that will help you integrate them into your game:
- Highlight rewards instead of prices and difficulty. Keeping players focused on the rewards will make them lean toward more time- and resource-consuming options that will drive your monetization;
- Make sure that the rewards are proportional to the time and resources invested by the players. Even though, as a developer, you know that players spend more than they win, it’s important to keep them motivated and feeling fairly compensated for their effort;
- Remember that the mechanic is flexible and can be integrated into various types of events. Make sure it fits seamlessly with your gameplay to maintain a cohesive player experience;
- Drive ARPPU through the right incentives. Highlight popular choices, create a sense of exclusivity, and make players feel brave for taking the challenge—this will create incentives for seeking rewards and hence justified spending;
- The practice is relatively new, so it’s always better to use A/B testing and compare it with similar events without the reward choice. This will help you build an optimized LiveOps strategy for your game!
Check out our previous Top Events of the Month editions, where we explore events in games like Monopoly GO!, Royal Match, Brawl Stars, and more. We have one piece of research into Album events and another for Complementary events.