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August 5, 2024
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Given today’s volatile mobile gaming landscape, retention remains the most critical element for sustainable mobile game growth and affords game publishers the runway to innovate product evolution, maximize monetization, and scale marketing from game launch to maturity. While product, LiveOps, and UA strategies drive most of the success, there are also often underserved levers for incremental value creation.
One of those levers is game communities.
To better understand how social and community factors influence user acquisition, retention, and spending, we surveyed over 2,000 mobile gamers in North America across genre and spending categories to produce a new industry report: How social & community fuels organic growth for mobile games.
The findings within our social and community report highlight why publishers must invest in mobile game community strategies as another avenue to mitigate the impact of industry headwinds, offset the increasing pressures on paid media performance, and ultimately support efforts to achieve sustainable growth.
Read on as we discuss three key findings from the report that illustrate how social factors and online communities can work to strengthen your mobile growth flywheel.
What makes a player go from ad impression to install? Ultimately, players trust other players, and community sentiment is a powerful lever to drive conversions.
While player ratings and reviews are the most important social factor driving install decisions – nearly half of mobile gamers (49%) research player reviews and ratings across the web or app listing -– one in five (19%) also specifically research a game’s online community, considering things such as activity and positivity.
Player ratings and reviews are even more influential for spenders (51%), who also tend to take a publisher’s game community into consideration more than non-spenders (21% vs 16%).
Additionally, a game’s star rating on the app store listing comes in third place as the most important element to influence an install decision, further highlighting the importance of existing player sentiment for a new player to try a game.
Given that players often rely on peer reviews and ratings for their installation decisions, cultivating a healthy and active community stands as a linchpin for sustainable mobile game growth. Although often hard to measure, successful community management can significantly bolster your game’s brand reputation while fueling organic growth through word of mouth and referrals.
Community engagement and sentiment are unsung heroes when it comes to driving LTV for mobile games, with one in five spenders considering the game’s community before install (21%) and more than one in four (27%) actively participating in said communities – more than their non-spender counterparts (18%).
Being a part of mobile game communities has a real impact on in-game engagement and monetization as well, with 15% of spenders reporting that they’re more likely to make in-app purchases and 28% being more likely to try other games from a publisher if they’re part of its community.
Game communities offer a powerful out-of-game avenue for fostering deeper connections with spenders. By focusing on creating positive brand touchpoints and discussions linked to valuable gameplay experiences – such as by offering game-related tips and IAP discounts – you can incentivize players to revisit the game and ultimately increase LTV.
👀 Related reading: Mobile gaming IAP spend trends for 2024: Player motivations, churn, and more
An oft-forgot part of the growth flywheel, customer support has a strong impact on a player’s experience with a game and can greatly impact further growth and engagement, especially as 81% of players reach out to support when they encounter in-game issues. Positive experiences with support can have lasting benefits, with 35% of players playing the game more, 24% leaving a positive review, and 21% recommending the game to friends after a good support interaction. Negative support interactions can be even more impactful in the opposite direction, with a full 65% of players who had a negative support interaction stopping playing the game, 34% leaving a negative review, and 35% complaining about the game or experience to others.
It’s clear that support interactions can have a ripple effect on game engagement and player sentiment, so ensuring efficient and positive experiences is a surefire way to fortify your reputation and growth.
👀 Related reading: Plugging the leaks: Decoding leaky bucket syndrome to find growth in mobile gaming
The findings of Mistplay’s social and community report ultimately offer insight into how online mobile game communities have a full-funnel impact on the user lifecycle and can be leveraged as a supplemental factor to fortify and support a strong mobile game growth flywheel.
Download the report to dive into the data behind the power of social and community in mobile gaming.
