Marvel Puzzle Quest’s road to the mythical $1 ARPDAU, Part 5: Adventures in consumables

In the previous parts, we touched mainly on things that had worked well from an ARPU perspective for Marvel Puzzle Quest. That’s a bit disingenuous, actually. To date, we’ve had many attempts that haven’t moved the needle in the ways we originally hoped. For example, one approach we at Demiurge Studios felt would be fruitful was adding additional items to the game for sale. The logic is strong: Some people out there would spend money on the game, but they just haven’t seen something they perceive as valuable. In Part 5, I’ll go into more detail about both Shields and Boosts and share some of our key learnings.

Shields

Versus events in Marvel Puzzle Quest run for two to three days. At the end of the tournament, we give out prizes on how well you ranked compared to others in the game. Like many games, we award points based on Elo. To prevent players who hyper-engage with the game from running away with the win, we keep the scoring roughly zero-sum, and under Elo, highly rated players are worth more points than lower-rated ones. One side-effect of this system is that players who are ranking well get pummeled, and there is a race-to-the-finish that happens in the final hour of a tournament. That’s not great for gameplay and forces our players to schedule their lives around the game to be competitive. To combat that, we’ve long wanted a mechanic that enables players to protect themselves from attacks.