Xmas slots results
14.5 average no. of opens
Total opens / unique opens = 14.5 (on the day it expired). We usually average 2.5 opens. Though it was spread out from 1 to 980. 20% of users opened 10-50 times, reaching 1000 points and 5% opened 100+ times.
The range of opens reflect users different goals. At 1am Xmas morning, Phil in the UK hammered the refresh 77 times until he'd reached 5,000 points. Chad White, just wanted to get a jackpot. While Tina of NJ, had her eye on the Xmas swag with hundreds of opens within just a few hours.
Players have different motivations which map to the no. of opens
Reward winners straight away
We fudged the way we gave out prizes. We should've generated a unique coupon code on reaching 1000 points, that could be redeemed online immediately. Instead we contacted winners via a second email once the game had expired, asking them to send us their addy. I know, I know...
Redeeming real-world prizes for in game achievements. What we did (left) vs. instant reward.
Holidays = mobile
We had ~ 55% mobile usage for the first 48-72hrs (Xmas Eve & Day). Surprisingly we saw heavy play on these days. As people trickled back to work, our Outlook no's climbed to 21%. Mobile usage evened out at ~35%.
From our sessions data, we know that 10.5% of players opened on more than one client. Though 6% of that was desktop to desktop e.g IE to Firefox. Of the 4.5% that was desktop/mobile: 3% was mobile to desktop, 1% desktop to mobile and 0.5% mobile to tablet.
Client usage before players got back to work
Rethink it for digital
Originally I wanted to replicate the kitsch artwork of Vegas slots. Only it was tough to fit it within 285px. Graeme asked why I was trying to mimic a real slots machine, "Its digital, all you need are 3 icons and some animation".
Creative that replicates real world objects, act as a shorthand. Users know what to expect off the bat. I still plan to build out a traditional slots demo, the trick is knowing what's redundant, like page curl effects.
Early drafts including a Halloween skin vs. what we ended up with far right.
Much more to explore
We left a lot on the table for our first game. No reward screen on hitting 1000 or 5000 points. I'd wanted to have animated Xmas lights go off when you hit a jackpot. No highest score table. We discouraged sharing by omitting FTAF, SWYN or a webview link. No Twitter smackdowns or encouragement like, "OMG 100 opens, go Sara!".
Turns out, you need very little gameplay to have fun. Sure it wasn't without its flaws, but I'm encouraged. We're already putting together our next game, with Twitter chat and a highest score table. Game on!