I must say, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is a well-designed game. I was doubtful at first. There are many mobile games out there that simply duct-tape mechanics and brands together, similar to the SNES era of movie games. But I found Kim Kardashian: Hollywood to have merged its mechanics and aesthetics together pretty well.
Mobile games can be divided into a few parts at the moment: Acquisition, Retention, and Monetization.
- Branding. Kim is a major brand-name. Her star power gives the game a significant advantage. Most games are launched without much awareness or discovery and must fight to rise above the noise of the internet. In this case, Kim has a curated and sustained following which allows this game to have a significant advantage in visibility.
- Publishing. Glu Mobile is a publishing titan in the mobile world. They have a very large network of quality users that play their games. With today’s metrics and user tracking tools, they can easily migrate users between games and give themselves a strong download burst without heavy UA costs from banner ads or incentivized downloads.
- Placement. Both Kim and Glu are powerful and trusted names. This gives them a significant advantage when approaching various store fronts like Apple or Google. Strong brands will give Apple more confidence that the game won’t do anything that will negatively effect their iDevice user base.
Hollywood did a soft-launch on the Canada/UK AppStore sometime around June 2nd. They ranked pretty quickly. I assume they were able to measure their metrics and got some good numbers. That most likely gave them confidence for an official launch.
The official launch was in the US Appstore, where Kim Kardashian: Hollywood was available on June 24. On June 26, according to AppAnnie.com, it was “featured on the iTunes Home Page in 104 place.”
Currently, AppStore rankings algorithms favor trendiness. This is also one reason why some publishers perform UA bursts to reach a high rank within each store. With a high rank, UA bursts can be converted into organic downloads.
Most of the time, mobile specialists will talk about how humans like to push buttons, collect things, and simply get addicted. I’ll skip all that and focus more on the psychological aesthetics. But to better understand this, I’ll have to dig into the history of mobile games and current gamer expectations.
Old gamers (before mobile) have been playing games for quite a long time. They’ve seen their share of good and bad games. Think of them as well informed consumers. They know what they are buying.
New gamers (new to gaming thanks to the smartphone) have only recently accepted games as a acceptable source of entertainment. Many of them are playing games for the very first time in their life.
New gamers are quite susceptible to product mechanics they are not informed of, while old gamers can see these tactics very easily. Like a movie buff that’s seen hundreds of action movies, they can identify moments when the director decided to “simply add more explosions.” They can identify a lack of plot or lack of character development, whereas an unexperienced movie goer might claim it’s “the bestest ever.”
This is one reason why old gamers have a grave distaste for mobile games. As informed consumers, they feel like it’s a cheap shot. Some development studios don’t spend the time to marry their mechanics with their aesthetics.
But for Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (I’ll refer to it as Hollywood), it’s actually put together quite well. The simplest way to say this is “the mechanics do not break emergence.” Here are a few major UX moments which felt well executed:
- A modeling manager working on a deal for you – he will call you back within 1-hour. There’s a timer that counts down, and it’s uncertain when the modeling manager will actually call you. For emergence, it’s believable, relatable, and it gives a great sense of uncertainty. Outside of the game, it’s leveraging basic emotional triggers; most everyone has waited for some good/bad news call in their life. Mechanically, it’s a great way to use the notification system. Notifications are often used to create a sense of pacing, or used as a reminder to get the player back into the game.
- You’re a newbie model trying to get famous, so you need to do small things like a side jobs or helping out at a photo studio. Because the player is able to choose which jobs they would like, it’s a completely self-paced game. Jobs are time based tasks that last for some period of time. While the job is active, the player spends energy performing tap-to-collect mechanics. What Hollywood does well is implement a sense of “choice” for what jobs you want to take on. You’re not stuck in a single screen “collecting milk” or “harvesting carrots.” You can be working a day shift folding clothes and straightening mannequins, or you can be on set helping people with their coffee while joining the photo shoot itself. In these settings, the energy system makes sense and doesn’t break emergence.
- In this game, Kim Kardashian’s avatar’s role, is to help you “power-level” as an individual and help you climb the modeling social ladder. Most games will always give the player a sense of “what will come later.” Either they throw a big bad boss at you, allow a higher level player to attack you, or show you an ally that’s significantly further in level than you are. That’s Kim – she’s a significantly higher level ally with a snazzy house, fancy life style, and an air of social prestige. This gives the player an immediate goal. But the design goes much deeper than that. Hollywood (the real one) is known as “the city of dreams,” where anything can come true. This is the psychological aesthetic that the game is offering to its players. You’re emerged in “Hollywood.” You’re working your way to the top. With it, you’ve created a narrative with your own hands and working towards that sense of future. The mechanic is well integrated into the narrative ad doesn’t feel out of place or forced.
- If you play as a guy character, Kim’s avatar seems like a potential romantic goal. If you play as a girl character, Kim’s avatar seems like a super awesome friend. Either way, a few events into the game, you’re setup on a date with a different girl or guy. It ends up being a dating sim to some degree. Paparazzi immediately take pictures and ask you many questions. These are positive emotions of being wanted and admired by others. They even have a fake social media system within the game that tells you how many follows you have. It’s a great example of how psychological aesthetics can be satisfied by mechanics while not breaking emergence.
- Additionally, real social viral mechanics are integrated nicely. It’s simply well themed. To be a good Hollywood model, you need to tweet and do some self-promotion. Which means users can actually use their real Twitter/Facebook/etc. platforms as a way to promote themselves within the game. Again, a mechanic that’s not emergence breaking.
I believe that Hollywood has good retention because it doesn’t break emergence.
Here’s a counter example. If you’re playing a war game, it’s emergence breaking if you “tweet for more resources, so that you can defeat your nuke-throwing opponent.” It just doesn’t make any sense. This takes the player out of the experience, breaks emergence, and leaves the player debating if they should actually subjugate their friends to advertising.
Hollywood on the other hand, makes a lot of sense in its social viral mechanics. If you tweet, it doesn’t break your emergence. It just feels like it’s a natural part of the game. Thus the player is more inclined to tweet about it or share it with friends. This helps acquisition, but more importantly, it helps retention since the marketing needs are satisfied without breaking emergence.
To come back to my point. Retention is really about psychological aesthetics. Some play games for very specific reasons. Specific game mechanics can provide a sense of growth, social acceptance, challenge, narrative, or more. But it’s not enough to simply throw that mechanic into the game and expect good retention. That mechanic needs to “make sense” and fit within the game.
Take a retention example used by Las Vegas. Slot machines are a mechanic-driven system of entertainment. But a slot machine placed in a convenience store is significantly less effective than a slot machine placed within a posh, glamorous, and shiny environment. Slot machines placed on a casino floor are significantly more effective since they also provide additional sensory additives to the reason why they are playing. They aren’t pulling slots to win a Big-Gulp, but pulling slots to win it big and be an affluent social spender within the Las Vegas ecosystem.
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