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Gaming in a Winter Wonderland: Effects of Christmas in Games

Updated: Feb 20


This article examines the impact of integrating Christmas-themed content, store listing, and transforming game spaces into festive settings on user acquisition and revenue generation. Developers are actively seeking innovative strategies to engage and monetize games. Holiday-themed content presents a valuable opportunity to captivate players during the holiday season, utilizing festive visuals, characters, and narratives. The article analyzes the user experience delivered by Funtory Studio and explores changes in game atmosphere and marketing campaigns, evaluating the outcomes. With a focus on popular titles like "Jump Up 3D: Basketball game" and "My Monster Pet: Train & Fight" this article provides insights into current gaming trends, ensuring readers stay informed about the evolving industry landscape.

Assets:

For these two games, the campaign assets feature Holiday-inspired elements and context, including Santa Claus, gingerbread, Christmas trees, gifts, snow, and similar festive themes.

The campaign assets, such as banners, videos, and captions, are specifically designed to align with the holiday event and incorporate elements from the game. This approach aims to attract users by appealing to the festive theme. For instance, in the game "Jump Up 3D: Basketball game," the campaigns utilize two types of assets tailored to both novice and experienced players, all centered around a Christmas theme. This strategic approach enhances user engagement across different segments, contributing to the game's overall appeal and popularity.



ASO:

For ASO, the games have customized their store listings based on the main elements of Christmas, incorporating the festive atmosphere into each part of the store listing. This strategic approach has resulted in a conversion rate approximately 1.3% higher than the default store listing in the Google Play Store for the game "My Monster Pet: Train & Fight."

Icon:

The first point that can attract users to install an app is the icon. Implementing 2 different attitudes for using Icons based on experiences during this time and conducting A/B testing to determine the best design for Icons with a Christmas theme.

Regarding the use of AI, we have successfully implemented this technology to redesign Icons for stores. The results have shown a positive impact on conversion rates.

Another approach we have taken is to adopt a minimal and simple theme. For Jump Up 3D: Basketball game, we have incorporated one festive element and a light background to reflect the concept of the game.





Description:

It's a brilliant strategy to leverage holiday-related keywords for optimizing app store visibility. By incorporating relevant keywords that align with the features of the game, it is possible to improve the app's ranking in ASO (App Store Optimization).

We have attempted to utilize a theme-based approach in our store titles and incorporate relevant keywords that align with our game, aiming to establish harmony. For instance, we have applied this structure to engage new users in the game through our short description and detailed description in My Monster Pet: Train & Fight:

Short description:

"Unravel Festive Monster Mysteries and Enjoy Playtime with Adorable Beasts!"

This structure not only serves to captivate new users but also ensures coherence between our marketing strategy and the essence of the game.

And also for starting our main description we use this sample:

Welcome to My Festive Monster Pet Wonderland! Breed them, feed them, and engage in epic Christmasy monster battles!

Screenshots:

Incorporate festive elements into your app's visuals to engage users during the holidays. Stand out from the competition by adding personalized touches while staying true to your brand. Test this approach early and highlight your app's unique features. This strategy improves user engagement and search visibility, making your app more discoverable during the festive season.

Some tips can help you prepare for future festivals without requiring a complete redesign of your app. One approach is theming your screenshots to attract users to install. Additionally, if time is limited, A/B testing may not be feasible, so changes can be implemented with confidence.

For January 2024, the Funtory marketing team used these tips to promote games with redesigned game designs, while using themed screenshots for other games.







Game Design:

This is all about making games more fun by adding exciting elements to keep players entertained and hooked. It introduces new challenges and obstacles to make games even more enjoyable. We focus on adding a festive vibe to every part of the game, especially during the holiday season, to give players a truly enjoyable experience. When people are playing games, they're usually focused on having fun and don't think much about why they enjoy playing. But by making some changes to the game design during holidays, we've seen that players get more involved and are more likely to buy things in the game compared to before.

Funtory Games made some adjustments and introduced differences in the Christmas version. However, upon reviewing our data, we discovered that for some of our games, these changes did not yield the desired results compared to the original version.

There are two samples of game designs in Funtory Studio, which you can view through the videos in the article.



In summary, incorporating festive strategies in game development and marketing can have a significant impact on user acquisition and revenue generation. By utilizing captivating seasonal content, optimizing app store visibility through ASO techniques, and integrating enjoyable and celebratory elements into game design, developers can attract and retain players during special occasions. Embracing the potential of themed experiences in gaming is essential for capturing player attention and loyalty, leading to increased success and profitability. Don't miss out on the opportunity to stand out during these memorable events and unlock the full potential of immersive gaming strategies.



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