85% of social game players quit after first day

Social gamers don't give a new free-to-play game long to hook them in, found Playnomics in its latest 'Player Engagement Study'. A whopping 85% of social gamers quit playing such a game after just one day, according to analysis of behaviour between July and September this year.

Unless a game can hold the attention of player, it will likely be ditched. However, once hooked, or if a player is still engaged with a game after one week, the game developer is more likely to make money, says Playnomics.

Players who continue to play a game for one further day after their first engagement with a game will play 334% more than average, found Playnomics, while those who play for a week will play 21,364% more than average.

Another interesting highlight from Playnomics' research is that Friday and Saturday are the most common days that people spend money on free-to-play games despite these being the days people spend the least amount of time playing. By contrast, Monday and Tuesday are the days when games are played the most, but generate the lowest revenue.

"We pull and analyze data from millions of players worldwide, across all the online social games in our PlayRM platform, to determine results with important, applicable implications for developers," Chethan Ramachandran, chief executive officer of Playnomics, told VentureBeat.

"When do players return to your game, and how frequently? What are the triggers for player returns? Which are most likely to share your games with their friends? Why do they come back, and how often? These questions are crucial for user retention in today's online marketplace, and our tools make it possible for developers to answer them -- easily, succinctly, once and for all."

Tags: game developers, gamers, in-game revenue, social games