Parallel Kingdoms generating up to $0.50 a day per DAU, mostly on Android

Mobile developer PerBlue's flagship location-based social game Parallel Kingdom is generating over $200,000 a month on mobile devices, even though it isn't in the top 100 grossing games categories on either iOS or Android. This figure comes to us from CEO Justin Beck's GDC Online talk "Bootstrapping 101: How College Kids Built a Thriving Game Company in Under Three Years," where he was detailed his company's history since it was founded three years ago. The developer now grosses over $3 million a year. A good portion of this talk dealt with how the company's early founders decided to stay in Madison, WI, due to the low cost of living and the pool of recruitable talent that comes out of the University of Wisconsin. Beck also explained how the company decided to raise its initial funding to launch Parallel Kingdom from family and friends, raising $72,000 in exchange for a small percentage of the company. Since the game's launch, Per Blue's managed to be profitable. Beck showed the below infographic to the audience, breaking down Parallel Kingdom's monetization. Between iOS and Android, the game has 50,000 monthly active users and 15,000 daily active users. According to Beck, the game generates $0.40 to $0.50 per day per DAU. Based on these numbers, Parallel Kingdom is generating somewhere between $180,000 ($0.40 over 30 days) to $232,500 ($0.50 over 31 days) a month. Approximately 85 percent of the game's revenue comes from Android users while only 15 percent comes from iOS. This is a stark contrast to what we normally hear from mobile developers. Case in point: GameDuell told us in July that iOS users monetize up to four times better than Android users and King.com told us yesterday Bubble Witch Saga monetizes three times better on iOS than it does on Facebook. Our AppData traffic-tracking service doesn't show Parallel Kingdom in any of the top iOS lists, but the game is currently the No. 281 casual game on Android after a brief spike into the top 200 rankings last week. Before that, Parallel Kingdom sat around the No. 440 mark for the past few months. This means that even though Parallel Kingdom isn't normally in the top 200 games on Android, it's bringing in somewhere between $153,000 and $197,625 a month. Beck didn't discuss the figures for PerBlue's two newer games, Parallel Mafia and Parallel Zombies. However, the aforementioned figures mean Parallel Kingdom is at most currently generating $2,790,000 a year, which means there's some these other games are generating at least a total of $210,000 a year ($17,500 a month) between them. One other monetization detail was revealed during the talk. In Parallel Kingdom, new player have a lifetime value of $3.25 per user. About 15 percent of the game's players become "Converted Users," meaning they play for at least four days in a row and become invested in the game. The average converted user has a LTV of $21.75. Finally, 22 percent of that 15 percent undergo a "paying conversion," but these payers have a LTV of $95.00 per user. Towards the end of his speech, Beck noted many developers might shy away from developing games for niche audiences because they believe the audience wouldn't be large enough to survive on but “niche products have more legs than you think.”

Social Pro Daily

Parallel Kingdoms generating up to $0.50 a day per DAU, mostly on Android

Kathleen De Vere

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Kathleen De Vere