To judge the success of a mobile game, revenue is often the simplest and most direct measure. If $1 billion is a memorable milestone, Moon Active's Coin Master has already erected six monuments for itself.

According to Sensor Tower, Coin Master has earned more than $6 billion worldwide on Apple's App Store and Google Play since its release.

How did such a seemingly unremarkable game manage to fetch $6 billion worldwide? At the same time, what is even more curious is that as a game launched in 2016, why did it not really start to explode until 2020?

01

Keep the player pumping

As a social gambling game, Coin Master is not complicated to play, and you can use slot machines to draw coins to upgrade your village; Upgrading the village can earn rewards such as the number of draws, which forms the most basic gameplay cycle.

But this is obviously too simplistic, so the game introduces a social element. In addition to gold, when the player draws three hammers or a blindfolded pig's head, they can attack or raid other players' villages to steal gold from others.

You can see the information of the players you have plundered, and similarly, you can also see the information of the players who have plundered you, and then launch revenge the next time you get the opportunity to attack, or choose to attack your friends, thus establishing a "enemy" social system based on revenge or friend loss.

The introduction of "enemy" social networking can give players a new drive, while also using social topics to spread and maintain the popularity of the game.

Whether it is simulated business or "enemy" socialization, it is all built on the simplest action of lottery, and the number of lottery draws has naturally become the core payment point, so how to let players draw non-stop has become the key to the success of this game.

In addition to the aforementioned gameplay design, the various activities are also key to driving players to keep pressing buttons in Coin Master. These events do not require additional action from players, as long as the designated pattern of the event is transferred through the usual lottery, the progress can be automatically accumulated, and the goal can be achieved to obtain rewards.

No additional operations are required to disrupt the core lottery gameplay and ensure a smooth experience, but the high frequency and short time limit are the reasons why these activities can continue to drive players to engage in them.

Coin Master's events are generally short-lived, and there may be several events at the same time, with frequent event updates, making it important for players to keep an eye on in-game events so they don't miss out on rewards. The eroded time is also urging players to press the draw button as soon as possible, and it is obviously unrealistic to wait for the number of draws to recover over time, and players will either get rewards through social sharing or buy with real money in order to get more draws.

The anticipation of random rewards, the revenge of other players, and the reluctance to miss out on event rewards all drive players to press the button again and again, and the wheel spins and repeats.

02

Not just a "pig" on the tuyere

Over the past few years, Coin Master has been active at the top of various revenue charts, making the pig's head in the game's icon deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. However, before that, the revenue of games was not as strong as it is now.

According to the app store, Coin Master was released in 2010, but according to SensorTower, the game didn't gain support until 2016, and by December 2018, the monthly turnover climbed to $10 million, which is nothing compared to its subsequent monthly turnover of over 100 million.

The following year, the game began to gain momentum, and by October 2019, the monthly turnover had exceeded $60 million, but the real explosion was not until 2020.

In 2020, driven by the "stay-at-home economy", the game industry ushered in a wave of contrarian growth, and it was at this time that the "pig" of "Coin Master" flew up. In May, the game's monthly turnover surpassed $100 million, and by August, the total revenue exceeded the $1 billion mark.

As the saying goes, a pig can fly when standing on the tuyere, but it would be too simplistic to attribute Coin Master's achievements to external factors.

According to the monitoring of AppGrowing International Edition, Moon Active has taken relatively active actions in terms of purchase promotion, and its placement has always been at the relative head of the category.

But more crucially, around the point of 2020, Moon Active took a far-reaching marketing move - asking celebrities to advertise the game.

Looking back at the celebrity purchase promotion of "Coin Master", it will be found that no matter how the stars of cooperation are changed, the creative ideas around the "enemy" social network will always remain the same.

For example, an earlier out-of-the-circle advertisement: Jennifer · Lopez came to a supermarket and called out the cashier's name; The latter was pleasantly surprised to see the big star, but Jennifer · Lopez took out her phone to show "Coin Master", and angrily asked if the other party had attacked her village.

In its recent collaboration with David Beckham, Moon Active continues to use this line of thinking. Beckham appears and causes a surprise, but the big star comes to the door because he attacked his village in "Coin Master".

Obviously, Moon Active is very partial to this idea, and it does have a good spread. On the one hand, unlike the rigid and tough publicity, the life-like scenes make the stars no longer high, which can well shorten the distance with the audience; On the other hand, the "enemy" social network is also hinting at the audience that through the game, you can interact with these big stars, and even "override" these strong people, so as to stimulate players to download.

After the initial taste, Moon Active has held on to this style of play, from Kardashian, Jennifer· Lopez, Cardi B, Ben ·Higgins, Richie· Harrison, Emily· Ratakowski, etc., to the recent collaboration with David Beckham, its coverage and lineup are astounding.

If "Coin Master" is a "pig" standing on the tuyere, then at least, it walked to the tuyere on its own.

03

One game feeds a company

After Coin Master took off, Moon Active's valuation also rose. At the beginning of 2020, the company was valued at $1.25 billion, and after closing a $300 million funding round at the end of 2021, the valuation has reached $5 billion.

To this day, Coin Master remains the backbone of Moon Active, and it's not an exaggeration to say that the company is supported by the game. The company's CEO, Samuel Albin, once admitted that Moon Active's shortcomings lie in the limitations of the game category.

In order to overcome this limitation, Moon Active first acquired Melsoft, which has a strong track record in the farm simulation track, and its core product, Family Island, is second only to Playrix's Dream Town in the category track in 2023.

Soon after, they acquired Zen Match and the team behind it from Good Job Game, which had a peak monthly turnover of 70 million RMB.

Last year, they acquired Magmatic Games, and their merger mobile game Travel Town, which launched in 2020 and saw rapid growth after being acquired, with monthly turnover soaring fourfold in one year.

Judging by Moon Active's moves, they are still focusing on the casual space, and these acquisitions have certainly helped them push the boundaries of the company and make great achievements in other tracks, but there are still no games that can take over the Coin Master banner.

Perhaps in a hurry to change this situation, Moon Active even wanted to recreate the miracle by copying "Coin Master", and launched a mobile game called "Pet Master" in 2021, which is actually a reskinning of "Coin Master", except for the different themes and art packaging, the core gameplay is almost identical.

Lack of differentiation in Pet Master is not an effective competitive differentiator from Coin Master. Perhaps because the test results were not satisfactory, Moon Active did not let go when it came to promotion. According to monitoring, when "Pet Master" was launched in 2021, the daily peak delivery did not exceed 100, and the material content was naturally not supported by star resources.

At the same time, you'll find that Moon Active's current focus is still on the products that are already live, with no games in the pre-order or sprint period, and a lack of new successors.

Although Coin Master's revenue was still as high as $98 million in July this year, it has fallen from its peak, and coupled with the impact of similar products on the market, Coin Master's challenges are becoming more and more severe, and it will undoubtedly be interesting to see how Moon Active will break the situation of a game feeding the company, or continue to inspire the possibility of Coin Master to hit new milestones.

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