Subway Surfers is an endless runner mobile game developed by Kiloo and SYBO games.
It was
released in 2012 and gained massive popularity in the initial years but is now facing in a decline in
the number of DAU (Daily Active users).
The goal of the game is to create a score by running on railway tracks. There are three tracks
between the two platforms on which the player can switch, he faces static obstacles such as barriers
and dynamic obstacles such as trains on his way. As the player his running, the score is increasing at
a certain rate and it stops when the player dies and the score is stored. When the user plays a new
game, the meter starts from zero. A player competes with other players throughout the world and
all the players are ranked on the basis of their highest scores.
The user thus wants to maximise his score in a single run and create a high score. The user would be
interested in buying anything which can help him increase his score and this is the core loop.
The main resources in the game are the Coins. The user can use the coins in various ways to
maximise his score. Keys are another important resource in the game; major function of the keys is
to respawn the player once he dies
The most common way of increasing the score is by increasing the multiplier of the score meter
which can be done by completing challenges in the game which require upgrades which have to be
purchased with the help of the coins or the user can directly purchase score multiplier for individual
games. The game also gives the option to respawn once he dies, and for that he has to use keys.
Keys are very important top players as when they are playing at very high scores and have the
chance to beat the high scorers, they find this option of getting the life back very good and use the
keys.
As discussed, the coins and keys are very important for player if he wishes to make a high score.
Supply of the resources: - The player can collect coins and keys while running, coins are common but
keys are rare. But at some point of time, the user is unable to purchase upgrades and characters,
that is the point when the developers earn money. The following are the ways of monetization in the
game: -
The platform sells bundles of coins and keys which the user can buy with real currency. The
size of the bundles determines the price. The user gets a discount if he buys the coins and
keys in bulk. Study states that only 5 % of the users perform these kinds of transactions.
While most of the upgrades are bought with the virtual currency, some upgrades such as the
Coin doubler can be bought with real currency.
Another way of collecting coins is by watching the advertisings in the game, after the user
finishes watching the advertisement, he gets the rewards in form of coins. This is the most
commonly used method to get coins, thus a big opportunity is there to make money by
running advertisements.
The developers of the game have also collaborated with other developers. If the users of
Subway Surfers try the games of other developers, they will get coins and keys to use in the
game. The other developers pay Kiloo and SYBO for this collaboration as this increases their
new downloads.
As discussed above, the largest monetization lever is the advertisements which the player watches
to get the free coins. The amount of money the
