Pocket Planes and F2P Design Rules

Although Pocket Planes hasn't been a huge commercial success, I think it is still such a good example of how to develop and publish a F2P game that I wanted to share some thoughts with you guys how the characteristics of the game transforms to the some F2P Design Rules set forth by Nicholas Lovell, and how that translates to money.

The Core Loop and the Complexity in Layers

The core loop of the game consists of operational level with completing the jobs and strategic level with expanding and building up player's own flight armada. The inner layer and the whole idea of the game is to get some people and cargo  in to the planes and move them to the location where the customers want them to go. This process is called as the jobs in the game.

The game features basic restriction mechanic which is quite low at the start, but increases quite heavily after a while. In the beginning of the game - and depending on the purchased cities (airports), accomplishing one round of core loop takes from 10 to 20 minutes. Usual reward of the flights is soft currency called bitcoins, but from time to time, there comes jobs with a reward of hard currency (Plane Bux). As the time goes by and player gains more experience, cities and planes, it might take several hours to complete one job increases the retention as well as the conversion of the players.

Player can access the boarding , airport upgrade and plane upgrare screens from the aiport screen.

Passenger and cargo have different kinds of destinations and  rewards

After choosing the jobs (passengers and cargo), it's time to decide the flight route for the plane.

Players can view tha plane and the passengers and cargo from the flight screen (and collect some in-game currency)

Does it sound too simple? It's not. Pocket Planes is a perfect example of baking complexity in layers. Every plane has it's own variables (level, capacity of passengers and cargo, speed, flight distance and weight) which translate to which airports it can use, how much cargo it can carry, how long it takes to complete the job, how far the plane is able to flight without stop-overs and how efficiently. Even without thinking the complexity of the outer layer of core loop, player can fine-tune the performance and reach of his flight armada based on at least six variables - enough complexity for most of us.

Outer layer of the core loop consists of buying and upgrading more and better planes, buying more cities and establishing different kinds of flight routes for player's armada. The decisions of course are based on the existing armada and the planned future plane purchases. Every plane and airport has level (1-3) which determines which aircrafts can  use which airports. Level one aircrafts can use all airports, but level two aircrafts can use only level two and three  airports and level three planes can use level three airports. The level system really deepens the gameplay, but at the same it isn't too complex to drive away more casually oriented players.

I must not fail

One great element of Pocket Planes is that the player cannot fail in the game; player can either earn more or little bit less, dictated by his decisions on the cargo, plane and the flight route. It's important to note that even if players cannot fail, it doesn't mean that they can't use and develop their skills. In Pocket planes. players get more rewards (cash and Bux) by tuning their plane armada's vatiables (planes, plane types, airports, flight routes) to optimize the cash flow.

The emotion of the player gets from the game is not that "I failed", it's more like "Wow, that's a great profit from the job" or "That wasn't perfect job, but I got profit. Next time, I will get more with less". Players always feels good after completing the job, but not completely satisfied which would kill the appeal and traction of  the game.

Evergreen story

It's important to note that in order to get the percentage of the player base converted and the retention, there's gotta be enough content in the game to get the players playing the game.

Pocket Planes has A LOT of playable content. There's 62 planes, over 250  cities and a lot of funny, special cargo and passenger for player to keep playing on and on and on...

Pizzazz and emotion

Another great element of Pocket Planes (element found in some other titles of Nimblebit; Tiny Tower and Nimble Quest) is that even though the graphic style is similar to 90's PC games, it's still creates very compelling and vivid world. This experience is achieved with several elements, such as actual names of the "bitizens" (passengers) in the airports, Facebook mock-up called Bitbook where players can see and share messages of bitizens which actually synced with the gameplay and progression of the player. 

Monetization and the no-brainer first time spend

As said above, there's soft and hard currency system in the game by which the developer can control that the player cannot get all the items in the game for free. 

Soft currency is mainly used to buying more airports, buying more plane slots for additional planes and to upgrading airports.

Hard currency is used to buying, building and upgrading planes and speed up the flights. Buying planes cost from five to 50 bucks, depending on the level and characteristics of the plane. 

Player is able to earn hard currency without spending a dime in the game. First of all, the player gains three complimentary Plane Bux every time he reaches a next level. Second, player can earn a lot of Plane Bux by completing jobs with hard currency rewards. Finally, few Bux can be earned by watching the plane during it's flight and tapping on the screen when hard currencies come by.

Hard currency can be bought with real money. The price points of the hard currency packs starts from 0,99USD (0,89EUR) which gives the player 20 Plane Bux, the prices of Plane Bux packs go on with 4,99USD (200 Plane Bux), 19,99USD (1000 Plane Bux) and 39,99USD (5000 Plane Bux).

My guess is that the main drivers for people buying hard / premium currency packs are the ability to buy better aircrafts and upgrade them. Second biggest driver of retention is the ability to build aircrafts from parts discovered from the newly bought airports.

In my opinion, the first price point is low enough (heck, it cannot get any lower)  to encourage players to take quite risk-free first step of spending some money to game. But honestly, I believe that Nimlebit should offer bigger and more expensive premium currency packs to enable players who have money and are willing to spend it to games, they can spend $100 with one purchase in the game.

Although I believe that game makers should be generous especially with F2P games, I think that Pocket Planes gives a little bit too much too often. With a bit of luck (in terms of being able to get a lot of premium currency jobs),  I could make up to 20 Bux in one game session. In average, the player can make 3-10 Bux with one session (in Level 13, one session takes about hour and half). I think that's little bit too much too often.

One great aspect of the monetization is that the player's can convert premium currency to soft currency in the game. With one Plane Bux, the player is able to get 500 coins. Because players are not able to buy soft currency with real money in the game, it's a nice way to enable players to spend more the hard  currency to speed up the progression (remember that players cannot buy Plane Slots or Airports with hard currency).

Conclusion

To sum up things, I think Pocket Planes is great example how to build F2P games consistently throughout the game. The fact that it's not in the top lists of grossing titles, might be due to little bit alternative graphical style which doesn't appeal to broad audience (as e.g. Hay Day appeals). Also, the genre of the simulation game (airline simulation) doesn't have the broadest appeal for the gamers.

Despite these facts, Pocket Planes is a great game, but not perfect example of implementaion of monetization  mechanics in the game.