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How Everywear generated 25% D-30 retention in its Apple Watch game Runeblade

Always on

How Everywear generated 25% D-30 retention in its Apple Watch game Runeblade

While many of the early supporters of Apple Watch have been disappointed in the hardware's gaming potential, others remain believers.

German developer Wooga is setting up a wearables team, while San Francisco startup N3TWORK has just launched its Apple Watch game Mafia Watch.

But the most evangelistic outfit remains Finland's Everywear Games.

It's now celebrating seven months of its Runeblade watch RPG, which is generally recognised to be the poster child for Apple Watch gaming.

In a new infographic, the company has revealed some interesting stats.

Big numbers

When it comes to retention, Runeblade players are highly engaged, generating an average of 20 sessions a day, with the top 2% of players, hitting 100 sessions a day.

Of course, this high frequency is driven by the always-there UX of a wearable. Sessions themselves are ultra short - 40 seconds average length.

Subsequently, retention is high, with a Day-1 rate of 57% and Day-30 of 25%; the latter being highly impressive.

In terms of how Everywear has generated this audience, the answer is content, content, content.

It's updating every 12 days, on average, with the game now consisting of 8 months of playable content.

Despite six localised languages, the main countries playing are the obvious English language ones - US, UK, Canada, Australia - plus big gaming territories such as China, Germany and France.

Of course, the one thing we don't know, is how many people are playing Runeblade.

Still, given we don't really know how many Apple Watches have been sold, we're not surprised no-one's releasing absolute figures on that score.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.