Monster World

Monster World

At Wooga we don’t talk about numbers too often, but today we would like to do exact that: 65 million players have played Monster World on Facebook since it launched on April 27th 2010. We decided to use this great milestone to look into something important and noteworthy: How do you build and – more than that – improve a game to keep players active over three years?! Yes, it is true: some players grow their plants for over three years. After 40 months there are still more than one million DAU in the game – making it the biggest title of all of the games launched in 2010.

But before we talk about how to keep players alive for three years, let’s have a look at a player, that has been playing to level 100 – Jesper, our very own head of engineering. He retired after almost three years of heavy playing. We estimate the loss of productivity for the company to around 200 hours.

But Jesper is not alone – around 1.135.000 players have grown their garden for 200+ hours. All with a little help of their friends, of course. 535 players have more than 4.000 friends in the game. The record is set at 4.919 friends – imagine that garden party.

So, let us spin-off some of the most important ingredients we developed over the years, that turn a game into an activity that keeps you engaged for years:

Story Missions – July 2010: Apart from planting and harvesting crops and of course decorating the garden there wasn’t really much going on in Monster World. This changed when the story missions were introduced. Players now really had stuff to do and they knew why. More and more characters were introduced, such as Granny McFur who appeared in the first ever story mission. Every character in the game actually has a real life – just like us: with problems, surprises and challenges to accomplish. And the Monster World players were just a part of that quirky world.

Introducing WooGoo – December 2010: After introducing the magic wand and the factories (see next point) in mind, the team knew they needed power fuel to keep the machines running. So they invented the WooGoo – concentrated rainbow ooze you won’t find in stores. With this consumable good players were in charge when to run what machine. Consumables in that sense either help the user to progress faster in the game or allow him to prolong the playing session. But WooGoo perfectly fits into the world of monsters and plants.

Factories – March 2011: The factories – invented by the game’s very own Dr. Robotron – enabled the players to combine harvested materials and WooGoo to craft whole new items. That was a complete new layer in the game adding a new game loop into the game – crafting. The factories also enabled the content team to design much more complex and deeper mission stories.

Part of the first ever story mission, starring Molly

Timed Missions – August 2012: In summer 2012 the Monster World team realized it can’t always be all about idyllic gardening, because hey, farming is about seasons. The timed missions were introduced, as well as the new character Buzzy. Players could achieve a lot through crafting the right items at the right time – but they had to learn to live with the rhythm of the flowers.

Coming soon - Robot Sharks

Refactoring – May 2013: Most game teams might never make that experience – but after running a game for three years, you discover quite some „spaghetti code“. If you work on feature A, feature Y reacts completely wild. It’s all related. A huge feature like the underwater world wouldn’t have been possible without month invested into cleaning the code. You would be surprised how much stuff taken out of the game or never released stays carved in frontend/backend-stone – code is a living piece of culture.

Head of studio and inventor of Monster World, Stephanie Kaiser, attributes the success of the game to the 25 characters: „They are the heart of the game. While they are not important for the core game loop, they set the theme of the monsterish world, make it lovable and let our users smile every day over and over again. take Robert the Robot, he is an evergreen. I remember struggling over the idea of putting a robot in a monster’s world. but then i thought, this is absolute logical, if anything. Today everybody loves Robert. And he loves Roberta. And not only their story is to be continued.“

And here we are. It is August 2013 and we decided to offer a whole new world. That’s right, Monster World goes below sea level. Octi’s Garden offers the players new spaces, new plants and new missions. For at least another three years.