Game Market Trends: How Publishers Use House Decoration System In Mobile Games To Attract More Users?

Since the release of The Sims in 2000, the ability to build and design your own virtual home in a video game has been popular with gamers. Virtual homes and home decorating systems are one of the biggest trends in mobile gaming right now, but do you have one? Know that these systems will vary from game to game, which means they can be used for most genres?

How important are decorative buildings in mobile game market?

Decorative buildings are a popular feature in every mobile game market. If you're not familiar with the feature, it involves creating decorative buildings, furniture, and other structures that typically have limited impact on the actual gameplay. When we looked at the top 200 highest-grossing games in the US, Japanese, and Chinese iOS markets, a number of games included decorative building features in their games. 

We'll look further at some examples of how different games implement home systems. Let's start with RPGs, as they tend to rely heavily on decorative and customizable elements and are therefore well suited for family systems.

Home decoration system in different game genres

Home decoration system in RPG

MMORPGs typically have many social and decorative elements. Since MMORPGs have a large player base, these elements are an important part of player differentiation. Family systems allow players to extend this idea further by decorating their space to reflect themselves to other players and potentially provide a personalized place to socialize. 

The most common example of a home system can be seen in Perfect World Mobile, which includes a variety of furniture and other items that they craft themselves. By crafting furniture, players can earn "Feng Shui" and "Home Base Prosperity" for upgrading their home base, as well as some in-game bonuses.

Click "Learn More" to drive your apps & games business with ASO World app promotion service now.

Perfect World's home base is closely related to the tribe and has a special social function. Tribes are a guild-like feature that opens up a number of social features for players who join them, such as a tribal marketplace that allows players to purchase furniture blueprints (for making rare furniture), acceleration items, and many other rare items. When players move their home base system to a tribe, it unlocks some new home base features, such as assist functions.  

In Black Desert Mobile, the home system is incorporated with a twist: players have their own camps in villages rather than houses. While many housing systems are optional features in the game, the camp plays a crucial role in Black Desert Mobile. It is the gateway to many game features and activities, such as game modes, crafting consumables and equipment, collecting currency and resources, and managing workers. 

The various buildable buildings in the camp can be upgraded to generate more currency/resources and craft better items. Workers can also be upgraded to complete missions, collect resources and help with future building upgrades.

Home decoration system in rhythm games

An example is QQ Dance, a rhythm game with multiple game modes, such as the typical PvE and PvP rhythm game modes or social gathering space with mini-games. The game also has a lot of customization and social elements. QQ Dance's family system relies heavily on the social element, as it allows players to hang out as their avatars in virtual homes, where players can visit each other and build furniture together. It even has a reward quest system that ties the family system to the core gameplay, as furniture rewards are earned through the core game levels.

Home decoration system in match3 games

An atypical selection of home systems can be found in Craz3 Match (Everyday Love Elimination), a Match3 game with a home decor element called Wenxin Jiayuan. It is a seasonal based home decorating system where players earn currency through Match3 levels that can be used to purchase decorative furniture for their home system. In this game, there are different types of individual rooms that can be decorated with different themes, and every now and then a different theme is introduced to refresh the content.

Home decoration system in survival games

The decorative home system is also well suited for survival games such as LifeAfter, which uses a home system similar to that found in MMORPGs. Since survival games usually include some MMORPG elements, such as some open-world exploration, inclusion of other players in the world, and customization of the main character, it makes sense for the game to implement a family system that enriches these elements. In LifeAfter, there are ever-changing seasonal events, such as the Halloween event, which offers decorative buildings as special rewards for players to place in their homes. This is a great way to deepen the mechanics of the game's family system by offering new content through limited-time offers.

What did Homescapes do for user acquisition?

Homescapes is a 3D puzzle game with story progression and home and decoration meta-levels. In other words, players need to solve triple elimination puzzles to get the resources they need to renovate and decorate their homes. To date, Homescapes has been downloaded more than 438 million times. That's remarkable - not many games can do that. To date, Homescapes is approaching $1.5 billion in revenue. The crazy thing is - Homescapes' revenues have increased year after year. This rarely happens, especially for casual games.

Homescapes ASO attempts

Before we get into advertising and paid user acquisition, let's take a quick look at the Homescapes app store page. I'll break down the most important ASO elements that help Playrix engage users organically.

Game name

Homescapes is part of Playrix's Scapes series, the other being Gardenscapes. both names are very simple and refer to the gameplay. In Homescapes, the goal is to renovate the house, while in Gardenscapes, the player decorates the garden.

To learn more about app name ASO, you can check "ASO Creation Strategy: How to Create a Perfect Name?" of our previous articles.

Game icon

Interestingly, the Homescapes icon references advertisements. Yes, those notoriously misleading ads featuring puzzle mini-games. In fact, this is true of all Playrix games icons.

Just like in the ads, we see a puzzle - Austin, the game's mascot/protagonist, a burning stove, water, and pins. The goal is to move the pin to get the water to the stove.

They chose to reference the ads in the icons because they are easily recognizable as Playrix ads. They want users to make that connection. In addition, they wanted the ads to look non-misleading.

To learn more about icon optimization, you can check "App Icon optimization: A practical guide to boost app conversion rate" of our previous articles.

Screenshots

Each Homescapes graphic shows a game feature - minigame, renovation, design/decoration, triple elimination puzzle, and game activity. While none of them are actual screenshots of the game, they represent what the game is about.

Homescapes ads creatives

The success of Homescapes is undeniable. But how did Playrix get millions of users? The answer lies in their advertising strategy.

You may have seen these ads. They depict puzzles where users need to avoid disaster by pulling pins in the right order. However, this is not true of the core gameplay. at their core, both Homescapes and Gardenscapes are match3 games with some decorative and narrative meta-elements.

Homescapes ads usually mislead and misrepresent the game. This is not a secret. Everyone in the industry knows it, most gamers know it, and there are some people who are very annoyed by it. And it's not just Playrix, many successful developers use this technique. You may have been wondering why these seemingly simple and misleading ads work so well? We've analyzed Playrix's ad strategy and creative to find out.

Storytelling in ads

A great deal of Homescapes advertising focuses on narrative elements. It's somewhat related to the game, considering it has the ability to tell a story.

One of the stories is about a mother fighting for custody, which is a dark theme for a mobile game ad. Her house needs to be fixed so she can have her daughter back. But the renovation ends up being a failure, as you might expect from a Homescapes commercial. The purpose of showing a failed renovation is to make viewers think they can do better. There is also emotional engagement, especially for the target female audience.

In a way, the ad challenges them, and this is reflected in the CTA. It says, "Challenge accepted!".

We've established that the idea of Homescapes, misleading or not, was to appeal to a broader audience, which is what Playrix was after. It has enabled Homescapes to continue to grow in terms of downloads and revenue. Engagement KPIs like user retention DAU are also good. That means Homescapes' advertising strategy is working, and that's all that matters.

What to pay attention to when containing decorative elements in games? 

Home decorations provide a great way for players to express their creativity, unleash their personalities and showcase their creations to other players. There are many games on the market today that feature some sort of home system, varying from the typical house or room to a village system. 

One of the biggest factors driving their popularity right now is their compatibility with many different genres. Games that already include decorative and social elements can deepen these game mechanics by introducing customization modes into the game, while games that don't typically include customization can attract new players motivated by decorative and customization by introducing decorative modes.

Decorative and customizable items also work well with (seasonal) events, so you can regularly provide players with new content to decorate their space in the game.

The success of Homescapes is undeniable. Whether you agree with Playrix's marketing strategy or not, there are powerful lessons you can learn from this top publisher.

Primarily, if you have a mobile game, try to expand your reach and broaden your audience. If you want to avoid misleading ads (my advice), then use creativity to make them appeal to a different audience. It's possible!