COVID-19 UPDATE
500,000 monthly readers are maximizing their advertising conversions with conversion intelligence.
The average online user is exposed to anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 ads every day.
Jan 7 2021
Many developers are aware of the opportunities, growth potential and fierce competition in the game app market, so here the ASO World team takes you through the success story of the recent "among us" game in the mobile app market, looking for reusable growth factors and taking you through the growth process of an app in the app market, from the entry of a new app into the app store to how to improve From the entry of a new app into the app store to how to improve the category ranking of the app, how to improve visibility, get more user growth, so as to enter the positive cycle of growth, climbing traffic and exposure, and achieve ultimate success.
Many players have noticed the game "Among Us" on Steam, while it was first released on Android and iOS in June 2018. "Among Us", a werewolf-like game, is a strategy casual game that can play online by 4-10 players. In the game, the player is on a ship that takes off, and one or more random player in the crew is an impostor who tries to kill everyone, all you have to do is find him and stay alive.
After an internal analysis, the development team added a multiplayer online mode to the game and logged it on Steam at the end of 2018 in the hope of giving the game one last shot. However, unfortunately, due to the overwhelming library of games on the Steam platform, the game sank like a stone after its release and has since disappeared. 
Click "Learn More" to drive your apps & games business with ASO World app promotion service now.
As with most indie games, "Among Us" averaged only 30 to 50 players online due to a lack of brand exposure opportunities， such as pre-branding and advertising from the big players, or the traffic display opportunities from multi-channel promotion. This is a fatal blow to a game that operates purely on players.
Through the SteamBD website query "Among Us" online numbers can be found until April 2020, the game's online peak did not exceed 1,000 people, the average number of people just hovering at 200 to 500. According to the development team InnerSloth, the early spike in numbers for "Among Us" came from Godenot, an oil pipe podcaster. He discovered the game on Google Play and used it to create a lot of related UGC content. At the time, the development team was troubled by the inability to make a profit, but the strong response from Brazilian players gave the team great hope and support to continue adding new content to the game.
So we have to say that this growth of "Among Us" is attributed to the recommendation of the big player, Godenot. From our experience and cases, we also know that the recommendations of some influential players can often be further recommended by Apple, thus pushing your apps and games into a positive cycle.
From “Among Us” growth story, we know that: ”If you work for a large game developer you were probably featured by Apple many times. A sharp increase in awareness and visibility does not translate to ongoing and sustainable growth without more moving pieces.”
The popularity of strategic games has shown a growing trend in the app store category in recent years. Whether the effective promotion channels can be discovered in time, and valuable resources can be tapped and used, which often helped many new applications to get opportunities for rapid growth, be one step ahead of their competitors, and occupy the top position in their app store category.
Streamers who discover games and make them known to a wide audience are accidental. If the partnership with the influencer was planned, success could have come much sooner. Streaming is a powerful source of traffic to an app. It's not a free way to promote, but, as "Among Us" shows, it's efficient.
The game's social media pages are not very active. Generally, there are news related to updates. At the same time, the game has a large community of fans who create artwork and make memes. The developers decided to use some of the artwork in official merchandise and offered collaboration to the fans. This step was a good one. But UGC (User Generated Content) could also be a viable option to apply to social media.
"Among Us" has also won three consecutive Steam sales charts, and according to the latest data released by YouTube, the video viewership of this deduction game "Among Us" in the oil pipe has surged in September, and has now exceeded 4 billion times, nearly 390,000 people online, and more than 86.6 million total downloads on mobile, and the number of online players worldwide exceeded 1.5 million in August.
It's hard to believe that this is an indie game developed by 3 people and released 2 years ago, and the above miracle happened only in the past 2 months.
After understanding its unbelievable growth story, let’s try to distill the growth loops leading to “Among Us” success.
Let’s define a growth loop before we break it down. A real growth loop is a process in which the growth output (a new user usually) creates an additional input to the process (another new user) and creates a self-reinforcing loop that will keep in motion as long as it has enough “fuel” (the activities and motivations that drive the loop).
So the idea App Store Category Growth Loops must be:
Someone Search for the Game - New Player Installs(Game Raises in Popularity) - Work with Influencers/ads(stream the game to gain more view) - Game Ranking / Exposion(A Large Audience is Exposed to the Game).
The mobile game growth loop works as follows: 
Search - A new player installed the game by searching the targeted keywords in iOS App Store or Google Play Store;
Installs - The game rises in popularity as its userbase grows(the amount of the game installs, more positive reviews), making it get more exposion from the store(category ranking, recommetion);
Growth - The more audience talking about the game, and the more new player search them by different keywords, the keyword coverage will be improved then;
Some of these viewers search for the game after seeing how fun it is, as they want to play themselves. Some of them will search for it in the App Store, Google Play (usually branded search).
Visibility - Some of these searchers will install the game, making it ranking better in the App Store, and more exposion. A large audience is exposed to the game, even more attractive to Twitchers that’ll continue to stream the game.
This growth loop works because each party in this growth loop has a very strong “why” to perform its action.
So the more new users' installs that "Among Us" gets, the higher they climb on the top charts, and even keyword ranking (it’s ranking #1 for “games”).
This exposes the game to a new audience, one that browses the app store looking for new games. Ranking high means that a large portion of that audience is exposed to the game and a percent of that audience will install the game, driving that install velocity even higher which keeps the loop in motion.
This loop works because the platforms (the app stores) are looking to surface the best games and apps to their users, and have a very large incentive to improve the discoverability of that app.
The "Among Us" team has a very strong growth engine in order to continue to grow. However, the traffic that has driven growth through twitch thus far must be capitalized upon to drive future success.
To invest in the App store off metadata optimization, to optimize the number of new user installs and positive reviews of the game through multiple channels, it will potentially unlock significant growth from new audiences outside of the Twitch community.
Additionally, building growth loops through paid advertising (taking the revenue being generated and targeting new audiences with ads to generate more growth) and expanding to non-Twitch audiences would be a meaningful move for the team.
Get FREE Optimization Consultation
Let's Grow Your App & Get Massive Traffic!
All content, layout and frame code of all ASOWorld blog sections belong to the original content and technical team, all reproduction and references need to indicate the source and link in the obvious position, otherwise legal responsibility will be pursued.
Comments
Kathy Jones
@Sheila Wright Among Us has seen a quick rise in popularity due to a combination of multiple factors. It's a unique game with an interesting asymmetrical multiplayer, it's easy to learn thanks to a simple premise, and it's available for (almost) free on a variety of popular platforms, including PC and mobile.
Marshall Mcdonald
@Sherman Flores This ability can be used in many different ways, such as luring Crewmates away from a body or concealing a kill. There are two ways for Impostors to win: Eliminating Crewmates until they no longer have a voting majority. Enacting a critical Sabotage that is not resolved in time.
Maxine Saunders
@Jake Frank Platforms where Among Us is available? The game is currently available on Android, iOS and Windows. The game is available free of cost on Android and iOS, with in-app purchases. On Windows, the game is available on the Steam Store for $5.
Milton Copeland
@Lois Scott ASO is a commercial channel used to improve the ranking of apps in the app market which is a series of optimization strategies that are based on the rules of the app store ranking to improve the exposure and conversion of apps in the app store for the purpose of increasing the natural growth of the app.
Milton Copeland
@Lois Scott Keyword analysis research is the first important step in the ASO process. However, the search algorithms of the App Store and Google Play are very different. Therefore, for ranking in search results, stores both consider different factors.
Trevor Hart
@Jean Francis In fact, this game in general was brought on fire by the oil tube anchor, but the simple operation of this game also immediately attracted a large wave of players.
Trevor Hart
@Jean Francis The game has been slowly coming to everyone's attention.
Beth Waters
@Regina Mitchell Publishing Your Game to the Google Play Store Register as an Android Developer. Click the '+ Add New Application' button in the top right. Enter the Title of your Game and choose 'Prepare Store Listing'. Fill you your Product Details under Store Listing. Upload your Graphic Assets.
Joan Davidson
@Janis Hall ASO is a commercial channel used to improve the ranking of apps in the app market which is a series of optimization strategies that are based on the rules of the app store ranking to improve the exposure and conversion of apps in the app store for the purpose of increasing the natural growth of the app.
Joan Davidson
@Janis Hall Keyword analysis research is the first important step in the ASO process. However, the search algorithms of the App Store and Google Play are very different. Therefore, for ranking in search results, stores both consider different factors.
Thelma Gray
@Charlotte Townsend In fact, this game in general was brought on fire by the oil tube anchor, but the simple operation of this game also immediately attracted a large wave of players. The game has been slowly coming to everyone's attention.
Stuart Carroll
@Leah Silva Among Us has witnessed a steady decline in viewership, which can be perceived as a suggestion that the game is slowly dying down after its outburst in 2020. ... However, the game hit its peak in September with 147 million hours viewed on Twitch with an average concurrent viewer count of more than 204,000.
Jana Hawkins
@Virginia Graham According to steamcharts.com, the game hit a peak last October at approximately 176k average players. It also set a record on Steam with a 438.5k peak player count back in September 2020, giving it the #8 spot. While this is all quite impressive for a free mobile game such as Among Us, there's been fall-off, lately, that may lead some to believe that the game is now dead.
Bennie Moody
@Kirk Mckinney The wildly-popular Among Us began life in obscurity and exploded into fame over the course of several months. Partially being attributed to the pandemic, players began flocking to the game late last summer when lockdown restrictions started to roll out. Among Us' gameplay is simple and the concept is fun. InnerSloth's Among Us has an Impostor (or multiple Impostoprs) amongst a group of players, who attempts to get away with killing their other Crewmates without getting caught. Among Us has enjoyed time in the spotlight, but has the moment passed to the point of no return?
Matt Pierce
@Sean Fowler The best-selling video game to date is Minecraft, a sandbox video game released by Mojang for a wide range of PC, mobile and console platforms, selling 200 million copies across all platforms. Grand Theft Auto V and EA's Tetris mobile game are the only other known video games to have sold over 100 million copies.
Lynn Abbott
@Saul Garrett According to a report by SuperData market researcher firm, run by Nielsen, 'Among Us' has amassed over a billion players in 2020 alone, earning itself the title of “most popular game ever in terms of monthly players.”
Lynn Abbott
@Saul Garrett The company reports that the game had around half a billion monthly active users in November, which is a gargantuan amount. The success of the game seems even more incredible considering it was developed by a team of only four developers.
Marian Rodriquez
@Beatrice Walsh Explosive Popularity It's available as a free mobile game on iOS and Android, and a $5 game on the PC. It had a bit of notoriety and got popular enough for the developers to start working on a sequel. But it wasn't until a couple of years later that the game started to take off. The key factor: Twitch streamers.
Kent Saunders
@Samuel Greene How Among Us, a social deduction game, became this fall's mega hit. Among Us is a multiplayer PC and mobile game that has suddenly exploded in popularity, becoming one of the hit video games of 2020.20
Charlotte Doyle
@Lynda Gardner Among Us is an online multiplayer social deduction game from developer InnerSloth, similar to Mafia or Werewolf. You can play with four to 10 people -- either people you know, or online with strangers.
Daryl Waters
@Randolph Parks Among Us is a multiplayer game for four to ten players. Up to three players are randomly chosen to be the impostor(s) each round. A round can take place on one of three maps: a spaceship called "The Skeld", a headquarters building called "MIRA HQ", or a planet base called "Polus".
Julian Peterson
@Alton Bowers Among Us checked all the right boxes Board games in the style of Mafia were becoming more popular, and Among Us – a sort of video game spin on that concept — was ready to take advantage. Twitch streamers also helped the game reach a larger audience; a crucial component to ensuring a multiplayer title has staying power.
Martin James
@Luz Lowe Among Us is played online so you will need either internet access or a data plan. Players can download the game for free on their mobile or pay $5 (Dh18. ... Gamers can host their own private games with friends or join online games with strangers.
Lillie Love
@Willie Warner Among Us is free to play on iOS and Android devices (you can download it on the App Store or Google Play Store). ... One major benefit of Among Us is the ability to seamlessly play with people across different devices, making it easy to jump into a game with friends or strangers.
Jeremy Mcgee
@Camille Simmons Among Us has garnered a good viewership in the past few weeks. It has managed to oust Fall Guys. According to the Twitch tracker, the game has currently been ranked as the 3rd highest streamed game. Surprisingly, it's even placed above Fortnite.
Taylor Jennings
@Pam Gill Among Us is not a new game. Obviously—it came out in 2018. But at heart it's much older than that. Among Us is the latest popular adaptation of Mafia, aka Werewolf, aka The Resistance, aka Secret Hitler. This social deception game, about a group of players trying to identify the traitor(s) in their midst, actually dates all the way back to the 1980s. An internet message board I posted on in 2005 ran regular games of Mafia, played out in hundreds of posts of strategizing and accusation, and countless backchannel DMs of dastardly plans.
Harry Vaughn
@Opal Diaz Thanks to a new unofficial version of the game from fan KlopityL, Among Us can be played completely solo. For people who prefer single-player games - or who just want a break from Among Us' multiplayer - it's a great option.
Brett Newman
@Hannah Tyler The developer announced on November 24 that it would disable advertising on the Among Us mobile app until an unspecified date in 2021 because it had spotted a number of "inappropriate ads." That means iOS or Android users can temporarily play the free version of the game ad-free at no cost. Still, PC and Switch users have access to far more cosmetics that mobile players need to pay for.
Brett Newman
@Hannah Tyler InnerSloth chose a one-time purchase model for its PC and Switch version but opted for a microtransaction-based, freemium model on mobile. Purchasing the game for $5 on PC or the Switch will unlock all of Among Us's premium cosmetics that cost $2 each on the mobile version. That might make it seem like skin purchases account for a massive part of InnerSloth's business, but Among Us is lightly monetized compared to most freemium titles on mobile despite it's sudden rise to stardom.
Glenda Mack
@Dawn Hampton Among Us' success isn't slowing since it's Nintendo Switch, as the game has now sold over three million units. Ever since Among Us gained traction in the latter half of 2020, it has gone virtually nowhere but up in its popularity. One of the reasons for Among Us' growth in popularity is its easy accessibility.
Warren Patrick
@Elaine Hardy The free-to-play app displays advertisements on Among Us' main menu and collects users' personal data, like a majority of freemium games. According to Among Us developer InnerSloth, it doesn't sell gamers' personal information - like their name, email, and shipping address - but it holds the right to "disclose" that data to its "service providers," which include "e-commerce and merchandising service providers." Players used to need to pay $2 to deactivate the app's ads and data collection, but InnerSloth has temporarily removed the mobile app's ads.
Katie Kennedy
@Tara Morgan The developer announced on November 24 that it would disable advertising on the Among Us mobile app until an unspecified date in 2021 because it had spotted a number of "inappropriate ads." That means iOS or Android users can temporarily play the free version of the game ad-free at no cost. Still, PC and Switch users have access to far more cosmetics that mobile players need to pay for.
Katie Kennedy
@Tara Morgan InnerSloth chose a one-time purchase model for its PC and Switch version but opted for a microtransaction-based, freemium model on mobile. Purchasing the game for $5 on PC or the Switch will unlock all of Among Us's premium cosmetics that cost $2 each on the mobile version. That might make it seem like skin purchases account for a massive part of InnerSloth's business, but Among Us is lightly monetized compared to most freemium titles on mobile despite it's sudden rise to stardom.
Rita Maldonado
@Gabriel Pratt Among Us took the gaming world by storm during the summer of 2020. The indie murder-mystery title was originally released in 2018, but it recently surged in popularity due to its simplicity, sociability, and affordability. Among Us costs $5 on the Nintendo Switch and Steam, and it's available for free on mobile platforms. While Among Us might be a bargain compared to most $60 releases, why is it that mobile users can get it for free, but PC and Switch users need to pay?
Pat Ford
@Gabriel Pratt All three versions of Among Us support cross-play capabilities, meaning users can play with each other regardless of the platform they're running the title on. Gamers who download the game for free on mobile can host and join games just like PC-users who paid full price. While that might make it seem like the different versions of the title are identical, there are actually some major differences between the mobile app and Among Us on other platforms.
Peggy Flores
@Shawn Austin Among Us is a multiplayer PC and mobile game that has suddenly exploded in popularity, becoming one of the hit video games of 2020. Despite its release in June 2018, Among Us did not emerge as a hit until recently, after video game streamers on Amazon's Twitch service started broadcasting their games.
Carla Howard
@Abraham Guerrero While the small developer team InnerSloth had intended to create a more complex sequel to Among Us, the exploding popularity of the game has taxed its resources. It will be working on improving the current game for the time being, adding more robust account and friend support, new stages, and better accessibility for colorblind players. Perhaps most crucially, more servers will be added to keep up with demand.
Lorene Tyler
@Clara Morris InnerSloth's Among Us is a social deduction game dependent on online multiplayer, so it might seem strange that people are asking for a single-player mode. However, a single-player mode can provide a number of nice features and changes to Among Us' gameplay, which is probably why it's so in-demand right now.
Lorene Tyler
@Clara Morris The usual gameplay in Among Us follows a band of crewmates who have one or more Impostors killing them one by one. Various custom Among Us games from modders and fans have altered this gameplay, but multiplayer is almost always the default. It's a social deduction game, after all, so communicating with others is a key part of the experience.
Tracy Floyd
@Jill Morgan When someone walks nearby, immediately jump out and kill them to keep them from reporting the body. This strategy works well on the Polus map. You can kill someone doing the wiring task in Laboratory, sabotage the lights, then hop in the Lab vent to wait for another crewmate.
Ralph Manning
@Nellie Caldwell The best part, sussing your fellow imposter out will also earn you the trust of the crewmates, only to kill them later.
Melinda Mcgee
@Vanessa Keller If you tuned in to AOC's Twitch stream, you probably heard the players talk about something called "marinating," wherein a player gains another player's trust in a round before finding the opportune moment to kill them. During the stream, expert player Disguised Toast "marinated" AOC by following her around in previous rounds while he was a regular Crewmate, claiming that he was "protecting" her. Then, in a round in which he was assigned Impostor, he continued his behavior, following her around for a while before suddenly striking her down. Sneaky! Also a classic move to play in something like Among Us, where long-con trickery is the name of the game.
Cheryl Mason
@Nadine Gordon Venting is an ability that Impostors have that allows them to hop into any of the vents on the pathway to travel around the map, or simply hide from other players. Crewmates can see it if you vent, so make sure to do it only when you're sure no one else is around.
Alberta Ortiz
@Janet Briggs At the start of the game, anywhere from four to ten players are randomly assigned a role on their spaceship, the Skeld. You can be either a regular Crewmate, for which you'll be given a list of tasks to complete before the round ends—anything from examining your vitals in the medical bay to plotting the ship's trajectory—or you'll be an Impostor, pretending to do fake tasks while actually singling out players on the ship and killing them. You also have the option of sabotaging the entire ship, venting oxygen or breaking the reactor so people have to run around fixing stuff. When a body is found, whoever finds it alerts the other players, and a meeting is called to discuss who they think the Impostor is (or are, if there are several). They vote, and whoever gets the most votes is vented out the airlock and the round resumes until another body is found or someone calls an emergency meeting.
Brittany Hopkins
@Janet Briggs Your objective if you're an Impostor is to lie as convincingly as possible so that everyone casts votes for all the players except for you. If there are multiple Impostors and you are one, you can see who the other one is so you don't go after each other. If you're a Crewmate, your visual area is reduced to the immediate space around you (even smaller if someone turns off the lights). If you're an Impostor, you can see where everyone else is on the screen. You can also look at the cameras in certain rooms where you can watch other players in other parts of the ship. It's important to keep in mind, though, that even if you saw someone kill right in front of you, not everyone may believe you when you tell the rest of the crew.
Glen Holmes
@Darrin Park Though it was made available more than two years ago, Among Us has only become super popular pretty recently, as tons of famous gamers and online streamers with large followings have been playing it in quarantine. The Twitch streamer Sodapoppin is credited with initially popularizing the game, and now it's become a meme on Twitter and TikTok. It's a great game for quarantine, since you don't all have to be in the same place, yet it offers a little more connection with other players than something like World of Warcraft. Plus, every round is a little mystery, and you get to trick people! How fun! The game got so popular, in fact, that in August 2020 InnerSloth announced they'd be making a sequel, before quickly deciding to scrap their sequel plans and spend their time making the existing game better.
Donald Sparks
@Rhonda Richards The Impostor is one of the two possible randomly assigned roles in Among Us. Their goal is to kill the majority of the Crewmates to win.
Dean Mason
@Eva Oliver Among Us is a computer game developed by the company InnerSloth and released in 2018, described as an "online multiplayer social deduction game" wherein up to ten players run around inside a virtual spaceship completing classic spaceship maintenance tasks while trying to figure out who the "Impostors" are before they kill everyone.
Billie Bowman
@Mario Diaz Among Us has seen a quick rise in popularity due to a combination of multiple factors. It's a unique game with an interesting asymmetrical multiplayer, it's easy to learn thanks to a simple premise, and it's available for (almost) free on a variety of popular platforms, including PC and mobile.
Olivia Klein
@Betty Perkins In fact, this game in general was brought on fire by the oil tube anchor, but the simple operation of this game also immediately attracted a large wave of players. The game has been slowly coming into everyone's attention.
Alexis Fisher
@Leona Morris This ability can be used in many different ways, such as luring Crewmates away from a body or concealing a kill. There are two ways for Impostors to win: Eliminating Crewmates until they no longer have a voting majority. Enacting a critical Sabotage that is not resolved in time.
Irene Wilkerson
@Rosie Hansen Platforms where Among Us is available? The game is currently available Android, iOS and Windows. The game is available free of cost on Android and iOS, with in-app purchases. On Windows, the game is available on the Steam Store for $5.
Clark Thomson
@Anna Frank ASO is a commercial channel used to improve the ranking of apps in the app market which is a series of optimization strategies that are based on the rules of the app store ranking to improve the exposure and conversion of apps in the app store for the purpose of increasing the natural growth of the app. Keyword analysis research is the first important step in the ASO process. However, the search algorithms of the App Store and Google Play are very different. Therefore, for ranking in search results, stores both consider different factors.
