Game Ventures' Howzat Hits 1 Million Active Gamers, Shares Some Secret Sauce

Today Zaki Mahomed, founder of Game Ventures, shared a graph on his Facebook showing that Howzat, a Facebook Cricket sport game, had crossed the one million active users mark. The screenshot graph shows a linear increment in monthly active users. It’s good growth to have as an entrepreneur, so I asked Zaki what’s the secret behind it. He didn’t hesitate to reply, saying,

We take user actions seriously. Understanding the levers of your product and then building for retention. It’s not easy so most people don’t like it.

But that didn’t explain too much. I was curious to understand how exactly he did it. I believe most entrepreneurs would want to know, so I pressed for examples.

Zaki says that the multiplayer mode for Howzat is very popular. It is a game mode where four gamers can play together and compare scores in real-time. But for obvious reasons, it sucks to be a loser. So usually, half way through the game, the bottom two guys who are getting whipped badly have little chance to recover which makes quitting common. And that isn’t too good for the game. To cater to the user behavior, Zaki and co designed a new multiplayer mode which automatically knocks out the lowest player every three minutes or so. It makes the game more competitive which he says leads to gamer retention.

And just last week, Howzat saw a four percent drop in new user growth. The team pinpointed the problem to a new video ad campaign which they ran on Howzat. Every Howzat gamer, new or regular, would see that video ad. The new players who aren’t impressed usually opted to quit the game. So currently, advertisements are only shown to regular gamers who are already hooked in. New gamers won’t be able to see the ad until they become regulars. Zaki shared more info about his own operation at Game Ventures:

Retention is everything. Identify 10, 20, 30 levers for your app and
track them obsessively. Track them when you ship product, track them daily, and make someone own each of them. Internally, we have maybe 15 metrics we track and they are divided between three or four people.

We also briefly chatted about Game Ventures’ future plan. Zaki told me that Howzat will be available on mobile and tablet soon and is shifting its focus from Facebook to a more multi-platform approach. While the game commands over a million active users, monetizing it is still a challenge, especially for a live action game like Howzat.