Year in and out, games continue to be the most popular mobile apps. Games leverage our deep desire not only to have fun but to compete, win, learn and grow, leaving all other forms of app in their dust.
As mentioned in a previous blog, we exist as a species not out of love but out of fierce competition and a hunger to survive and win. Those who learn and compete, win. Those who don’t are cast aside.
This deep drive continues to push game to the top of the digital engagement leaderboard.
Subway Surfers topped the games leaderboard in 2023, offering fresh visuals, challenge, adrenalin and reward to players. Since its release in May 2012, the game has been a favourite among players of all ages, taking them on a city adventure through subways and rooftops.
Jake, Tricky, and Fresh, try to escape from the clutches of the grumpy inspector and his dog by running as far as possible along the subway tracks. The game deploys some classic game mechanics.
Guard Rails: As players move forward, they must swipe left or right to change lanes on the tracks, swipe up to jump, and swipe down to roll, to stay on track.
Collecting Coins: Coins are scattered along the subway tracks and roofs. Collecting these coins allows players to purchase power-ups, characters, and hoverboards to enhance their performance.
Power-Ups: Subway Surfers offers a variety of power-ups, including the Jetpack, Super Sneakers, and Coin Magnet, which can be collected during gameplay to help players run longer and score higher.
Missions and Challenges: Completing daily missions and special challenges adds an element of progression to the game, keeping players engaged over the long term.
Finance apps are way down the list in popularity, despite money being a key ingredient of life. It is money that helps us exchange value, buy the essentials, have fun by buying toys and holidays, building resilience and getting on.
When we review the game mechanics in Subway Surfger through a lens of finance apps, potentialities arise:
Guard Rails: As customers move through their daily lives, they must earn money, pay bills and loans, make savings and investments, eat, board, move, clothe and have fun. Thats more complicated than Subway Surfers and can do with Guard Rails, to stay on track. This is more than goals, but habits, buckets and certainly plenty of feedback.
Collecting Coins: Coins are used throughout games as a means of establishing a currency to earn and use. During a financial life there are many opportunities banks and financial servcie providers can deploy coins for rewarding consistent or one off behaviours. As with Subway Surfers those coins can be used to purchase power ups.
Power-Ups: Banks, Wealth Providers and Fintechs all have a range of services, tools, conent and prices that can be made available to customers. Placing these at strategic positions on the user journey, unlocked through actions, wins or purchased with coins enables them to be earned and as a result become more valuable. These intrinsic rewards are more valuable than extrinsic rewards such as those prevalent in credit card loyalty schemes. A lifetime of financial learning and growth is more valuable than any toaster, ever.
Missions and Challenges: Weekly, daily and monthly missions as well as special challenges adds an element of progression to the experience, keep customers engaged over the long term. Better your cash flow month on month, quarter on quarter, year on year. Make more progress than everyone else and win more. There are many ways misisons and challenges can be construed within a gamne context that have been proven to work usingthe Moroku game methodology and platform.