Supercell’s Brawl Stars generates millions of $$$ each month, so it must have a killer store? Right?
Brawl stars is a F2P mobile 3v3 casual MOBA with deep mechanics that allow for a strong e-sports scene. The game employs a very relaxed monetisation system, I expect relying on its mass appeal and strong long-term retention metrics to keep highly engaged users spending out of love for the product, and more casual users spending a little.
The game loop has a strong dependency on the Battle Pass system. As a result, the top IAP in the App Store for all core markets is the $9.99 gem pack.
Cool – store time.
Daily Hook
A free daily hook in the store is a useful technique for building the daily habit of checking the store. Brawl stars daily hook is a daily reward. (This is the same in Clash Royale)
The cue for the daily reward is super obvious, letting the users know when a new item is available to collect in the shop through a ‘free’ banner and yellow colouring for the shop icon on the home screen.
This habit is built early in a user’s life: when users have a strong craving for soft currency and power points to level up their brawlers.
The action is frictionless, it’s very quick and fun to find the item in the store. The reward is enough to feel good for the cost of the action, as the reward is substantial enough early on to provide noticeable improvements! As you progress, you graduate away from needing the daily reward for progress, but continue to collect it as getting rid of the ‘free’ banner is satisfying and the habit is already formed.
Brawl Pass
The Brawl Pass (Battle Pass, BP) is the first impression in the store– it’s very clear that if you’re gonna purchase something, it better be the BP. The user is guaranteed to view it with each store impression, which is crucial as it’s the store’s strongest value proposition.
The Brawl Pass sells its contents well, with exclusive skins and brawlers animated, and rotating through a slideshow. The skins/brawlers are the centrepieces and main selling point of the pass, with the accompanying loot boxes and pins displayed on the border of the offer window. The sheer volume of items shown makes the Pass feel like a toybox ready to burst.
The value proposition is a whopping 13x! This is the highest anywhere in the store and makes it very obvious that this is THE no-brainer purchase.
Offer Features
The offers in Brawl Stars always look enticing – they are varying in size and colour, and use animated characters to sell the more premium items! This variety makes the viewing experience exciting and fun.
Time-Limited
All offers are timed, incentivising frequent store check-ins to view updated items, and time pressure to make a purchase. New offers pop into the screen as you scroll, again, making for an exciting browsing experience.
Value Indicators
Offers use a variety of value indicators in different combinations depending on offer prices. Cheaper offers typically provide higher value multipliers, so feature an ‘Nx Value’ sticker.
More premium offers use ‘X% Off’ and price slashes to indicate value. Using a multiplier on higher-priced offers results in low numbers, e.g. 1.5x or 2x, selling the offer poorly.
The key thing here is that ALL deals have clear indications of the additional value they provide.
Free Offers
Brawl Stars will occasionally sprinkle in some free offers in between paid offers. These are deliberately not well sign-posted, so you tend to find the first one accidentally! But when you do find one, the unexpected reward provides a strong boost in dopamine and encourages you to check all the other offers just in case another free offer slipped by you!
Rotating Skin Shop/Star Shop
As with other MOBAs, Brawl Stars features skins for its Brawlers. The game takes a different direction from most, making skins only directly purchasable via limited offers and via the skin/star shop. So most of the time, the majority of skins will be unavailable to purchase!
Only a small selection of skins for a few Brawlers are featured each day. This encourages users to check the store to see if the skin or the brawler they want to outfit is in the featured selection! Checking out what’s in stock can be quite fun and rewarding, providing a small dopamine hit when a skin you like is on sale and/or is discounted. It also has the added time-limited pressure, as you can’t be sure when the skin will be next available!
On the other hand, it makes purchasing specific skins and seeing all available skins quite hard! This may result in some missed value!
Brawl Stars may be able to get the best of both worlds by allowing skins to be purchasable for full price at all times via the brawler collection screen, while the shop features rotating discounted skins.
One Long Scroller
A single-paged, continuous scroller is very common in the top-grossing f2p games– there is something about endlessly scrolling that is so pleasurable! Also, it has the benefit of no confusing menu navigation AND is great in low-offer periods as the store will always feel full and alive.
The system is supplemented by quick-travel tabs between key shop segments.
Currency Packs
Hard Currency IAP packs feature no price slashes or X amount extra on higher-priced packs, despite being more cost-effective. I guess Supercell feels a ‘Best Value’ ribbon on the top IAP pack is sufficient for the user to understand higher priced packs provide more gems per buck.
The $9.99 Hard Currency pack does have a ‘Most Popular’ ribbon taped across the bottom. This plays on people’s natural bias toward emulating the crowd. In addition, it is the hard currency pack that provides enough gems to purchase the battle pass. Encouraging this particular pack is crucial.
My Other Content
If you’re interested in more store breakdowns, you’d like this one on Archero!
https://reversenerf.com/f2p-in-game-store-breakdown-archero/
How Archero Makes Money – F2P Store Analysis