Since its launch on 18th October 22, I have been completely and utterly hooked on Marvel Snap (MS) – every time I have a few minutes spare, I find myself whipping out my phone to ‘Snap’ on my next victims. So yep, it’s official, Marvel Snap has stolen all my free time.
Second Dinner’s MS is a fantastic game in terms of entertainment and retention-driving mechanics – with elements that you can, and should, implement in your games to improve short, mid and long-term user retention. Its issues lie in its low spend depth, relying heavily on the season pass as its primary revenue driver.
What is Marvel Snap?
Hopefully, we all know and have played MS by now – so I will try to keep descriptions brief. Some items will be less transferable but provide useful insight into how MS hooks the user. Feel free to skip around to whichever features interest you most.
Background
MS is the latest card game to enter the F2P mobile market. It was developed by ‘Second Dinner’, a studio with plenty of digital card game experience – both CEO Hamilton Chu and CDO Ben Brode are former Blizzard, playing key roles in Hearthstone. Naturally, their learnings from Hearthstone will pay dividends in Marvel Snap.
Gameplay/Hook
Marvel Snap focuses on providing a simple, intuitive experience full of novel occurrences to appeal to a wider audience and continue to engage its user base in bitesize matches. The game’s variability, framing and ability for most games to feel winnable, lead to the user’s leaving with a positive feeling after every gameplay session.
Objective
There are three locations to play your cards – your goal is to try and win two of them. Winning a location is achieved by having a higher total ‘power’ than your opponent after the 6 game turns. The game’s simplicity reduces early-game friction, helping to capture a wider audience.
Simultaneous Turns
Turns are played simultaneously, so you and your opponent both think and play at the same time. This seriously reduces the time of each game, the amount of energy you expend thinking and overall gameplay complexity. Games end up lasting maybe 5 minutes and get even faster as you (and your opposition) become more skilled.
Card/location effects
The gameplay depth is achieved through card and location effects, and their synergistic (and in some cases, anti-synergistic) relationships with one another.
Each game features three random locations that are revealed throughout the first three turns. The location effects can have a huge impact on each user’s strategy, making each game feel very different. Tim Mannveille made a great analogy, describing each game as a ‘loot box’. Here are some example location cards:
- Muir Island gives all cards played here +1 power after each turn. This incentivises filling this location as quickly as possible.
- Onslaught’s Citadel doubles the effects of all ongoing cards. This can mean cards like Iron Man, which doubles the total power of all cards at this location, ends up quadrupling the power of cards here
Depending on your deck, a lucky location draw can completely change the game state – leading to big swings in relative power.
This ‘loot box’ style gameplay provides a consistent stream of novel experiences, combined with the short game loop, helping curate the habit of ‘just one more game’.
Outcome Variability
The outcome of the game never feels guaranteed – you almost always feel as though your next draw or the next location revealed could change your fate!
However, sometimes there will be scenarios where the game is lost or a win is very unlikely, and in these scenarios, you can just quit (or ‘retreat’). The game design allows for that, as you lose the same or less when you leave a loss early.
This is a key component to MS’s success in creating gameplay that hooks the user. The player should always feel like there is a chance to win, or at least improve their outcome.
Meta Game
MS’s deep scaling meta game builds desirable short-to-long term goals, driving user retention, through two main systems: a collection system and a seasonal, skill-ranking system. These emphasise 2 key player archetypes, the collector, and the duelist.
Collection System
The collection system focuses on your card collection. The collection ladder is like the ‘Trophy Road’ systems used in Supercell games, rewarding you for progressing your card collection. Every three milestones you receive a card – this is the primary method of card acquisition.
This is very different to other card games, opting out of the ‘booster pack’ model. This means there is no way to significantly accelerate the speed of acquiring cards or finding a specific card through spending money – you can’t pay for the best deck. This solves the problem of needing to fish for extremely rare, meta cards from booster packs, but reduces overall spend depth, likely leading to a better game but worse monetisation.
Each match you play awards you 6 ‘boosters’ for a card in your deck. As you collect boosters, you can upgrade the rarity of the card – allowing you to obtain cool 3D and animated effects for each card. More importantly, each time you upgrade the rarity you gain ‘Collection levels’, which progress you along the collection ladder.
Variable Rewards
MS’s reward system is well designed, encouraging the habit of ‘just one more game’.
After each match, you gain boosters at random for one of the twelve cards in your deck. These boosters progress that specific card’s upgrade track – which is purely aesthetic. This randomness combined with swapping in/out new cards to your deck leads to your cards all being at various stages of progression. This is very clever, as naturally, you will always have a card you are very close to upgrading, so that ‘one more game’ you play may give you the boosters to get that upgrade!
This system has two strong effects that lead to habit formation:
- Each game allows users to feel like they are making meaningful progress. If you do not get the rewards for the card you are after, you are still receiving useful rewards and progressing your collection
- Variable rewards are proven to incite powerful dopamine responses. When you do receive the rewards you are after, it feels all the better
Scaling Economy
Most games utilise a scaling economy. In MS, cards require increasing amounts of boosters to upgrade. This creates a strong first impression of generosity, as you quickly progress and feel rewarded early which can improve short-term retention. In addition, maxing out your cards takes a long time which makes them aspirational – providing mid/long-term goals for users.
This idea is echoed on the collection ladder, as rewards become spaced further and further apart to increase the lifespan of the content. As this is the primary source of cards, this can be a problem. A post reported that the first 73 cards took ~498 collection levels (which took me around 3 weeks of consistent play), and the last 73 cards took on average ~2500 collection levels (so 15 weeks of consistent play, or 3-4 months).
Fortunately, the last 73 cards taking a long time to acquire are a lot better than the first 73. At this point, it becomes less of a problem due to self-selection, diverse gameplay due to an already large card collection and, how the game transitions itself into this slower progression.
Infinity Split
Once cards have been upgraded to ‘infinity’, the max upgrade level, users can perform an ‘infinity split’. This will produce a new copy of the card that starts at zero, so you can continue to upgrade and gain collection levels.
So why bother with this mechanic? Well, when you perform a split your card gets a new visual effect which can be animation or exciting background colours. Some of these effects are very rare, which appeals to collectors as they strive for the rarest forms of cards. This is a great mid/long-term goal for users.
Skill-Ranking System
Up until now, there has been no reason to be good at the game as all rewards discussed are independent of win/loss. So, now I’m going to take you back to the gameplay to explain how the Skill-Ranking system works, or rather, the ‘Cubes’ currency.
Cubes
The cubes system plays a lot like poker as you stake cubes, bet on your strong games and fold on your weaker games.
Each time you play a game you and your opponent each put one cube in the pot as your stake. Depending on your chances of winning, you can ‘Snap’, which doubles the cubes in the pot up to a maximum of 8. In reverse, if you have a weak game and your opponent ‘Snaps’ then you can ‘Retreat’ so you save some cubes.
Rather than IRL poker, the game is like the online scene as you never build strategies for playing against specific players, but rather try and categorise opponents by their decks and their style of play. Your goal is to beat the pool, not the player. This means as the metagame changes, and you begin to see a specific card in high frequency, you must adapt to deal with this card until players stop using it.
Seasonal Ladder
As you gain/lose cubes you move up and down the seasonal ranked ladder. The first time you reach certain milestones you receive rewards in currencies, card variants and unique cosmetics. The ultimate goal is to achieve ‘Infinite’ before the season ends, rewarding you with a very exclusive card cosmetic to flex your skills to your opponents.
This ladder is simple and intuitive, giving the user a clear reason to hone their skills and game knowledge.
The ladder soft resets every season (~monthly) so you can repeat your climb and gain more rewards and another chance to reach the top.
Generally, this is quite a good system. One issue I have noticed is that it becomes seriously grindy as you begin to reach high ranks for two reasons:
- You get to the ladder rank relative to your actual skill level – this is not a problem and intentional
- At the top level, users become extremely disciplined with ‘retreating’. This means you will rarely gain more than 1-2 cubes per win, and your win rate will be close to 50%. This can be a problem but is unlikely to have any strong negative impact on the kind of users grinding to this point as they are highly self-selected
Battle Pass and Challenges
Recruit Pass
MS incorporates a starter pass as the first battle pass a user sees, which is designed to award you some starter cards to bulk out your collection and tutorialise the Battle Pass.
This pass is entirely free to complete, has no time restriction (IIRC) and must be completed to unlock the real, live battle pass feature.
This implementation has pros and cons:
- On the positive side, this allows users to progress at their own pace, provides clear short-to-mid-term goals and acts as a good introduction to battle passes. In addition, the pass challenges are pretty much mandatory to complete the pass. This is good as the challenges are designed to encourage exploration of different deck archetypes
- On the other hand, the recruit pass takes around 1-2 weeks to complete. At this time, you are not shown the current live season pass so do not see the game’s primary conversion tool. This likely has a strong negative impact on early LTV, in exchange for higher mid-term retention
The overall UX for the pass is quite tedious as it is split up between different menus. Fortunately, we have our unsung hero, the red dot, that can guide us through every bit of the metagame.
Battle Pass
Like most current titles, this game has a battle pass. This pass is live alongside the ranked season, which lasts around 4-5 weeks.
The pass’s rewards are OK – it presents you with one unique card that is only obtainable by purchasing the pass, some cosmetics, and additional currencies. It is nothing really crazy but is enough to encourage conversion.
A common model for the battle pass is to feature a ‘free’ track and a ‘premium’ track. MS diverts from this model, mixing both the free and the premium track together, which reduces the perceived value of the pass. Maria shared that she thought this was a sign of ‘low content depth’, which could suggest the developers may struggle to produce additional content for monetisation or even to continue engaging the player base in its end-game.
A small ‘nice-to-have’ feature is that the game does not notify you with a red dot if you achieve a battle pass milestone where you can’t claim the reward. This is only applicable if you do not buy the premium pass, but helps the game continue to maintain the ‘non-aggressive’ feeling with monetisation.
Challenges
Seasonal Challenges
To progress through the Battle Pass milestones, you must complete challenges. The majority of the Battle Pass XP is obtained through seasonal challenges, which often require significant engagement and directed behaviours (these are not all unlocked just by passive playing).
The challenges are progressively unlocked throughout the season, with each week unlocking a new set of challenges. The weekly sets of challenges are also not unlocked all in one go– they slowly appear throughout the week with clear indications of when the next is to unlock. This can be great because:
- It ensures content isn’t exhausted too quickly and provides a reason to continue to log in throughout the week
- Acts as a catch-up mechanic for late-season joiners, as users who join late can complete all 4 weeks of challenges all at once and still finish the pass
Each week’s seasonal challenges are called a chapter. Beating all challenges in a chapter provides a big boost to Battle Pass XP.
Daily Challenges
Daily/Weekly challenges have become staple parts of F2P titles as they lean into learnings from studies on consumer psychology and habit formation by creating a simple routine with clear incremental steps of progression. MS’s daily task system is implemented with this in mind, and we can pull out a few interesting ideas.
Firstly, these challenges are critical for progression as provide the primary source of soft currency – this encourages users to interact with the system.
Two challenges are given to the player every few hours, with a maximum holding capacity of 6 challenges. These two features combined are clever as cater to both the daily player and user that logs in multiple times a day. Daily players receive all 6 challenges, which take probably around 15-45 minutes to complete depending on challenge selection – presenting quite a lot of content to the user. Hyper-engaged users, will, however, be able to maximise their challenge completion by logging in to complete challenges as soon as they are replenished, lending a small benefit to the most engaged users.
Each time you clear a challenge, you can go and claim its rewards, clearing it from the challenge log. The ability to keep a clear log is a small yet satisfying part of the loop.
Each daily challenge you beat progresses the weekly challenge tracker. This tracker has milestone rewards for up to 25 total challenges or around 5 days of consistent engagement. The rewards are incremented in milestones of 5, so allow you to get into the tracker and taste the stronger rewards within your first session. Trackers are an excellent feedback tool, providing the user with clear positive indicators for their actions.
Users can acquire 2 missions for 120 hard currency, which is around $2. This is one of the only ways to pay to progress faster, and it is very expensive.
Monetisation
MS’s monetisation strategy is currently focused on attaining a small amount from a large population of players. In other words, high DAU low ARPDAU, in the same light as Supercell.
There are limited areas to invest money, and these products enhance your progression significantly lower than traditional F2P designs. In addition, these items are not pushed, so conversion is likely low.
Products
Currently, purchases are limited to hard currency, a starter pack, and a seasonal battle pass.
The only IAP I considered purchasing was the battle pass, not because I thought it was good value, but because I know that I will have more fun if I’m getting rewards at a higher frequency because I am really enjoying the title. What’s crazy is that this is the highest value IAP you can buy in the game, and will likely be their main source of revenue, but you won’t see it for the first 1-2 weeks of your playtime! As mentioned earlier, this will likely hurt their early-game LTV.
Hard Currency (HC) is not as valuable as in other F2P models. In MS, its primary use is for cosmetics, which can be obtained naturally throughout the collection ladder – which really undermines its value. In other game economies, HC can seriously speed up progression: this is not the case in MS, as the shop limits the amount of soft currency you can buy. To progress quickly, you must purchase challenge re-rolls, which require strong levels of engagement and spending.
Ads
As far as I’ve seen, this game has no ad monetisation whatsoever. This has the benefit of making the game feel like a premium experience, but likely could generate some additional revenue through shop re-rolls, challenge re-rolls or as a means of getting a small amount of extra currency each day.
Social
When MS officially launched, it already had an impressive community and social presence built from its soft launches. Moreover, the game’s design is ideal to incite written/video content to share things such as deck types, strategy, and metagame guides. This was particularly useful for me, as I was able to quickly find cool deck ideas that improved my early win rate, likely reducing my likelihood of churning.
MS even has a deck-sharing feature that allows you to copy/paste a string directly from/to the game to share or import decks into the game. This is a great QoL feature, and likely has a strong effect of encouraging deck sharing and discussions about the game with your friends and the wider community.
Conclusion
MS is a fantastic game, with deep mechanics that provide a consistent stream of novel experiences, and a strong metagame that builds compelling short, mid, and long-term goals, ensuring users always have a reason to continue playing each day and leave with a feeling of having made meaningful progress.
In its current state, the game lacks any powerful conversion-driving products. MS will likely feature poor early-game monetisation metrics in favour of stronger mid and long-term retention metrics.
Lastly, I want to extend my apologies and thanks to my friends and colleagues who have endured constant conversations about my snap-ventures.
If you enjoyed the above, you may like my other posts: https://reversenerf.com/retention-made-easy-with-archero-and-what-its-missing/
Retention Made Easy With Archero and What Its Missing