Bitcoin Billionaire Case Study [Fizzpow Games & Noodlecake Studios]

© 2015 Tilting Point Media LLC. All Rights Reserved
AUGUST 2015

CASE STUDY
BITCOIN BILLIONAIRE
DEVELOPER: FIZZPOW GAMES
PUBLISHER: NOODLECAKE STUDIOS
®

THE GAME

WHAT IS BITCOIN BILLIONAIRE? 3
IDLE CLICKER WHERE EVERY ACTION IS INCENTIVIZED AND CELEBRATED
Source: iTunes, August 2015

CORE GAMEPLAY
Tap the screen = get bitcoins.
Spend bitcoins on stuff.
Get more bitcoins.
Get better stuff.
WHY IS IT SUCCESSFUL?
Tickles the yearning for more and constant feeling
of progression.
Provides entertainment without a skill barrier by
overwhelming you with visual fireworks & feedback
(but requires a specific mindset to enjoy it).
It’s shallow, stupid, yet incredibly irresistible and
habit-forming if you have a certain mindset to
enjoy that type of games.
Clever use of ad-based incentives and rewards
+ mix of temporary & permanent IAPs to cover
most types of play styles.

WHAT IS BITCOIN BILLIONAIRE? 4
TOP IN-APP PURCHASES FROM iTUNES
IAP Cost
Premium Spin (casino ticket, luck-based) $0.99
50 Hyperbits (hard currency) $1.99
Auto Miner 1.0 $1.99
150 Hyperbits $4.99
Cat (boost) $0.99
Coin Doubler $4.99
250 Hyper bits $7.99
Permanent upgrade
Hard currency
Other
Source: iTunes, August 2015

MONETIZATION

MONETIZATION TACTICS 6
CASINO SPIN: MONETIZATION & RETENTION
This feature was not available at launch, but added with subsequent updates.
Every day, the game rewards you with a free standard spin. You can purchase additional spins for 10 gems (standard) or $0.99
(premium), which dramatically aﬀects the winning odds (see last screenshot above). Premium spin is the game’s top in-app purchase.
The clever part is that it functions exactly like a casino and you can virtually not “lose”. You pay $0.99 for a spin, and get a chance to
win anything from 25 gems (equivalent of $0.99) to 500 gems (equivalent of around $15). Worst case scenario: you paid the normal price
for hard currency (which is $1.99 for 50 gems, making the casino spin the lowest-priced cash IAP in the game).
GATCHA SLOT MACHINE SPIN

COIN DOUBLER ($4.99)
Benefit: acceleration of progress
Reason to buy: impatience
PERMANENT UPGRADES
AUTO CLICKERS ($1.99 for Lvl 1, then $3.99 for Lvl 2, Lvl 3, and Lvl 4 – Total: $14)
The “Auto Miner” removes the need to tap tap tap frantically on your screen, by giving you the ability
to simply hold your finger on the screen, and automatically counting this as 15 taps / seconds (Lvl 1).
Main benefit is obviously to avoid carpal tunnel.
Upon purchase of Auto Miner Lvl 1, the game mentions that there are actually higher levels for extra
cash (30, 50, and 75 taps/sec) and the item appears in the store. There is no way to know how many
times you can upgrade this item until you reach Level 4.0 (the last one) and nothing happens.

CAT ($0.99)
Benefit: +30% coin bonus.
Basically another type of coin doubler, except with cosmetic
benefit of being a pixelated cat that is cuter than a button.
Used to be sold for 50 gems or $0.99 (second screen above), now
sold for 100 gems (third screen above). You can purchase 150
gems for $4.99 or 50 for $0.99 (price was doubled since launch).
PERMANENT UPGRADES
DAILY GEM DOUBLER ($9.99, used to be $4.99 at launch!)
The game rewards you with 25 free gems each day. Requires the user to tap on a
flying dino/robot that appears every 5-10 seconds. It drops a cardboard box,
which can sometimes contain one gem. You can get up to 25 free gems a day.
This permanent upgrade basically doubles that limit to 50 gems a day, which is
the equivalent of $1.99. Rationally, if players anticipate to commit to the game for
more than 5 days, this purchase already makes sense.

5-MIN AUTO-CLICKER
Gives you an auto-miner
that taps 100 times per
second, but expires after 5
minutes
TEMPORARY BONUSES
COIN BLAST
Ability to purchase a ﬂock of
coins instantly, proportional
to your current earning rate
TAP VALUE DOUBLER
Multiplies your tap value by
200 for 20 seconds. The rest
is up to how fast your potty
ﬁngers go
BUNCH OF BOXES
Instantly opens 20 of the
cardboard boxes. Basically
saves you 100 seconds
BONUS INVESTMENT
Multiplies your passive
income stream by 10 for 5
minutes of not doing
anything and making it rain

WATCH AN AD, GET A REWARD
Every minute or so, the game pops up a bouncing email icon alongside a sound effect and a tempting
“Open” call to action. Tapping on it opens a juicy ad-powered offer that rewards you with either a
bunch of cash or a temporary tap speed multiplier.
Ad is most of the time a 15 or 30 seconds video. Sometimes, the offer asks you to authorize a small
banner ad for 30 seconds at the bottom of your screen (see the last screenshot above, with an ad for
the Depression Treatment Service, which offered a 15% discount for Bitcoin Billionare players).
AD-BASED REWARD SYSTEM
PURCHASES W/ INCENTIVE
Purchasing hard currency packs
above $9.99 also rewards you
with a Bling Bot Pet, which
unfortunately is just a golden
robot that offers nothing else
outside of being a golden robot.
EXTRA

RETENTION &
INCENTIVES

RETENTION & INCENTIVES TACTICS 12
FURNITURE & DECORATIONS FOR YOUR APARTMENT
Part of the core loop and major objective of the game is to unlock new pieces of silly furniture to enhance your oﬃce with, or just a
better oﬃce altogether. These get unlocked as you level up your main BitMiner (which decides how much you make for each tap). You
can customize your desk, your carpet, the background, your paintings, statues, even buy a Vacuumammoth (a mammoth that smartly
serves as vacuum). Outside of the pets, you cannot purchase these room upgrades, they only get unlocked through game progress.
All locked items are visible prior to unlocking them and indicate which level you need to reach to unlock them, which gives a clear sense
of direction and purpose. You can switch back and forth between items at any time. They have no impact on earning rate or permanent
bonuses like the pets do.
VANITY UNLOCKABLES & THE CONSTANT FEELING OF PROGRESSION

VANITY UNLOCKABLES & THE CONSTANT FEELING OF PROGRESSION
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF VISUAL PROGRESS, FROM RAG TO RICH TO OBSCENELY RICH

TAP THE FLYING CARDBOARD BOX, GET A REWARD
Every 5 to 10 seconds, a ﬂying robot (or dinosaur) ﬂies back and forth at the top of the screen and sticks around for 10 seconds or so
until you tap it (or not). When tapping it, the robot drops the cardboard boxes it was holding. You just need to press and hold on the box
and it opens the package with an instant gift, usually a bunch of coins, but you can get up to 25 gems daily that way (50 if you buy the
permanent upgrade).
The rewards are much lower than the ad-powered email system from the previous page, obviously; but give you a good reason to keep
the game open, at least for the next 5-10 seconds (‘momentary’ retention).
ENGAGEMENT EVERY 5 SECONDS

PICK A CARD LUCK-BASED MINI-GAME
Once every 5 minutes, the game prompts you to choose one card amongst three. There is no way to close the pop-up, there is
no way to keep playing until you’ve done so. Of those three cards, one is pretty much always a sucker, the other two are bonuses.
You can also pay 3 gems to reveal all the cards, which is a feature that was not present at launch.
If you pick a good card you get an instant reward and you can decide to either double it for free by watching an ad,
or doubling it by paying to gems. You can also do none of that and just cash it in as is.
The bad cards threaten your progress. They either cut your passive revenue stream for a minute or divide your fortune in half.
You also have the option to accept the punishment as is, or to escape it by watching an ad, or paying gems.
ENGAGEMENT EVERY 5 MINUTES

ONGOING STREAM OF TASKS
In the bottom corner of the screen, you permanently have a task that is either in progress, or a task that needs to be collected.
The rewards are pretty signiﬁcant, lower than ad-powered ones but higher than the cardboard boxes. It’s a useful short term loop to
keep you aware of what you can do if you get bored or uninspired or just plain lost which would be worrying for your mental sanity
or level of sobriety because who truly gets lost in a clicker game, seriously?
TASK LIST

IS THE PLAYER STILL ALIVE…?
Or is the player falling asleep with a finger on the iPad to make sure the passive investments and/or auto-miner do a good job overnight? Or are they just
reading an article on the Internet vs. focusing on the essential in life (the game, obviously). Two mechanics are in place to keep this in check:
The “pick a card” screen that opens every 5-10 minutes prevents you from tapping or collecting cash until you’ve picked a card.
The sleep mode pops up every 10-15 minutes if you haven’t touched the screen at all. This is to deter the user from cheating the passive revenue stream
(what you get even if you don’t tap the screen). By default, your passive investments only work if the game is open. Once you close the app, the income
stops. You need to purchase upgrades through hard currency to enable offline earning. Basically, the sleep mode prevents users from leaving the app
open and benefiting from passive income even without making the “suggested” purchases.
KEEPING ACTIVE PLAYERS ACTIVE

STUPID NEWS AND SILLY THOUGHTS
The game does a great job at constantly peppering your experience with speech bubbles for your character, depending on what you unlock new items,
or purchase furniture, or crush achievements, or if you stay idle, etc.
Second source of non-stop entertainment is an ongoing news ticker at the top of the screen, sharing tongue-in-cheek random breaking news about the
world of the game. There are dozens of news and even though they become redundant after a few hours, they add a lot of charm to the game’s
presentation. Example for the Prehistoric update: “Researchers at Habilis University have stumbled upon a startling discovery. They call it “ﬁre” and as
best they can tell, it can be used to turn your skin bright red and make it hurt. Additional tests are forthcoming.” You can tap on the newsfeed and share
any of the news you’ve seen so far.
RETENTION THROUGH ENTERTAINMENT

FREE, HIDDEN GEMS
The game rewards you for exploring its menus, options, and functionalities by giving you free “hidden” gems one at a time. Some ways
to collect those hidden gems: opening the “credits” screen, completing the “help” slideshow, browsing random sections of the store,
checking out your achievements, stats, and progress, tapping on the newsfeed at the top of the screen.
This isn’t a “retention” feature per se, but helps extend the ﬁrst few play sessions (when you discover a few of those) and expose the
gamer to all features and stores of the game, and feel inclined to look around.
ENCOURAGING EXPLORATION

ACHIEVEMENTS
Nothing really revolutionary or exciting here. Just a bunch of behavior-driven achievements: how fast you tap, how much you invest, how
many things you purchase, etc. Oﬀers you a few hidden gems here and there when you check the new achievements. Since each
achievement is layered into 5 tiers, the achievement notiﬁcations pop up quite often (third screen above) which does a good job at
conveying a constant and satisfying sense of progression and patting on the back, especially since both the icons and achievement
descriptions are dipped in wit.
ACHIEVEMENTS

LONG-TERM RETENTION INCENTIVE: THE REINVESTING LOOP
Like Tap Titans or Clicker Heroes, Bitcoin Billionaire has a “reset” loop that’s essential for long-term retention of dedicated players.
Note: this feature wasn’t present at launch but added through an update.
Once you make it past level 25 – which takes a solid 5-6 hours of play time if you purchased a coin doubler and auto-miner and actively
open all emails and rewards – you can “reinvest”. This eﬀectively reboots the game, but gives you a +20% coin bonus for the next round
and unlocks a random, super-cool vanity item to decorate your oﬃce: a top-hatted dino, an Egyptian pyramid computer, etc.
Resetting also unlocks new pets (Dog! Dinosaur! Chinchilln’!) because the cat gets a bit boring after a few million taps.
END GAME AND RESET LOOP

TIRED OF MODERN TIMES? TRAVEL THROUGH TIME
This was the ﬁrst major content update for the game (August 2015). When you reach level 25, you can also decide to travel to another
time area and “build a new empire” (mostly by tapping). It’s an entirely new set of backgrounds, items, vanity decorations, furniture,
investment options, etc. Except it is now set in the Prehistoric Era, when software bugs were literal bugs.
Important note: the time travel feature can be unlocked when you make any in-app purchase, rendering it accessible
(at a $0.99 cost or more) for new players, too.
END GAME AND NEW CONTENT

SOCIAL

SOCIAL TACTICS 24
“PLEASE LIKE US” FREE REWARDS
Within the store menu, a “free stuﬀ” sub-menu invites you to go and do a few social things to get free
gems. Gems are awarded when returning to the app, they don’t care whether you actually did like them.
Like Bitcoin Billionaire on Facebook
Follow on Twitter
Invite Facebook friends > 2 gems per day if you invite 3 or more friends
Subscribe to the reddit page (there is also a dedicated Reddit icon in the sub-menu)
Enable push notiﬁcations (not social)
FREE STUFF FOR VISITING SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES

SOCIAL TACTICS 25
SHARE A SCREENSHOT AT ANY TIME
Within the options // social sub-menu, you have the ability to “share selfie”, which is pretty much just
taking a screenshot of your room, including the UI elements at the top. You can then save it on your
device, or share it wherever you’d like and spam your friends profusely because you’re an influencer.
Some of the “emails” invite you to share a selfie to get a gem or other in-game bonus.
SHARE A SELFIE / SCREENSHOT

SOCIAL TACTICS 26
SHARE FUNNY NEWS
The game has an ongoing
stream of hilarious and self-
aware news at the top of the
screen. When tapping on it, you
can share the current news or
the previous ones. No reward.
SHARE EVERYTHING
SHARE YOUR STATISTICS
Besides sharing your beautiful apartment (or cave) to envious friends, you can also taunt them by
ﬂashing your earning statistics. Behavior isn’t incentivized or promoted besides just… being there.

KEY LEARNINGS

OVERLAPPING ENGAGEMENT LOOPS
WITH CLEAR SENSE OF DIRECTION AND PROGRESS
Always-on task list
Always-on entertainment: silly newsfeed & speech bubbles
Free bonuses every 5 seconds
Ad-powered bonuses every minute
Luck-based bonuses every 10 minutes that can be doubled through ads
Level-based vanity unlockables & decorations (core driver)
DIVERSE MONETIZATION STREAMS
Coin doubler
Tiered “auto-clicker” (unusual but definitely something we should consider)
Luck-based gacha premium tickets (most effective IAP)
Powerful incentives to watch ads at every occasion
NOT THE MOST EXTENSIVE SOCIAL/VIRALITY FEATURES, BUT STILL…
Take a selfie / screenshot functionality
Incentivized social actions (visit pages, refer friends)
Non-incentivized fun content to share (wacky news, personal stats)
Leaderboards (but very limited and peripheral)
KEY LEARNINGS

Terms of service: http://tilting-point.com/terms-of-service. All third party products and services referenced in this independent case study are the property of their respective trademark
and copyright owners, including FizzPow Games, Inc. and Noodlecake Studios Inc. Tilting Point is not aﬃliated with Bitcoin Billionaire, FizzPow Games, Inc. or Noodlecake Studios Inc
THANKS!
JEROME SUDAN
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING
JSUDAN@TILTINGPOINT.COM
®

Bitcoin Billionaire Case Study [Fizzpow Games & Noodlecake Studios]

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