Deer Hunter is a popular game that doesn’t really need an introduction. It’s one of these games that features multiple worlds with both levels and single level modes so users can make progress but can always play more if they get stuck on a level. If you haven’t seen it before, the game simulates hunting wild animals with various weapons that are based on real ones.
Economy of upgrades yields high ARPPU
The game economy is based mainly on requiring users to constantly upgrade their weapons to succeed in new levels. This is a very effective model used by CSR Racing, Blood and Glory and many other games. Users find themselves spending a lot of time accumulating game currency so they can upgrade their guns. The time spent on accumulating ingame dollars helps them to justify purchasing game currency for real money. The outcome is that paying users tend to pay a lot in this kind of games.
Showing ads only to non paying users
One of the interesting things about Deer Hunter is a fresh approach to balancing between In-App Purchases and Ads. Obviously, games with high ARPU such as Deer Hunter can’t risk scaring people away so no ads are been shown in the first phases of the game. Other publishers such as king.com and SuperCell have even eliminated in game advertising completely just to avoid the risk of upsetting a paying user. Glu however, takes an interesting approach here. It tries to feature ads only to non paying users.
Identifying the non payers with incentivized ads

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