Wooga’s flagship title June’s Journey just passed 60m downloads, not long after it hit $500m in gross lifetime player spend.
And five years after launch, Appmagic data shows the game’s revenues are still growing, though downloads are slowing a little.
Wooga regularly earns over $15m per month from June’s Journey, an average monthly return of $14.7m based on the last six months. Over the same period, June’s Journey averages around 884k downloads per month.
To cut it another way, in the last six weeks it earned Wooga $3.6m every seven days on average. Or: June’s Journey makes Wooga an average of $506k daily, based on the last 30 days. Factor in the rewarded ads threaded through the game and this is quietly a very successful title for Playtika-owned Wooga.
And it’s still growing. How? The secret, according to our friends at Naavik, is how Wooga has matched the product with what the audience wants.
Almost half of June’s Journey players are over 60, and 85% is female. What they want is a compelling narrative to hook into and careful, bespoke community management.
“June’s Journey is truly story-driven, releasing a weekly chapter of fresh narrative since 2018 without fail,” says Niek Tuerlings in Naavik Pro’s June’s Journey deconstruction.
“It’s not a secret that a big part of the mobile audience does not seem to be interested in narrative arcs, but the other part of the audience that is looking for narratives is incredibly loyal when they find a story they identify with.”
This has led to rock-solid long term retention, according to Naavik’s data, with Day 30 at 16.5%, Day 60 at 15% and Day 180 barely lower than day 60 at 14.25%.
Another reason for the game’s staying power the gentle pace. “Except for the soft nudge towards timed performance that the combo bar provides, there is no time limit for a round of gameplay and therefore no loss condition either,” says Tuerlings. “This provides a unique, peaceful gameplay you can’t really find anywhere else in the hidden object genre.”
A slew of new features and live ops added to the game over the years encourage competition as dedicated players team up into clubs and compete – in a friendly way.
“Whoever thought that 60-year old women wouldn’t be looking for online competition at scale should think again,” adds Tuerlings. “It’s a remarkably successful attempt to make online, competitive gaming accessible for a demographic that has rarely been exposed to this elsewhere.”
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