How to boost your app with AR
Augmented Reality was built as a creative and immersive way to interact with the real world. This technology isn’t yet widely used, but the reality is that there over one billion AR-ready devices that are waiting for great apps and experiences. These can be created as new titles, but AR is also a good way to extend the user experience of your existing apps.
AR as a booster
We see that the gaming industry can already benefit from augmented reality. This includes more than just new AR titles — it also includes AR-based features or extensions for existing games. These add-ons could unlock new experiences for existing players and attract new users too.
This is especially true for games in competitive genres, such as Match-3 or casual games. There are plenty of similar apps here, making it extremely hard to build something unique and remarkable. That’s why customer acquisition becomes even more expensive. Augmented reality features can be very useful as they:
● Bring new catchy mechanics
● Can be used for promotion
● Differentiate your app from competitors
At the same time, AR extensions for existing games can bring even more benefits depending on a company’s strategy. For instance, AR extensions can use characters and other assets of the main title and even connect to game progress or achievements. Here are the main benefits:
● Low CAC, as the AR market has much less competition
● Attention from platforms (for the same reason) — many are looking to feature apps or games with novel experiences like AR.
● A new category of users. For example, some Match-3 games target users that are 30 or even 35+ years old, but AR can attract a younger generation. Parents can even play with their children.
One of the companies I’ve been working with created such an AR extension and had absolutely great results. They were able to achieve amazing organic growth, with over 50% of extension’s users becoming players of the original game. Of course, the CAC here was much lower than for their original game. That means that AR extension development and promotion is more cost-efficient than direct marketing of the existing game. The app was also featured in Google Play.
These results can be even better if you include social mechanics here — and now I’m talking about multiplayer. If we look at the top grossing games in the App Store, we see that most of them have either some multiplayer functionality or are wholly based around multiplayer action.
This is applicable for Augmented Reality as well. The problem here is that ARCore and ARKit frameworks can be used only for collaborative AR when players must be physically together. That makes it hard for a game based around AR to grow, especially in recent times.
Here comes remote AR multiplayer tech from ARnDAI to the rescue. This tech can help you to build synchronous and asynchronous room-based multiplayer games. Remote AR multiplayer apps can become more engaging than existing multiplayer as a user’s environment becomes the core.
Remote multiplayer mechanics can include:
● Virtual scene generation depending on the physical environment. Each time you start an AR session, the resulting space is different. This means every session will be unique and the map will be perfectly tailored for the user’s particular tracked space.
● Personalised experiences: matchmaking can find users with very similar environments.
● A virtual scene for all players that can be changed in real-time by getting new tracking information.
That’s not all, either! You deal with the real world so you can experiment!
Moreover, remote AR multiplayer isn’t just applicable to games, but also makes sense for other industries such as remote work, medicine and education. Users reap the same benefits — they can interact with each other in augmented reality while being in different parts of the world. For instance, a professor from Stanford can collaborate on the same 3D objects as students in Russia or Australia. Things are only limited by your creativity.
In conclusion, you can see that remote multiplayer can bring AR to new levels and expand the user experience drastically.
Get in touch to learn more about remote AR multiplayer, ARnDAI tech, and our latest use cases!
Our website: https://arnd.ai
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vodolazovvladislav/
