Introduction

Latvian mobile game studio Beetroot Lab had a lot on the line with Dystopia: Contest of Heroes, starring mixed martial artist Conor McGregor. The free-to-play strategy game joins a competitive marketplace of apps featuring celebrity characters. Would it resonate with American audiences? Beetroot turned to PickFu to find out.

The problem: guesswork won't cut it when developing an epic mobile game

Beetroot Lab had the star for its large-scale title: famed fighter Conor McGregor. Now it needed a powerful visual style and marketing assets to match. As an indie mobile game developer, Beetroot Lab knows how costly testing can be. But with expectations riding high, the studio couldn't chance guessing at what its audience would want. It had to be sure.

The solution: in a competitive app marketplace, ask real users directly

Using PickFu, Beetroot Lab polled hundreds of U.S.-based app store consumers for their opinions on key visual assets. In one poll, respondents were asked to rank six secondary character designs based on which one would compel them to download the game. (Their top choice: a masked character named Spectre.)

For the app icon featuring McGregor, Beetroot ran five polls over a two-day span, adjusting minute details with each round of testing — the background color, McGregor's pose, the shading of his chest tattoo.

In all, the studio spent less than $2,500 on testing. The feedback it returned was invaluable.

The result: a total knockout

Dystopia: Contest of Heroes emerges a clear favorite

You can now see the winning icon and marketing assets for Dystopia in the Apple App Store, Google Play, Samsung Galaxy Store, and Huawei's AppGallery. McGregor is the hero, and the Spectre character features just as prominently in screenshots and on the Dystopia website.

Across the marketplaces, the global multi-player game has more than 1 million downloads and a 4.8-star rating.