Want to know how to keep players entertained, even as the marketplace fills with competitors? Or how to create an exciting experience that will make them play longer and spend more money in your game?
The general population has developed what seems to be a mobile gamer ADHD. People have so many options to choose from that they will often toss aside a game at the first sign of boredom to move on to the next one. It’s a little like high school dating … if your high school had half a million students looking to go out with you.
Coming up with a good game is difficult. It needs to be many things simultaneously: intuitive yet challenging over time; entertaining yet appropriate for a wide audience; simple yet complex — all while remaining eye-catching and exciting. As hard as it is to create that all-encompassing game, it’s even harder to keep people entertained while playing the same game every day.
Plarium uses two specific techniques to create ongoing excitement in our players by tapping into innate psychological tendencies. Here’s how we do it.
The first ingredient: a never-ending to-do list
One of the strongest psychological hooks to keep people engaged is an influx of tasks. In a game, these are usually the flashing icons on the side of the screen telling you what you need to do next. It’s interesting to learn how people convert these game tasks into small goals in real life. It’s much like your reaction to doing the dishes — yes, the pile in the sink might be growing slowly, and it might smell funky, too, but (hopefully) you are going to get it done at some point. Similarly, players often think about their in-game objectives =- that puzzle they need to solve or that building they need to construct. Those thoughts will lure them back to play as soon as they find (or create) some spare time.
The second ingredient: rare items
People also react to scarcity: They see rare items as more valuable, even when these provide similar effect to more standard in-game goodies. Oceans, rivers and lakes cover 73 percent of the Earth’s surface, making water the most common element at our grasp. Yet in spite of its availability, many of us still buy bottled water.
Goodfood, an Australian website, conducted a blind water taste last year. They came to the same conclusion that academic studies had reached before — tap water tastes better than most bottled water, which costs 1,000 times more that what comes out of the spigot in the sink.
When you design rewards to attract your players, keep this concept in mind: packaging and definitions do matter. For example, Plarium has “imperial units” in our strategy games; they are quite rare, and players can only gather them during events that run twice a month. When the early event participants start obtaining and sending them to attack, we see an immediate increase in overall engagement from vigilant victims.
The finished product
Now, let’s combine these two ingredients into a long lineup of in-game tasks and give players rare items for completing them. One efficient way of doing so is utilizing a special currency that you can only gather during a time-limited event and must be spent before it expires. Et voilà – you have a complete recipe for a live operations event, or Live Ops.
This is what you’ve accomplished: Your players have cool in-game items they desire, which are rare and will soon be gone. They face challenges that are escalating in difficulty and are in a constant race with their friends to maintain ranks on the leaderboards. The competitive landscape might compel your players to make a purchase in the game, but their drive also comes from the satisfaction of advancing in the game and gaining bragging rights with those rare items. Game development is a business of thrill, and when your players become your customers and pay, you want them to feel great about it.
To get a sense of the power of Live Ops, take a look at the Japanese mobile game Blood Brothers, whose grossing rank history is below. Publisher DeNA has implemented a strong events system, and you can clearly see times when the events generated so much money that they were able to double the game’s grossing ranks.
The garnish: showing your support
A well-performed Live Ops drives engagement as people login multiple times a day to keep up with the competition. We see a 25 percent increase in engaged users and a 100 percent increase in battles taking place during events. One way to encourage this loyalty is to apply a discount and support the player’s shopping desire, our research department recommends timing the discount right before or during the event. We came across many examples of games that see their revenues increase by up to five times during Live Ops.
Our analytics team consistently gauges player behavior to better understand and address them on a personal level. Based on their exhaustive analysis, we have rapidly released more than 2,700 updates for our portfolio in 2013 alone. Today, we serve our players with 15 different events and promotions monthly and are constantly adding new layers of interaction.
Incorporating tasks and scarcity within our games has helped us to become one of the world’s fastest growing developers of social and mobile games. These “ingredients” are integral to making a fun game that keeps engaging its players and grows increasingly popular over time.
Leonard Frankel is head of business development at Plarium, the largest hardcore games developer on Facebook. Plarium is known for its strategy games, such as Stormfall: Age of War. Frankel’s role includes negotiating distribution and licensing deals, playing games (yup, it is part of his job), acquiring smaller studios, and helping set the company’s strategy. He personally entertains his two girls, who have been playing games since they were 6 months old.