as we all know, as a professional game designer, the first task is to stimulate players' interest and create a unique game experience. We make games to let players enjoy the game! If they always leave the game quickly, it means that we have failed.
To think carefully about why players leave the game, developers need to think from the player's point of view. More than that, a profitable game depends largely on the size and loyalty of the players. Especially when the game wants to earn income through in-house purchase.
the data science team of p>GameAnalytics recently presented their latest research results. The report shows that the high income of the game is related to the high retention of the players. In particular, it is necessary to keep the early users happy. This means that the key to high income is to retain users.
there are various reasons why players leave the game. The two most important ones are: frustration and game fatigue-the fatal injury of flow experience. You may not know much about flow experience, which refers to a mental state characterized by concentration and concentration in game activities. A deep pleasure and passion. No matter what kind of game we make, this is a state that we expect players to be in when playing games.
once again, this is the first priority as a game designer, working hard from the perspective of positive psychology. A good player's retention comes down to the flow experience generated by its design: floating and deep reward experience. Don't mistake what you are talking about for a strange game. The game process will encounter many unsmooth designs, but it still looks natural in the eyes of players.
in this article, I don't want to simply list the known cliches about design mistakes. Instead, it is a list. The following focuses on the collection of potential reasons why users may leave the game, and the order is in descending order of importance. Be sure to check carefully to ensure that users always have a good experience.
why did the player leave the game? Or why do they feel frustrated or bored when they quit? Here are some reasons.
1. The game started badly
In almost every aspect of life, people are looking forward to it. They don't want to wait until they experience what the game name says. Whenever you start the game, you need to give them a reason to stay. Any time! Your main interface, loading interface and the first level will give players the first impression of the game. This first impression will always follow them, even if they don't uninstall your game right away.
You can check out the previous article which described in more detail: How to create immersive intros.
2. Playing games takes too long
Life is very busy now. Maybe we are not busy, but modern social life makes us feel that we have no time at all!
players may have been overwhelmed by various notifications and other beautiful apps trying to attract attention. If the target users of the game are adults, work and family will occupy most of their time. They can't play games for hours on end.
players should not spend an entire hour experiencing the game module or completing the current game progress. But this does not mean following the trend of mobile games, that is, each game lasts for 2-5 minutes. If the target user is a heavy player, it is barely possible to experience the game for half an hour. If the target is the mobile market and you want to target the public, you need to control the duration within 3 minutes.
the experience duration of the core modules of computer games depends on the game type. However, even MMO rpg games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 allow users to get a common copy in 15 to 31 minutes. MMO games tend to satisfy all users rather than users with a certain feature.
3. No correct target user has been selected for the game
It is useless for a fast-paced game to target 61-year-olds.
as designers, we build a framework for the player's experience. Because we can't satisfy everyone, we need to determine the target users. In other words, I believe some people will be interested in our creation. We need to study users. Find these people and let them try the product and give feedback in the early development process.
choosing the wrong user means wasting the market budget. Trying to attract the wrong users is very dangerous! Time and money will be wasted.
4. Positioning the over-saturated market
Imagine that we have locked in users: women over 41, most of whom don't play games often and have some free time. Based on this assumption, we made a brand-new 3-elimination game. An original theme, carefully crafted, has won the praise of the industry and has a certain fan base.
however, it's useless. Why? Because there have been a large number of puzzle-solving games and 3-elimination games based on physical mechanisms. Especially a big company like King, which has a large number of loyal users. -No matter the quality, people don't want to play other similar games easily ...
We are in the entertainment industry. Although the game is our creation, it is also a commodity on the market. Whenever we come up with a new product, we need to make sure that it solves the needs of players. Nowadays, people have no demand for 3-elimination games.
even if the quality of your products is comparable to that of your competitors, there is always something that you can't compare with a company like King. For example, it has always maintained a good and positive user relationship.
5. Not tested enough
Unfortunately, games and software with many bugs have become mainstream now. You may even be surprised to find that some well-crafted 3A masterpieces still have bugs. Bugs are like a plague. Game stagnation caused by any bug will affect the smooth game experience and damage the life cycle of the game. Bugs will frustrate players and force them to uninstall the game.
end users must try our game as soon as possible. Start with the original prototype! Especially for independent developers, we can't fix all the bugs by ourselves. Even if we assume the role of testing, thinking hard about game creation will hinder our handling of bugs.
6. Tutorial slows down the game rhythm of players
The tutorial of Dark Soul 2 is easy for all players to understand and optional.
We shouldn't force players to enter the game by experiencing a lengthy, boring and self-righteous tutorial ... Since the tutorial is usually the first step in the player's game process, it is very critical. Here I just want to emphasize the fact that the tutorial should attract all the target users.
if you are making Japanese RPG or FPS games, some end users don't need tutorials at all. Don't force them into the tutorial! The Dark Soul provides a good tutorial case, which is properly designed and leaves room for players to choose.
if you want to learn some ideas about destroying the player's tutorial experience, you can refer to "8 Ways To Make a Bad Tutorial" written by Ernest Adams.
7. The game is too difficult to use
As independent developers or small development teams, we tend to test the game ourselves and adjust the game balance accordingly. However, the difficulty of the game should be calibrated by the game skills of the target users, not ourselves. Repeated Beta testing and game analysis are the key to keeping the difficulty of the game objective.
if the pre-game experience makes players feel unfair and punitive, players are likely to lose. Especially for light players. This is also true if the operation settings are slow or inaccurate. Bad operation makes it difficult for players to master the game and have a bad time. -
our initial goal is to prevent players from leaving the game early in the game. Otherwise, they won't continue the game. And we also hope that they can experience the later part of the game. Generally speaking, only a small number of players will see the end of the game. Most players will leave the game before the end of the game. Here are some reasons why players may leave later in the game.
8. The difficulty rises sharply
Disgusting high difficulty will ruin the player's experience. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that games shouldn't be difficult. However, it should always be moderately difficult. The Souls series is a good example, with a moderate and impressive difficulty curve. It allows players to choose their own moderate difficulty without knowing it! Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac are both difficult, but they are both successful.
9. Balance between player level and game difficulty
It feels great to be invincible in Mario for a short time. Because it doesn't last.
don't forget that the challenges of the game should match the skills of the players, so as to keep the players have a good flow experience. It will keep the players in the game at last. However, it is difficult to balance the challenges and skills of players!
In The Elder Scrolls: Sky, I remember that the dragon weakened after reaching a checkpoint. My thin thief killed it with a knife. This broke my immersion and epic worldview. And that's when I stopped playing.
11. The game pays too much attention to constantly brushing monsters and lacks an internal reward mechanism.
It is a powerful tool for players to brush monsters. Properly used, it can increase the player's perception of skill improvement. It provides specific and quantitative material rewards for players. But just brushing monsters is not enough to make an excellent game.
Blizzard, the master of strange games, still takes years to polish the core mechanism, game images and scenes. Diablo III is more than just a strange game: it is a beautiful and constantly updated action game. World of Warcraft is famous for its many unique maps and dungeons for players to explore! Although the brush monster is extremely important for these two games, it is only used to strengthen their respective qualities, which is their core gameplay.
11. The game needs a lot of time to become interesting
This was once a topic of MMO: The 4th Prophecy and Shadow of King Arthur's Palace require players to invest a lot of time before they can enjoy in-depth play. Again, not all players can spend a lot of time in the game. As I said above, most MMOs are now adapting to this user feature.
Final Fantasy 13 is a single-player game with a 31-hour tutorial. The game system is displayed linearly one by one during the tutorial. After that, the game provides an open game space. This is also the reason why this game has been criticized.
The game should provide some playable content as soon as possible.
the above ideas are desirable for most games. Because not all games are social, let's talk about them later.
F2P tour