"Building Games" like Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, and SimCity gave players reasons to play even after they'd finished any pre-determined objectives. Instead of constructing a game around fulfilling checklists (which means players will leave once they've finished the checklist), it's better to build games that don't require such a significant investment in ongoing content development. However, he cautioned people not to overburden the player with a rigidly determined quest progression line. Koster focused on long-term retention tips, starting with the obvious: using quests to guide people. As a result, most top card games need to be more skilled at using timers to drive urgency and get players to keep coming back. It's nice if you have a great game, Welch said, but it's really hard to create a game like Dominion or Hearthstone. For example, Defender of Texel uses limited time achievements, while Lil Alchemist adds research timers to the process of combining cards. Limited time in-game events and daily log-in bonuses are common, but there are more clever ways out there. But for those that do employ retention tactics, there are a variety of options. In Dominion Online, there is no retention plan other than having a ton of great gameplay, Welch said. Welch focused his microtalk on battle card games, saying one big advantage of the genre is that there's a nearly endless supply of content to give players. John Welch | Co-Founder & President, Making Fun, Inc. But beyond that, the retention loops in social casino games are still in the very early stages, and he expects a lot of progress on that front in the next year or two. The thing players care most about is the betting currency, Meretzky said, and they care about how much you give them and how often you give it to them. However, in social casino games, the core gameplay loop is actually the drain to the in-game economy.Īs a result, social casino games deal with the log-in bonuses in different ways, Meretzky said, saying some titles go so far as to have hourly bonuses. In free-to-play games, the core loop of grinding adds money to the player economy, while the purchase of items drains it. He said such bonuses for players checking in with a game every day are incorporated in most genres, but there's a unique twist to it in social casino games. Meretzky's talk was about the social casino field and daily log-in bonuses. Steve Meretzky | Vice President of Creative, GSN Games For readability's sake, here are quick recaps of each speaker's main points. The first such session this year took place Monday as part of the Free-to-Play Design and Business Summit, and packed insights on player retention from seven veteran developers into a series of six-minute talks. If the Game Developers Conference is a place to exchange ideas, there may be no more efficient use of time at the show than the microtalks sessions.
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