Most Game Developers focus on Day 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 Retention (or some combination thereof). After Day 30, all headlights are on Monetization and LTV (Day 180 or otherwise). The reason for this shift is that by Day 30, we assume that a Player is committed enough to the game so that we don’t have to worry about keeping them in anymore. This is true to a certain extent. By Day 30, the Player has had ample exposure to most or all of the core systems, so its easy to think that once a player hits Day 30, they are set in the game.
The reality is that there is such a thing as Long-Term Retention in a Game. However, it behaves so differently from Day 1-30 Retention that it is difficult to lump the two together. Long-Term Retention, and the Player Dropoff that occurs after Day 30, stem from Players becoming too overwhelmed in a game that they otherwise enjoy. Luckily for Developers, the solutions to players being overwhelmed are much more easily identifiable and fixable in the elder game than they are in the early game. To read more on the problems and solutions of Long-Term Retention and Dropoff, please check out my blog post here:
So what causes Players to be overwhelmed in a game? The Game requires too much Time and Effort from Players.
This issue is something that not a lot of Game Developers spend a lot of time thinking about–how to reduce the play session length. The conventional wisdom is that if Players are spending a large chunk of time in your game, they like it.
But that outlook is too simplistic for describing Player motivation. I would argue that Players have no problem spending time doing meaningful actions in the game. Competing in Events, PvP/GvG, figuring out how to win the latest Stage–all of these are moments that Players relish when they play their games. What Players don’t enjoy as much is the grind. By Grind I mean meaningless actions Games require from Players in order to slow down their progress. Now a lot of games have Grind–It’s a staple of RPGs. And from a Monetization perspective, Grinds give opportunities for Players to spend to speed up or avoid the time cost of the Grind. Where a lot of Games go wrong is having lengthy grinds with no opportunities for players to speed up or avoid.
Some Grinds are perfectly fine. The Auto-Completion of PvE Stages in RPGs like Marvel Strike Force and Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is a good grind for Players.
Within a few taps, the Players can spend all their Energy and get all their rewards immediately. While there are a lot of limitations on how much progress Players can make with this Grind (Energy Cost, Max Attempts), the Player can get all the Grind that they want done relatively quickly. Spending Energy is very quick, and Players who spend to Grind more don’t have to play that much longer than Free Players.
Where Grinding gets out of hand is when Players are forced to play through content they’ve already completed. The number of those 1-2 minute battles adds up, and as the amount of Gameplay systems that Players can engage with Daily grows over the lifespan of the Game, that time that the Player needs to spend to do the daily Grind grows as well.
Luckily, many prominent games have learned from their mistakes. In Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, Players used to have to play through daily challenges even though they beat those Challenges countless times. This used to cost Players 10-15 minutes every day to beat content they’ve won already.
Worse yet was the Galaxy War feature, where Players had to use all their Heroes to try and beat 15 increasingly difficult Battles twice (30 Battles total) everyday. And unlike Daily Challenges, it was not wise to use auto-battle in Galaxy Wars because Hero Health persisted from Battle to Battle, so inefficient Auto-Battles would most likely cost more health than if the Player paid attention.
Both these systems easily took an hour or more each day. Add in PvP, Ship Battles, trying to beat new PvE Stages, Guild Battles, and more, and you are looking at a lot of time required for a Player to engage with all the things Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is asking of them. For Players who want to be competitive in that game, the repeated failure of adequately engaging in all those systems each day will lead Players to feel like they aren’t doing what they should be doing to succeed. That sense of failure will lead to drop off in a game they otherwise enjoy.
The good news is that Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes did amend these features so that Players can auto-complete much of the content that they used to have to slog through each day. Daily Challenges now have an auto-complete option if the Player achieves 3 Stars on the Challenge.
And Galaxy Wars added an auto-complete for Galaxy Wars as well.
The bad news is that by the time Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes added these quality of life additions to the Daily Challenge and Galaxy War features, a lot of spenders dropped the game. Had those features been present at Launch, its possible Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes would have retained more of those players long-term.
Some Games handle this problem in effective ways. AFK Arena’s version of the Galaxy War (Arcane Labyrinth) requires the Player to do it once every 2 Days (versus twice every day in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes).
Rise of Kingdoms allows Players to collect rewards from their Daily Expedition System for every star the Player has achieved, meaning that Players only have to focus on getting stronger so that they can get more stars.
Both of these systems recognize that it is important to have players focus on meaningful gameplay, and when they have to grind, to make sure that the grind doesn’t take too long.
The Lesson to take away from all this is that Game Developers should be mindful of the time their systems require from Players. Requiring Players to spend a lot of time in an Event is one thing, and might be tolerable. But requiring Players to spend a lot of time in the game for meaningless grind with no means of speeding up or avoiding the grind is a surefire way to lose them in the end.
Thank you for reading! Feel free to add any questions or comments to this blog post. If you like what you read, you can find more of my posts on ggDigest. Subscribe to ggDigest here: https://medium.com/ggdigest
Stay safe everyone!
Jeff
Principles of Free to Play Game Design 