8 Simple Ways To Boost Player Engagement And Retention In Your Indie Game
1. Give players real meaning and context to their in-game actions. When a player believes that they’re doing something greater than themselves, they’ll give it their all. A typical example of this would be the trope of the player character being the “chosen” one, to give more meaning to their journey. Another example of this might be to empower the player at the beginning by incorporating strong elements of luck. For example, a player in an RPG might feel more attached to the game if they felt that they’re better than the average person right off the bat. Grant them more reasons to feel this way by making them feel special.
2. Give players a real sense of character development and accomplishment. Challenge is important, and achievements by themselves cannot fully make up for a real challenge. Make sure that the player is always playing on the most optimal difficulty curve for flow for the majority of the play session, but don’t forget to have the player occasionally feel a bit overpowered to mix it up and give players a mental break.
3. Make players curious. Make things unpredictable and give players a reason to be curious about what happens next. The act of reading or watching a film shares a commonality with this, as the progression of a plot lends itself to natural curiosity. In a video game, design elements such as loot boxes, randomly generated zones, and a compelling storyline all feed into this element of retention design.
4. Make players feel compelled to act in order to avoid a negative consequence. This sounds much more sinister than it actually is, so I’ll throw out an example for you. Something such as a “Daily Challenge” that expires every day can be a very powerful motivator. Players don’t want to miss out on the prize that’s associated with the daily event, and will have a strong compulsion to complete it. Make players feel as though they need to act in order to not lose the opportunity.
5. Give players the freedom to be creative, and reward them appropriately. Give players an environment where they can figure mechanics out and be truly creative with their decision-making. Additionally, make it super easy for the player to see the results of their creativity as well. A prime example of this would be roguelike games that allow for the player to customize their perks prior to beginning a new run.
6. Give players the power of ownership. Players will feel much more motivation if they have a sense of ownership over in-game assets. One way to do this would be to implement in-game currency that players could accumulate over time. We could then tie this currency to items that the player could purchase to customize their avatar. This way, not only would they be motivated to earn this currency, but the ownership of something that they can collect to customize their experience adds an extra layer of depth.
7. Make players actually care about sharing their experience in the game. For example, if you see one of your friends playing a particular game, you’re way more inclined to check out that game than if you were shown an ad for the game. This is how many games go viral — through word of mouth. When it comes to engagement and retention, it’s important that the game have a social component. One rudimentary way of implementing something like this in an arcade game, for example, would be to have the player share their high score on social media if they bested their previous score. Something more intricate might be to devise a system where the player can share up to a maximum of three times a day. Perhaps on the third time they’ll be rewarded with a boost of in-game currency. Stuff like this works really well.
8. Make players feel impatient. Many nefarious mobile games have timers in them that force players to come back in “n” hours to claim rewards — this works really well. Delay the gratification. The fact that you can’t get something immediately forces your brain to be fixated on that until that tension is resolved. Now, I’m not saying that you should time-gate all of the things; this is unnecessary and questionably unethical. But, seek to offer milestone rewards and tease the hell out of those rewards. Companies such as Blizzard do this very well in all of their games, where they’ll have really cool in-game rewards that unlock at certain milestones. The player knows this, and they’ll work hard towards these rewards. Once they achieve their reward, hit them with the next goal and tease them again.
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About The Author
Daniel Doan is the Co-Founder & CGO of Black Shell Media and the developer of SanctuaryRPG and Overture, among dozens of game prototypes. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
If you’d like to steal his marketing and game development knowledge, you can book a consultation with him for only two bucks.
