Secret Triggers to Drive Player Retention
Emotions like greed, impatience, and envy can be amazing triggers in mobile games. They, along with curiosity and a competitive spirit, can motivate players to return to the game and unlock new achievements.
We ran a visionary case study for Angry Birds 2 including a player cycle. Step 1 is triggering players to take action. In this case, the play can either open the game or continue playing to unlock rewards.
Triggers happen when motivation and ability align. Like when the player receives a game notification while waiting in a line or is spending a cozy evening at home. With nothing better to do and phone already in hand, ability and motivation align, and the game is opened.
The reminder can be a push notification with a reminder or rewarding players for each day they return to the game. It’s successful when playing off various emotions:
- Greed — players want rewards, bigger and better are the best.
- Impatience — humans are inherently impatient, and more often we want what we want when we want it. Giving players the option for rewards unlocking the next day increases chances he/she will come back to claim the reward.
- Envy — seeing how another player or friend’s game is much more developed or a growing number of points on a leaderboard higher can drive a player back to the game.
- Curiosity — when there’s a surprise around the corner, players can’t help but to wonder what it might be.
In the Angry Birds 2 case, it’s great for the game to have 67 million monthly active users, but players want to feel special. How can you make each player feel unique and not just 1 of 67,000,000? That’s where exclusivity comes in handy.
For example, when a player is in level 10 and receives a notification — “1st 100 reaching level 15 get exclusive rewards” — it can trigger competitiveness, especially since being in a smaller number (100) than the full MAU is seemingly attainable.
Step two is motivating the player. More about that in our next post. Don’t want to wait? Just click here and see the full case study.
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