The most important things in a strong free-to-play game are role-playing elements and a sense of progress, said David Pi Chiu, director of business development at Kongregate, at Game Connection Europe.
But he also warned his colleagues against getting carried away with numbers. “Not everything comes down to them,” David noted. – “It is important that the game has a soul.”
In his opinion, the players know better what is best for the game than the developers. Therefore, if the authors of the game are interested in the growth of the community, they should listen to their users.
As an example of interaction with players, David cites a case when a user turned to the Kongregate forum due to the fact that he could not find a store in the game. There was a store in the project, but thanks to the user’s message, it became clear about its incorrect location.
Editor’s note: the question arises whether such data does not provide correctly configured and placed beacons of analytical programs? After all, based on their results, you can get more specific information with a larger sample.
Another important point of David’s speech turned out to be fines. According to him, “Daily bonuses are great for users to return to the game every day, but you should not punish the player if he decided to take a break from the project.”
“The threat of punishment is a double—edged sword. On the one hand, the fear of it can lead users into the game day after day, on the other hand, players sometimes need a break, they may get sick, they may have exams. And in the latter case, because of the punishment, they will not return to the game at all.”
Therefore, games should reward the user regardless of how long the user has been absent.
“Players shouldn’t feel like they’re losing everything, just because they didn’t look into the game yesterday,” David added.
It is also important to constantly give players tasks, following a simple logic: “the more they need to do, the longer they will play.” Each task should give players a sense of development. Moreover, according to David, this is more important than the presence of multiplayer features.
David finished his speech by criticizing the developers of three-dimensional mobile games: such projects sell worse not because they are three-dimensional, but because their development is usually done by people who came from the console business.
“They are still creating games as end products, while everyone has already switched to the game-services model.”
A source: http://www.pocketgamer.biz