Retention, Part Fifteen: A Place In This World

By Sanya Weathers

Nearly every discussion of retention comes down to creating ties that bind the customer to the product. In game accomplishments can be so fleeting and transient that many of our topics have been about pinning down the achievement, the score, the relationship, and creating a record to remind the customer of past glories.

The very nature of the online world means that the game must reset, monsters must respawn, and everyone needs the same access to the content. A player near to burning out comes across like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day – painfully aware that nothing he does ever really changes his world.

So offer players a way to make a permanent mark. Make your leaderboards searchable in the game. Name objects/monsters/skills after the players who test them. Carve their names into the scenery. Have your NPCs refer to players who organize activities for other customers. Heck, work their forum dramas into your storylines.

Don’t make it too easy. Earlier I mentioned burnout. A casual consumer will never really burn out, and the bulk of your product is for that user. The passionate, devoted player cannot maintain a high level of engagement for very long, but this is the customer that creates buzz, brings in new players, provides content, and writes the third party tools and the fansites. Those are the ones who bring the most value, and the ones in danger of burning out. Identify these high achievers, and in some way put the very best of them into your product forever. It will be almost impossible for them to leave.