Retention, Part Seven: In-Game Activities

By Sanya Weathers

You spend years developing content for your online property. You’ve created a world of activities, merchants, music, hobbies, rivalries, and more. And yet it is still possible to hear “but there’s nothing to dooooooooo.” Why might you be hearing this? It’s usually related to bad content management.

–    In your zeal to make people think leveling is fast and easy, you’ve enabled your users to skip most of your content.

–    Your endgame is user created content, such as PVP, but at no point during the leveling up process did you introduce that type of content to your users, and the customers are not yet accustomed to the paradigm shift.

–    You’ve created so many different types of activities that your users are spread too thinly across your world.

–    The content lacks a cohesive interface to help users find the content in the first place.

There’s more, of course, but those are four of the biggest. Address them with long term solutions. But in order to retain users facing those problems, you need a more immediate solution than “redesign the game.” One possible solution is to offer in game activities. Here are some things to consider when designing your event:

–    Will it disrupt regular gameplay? Tip: Don’t ever do that. Test servers are great environments for events, tournaments, and so forth.

–    Try not to run any events that can only be enjoyed by small numbers of people. Giving the players tools to create such events is good, but from you the customers expect to be able to participate.

–    Avoid events that must follow a specific script. Players don’t follow scripts.

–    Provide event security. Be able to muzzle/teleport anyone attempting to disrupt the event.

–    Use the event to drive players to the content they may have missed. Host Hide and Seek events in the zones your metrics show are not being used. Run a scavenger hunt in an untouched hunting ground. Put on a tournament where participants can only wear crafted armor. Play tag with a monster people don’t see.

–    Take screenshots/in game video of every event. You know what your customers say: Pics or it didn’t happen.