Factors for success in the gaming industry
Now, the title of this article may just be presumptuous and I am new at this. So let me begin with a slight tweak and you promise to be gentle. These here are the possible factors which just may contribute to making a game successful. Ambiguous enough? Great! Lets begin.
The first thing to do, is to break down the user lifecycle for a game into pre-contact, the contact phase and post-contact. Pre-contact is the phase when the user has heard of you, your brand and your content. During this phase, the idea is to draw in as many users as possible. Therefore, the first factor I consider important is Curiosity.
Curiosity is the pull the user feels towards your game. It is a natural extension of their expectations. You are expressly advertising an experience that is either completely new or a rehash of an existing experience that promises something new. Hence, a user is drawn towards you because of many, many smaller factors like the IP of the game, the advertising, the company behind the game etc.
Congratulations! Curiosity has brought you your first experimenters and a lot more are sure to follow. But how does a person satisfy his curiosity? Through gameplay, during the contact phase. Which is where Content comes into the picture. This is the meat of your game, the acid test. This is what makes or breaks all the hype that you have built to sustain curiosity. The best kind of games feed you this content in bits and bites so that even content drives further curiosity and drives the user to go deeper and satisfy this curiosity. This is where numbers begin to make a difference. The FOL of so many people checking this game out, playing it and talking about it can lead to the doubtful and undecided crowd at least making an effort to check the game out.
Now that you have users who are sampling your content, the phase they are going through, and the next factor, is Engagement. How much is your game and content resonating with the user? How much time is he spending on your game? How much exploring is he trying to do? The depth of engagement is the collective sum of a lot of such factors and the deeper it is, the more time the user will spend engaging with you, the more likely he is to come back to your game and the more he is going to be, and this is important, Satisfied.
Satisfaction, obviously, is the end result when the user’s curiosity is said to be satiated by the content he has engaged with. It is up to the developer to bring this game to a stage where the user’s satisfaction is as high as possible, and hopefully exceeds his expectation. Fulfilment is when satisfaction reaches its zenith.
And now for the post-contact phase. This is where the user starts talking to other users about his experience and starts reading up on other user’s experiences, watches videos posted by other gamers etc. This user is now fully engaged and is trying actively to spread his experience to as much of his friend’s circle as possible, through various social media platforms, image and video sharing platforms etc. This is, obviously, the ideal situation. And an important factor that, though out of your control to some extent, is critical to how your game is received and how widely it's impact is felt. I call this factor Activation.
During all these stages, through all these factors, one may hope that their users have transcended their experimenter tag and truly become missionaries for both your content and your brand.
Examples to keep in mind:
- Wrath of the Lich King by Blizzard
- Bioshock by Irrational Games
- Max Payne by Remedy Entertainment
- Far Cry series by CryTek
- And so many, many more games that would take top honours in building not just a product, but a community.
The first thing to do, is to break down the user lifecycle for a game into pre-contact, the contact phase and post-contact. Pre-contact is the phase when the user has heard of you, your brand and your content. During this phase, the idea is to draw in as many users as possible. Therefore, the first factor I consider important is Curiosity.
Curiosity is the pull the user feels towards your game. It is a natural extension of their expectations. You are expressly advertising an experience that is either completely new or a rehash of an existing experience that promises something new. Hence, a user is drawn towards you because of many, many smaller factors like the IP of the game, the advertising, the company behind the game etc.
Congratulations! Curiosity has brought you your first experimenters and a lot more are sure to follow. But how does a person satisfy his curiosity? Through gameplay, during the contact phase. Which is where Content comes into the picture. This is the meat of your game, the acid test. This is what makes or breaks all the hype that you have built to sustain curiosity. The best kind of games feed you this content in bits and bites so that even content drives further curiosity and drives the user to go deeper and satisfy this curiosity. This is where numbers begin to make a difference. The FOL of so many people checking this game out, playing it and talking about it can lead to the doubtful and undecided crowd at least making an effort to check the game out.
Now that you have users who are sampling your content, the phase they are going through, and the next factor, is Engagement. How much is your game and content resonating with the user? How much time is he spending on your game? How much exploring is he trying to do? The depth of engagement is the collective sum of a lot of such factors and the deeper it is, the more time the user will spend engaging with you, the more likely he is to come back to your game and the more he is going to be, and this is important, Satisfied.
Satisfaction, obviously, is the end result when the user’s curiosity is said to be satiated by the content he has engaged with. It is up to the developer to bring this game to a stage where the user’s satisfaction is as high as possible, and hopefully exceeds his expectation. Fulfilment is when satisfaction reaches its zenith.
And now for the post-contact phase. This is where the user starts talking to other users about his experience and starts reading up on other user’s experiences, watches videos posted by other gamers etc. This user is now fully engaged and is trying actively to spread his experience to as much of his friend’s circle as possible, through various social media platforms, image and video sharing platforms etc. This is, obviously, the ideal situation. And an important factor that, though out of your control to some extent, is critical to how your game is received and how widely it's impact is felt. I call this factor Activation.
During all these stages, through all these factors, one may hope that their users have transcended their experimenter tag and truly become missionaries for both your content and your brand.
Examples to keep in mind:
- Wrath of the Lich King by Blizzard
- Bioshock by Irrational Games
- Max Payne by Remedy Entertainment
- Far Cry series by CryTek
- And so many, many more games that would take top honours in building not just a product, but a community.
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