GAMES AS A SERVICE

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GAMES AS A SERVICE

How Free2Play Design

Can Make Better Games

OSCAR CLARK
First published 2014
by Focal Press
70 Blanchard Road, Suite 402, Burlington, MA 01803

and by Focal Press

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Focal Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

The right of Oscar Clark to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or uti-
lised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices

Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new
research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research
methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and
knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds,
or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they
should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties
for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and

are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clark, Oscar.
Games as a service : how free to play design can make better games / Oscar
Clark. — First edition.
pages cm
1. Video games—Authorship. 2. Video games—Design. I. Title.
GV1469.34.A97C53 2014
794.8'1536—dc23 2013039832

ISBN: 978-0-415-73250-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-84910-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Minion Pro
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
A book like this has too many influences to properly thank everyone.
I wouldn’t have started down this road without the support of Si Shen
from Papaya Mobile and Jussi Laakkonen from Applifier. However,
games is not just a job for me and my playing buddies Andrew
Robertson, Ian Goolding, David Hankins, John Gathercole and Glyn
West undoubtedly helped inform my creative approach, despite having
nothing to do with the industry. Then there is the fabulous feedback
I got during the process of writing from Eric Seufert, Evelyn Stiller,
Brian Tinsman, Jacob Naasz and Berni Good.

However, in the end this book has to be dedicated to my wife and

illustrator, Melanie, and in particular our amazing daughter Tizzie who
continues to teach me about both games and writing.
This page intentionally left blank
 Bound to Create
You are a creator.

Whatever your form of expression — photography, filmmaking,

animation, games, audio, media communication, web design, or
theatre — you simply want to create without limitation. Bound
by nothing except your own creativity and determination.

Focal Press can help.

For over 75 years Focal has published books that support your
creative goals. Our founder, Andor Kraszna-Krausz, established
Focal in 1938 so you could have access to leading-edge expert
knowledge, techniques, and tools that allow you to create
without constraint. We strive to create exceptional, engaging,
and practical content that helps you master your passion.

Focal Press and you.

Bound to create.

We’d love to hear how we’ve helped

you create. Share your experience:
www.focalpress.com/boundtocreate
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
x Contents

1 Introduction 1
Exercise 1: Concept Creation 17

2 What is a Game? 25
Exercise 2: Who Are Your Players? 35

3 The Anatomy of Play 41

Exercise 3: What is the Mechanic? 57

4 Player Lifecycle 61
Exercise 4: What is the Context Loop? 72

5 The Rhythm of Play 79

Exercise 5: What is the Metagame? 95

6 Building on Familiarity 101

Exercise 6: What is Your Bond Opening? 113

7 Counting on Uncertainty 117

Exercise 7: What is Your Flash Gordon Cliffhanger? 129

8 Six Degrees of Socialization 133

Exercise 8: What is your Star Wars Factor? 146

9 Engagement-Led Design 151

Exercise 9: What is Your Columbo Twist? 165

10 Delivering Discovery 169

Exercise 10: What Makes Your Game Social? 184

11 Counting on Data 189

Exercise 11: How Does Your Design Encourage Discovery? 203

12 Service Strategies 207

Exercise 12: How Will You Capture Data? 227

13 The Psychology of Pricing 233

Exercise 13: Writing Use Cases 256
 Contents xi

14 Tools of the Trade 259

Exercise 14: How Will You Monetize? 280

15 Conclusions 283

Index 287
Chapter 1
Introduction
2 Games as a Service

First Principles
Whatever you think about mobile or console games, I’m hoping that if
you have picked up this book that there is something about the game
design process that delights you. It’s more than just the pleasure of play-
ing a well-crafted game (regardless of the platform). Game design com-
bines an intellectual and creative challenge to manifest your ideas into
something others can play through and want to pay you for the privilege
of playing. We want players to be charmed, empowered, surprised, even
scared. But unlike other art forms we want players to resolve the experi-
ence for themselves; to make their own game. People have been creating
and playing games for centuries before the introduction of personal
computers, consoles and mobile devices. However, since the 1980s,
computer games have largely driven innovation and creative design for
games, although arguably not always in the gameplay design itself.

Making a Stand
In this book I’m going to assume you have some idea about what makes
a good game, and ideally that you have a little experience making
games. Don’t worry if you don’t. I also plan to provide notes to sug-
gest good sources of inspiration and insight. The purpose of this book
is to provide a framework to make it easier for you to make games as
services. This will take us back to some of the basics of game design to
find lessons that lie at the core of every online, console, or mobile game;
perhaps even elements that date back to old-school tabletop board
games, card games, and maybe even role-playing games. I also want to
show how these lessons can help us rethink the way we approach both
the artistic and commercial elements to help you make the best possible
games suitable for this era of always connected devices. The technical
power and ability to leverage online services has so rapidly filtered into
every home and every pocket with laptops, tablets, consoles, and—of
course—the cell phone almost all of us now carry. The trouble is that we
are still in the midst of this massive change and at the time of writing
some of the biggest changes seem to be just over the horizon. So to
avoid this book becoming out of date before it’s released, I have tried to
focus on the deeper, lasting principles that matter to making games as
services, rather than the particular trends currently popular. My plan is
to then continue to add to this material using the companion website
www.GamesAsAService.net; a site that I hope will become a place for
designers to share ideas and learn from each other.
 Introduction 3

Service with a Smile

We are seeing the way we consume and experience games change
faster than ever before and at the same time we are seeing this great
entertainment medium at last reaching true mass-market audiences,
something thought nearly impossible only ten years ago. In particular
we are seeing a dramatic rise of ‘games as a service’ and of course the
“freemium” business model, both of which I will argue go hand-in-
hand. I believe this will be a driver for greater creativity, allowing us
to make better games, not just more profitable ones. I will try to show
why we can no longer afford to simply build a game, throw it over to
the marketing team or publisher, and then hope that someone buys it.
Hope is not a strategy.
In particular the old approach of creating retail ‘box-products’ is
not just inefficient but dangerous, perhaps even suicidal, for game
developers—and not just for mobile and tablet games. We need to rethink
our approach to development and instead look at the way players now
consume their content and use that to build games as services instead.

First Bite of the Apple

The tipping point that brought us this change, for me, was the arrival of
the iPhone. However, unlike many people, I believe that it is wrong to
think of this first iOS device as an extraordinary technical achievement.
At the time it was released, most handset manufacturers had devices
that were—at least in part—technically superior to the first iPhone. Let’s
not forget that the most basic phone-call features of the first iPhone
were pretty terrible. However, Apple’s little device showed us what was
possible when you make the user experience seamless.
Many will argue that it was the simplicity. I’m not convinced by this
argument, but this isn’t a book about user interface design so I won’t
bore you with the details of that discussion. However, what I do think is
relevant to this book is that, unlike all other handset devices at the time,
the iPhone experience was both internally consistent and joyful to use.
For me the genius of Apple at this time was making the mental shift
towards delighting the end-user not just pushing the technical aspira-
tions of the manufacturers. But even with this, the first iPhone doesn’t
count in my mind. The really important stuff came in with the iPhone
3G and an almost incidental release Apple made the same day. On
June 9, 2008, Apple launched the iPhone 3G and with it the new App
Store,1 which it described as:
4 Games as a Service

providing iPhone users with native applications in a variety of

categories including games, business, news, sports, health, reference
and travel. The App Store on iPhone works over cellular networks
and Wi-Fi, which means it is accessible from just about anywhere,
so you can purchase and download applications wirelessly and start
using them instantly. Some applications are even free and the App
Store notifies you when application updates are available. The App
Store will be available in 62 countries at launch.

That’s it. That’s how the biggest innovation in application retail was
introduced. In hindsight this might seem an inauspicious start, but we
must remember that the original iPhone release didn’t even mention
downloadable apps2 in fact instead they talked about using Web 2.0
techniques to support third-party apps.3
There is no doubting that the Apple team did something amazing,
even if I don’t believe it was deliberate. They opened access to everyone
to release any app. It was (and largely still is) possible to get through the
approval cycle within just a couple of weeks. You don’t have to convince
anyone of the merits of the app you want to release. You just have to
meet Apple’s documented rules. This has removed nearly all of the bar-
riers to entry for developers of any size. It turned out to be a completely
disruptive act and continues to have a profound impact on everything
we do in games. They opened up the floodgates for new content and had
immediately leveled the playing field so anyone could publish a game
and access an audience of millions of users.

Supply and Demand Matters

Of course that has now led to an unprecedented volume of games and
apps, and because the pricing was set by the developers themselves there
was an inevitable consequence. The average price for a game went down.
This is a normal economics principle. The price we are willing to
pay for any good, especially a luxury like a game, is determined by the
supply of that item and its demand. If supply increases and demand
remains unchanged then the price will inevitably fall. On June 10, 2013,
Tim Cook announced that the App Store was now hosting more than
900,000 apps;4 but by the time of publication, I suspect we will be close
to the 1 million mark. There are now more good games on the store
that I could possibly play in my lifetime. This effectively infinite supply
of content inevitably means that the “natural” price for a game will be
nothing; free.
 Introduction 5

Not the only Game in Town

The emergence of Apple’s little device was not the first or only place
where innovation for games pricing has happened. In 2003 we pio-
neered an early form of mobile in-App purchases at 3UK with the
introduction of a “rent” game. It was too early and flawed, but the tech-
nical innovation was to allow a user to make a purchase within an app.
Also in 2008 Sony introduced PlayStation Home as a Free2Play (F2P)
experience for owners of the console. However, the first steps for F2P
largely came out of the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) world,
especially those wanting to target a younger audience—in particular
online services such as Neopets (1999). Other MMOs followed suit,
such as UK-based RuneScape (2001)5—still recognized as the world’s
largest MMO6—and Korean-based Maple Story (2003). Maple Story and
Neopets both involved the purchase of virtual goods within the game,
but RuneScape initially only offered a subscription service for paying
players.
Online browser-based games continued to innovate including notably
Big Point’s Dark Orbit and the sale of their Droid X. This was a virtual
good that, on paper, costs $1,000 of their virtual currency; however,
when you look under the surface this tenth droid required that the
player had all of the previous nine and only cost the full amount if you
decided to buy it outright and hadn’t earned enough virtual currency
already.7 How much money was actually spend on them is unclear, but
the value was clearly set in the minds of the players who owned them.

The Only Certainty is Change

More change and more innovation is coming. The arrival in 2013 of the
microconsole heralds another era of change and new device opportu-
nities for developers but, at the time of writing, it seems unlikely that
many of the first wave of these smaller, cheaper, open access options are
quite right to take over the imagination of all players just yet.
Then of course in the same year we have seen the arrival of the
next-generation Xbox One and PS4, both of which had a few missteps
in their initial launch PR. However these are both likely to embrace
greater flexibility in pricing and retail models and, hopefully, a deeper
engagement by the prestige side of the industry with the world of indie
development.
Change continues to come at us in many forms and on many devices.
I may occasionally focus on the iOS platform as an example, but only
6 Games as a Service

as the place where the Darwinian forces are perhaps strongest, where
competition is fiercest, and only the fittest will survive.
Whether or not you agree that iPhone’s arrival has, as promised,
changed everything, the fact remains that everything has changed and
the iOS market provides useful information to allow us to gauge that
change. Further than that, I believe that change is only really starting.
I believe that increasingly, rather than focusing on one device, we need
to consider the opportunities and consequences of gameplay on all the
available devices of all kinds of color, flavor, shapes, and capabilities.
What they will have in common is that we will want to play games on all
of them at different times and they will all be connected to the internet.
What an amazing time to be in our industry.

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

Looking at the iOS and Android markets its clear that F2P has become
the dominant business model in the mobile market, displacing all but
a small number of premium games from the top grossing charts. This
transition had happened by June 2011,8 and has continued to increase
its hold over revenue.
In this book we will consider why this is and why, from a psychology
perspective and a market perspective, there is a tremendous natural
advantage in not charging for your game upfront. Indeed I will argue
that we can create more anticipation of value inside our games by doing
what games are best at—building engagement. There is then no surprise
that when we show our players what they love and offer them different
ways to invest in our games, they will spend more.

Free is Only Part of the Story

Going “free” is not just about removing the barriers to players trying
out our service. With a freemium game we are no longer selling the
gameplay itself, or even the reasons to return to the game. We have to
focus on selling things that players want to help improve their playing
experience. It doesn’t matter whether that is an avatar outfit, a compan-
ion in the game, an energy crystal, or a farm building. If a player loves
your game and you offer them something that helps them enjoy it more,
then they will be willing to pay. But, this only really works if you think
of the game you build as a service and continue to invest in the experi-
ence, showing you love your game too.
 Introduction 7

I believe that this requires a complete change in the way we look at

game design, playing mechanics, and even production processes. It
requires a commitment long after the release of the game to sustain it
with new content, events and features. It is a commitment between the
developer and the player that shouldn’t be started lightly. Indeed typi-
cally you should expect 80 percent of the development costs to happen
after your initial release.

But There is a Problem . . .

Of course there is a problem here.
A lot of people, especially game designers, don’t like the way many
freemium games work. Indeed they don’t even like the words we use
to describe them. How can a game be F2P if you are being constantly
asked to spend money? Does “premium” mean you pay for it or just that
it is of a higher quality? There have even been investigations, such as by
the UK Office of Fair Trade, into the practices of selling in-game assets
to children.
Then on the freemium side you have similarly daft people saying that
“developers who make Premium games are Zombies. The living dead.
Dead, but they just don’t know it yet.”9 There have been devastating
predictions about the end of premium games as we know it or at least a
reduction to “No more than 12 games a year.”10
So I started to wonder. Was there a way we could find some common
ground, a way to look at the market objectively?
Games Market Research Company Newzoo showed the status of the
games industry in 2013 by comparing the different platforms;11 which
largely reflects an ongoing position following the past couple of years.
Console remain (for now) the largest sector in terms of revenue. How-
ever, this has been in decline for some time as we have waited for the next
generation to arrive. This decline has been particularly damaging for the
console-based studios, which have seen dreadful losses as large, historic
studios have gone under. Sony Liverpool Studio and Real-Time Worlds
were both notable examples of large scale losses in the UK. However,
many of these redundancies have sparked the creation of new indepen-
dent studios usually focused on mobile games. Studios like Hutch Games
exemplify the transfer of talent from the console space into the indepen-
dent mobile and tablet sector; a sector growing at 35 percent year on year.
This growth is expected to continue with Mobile and Tablet leading
the charge.12
8 Games as a Service

Figure 1.1 The global games market, per segment, 2013. © Newzoo 2013.

Figure 1.2 Global games market 2012–2016. © Newzoo 2013.

 Introduction 9

However, what’s most interesting is the rapid change in the use of

multiple devices. We have been using different devices for quite some
time but until relatively recently few players would transition from
a game on their phone and pick it up on their laptop, usually prefer-
ring one device for specific activities. That appears to have gone and
we are increasingly regarding applications as things that should work
everywhere, choosing the device that best supports our current circum-
stances, a “mode of use” if you like.
Figure 1.3 shows the overlapping use of devices and how that
changed between March and September 2012, a trend which has con-
tinued ever since.
There is clearly a change that has happened. Mobile has manifested
this change in the most profound way with games delivering 33 per-
cent of the downloads and 66 percent of the revenue on iOS App Store
in 2012. However, we have also seen various experiments for down-
loadable content (DLC) being made by the traditional console game

Figure 1.3 Overlap of use and complementary smartphone and tablet markets.
© Newzoo 2013.
10 Games as a Service

publishers to augment their retail box-product sales; even with “Season

Passes” being sold to mitigate against the rising secondary market of
pre-owned games. However, the more profound impact on console
has been the introduction of Xbox LiveArcade and PlayStation Home;
both surprisingly successful in their ways. There is no reason to expect
consoles will be immune to the F2P model.

A Religious War
Of course even with objective data I won’t stop people arguing the rel-
ative merits of premium and freemium as the debate has polarized into
an unhelpful, almost religious, bickering.
Perhaps there is something more fundamental at work? Perhaps we
are looking at the symptom rather than its cause? If I am right then we
have used the wrong emphasis by focusing on the money. I think this
preoccupation with revenue has hidden a more important change—the
move to games as services.
Let us take a step back from the arguments about F2P. There has
been a decline in old-school physical retail models and there has been
a rapid rise in digital content, not just for games. Freemium models
have attracted not only large audiences, but also greater revenues than
premium games on mobile and table. Social media and internet access
on multiple devices has become ubiquitous and has affected the way
traditional mainstream retail brands talk to us. Look at the high-street
of your local city. Everything has changed. So, of course, the way we buy
games has changed too.

(Not) the End of Premium

Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to lose the excitement I get with those
amazing of AAA13 console titles that continue to attract hugely dedi-
cated audiences and of course make vast amounts of money, but it’s a
blockbuster, “hit or miss” model. These games have to make huge sums
to offset the huge risks and the ever-bloating costs and resources needed
to build the next seminal title. The coming generations of consoles with
the power to create photo-realistic real-time generated avatars make it
unlikely we will see art production costs go down anytime soon.
I’m also not saying that every game has to be freemium moving for-
ward. Sometimes the flow of the game you want to create won’t support
a virtual goods or advertising-based business model; however, as this
book will explain, that will be the exception rather than the rule and will
always compromise the potential audience size and revenue.
 Introduction 11

These AAA projects typically require multimillion dollar budgets and

teams of more than 100 people engaged for three to four years. That’s a
lot of risk to manage and inevitably creative freedom will be inhibited
to some extent, so is it any surprise that we see increasingly fewer AAA
games released with an increasingly smaller range of game formulas?
Indeed I believe that it is no surprise that many otherwise promising
projects are getting cancelled in increasing numbers before we see so
much as a trailer.

It All Started With the MMO

The MMO market has faced similar problems. The subscription model
has been an amazing ongoing revenue source for these games, but in the
last few years, that model has started to break down with many closing
down or migrating to a F2P model. Too often this has been a poorly
implemented change as well. At their peak, these games showed us just
how committed a small niche audience could be and wooed them into
buying ongoing subscriptions on top of the original purchase price.
World Of Warcraft reportedly had over 12 million monthly subscribers
at its peak in 2010, but by July 2013 this had dropped to 7.7 million, a
loss of 600,000 in just three months and the lowest point since the first
expansion, leading to announcements that they were considering a F2P
in future. Lots of MMOs launched in recent years have fallen foul of this
transition, games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Trek Online,
Dungeons & Dragons, and Lord of the Rings Online all launching as sub-
scription games, but having to rapidly transition to a freemium model
of some kind despite enormous initial expectations.

Where Did the MMO Fail?

So what has happened? World of Warcraft’s initial success came from
not just creating a better MMO than had previously existed but by
innovating with guilds and raids, to sustain an extremely loyal engage-
ment over time. This leveraged social bonds as well as regular events
and updates—something that wasn’t being done anywhere else at the
time. They backed this up with blockbuster updates, building up the
anticipation long before they were released. The trouble is even these
great techniques can’t sustain games forever. In the end audiences tastes
change, as do their lifestyle choices and, despite lots of attempts, none of
the more recent released MMOs have captured the same level of audi-
ence as World of Warcraft. More than that, the competition for the time
and attention of that player also change and the alternatives made it
12 Games as a Service

easy for many players to move on to something new. Not always another
MMO, sometimes a game as simple as Candy Crush Saga or Clash of
Clans can fill the void. These kind of social and mobile games not only
satisfy different social playing needs but inevitably make us question the
ongoing expenditure of a game subscription.

Social Games Invited Everyone to Play

Games such as Pet Society14 and FarmVille, which launched in 2008
and 2009 respectively, went further than that. They didn’t just target
the already converted players, they unlocked a new, more mass market,
audience through their integration with Facebook. What I still find
remarkable is the way these games delivered the experiences in an
ongoing way. They were constantly updated, even if only to make a tiny
tweak to gameplay, remove bugs, or add minor content changes. The
innovation was not in the gameplay, after all these new gaming players
didn’t have the time or inclination to get into complex game mechanics.
It was in the way they responded to real player behavior by collecting
data and measuring whether each change made improved the game or
not. Of course they also brought with them the freemium model. Any-
one and everyone could play the game as long as they wanted without
paying, but to make progress or to access unique experiences you would
want to spend money. Usually to speed up the gameplay.

Now it is Mobile’s Turn

Of course, a number of mobile developers such as King and Super-
cell have followed suit, bringing the service approach and freemium
business model to their mobile and tablet games. With the success of
Simpsons Tapped Out and Real Racing 3, even EA’s Nick Earl announced
that he was “pivoting sharply toward free-to-play models instead of the
pay-once ‘premium’ business model.”15
Building games as a service means almost inevitably we end up adopt-
ing the freemium model. But what about the tarnished image of F2P we
have talked about? What does it mean to our ability to be creative?
Players are learning about the nastier tricks and techniques used in
different games and unless we change our focus from monetization to
delivering better service we may just lose them. But on a more posi-
tive note the transition to a service mindset means we can launch the
smallest, least risky build of our game (minimum viable product) and
get it into the hands of players to test and show us how they like it.
 Introduction 13

Moving to a service approach changes not only the way you think
about the game, but also about how it will be managed and updated.
There are technical and cost consequences as well as the need to change
to a new business model. We have to have the infrastructure to sustain
and support our community over time and the tools to help them com-
municate with us and each other with all the appropriate moderation
that dictates.

Free is Not Cheap

This is costly and resource hungry. It also requires different planning,
maintenance, and development skills. Fortunately there are lots of “off-
the-shelf ” technologies out there that mean it is possible, if you plan it
in advance. However, even with the simplest service you have to assume
that the need to continually keep your game “alive” with content, events,
and functional updates will mean that as a rule of thumb you should
plan for at least 80 percent of your total development costs to arise after
your initial launch.

But How Does This Lead Us Into

Greater Creativity?
Let’s take three cliché looks at how people become video game design-
ers. The first is the “old school” designer who learnt their trade by
making games for studios, which in turn supplied their talents to pub-
lishers. They worked on games that had fixed released dates, planned
months (if not years) ahead because they had to compete for precious
space on the shelves of the game shops on the high street of your
local town. Next we have the “indie-ism” designer, the multitalented
self-contained artist/coder savants who start out having something
they want to create and then learnt through their own mistakes. Many
of these couldn’t care less about the money or arguably about what
their audience wants to play, but they have an attention to detail about
the perfection of their game concept that takes them forward. The last
type is the “reborn vets,” often a highly experienced coder or artist
who has moved away from the big projects, wanting to make the game
their former employers were too blind to see, and who admits that
they had to learn the hard way in order to fully appreciate the design
process and in particular the impact of unintended consequences.
All of these introductions to games design are perfectly valid but the
trouble is that they all focus on the game experience rather than the
14 Games as a Service

player experience. The move to a service means we have to consider the

journey not only of our game character over time, but also the journey
of our player.

What Has This Chapter Been About?

This introductory chapter has been about looking at where the games
industry has been and the impact that the changing business model
has had on that industry over the past few years. I’ve tried to demon-
strate how much change there has been and the impact that this has on
almost every aspect of design. F2P is often, wrongly, thought of as only
something that affects the way we sell our game. What I hope this book
will do is allow you to see that it has a much more profound impact
than that.

Free2Play is a Symptom, Not the Cause

This is because F2P is a symptom not the underlying cause in my view.
The more profound change has been the change from a retail box-product
to an online service industry. When we sell a game upfront, all we have
to do is to create enough anticipation to encourage the player to get
past the purchase point. Is the idea exciting enough? Does it make me
anticipate the joy of playing so much that I have no question about the
price tag? Is the gameplay good enough to mean that the game reviews
support the marketing story? Sure we want to get better reviews. Sure
we want players to rate the experience highly. But none of these reflect
the longevity of the player’s experience or their lifetime enjoyment. If we
are paid upfront we don’t have any incentive to really think deeply about
each their evolving engagement with our game.
Game services on the other hand only work if, first, enough players
play the game regularly and, second, enough of them are willing to
continue to spend some money regularly. Those players still have to
anticipate the joy of playing, not just at the start of their experience,
but every day. They still have to find and choose our game over almost
infinite number of other titles available to them.

Free Requires Different Skills

Going free isn’t enough to attract an audience anymore. Designing
games with the freemium model has unique challenges. Not least of this
is that because players have spent nothing, they have nothing invested
in the game they have just downloaded. If I have paid upfront, I have
 Introduction 15

no choice but to put up with the layers of tutorial, quicktime videos

and partner logo images if I want to make the most of the money I have
already spent. If I haven’t spent any money I have nothing to lose and
I can just switch off if I don’t want to put up with all of that clutter. If
we don’t get our freemium players started playing straight away, it’s our
fault if they get bored and play another game instead.

The Designer’s Job Just Got Tougher

Your job as a game designer, no matter which type you are, just got
tougher and more interesting at the same time. We need to look at
design differently and constantly consider new techniques, tools, and
data if we are going to rise to this challenge. I believe this will have a
Darwinian influence on the industry—we have to make better games or
we will replaced by others who do.
This book aims to give you the skills and tools to make better games,
not just more profitable ones.

Notes
1 www.apple.com/uk/pr/library/2008/06/09Apple-Introduces-the-New-iPhone-3G.html.
2 www.apple.com/uk/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone.html.
3 www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iPhone-to-Support-Third-Party-Web-2-0-Applica
tions.html.
4 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57588534-37/apple-now-hosts-900000-apps-in-app-
store.
5 Marketing to children has always been problematic and RuneScape denied that it was
doing this and had an age requirement of 13. This has now been removed but players
under 13 only have access to a limited version of chat (Quick Chat), which restricts play-
ers to predefined sentences.
6 The Guinness World Records site records RuneScape as the most popular free MMO with
175,365,991 users in November 2010, www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-7000/
most-popular-free-mmorpg.
7 More details of how the BigPoint DroidX works can be found on GamesBrief, www.
gamesbrief.com/2011/11/bigpoint-does-sell-the-tenth-drone-for-1000-eur-but-may-not-
have-made-eur-2-million-from-it/.
8 The transition from paid to Freemium was complete by June 2011 according to Flurry,
http://blog.flurry.com/bid/65656/Free-to-play-Revenue-Overtakes-Premium-Revenue-
in-the-App-Store.
9 This quote comes from me by the way. Check out my slideshare presentation “A Develop-
ers’ Guide To Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse” given at a number of locations, but most
notably Game Horizon 2012, Casual Connect Hamburg 2012, and GDC Europe 2012.
10 Again me I’m afraid. In my defense there is logic in this and it’s based on the continuous
decline in the number of console studios over the past three to four years alongside the
increasing costs of development and marketing against the persistent decline in the retail
trade. Given these trends, an average of one game per month seemed appropriate at
the time.
Base
16 Align Missmatch
Games as a Service B

11 NewZoo’s Global Games Market Report infographics can be found at www.newzoo.com/

infographics/global-games-market-report-infographics.
12 This data was presented by Peter Warman of NewZoo at the Casual Connect in Hamburg
(February 2012), www.newzoo.com/keynotes/casual-connect-europe-2013-single-screen-
metrics-in-a-multi-screen-world.
13 As I am often reminded by UK consultant Gina Jackson, AAA is about marketing budget,
not about the quality of the game. However, for the purposes of convenience I am delib-
erately confusing the two.
14 Pet Society was shut down in June 2013 by EA who had acquired Playfish in 2009 for $400m
15 www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-02-ea-mobile-boss-freemium-haters-a-vocal-
minority.
Base Align Missmatch Concept Creation 17

Exercise 1: Concept Creation

Throughout this book we will have exercises1 aimed at helping designers
new to Free2Play design to test out their ideas. This can be for your own use
or perhaps you will want to visit our website www.GamesAsAService.net
to share your thoughts with other designers who are working through
the exercises and compare and rate each other’s concepts.
There are lots of game design techniques you can use to create a start-
ing concept. We will explore some of them in this exercise and at the
end you should select one idea to use for all of the later chapters of the
book. Try answering the following questions as quickly as possible, don’t
worry about being accurate, just put in the first concept you think of for
each answer, but you can’t duplicate any answer.

QUESTION YOUR ANSWER

1. What is your favorite long running TV series?
2. What is your favorite “popcorn” movie?2
3. What is your all-time favorite computer game?
4. What the last fiction book/comic you read?
5. In the last week, what game did you play the most?3
6. What was the last traditional or “casual” game you played?

Pick any one of your answers above and describe, in just one sentence,
the basic concept of the story; the objective of usually the lead character,
but if there isn’t one explain the goal described and finally describe the
essential challenge that has to be overcome in the concept, what causes
the story arc to be interrupted and difficult.

Feature One-sentence summary

1. Story
2. Objective
3. Challenge faced
18 Games as a Service

Now pick a second answer from your selection of 1–6 above and
describe in just one sentence, the leading character of that concept
or, if there isn’t a character, what the central mechanic or premise is;
then describe the genre or type of story and within that answer try to
describe the mood or flavor of the concept; finally, describe what the
concept presents as victory conditions or, if that’s not obvious, how the
concept reaches a conclusion.

Feature One-sentence summary

4. Leading character, mechanic or
premise
5. Story genre or type and the mood or
flavor
6. Victory conditions or conclusions

We are going to take these selected concepts and merge them together
with the story, objective and challenge of the first concept and the char-
acter/premise, challenge and victory conditions of the other. This should
form what is essentially a brand new concept, but sometimes we have to
throw in something else new, just to be on the safe side to avoid falling
into cliché or becoming too derivative. So in order to mix it up a bit, let’s
use a six-sided die (yes there is a reason why I wanted six concepts and
two sets of three features). First roll to determine which feature of your
new game concept you need to revise; where 1 = story and 6 = victory
conditions. Then roll again and look at the original six answers you
gave, where 1 = TV series and 6 = traditional game.
Rewrite the feature you have randomly selected using the con-
cept answer you have randomly selected as a guide. If the randomly
selected concept is the same as you used originally, then leave it
unchanged.

One-sentence summary
Feature to change
Alternative concept
Rewritten feature

Next we have to throw in something of our own; you could just

decide which one to change, but if you need inspiration why not roll
Permission to photocopy for personal use
 Concept Creation 19

that dice again where 1 = story and 6 = victory conditions and add
something unique to you. It mustn’t come from the six concepts we
described in our answers. It needs to be different, ideally inspired
from the other features of our concept; perhaps even something a
little weird.4

One-sentence summary
Feature to change
“Weird” feature

Finally, we need to give this a name. Don’t be limited by the source

concepts we used to create our descriptions, instead think about the
resulting six features of the new concept and reimagine what this game
might be called. We can always come back later if we want to change
it. While we are at it, let’s create a final summary putting everything in
one place.

Game name
1. Story
2. Objective
3. Challenge faced
4. Leading character, mechanic or
premise
5. Story genre or type and the mood or
flavor
6. Victory conditions or conclusions

That should be enough for us to get started. We aren’t actually looking

for an earth-shattering idea right now, just something unique to you we
can use to work on through the different exercises in the book. It is not
even particularly important whether you think this could be a good game,
but you should at least find it an entertaining idea. You can always repeat
the process until you are happy to use your idea to practice on as you learn
the design strategies for games as a service. Through the later sections
of this book we will look at the different elements of the game design
from the compulsion loops, game mechanic, context and metagames,
Base
20 Align Missmatch
Games as a Service B

allowing you to find ways to realize the best possible gameplay from
this idea. If you end up wanting to change the concept; just try working
through these steps again and try being playful with each concept you
explore.
Feel free to check out www.GamesAsAService.net, where you will be
able to upload your results onto a webform that will allow you to create
a PDF of the eventual game design and, if you like, share it with others
for a comments and comparisons.

WORKED EXAMPLE:

QUESTION YOUR ANSWER

5 The Sopranos
1. What is your favorite long running TV series?
2. What is your favorite ‘popcorn’ movie? Casino Royal (original
with David Niven/Peter
Sellers/Woody Allen)
3. What is your all-time favorite computer game? Space Invaders
4. What the last fiction book/comic you read? Harlen Coban, Six Years
5. In the last week what game did you play the most? Scrabble
6. What was the last traditional or “casual” game you Sudoko
played?

Feature One-sentence summary

1. Story Mafia boss seeks psychiatric help to help him cope with his
family life, relationship with his mother and the violence of
his “business” interests
2. Objective Looking after his family day-to-day
3. Challenge faced The politics of the wider family

Feature One-sentence summary

4. Leading character, mechanic or premise You have to keep the b***ards out
5. Story genre or type and the mood or flavor Science fiction and tension, with
inevitable doom
6. Victory conditions or conclusions Survive as long as possible (get the
highest scores)
Base Align Missmatch Concept Creation 21

One-sentence summary
Feature to change Leading character or premise
Alternative concept Harlen Coban, Six Years
Rewriten feature The leading character is a Professor at an American
Midwest university who is looking for his girlfriend
who told him not to follow her

One-sentence summary
Feature to change Challenge faced
“Weird” feature The main character loses his memory

FINAL SUMMARY:

Game name Finding Anthony

1. Story Mafia boss seeks psychiatric help to
help him cope with his family life,
relationship with his mother and the
violence of his “business” interests
2. Objective Looking after his family day-to-day
3. Challenge faced The main character loses his memory
4. Leading character, mechanic or Looking for his girlfriend who told him
premise not to follow her
5. Story genre or type and the mood or Science fiction and tension, with
flavor inevitable doom: Anthony is a cyborg
with failing memory circuits and
damaged “brain slots”
6. Victory conditions or conclusions Survive as long as possible (get the
highest scores)

Notes
1 Please note that these exercises and the “worked examples” are intended to help you
think like a “games as a service” designer. The results won’t provide a complete or fully
fleshed-out game design document. However, it should provide a good start to that
process with this specific approach to design. The worked examples are simply intended
to provide a comparison with the kind of answers you might want to think about. This is
not a real game (deliberately), just a sample concept intended to show that it is possible
to come up with non-standard games with this design process. We will post more fully
fleshed examples onto the website.
22 Games as a Service

2 By “popcorn” movie, we are looking for the movie you will watch time and again, rather
than the movies you rate as being representative of the highest calibre of the artform.
3 The current game need not be a computer game, or even a traditional game. If you played
a game of “dare” or even play around with how accurately you park your car, that could
still count.
4 Remember Scott Roger’s Triangle of Weirdness, we need some structure around what is
new and what is weird, which is why we are picking two familiar concepts and putting
them together, then adding one weird/new item to ensure we are introducing originality
http://mrbossdesign.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/triangle-of-weirdness.html.
5 In order to make this example I took the answers to the concept creation questions given
to me by my Mum. Hopefully this shows that anyone can do it. I also hope it demon-
strates that we can have fun with the process rather always having to try to make best
possible creative concept. However, I am surprisingly pleased by the results.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 2
What is a Game?
26 Games as a Service

What is Fun Anyway?

It is impractical to start off a book on games design without spending
at least some time trying to define what we mean by a “game,” and how
that relates to “fun.” It would be easy to spend the majority of this
book exploring the different concepts and ideas behind game theory.
However, rather than doing that, I’d like to point you in the right direc-
tion to find out for yourself. In this chapter I’ll refer to other writers
and provide references in the endnotes for people who have looked into
the theory of gameplay from traditional games all the way to modern
computer games and if you feel you need to know more, please check
out their work. Whether you are familiar with the concepts here or not
it’s well worth taking time to step back and to consider these questions.
But where should we start? The very act of definition seems to suck out
the life of what it means to “play.”

Can You Define Fun?

Saying that Fun is “enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure”
doesn’t help us understand how it feels to laugh or what triggers within
a game can delight us.
The easy answer might be to quote some inspirational game design
guru like Rafe Koster.1 In his A Theory of Fun he tries to get us to go
back to basics and to consider the way our brains reward us for success
in pattern-matching. Pattern-matching is a cool way to start. We see
two blue gems alongside a green gem, we know that if we can get a line
of three blue gems we will get a reward, and as long as the grid of gems
changes, we continue to get pleasure from the process of finding such
matches where we can.
It can be hard to accept this fairly reductionist way of thinking about
games. For example playing poker isn’t the same thing as playing chess
or a classic match-three style game like Bejeweled. There are nuances of
social interaction and decision-making based on predictions of probabil-
ity in poker, but even these are in themselves forms of pattern-matching.
Texas hold ’em players talk about the board texture based on the “suited-
ness” and “connectedness” of the flop.2 Chess, as it has evolved, involves
no random influence except the strategies of your opponent, but again
the patterns of the play of the finest players has been detailed and clas-
sified over hundreds of years and many players will instantly recognize
shapes of moves made in the opening, mid and end game sections of play.
 What is a Game? 27

At What Price Victory?

Patterns in games are extremely powerful. When trying to create games
as a service they are fundamental. We need a game to have something at
its heart with a highly repeatable pattern. It’s almost like the heartbeat of
our game or the meter of a song.
The trouble is (as Koster goes on to state) pattern-matching can
become boring.
Writers like Johan Huizinga3 and Robert Caillois4 proposed that
“rules” form a key factor in helping us to turn the pleasure of
pattern-matching into something we could term “play.” They create
structure and ways to validate our behaviors, whether that applies to
sports or games. Rules have to be something that are agreed by the
participants and that help us make sense of the experience, allowing us
to differentiate what is play from what is not.
Key to these rules is the creation of “victory conditions,” something
Scott Rogers5 includes in his definition of what makes a game.
Then, of course, if we accept that there are victory conditions, then
it’s probable that we also have to accept that there are failure conditions
too. Jesper Juul6 writes about the paradox inherent in knowing that
we will experience failure and that we still seek to overcome it is what
drives our interest in games. Greg Costikyan7 uses the example of Space
Invaders to show that, even where the final outcome is inevitable defeat,
players can delight in the playing, not to win but to better their previous
score or that of another player. He further argues that a game’s outcome
can be more than just a binary “win” or “lose.”
Many writers also talk about the psychology of games, and as much
as I want to be scientific about this, I don’t know enough about brain
chemistry to be sure whether fun is a chemical response with a dopa-
mine or serotonin release following the successful overcoming of a
challenge. But clearly it can be valuable to consider how normal brain
responses are triggered from the way a player engages with our game.

Play is Utterly Absorbing

In the end I personally find, despite being written in 1938, Huizinga’s
definition of play to be extremely useful and I think we can learn a lot
about what makes for good game design by analyzing it further. He talks
about “play” as “a freestanding activity quite outside ordinary life . . .
absorbing the player intensely and utterly.”
28 Games as a Service

Think about that for a minute. When we suspend our disbelief and
allow ourselves to dwell in the world created by a game experience
we gain an amazing release. We free our imagination and creativity to
explore and focus on the patterns of whatever it is we are doing. It’s
almost like we are giving ourselves permission to play. We experience
this kind of release when we read a great book, or watch our favorite
soap opera. This works whether that is just for a few brief delightful
moments of casual play or for the hours we set aside for our favorite
hardcore console game. This suspension of disbelief comes from a
mutual agreement between the designer and the player. We, as design-
ers, have to create the conditions where the player feels comfortable to
accept the rules of that world and we have to keep consistent with those
rules to avoid breaking the immersion, or at least limiting those breaks
to predictable patterns.

No Material Interest
Huizinga’s definition continues by saying that play is an activity with
“no material interest or profit gained.” That’s a bit more challenging,
especially where we want to sell virtual goods to the player. But per-
haps this helps us gets to the bottom of the negative feelings that we
talked about with the Free2Play (F2P) model in the introduction. When
players feel that we are only interested in the money we can gain, then is
there any wonder that this will feel like a breach of trust; perhaps even
feel like we have “broken the rules?” If you can buy your way to success
then we remove the challenge and essentially create a method to cheat
the victory conditions. I have found this myself in several games where
the purchase of virtual goods essentially undermined the purpose of the
game mechanic. Why would I want to spend money on in-game grind
currency when that very currency was the only meaningful measure of
how successful I had been in playing the game?

Crass Commercialization
It is also the case that constant reminders to buy things can stop us
from “absorbing the player intensely and utterly.” However, when we
look at the raw data of how players respond to in-game reminders, this
shows that instead of causing players to leave or “churn” from our game,
instead we see that “push promotions” can be really effective. Does that
mean Huizinga was wrong? I don’t think so. The problem is often that
there are multiple motivations at play. Players understand that games are
 What is a Game? 29

commercial properties and often accept that we want to sell to them, but
this will still annoy a number of them. Looking at data from some social
mobile games it seems that promotions that are in-line with the flow of
the game generally perform better. Where possible we should try to find
the balance between the need to inform players that it’s worth invest-
ing their money in the game without breaking the illusion of the game
experience.

Farming for Gold

On the other hand this idea of “material interest” is also about what
the player themselves might gain. Removing the idea of profit from the
definition of “play” helps us consider the phenomenon of gold-farming
in MMO games. We can clearly argue that this breaks the fun of the
experience, at least for the people gold-farming. However, for the people
paying for the extra gold or to eliminate the grind in order to gain
access to the higher level playing experiences, this can be an absolute
delight. Many games, such as RuneScape8 spend a lot of time trying to
minimize the impact of gold-farming, but the question in my mind is
whether this activity is essential to preserve the game or a symptom of
an untapped demand. What if instead you provided a system to encour-
age players to gold-farm inside the game and take a small percentage
on each transaction? Similar questions apply when you start thinking
about the creation of user-generated content. When does this cross the
line between creative entertainment and work? Should creators have the
opportunity to be paid with grind-money or in-game virtual goods for
taking the time to make things in the game? Should they be paid with
real-money?
This seems tempting to me, but it does seem at odds with the concept
of “material interest.” Then there are other complications, such as the
legal requirement to prevent money-laundering involved with any real-
money transactions.

Gambling With Players?

What is clear to me is that when “profit” or “material interests” impact
play, our motivations change. The more personal gain affects our play,
the harder it becomes to suspend disbelief.
This question will have a profound impact on the way game compa-
nies embrace real-money gambling in their games. As the USA opens
up to gambling services, like the UK before it, we will see a “gold rush”
30 Games as a Service

for gambling games, but at the risk of blurring two very different playing
motivations.9

Counting on Uncertainty
In 1958 Roger Caillois, in his Definition of Play, expanded on Huizinga’s
description of play and suggested that doubt itself was a vital part of the
process of play. If there is no uncertainty then play simply stops. This
applies to games of skill as well as luck, because if the players aren’t suf-
ficiently balanced there is no pleasure in the game, as much as if there
is no chance of failure or success. Although it is possible that some fun
can be achieved through the process of play if there is room for personal
impact on the outcome. For example, the fun of playing FarmVille is not
found in the creation of your farm, but in the journey of making it your
own. Juul in his 2013 The Art of Failure expands on this by asking us to
consider the “Paradox of Painful Art.” We wouldn’t seek out situations
that arouse painful emotions, but we recognize that some art will evoke
a painful emotional response and yet we still seek out that art. Similarly,
we don’t seek to experience the humiliation of failure, but we know that
playing some games will result in such a failure and yet we seek out
those games as long as we perceive that we have to potential to over-
come those goals with practice. Indeed it’s the fine balance of challenge
and perception of the potential for success that makes a great game
impossible to put down. It’s worth checking out Greg Costikyan’s Uncer-
tainty in Games if you want to see how these concepts apply to different
classical games from Super Mario Bros to The Curse of Monkey Island.

Playing Together Alone

There is a public perception of games playing in isolation with a com-
puter is very new and reading Huizinga’s work further we see that in his
definition of play is the idea that this “promotes the formation of social
grouping which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress
their differences from the common world by disguise or other means.”
I find this perspective fascinating not least because this predates Face-
book and computer games in general, but it even predates games like
Dungeons & Dragons by 36 years.

The Cake is a Lie

Think about the way hardcore computer gamers have their own shared
memories and affinity to specific platforms and characters. For example
 What is a Game? 31

if I say “the cake is a lie,” most of you reading this will know exactly
what I’m talking about and may even have strong memories of a par-
ticular song. There are of course a lot of people who won’t have a clue
what this refers to and indeed who are effectively excluded because of
this. Inside knowledge is an important aspect of belonging to a group
and becomes a shortcut to sharing the fun when we play. It’s also a
factor that I believe has largely been overlooked in social game design in
recent years.

We Want to Play with Others

Social interactions are vital to playing games. Indeed the idea of
playing with others is a key survival trait exhibited by countless social
mammals. It allows us to be able to test and trial experiences as well as
working out your place in the pecking order without the risk of being
harmed in the process.
Since 2008 the idea of a social game has changed dramatically with
the arrival of Facebook-based games and the way this innovation
dramatically shifted the size and nature of the games playing audience.
Zynga and Playfish essentially made it possible for games to reach
mainstream users and for the first time made playing games something
that almost everyone did. Key to this change was the nature of the
platform. It only needed a browser, it didn’t require an upfront fee and,
because it allowed us to share playing moments everyday with people
who matter to us, this unlocked supersized audiences. Of course most
of these players had never learnt the “rules” of game-playing and indeed
arguably had rejected the very idea of play. At the heart these games
had to be simple, repetitive, playful moments; they couldn’t get a new
audience who had previously rejected computer games to adopt the
often complex and obscure mechanics many experienced gamers take
for granted.

But are These Games? Are They Social?

We will talk about degrees of sociability in a later chapter, but I would
argue that what makes Facebook games work, indeed the genius part
of Facebook itself, is its power to deliver asynchronous communication
with people who matter to us. We don’t have to be at the same place or
the same time to be able to share meaningful moments. It is like we are
leaving footprints in the sands of time for our friends to discover when-
ever they are in the mood to find out.
32 Games as a Service

There have been lots of issues since the golden age of FarmVille and
Restaurant City, not least the decision by EA in April 2013 to close
SimCity Social, Sim Social and Pet Society. But I don’t want to turn this
chapter into an analysis of why I think we have seen decline in this
area. Instead, I want us to focus on what this concept of social interac-
tion means for game design and the way asynchronous play can vastly
broaden our horizons—provided the interactions are meaningful and
personal enough.
One of the areas that has regularly been brought into question when
considering the Facebook game is where there might be room for failure
and challenge. Something I would argue was largely absent from this
generation of social gaming and that I expect will come back in the next
generation of Facebook-powered online games.

People Are People No Matter What They Play

Of course when we introduce social play we have to consider the way
we interact with other people. Richard Bartle10 has spent a lot of time
looking at how people react with each other and how these behaviors
impact on how they play games. He looked at the ways people played
the first virtual world, the original online text-based Multi User Dungeon
(MUD), and used this to isolate four essential player types. These types
were defined to help answer the question of what players wanted from
MUDs, but has a remarkable relevance to online worlds and to games as
a service in general. Looking at this crudely you could say that “achiev-
ers” are looking to resolve in-game goals and are essentially motivated by
success. “Explorers” gain enjoyment intrinsically from the act of moving
through the world and collecting items and information about the world,
the completion of the game’s goals are less relevant that the knowledge
of where those goals occur. “Socializers” are often less motivated by the
inherent mechanics of the game and often use the game as an excuse to
meet and interact with others. The last category were named “killers” but
you could easily call them by the name used on internet forums, “trolls.”
They actively enjoy the ability to disrupt the play of others and to exploit
methods in the game to create unexpected results (even to bring down the
servers).

Understanding Motivations
What I believe Bartle is showing us is that players exhibit different
reward motivations and it becomes vital to us to understand these
different motivations as we try build and maintain a community. We
 What is a Game? 33

have to anticipate and manage (ideally redirect) the latent frustrations

of the killers to avoid them becoming disruptive. We have to have goals
and variety for the achievers and explorers respectively to complete that
don’t simply come to an end after just a few hours of play. We have to
create the context for socializers to be able to communicate and create
the social glue that sustains your community.
Understanding the range of emotions that we create through play is
essential but we still have to simplify these into terms we can communicate
easily to others, the press, our investors, our team, and—importantly—to
potential players too. That means we also need to consolidate all these
ideas down into two deceptively difficult questions. What is our unique
player proposition (the core reason why players should care about our
game from a purely gameplay perspective) and what is our unique sales
proposition (the reason why our players should convert to being regular
payers)?

Fun isn’t Limited by Technology

I guess my point in all of this is that fun is a basic human emotional
response to play and the principles of our behavior have only super-
ficially changed over time. We may have handheld devices and cloud
computing, but in the end we still play as a free activity, with no care
for material profit. Fun is not something that can be forced. It requires
a separation from our normal world to exist, usually framed in some
commonly agreed rules with some level of uncertainty to its outcome
and it’s something we want to share with other players. Understanding
this and allowing us to consider the implications this raises as well as
the harder questions of business models and marketing is what makes
our job as designers so much fun.

Notes
1 Game designer Rafe Koster’s A Theory of Fun is a great inspirational text for budding game
designers. Check out www.theoryoffun.com/index.shtml.
2 If you are interested in poker theory, check out this post from “Pokey,” which talks about
poker strategy in detail, http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=
microplnl&Number=8629256.
3 Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga wrote about “play theory” in in 1938
with his title Homo Ludens, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens_(book).
4 In 1961, French sociologist, Robert Caillois published a critique on Huizinga’s work in
Man, Play and Games, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Play_and_Games.
5 Scott Rogers talks about game design in his book Level Up: The Guide to Great Video
Game Design. Check out his blog at http://mrbossdesign.blogspot.co.uk.
6 Jesper Juul talks about games as the “Art of Failure” and the paradox of tragedy in relation
to video games. His blog can be found at www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist.
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7 Greg Costikyan has worked on traditional and computer games as well as Uncertainty in
Games http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/uncertainty-games.
8 The RuneScape team spends a lot of time trying to reduce the impact of gold-farming
on their service, despite being a F2P game, http://services.runescape.com/m=news/
anti-gold-farming-measures.
9 I believe that gambling has a very different set of motivations and rewards based on the
tension between the result being in and the player knowing whether they have won
or lost. This anxiety seems to be heightened by the importance of the stake. Success is
generally attributed to personal choice, whereas failure is generally attributed to “bad
luck.” Unlike non-gambling games, this sense of reward doesn’t diminish with repetition
and hence, I suspect, players will be more vulnerable to addictive behaviors (of course
addiction is a massive topic itself on which few experts agree).
10 Richard Bartle, Professor at the University of Essex, co-creator of MUD and author of
Designing Virtual Worlds, www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm.
Base Align Missmatch Who Are Your Players? 35

Exercise 2: Who Are Your Players?

In this second exercise we want to consider our audience. We need to
identify a selection of different personalities to help us ask questions
about our ideas in a useful way. Ideally, these personalities would be
based on real segments of our playing audience, but for the purposes of
this exercise I will assume that we don’t have access to that data yet, not
least as we have yet to make our game. When we can use real data we
should. This approach is a thought exercise designed to make it easier
to question our own ideas as much as to consider the perspectives of
other players. With games as a service you are not just making a game
for yourself.
For this exercise to be useful we need to be able to put ourselves into
the shoes of other players. This mean we need to understand something
of what motivates them, who they are, how much experience they have,
and, above all, what motivates them to play at all, let alone to play our
game. To help with this we will create a stereotype personality based on
their age, gender, and background. We want you to build up a picture
of them and try to think of people you know, ideally people who have
different interests and needs to your own. Then we will add to that by
considering their playing experience and motivations to play.
Richard Bartle’s player types form a great model for this, but are not
the only way to categorize the reward motivations of players and we
should feel free to expand on this kind of thinking. We should also
consider the principle mode of use (on-the-go; in their front room; on
the toilet, etc.) for each player as well as their mood or current objective
in playing (escapism, distraction, collection).
It’s really important to give them a name. This is a tool that helps you
isolate their needs in your own mind and indeed to give yourself per-
mission to question your own ideas safely; because it’s about what that
“person” would feel. This may sound trivial, but it’s quite a profound
thing in allowing your own inner questions about the game to come
through.
Let’s start with your principle player, the one who is your ideal target
and who will probably be the most typical player of your game.
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Who is your principle

target player in terms of:

Name:

Gender:

Age:

Location:

Principle mode of use:

Motivation to play:

Reward they seek:

Why are they typical?

Next we need to come up with a contrast. This should be a player with

different needs, but who still has good reason to play your game, even
though this is different from our principle player.

Who is your secondary

target player in terms of:

Name:

Gender:

Age:

Location:

Mode of use:

Motivation to play:

Reward they seek:

Why are they different from

the primary target player?

Often two personalities can be enough to help provide contrasting

views, but I also like to have a third, the “outlying” player type. These are
players who might play your game if only you considered their needs
a little more. They should be more different still than the target and
secondary players and represent a wider more mass-market audience
in most cases (if you have a mass-market concept then instead these
should represent more “hardcore” players). This personality should not
be the same gender as both the previous personality types.
Base Align Missmatch Who Are Your Players? 37

Who is your outlying

target player in terms of:

Name:

Gender:

Age:

Location:

Mode of use:

Motivation to play:

Reward they seek:

Why are they different from

the primary target player?

What stops them from

playing?

Finally, let’s use these player types to consider how your concept
might deliver a unique playing proposition for our audiences. Essen-
tially this is about what makes the game fun for your players (and not
just for you!). This might be quite difficult to answer at this stage and
you may want to come back after progressing further into the book.
Alternatively it might be worth returning to the concept and changing
one of more of the features of the concept.

Consider what each player type can get

from your game concept that they won’t
elsewhere.

Why should each player type download

your game and start playing right now?

For each player type, think about why their

friends will care when our players show off
your game to those friends?
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WORKED EXAMPLE:

Who is your principle target Bob is a 40–45 year old male gamer living in
player in terms of: the Bay Area with his wife and two kids. He
used to play a lot of hardcore games and is quite
Name: competitive, but he has lost his edge now due to
Gender: lack of time to practice and no longer having
the manual dexterity. Work and family life
Age: get in the way of his time to play so he needs
something that can fill the odd few minutes
Location: throughout his day. He tends to play on his
Principle mode of use: phone, but occasionally on a tablet, which he
prefers due to the scope offered by the larger
Motivation to play: screen. Game sessions on the tablet normally
Reward they seek: happen in the living room while his wife and kids
take over the family TV. He is no longer a pure
Why are they typical? “achiever” player, motivated more by exploration
and collection. Bob is typical as he is looking
for a game that is a little more thoughtful and
challenging without manual dexterity being too
crucial to success.

Who is your secondary target Kevin is a 18–24 year old male living in his
player in terms of: parents’ house in Guildford in the UK. He plays
on multiple devices, but once he starts playing
Name: a game he generally sticks with the device he
Gender: started with (although not always). He typically
plays on a tablet for this kind of game, but is also
Age: considering getting a microconsole alongside his
Location: traditional console. He is a classic hardcore gamer
on his PC and console, but enjoys more relaxed-
Mode of use: paced playing formats on mobile devices. Despite
that, it’s all about winning for him—both beating
Motivation to play: the game and his friends. Ideally crushing them
Reward they seek: publicly! He is a classic “achiever” with a little
“killer” on the side. He differs from Bob because he
Why are they different from is more aggressive as a player, but also is a little
the primary target player? more flighty so may more easily leave the game
for another if he gets bored.
Base Align Missmatch Who Are Your Players? 39

Who is your principle Sumi is a 30–35 year old South Korean woman living
target player in terms of: in Italy with her American husband and young baby.
She uses games to provide her not only with an escape
Name: from the day-to-day activity of childrearing but also to
Gender: provide a much needed social outlet. She roams between
different devices freely and gets frustrated when a
Age: game’s save state isn’t consistent between those devices.
Location: She has tended to play casual games and particularly
likes those that remind her of the Tycoon games of her
Principle mode of use: youth. However, she is open-minded about the genre
and will try anything where there is a social context.
Motivation to play:
At heart she is a “social” player. She won’t play games
Reward they seek: without a genuine opportunity to share with her friends;
this need not mean direct conversation, but has to offer
Why are they different meaningful reminders of the presence of her online
from the primary target friends.
player?
What stops them from
playing?

Consider what each player This is a game that will have an approachable art
type get from your game style combined with a serious undertone (based
concept that they won’t on dementia), which is offset against a science
elsewhere? fiction backdrop (allowing a sense of distance and
at the same time making it easier to create a play
mechanic based on memory loss). There is a sense of
inevitable doom but this is balanced by the reward
from nurturing the family who themselves provide
a darkly comic twist as they are mostly ungrateful
parasites. Although there will be opportunities to
inform players about the real risks of dementia,
the focus is to make a playable game, not an
educational tool.

Why should each player The game will include strong social elements
type download your game “connecting” different families and each playing
and start playing right session will have the potential for comical results that
now? can be shared with friends.

For each player type think The core mechanic will have the inherent potential
about why their friends for comic effect partly from the way the elements
will care when our players interact, but also through the funnily unpleasant
show off your game to those reactions of the family members.
friends?
Chapter 3
The Anatomy of Play
42 Games as a Service

Getting to the Bones

In our attempts so far to define what we mean by a game we have looked
at the nature of play and the drivers of fun. We have considered the role
of patterns, rules, victory conditions and, of course, social interactions,
including the role that play takes in forming excusive social groupings.
All of these are lofty concepts and although they are important to
consider they don’t leave us with much structure to leverage. If we are
going to actually build a game we have to get under the skin of a game.
We have to get thinking about how to deliver a playing experience.
Those of us who spent too much of our childhood making up games
to play with our friends may have a good instinct for what it fun, but
to reliably make great content we need more solid framework to build
from. That starts by considering the anatomy of a game.

Celebrate Differences
There are huge differences between different games types and genres.
Art-style, controls, genres, even the platform we play that game on, all
influence design decisions. These variations allow us to endlessly come
up with new concepts and ideas and with each one the designer can
communicate something new to their players. However, much of this
variation is on the surface and by looking underneath this skin we see a
great deal of shared common principles.
In this book the model we use is an attempt to make it easy to
consider the flow of play in a game, something that is essential to be
successful when creating games as a service.

Where’s Wally?
Before we can start we need some common principles. For this purpose
let’s start with the assumption that games essentially break down into
a series of patterns which combine to form rules.1 Pattern-matching
seems to have been a critical factor in evolutionary success for humans
and as a result it seems unsurprising to me that we gain great pleasure
from being successful at this apparently simple activity. Finding a skinny
guy in a red and white hat and matching jumper is a game, even if one
of limited depth, and it’s about finding a known pattern (i.e., Wally
himself) within a complex image.
Humans are also unusual in that we can consider patterns using
our imagination. We can work through different scenarios and
 The Anatomy of Play 43

look for the patterns that give us the best outcomes, a skill that has
transformed our survival chances. When we play Go we take turns to
place our black or white stones in position so that we capture as many
of our opponent’s pieces as possible, while safeguarding our own
position.

Stick or Twist?
Of course games don’t just use fixed patterns, they often have some
level of randomness. For example, we don’t know the original rules for
Senet,2 the oldest known game, but it seems likely to have involved ran-
dom number generation using thrown sticks or knucklebones (the first
dice). Some of the most common modern games use cards to generate
a level of randomness, from snap to bridge; even Magic: The Gathering
uses patterns based on the random selection of individual cards that
have different values, suits or rules. We essentially compare our cards
with our opponent in order according to the agreed set-up. There are
dozens of variations, from Texas hold ’em to Montana red dog, where
the winning hands remain largely the same but the betting structure
and the process to reveal cards varies. All of these pivot around the
principle of players using random results to complete patterns and sim-
ilar principles apply when we look at dice-based games or traditional
board games.

Six to Start
In Ludo3 I roll a dice, attempting to get a six, which allows me to get
one of my pieces onto the starting spot. It also allows me to move any
other pieces I have in play across the board, and hopefully I’ll get lucky
enough to land on my opponent pieces, sending them home. Monopoly
uses a similar method for movement, but rather than one die, we roll
two and add the total together to find how many spaces I have to move
my “avatar” before resolving the actions associated with that space, such
as if I land my top hat on Park Place (or Park Lane if you are from the
UK) where you have placed a hotel!
The introduction of a second die to determine movement has sig-
nificance not only on the range of movement of my piece, but also the
statistical probability of me travelling a given distance. Monopoly adds
to this mechanic further by allowing players to roll again after gaining a
double. However, there the game also adds jeopardy by sending you to
jail if you happen to roll doubles three times in a row.
44 Games as a Service

Complex Forms from Simple Elements

These patterns form a language allowing us to map the design of
game mechanics. At their heart these should be highly repeatable and
individually don’t usually require complex thinking to resolve. These
simple patterns exist in almost every game and combine in unique ways
depending on the decision of each player (or indeed to AI response of
the game code).
Even chess, a game renowned for its intellectual demands, has very
simple rules governing the behavior of each piece. Games like this have
a particular characteristic of play that has a profound impact on the
flow of the game. They are “games of emergence,” where all of the
rules and available options are defined at the start of the play. They use
essentially simple and consistent rules, but the combinations of each
piece and their relative position to each other creates an immense range
of variation. They are extremely challenging to create as they run the
risk of creating unexpected dominant strategies. For example, when you
understand the mechanism of tic-tac-toe (or noughts and crosses) you
quickly learn how to always force a draw.

Changing the Rules As We Go Along

The other common type of games are known as “games of progres-
sion,” which create an evolving narrative, even if like Tetris the story
is abstract,4 which is revealed through the playing and which unlocks
new behaviors or mechanics over time. These games tend to have lots
of stages but only a small range of victory conditions. Quite often the
narrative arc is largely fixed by the game designer and merely navigated
through by the player. They also tend to require the player to resolve
specific mechanics prior to permitting the player to proceed through
the story of the game. They need not be entirely linear, however; games
such as Deus Ex, Zelda and Heavy Rain5 famously used a range of
interactive techniques allowing the player to influence the outcome of
the story. One simple variation includes “forks” in the narrative, which
split the path of the player down a fixed number of different outcomes.
These forks might over time funnel the player back to the original nar-
rative by presenting them with unpalatable or self-sacrificing options.
Other more complex structures include the “hub and spoke” structure
where the player has a range of conditions to complete before they can
move forward to resolve the next section of the game. Unlike games of
 The Anatomy of Play 45

emergence, games of progression will have a fixed number of endings

because in order to make progress, specific playing conditions have
to have been met. Each playing moment is in effect a node for
decision-making resolved through play. I am tempted to suggest that
games of progression are actually metagames, linking a series of mini-
games, but that would be too sweeping a statement.

Getting to the Core

Of course being practical, we know that many games blur the bound-
aries between these two models of design. Regardless of which type
of game we want to make we can still break down the anatomy of the
game in the same way. We determine the conditions at the start of the
game, the challenges and methods of resolution as well as what reaching
the victory conditions actually means, including whether this unlocks
further elements for later repetition of play. This is the heart of the core
mechanic of the game and it’s that which determines what actions are
available for players to take, how they resolve the patterns of play, and
somehow within these we aim to find the fun.
Let’s take some examples. In almost every MMO adventure I have
played since Meridian 59 we start out having to go and kill a virtual rat.
When we succeed we loot the rat6 and then (assuming we have gained
enough experience points) we level up. This we repeat, increasing the
skill and challenge of the opponent each time to maintain the speed
at which we improve our own character. But essentially each of those
monsters is simply a bigger rat.
How about a first-person shooter (FPS) game? Well here it’s similar.
We identify a target, choose the right weapon to defeat them, then we
loot their gear. Looked at this way we see that there are lots of similar-
ities in structure to the MMO, but of course the delivery is completely
different.
Possibly the purest loops are simple puzzles games. These games are
almost inherently self-contained cycles of play. We see an incomplete
puzzle, we complete it and gain whatever rewards we expected before
moving onto the next.
Even resource management games have repeatable cycles of play. We
plant the seeds we start out with in the fields we start with and wait until
we can harvest them to get more seeds and of course some in-game
reward or currency. However, there are secondary and tertiary levels of
cycle. In order to plant more seeds we need to buy extra fields, but extra
46 Games as a Service

fields mean that we need extra storage units, which we can only access
by selling the plants we harvest. Those plants we harvest can also unlock
new types of seed for us to plant, etc. This idea of loops feeding other
loops is extremely important and in later chapters. We will also look
at how we can use imbalanced economies to balance the interactions
between each cycle.

Repetition is the Soul of Play

The repeatable nature of these game loops is essential to how we create
entertainment suitable for services. Interestingly, we find this kind
repeatable activity intrinsically enjoyable. The more regularly we repeat
them the more compelling they become and we create habits through
repeated play. There are some models out there that can help us explain
how this kind of repetition is enjoyable. The most common example
quoted comes from the experiments on operant conditioning by B.F.
Skinner.7 This examines the repeated cycle between action and reward,
usually a rat or pigeon pressing a lever to obtain food. Various conditions
were applied to the release of the food to create “schedules of reinforce-
ment,” which would themselves amend the behavior of the rats. There
are of course some apparent comparisons between the ability to manipu-
late rats using a Skinner Box and the way we affect players’ behavior with
our games. Indeed there are some who would argue that, because we use
these compulsion loops in games, we are somehow “conditioning” play-
ers to repeatedly play that game. It’s a compelling concept but I believe
this falls down in practice. Not least because compulsion isn’t the same
thing as addiction. One of the key differences is that we aren’t restricting
players’ access to real-world necessities, such as food. The stakes involved
aren’t equivalent and there are plenty of alternative options for seeking
entertainment. On the other hand we never get full of entertainment,
unlike our reaction to too much chocolate. However, we do eventually
get bored and looking back on our playing history we recognize those
games that used operant conditioning too strongly and the resentment
that leaves lasting damage for the brand of that game.8

Taking Control
Mechanics are more than just the patterns of course. We have to con-
sider the method of play used to resolve those patterns, including the
control systems in computer games. In tabletop games we might think
about the board and pieces. With a card game we might consider the
relationship between the cards we hold in our hand, the remainder of
 The Anatomy of Play 47

the deck, and the placement of the cards. Computer games—whether on

mobile, console, or tablet—have their own considerations. Here we have
to think about what the player actually does to move the game forward.
Do we move a thumbstick, press a button, shake a controller, type some
text, or in some other way direct the movement of an avatar or sprite? If
there is some movement involved in the interface, what are the kinetic
sensations of the action? How does the game connect the physical
movement with the visual and audible feedback? How would that be
different if we were to use a touch gesture to slide or spin an object on
the screen? How does this action make the underlying experience of
play delightful?
The designer has to consider how to communicate the controls
system as well as to provide stimulus to inform the player to the actions
available to them as well as the feedback from their choices. This has to
include any hints, tips or instructions needed to navigate through the
game. Will you have pop-up text boxes or “holographic” overlays or
perhaps attempt to have all the communication intrinsically contained
in the game world itself?

Lights, Camera, Action

We also have to consider what the player sees and how the display
responds to their actions. Are we looking at objects in a 2D world? A 3D
world? Isometric? You have to consider whether you want the players to
be able to direct the camera view or whether you want to fix the camera
position within each scene in order to free resources to create the most
beautiful visual effects. You might, instead want to have an assisted cam-
era that follows the central character. In some games the designer might
also revert to simpler 2D views, perhaps even using parallax scrolling
or even Mode7-style effects to create the retro approximations of spatial
depth.
The camera view is only part of the visual process. We have to think
whether we want our game world to be realistic or perhaps keep it
extremely simplified or maybe even quite surreal. The art and audio
style we choose will have a profound impact on not only the atmosphere
of the game, but to a certain extent the way the players react to specific
mechanics and, of course, their emotional responses too.

The Importance of Success and Failure

The core mechanic is like the bones of a game; we can see how a crea-
ture might move from its bones, but it’s not the bones that provide the
48 Games as a Service

source of movement. It takes an understanding of success and failure

to understand the equivalent of the muscles. The motivation to play is a
complex balance of push and pull from both of these influences, the lure
of success and the pent-up frustration that comes from “good” failure.
As humans we crave challenge and actively need the possibility of
failure if we are to value what success we achieve. This is more compli-
cated than first appears especially as we start the process to learn about
the game. Failure itself is a great motivator, if we cannot fail then there is
no challenge. If there is no challenge, there is no fun to be found. Hard
games can be incredibly compelling and a real motivation to continue
to play. However, there is a downside. Imagine I start a new game, it’s
a first-person shooter and I’m keen to get going. I find how to move
my avatar and make it out of the starting spawn point. I see the bright
sunlight of an amazing beautiful world (or, perhaps more likely, the
dark brown of some unnatural cave system) and turn to see my friends’
avatars charging toward the enemy. Next thing I know, my character
receives a head shot. I’m dead. I might get to see a brief replay of my
opponent shooting me and perhaps even some obnoxious message to
enhance the moment. A few moments after watching one of my team-
mates playing the game I have the opportunity to respawn back to the
match. OK, that wasn’t great, but I think I know what I did wrong and
decide to get back into the game, a process that often requires about
a minute of waiting for the level to reload. This time I’m a little more
cautious. I wait till I hear its gone quiet before sticking my head out.
Bang. I’m dead again. Another obnoxious message. Another humiliating
replay I have to watch, then another minute of waiting for the level to
reload. How many times does that have to happen before I stop playing
this game? This can be a motivation for some players. But this can’t be a
good way to build engagement for a mass-market audience.

Don’t Punish Players

It doesn’t just happen with hardcore FPS titles. FarmVille, the clas-
sic Facebook social game launched with the infamous “withering”
mechanic, where your plants decayed should you fail to harvest them
in the allotted time. This on paper is a great concept. We know in
advance how long our plants will take to grow and how long they will
survive once they are fully grown. It makes sense that if we don’t return
to a farm that the harvest might spoil. Our friends can restore any lost
plants by simply visiting our farm. But a lot people hated this mechanic,
 The Anatomy of Play 49

especially where the player had spent money on that farm. Coming
back to withered plants was something that regularly happened to me
and with my odd work/life balance, it was something I could personally
do very little about. So I had to either depend on friends coming back
to my farm regularly or to pay to fix it. To me, this felt too much like a
punishment for not returning when the game demanded it, rather than
when it was convenient for me.
In these examples the overwhelming feeling is that the player is being
punished for not meeting the games’ standards. As designers, it’s our job
to make sure that we create the conditions where players feel challenged,
but not beaten. We want players to be able to reasonably expect that
they have a standard to achieve, or they won’t feel success when they
reach it. However, we don’t want them to feel hopeless or so badly resent
playing that they never return.

Teeter-Totters are Fun Only When Balanced

Getting the balance between the perceived potential for success and the
reality of the experience of failure is extremely difficult and can depend
on the mechanic. This is especially true with mass-market audiences
where the range of game-playing experience or skills may be very broad.
We can look to create ways for the game to assess the rate of learning/
skill within aspects of the game that are less critical to the flow of the
game, or allow players to make decisions that let them opt into higher
levels of difficulty. It’s OK to punish a player’s decisions, provided they
have the opportunity to change them later. As suggested above, the fear
of loss can be an even more effective motivation than the opportunity
for gain. Imagine the negative impact of losing $100 compared to the
positive value of gaining $100. The same amount of money, but a huge
difference in terms of their impact on most people. Because of this
effect, loss aversion plays a vital role in decision-making9 (not always
positively) and we should not ignore its importance in gameplay.10
Being offered the chance to retry a game, without having to restart or
lose some in-game treasure can be a powerful incentive to spend money
in a game. However, we also should be careful not to overplay this idea
at the risk of spoiling the experience for players.

Playing is its Own Reward

Winning is a great feeling, whether that’s a small win as we complete a
puzzle or a big win as we conquer the game world. This is the “intrinsic”
50 Games as a Service

reward for success within the very act of play, even if we don’t always
succeed obviously. However, we all like to find a way to measure our
achievements or to at least be able to find a meaningful comparison so
we can feel good about the experience and our abilities. These rewards
are highly compelling and provide a lure and motivation to repeat.
Extrinsic rewards, or rewards beyond just the enjoyment of the game,
can be very useful to help the game designer demonstrate the players’
achievements. Even the anticipation of these rewards can greatly affect
our level of performance in a game. These might be shown through
experience points, character levels, in-game currency, etc., all of
which enable the player to see that their character, vehicle, system has
improved (even if this is just in line with the new increased difficulty).
Extrinsic rewards can also include badges, trophies, and achievements
that I can brag about to my friends—at least the ones who also play the
game. The achievement systems on Xbox Live has been a very effective
driver to allow hardcore gamers to brag and to reward those players
who are motivated to collect every one.

Success is Never Enough

Rewards methods provide the nervous system for a game. These are the
tools that provide feedback and affect our playing patterns. The trouble
is that repeated exposure to the same reward stimulus has a diminishing
effect. We become satiated by the obvious patterns of play that we have
already completed and need something more. Building in progression
between each repeat of our core mechanic is important to sustain the
interest of the player. Progression can take many forms but essentially
involve changing the variables in the mechanic gradually each play. This
either builds the challenge level as the player progresses through the
game or provides variations that stimulate other aspects of the expe-
rience from art style, through genre, even different forms of pattern
resolution. Largely this can be done in line with the rate of progress of
the player themselves. For many of us, we want the difficulty to increase,
ideally just a little faster than our ability to play grows, to respond to
that challenge.

Measuring Progress
However, we need some way for the game to show us how we have
improved and of course our progress in the context of the game. We
want small meaningful victories along the way that reassure us of our
 The Anatomy of Play 51

ability and prove to us that success is not just possible, but something
we associate with our own actions. Marking these victories can create
anticipation for future stages and show us the measurable value of our
investment of time and money in this game so far.
In Candy Crush Saga, they have a simple map showing a winding path
with stops representing each of the levels to convey a sense of momen-
tum and at the same time to show you where your friends are on this
journey. This approach allows you to measure your progress inde-
pendently of your specific performance on each of the separate stages,
making it more accessible to a broader range of players.
Sometimes however, the player may not use the progression mechanic
you thought you had set up. Many games prominently display the
in-game grind currency within play and reward player success with
increases in that cash. All well and good. However, if you are not careful
this becomes the principle way that players determine their progress.
With games like Plants vs. Zombies 2 I found this an active barrier to
me using that currency to use power-ups like the “pinch,” a mechanic
I found highly enjoyable to use in the level that introduced these
power-ups, but resented using during normal play. Similarly, I found in
games like CSR Racing that this effect reduced my willingness to spend
money in the game as for me the purpose to continue to play was to see
how quickly I could earn that grind money.

Telling Stories
Building on this idea of progression provides a good reason to
think about why we are playing our game. We can’t just have a game
mechanic and be able to deliver a great service. There are great products
that are simply mechanics that we repeat, however building a service
needs more. We need a motivation to continue to play time and again
and this often is driven by the context—often the story or narrative of
the game.
The context is the circulatory system in anatomy of play. It provides
the life and power for the game as well as supplying a sense of purpose
for the repeat use of the core mechanic. In Tetris, as we have said, this is
quite simple and abstract. We have to place the falling pieces carefully so
we can clear them from the screen by completing unbroken horizontal
lines, getting a high score along the way which we want to beat each
time we play. For Tomb Raider this is a lot more detailed, but essen-
tially involves the survival of a young Lara Croft, shipwrecked on an
52 Games as a Service

impossible historic island, facing crazy gangs of cultist and mythical leg-
ends, collecting treasures as she tries to save her largely hapless friends.

Games within Games

Context can also evolve over time, sometimes as part of the narrative
determined by the developer, such as in Deus Ex Human Evolution for
example; do your save the “Thorpe Couple” or not? Do you search to
Hung Hua Hotel to find Mei’s friend Ning, who had been taken captive
“not long ago?” These don’t belong to the core mechanic, instead they
provide their own tier of gameplay as well as the reason for shooting or
sneaking your way round the game.
This opens out an important factor. Creating a context for your game,
especially in a service, often requires us to think about the patterns of
design that also exist at the level of the game mechanic. Here again we
find patterns to resolve. However, rather than creating new mechanics
to resolve these, we look for ways to encourage repeated use of the core
mechanic.
Through this way of thinking your core mechanic can become a loop
or perhaps more correctly a cog cycling forward, triggering the move-
ment of another cog for every complete revolution. This could extend
for many different cogs making it easy to extend the potential game
experience for ever longer periods of time. It’s that thinking that makes
it possible for us to create games that can survive not just hours of play,
but days, weeks, and even years of play. I’m not suggesting that we
shouldn’t introduce variation, but there is value in thinking about game
design as a series of layers of engagement.

What’s in a Game?
The use of narrative or context loops can be controversial and largely
this comes down to the values designers place on narrative or gameplay
elements. Part of this is the choice of language. The background of
the game is part of its narrative, but the flow of play providing context
can itself tell a story and it’s hard not to call that the narrative of play.
However, there is a core issue here too. Is the “story” a designer wants
to tell as important as the game experience the user wants to play? The
response is of course “It’s the gameplay stupid!” However, if we are to
make better more repeatable games we need to ensure that we create
material that supports our context for our repeatable mechanics, that
drives repeat play, and entertains in its own right. Players have to care
 The Anatomy of Play 53

about that story. Indeed I believe they have to consider that the game’s
narrative arc as so compelling that they need to return to the game and
continue to play because they “have” to resolve that story. Furthermore,
I believe that if we are to be a game designer, not just a games player,
that we should have something to say about this artform.

Build it and They Will Come?

This sensation is vital if we want success for a game as a service. Only
a tiny percentage of games succeed in breaking even and even those
games that are downloaded, only a few are played more than once. The
volume of games available on mobiles, tablets, PCs, and indeed consoles
is so large at this point that we cannot assume that players will find our
game, let alone that they will be as keen to keep on playing it as we were
to make it. As designers we have to give players both a “pull” to want
to play the game as well as a “push” to call them back. This is a critical
issue, as if we don’t get players back in the game we won’t have an audi-
ence and more importantly all our efforts to create a great game will be
wasted. Of course if we are using the Free2Play (F2P) model this means
that even if we have downloads we won’t be getting any revenue at all.
This is why F2P games have (in the end) to be better than other games.
It’s a question of survival.

The Gossip Effect

There is a reason why soap operas manage to succeed over decades of
daily shows, especially in urban societies. This TV format replicates the
human desire to be tapped into the social gossip that we would have
experienced in person in the context of village or tribal life. It’s linked to
social survival that we are on top of the latest news and indeed this can
take the form of a game in its own right. Twitter and Facebook fulfill
similar needs in many of us, including those who have no interest in the
plots of the soaps.

Am I Missing Out?
Similarly if we wish to create successful games as a service we need
them to create a sense of activity or change happening inside the world
of that game in order to sustain our players’ attention over extended
periods of time. This means we need a “call to action” that reminds the
player to return. This can be a simple notification just telling the player
to return, however that quickly gets tiring and can actually be a good
54 Games as a Service

reason for many to delete your application. It’s much better to have
something in the gameplay that we desire that calls us back into play.
One of the most overused mechanics to create a reason to return is
the energy mechanic. In this concept, players have a certain amount of
energy they can use in any given playing session. Once this has been
used up, they have to stop playing and wait till their energy has restored
before being able to continue. This model is of course flawed in that we
effectively shut players out of the game, requiring them to pay up or wait
till they have more energy. However it does offer one really important
thing in terms of game design; it created a real sense that the game’s
world was “persistent” and that while the player wasn’t in the game,
there was still something happening in that virtual space. There are
other techniques we can use to replicate this sense of something mean-
ingful happening in the world, including having other players (usually
Facebook friends) come into your space to perform some minigame
action that rewards both players.
Having a persistent world has other advantages. It creates a context
for us to provide regular notifications to the player that relate to changes
in that world that become meaningful to the player, rather than just
sending sales messages. It also allows us to create stories where the play-
ers’ actions can contribute to the state of the game world; indeed they
can feel part of the ongoing creation of that narrative.

Telling Better Stories

The interesting thing about the latest evolution of games design is that
the focus is increasingly on the relationship between the mechanic and
context loops that empower players to experience the story rather than
have us tell them what’s happening. There is some classic advice given
to writers: “show, don’t tell!” I believe this is just as important in game
design. In general, we should avoid exposition and allow players to
discover the experiences for themselves, not be told in neat little popup
text boxes how their character feels or why they should play more.

Beyond the Context Loop

The concept of cogs driving other cogs doesn’t stop with the context
of the game. There are other elements that we have to consider which
sit above both the mechanic and the context. This is the metagame
and provides the last aspect of the anatomy of a game. However, rather
than being a physical analogy to a part of the body, this is more like the
 The Anatomy of Play 55

psychology of the game “animal.” The elements are not directly part of
the game, but they profoundly influence the performance of the other
parts. Indeed the metagame can complexly subvert the intentions of the
designer as well as the general flow of the game.
It can be found in the social context that the player exists in while
they play or from the “mode of use” of the devices that the player uses to
experience it. The metagame can form from the behavior of the super-
fans or even from the physical space surrounding the devices used—
think of the shared space around a tablet or television set. All of these
things remind us that the game doesn’t exist in isolation, an idea we will
return to in later chapters.

Identifying the Elephant

Throughout this chapter we have tried to break down what makes
a game into its component parts. Taken apart, thinking about these
elements allows us to get a handle on not only the challenges of game
design but also how we can change our thinking to come up with
solutions. Thinking of the art-style and game genre as the skin of the
game reminds us how important it is for players to see the best of our
game and that these concepts allow players to make sense of the shape
of the game. Looking at the core mechanic as the bones of the game
reminds us that there are “physical” principles at play that have to be
highly tuned to support the playing experience. Thinking of success
and failure as the muscles is more abstract and perhaps not the best
analogy, however I like this way of thinking because it reminds me of
what drives the movement of the bones of the game and that, over time,
these motivations will tire. That brings us back to the rewards “nervous
system,” which provides the stimulus and the context, which supplies
the “oxygen” to continue.
However, none of these elements alone are the game. Writing this
chapter is like the story of the blind men trying to describe an elephant
for the first time, where each one only gets to feel a single part.11 It’s only
by pulling these elements together that we truly understand what our
game looks like.

Notes
1 Although this is the hypothesis presented by Rafe Koster in A Theory of Fun, not everyone
agrees that it’s useful to reduce games to just patterns. However, I think it’s a useful place
to start so please bear with me.
Base
56 Align Missmatch
Games as a Service B

2 There are modern rules for Senet that can be found online (http://legacy.mos.org/quest/
pdf/senet.pdf), which are based on various tomb paintings and the discovery of playing
boxes in various burials.
3 Ludo is based on Pachisi, a game from India around the sixth century, other variations
include Sorry! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludo_(board_game).
4 The idea that Tetris has a limited narrative is highly controversial. For me the realization
that it has an abstract narrative came to me after a long argument with Nick Ryan and
Simon Brislin (PlayStation Home), after a great lecture by Richard Bartle at GDC Online
in Austin in 2010 (www.gdcvault.com/play/1013804/MUD-Messrs-Bartle-and-Trubshaw).
The progression of colors and shapes to complete rows before our inevitable demise is
a form of narrative that for me fairly accurately depicts the concept of mutually assured
destruction of the late Cold War, not bad considering that the game’s license was
allegedly owned by the KGB. For more detailed thought on the argument about
the narrative qualities of Tetris check out this article from Jack Post, www.ec-aiss.it/
monografici/5_computer_games/3_post.pdf.
5 There is an argument that Heavy Rain isn’t really a game, but is instead is a really advanced
form of storytelling; either way its use of narrative flow warrants consideration.
6 I’ve never really understood where a rat might conceivably keep gold or some of the
other curious winnings we find when we loot them.
7 American psychologist/behaviorist B.F. Skinner is widely considered to be one of the most
influential psychologists of the twentieth century and invented the Operant Conditioning
Chamber, known as the “Skinner Box.” Check out www.simplypsychology.org/operant-
conditioning.html.
8 There is a great piece on Penny Arcade describing the Skinner effect and making the case
against its overuse. I think this underestimates the potential positive use of the technique,
however the underlying message is sensible, http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/
episode/the-skinner-box.
9 Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky talked about the influence of loss aversion on the
decision making process in their 1994 work Choices, Values, Frames, http://dirkberge
mann.commons.yale.edu/files/kahnemann-1984-choices-values-frames.pdf. However,
it’s also important to note that in recent years the ideas of loss aversion have themselves
been questioned. See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1578847.
10 I talk a lot about using psychological patterns in game design, such as the Skinner Box
or loss aversion. This isn’t a cynical thing. It’s a realization that we need to understand
human motivations. Actually, I think it’s one of the most amazing things about playing
games. We can explore the whole of the human experience and provide a safe way to
“practice” our responses. Ignoring how players respond to stimulus would simply impair
our ability to make better games.
11 The story of the blind men and the elephant has appeared in many forms but originates
from the Indian subcontinent, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant.
Base Align Missmatch What is the Mechanic? 57

Exercise 3: What is the Mechanic?

In Chapter 3 we talked about breaking down the anatomy of a game and
in particular about how we develop a language of play from the game
mechanics. In this exercise we will explore the concept you developed
in Exercise 1 and try to define how the core mechanic will function.
This means we need to consider whether you are planning to create a
game of emergence or progression, or some kind of hybrid. We need to
understand the methods of interaction, what generates the challenges,
and how we provide the feedback in terms of success or failure.
While you undertake this exercise I strongly recommend that you
take time away from your PC and get your hands on paper, pencils, dice,
counters, in fact any material that will help you explore the thought pro-
cess of your game. Paper prototyping is incredibly useful and especially
where take your physical materials (even if they are just scraps of torn
paper) and try to explain the game to someone else.
Additionally, remember the target and secondary players you defined
in Exercise 2. It remains important to ask yourself how this game
mechanic will sustain their interest. How would you answer them if
they ask “so what?” to every part of the mechanic design?

Summarize the core loop

of your game mechanic:
Start stage:
Challenge stage:
Resolution stage:
Reward stage:
Why is this repeatable?
58 Games as a Service

How will you realize your game in

terms of:
Target device:
Principle control mechanism:
Avatar or other focus:
Type of camera used:
2D/3D or variant:
Art style:
Measure of progress:
Success criteria:
Rewards:
Consequence of failure:
Reasons to repeat:

WORKED EXAMPLE:

Summarize the core loop of Anthony has to solve a series of missions through
your game mechanic: the completion of memory matching minigames.
The patterns become increasingly complicated
to complete as Anthony increases in level (and
becomes more confused).
Start stage: Anthony is informed of a mission, e.g., his child
hasn’t gone to school or a burglary has gone wrong
and he has to cover up the evidence.
Challenge stage: Anthony has to search the location of the incident
and collect items for the memory matching game
in order to recreate the circumstances, without
being discovered by roaming “enemies.”
Resolution stage: Anthony locates the memory matching objects
that relate to the nature of the current mission and
places them in the correct order (as required by the
specific minigame) in his “brain.” There will be
many different copies of the same objects that he
has to match, but the number reduces each time
the player returns to the same location. He can
continue to add additional matches as long as he
has available “brain slots,” but this increases the
time taken and the battery life used to follow the
player-defined paths.

(Continued)
 What is the Mechanic? 59

Reward stage: Upon completion Anthony is given a reward,

typically a power-up or resource that can be used
to extend the playing experience and is related
to the nature of the task and to the nature of the
opposition. Occasionally, he will get a match that
relates to his lost girlfriend, helping complete his
progression to the next tier of the game.
Why is this repeatable? Each time Anthony returns to a level, the memory
matching variations will have increased and he
will have less capacity in his “brain” making it
harder to resolve the puzzles.

How will you realize your Finding Anthony is a mobile game featuring a
game in terms of: cyborg mafia boss, played out on fake 3D room
layout (2D with perspective). The player controls
Target device: their avatar (Anthony) by drawing a path around
Principle control this “room” and Anthony will make his way using
mechanism: the shortest path. When he is close enough to hidden
tiles, the player can click on an object to see if there
Avatar or other focus: is a tile and what memory image it holds. These
tiles will have been laid throughout the space, some
Type of camera used: more obviously than others. In the room may be
2D/3D or variant: other enemies who have to be avoided, something that
becomes challenging if they cross the path that you
Art style: have drawn for Anthony. Bonus points are given for
Measure of progress: each successful match you place in Anthony’s “brain
slots” as well as for the length of paths drawn by the
Success criteria: player (provided the player doesn’t use up all of the
allocated battery life to draw them) as well as the
Rewards: time of play and the fewest number of missed clicks.
Consequence of failure: Walking into enemies reduces the number of points
you have gained so far and if this reaches zero the
Reasons to repeat: game “fails.”The art style should be a comic variant
of a dark near-future science fiction world. The
“brain slots” used in play will use ideas of electronic
memory failures, so we need not get too dark and
personal, but still be able to use the narrative and
playing mechanics to ask questions about living
with mental illness.
Chapter 4
Player Lifecycle
62 Games as a Service

Breathe Life into Your Games

In the last chapter I used the analogy of anatomy to describe the
component parts of a game. That discussion hopefully helps us think of
games experiences as living things and I believe as designers it’s our job
to breathe life into play. In this chapter I want us to take this analogy
further and make the hypothesis that, for the player, their game will go
through a lifecycle and that understanding this lifecycle is a defining
skill that separates successful games as a service design from box-products.
Lifetime value is critical to success and essentially this comes down to
sustaining the relationship between the game and the player over an
extended time. That means that it is not good enough that a game have
sufficient material to play in principle for the lifetime of the player, it has
to adapt that content to the player’s changing needs as their experience
and commitment evolves.

Product Lifecycle 101

Considering games as a service also allows us to look at production as a
journey. This means that we can spread the risk and production over an
extended time period, initially releasing only sufficient functionality and
content to satisfy the initial players.
But to begin to do that we have to know if there are any ways to pre-
dict the lifecycle of a game or its players. Fortunately, this is an area that
has been extensively researched—the marketing discipline of product
management.
The initial stage of any product or service begins with the concept,
where we imagine the possibilities and identify customer needs that we
can satisfy. There will follow a period of research and development where
we test and realize the goods for our intended audience. Next is the
“market introduction” stage. This might involve many stages from build-
ing the initial hype to creating anticipation to attract the early adopters.
Assuming that process is successful the product will reach the “growth”
stage. This generally involves broadening the brand appeal, attracting a
wider more mass-market audience. Prolonging the growth stage requires
ongoing innovation and the identification of new audiences. In time,
however, all growth stages will come to an end as products reach the
point of “maturity,” where the product is established and indeed where
further innovation becomes more difficult, perhaps even cannibalistic
(i.e., where new adaptations compete with your own core product).
 Player Lifecycle 63

Figure 4.1 A comparison of product lifecycle, technology adoption, and player

lifecycle.

Product Extensions
Sustaining the maturity stage is vital to the lifetime profitability
of your product. Usually this needs constant vigilance and often
involves the creation of product extensions, variations of the product
designed to stimulate new interest from its users, as well as to attract
any laggard users who have yet to try the product. These product
extensions leverage the core product or perhaps the overarching
brand and can range from an “improved flavor” to “family sized”
packaging, indeed perhaps even introducing new products entirely
leveraging the brand’s values, such as when Dove, a moisturizer
brand, introduced an antiperspirant.1 Almost inevitably, even with
the introduction of product extensions, product will eventually reach
the “decline” stage. During this period, only a small proportion of
total users can be retained, but if managed well and assuming that the
costs to sustain the product are minimal, it is possible to enjoy a great
deal of profit out of the long-tail decline of any product. If the decline
stage is left unmanaged or allowed to continue beyond the viable
lifetime, this can be costly.
64 Games as a Service

Crossing the Chasm

This is a fairly simple way to look at product lifecycle; to go a little
deeper we can look at Geoffrey Moore and his 1991 classic Crossing the
Chasm.2 This seminal work looked at the social phenomena of “diffu-
sion of innovations,” which describes the rate that ideas move through
societies and, in particular, considers the role of advocates. Moore used
this concept to consider the different behavior responses of individuals
at different stages of the development of a technology-based product or
service. He compared the lifecycle from market introduction to decline
against the typical audiences found at each of these stages of
adoption.

Hardcore Gamers Are Visionaries

The argument can be summarized by considering that during the
market introduction phase we see an audience of visionary “early
adopters.” These are individuals who can instinctively understand the
value of your good/service. These users match well in principle to our
classic understanding of an “avid hardcore gamer” fan base. These
users already appreciate the value of playing a game and who find
it easier to suspend disbelief in order to play your game. Provided
of course the game reaches a minimum standard they will “put up”
with some behaviors that more mainstream users might reject. For
example, a steep learning curve or frustrating tutorial might be more
readily forgiven by hardcore players compared to more casual-minded
players.

Casual Gamers Need Permission to Play

As we move from the market introduction phase and our early adopters,
we start looking at the early maturity of the product/brand. It is this
phase where we see a new kind of user known as the “early majority,”
who are made up of more pragmatic, often less committed users but
who represent the largest revenue opportunity. Like our casual games
players, these individuals need more handholding and support than the
visionary early adopters (or hardcore gamers). Quite often these early
majority users need us to provide safe, clear explanations of why they
should change their current behavior and replace that with our prod-
uct or service. In particular with luxury or entertainment services, like
games, this means that they need to have some kind of permission to
purchase or play. I use this idea of permission to explain the emotional
 Player Lifecycle 65

difference in the decision-making process for mass-market users. They

don’t have to have a game. They choose to play a game where we have
sufficient control over our other needs or (importantly) wish to escape
from those other needs. This idea of “permission” for me came out of a
research project we commissioned while I was working 3UK3 running
their mobile games portal. A survey inspired by my experience of talking
to some of the earliest female only Quake clans back when I had been
working at Wireplay.4 This research looked at the adoption of games
by female gamers and concluded that female gamers tended to select
game-playing only after they had completed other activities that they felt
they “had to complete.” That they needed to give themselves “permission
to play” and, interestingly, the genre of the game was less important than
the “social context.” In other words, if they could socialize with others
during play, this would greatly increase the likelihood of choosing to play.
All of this seems pretty obvious in hindsight, now that we have seen the
rise of social games and percentage of female players using those games.
However, there was something even more interesting in the survey. Male
non-gamers showed almost exactly the same responses as female players.

From Product Lifecycle to Player Lifecycle

The lesson of this is that there is a significant gap, or chasm, between
these early adopters and early majority in terms of their needs and
ability to accept your product/service. In games, at least, this appears to
relate to whether they are willing to give themselves ‘Permission to Play’.
That “chasm” is shown on the lifecycle curves as a slice cut out of the
normal distribution curve. If we want our products/services to be
successful we have to cross that chasm.
When you are running services another factor becomes clear. It’s
not just the services that experience a lifecycle. If you take the data of
activity from players themselves and compare them from the date they
started, we generally see a comparison which shows that players them-
selves have a lifecycle and this cyclical behavior also reflects the levels of
engagement of those players.
The process for players starts before they are aware of the game itself.
This is the discovery stage and the process of how the player engages
with the game is crucial. There are many techniques we can use to
attract the attention of the player, from advertising to encouraging
friends to show their favorite games to each other. During this process
we are setting expectations. We need to create a desire to play and create
conditions that make it as easy as possible for that potential player to
66 Games as a Service

Figure 4.2 The chasm found in product lifecycle, technology adoption, and player
lifecycle.

give themselves permission to invest their time and (hopefully) money.

Success is measured by the proportion of players we manage to convert
to not only installing the game, but also then running it. The limita-
tions of some games promotions, particularly incentivized download, is
that—unless handled well—these can trigger downloads motivated only
by the reward, where the downloaded app is then immediately ignored
or deleted. Our success in the download phase is measured by the num-
ber of users who run the application.

Time to Learn in a Safe Place

The next stage is the learning stage. This is where the player has first
downloaded the app and is starting to learn about where, or whether,
this game fits into their lifecycle. They are also learning about the flow
of the game monetization and whether they can see the value in playing
on, as well as how much they might wish to spend. This stage is critical
and delicate, especially with the freemium model. At least with a paid-
for game we have the motivation to get through the tutorial in order to
get to the game experience we paid for. However, freemium games have
 Player Lifecycle 67

no such invested value or utility to maximize. This means we have no

reason to keep with that game other than our curiosity and expectations
of entertainment. Anything that doesn’t support the enjoyment of the
player or their expectation of delight will inhibit their engagement. We
have very short time to get them into playing and shouldn’t waste that
by building in levels of unnecessary menu systems, tutorials or Quick-
Time videos. If we don’t delight these players the chances are that they
will look elsewhere for something to entertain them. This is just the start
of the learning process and in later chapters we will go into more detail
on how we can evolve the player engagement up to the point where we
have built sufficient trust so that they are willing to make the transition
to the next stage, “engaging.” The learning process is an important stage
if we are to convert a player to become a repeat player or repeat payer;
just like with Moore’s “chasm” we have to help the learning player evolve
to the point where they treat our game as part of their lifestyle.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

Repetition is vital to building habit and commitment to our game. If we
can’t create that repetition, we won’t achieve the potential lifetime value
which is so vital to the success of games as a service. Repetition is only
the start of course as during the “engaging” stage we also want to focus
on converting players to start spending money on our game. Only if we
have demonstrated the value of investing time into the experience of
our game will we be able to provide the conditions where they will be
willing to pay. We actively want players to feel committed to continue
to play as long and as regularly as they feel the game entertains them
before we really start to consider asking them to pay. Some developers
have been successful in pushing for earlier revenue, however that is
often at the expense of the lifetime value. The better alternative is to
realize that it is during this “engaging” stage that our players are most
connected with our content. They have taken our game into their life-
style and will happily repeat that experience over their playing lifetime.
They already trust and understand the experience and will return our
investment with their time and/or money.

Money For Nothing

One of the hardest things to accept about the Free2Play (F2P) model is
that the vast majority of players will never pay. This is difficult for many
people to understand. The problem largely comes down to the fact that
68 Games as a Service

most us assume that the effort we put in has a direct value. Just because
we put hundreds of hours into the creation of a product doesn’t mean our
product is “worth” thousands of pounds to the buyer. The product is only
worth what the buyer is willing to pay. This can work in our favor too.
A product that is cheap to produce but that everyone wants will be highly
profitable. I don’t want to go too far into the talk of monetization now,
that will be covered later in the book. However, it’s important to think of
“engaging” as the most valuable life-stage, even though that’s not just in
terms of direct cash. Committed regular non-payers are as important to
the success of any game as the highest-spending users. Without them, we
don’t create the social context that makes it worthwhile for the high spend-
ers to pay for our game. Additionally, the longer we retain these players the
greater the opportunity we will have to eventually convert them.

It Takes 8–12 Days to Engage

During my time at Papaya Mobile we looked at the performance of the
best monetizing social mobile games and saw that average a typi-
cal high-spending, regularly repeat-playing, “whale” user (which we
defined as someone who spent $100+ each month for at least three
months) didn’t start spending until after 8–12 days had passed. When
you look at the data for your game, can you predict which of your new
players are going to become these high spenders? If we can’t engage
players for this length of time, or don’t offer enough content, then we
are probably missing a highly valuable audience. It’s vital to understand
and sustain all the different cohorts (or segments) of your audience and
look for the best way to maximize their engagement stage. Freeloader
players in particular provide a hugely valuable role in the ongoing dis-
covery of your game as they often share their playing experiences with
their friends in person and through social media. Finally, freeloaders
who have gone past the learning stages of the game are also generally
quite comfortable to see advertising within the game—assuming its
placement is appropriate. In particular, they may even readily seek out
opt-in incentivized advertising, if available, in order to gain in-game
currency in order to further sustain their enjoyment of our game. This
is a direct revenue source, but more importantly it extends the retention
of that player and teaches them to use the in-game currency earned
to learn how to value spending money. Making a great game is about
engagement not just monetization, and that also brings acquisition and
retention.
 Player Lifecycle 69

Mature Content
The earning stage, like the maturing stage of product lifecycle, is essen-
tial to the lifetime profitability of any game. Our objective is to sustain
the players in this stage for as long as possible and this takes a great deal
of effort and development. We need to consider events and activities,
as well as the perpetual addition of new content and appropriate new
features. Even simple download games feel “dead” if the app hasn’t been
updated in several weeks, services need to feel alive every day—ideally
more frequently. At 3UK we discovered that the average frequency
of return to the game store was directly related to how frequently we
updated the site. In the end we managed to find a way to update the
front page every four hours, significantly increasing our sales. The same
affect can be seen in games as services.

Plan for Change

Obviously, with the technical constraints as well as the various plat-
form processes, it’s not practical to create a pipeline of new activity
to constantly update the experience with new material; that would be
both costly and a huge resource commitment. However, it is possible to
make the game feel like it constantly changes with a few simple pre-
programmed changes. In order to build and reinforce habits, it’s useful
to consider how you can create regular predictable changes that build
delight and then complement these with apparently random moments
of irregular rewards, ideally within the context of the game narrative.

All Things Come to an End

However, this won’t continue forever. In time players will leave the
service, we tend to call this “churning.” Managing churning users is just
as important as any other part of the lifecycle. We want the best possible
outcome for our players, not least as we need to be able to plan our
resource commitments and still be able to sustain any remaining players
as long as practical. Additionally, if players are content with their expe-
rience playing our games, we have a greater chance to bring them back
to play other games we make, perhaps even creating a level of anticipa-
tion that would otherwise be expensive to reproduce. Also if we manage
their departure, we have more chance to turn this into an opportunity
for additional revenue through advertising or, better still, convert this
into new users through cross-promotion. Ideally, churning players will
Base
70 Align Missmatch
Games as a Service B

continue to recommend our game to their friends. If on the other hand

we leave players feeling exploited or that we have squeezed every penny
out of them they will tell other people about their bad experience. That
negative feedback is poisonous (assuming we want to have a long career
making games) and players are vastly more inclined to tell people of a
bad experience rather than a good experience. This is essentially the
same effect that comes from relying too heavily on “Skinner Box”-style
techniques; players feel exploited if they feel they continued playing
longer than was “good” for them.

The Soul of a Service

Thinking of a game as an organism means we have to take into account
the different life stages. These aren’t just convenient distinctions to help
us think about the strategy of development but also help us in terms
of thinking about the evolution of the type of entertainment that those
players want to experience over time. It allows us to think of the game as
a living, evolving thing that needs sustainable conditions if it is going to
survive and thrive. Using the perspective of the player lifecycle from dis-
covering, learning, engaging and churning helps us to apply a different
mindset to each stage of the player’s experience. It requires us to accept
that a player’s needs will change over time as their relationship with the
game changes and that we have to adjust our approach if we wish to
retain them as their engagement evolves. These are factors that we need
to take into account not only in the design of the ongoing support of
the game, but also in terms of the design of the playing experience itself;
especially in terms of the context and metagame aspects of game design.
More than that as we launch our game we will find that it will have
to adapt to its surroundings and we will see it change as we adjust the
parameters, hone the mechanics, reward systems, and success criteria.
Watching the player lifecycle allows us to evolve the game in line with
the needs of our players. It’s the soul5 of games as a service.

Notes
1 Technically the introduction of all new products using the same brand is a “brand
extension” or “line extension.” If you want to investigate this further, it’s worth checking
out works such as Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand
Equity by K.L. Keller.
2 Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High Tech Products To Main-
stream Customers was initially released in 1991 and remains one of the most influential
Base Align Missmatch Player Lifecycle 71

studies on entrepreneurial marketing. It is one of the few marketing principles I have

continually relied on throughout my marketing career, not just in games.
3 3UK is shorthand for the UK Mobile Phone Operator Three, part of the Hutchison
Whampoa group. I was responsible for the games offering there between 2001 and 2006.
There were a lot of firsts which we were able to do during my time there from the first
mobile in-app purchase solution (Rent Games), first 3G realtime multiplayer games
(a FPS called Lock’n’Load) as well as the first Video game reviews channel on mobile.
4 Wireplay was an online gaming service using dial-up modem based connectivity. The
project led by Colin Duff y and Richard Warren came out of British Telecom’s experiments
with video on-demand based in Milton Keynes in the UK. It missed being the world’s first
such service by just two weeks when MPlayer launched in the USA.
5 As an atheist it’s hard to come up with a good definition of a soul, but for me it’s a way of
looking at a thing as a whole, rather than just the sum of its parts. I use it here because
it allows me to propose a difference between the lifecycle and the metagame. The meta-
game allows us to consider the role of the environment from within the context of the
experience, hence my analogy with the psychology of the game. The lifecycle is a different
kind of design influence. It’s about the players’ engagement and how the relationship
evolves over time.
Base
72 Align Missmatch
Games as a Service B

Exercise 4: What is the

Context Loop?
Following on from Exercise 3, where we looked at the mechanic loop,
in this exercise we are going to focus on the context loop. This allows us
to think about how we are going to sustain our audience over the longer
term and how we give them purpose and progression. To do this well we
should try to understand the changing needs of the player and to find
ways to encourage them to become even deeper involved with the game
experience. The purpose of the context loop is to sustain the life of the
game over time, creating reasons for the player to continue to want to
return and engage. Ideally we will create a positive form of the “Crack-
Berry” effect, where players feel that they might be missing out when
they aren’t playing the game (for more on this, see Chapter 5).
To help us with this process let’s use a cut-down version of the hero’s
journey1 as a tool to model the essential aspects of a narrative model.
The first stage is the “call to adventure.” In this situation it’s about how
we draw the player into our game and how we explain the mechanics
of play and excite them about the possibilities of the game. There is an
argument that at each new tier of the game we should introduce new
playing methods, renewing the call and reinvigorating the player.
The next stage is the “awareness of challenge.” In our case this is about
how we introduce the player to new variations and increasing complex-
ity. This is still a handholding process and may include the support of a
“mentor” figure if that proves useful. This process doesn’t have to lead
the player by the nose with a step-by-step path, we can use alternative
missions, side quests, even a complete narrative sandbox to play in. But
we still want a sense of purpose and progression.
After that the progression commences in earnest and we have a series
of “challenges and improvements,” which allow us to trace the player’s
progression and the rate at which they approach the “boss level.” That
approach should be designed to draw the player ever closer to that
larger goal with the knowledge that it will be truly challenging, but with
the greatest reward. We need to understand whether our context loop
approach will directly signpost the boss level, or if instead we build up
the suspense and simply foreshadow the inevitable showdown. The term
“boss” is intentionally derivative, there may be no traditional enemies
or bosses to beat, indeed the idea of a “level” might have no direct
Base Align Missmatch What is the Context Loop? 73

relevance, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need narrative tension and
you should consider this whatever the equivalent for your game. The
final stage is the “transformation” of your character, which takes them
up to the next tier of engagement. There may be new goals, new abilities
and new narrative arcs to follow, but we should relish the moment of
triumph after the boss level before moving onto the next step in the
narrative.
As I continue to stress it’s vital that we consider the replayability2 of
your game. I don’t mean just is it possible to repeatable the experience.
I choose to define that term in a way where I mean that each return to
the experience feels like a new game session. Repetition is dull and life-
less, replay value brings something fresh each time the game is played.

Summarize the context loop of

your game mechanic:

Call to adventure:

Awareness of challenge:

Challenges and improvements:

Boss level:

Transformation:

Why is this replayable?

Mapping out the stages is just the start of course and we have to think
about how we will in practice deliver our context loops.

How will you realize your context loop

in terms of:

Sense of purpose:

Reasons to return:

Measurable progression:

Narrative arc:

Alternative paths:

Graphical representation:

Cogs within cogs:

Why am I missing out?

74 Games as a Service

WORKED EXAMPLE:

Summarize the context loop of Anthony as the boss for his family has to
your game mechanic: build his reputation in the community and
ensure that his subordinate Capos are doing
the same. However, his Capos are asserting
their own authority and one by one, region
by region he has to regain his control over
each part of the city.At the same time he is
distracted by different family members
calling on his time and resources to resolve
more trivial family matters.Anthony has
to keep earning “happiness” and “status”
otherwise for each day that passes his family
become more difficult and his status is
diminished (locking him out from other
districts).
Call to adventure: Anthony has been in a car crash where
he lost consciousness. He has been treated
for his obvious injuries, but has lost his
memory and has no information about why
he lost consciousness. There is an image of
a missing girlfriend in his mind, which he
can’t tie down or shake.
Awareness of challenge: As Anthony returns to work he has a series of
missions that allow us to demonstrate to the
player the various ways he can play the game
and how these contribute to his control of the
city as well as how “happy” his family life is.
Challenges and improvements: Once Anthony has played through the core
areas of the central city district, he start
getting an increasing number of alerts
for missions all around the district. Some
of these will foreshadow a narrative boss
challenge to his authority in that district. The
challenge might relate to his family, to the
family or the civil authorities. New missions
will continue to appear on the district map
as fast as they are resolved until Anthony
defeats the challenge for that district.
Boss level: The boss level will present a much more
significant challenge than usual levels and
may indeed consist of multiple rounds as
well as different variation of play to resolve.
Often these boss levels will introduce a new
power-up that can be used to assist the player
compete against the boss.

(Continued)
 What is the Context Loop? 75

Transformation: As Anthony advances he start to lose “brain”

slots, which makes it harder to get bonus
scores by exceeding the number of matches
needed to complete the mechanic. However,
these “lost” slots can be filled instead with
the “power-ups” they get as a reward during
play, but making them permanent (at
least till they are removed—which destroys
them). The power-ups can be collected and
multiple duplicate cards sacrificed to obtain
more powerful boosts (which can of course be
purchased in booster packs).
Why is this replayable? Defeating the boss challenge for each district
not only unlocks the next neighboring
districts but it also unlocks a clue to the
mystery surrounding the missing girlfriend;
there will usually be 3–4 clues to unlock
the next part of her story, but these have to
be pieced together by the player like a jigsaw
puzzle.

How will you realize your context The context loops for Finding Anthony is
loop in terms of: a series of maps showing locations related
to potential crimes, family incidents and
Sense of purpose: civil authority. Each accessibly location
Reasons to return: will have a ticking clock showing how
much time remains for Anthony to resolve
Measurable progression: the problem and how much “happiness”
Narrative arc: or “status” he will obtain if he completes
that puzzle in time. Some puzzles will pop
Alternative paths: up with special daily bonuses including
unique daily missions with unique
Graphical representation: variations of play. These elements all
Cogs within cogs: create reasons to return or miss out on an
opportunity to reach your score faster.
Why am I missing out?
The art style of the game is a kind of
retro science fiction; slightly dark with
Blade Runner-like qualities and the maps
and location interiors will reflect that.
Anthony gets to see how much “happiness”
and “status” he has, which measures his
progression and how much he needs in order
to access the boss challenge.

(Continued)
76 Games as a Service

The context model is scalable for each new

district although there would be limits to
the scale of the world based on the number
of “brain slots” and the narrative arc for the
“missing girlfriend.”
Once a district has been completed, there
will still be missions you can return to
in order to ensure that you maintain the
“happiness” and “status” in that district—
like maintaining the spinning plates.

Notes
1 The hero’s journey is a tool widely used by writers as a template for the progression of
their characters through their stories. It’s a deceit on the principle of the monomyth, the
idea that all heroic stories are essentially variations of the same story, http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Monomyth.
2 Not everyone likes the word “replayability,” http://iam.benabraham.net/2010/09/
replayability-is-not-a-word.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 5
The Rhythm of Play
80 Games as a Service

Finding our Rhythm

In the last chapter we tried to identify the soul of games as a service
and we postulated that the player lifecycle helps us to differentiate
this approach to games design. The next question is to find a practical
application of this thinking and to see how this can help us provide a
framework to improve our designs.
The problem is that we can only really understand the specific details
of the player lifecycle for our game if we stand back and look historically
(and dispassionately) across the collective behavior of our players. That’s
not particularly useful as long as the game remains actively played and,
worse still, the very act of analyzing requires us to change our attention
from the detail that makes up the player experience, instead looking to
the higher level patterns of flow through the game.

Focus on What Matters

A more practical approach is to look for the transitional phases such as
the move from discovering to learning that is found in the data from
access to our page on the app store to the initial download and in the
first moments of play. Then we can look at the transition from learning
to engaging, where we see how the player goes from playing the precar-
ious first time (perhaps even the first few times) to the point where they
are playing regularly and ideally multiple times per day (depending on
the device they are using to play). As part of this stage we can look at
the process by which players convert from playing to paying. I’ll come
back to that in the last few chapters of the book. Finally, I want to con-
sider the end-game, where the play moves from engaging to churning.
How they leave the game as positively as possible matters if we want
to sustain our brand and be able to re-engage that player for different
games.

The Player’s Journey

In these places we find patterns of behavior that help those players move
more easily onto their next stage. When we look through the player’s
journey, particularly the first-time user experience, it seems to me that
these have a rhythm that we can build on. There seems to be a series of
cycles that repeat and layer upon each other to create a composite expe-
rience, ideally one that reinforces habitual play and deeper enjoyment of
the game. I like to call these habit-forming patterns the “rhythm of play.”
 The Rhythm of Play 81

The rhythm has to start quickly if the player is going to get a chance
to become entranced by your game. There is a tentative delicate moment
that begins at the first point the player encounters the game. The name
of your game has to quickly define their expectations about the game
that, combined with the icon you use, has to be instantly identifiable.
These two simple things have to be compelling and memorable, not just
to download the game, but to ensure that it will be clicked a second and
third time once it has been downloaded. This isn’t an easy task when
there you have only 11 characters and a 57 × 57 pixel icon (114 × 114 on
HD devices), especially given that there are over 900,000 existing varia-
tions. We have to think of reasons for players to want to press that icon
the first time; of course much of the reason they will press it time and
again will come down to the game itself.

First Impressions
The first time the player launches the game is a kind of exploration
where everything is new. Every click, every splash screen image, every
inconsistency compared to their expectations will jar and risk them
going off and playing something else instead. Unlike a premium game,
players have not spent any money yet. They have no investment or
“utility to maximize” in the game at this point, just the effort they have
so far taken and the anticipation they have for our game. Any undue
effort they have to go through undermines even that limited utility and
you risk them getting so frustrated that they don’t give your game a
fair shot.
This is the equivalent of the first date. You can’t expect them to make
a commitment at this point. Don’t ask them to change their Facebook
status or otherwise register until you have at least taken them out to
dinner . . . I mean, until you have made sure that they enjoy the game.
There is no clear evidence over how long is too long. Personally I like
to say that we have about six seconds to grab a player’s attention or we
lose them. This isn’t particularly scientific, however, it does reflects the
kind of design guidelines used when you create direct mail or newspa-
per headlines. Headline writers know the importance of catching atten-
tion and drawing people in and we have to learn to do similar thing
with the way we create our user interfaces. Ideally players should not be
faced with choices they don’t yet understand or which present dilem-
mas, like having to play with other real people before they understand
the rules of the game. We need the transition from launching the app to
82 Games as a Service

starting to play as quickly and as comfortably as possible if we want to

build up retention rapidly.

Measuring Your Heartbeat

Getting players started is just the opening bars of our rhythm of play,
but allows us to introduce them to the principle underlying beat. The
first play needs to introduce them to the core repeatable mechanic of
play, the heartbeat of play if you like. We start with an objective, act
upon it, and gain a reward; this is a pattern we then repeat throughout
the game. There are alternative methods than just loops, for example the
hand-crafted one-time-only puzzles used in classical adventure games.
However, the loop is particularly effective for freemium as its repetitive
nature helps create positive reinforcement in terms of play.

This Isn’t About Addiction

We mentioned the idea of Skinner Boxes and operant conditioning
in Chapter 3, which looks at the idea of creating schedules of rein-
forcement of behavior. This type of thinking while hugely useful is
also quite controversial and makes some people think that Free2Play
design can become manipulative. I largely disagree not least as there
is firstly an assumption that “entertainment” has the same compulsive
effect as addictive factors such as food, sex, money, and drugs—all of
which affect the lower level “need states.”1 There is the suggestion that
higher need states like entertainment don’t (by and large) have a limit
by which we can satisfy our appetite, unlike our consumption of food
for example. However, as we also discussed in that chapter, the form of
entertainment we are offering through pattern-matching does indeed
tire over time. If we know how to solve the pattern so well we can do it
subconsciously then we stop getting the same enjoyment. Because of
this I disagree that we are attempting to create some kind of a Pavlovian
response2 in the same way that ringing a bell starts a dog salivating. But
that doesn’t mean we don’t want to recognize the way humans react
to conditions that encourage the player to want to make our game a
regular hobby.

The First Minute

The early pattern of play for games as a service is often most suc-
cessful when featuring short repeated plays through the mechanic
itself. This lets the player quickly get feedback on their performance
and allows them to learn and get the positive payoff from their
 The Rhythm of Play 83

initial success. That doesn’t mean we can’t have longer loops of play
that may themselves repeat several times in order to resolve a larger
section of the game narrative. For example, I may have to battle many
waves of enemies or plant and harvest several items before I complete
the objective needed to move to the next stage of play. However, if we
are going to respond to the needs of the “learning” user then we need
to appreciate the benefits of having an immediate sense of meaningful
reward, directly attributed to their actions, within the first minute or
so of playing. This ability to complete actions within short periods is
particularly important with mobile device games. We commonly use
our phones in circumstances where we are at risk of being interrupted.
If we can’t have satisfying bursts of entertainment, or if our expectations
are that the playing cycle will take too long to get into, this will limit the
audience accessing our game. Although it might seem less relevant for
tablet devices, which are less prone to interruption, or consoles, where
we deliberately set aside hours to indulge, these short loop cycles are
still valid as they provide a limit to the duration of intense focus needed
to compete each puzzle or obstacle before moving on to the next. Oth-
erwise it can get to be a bit much for some players. We all need save-
points or moments when we can relax a little in the game.

Building on Success
Once we have succeeded in giving the player a positive sense of success
with their first play through our game loop, we have to build on that to
progress. We need to move on to the second or third cycle of play, build-
ing on that initial engagement and foreshadowing the delights that the
player can enjoy if they continue to play.
Although these loops are easy to repeat in principle, if we don’t adjust
them over time they can quickly become boring if we can consistently
solve them. We need these puzzles or loops to evolve as the player
becomes more familiar with the style of play. This typically means we
introduce a sense of escalating challenge that builds on each subsequent
loop, adding either greater difficulty or some other sense of progres-
sion. This can include the use of stronger opponents, new level designs,
greater complexity, or new characters to encounter.

Making Progress
However, we should not just focus on the increase in the resistance of
the mechanic to the player’s increase in understanding; we also need to
present a sense of advancement or progression to the player. This often
84 Games as a Service

takes the form of introducing new tactical options, the use of new weap-
ons or moves that allow them to solve different puzzles, or perhaps just
introduces choices that add dilemma to the outcome. This is particularly
effective if the progression of the player introduces ambiguity into the
strategy for play, such as choosing where to spend any experience points
you gain.

Don’t Be Greedy
The important thing is that we don’t have to rush into making money
out of our players. Indeed it could be counterproductive to try to
monetize the wrong things too early. We need to build up confidence in
the game and a desire to continue playing as a lifestyle choice, a hobby.
This kind of habitual behavior only comes from players returning to
the game repeatedly and feeling that they can both trust the service and
see that value of spending money in that service. We can’t afford to be
discordant or otherwise disrupt the rhythm of play. Instead we have to
foreshadow reasons why buying goods in the future would be a good
investment in the game the players are enjoying.
Playing the core loop several times in the first playing session is
important in order to ensure that the player fully understands how
to play the game and so we know that they find it suitably enjoyable.
However, if we want to build a sustainable game as a service, this is just
the first step forward. The next challenge is to find a way to keep players
coming back to the app time and again. This is not a task to be underes-
timated. This is why we need a rhythm of play to create cycles that effec-
tively demand the player restart our app again and again. Just having a
“nice” game isn’t enough. Looking at the behavior on mobile platforms
as well as on PC with stream, even if a game is downloaded, there is no
guarantee that it will be played. Even if it is played there is no guarantee
that it will be used twice. Very few games are ever played multiple times.
Think about what that means. Unless you charge upfront, something
that always impacts the proportion of people who download your game,
you are dependent on repeat use in order to be commercially successful.
If only a tiny proportion of games are every reused at all, you need your
app to be one of them. That means we have to stop being squeamish
about encouraging repeat play.

The “CrackBerry” Effect

So what can we do to create reasons for the player to return after their
initial playing session? A compelling narrative or context can help, as
 The Rhythm of Play 85

can the desire to complete the next puzzle or to progress your character
through different levels. These are important ideas, but they are hard to
make truly compulsive, especially with all the noise out there from other
games, media, and, of course, real-life pressures.
If you had a BlackBerry when they were at their peak of popularity
you might already be familiar with the kind of experience that truly
compels the user to return to an experience. This device was the first
to actively use the buzz feature to alert you whenever a new email,
meeting, or event was happening. The term “CrackBerry” became
commonly used to compare the behavior of BlackBerry users, unable
to resist any incoming message, with users of crack cocaine. Not
an entirely flattering idea, however, it does reflect the very human
response to partial knowledge and the importance of resolving patterns
as well as information. When that little device buzzed it might be a
spam email or a summons from my boss at the time. The only way to
tell was to pull out the phone and check. Doing this while out on a date
with my wife never went down well and I quickly learned to turn off
the notifications that weren’t important. However, despite the nega-
tive description, having this tool was an amazingly positive thing and
vastly improved my ability to keep up-to-date with what was important
to me. It just happened to also mean that I couldn’t be without that
device.

Am I Missing Out?
We need something about our game that taps away in the player’s
subconscious like that old song we hear on the radio and find ourselves
humming all day long. Something that at the same time reminds us of
the fun we are missing out on. The feeling that there is something going
on inside the game world helps encourage us to return, knowing that
otherwise we might be missing out. This is of course a fine line (as with
all of these concepts) because if I feel I have missed out too much then
I won’t return, and if I feel that the game is nagging me to return at its
convenience not mine, I will simply turn off the notifications or, worse
still, delete the game.

Building Compulsion into Play

There are many different approaches to how this can work. It can start
in the core mechanic, be part of the context of the game or even part
of the metagame. The most common way technique we have seen in
social games so far is the use of energy. What if the player has a limit to
86 Games as a Service

the number of actions they can perform in a given period of time or for
some reason (as suitable for the game) they have to wait before a tool
they are using will recharge.
Either method creates a time delay or “friction” to the way the players
progresses. The influences the player’s decision-making process in the
game and creates a playing mechanism in its own right around which
action is best. All good. However, it also happens to create a moment
that stops their ability to play further, at least until that energy replen-
ishes either by paying or waiting. This also happens to cover up when
the developer doesn’t have enough content to satisfy the lifetime of the
player (but that’s not something I’d recommend).

The Friction Factor

Friction is a normal factor with a game design. It allows us to managed
the pace and flow of a game and where this is “player-directed”3 it can
be a powerful tool to enhance the game, but there is a very fine line
between friction and frustration. Knowing that the energy will recharge
over time means that in order to maximize my utility (existing invest-
ment) in the game so I need to return just as soon as the recharge has
completed. Missing this timeframe has an opportunity cost but usually
doesn’t actually cause me to lose any gameplay asset. However, it has
become overused and many players can become cynical and lose trust
with the developer when they see it in a game.
An alternative to energy, and one famously used in social freemium
games on Facebook, is the “harvesting” mechanic. In this case the
player decides which crop (it could easily be a car repair or tower
defense building) to plant in their farm (or garage, or defense base)
and knows that this will take a predictable period of time to com-
plete, making it available to harvest or use. As we talked in Chapter 3,
FarmVille included a “withering” concept where, if the object has
not been collected in a specific time-frame, this becomes useless or
requires me to pay or get intervention from a friend. If you want to
use this technique, you need to think carefully about how to commu-
nicate this to your user base and find a way to make sure this is seen
as a part of the tactics of play rather than just a frustrating experi-
ence that punishes the player, encouraging them to lose interest and
churn early. It is a natural for designers to look to monetize energy or
friction, but it’s a pretty transparent technique that players have come
to deeply resent.
 The Rhythm of Play 87

Are We Running Out of Energy?

Despite how unpopular it has become to use energy and friction to mon-
etize your game, I argue these techniques still have real value to create the
sense of activity in the game which the player is missing out on, something
I believe is more valuable than the money they can earn. There remains
a debate over whether you should stop your players playing or not. This
might seem obvious, but stopping your players playing when they want
to is generally a bad thing. However, managing their access to engaging
with the game can intensify the experience and create a compelling driver
to repeat play, particularly if these restrictions are highly targeted.
Take for example a Monkey Island-style classical adventure. What if
clue objects could only be used three times every ten minutes?4 This
would transform the way that you try to solve puzzles in a point-and-
click adventure and encourage a more thoughtful response to the
puzzle rather than having players depend on the brute force solution of
repeated clicking on every aspect of the screen.
Alternatively, take Real Racing 3 from EA. It takes time to service your
car and, although you can pay to speed this up, it’s often easier to simply
switch to another car while you are waiting. That encourages me to vary
the style of play and the nature of the experience I have while playing. It
does more than leave me aware that my car might be fixed when I stop
playing, it also reminds me of the other races and playing values of
the game.
Of course this kind of approach is not for every game or every player,
but I’m sure as a designer you can see the potential benefits of using
friction wisely from a pure gameplay perspective.

I’m Not in the Mood

At this point it’s probably worth discussing mode, mood, and pace.
The flow of a game is rarely static and when we look at the playing
experience we are trying to create in mechanical terms such as “loops”
or “cogs,” it’s hard to remember the importance of the intensity and
emotional experience we are trying to create. This isn’t strictly part
of the anatomy of the game, it’s more about the rhythm, which is why
I’m bringing it up here. Personally I happen to play lots of different
games, almost at the same time.5 Mood often drives my choice of game
as well as the “mode of use” I am currently in. Mode being the rela-
tionship between where I am, what devices I have access to, whether
88 Games as a Service

I am connected or not, as well as the impact my physical location has

on my playing choices, e.g., in the living room with my family. Mode
determines largely practical considerations while by contrast my mood
reflects the emotional decision-making, which is largely drawn to less
obvious conclusions. For example, subject to my mood, the cathartic
gloom of a horror story might well be more rewarding than a high-octane
rush or the sweet indulgence of a candy-colored world. Mood often
makes us behave is a way different from our usual approach, making
us appear to behave like a different user-segment (or cohort) than
we would usually expect. For example sometimes I don’t want highly
intense experiences, sometimes I am looking for trivial distraction.
Much of the time I am not directly aware of my mood but this will still
be reflected in my game choices as well as how I respond to the way
the game delivers content. Curiously, although we often want a game to
help us journey through a particular mood state, this is rarely a static
proposition, and where the game takes us forward emotionally we often
find ourselves lost in its story. I suspect this is part of why games are so
powerful at engaging us.
Pace is directly connected with the rhythm of play and has a musi-
cal pattern to its design. Many equate the patterns of building tension,
harmony, energy, or relaxation to concepts from music theory. Pace
has a role in sustaining interest as well as punctuating the narrative or
context, but it also acts like a mirror to the mood delivered by the game.
More than that, it helps players push forward on their emotional journey.
Different games will have different patterns of play peculiar to the
context of the experience but what matters is that this pace should
adjust as the play continues. Players will become bored if the pace and
mood of play don’t vary, just as much as it will alienate them if the pace
and mood vary too greatly and clash with the context of the game.

Keeping Up the Pace

Pace relies on forces which direct the player’s attention. This might
start with the stick of an enemy behind them or the carrot of a reward
they can acquire just ahead. This is important as there is a great deal of
difference between the way we make decisions while calm and log-
ical, as opposed to when we are hot and under tension. Stimulating
players’ emotions6 can impact the way that they act during play and
this can make for deeper enjoyment and a greater opportunity to fail.
A great example of this is the tongue-twister, as many of us know how
 The Rhythm of Play 89

infuriating these can be when we are rushing or under the influence of

alcohol. Time can also play an important factor, just as a limitation in
the number of moves (or indeed energy). On the other hand, pace can
be reduced to enhance the relaxation derived from a game. Creating a
sense of awe about the location where the play takes place or a build-
ing an impression of upcoming dread, perhaps of a known enemy just
up ahead, can do wonders to slow down the pace of a game. Even the
simple mechanics involved in different action mechanics can influence
the pace and mood of a game. Even the smooth movements used when
harvesting goods in HayDay contributes to the pace of the game that
players experience and this technique affects the game for the better.
I’m less interested in story exposition, which although can help slow the
pace down, often does so at the expense of the game. I believe we should
try to “experience not tell” in games.
Pace, like mood, needs to vary throughout play in order to sustain the
interest of the players. This means we need to take note of the patterns
of interaction, how consistently we repeat them and what patterns we
can create that take the player on an emotional journey while they enjoy
our game.
A great example of this for me is the way CounterStrike plays through
the intensity of a counterterrorist action, with forces moving rapidly
toward choke points in order to take out the enemy, followed by a few
minutes of downtime between battles which allows them to chat and
re-equip before kicking back into the intensity. There are musical paral-
lels here for me with the Soft>Loud>Soft>Loud associated with grunge
rock. Of course different games resonate with different musical forms.
It’s too complex a subject for us to cover in enough detail here, but it’s
worth checking out various articles and books on the subject.7

The Lure of Other People

Sometimes it’s not the game mechanics themselves that encourage us
back into the game. The biggest compulsion can come simply from the
knowledge that our friends (and other people like us) are coming back
to play. Social play has been a big influence for many computer games.
Games like Singstar encourage shared play in the same room, while
games such as Quake or Counterstrike thrived on real-time connected
servers.8 Social Facebook games like FarmVille and Zombie Lane
encouraged asynchronous connections that had a simple low-level of
interaction that benefited both sides. Even relatively simple web games
90 Games as a Service

like Tribal Wars from Innogames9 include a level of persistence where

the actions of other players can have a direct effect on all the other users
in due course. If you know your game might be affected your fellow
players—whether they attack your village, water your plants, or tune the
engine of your car—it creates a reason to return. Again we have to be
careful about the type of consequences we want to build into our games,
but the awareness of other players acting on the game world while we are
not there can be quite compelling, especially if those people matter to us.
Social play is more than just a reason to return. It helps reinforce our
expectations and values associated with playing a game, and it can in
the end become a driver for deeper engagement in its own right.

Don’t Let Me Forget

Although there are many more techniques out there to build reasons to
return, do not underestimate the value of the appropriate use of the noti-
fication system. Add to that the impact of regular predictable new content
releases or functional updates to trigger a desire for players to re-engage. We
should use every technique suitable for our game and create an appoint-
ment mechanism to encourage players to regularly and predictably
return to the game, as long as it remains meaningful to the players.

Stop Nagging
We have to create this as a benign process designed to encourage
repeated play. We can’t afford to do this in a way that upsets or annoys
players. The last thing we need is allegations that we are being manipu-
lative. Long-term lifetime value depends on trust and if our objective is
to get as much money as possible, rather than to make a better game, we
will be found out and lose out.
If we get the balance right we will have succeeded in building the
rhythm upon rhythm. This starts with the core mechanic, building with
the minute of play, further building with the context loops. We have
to keep our interconnected rhythms going and harmonious so we can
help players fully realize their enjoyment of our game over an extended
period of time.

Patience Will Pay Off

We need players to keep playing our game for days or weeks to realize
the full benefits of their engagement. The biggest spenders in social
mobile games seem to take between eight to twelve days before they
 The Rhythm of Play 91

start spending any money and if we get the model right they will con-
tinue to spend over many months.
Eight days of repeat play for a mobile game is a massively long time
and we can’t just rely on escalating difficulty or simple appointment
mechanisms to guarantee that players will sustain their interest in our
game. To achieve this we need to build a rhythm and progression that
provide ongoing purpose and drive for the player to continue their
game over the longer term. This generally uses that part of the anatomy
of the game I described as the “context” but the specific tools we use can
vary widely.

Wheels within Wheels

The basic principle is to build up mechanics as cogs, feeding into the
next tier of cog in line with the context of the game or the overarching
metagame, giving players a sense of narrative or progression along the
way. This typically means we find a reason to repeat the Core Mechanic
as separate steps building up to another cyclical objective but at the con-
text level. One example of a context loop might be found in an MMO
quest where an non-player character (NPC) asks me to obtain an item
for them. Each step to complete that quest involves me encountering
a number of enemies who I have to dispatch until I finally reach the
boss encounter and resolve that. This mission could easily be a series of
connected puzzles or even a series of different layouts of a casual match-
three game. Each stage is a separate use of the core loop mechanic with
its own rewards, but if all the stages are complete I gain an extra reward
from the context loop. This is potentially endlessly repeatable, but will
often form parts of a finite ladder of progression or in the case of Candy
Crush Saga from King,10 a lengthy fixed path of separate puzzle levels
that show your friends’ progress and success at each stage. Importantly
this path isn’t just static. At each stage a new variation to the mechanic
is revealed, building on what has gone before and increasing not only
the challenge level, but also the variation and uncertainty within the
gameplay.
Another example would be where there is a puzzle or natural barrier
that requires a player to repeat the core loop in order to gain the right
equipment or skill level required to beat that barrier. For example, if you
have to build a bridge to cross into a new area you might have to find
all the raw materials and then practice your blacksmith skill until you
were able to create that bridge. This feels like a natural process in the
92 Games as a Service

storytelling but requires ongoing repetition of the core game mechanic

to complete that task and, once complete, opens up a new chapter in the
story, which may itself have a further context loop.
One of the best lessons I learnt about creating natural barriers comes
from the game Galaxy on Fire Alliances from Fishlabs. While playing
the beta version of the game, I found that the experience was missing
what I can only describe as the “Middle game.” This is a sense of pur-
pose that we are trying to build with the context. However, rather than
adding a new feature, the designers cleverly increased the difficulty to
create some of the more valuable items in the game; in this case a Mark
III Carrier. Having to invest much more effort to raise the rating of your
HQ, Laboratory, and Starbase by spending your grind resources and
waiting for the process to complete transformed the playing experience.
As a player I had the tension of having to wait, with the potential risk of
being attacked during the process, to build my most effective defense.
There was no need to add new features or complications on top of an
already complex game.

Creating Special Events

There are other methods that are less integrated with the underlying con-
cept of the game. For example we might introduce a series of daily rewards
or challenges that are only available if the player returns to the game each
day (perhaps even more frequently) as well as less predictable “special
events,” which subtly subvert the rules of play in a way that adds an inter-
esting challenge, such as a boss opponent who is invulnerable to “water”
effects. The original Plants vs. Zombies and JetPack Joyride both include
these kinds of disruption to the normal play. To gain certain achievements
in Plants vs. Zombies the player has to change their approach to specific
levels, such as not using any “mushrooms” in a night scene or not using
any catapult plants on a “rooftop” level. Similarly, JetPack Joyride chal-
lenges the player to deliberately die at a specific distance—something that
is trickier to achieve than you might at first think.
These kind of challenges need not only be about avoiding using certain
items, indeed there is no problem having some of them benefiting from
the player using temporary boosts, additional energy, score-multipliers,
etc., provided that these can reasonably be obtained without paying. Oth-
erwise it might be seen as a cheap trick to obtain money from the player.
The rhythm of play continues beyond the context level and can also
reside up in the metagame level. Metagame loops can include a range
 The Rhythm of Play 93

of behaviors that interact with the game, but are not necessarily tied
directly into the game mechanics. The most obvious of these is the
playful involvement with others. Socializing games mean more than just
connecting people through a social graph such as Facebook or Twit-
ter. They require that we create both reasons to share and meaningful
interactions. We should not underestimate the personal effort and risk
involved for players who don’t know what their friends’ reactions might
be. It takes energy to maintain active relationships whether that is in
person, over a real-time game connection, or even through playing
asynchronously via social games. The latter of course requires much less
effort on the part of the player but still provides emotional engagement
and shared experience. If designed well, social interactions within a
game can become a conduit to help maintain relationships we might
otherwise lose.

Making Metagames
Metagames can involve almost unlimited options, and this is an area
I believe the potential is only just being considered. Think about what
patterns we can create by leveraging the real-world location of each of
the respective players. What about the physical space around the device
we are playing with, from augmented reality to shared-screen multi-
player experiences? How might we use each player’s connected devices
to generate new patterns of play, which might deepen our relationships
with the game and its other players?
Fundamentally, any game is enjoyed for the rhythm of how it is
played, from challenge to defeat to ultimate success, whatever that might
look like. Designing a game as a service means that we can’t take these
patterns of behavior for granted. We have to pay very close attention to
them and find ways to enhance the delight that these can bring so that
our players engage more deeply and build utility into the game itself.

Notes
1 It’s worth investigating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to understand the different levels of
engagement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs.
2 Pavlov famously rang a bell in his experiments on classical conditioning before giving his
dogs food and discovered that the ringing of the bell itself could elicit salivation, even
without the presence of the food. However, there are those who question whether this
response was conditioning at all, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning.
3 By player-directed I mean that the player makes the decision to select how they use their
allocation of actions, any mistakes or limitations are by association their choice—
provided the player considers that they had a fair allocation in the first place.
Base
94 Align Missmatch
Games as a Service B

4 This was an idea suggested by someone in the audience during a panel session at Game
Monetization Europe 2013 in London.
5 In case it’s not obvious, playing lots of games is an absolute must for a game designer. This
shouldn’t be limited to computer games. There are lots of amazing mechanics out there
from card, board, dice, and RPG games, and I once arranged for bridge lessons for all of my
team at BT. Personally I also enjoy LARP and pub games like Shove-Ha’Penny, although
pool and billiards don’t do it for me. Even mechanisms such as old-school Play-By-Mail
influences my design thinking. All that being said, probably my biggest influence is a
business learning tool called the Balloon Game.
6 This form of cognitive bias is based on the hot–cold empathy gap and we will discuss this
further in later chapters, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_gap.
7 There is a great Gamasutra article looking at pace in games at www.gamasutra.com/view/
feature/132415/examining_game_pace_how_.php?print=1.
8 In 1998/1999 I worked for Wireplay from British Telecom and we operated numerous
online games including first person shooters like Quake and Counterstrike, which were
played over dial-up modems—hard to imagine now in our permanently connected wire-
less broadband world.
9 This is a city-building and conquest game that requires a certain aggressive mindset to
play and which can be quite brutal and unforgiving.
10 King’s Candy Crush Saga reached over 70 million users in April 2013, http://www.tuaw.
com/2013/05/16/king-claims-70-million-daily-active-players-pet-rescue-saga-com. This
game features a lengthy path showing all the levels and each players progress so far.
At Level 35 it introduces a barrier where you have to introduce friends or pay in order
to progress further. Since then they have also introduced “Quests” that allow you to
continue provided you come every day and complete a special level over three days.
Although fiendishly difficult at the higher levels, it is possible to play endlessly if you are
prepared to go back to the earliest levels again.
Base Align Missmatch What is the Metagame? 95

Exercise 5: What is the Metagame?

In this exercise we are going to take a look at the outermost cog of the
game, its metagame. This is the level where we think about all the elements
with which we interact with the game from the role of the social graph,
superfan styles of gameplay, the behavior profile of the device we are
using, and even the physical space around us when we are playing.
We are looking here for ways to develop a deep level of engagement
with the player and ensure that our game fits comfortably in their life-
style and natural community. This is all about turning our game from a
means to passtime to an experience they will remember and talk about
in years to come.
Let’s start by considering the environmental context of your game and
how your metagame uses those elements to help deepen your engage-
ment with the players.

Summarize your metagame

and how it operates its
environmental context:
Mode of use:
Reasons to share:
Opportunities to collaborate:
Creating appointments:
Superfan game:
Social connectivity:

A superfan game is essentially a high level mechanic that is intended

to sustain the most engaged players even further, and ideally encourage
them to want to invest more time and money in the game than they
might have otherwise done. This variation of the mode of play will
be for the most dedicated players who will be more willing to spend,
however, they also expect a high level of return on that value. They also
expect something that allows them to maximize their potential in the
game and be able to gain recognition in the games community.
In this exercise we will look at the superfan game using the same
principles of the core loop mechanic we looked at with Exercise 3.
96 Games as a Service

Summarize the core loop

of your superfan game:

Start stage:

Challenge stage:

Resolution stage:

Reward stage:

Why is this repeatable?

WORKED EXAMPLE:

Summarize your metagame and Finding Anthony is a memory game that

how it operates its environmental uses a narrative context to ask questions
context: about memory. It needs a science fiction
concept in order make it easier to ask
these questions without them becoming
too dark and personal. The metagame
will have two components. The first is the
creation of families, which allow players
to cooperate with others and compete in
terms of the family with the best control
over their districts. The second component
explores the search for Anthony’s missing
girlfriend, who doesn’t actually exist.
The objective is to locate her, before she
disappears. Once the Player has unlocked
at least three districts of their map they
start to collect more fragments of the
puzzle that provides clues about the
whereabouts of the girlfriend. These clues
are time-stamped in allowing you to work
out where she will be at different times
during the day. The more team-mates
(family) you can have ready in that
location at the right time, the bigger the
value for everyone and this contributes to
your “family” controlling that district.
Mode of use: Finding Anthony is a game that has
short bursts of concentrated but not
intense play. It is ideal for mobile and
tablet play as it can provide ongoing
engagement and still be easily
interrupted. The selection of the most

(Continued)
 What is the Metagame? 97

efficient paths by drawing on the screen

also perfectly suits this experience. The
game would also work well on a second
screen-supported experience, such as using
an Android Phone with an Android based
UnConsole; PSVita as a controller for a
PS4 title or the WiiU.
Reasons to share: The style of play combines quick spatial
thinking, which can easily go wrong as
the avatar bumps into moving obstacles
or worse still enemies, creating funny
moments.
Opportunities to collaborate: The metagame will allow players to
join “families” where their performance
manages their districts.
Creating appointments: Returning to the game becomes
important if you want to avoid missing
out opportunities to gain “happiness” or
“status” by completing missions, but there
will always be more missions even if that
means it takes you longer. Additionally,
the collection of the puzzle pieces provides
an opportunity for the most engaged
players to arrange to collectively gather
at the point where they believe that the
girlfriend will appear, granting a special
bonus.
Superfan game: The principle superfan Game is all about
building up your “family” and trying to
dominate the districts. This is accelerated
by finding the girlfriend.
Social connectivity: Compare your performance in each district
with friends. Collaborate with other
players by joining their family. Work
with fellow family members to locate the
girlfriend.

Summarize the core loop Superfan game 1: friends and family.

of your superfan game:
Start stage: For each location in the district that your Facebook
friends have completed you can see the “Facebook”
avatar of the highest performing player.

(Continued)
98 Games as a Service

Challenge stage: Once you have completed the level you see how your
performance compares with your friends. Select one
of your friends to access a link to the video playback
of their performance and see what paths they took
and whether you can beat them. Additionally,
players can invite their friends to join their “family.”
Resolution stage: The game will collate the combined performance
in each location in the districts and record that as
the performance of their family. Families will be
managed by the community and have roles that
grant advantages but where you can be replaced by
being outbid by spending “status” to obtain that role.
Reward stage: All members of a family should gain rewards for
their contributions and those families that are
achieving the best scores will be displayed on the
district map.
Why is this repeatable? Your contribution in terms of score only persists for
seven days. This means that you have to continue to
play in order to sustain your faction’s dominance
over a district.

Summarize the core loop Superfan game 2: the girlfriend.

of your superfan game:
Start stage: During missions you will obtain puzzle pieces that
provide clues about Anthony’s missing girlfriend.
These clues can lead to a prediction of where she will
appear.
Challenge stage: Collect and decode all the puzzle pieces to work out
where and when the girlfriend will next appear.
Alternatively the player can spend “happiness” to get
more clues.
Resolution stage: Arrange for as many people in your faction to turn
up at that location at the designated time to get a
sighting of the girlfriend and a significant bonus.
Reward stage: The animation for the sighting of the girlfriend
should be haunting and fleeting, but what
she leaves behind is a minigame where instead
of collecting memory tiles, each object hides a
power-up and the combined scores of the team are
multiplied to help your team dominate that section
of the map.
Why is this repeatable? This happens every day—perhaps more frequently—
and can help smaller families displace larger, but less
unified factions.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 6
Building on Familiarity
102 Games as a Service

Finding the Fun

In the last chapter we started to move our focus away from the structure
of a game and towards the behavior and needs of the player. “Identifying
and satisfying consumer needs” was described to me as the definition of
marketing and I have since found that it equally applies to product devel-
opment and design. Commercial game design is no different; we use the
expression or application of human creative skill and imagination to create
engaging experiences.1 That means it is important to us to satisfy our audi-
ences as well as to understand what attributes those players will value.
The simplest way to express the desire of players comes down to “fun,”
an attribute we tried to define in Chapter 2. We talked about fun being
an emotional response to play and that play was a free activity with no
care for material profit, with commonly agreed rules as well as some
level of uncertainty. This isn’t a new thought. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi2
proposed that happiness comes when people are in a state of “flow,” a
state of concentration that completely occupies the mind between the
challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. Looking at games
as a service means that we have to be interested in the whole lifecycle of
the player. When they start to play, they essentially have no “skill” (or at
least have yet to learn how to use that skill appropriately for the game)
and we have to illuminate them and bring them to the point they can
leverage their potential ability to maximize and sustain that flow state.
It takes time to reach the point where a player can slip into that state of
flow and an essential aspect of freemium game design is to help them
through that process. The good news is that players don’t come to our
game in isolation. Games build upon familiar patterns and concepts.

Familiarity Breeds Trust

We need to use playing mechanics that are familiar enough so they can
quickly make sense to the player with as little explanation as possible.
This doesn’t just make it easier to get started, it actually engenders trust
and confidence. Familiarity is important to shortcut communication
about the values of our offering in order to attract an audience in the first
place as this makes it easier for gamers to decide to download our game.
However, as we looked at when considering the rhythm of play, we know
players can quickly become bored if they pattern is too familiar. Players
need our game to bring something special, even unique, in order to
attract their attention or satisfy their craving for something more.
 Building on Familiarity 103

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Familiarity is a compelling concept. The trust this engenders can moti-
vate people to download games that share concepts with games they
already love. However, the fatal flaw with clones is that in reality we don’t
“just” want to play the same game with a new skin. Any duplicate will
always fail by comparison if they fail to take the concept forward as the
very act of playing the original has already altered our perceptions from
the original game. Instead we want to recapture the feelings we had when
we first discovered the great games that inspired those clones. Indeed
you could argue that often players are seeking to recreate the emotions
that first triggered their appreciation of interactive entertainment, some-
thing that is essentially impossible to achieve as we are no longer that
original naive player. If we rely too heavily on the familiarity of game
design this will feel shallow and inevitably fail to meet gamers’ needs.

Figure 6.1 The Triangle of Weirdness.

104 Games as a Service

A Little Disruption Goes a Long Way

Disruption only comes when we are brave enough to challenge existing
preconceptions. But be careful not to try to remove all familiarity. Scott
Rogers talks about the Triangle of Weirdness3 where you could change
the nature of any of the three elements of “character,” “world” or “activ-
ities” around a familiar concept; but not all three. If you change every
element then it upsets the frame of reference for the player and becomes
problematic to sustain their attention.
This model seems to work, look at the some of the most disrup-
tive games we have seen from Angry Birds to Walking Dead, Portal
to Candy Crush Saga; all of these took a previous concept into new
territory by radically challenging specific areas of gameplay without
breaking an overall sense of familiarity. Games that balance the new
and familiar like this often manage to obtain a large passionate fan
base who become advocates for the wider mass market audience that
can catapult the game into success, often without the developer having
to spend too much money on marketing. We will talk more in
Chapter 10 about the importance of building brands and leveraging
your community.

So Little Time
Familiarity as we have said helps us to communicate ideas to players.
This is critical to help us communicate ideas about our game to pro-
spective players even before they have any idea what our game is like.
Assuming that a player finds our game we have a tiny window of oppor-
tunity to get their interest and we can’t waste it on lengthy explanations.
Think about the space available on the app store or Google Play, where
we essentially have just the thumbnail and name of the game to grab
the players’ attention. This gets worse on the device itself because after
the game is downloaded we only have a 12-character app name and the
96×96 pixels of the icon.4 We have to think extremely carefully about
how we can best hint at why our game will be the one that will best
satisfy the entertainment needs and aspirations of potential players. We
can only do that with a high level of attention to detail to communicate
ideas about our game that will resonate with other games that went
before it, but at the same time we must still find a way to stand out from
the crowd.
 Building on Familiarity 105

Great Artists Don’t Copy, They Steal

It’s important that we don’t rely too heavily on the experiences of
previous games, even if our own is deliberately intended to stir up
feelings of nostalgia, such as with the modern-classic 8-bit game
art style.
There is a fine line between healthy borrowing from previous games
and outright copying. I don’t just mean in the legal sense (although a
breach of copyright is a serious consequence that I assume we all want
to avoid). However, creating a game that is little more than a derivative
version of an existing title without adding something is bound to end
poorly. As I have already stated, most players who are familiar with the
original will eventually feel cheated with your version if you don’t take
the concept in a new direction.
So how do we deliver on the promise of the new without removing
the familiar values of the experience that we are building on? I believe
successful game development is very much like standing on the shoul-
ders of giants. We try to understand the games that formed our thinking
and look at how we can build higher still. This may sound lofty, but
there is something in reminding us that that we aren’t (usually) creat-
ing from a blank sheet and that this is OK. When we want to build a
game in the style of one of our own great influences we need to start not
trying to copy, but instead trying to recreate the objectives of the game’s
original creator. We need to consider what they originally wanted to
deliver (or at least your own approximation of that) and understand
what compromises drove them to build that experience. Then we need
to consider how the resources, platforms and technology have changed
and whether we can use these to get past those compromises. More than
that, we want to consider how we can apply our own values and creativ-
ity to those objectives in order to make something completely new and
unique to you as its creator. You need to take ownership of that idea for
yourself.5

The Story of Arkanoid

One of the earliest examples of this principle is arguably Taito’s
Arkanoid.6 On the surface this game looks like a simply copy of Atari’s
Breakout.7 However, there are differences. First, the bricks have
rounded corners. I know this seems trivial, but it does mean the art
106 Games as a Service

style is different, something that was vital in the accompanying court

case. Second, Arkanoid had a story. The rectangle you used to bounce
the balls was actually a space ship, the Vaus—that had escaped from
the doomed mother ship, the eponymous Arkanoid—which you have
to steer through all the levels until you defeat Doh.8 OK, the story, like
Tetris, was fairly abstract, but it existed. Arkanoid also offered power-
ups, which it granted on completion of levels.
Don’t get me wrong, building on other games is a murky area fraught
with problems. Look at FarmVille, which was accused of being a clone
of MyFarm and Farm Town among others. I’m not going to enter the
debate about whether those claims are right or wrong. Instead, in order
to talk about how we can discuss how to build on familiar concepts, let’s
look at the more useful comparison of Harvest Moon.9 FarmVille and
Harvest Moon are clearly not the same game, but both rely on relatively
cute characters managing the resources of their respective farms. There
are many unique aspects that Harvest Moon has to offer that never
made it into Farmville,10 and I know that some designers who say that
Zynga’s breakthrough title was missing any gameplay. I don’t agree, but
I do accept that the game did very much simplify the playing process,
which made it much more accessible to people who were not established
game-players. The most important contribution this game introduced
(compared to Harvest Moon) was asynchronous social play with Face-
book friends into that design. Your friends could meaningfully interact
with your farm.

Social Interaction is Playful

The idea of using the Facebook social graph was not new. Playfish, one
of the first teams to successfully work with the early Facebook APIs, had
started experimenting with this approach as early as 2007.11 However,
after its launch FarmVille quickly became dominant, and I suspect this
was due to the combination of simplicity, schedules of reinforcement,12
and social play. The thing that impresses me most is that—more than any
other Facebook game of the time—FarmVille, through its social elements,
managed to transform the appeal of game to a truly mass-market audi-
ence who had previously rejected computer games as too geeky for them.

Building on Expectations
I argue that disruptive creative change is most successful when the
design builds our expectations, rather than simply confounding us. We
can create startling new stories or playing mechanics provided we do
 Building on Familiarity 107

so from a place of comfort. If we can foreshadow expectations of the

changes that players are able to reveal, this will empower them to enjoy
the game more. Better still we should try to make the most of how we
reveal these elements by creating moments for the player to remember
and share that makes the experience their own story.
The disruptive elements you introduce to your game have to make
sense in line with all three tiers of what makes the game work: its
mechanics, context, and metagame. The underlying flow of play in
terms of usability, immersion and narrative are equally as important as
whether the handling of the mechanic feels right. I believe that this is a
critical issue for game designers to consider and it will come up again
when we look into monetization in Chapter 13.

Too Much Disruption?

We should also be aware of the risks that bringing disruption into
a game can cause. The flow of the game needs to carefully balance
the mechanics and context, as well as the monetization. Adding new
features to existing concepts can accidently cause us to breach the
delicate boundaries between the reason to play and the objectives of the
game. This topic is the subject of a wider industry discussion known
as “Ludo-narrative dissonance.” The term was introduced in 2007
by Clint Hocking in his critique of Bioshock.13 He used it to describe
the conflicted demands of the gameplay against the demands of the
narrative. He argued that the needs for character progression worked
against the narrative structure to prevent the player from connecting
with either, leaving players unsatisfied with both. As designers, we have
to pay attention not just to good gameplay and good story, but also to
ensuring that the underlying player objectives pushing forward the
gameplay are aligned with the objectives that support the narrative (or
at least context) we are creating for the game. This seems on the surface
to be a fairly obvious thing, but in practice it’s more difficult to avoid
than you might think. To help find these problems, it’s essential to test
out all of the potential game strategies, not just the most instinctive
ones. Perhaps there are dominant strategies or hidden consequences
that lurk below the surface creating a dissonance that destroys the
intended harmony between game and story.14

Lucre-Ludo-Narrative Dissonance
This idea of the conflicts between conceptual elements in a game
isn’t restricted to the narrative and the mechanic. Within freemium
108 Games as a Service

monetization we have to also consider the impact of virtual goods sales

and advertising as a factor in this balancing act. When this goes wrong
it creates a similar imbalance in gameplay focus as Hocking described.
A Lucre-Ludo-narrative dissonance if you like. OK, it’s a bit of a joke
term, but we do have to consider the impact of commercial elements in
a game with the narrative.
There is a relationship between the decision to sell a consumable
virtual good or place an advertisement and the way that the game plays.
This might affect the flow of the game, our ability to suspend disbelief,
but the more interesting effects come when they impact the tactics or
strategy of play. Think about a resource management game where we
spend in-game currency to build up our farm, city, or units. We can
earn that currency by harvesting things or perhaps playing some kind
of minigame. How we use spend that currency might affect the rate at
which we earn additional currency and that in turn affects our strategy
of play. But if we can purchase additional in-game currency then this
removes the resource restrictions that made the game challenging, it
fundamentally changes the game. It’s not my intention to go too deep
into monetization at this point, something you will hopefully notice is a
trend in the way this book is written. We will come to that topic in time
at the end of the book in Chapter 13.

Understanding Reward Behaviors

Understanding the motivations for playing or paying for games content,
indeed why particular games have been successful is something that
returns us to thinking about the needs of the player. As we mentioned
when talking about the phenomenal rise of Facebook games from
2007 to 2011, games now have for the first time a truly a mass-market
audience. This means that we can’t just assume that all the players are
like us anymore. Indeed I would argue that we never could and that
this has always held back our potential as designers. We can look at
demographics and other traditional marketing theory about consumer
segments, however, in games I believe that there are more relevant tech-
niques based on the concepts of “mood” and “mode” as we discussed in
Chapter 5. Here we look at the behavior of the player to provide us with
insight on the segments.
Richard Bartle’s15 work on player types very much reflects this kind of
thinking, each type responds to the different objectives of each segment
that arose in the MUD virtual world and each represents a different
 Building on Familiarity 109

reward behavior. While we can’t assume that these types will exactly
match the player needs we will discover and satisfy in our games, they
remain a useful tool to allow us to consider who is playing our game
and what they will want from the game.

Mass-Marketing Means Targeting Everyone

Trained marketing people like me will usually tell you to identify your
target audience and then work out how to satisfy them. The trouble with
selling a mass-market product is that everyone is your target player,
and you don’t want to ignore potential players. This makes things more
complicated as we can’t target everyone. That’s why we have to iden-
tify different segments and look to see how we can satisfy their player
needs differently. If you complete a puzzle to release a magical sword
that automatically kills all the monsters in your path, this won’t be
particularly satisfying for an “achiever” player. In fact you will proba-
bly be undermining the very thing they thrive on, their ability to beat
opponents despite the odds. However, an “explorer” might find this a
tremendous benefit as it frees them from the trouble of perfecting their
fighting techniques, something they might not be as good at or enjoy.
Instead, unlocking this sword allows them to spend more time working
on puzzles and finding new secrets.

Players Aren’t Static Types

Of course looking at player types isn’t enough. As we have discussed,
players are rarely one “type”; although they will usually exhibit a
dominant one. Mode, mood and of course player lifecycle all affect
their attitudes and behaviors within and between different games
over time.
This was my experience playing CSR Racing from Boss Alien/
Natural Motion. Around the third tier of the game, I found that the core
drag-race mechanic transformed for me from being the whole point
of the game to simply a minigame that allowed me to earn money
and gold faster. Instead I discovered a new game. The “real” game for
me became selecting the right upgrades and races that would get me
the most income fastest and with the optimal use of fuel. Of course
I could buy more in-game money, fuel, gold or indeed better cars but
that would defeat the purpose I had found in playing the game and
my personal narrative as I attempted to rise up the ranks to defeat the
other racers.
110 Games as a Service

Don’t Make Your Currency the Performance Metric

A common mistake made by designers is to fail to recognize what
players choose as their performance metric. Grind currency can be an
incredibly powerful way to gate content access, provide friction, and
importantly demonstrate a level of progress in the game. However, if
this is the only or best way to measure our success, then we are creating
a problem for later. Why would I spend in-game currency if it’s the only
way I can measure my ongoing success? If I want players to progress in
my game and to become repeated payers then I need them to be able to
feel free about spending that in-game money, and not create a disincen-
tive to spend it.
If we are aware of this effect we can look for other ways to moti-
vate the players and find ways to ensure that the both the friction
mechanics and monetization approach works in line with the flow of
the game, rather than against it. Friction and monetization methods
are design tools, they are not compromises we have to throw in to
frustrate players. There is no need to create a “lucre dissonance” in
our games when with care we can use these elements to simply make a
better game.

Monetization as a Design Tool

One of my favorite examples of how this might work came during a
panel session at Game Monetization Europe conference. The panel was
moderated by Nicholas Lovell and included myself and Patrick O’Luanaigh
of NDreams. We were attempting to show how one could turn
any game into a Free2Play model. One of the suggestions was the classic
point and click adventure, Secrets of Monkey Island. After a series of
discussions including turning the world into a sandbox and the intro-
duction of repeatable minigames to complement the mission system,
we asked the audience for their ideas. One of them suggested that you
could restrict the number of times per day you could use puzzle objects.
That might sound like sacrilege to the purist, but if we think about it as
a disruptive technique it could have a genuinely beneficial impact on
how we play the game. Rather than clicking everywhere on the screen,
having a limited number of tries per day makes us more cautious about
how we control Guybrush to find the solutions to puzzles. How might
this affect the way we locate a file from inside the piece of carrot cake
from Otis? Would this add to the emotional intensity of the research
we might so in order to find out that the file is in fact intended to shave
 Building on Familiarity 111

the rhinoceros toenails and open the idol’s case? This might cause some
frustration of course, but it contributes to the game, rather than taking
an approach like selling “hints” where spending money simply defeats
the purpose of playing the game. Not to mention that there are probably
all the answers we might want freely available on the internet. Thinking
with this approach to monetization means we can create game mechan-
ics with real-world consequences associated with each attempt to solve
a puzzle. In reality, the risk is that this particular mechanic would be too
heavy-handed for some players and of course its introduction makes
for a different game experience. The point is, however, that we can use
virtual goods in many different ways to create new strategies and conse-
quences that can positively contribute to the experience. The limitation
is only in how we approach the design. The presence of virtual goods
can and should be entirely beneficial to the gameplay, as long as we
think about the consequences and use them as part of our palette of
design tools.

Notes
1 The expression and application of human creative skill and imagination is the very defini-
tion of art, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/art. However, we are making
more than “just” art, we are creating experiences for paying players.
2 Mihály Csíkszentmihályi has been described as the world’s leading researcher on positive
psychology. His seminal work is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, http://en.wiki
pedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi.
3 Check out http://mrbossdesign.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/triangle-of-weirdness.html for
more details on Scott Roger’s Triangle of Weirdness.
4 The app name is actually based on a maximum length rather than the number of charac-
ters on iOS, 12 (including a space) will often work, but sometimes 11 characters is safer.
Android uses character length of 12 and the pixel limitation described above refers to the
higher resolution screens for Android; in practice you have to be able to create your icon
using 36×36 dp for the lowest resolution. On iOS this resolution is (at the time of writing)
114×114.
5 Pablo Picasso is often quoted as saying “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” The argu-
ment being that inspiration may come from external sources, but it requires the artist to
take ownership of the idea; to make it their own.
6 Arkanoid was Taito’s response to Breakout and was very similar, http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Arkanoid.
7 Breakout was originally conceived as a successor single-player mode version of Pong,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game).
8 I was personally never patient enough to play through the entirety of the game.
9 Harvest Moon or Farm Story was originally produced by Victor Interactive Software; later
purchased by Marvellous Entertainment and first released on Nintendo’s SNES in 1996,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_Moon_(series).
10 Farmville was introduced in 2009 by Zynga and as well as winning the GDC “Best Social/
Online Game” in 2010 was also described as one of the “50 worst inventions” by Time
magazine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVille.
112 Games as a Service

11 I was lucky enough to be one of the first 100 people sent an invite to the Playfish game
Who has the Biggest Brain? in 2007, which was one of the first games to reach millions of
daily active users.
12 We talked briefly about schedules of reinforcement and the Skinner Box in Chapter 3.
13 http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html.
14 I strongly recommend that you try paper prototyping techniques to stress out the prac-
tical details of your design before asking a coder to commit to writing the game software.
It’s much quicker and cheaper to iterate a design with your imagination, some paper
designs and physical playing pieces to represent what the game will do and you almost
always learn something about the properties of the gameplay.
15 We mentioned Richard Bartle, his work as co-creator of MUD, and the analysis he did on
different player types in Chapter 2.
 What is Your Bond Opening? 113

Exercise 6: What is Your

Bond Opening?
In Chapter 9 we are going to explore a number of themes that will help
us think differently about our game and that reflect the transitional
moments between each life stage. The first of these themes is the “Bond
opening.” Think about any movie featuring James Bond and how the
first ten minutes sets up everything we need to know about the movie,—
who Bond is, how amazing he must be, and something about the world
he lives in—all without revealing the main plot for this film. It will
usually introduce at least one of the bad guys and sow the seeds that
foreshadow the plot to come. The point about this moment—and why
I believe it’s a useful metaphor for games design—is that it gets everyone
up to speed, not by telling them who Bond is, but by showing them. It
reminds the old die-hard fans how great Bond can be at his best while
at the same time explaining his character to any new viewers. It also sets
up the context to show just how terrible the opponents that he encoun-
ters later in the film really are; because if Bond can’t beat them, and we
know how good Bond is, they must be really scary!
In this exercise we need to work out what is your equivalent of the
Bond moment for your game. This is not about creating a tutorial; if
possible we should find a way to never have one. It is about conveying
the most essential elements of the experience clearly, quickly, and in
as an engaging manner as possible. We need to focus our attention on
getting our players into the game within just a few seconds of launching
the app. Then we have to explain the core game mechanic as simply and
safely as possible, making certain we don’t scare them off with the com-
plexity. This includes providing real clarity over the control mechanisms
themselves, which have to be entirely obvious and joyful to use. Next we
have to make sure that we reward our players for their understanding
of the game and ensure that this isn’t a patronizing thing, it has to be
meaningful and based on a real achievement.
We have some more long term goals too. How do we introduce the
driving motivation from your context loop. How do we communicate
it and its benefits to them as a player? The same questions apply to the
various aspects of the metagame especially the social interaction and
the superfan game elements you plan to introduce. The point here is
114 Games as a Service

to foreshadow the value of remaining in the game and demonstrating

that they can have fun playing the mechanic, but there is also a purpose
associated with it that will give them even more long-term enjoyment.

What is the Bond moment for your

game?
How many clicks till you start playing
the game?
How do you introduce the core gameplay
mechanic?
How will you explain the control
mechanisms of the game?
How will you meaningfully reward
your player within thefirst minute of
play?
How (and when) will you introduce
your context loop?
How (and when) will you introduce
your social elements?
How (and when) will you introduce
your superfan game?

WORKED EXAMPLE:

What is the Bond moment for Anthony waking up in the hospital. This will
your game? take the form of an interactive comic, which
in each cell explains not only the narrative
but also introduces a new interactive moment.
Players will be able to go back to this “tutorial”
later, but in doing so the narrative will have
changed slightly to reflect Anthony’s growing
understanding that his memory is affected.
How many clicks till you start Upon starting the game the player is presented
playing the game? with splash screen with an image taken from the
last mission they player participated in, or the
starting image from the comic. There is also a
Start button and the logos of our company and
any partners as required, these logos link to
mobile web pages about those companies. Selecting
the Start button triggers a new game, if the
player has never played or restarts the game from
a point where the local save state determines the
last play. If a connection is available, this save
state will be cross-referenced with server and
a tamper check will be performed based on the
upload of any cached play data from the device.
Players will immediately go into the game.

(Continued)
 What is Your Bond Opening? 115

How do you introduce the core When Anthony wakes up in his hospital ward,
gameplay mechanic? the player will be asked to draw a path to the
door. When he reaches the door a nurse will check
him over and ask if he is alright and the player
will be asked to open his “brain Slots.” When
the surgeon comes in to talk to him, he will be
asked to locate the first matching pair of tiles
and place them in his brain slots.
How will you explain the control Before he leaves the hospital ward, Anthony
mechanisms of the game? will have to search the ward for a number of
additional matches and this will introduce the
battery mechanic, the score bonus and the time
factor in play. All of these stages are treated
like comic book cells, but played against the
background of a real level.
How will you meaningfully At each stage the player gets a reward
reward your player within the (a power-up and score) for completing it.
first minute of play?
How (and when) will you The context loop will be introduced when
introduce your context loop? Anthony leaves the hospital ward. There will
be two additional cells of the comic tutorial.
The first will introduce him to his unpleasant
family and demonstrate the “happiness”
resource. The second will introduce the wider
district map and the family as well as the
“status” resource.
How (and when) will you After a few successful missions the player will
introduce your social elements? be told that if they login to Facebook they can
compare with their friends and get free in-game
currency. They will also be told that we won’t
post to Facebook unless they initiate it. Once
they sign-in they will then see their highest
ranked friend’s face for each mission as it
appears.
How (and when) will you Once the player has cleared their first district
introduce your superfan game? and demonstrated their ability to complete a
“boss level” they will be able to invite friends
to join their “family” and align their family
with a “faction.” This act will grant both parties
a free “power-up” and grant them access to the
social controls for the superfan game, including
a view of the different districts that shows the
current state of control among the factions.
Chapter 7
Counting on Uncertainty
118 Games as a Service

Strong Foundations
As we have previously discussed, familiarity is a vital foundation for
any new concept. However, with a game as a service we have unique
challenges that were not seen as important historically. The ability
to sustain an audience through hundreds, if not thousands, of plays
is something that needs special attention in the design. We need to
balance both repeatability and uncertainty if we are to sustain our
audience.
This is a topic that many designers completely miss. Too often I see
games which are little more than instructions dictating how the player
has to complete the puzzles as defined by the designer. Jump precisely
‘here’ to get the gem & avoid the monster. This is a terrible idea for
repeatability. What is the player’s contribution to play, other than com-
pleting what you created? Don’t get me wrong I appreciate this can be
a fun model for some games, but unless there are other variables than
success or failure, repeatability becomes impractical. Level designs can
take months of effort to perfect and if our players complete that puzzle
within a few minutes and never want to go back and play that level, then
it’s going to be extremely hard to make a sustainable service experience.

Sources of Uncertainty
Instead we need to find ways to build into our games a level of unpre-
dictability or a variable strategy that will encourage repetition. But
where does this uncertainty come from and how can we use it to make a
better game?
Without wanting to go into too much detail on specific examples1 you
can essentially break down the sources of uncertainty to five key areas.

Taking a Chance
The first source of uncertainty is found within chance and probability.
For the purposes of this book, let’s consider these to be two separate
things. In this definition, we will consider “chance” to be an unchanging
randomness, that crude but conceivable obstacle where the roll of a die or
some behind-the-scenes random number generator determines the out-
come. This is an inflexible, but “honest” or “fair” approach to introduce
randomness. Traditional games such as Ludo and Monopoly use this to
mix up the opportunities for players to succeed and players can always
blame the roll of the dice. This can be a great leveler, but when you are the
 Counting on Uncertainty 119

player on the negative side of the lucky rolls, it can get tired very quickly
because there is no opportunity for the player to influence the result.

What’s the Probability?

On the other hand, if we define “probability” to mean a random attri-
bute that may be influenced by other external factors, this gives us a use-
ful comparison with chance. For example, as I improve the skill level of
my character in a role-playing game the probability of my success with
that skill will improve. Here the player (and the environment) influences
these random factors. It becomes possible to select the best conditions
and invest in the associated variables that will affect the outcome I want
and, as a player, I may decide to advance those variables over time.
Using this technique to inject uncertainty into a game introduces not
just a sense of risk, but also a sense that the player has some level of con-
trol. It introduces a level of strategy in the game and creates a reason for
players to invest in repetitive mechanics to increase those abilities or to
accept that any failure during play can be traced back (at least partially)
to their own decisions. However, this can be problematic, especially in
the early stages, as it can appear to punish new players who have yet to
learn the process. It can also lead to an emergent problem where players
unduly focus on a narrow range of variables, creating a range of domi-
nant strategies that reduce the enjoyment of play if overly relied upon.

The Skill of the Player

A second source for uncertainty can be found within the ability of the
players themselves, which we know will vary for everyone who engages
in the game. The idea of player performance is particularly important
for games that have some degree of multiplayer behavior, but can also
be used to add uncertainty or choice in single player games. Not every
player will have the best thumb/eye coordination. Others might be
better suited to special awareness or logic-based puzzles. Being aware
of these differences, the designer can introduce obstacles that require
different problem-solving abilities or alternative strategies. The problem
is that too much emphasis on player performance tends to punish play-
ers who lack the prerequisite skills. Going back to Csíkszentmihályi’s
concept of “flow,” this imbalance between the skills of the player and the
challenge of the task can lead to anxiety; or, in the case where we “dumb
down” the puzzle, it can lead to boredom. On the positive side, however,
the mistakes I make are my own. Repeated failure, especially where the
120 Games as a Service

player considers the problem to have been their own fault can be incred-
ibly compelling to some people. Demon Souls by From Software and
SCE Japan Studio is a classic example of a game so fiendishly difficult
(largely due to the “permadeath” model the game uses) that it makes
me want to throw my controller out of my living room window . . .
moments before I press the button to restart.2

Leaving Room for Interpretation

The third uncertainty source comes from ambiguity. A lack of clar-
ity regarding how to apply the rules of the game can be particularly
powerful, provided that there are still consistent rules. For example, is
there is an imbalance of information between the game and the play-
ers or between opposing players? This often arises when you have rule
elements that combine to create different effects. For example, with a
collectable card game, each card can introduce new rule elements and
the associated strategies can greatly affect the style of play we adopt.
My favorite analogy for this can be found with the Californian fast food
chain In-N-Out Burger.3 Rather than simply ordering off the simple
menu in the restaurant you can order from the “Secret Menu” with spe-
cial terms like “Double Double” (two Burgers with two Cheese) or “Ani-
mal Style” (a mustard-cooked beef patty with additional pickles, cheese,
spread, and grilled onions). The system is quite flexible and you can
discover different ways to customize your meal, which adds a delight.
For example you can order a 3×3 (three burgers and three cheese) or a
100×100 (although they don’t server this anymore apparently).

Dilemma Brings Meaning to Choices

Ambiguity is not about a random consequences, it’s about decision-
making without access to all the necessary information. Part of this is to
build in a level of dilemma: a concept rarely used to its full potential in
games, but used for marvelous effect in The Walking Dead. Do you save
Doug or Carley when the drug store is attacked?4 Of course dilemma
doesn’t just have to apply to a life-or-death decision. Having a limit of
two weapons forces me to choose which are going to be most valuable to
me in the upcoming plot. That’s a dilemma and it’s based on ambiguous
information. These less critical decisions can be an incredibly important
opportunity for the creation of depth in the game and of course mone-
tization. The decisions can impact different parameters than the success
or failure in the game. We can look for secondary goals or alternative
 Counting on Uncertainty 121

ways to achieve the principle objective. I like to call the non-essential

decisions in a game “soft variables,” and these soft variables can add
creativity as well as reasons to rewardingly repeat otherwise static game
mechanics.

Complexity Creates Emergent Behavior

Our fourth source is derived within the nature of any complex system.
We may have simple rules, like with chess, but the way that the pieces
interact with each other and their respective positioning introduces
dozens of potential alternative moves. Thinking ahead compounds the
difficulty, but to be at least reasonably proficient we need to try to think
at least three moves ahead,5 which can introduce thousands of potential
moves. Of course we mitigate this by focusing our attention on only the
most beneficial moves, which are often the most likely ones. However,
this very act of selection means that we can miss a pattern and find
ourselves in trouble. Using complex systems in a game design can create
a barrier for users who may struggle to learn these rules and how they
interact with each other; rules affecting rules. In particular it becomes
possible that a player will inadvertently make a simple mistake early
on, which will come to punish them later. An example of this can be as
simple as the “interest” mechanism used in some tower defense games.6
If I spend all my construction money early on in the game, I never get
to gain enough interest to build the bigger turrets I will need to survive
later waves of enemies in the game. This can absolutely add dilemma
or ambiguous uncertainty into the game, but if it’s not clearly commu-
nicated or if the conditions aren’t perfectly balanced this can quickly
become annoying if the player isn’t given some hint about what the
dilemma means early enough in the process of play.

Feedback Loops
Probably the most powerful aspect of a complex system comes when
you start to look at the way different rule interactions can create feed-
back.7 This is a causal relationship where one action had an impact on
an outcome and it becomes particularly interesting in games when this
forms loops. If in our tower defense game we have “build money” and
an interest mechanic, then there is a positive feedback8 if we choose the
tactic of not spending all our money. The interest mechanic increases
both the pot of build money and any interest we had previously earned,
the interest becomes an amplifier of itself. If the interest level is set
122 Games as a Service

too high, the rate of gain of resources can quickly get out of hand and
thereby eliminate the challenge in the game. So we need something
that can return the balance. This is where negative feedback comes into
its own. Perhaps the more build money you have, the larger the attack
waves that come each round. There quickly reaches an equilibrium
point where you have to put more of your build money into the game to
offset the additional forces attacking you. The study of feedback loops
in game design deserves a lot more attention than I can give it in this
book and I strongly suggest that you take time to research this in more
detail. They can be incredibly powerful tools to help balance your game
mechanics and to build engagement and strategy. However, you have
to be extremely careful that their use doesn’t introduce unintended
consequences. It’s not unusual that games fall into a trap where there
is a hidden dominant strategy that ruins the game, even if to use it the
player has to do something contrary to the game’s ideology.

Reality Gets in the Way

The fifth and final source of uncertainty comes from the real world. This
is the area that many designers simply ignore, after all if you are design-
ing a game, why would you care what players do outside playing that
game? However, I argue that if you are building a service that you hope
will persist, you can’t afford to make that mistake.
Real life creates demands on your players and this can prevent them
from ever returning to your game. More than that, there is the potential
that the influences of the outside world and the social relationships of
the player can impact on their playing decisions. If you are supposed to
be meeting your friends or spending time with your family, or perhaps
in a meeting with your boss, the last thing you need is for a game to be
prompting you to return to a game to harvest your plants.
If you are worried about when you are going to be paid, the last thing
you want to think about is having to spend another $0.99 on a virtual
lollypop. We can’t (and shouldn’t try to) know the minutiae of our
players’ lives, but ignoring that there might be external pressures will
eventually lead to your app being deleted.

The Importance of Culture

Cultural context can also play an important part in the behavior of
players. This includes the differences between players from different
countries with different values, religions and politics—indeed even
 Counting on Uncertainty 123

different perspectives on history can have huge effects. At the same

time, cultural impacts can also apply to demographic groups that,
despite being located in different countries, can in some cases have
more shared values internationally than within their own country.
Something that I suspect is becoming more common as the reach of the
internet allows us to share more diverse experiences.
There is also an interesting argument that sometimes the cultural
differences can be a reason for players to actively seek out your game.
Many Chinese, Korean and Japanese players like specific Western
games and consume them specifically because they are different from
the local content; similarly many Westerners enjoy Asian content, in
particular Japanese RPG games.

Physical Presence
There are other real-world considerations we should consider. If we are
playing a game with other people, are they in the same room as us? If so,
how does that space between us influence the experience itself? How does
the game take advantage of that? At Game Horizon 2013, independent
game developer Alistair Aitcheson9 talked about the process of creation
which went into this shared screen (iPad) multiplayer game Slamjet
Stadium. Key to the design was that the device didn’t know whose fingers
were flicking which players’ pieces, and it is that fact which makes the
game so compelling. You are encouraged to use the space on the tablet and
around it in any way that helps your gameplay. In short, you are encour-
aged to cheat. We should think about the way the real-world impacts our
players. Multiplayer gaming isn’t just about real-time connections, we
have to consider the moments where players are going to be comfortable
to take the social risk to show off their skills and the conditions where
they can rely on the connections. Asynchronous games are not just about
how we use Facebook (or other social graphs) to connect with people. The
experience has to be genuinely meaningful to the players and their friends
who they might reach out to and encourage joining in the game.
With a little thought about the real-world context we can create dis-
ruptive experiences, just by considering the environment that the game
will be played in and what other forces might be acting on those please.
During my time in Sony London Studio working on PlayStation Home,
I remember that the EyeToy team was particularly interested in how
multiplayer games worked when all the participants shared the same
screen. Imagine what that might do to the way you design a game.
124 Games as a Service

Social Bonds
Awareness of these forces means that we can both work with them and
look for ways to use them to help us create deeper bonds within the
game experience. We can use social experiences to build deeper bonds
between players by creating a context within which they can share things
they all value. Games like Words with Friends and Draw Something
both leveraged the social bonds that already exist with people to create
reasons. They were also sensitive to the cycle of play, allowing player
to have short intense bursts of enjoyment that need not happen at the
same time. Their asynchronous playing style worked ideally to allow the
player to enjoy a shared experience without the burden of having to plan
to be in the same place or even online at the same time. These solved the
problem of creating a meaningful shared moment, resolving the dam-
aging uncertainty and replacing it with the positive surprise that comes
from seeing what other players do with the words or puzzles they are
presented with. The reactions and responses of other people to gameplay
never gets boring and we are usually more forgiving if a person beats us
than if we are beaten by the game itself (to a degree at least).

Practical Applications
All this theory is useful, but we need some practical direction on how
we can use this concept of uncertainty usefully in games. To help with
this I’ve looks at three approaches of how we might bring uncertainty
into a game and in particular how we might use this to create reasons
to repeat play our games. They aren’t the only techniques out there, but
they do provide strong examples worth considering.

Easter Eggs
I use the term “Easter Eggs” to describe the first of these techniques. But
don’t be fooled, it’s not just about hiding lots of meaningless little prizes
around your game. We can be more imaginative than that. The key is
to create a series of secondary goals that do not contribute to the core
success criteria of the game. Indeed they can be alternative goals with
their own objectives, which may even be at odds with the ultimate goals
of the game. I don’t suggest you take this too far, but they can intro-
duce a level of dilemma in play. Typically they involve the placement of
incongruous items in places that players need not explore to complete
the game or in places that require extra skill to access.
 Counting on Uncertainty 125

An Easter Egg is a great way to satisfy different reward behaviors

than the rest of the game fulfils, for example in a game where players
are expected to compete for speed they can adding in a “collecting”
element. Alternatively, having a monster you can kill or rush past can
add tension to a player’s decisions especially if there might be an extra
reward to be found if they make it to the goal early. And of course even
the classical egg hunt brings additional pleasure if you are able to be the
ones to locate all of them. There is an interesting dynamic which hap-
pens when players complete these “side-goals.” It seems to instill a sense
of “being on the inside,” especially if they have the means to share their
success with others. It can build on their personal identification with the
experience and other players like them, marking them out as special,
especially if it’s known that this takes skill and ingenuity to find.

Emergent Behavior
The second technique relies on building emergent behavior onto the
mechanic. I’m not really sure if it’s even fair to call it a technique, as this
often arises by accident rather than design. These are really alternative
applications of the rules of the game that create new ways that the game
can be enjoyed. They are typically tangential to the normal way you can
play the game but somehow retain a level of enjoyment, even if differ-
ently from the way the designers had intended.
Some of the best examples are the most surprising. Think about how
players decided to recreate the Mona Lisa in FarmVille.10 This wasn’t
the original intention of the game, and there are some who argue that it
happened because there wasn’t enough gameplay in the game so players
made their own. Finding something to do, when there is a problem in
the game but still pent up demand, is a common source of inspiration
for players to find these emergent behaviors. We saw this in the early
days of PlayStation Home before there was much in the way of playable
games. We saw players trying to exploit the tiny snags in the collision-
layers that had been missed in the initial testing. This allowed their
avatars to popup into the air as if they were defying gravity. For a time it
was quite an enjoyable activity but it didn’t take long for those spaces to
be cleaned up and, of course, there were soon lots of games to play.

Soft Variables
Despite being largely an accidental phenomena, we can find ways
to use emergent principles to introduce new strategies, especially
126 Games as a Service

if we use those “soft variables” not directly to influence success, but

to add flavor or alternative strategies. In a level-based puzzle game we
win by completing the level and lose by failing. However, how fast we
complete the game, which path we take, and whether we use any boosts
or power-ups are all soft variables we can measure. Plants vs. Zombies
from Popcap used this principle to beautiful effect by introducing
achievements if the player chose to restrict their options when com-
pleting a level. For example, I would gain an achievement if I chose to
not use any mushrooms during a night scene, or to not use a catapult
in a roof scene. Jetpack Joyride uses challenges to create a similar effect,
for example, asking the player to die at exactly 1,000 yards to gain a
reward.

Strategic Choices
Emergent properties can also come into effect in the choice of virtual
items a player uses to interact in a game. Take the example of a weapon
in a first-person shooter. A shotgun and sub-machine gun (SMG)
may deliver the same damage per second, but the shotgun does this in
infrequent bursts while the SMG delivers a continuous stream of bullets
that instead increases your chances to hit. The shotgun might do more
damage on flesh, but an SMG might do more damage against armored
opponents. The soft variables don’t affect the basic principles of play,
but each weapon creates a different strategy of play, either of which may
better suit the player.

Imbalanced Economies
The last technique uses the relationship between different playing
resources and their affect on the progress in the game and considers
how these can be used to create an imbalanced economy.11 The idea
is that the creation of new resources requires resources of other types
and effort on the part of the player. In any resource-restricted game
we might start with a given amount of money, things we need, and a
method to allow us to earn more money. As we play the game we earn
grind money we can spend on gathering or improving our playing
resources, which allow us to earn money faster. However, the rate at
which we can interact with the world limits how quickly we can gain
resources. This restriction might be a practical issue because of how
long it takes to play the core gameplay mechanic or it may be “arti-
ficially” restricted through the need for a fuel or energy, or perhaps
 Counting on Uncertainty 127

some cool-down process. However, we can free up those restrictions if

we spend grind money (or alternatively real money) on upgrades that
affect our performance. In some games this might be complicated by
other tools such as storage space, which again needs money to improve.
What makes this an imbalanced economy is that every upgrade we take
requires more resources to resolve and puts a demand on the player to
invest in another aspect of the game.
The principle can be used in any game. We have a tradition of using
XP/equipment/potions in a RPG and combat games that serve this exact
purpose of creating a level of friction (and achievement) to the progress
of your character. Games such as Clash of Clans have perfected the use
of an imbalanced economy to create deeper engagement for players,12
making it so that each success introduces a new challenge for the player,
which continues their desire to play.

Game Theory
Imbalance becomes even more interesting when we throw in other
players, especially if we allow the players to exchange goods with each
other. That process is extremely complex, especially if we try to model
precisely the economic implications of trade with supply and demand
impacts on price. More complex still if we insist on a ‘”zero-sum gain”—
the principle that there is a finite supply of goods so if a player takes
more than their share other players are left with less. This starts entering
the economics world of game theory, rather than games design using
“economies” (two very different things).

Summing Up Uncertainty
All of these concepts deserve much deeper analysis but are presented
here to encourage you to think differently about the way you look at
game design. My objective is to encourage you to consider how these
ideas might be applied to almost any game and deliver greater lon-
gevity to your title. Most importantly I believe they can help to create
moments that make the game special to each player. In particular
I believe that it’s essential to consider how we can use soft variables to
give meaning to every play of the game and to open out the opportunity
for mistake and error and those crazy moment of genius where every-
thing just works. That’s why uncertainty is important to me as a player, it
makes the gameplay mine, not just what the developer decided I should
experience.
128 Games as a Service

Notes
1 Go check out Greg Costikyan’s Uncertainty in Games if you want to see a breakdown of
different sources of uncertainty with a wide range of games from Super Mario to rock/
paper/scissors, http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/uncertainty-games.
2 Yes I know that quitting the game and restarting is cheating. But it’s a cheat I would have
happily paid for after my 200th death on the first section of the game, mostly down to
my lack of concentration or mishandling of the controller.
3 You can find out more details of the In-N-Out Burger online, but to be honest that takes
away a little of the fun of the process, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-N-Out_Burger_
products.
4 If you haven’t checked out the amazing The Walking Dead from Telltale Games I strongly
suggest that you do, and if you want to relive that moment check out www.youtube.
com/watch?v=au09wFtbS3k.
5 This is why I will never be a decent chess player, I lose focus after just thinking two moves
ahead and quickly get bored. I once hired Garry Kasparov to help promote a chess service
we launched for Wireplay and watched him playing four tables at once, four times over in
just a few hours. Unsurprisingly, he won every match easily but it was amazing to watch.
There are some great sources out there if you want to improve your game. This one talks
about how to train yourself to think three moves ahead, http://antheacarson.hubpages.
com/hub/How-to-Think-Three-Moves-Ahead-in-Chess.
6 Don’t get me wrong, I much prefer tower defense games that include an “interest”
mechanic specifically as a tool for dilemma that gives me more to think about than to
just trying to build the most efficient maze.
7 Feedback is a very important phenomena in economics, biology and, of course, games,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback.
8 There is a great blog post by Daniel Soli based on observations by Jesse Catron, Jay Barn-
son, and Kyoryu that looks at the use of positive and negative feedback looks in a series of
different games, http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/feedback-loops-in-game-
design.html.
9 Alistair Aitcheson was also behind the game Greedy Bankers and he had previously
explored same-screen multiplayer through the tablet version of his game called Greedy
Bankers Against the World, www.alistairaitcheson.com.
10 There have been an amazing range of art pieces created using the FarmVille game, it was
a bit of a meme in 2009. This link contains a selection of 21 of the better examples, http://
reface.me/applications/21-farmville-art-masterpieces.
11 There is an interesting blog post by Ian Schriber that looks at the use of economies in
some detail, http://gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com.
12 Personally I find the model used in Clash of Clans to be too steep and I haven’t chosen
to spend money in that game, despite my deep longstanding affection for the guys at
Supercell. I admire the game and its revenue potential, and appreciate their dedication to
making the best possible game, but in this case the combat system doesn’t work for me
as a player. I suspect that’s because at heart I’m still a table-top war-gamer and want to
control the troops more directly.
 What is Your Flash Gordon Cliffhanger? 129

Exercise 7: What is Your Flash

Gordon Cliffhanger?
Following on from the last exercise we will continue to explore the
themes from Chapter 9. This time we will look at the “Flash Gordon
cliffhanger.” This is taken from the classic Saturday matinee film series
of the 1930s and 40s. My favorite was Buster Crabbe and his version
of Flash Gordon. Each episode was a self-contained story that fitted
into the wider narrative, but at the end there was a moment of disaster.
Flash would be fighting one of Ming’s henchmen when the Princess
would slip and fall off the cliff to her almost certain doom and Flash
jumped after her to try to save her; or some such fancy. Come back the
same time next week to find out if (or more likely how) they survived!
Why did they use this formula each time? They did it because it gave
their audience a reason to return next week and part with their hard-
earned cash.
In this exercise we will explore how these ideas can help your game
design and what techniques you plan to use to create reasons to return
to the game rather than just assuming that because the game is enjoy-
able then this will deliver you retention. We need to create a sense of
activity happening in the game, even when the player isn’t connected.
We have to decide if we are going to use an energy mechanic or some
other time-based resource that has to be used up or takes time to
refresh. We also have to notify your players when something interesting
happens that might affect them or simply comes from social sharing,
how do we find our when our friends leave “footprints in the sand?” We
also have to work out which channels we will use to communicate with
our players and how we can avoid that becoming annoying—we should
never nag our users! Finally, we have to think about the different noti-
fication process for your more engaged players and whether we need to
create some specific social tools to support that experience.
130 Games as a Service

What is the Flash Gordon cliffhanger for

your game?
Which happens in your game while I am not
playing?
Which resources are real-time dependant?
What asynchonous social events can happen
when I am not playing?
How will you communicate reasons to return?
How frequently will you notify users about
changes occurring live in the game?
How will you avoid the game “nagging”
players?
Is there a separate notification cycle for the
superfan game?

WORKED EXAMPLE:

What is the Flash Gordon Finding Anthony has a low-impact

cliffhanger for your game? twist on the “energy” mechanic in that
missions appear in the game for limited
periods of time and reoccurring at a set
rate depending on whether the district
they take place in has been cleared or not.
Players waiting to play can always use
boosts to spawn new missions.
Which happens in your game while If I don’t check the game regularly I may
I am not playing? be missing new missions, each of which
might have unique rewards, such as a
puzzle piece about the “girlfriend”.
Which resources are real-time The missions themselves are real-time
dependant? dependent and the rate at which they can
be completed is dependent on whether the
district is cleared (slower) or not (faster).
What asynchonous Social events can My friends may complete a new space
happen when I am not playing? or beat my scores and send me a direct
challenge to try to beat them back.
How will you communicate reasons The game will allow the player to switch
to return? on or off notifications when there are ten
or more missions available to complete.
Player challenges can be sent via Facebook
messages or Email as well as via an
in-game notification. The receiver can
decide how the game should deliver this
and messages follow the same rules as a
poke—namely I cant resend a poke until
the player concerned has returned the poke.

(Continued)
 What is Your Flash Gordon Cliffhanger? 131

How frequently will you notify users Each day players will get a different free
about changes occurring live in the boost, the value of which goes up for each
game? consecutive day returning (up to ten
days). Players will be notified to collect
them as they become available.
How will you avoid the game We only send out gameplay messages,
“nagging” players? not marketing messages. Additionally,
they will be alerted within the game that
they will get notifications and we will
highlight how they can cancel these alerts
(opt out). This process will not be hidden.
Is there a separate notification cycle Family members will be notified (opt out)
for the superfan game? when other family members have taken
new locations in your districts or when
other families take control from yours.
Chapter 8
Six Degrees of Socialization
134 Games as a Service

Playing With Others

Some people think of social games as a new phenomenon because of the
introduction of Facebook and the way this changed how players shared
their experiences. However, over millions of years of evolution, mam-
mals have been playing with others as a way to learn new skills and to
test their social position. It’s really only in recent history, with the arrival
of the computer game industry, where we started playing alone. Even
then, with the arrival of connected computers, Trubshaw and Bartle
introduced the first virtual world or Multi User Dungeon (MUD).1 This
text-based experience was profoundly different because the world con-
tained real people, people who could type for themselves and communi-
cate (or more likely fight) with you. For those with an imagination and
willingness not just to suspend disbelief but to accept the limitations
of the technology this was incredible. This also provided an amazing
reference point for Bartle to find insight into social playing behaviors as
we have talked about in Chapter 2.

From Small Beginnings

Online gaming continued to grow as the quality of connection and
games experiences grew. Services such as MPlayer, GameSpy, and Brit-
ish Telecom’s Wireplay used different approaches to provide a central
hub for players to help them find and share their online gaming experi-
ences; in particular games such as Quake II or Unreal and, my personal
favorite, the groundbreaking Counterstrike.2
However, these services were flawed for many reasons, not least that
the technology meant that you had to download a specific client, you
couldn’t run them in the browser, and on top of that they usually needed
some form of direct integration into the game—something that most
developers didn’t have the resources to do.
The other problem is that these games were particularly niche. Only
people with the technical savvy (and resources) to link their computers
to the emerging internet as well as to troubleshoot these temperamental
connections could realistically play.
In 1999, Wireplay had 50,000 monthly active users with more than
1,000 simultaneous peak connections over dial-up (typically 28k or
56k baud) modems. That was one of the largest games services in the
EU (probably the largest) at the time, but if you compare that with
the 70 million daily active users of Candy Crush Saga it pales into
insignificance.
 Six Degrees of Socialization 135

Even with the rise of broadband and connected console games with
Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, I would argue that this kind of play
remained niche. Of course it grew, but the idea that it might be enjoyed
by mass-market players was almost laughable. The growing audience of
MMOs was probably as important as the impact of console players in
terms of the range of audience. More so if you consider that these games
were probably the first to be able to locate significant numbers of female
players. People wanted a social context to enjoy games playing together
and titles such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft offered that to large
communities of both gender.

Footprints in the Sand

However, it took the introduction of social games on Facebook to herald
an unprecedented increase in the size of the audience for online and
mobile games, bringing for the first time a truly mass-market adoption
of casual games. These games picked up on something which in the old
days of online gaming we missed: asynchronous play. This was the idea
that I don’t have to be online at exactly the same time as you in order
to enjoy the experience. I could leave “footprints in the sand” for my
friends to discover and these would allow them to feel like they had
shared in my experience and enjoyment.
Yes we know that more recently, the social games pioneers such as
Zynga, Digital Chocolate, and Playfish have stumbled, but rather than
signaling the end of the line for social games, I believe this is just a
stumbling start. We have seen a “gold-rush” of developers discovering
social values and using data-driven techniques but it has broken the
trust of players and left them wondering where the fun went. Something
that I hope this book will help you, as a designer, address.
The trouble is that getting under the skin of social play requires that
we turn upside-down our expectations of what we currently call social
games. Instead of looking at games as single player or multiplayer, we
should look at how people behave socially in games and look for patterns
of engagement that build trust and confidence. Understanding the role of
social elements in games ultimately comes down to understanding people
and relationships, not in trying to build on the technical implementations
used in games such as FarmVille, World of Warcraft or Call of Duty.

Understanding the Facebook Poke

When considering social play, it’s hard to break things down into simple
processes. However, Facebook has a core element that, although it has
136 Games as a Service

fallen out of favor, does allow us to get to the heart of what happens
emotionally when we use the internet for communication.
The Facebook “poke” is a little more hidden than it once was, but it
remains a very simple way to connect to your friends. Poking someone
is a transfer of information; it says: “Hey, I thought about you today.”
It doesn’t require reciprocation; it’s not demanding. You can choose to
respond, inviting further interactions, or you can hide the notification.
Facebook even has a simple and effective anti-spamming mechanism
included in that you can’t resend a poke until the other party responds.
If I poke you and you don’t poke me back, that’s that. This kind of
message doesn’t need words, it communicates simply through the action
of its use. Receiving this message gains our attention and compels us to
find out more if we want to—but the only pressure to respond is internal
to ourselves.
For me the most profound realization was in the meaning a poke
conveys to its recipients and that this intrinsic “message” is entirely
subjective to your relationship with its sender. Think about the different
meanings associated when you poke your lover if you are in a new rela-
tionship. What about if you have a wife/husband/partner? This message
might be flirtatious or even a deep token of love. That message might be
completely different if this was to my child or perhaps a close friend. If
it’s someone I’ve only recently met, this might have an entirely different
context still. A poke can convey other information, for example if we
have an arrangement to meet at a pub that day, it can act as a reminder
to leave on time; or perhaps if they owe me money, a reminder to pay.
Of course there is a darker side to this kind of communication. If you
receive an unwelcome poke, perhaps from a stalker or bully, that can be
deeply disturbing.
The point is the message and the medium are not necessarily con-
nected directly. Playing games allows us to see other players who matter
to us, whether or not we actually communicate in person. If I know that
you can see the purchases or playing decisions I make then that will
directly affect my behavior, making me more or less likely to interact in
the game depending on the context.

Interdependence Matters
To understand this effect it’s useful to think about how relationships
work and consider how players might look at your game as a medium
for communications with their friends and other players. This will allow
 Six Degrees of Socialization 137

us to find ways to help build deeper engagement as well as to reinforce

the positive values that make it more likely that players will gain the
emotional engagement with the game as well as to feel safer about
spending money with us.
There is a concept called interdependence theory that is used to help
us understand interpersonal relationships and in particular why some
relationships are stable and others aren’t. For me it also provides a useful
way to consider how the social elements in our game can contribute or
detract from the interaction with other players. This theory considers
why some people have happy relationship experiences and yet have
unstable relationships, while other relationships can be stable despite
the unhappiness of their participants. This concept was first introduced
way back in 1959 by Harold Kelley and John Thibaut in their book The
Social Psychology of Groups.3

Measuring Love and Friendship

Defining your relationship with someone is problematic. However, if we
take an objective, utilitarian view, we can theoretically compare the love,
friendship and affection gained from a given relationship with the effort
we expend to maintain it and from this we know if the relationship is
“worthwhile.” Of course that’s not something we can do in practice,
partly because we are too close to that relationship, partly because all
relationships are in a state of flux (we feel different needs at different
times) but mostly because we fail to correctly perceive the true value or
effort involved. However, for the purpose of this exercise, let’s assume
we can make this calculation and let’s call this the “outcome” of the rela-
tionship. Of course that’s not all. We also bring to each relationship a set
of “expectations.” This isn’t usually a consistent thing. We don’t expect
as much from some friends as from others and in some relationships
(with family members in particular) we are often willing to put up with
a reduced “outcome.”

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

According to interdependence theory, “satisfaction” with a relationship
comes when the “outcome” exceeds the “expectation.” To complicate
matters, we inevitably compare the outcomes we are getting from our
relationships to the outcomes that others are getting from theirs, and
those comparisons affect our expectations as well. This shouldn’t come
as a surprise; we are social animals and, in the end, social position is
138 Games as a Service

part of the motivation for play in the first place. Because of this we can
easily find that we set our expectations so unrealistically high that it
seems almost inevitable that we will be unhappy with what otherwise
might be the best possible relationship; only to discover the truth
too late.

Playing Together
This way of thinking is very relevant to social games. Our players have
a relationship not only with the game but with the other players of
that game. Each player will have a set of expectations that will create
an outcome for each game session that may have little to do with any
success they associate with the essential play of the game. Whether they
continue playing is dependant not just on players’ satisfaction with the
game itself, but on their social relationships and their expectations of
alternative services, which might otherwise satisfy their playing needs.
Is it any wonder that this social games market has proven to be more
complicated that just having a game that sends “gifts” to your friends
and that encourages you to “sell” the game to your friends in return for
a few virtual resources?

Other Sources of Emotion

This kind of analysis is all well and good and gives us a sense of the
dynamics of social influence on play. However, it can’t of course help
us isolate the specific emotional drivers of the players. This matters
for games as it’s a key aspect of what we try to engender in terms of
play and how we use mood and pace as discussed in Chapter 3. So as
designers we don’t just need to think about how players emotionally
respond to the gameplay, we have to consider how the gameplay will
affect the social context in which the game is played. There are internal
forces built into our game design as well as external forces from the
social context. Player satisfaction will also be influenced by practical
factors such as the ability for players to use our game to fill unoccu-
pied time, the ability for the game to be interrupted, and how others,
especially friends, can participate in our shared experience. At the same
time satisfaction may also be influenced by opportunity factors such as
what the player should be doing instead. Each of these may positively
or negatively affect a player’s commitment to playing our game. If we
fail to consider these issues we will fail to reach the potential value that
socialization can have for our game.
 Six Degrees of Socialization 139

Don’t Be Complacent
There is of course a darker way to view this interdependence model.
Does the player’s experience have to be entirely positive? If the outcome
exceeds their expectations (and especially the expectations from other
games), then this model tells us that they player will keep on playing.
There are some grounds for thinking that this might be the case, if our
players are new to gaming and their expectations of other available
games are sufficiently low, perhaps they might keep playing our game.
I’m not suggesting that anyone deliberately sets out to make a bad
game, but it could be argued that there have been some prominent
examples of complacency among the original wave of social games.
I suspect that this might be a contributing factor to why some of those
high-profile early-mover Facebook games lasted as long as they did; in
the absence of better gameplay, their players’ expectation of value wasn’t
very high due to their relative inexperience in games. The trouble is, you
have to ask yourself why new games didn’t just come along to fill the
void of quality or at least depth of experience. It’s not like there weren’t
other “better” games—whatever that means—available. However, this
market was one where the big publishers and developer were spending
lots of money4 to acquire users and often were spending a vast propor-
tion of their earnings to simply retain their position. In that context it’s
not surprising that other games had little chance of being found.

What Can We Do About This?

When we think about the forces at play in socialization of games it’s
clear that we can’t easily affect the expectations a player has about our
games. We can try to create anticipation as well as brand values and that
will help, however, players will still have their own thoughts and ideas.
There are two factors we can genuinely control when it comes to think-
ing about our game: how entertaining the game is, and how easy it is for
players to share and communicate in the game. The more we reduce the
effort required to socialize, the more we have a chance to increase the
engagement with our audience.
However, thinking about communication brings us back to the “soul”
of games as a service. Player behavior evolves as their engagement
builds. This concept directly affects the social needs of players as much
as their playing needs and it’s important to consider how the social
forces adapt as the player lifecycle moves on.
140 Games as a Service

Figure 8.1 Six degrees of socialization.

Six Degrees of Socialization

To help us understand how this works, let’s consider social interaction
in different stages, I call them the six degrees of socialization—six core
differentiating levels of social interaction that give us a way to examine
the engagement needs of players and how we can use this to help sustain
and build the audience for our game. More than that, this model helps
us think about how to avoid problems that arise when you try to build a
critical mass of players by reducing the the social effort expected of your
players.

The First Degree—“I See You Play”5

When a player downloads your game for the first time they are in the
“learning” stage and generally this is the most vulnerable time from
the perspective of sustaining their interest. At this time they have not
decided if they are willing to associate themselves with the game and
they may have a level of concern about their ability to perform in terms
of game skills.
 Six Degrees of Socialization 141

This stage of socialization is passive, almost voyeuristic. First degree

players need the reassurance to know that they are not alone and that
there are others playing this game. This voyeurism is vital to sustain
expectations and to help players overcome the initial disillusionment
that comes after the initial download. Other players can provide the
vision of the potential of the game and help foreshadow the benefits
that the game has to offer in a way that no tutorial or developer-led
process can. The point is at this stage that there is no risk to the
player. There is only the opportunity to feel welcomed into the
community.

The Second Degree—“See Me Play”

Once players become comfortable with their initial experience of the
game, and often still within the learning stage, they will become more
open to sharing their experience with other players as well as their
friends. This requires a little more effort on their part, but provided that
the experience is positive for the recipients of these messages (other
players, friends, etc.), that’s OK. For example, a simple Facebook post or
perhaps a video post of my gameplay (such as Everyplay from Applifier)
provides a way for me to share a positive moment from my gameplay,
likely an achievement or high score that I’ve achieved. Perhaps even a
funny moment that I managed to capture. The payoff comes if oth-
ers follow me to join the game I am playing and if I get to show off
moments of success.

The Third Degree—“I Beat Your Score”

The third degree, appropriately perhaps, is where we start to interrogate
our relationship with the game. By this point players have probably
crossed over from “learning” to “engaging” and their relationship in the
game is now deeper and they are probably playing regularly, perhaps
even paying already. At this degree the social elements are more direct
where players are deliberately comparing their performance and behav-
ior with their friends. Their relative progress starts to matter. This is not
always directly competitive, indeed this is still largely about communi-
cating their experience to each other than directly getting involved in
each others’ games. There is almost always a bragging element to this
(imagine that) from high scores to leveling up, however this is more
about players giving themselves a reason to keep returning, playing and
interacting with other players in-game.
142 Games as a Service

The Fourth Degree—“Lets Collaborate”

As our confidence with both the game and the social tools grows we
start becoming more open to deeper forms of collaboration and even
start to expect a level of reciprocation from other players. In some
games this can start quite simply, such as visiting a friend’s farm or
playing the same map of an FPS game. There may well be competition
between players and indeed the purpose of play may even be to beat
others. However, the point of this degree is that we increasingly rely on
the involvement of others to get the enjoyment out of the game. Indeed
some level of collaboration is often vital in order for each player to
progress further in the game. This builds stronger bonds and long-term
loyalty for our deeply “engaging” players. Of course there are games out
there which jump straight to this form of collaboration in games; think
about games such as Battleships or Call of Duty’s online play. These are
all about playing together. However, these always do this by creating a
barrier to entry for some players. The question to the designer is how
great is that cost and are the players who might be put off sufficiently
important in terms of cost of acquisition? On the other hand, there
are games that have tried to offer single-player versions and have then
found that converting player to multiplayer or social versions has been
problematic. These problems are usually caused by a lack of focus on
communicating the values of transitioning to social play. Building
strong fourth degree socialization requires a much greater level of effort
than that in previous degrees, and requires that players (and the game
developer) spends some time nurturing those relationships. Otherwise
these communities can quickly collapse.

The Fifth Degree—“Go Head-to-Head”

After the initial level of collaboration we find that the degree of engage-
ment accelerates further and usually the focus will be more directly
competitive. This usually requires a considerably greater level of com-
mitment and indeed to extent training. The offline experience becomes
essentially irrelevant and the core enjoyment is found entirely through
the interaction with other players. This is largely a phenomenon associ-
ated with real-time play, but there are some examples that leverage asyn-
chronous play as well. A critical mass of users is essential to sustain an
experience like this and this will inevitably skew your user base toward
players already predisposed to the game (and genre). However, building
 Six Degrees of Socialization 143

this kind of interaction from the perspective of the metagame or indeed

as a superfan game can be quite effective. Clash of Clans is a great exam-
ple where the superfan nature has brought together collaborate and
competitive elements within an asynchronous game.

The Sixth Degree—“We Are Guild”

The final degree takes socialization to its ultimate level where the social
experience becomes more important than the specifics of play, indeed
where the game becomes merely the chosen method of communication.
That’s a great thing to achieve and something that actually gives the
developer a degree of freedom because they can often take that fan base
with them into other games.
At this level, players use social tools in the game to manage and
schedule their experiences together. They actively plan to participate
synchronously, perhaps at regular times of the week, or even daily! The
best example of a game that has achieved this status is World of War-
craft, but other examples also exist, notably first-person shooters such
as Quake, Counterstrike, even Tribes. For players the real-world connec-
tions they make through their clan or guild can be highly rewarding,
but the effort needed to sustain them is equally high. It’s probably not
a surprise that many a divorce, marriage and affair have happened as a
result of people connecting through playing with guilds. Only the most
dedicated of player groups will sustain them, but these are the same
groups who’ll be your greatest asset, if you let them. Given the right
in-game tools, loyal players will provide the social “glue” you need to
sustain interest from less committed players.

It’s the Journey, Not the Destination

What I have tried to do through these six degrees is to show that, just
like the player lifecycle, social engagement is a journey not a desti-
nation. By understanding the concept of interdependence we can try
to understand the forces that sustain or break these social groupings.
Social forces are, however, different and less controllable than player
lifecycle. It’s like trying to build a pyramid out of sand; sometimes the
pressure of being at the top of the point causes the grains to fall out of
shape. It takes effort to sustain a community. They are the most loyal,
but you can’t assume they will be around forever. You need to find ways
to not only allow others to take over the positions of your most loyal
fans, but to actively reward those who take on those roles.
144 Games as a Service

A Social Pyramid Scheme

One of the lessons of managing online communities is that there is no
way we can ever have enough staff to engage with the community as
directly as we would like. However, by understanding the six degrees
of socialization and providing the right tools we can put the power to
recruit, manage and engage with the audience in the hands of our play-
ers. This takes a different way of thinking than most social games have
taken to date. First we have to remember that guilds and clans tend to be
fairly small in terms of their immediate members but they leave a much
greater shadow on the community. The people who coordinate the play
of their guilds and clans have a particularly vital role and we should find
ways in the game to reward them for their effort. The more we value
their contribution and find ways to return their investment through
gameplay, social prestige and, to be frank, love from the developer
team, the greater their commitment will be back to the game.
There is a risk that this kind of thinking could get us in trouble,
especially if we look at the way pyramid schemes work. Even organiza-
tions such as Amway that use the relationships of their sellers to recruit
others to promote their goods have a negative perception. However,
we have an audience who love our games and it is only reasonable that
we should find ways to reward players who genuinely help us retain or
acquire users; provided we don’t resort to cheap, brand damaging tricks.

Notes
1 MUD was the first virtual world, although my first experience of text-based virtual worlds
came in 1985 when I first played Shades (a later descendant) on my Apple IIE with a
coupler modem. This was the first time I realised the importance of lag; it turns out that
it’s difficult to fight in a text based game with a 9600 baud connection. Wireplay still sup-
ported MUD2 in 1998 and I had my first contact with Richard Bartle over support calls for
that service. I know I’ve already provided this link earlier but this presentation is definitely
worth checking out, www.gdcvault.com/play/1013804/MUD-Messrs-Bartle-and-Trubshaw.
2 Counterstrike remains one of my favorite games of all time. Indeed I would claim that
Wireplay helped “save” that project. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. We bought the
original mod team a set of new computers when they were low on cash and in return
the fi fth beta release of Counterstrike was branded “Wireplay.” One of the best decisions
I ever made. Sadly, it was only years later that Adrian Manning (one of my former col-
leagues) owned up that he and two others managed to get their names in the credits. I’ve
not forgiven him for not getting my name on that list, despite it being my decision and
budget that paid for it. Adrian—consider this my revenge, mate.
3 Interdependence theory is largely about social relationships, rather than the relationship
between a player and a game, however, it has great parallels for social games, http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdependence_theory.
 Six Degrees of Socialization 145

4 It’s hard to nail down exactly how much people were spending on user acquisition at the
peak of Facebook games but the Fiksu reports suggest that $1.18–1.81 is the typical range
for a “loyal user” on mobile, http://www.fiksu.com/resources/fiksu-indexes.
5 This model is an update of the one presented in my article in Casual Connect Maga-
zine. I have adjusted the first degree to reflect players who want to see others who play
but are not yet ready to socialise themselves, http://issuu.com/casualconnect/docs/
winter2013/3.
146 Games as a Service

Exercise 8: What is Your Star

Wars Factor?
This is another exercise where we will continue to explore the themes
from Chapter 9. On this occasion we will look at the elusive “Star Wars
factor.” This is about how users separate their identity from others using
your game as the vehicle. It’s the principle behind why some people will
understand what I mean when I say “Han shot first,”1 and why others
don’t really understand Star Wars (in my opinion of course). There are
special rules and experiences that allow us to include some people while
excluding others, especially the more we seek other ways to identify
with people than just familial bonds. We naked apes are a funny lot
when it comes to socializing.
In this exercise we will explore what elements in your game are
designed to create a sense of shared experience and therefore to leverage
the retention and monetization benefits as well as, importantly, the viral
discovery opportunity that comes from effective meaningful social-
ization. What social media will you support? Facebook and Twitter
are common in the West but what about China, Japan, South Korea,
Indonesia, India—all huge games markets. Just as importantly you have

What is the Star Wars factor for your

game?
What mechanisms do you support
to connect to social media from your
game?
Why should I trust your game with my
Facebook/ Twitter/Weibo details?
What advantage do I get by connecting
socially in your game?
Why would my social media friends
care about what I might post?
How frequently will you notify my
social media friends about the game?
* The right answer is only at player
request

What makes these social connections

meaningful?
What social tools will you be making to
support the superfan game?
 What is your Star Wars Factor? 147

to think about why these have meaning, and not only to the player who
wants to share but also to their friends, the recipients of those messages.
They may not care about your game but the last thing you want to do
is put them off because they feel like they are being spammed by their
friends, your players. Finally, do we have to build some special experi-
ence, perhaps an open application program interface (API) to enable the
superfans to make the most of the higher levels of gameplay?

WORKED EXAMPLE:

What is the Star Wars factor for There are two social aspects to Finding
your game? Anthony: the ability to compare your play
with your friends and the superfan game,
which allows players to collaborate as a
“family.”
What mechanisms do you support We will support all Facebook, Twitter and
to connect to social media from other localized social platforms such as Sina
your game? Weibo (China), GREE (Japan) and Kakao
(South Korea). Additionally we will leverage
Everyplay to offer access to gameplay
recordings of every play, including an
incentive to upload and share the video each
time you beat your friends’ high scores.
Why should I trust your game The game encourages sharing of gameplay
with my Facebook/ Twitter/Weibo videos alongside playing achievements as
details? well as incentivizing players who agree
to connect with their social media. It will
provided moments to share throughout play
but the principle access will be through the
player’s activity, namely the gameplay
video.
What advantage do I get by Connecting to Facebook allows me to
connecting socially in your game? compete and collaborate with friends. The
completion comes from outperforming my
friends as well as learning from how they
played the game via their video replays.
Additionally, I can invite my friends to
join my “family” and this adds two new
dimension to the game. The first is the shared
endeavors of our family (something that
can be quite bonding). The second is the
coordination required to locate the appearance
of the “girlfriend,” creating personal shared
moments. We all are in the same space at the
same time.

(Continued)
148 Games as a Service

Why would my social media Watching the gameplay of a game my

friends care about what I might friend loves is a great way to discover new
post? games content, plus it’s personal to their
experience. It’s not about the game, it’s about
what they did in that game. That might be
funny/silly/dumb. But because it’s your
friend, that’s entertaining in its own right.
How frequently will you notify We only notify when the player wants to
my social media friends about the and we only suggest connecting or updating
game? when the player has done something
* The right answer is only at meaningful or when something meaningful
player request happens to that player’s “family.” They have
to confirm the action and in doing such
updates we offer players the chance to share a
free item with that player.
What makes these social The posts about achievements are connected
connections meaningful? with personal challenges to “beat” the score for
that level. Whereas other posts will relate to
the superfan game
What social tools will you be Players in the superfan game will be
making to support the superfan allocated a URL for their family that
game? includes a template page with wiki-links,
forums, and a live chat system. All of these
will be mobile friendly. The site will leverage a
OpenMap API, which allows players to track
family members’ performance and allow
competition between clans within the family
to be measured separately from the overall
family performance.

Note
1 If you don’t know what this means, just type the phrase into Google or ask someone with
a copy of the original Star Wars film (Episode IV)—not the special editions . . . definitely
not the special editions.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 9
Engagement-Led Design
152 Games as a Service

Getting Engaged
In Chapter 4 we talked about how understanding the “soul” of games as
a service comes from thinking about the evolution of a player through
their different life stages. We continued this theme in Chapter 5 when
we tried to not only map out that the changing nature of engagement by
thinking about the different cogs and loops we use in games to maintain
and sustain the interests of the players over that lifespan.
All of this has been an attempt to get you thinking about player
engagement and to understand that by acknowledging the player flow
we can build on their engagement without accidently breaking it when
it is at its most fragile, by asking for money or social sharing at the
wrong time.

Thinking Differently
In this chapter we will explore the concept of engagement-led design in
more detail and look at some specific tools we can use to build mechan-
ics that respond to the player’s evolving needs. This isn’t intended as a
prescription to define a formula for game design but is intended instead
as a tool to help you review your game designs and to identify potential
problems as well as ways to punctuate each stage of play with experi-
ences that can help build deeper engagement, perhaps even to “upsell”
players to the next life stage, to spend money, or simply to keep playing.
In Chapter 5 we identified the need to grab the player’s attention in
just six seconds and lead them to a meaningful success within the first
minute. But how do we do that; what design principles can we use to
deliver on something like that?

The Bond Opening

Let’s take an analogy from the film industry1 and look at the James Bond
movies, which always deliver a spectacular opening moment.2 Within
the first ten minutes or so we are treated to a condensed experience with
all the guns, girls, chases, cars and, of course, quips that we expect from
the genre. This isn’t a random indulgence. This reintroduces us to Bond
himself, what he does and, importantly, just what he is capable of at his
best. It’s a benchmark against which his abilities are measured, allowing
us to understand the difficulty to overcome his opponents later. The
story of that opening is separate from the rest of the plot. This moment
is about setting up the conditions that allow us to make sense of the
 Engagement-Led Design 153

plot later in the story, hopefully without giving anything important

away. This is about explaining the environment of the world Bond lives
is. Then it ends with a classic staged moment, we look at the archetype
“licensed to kill” spy down the barrel of a gun. This reinforces the conti-
nuity between the films and whoever is playing Bond on that occasion.
It’s a level of familiarity that creates a concrete connection between the
viewer and the film, settling everyone into place for the journey that is
to come. This approach makes us willing to forgive all kinds of incredi-
ble or flawed plots as it gives us permission to turn on our “suspension
of disbelief ” and turn off our critical thinking.
What has this got to with games? Well it provides us with a perspec-
tive we can apply when we look through the first moments of our game.
We should try to work out what qualities the opening experience has to
delight players and importantly whether they foreshadow3 the value of
playing our game. This starts from the moment that the player selects
the icon. We are setting expectations with the art style, the UI and how
smoothly this functions. The way we explain to players what they need
to do to play the game matters and should feel part of the experience.
In fact I’d go further: it has to delight the player. If we have a boring,
frustrating tutorial, this risks setting an expectation that we have a bor-
ing frustrating game. Instead we should try to eliminate the need for a
tutorial and use play to educate the player in the ways of the mechanics
as far as possible.

A Core Experience
The early stages of a game should clearly communicate the core mechanic
(what we earlier called the “bones”) of the game and this means we have
to also clearly communicate the success criteria (the “muscles”), which
at the same time means we have to explain the values of the game, which
are intrinsically linked to the reasons why we should keep playing. Games
such as Assassin’s Creed take a very direct approach to this by giving us the
chance to play a fully equipped and skilled avatar in the first stages of the
game, only to take away much of those perks so that we can earn them
back again. On the other hand, Plants vs. Zombies 23 uses a pattern of play
that starts simply and draws you across the map for each level, allowing
you to quickly unlock a series of new seeds you can use. This demon-
strates the route map through the game, before you are informed that
to proceed to the next “world” you have to collect a specific number of
stars. This asks you to repeat the journey you have already made, but with
154 Games as a Service

a new end-goal as well as new twists to each stop on your journey. Both
these techniques provide the player with a degree of freedom, a sense of
purpose, and the opportunity to take a step-by-step journey of discovery
that gives them the opportunity to learn and perfect the controls without
this being too scary. Further, they use these steps to create entertainment,
genuine fun as well as genuine progression punctuated with regular and
early playing rewards. These are not just meaningful to sustain every
player, but they also set up the expectations for later in the game. From
this groundwork, the player will understand whether, for them, the game
is worth spending money on later. Don’t ask players to spend money at
this point, however; the point of this stage is to demonstrate the value of
the game to them so they are much more inclined to buy at the right stage
in their engagement. That being said, this is an opportunity to lay our
cards on the table; that our game is worth spending money on. We want
to make sure that even in only the first minute that we are explaining that
we have a great game, that there are things about this game that are worth
spending money on, but only when the player is ready to do so.

Reasons to Trust
Let’s also not forget the importance of communicating the core values of
our game’s brand and that we should ensure that our use of art style, the
emotions of our story, the way we sound, and, of course, the core game-
play combine to set expectations that will be lasting. Part of the reason
why it’s so important to paint such a good picture of our brand is that
these first impressions last. James Bond is a brand, he represents specific
qualities and an identity that, despite the terrible things he has to do,
remain something to aspire to; admirable despite his attitude towards
women. It doesn’t matter if he is being played by a different actor or if
the role takes a comic or dark tone. Bond is an idea that goes beyond
a logo or icon. Like other strong brands, Bond has become shorthand
for all of the qualities we want people to think about when considering
the ultimate, elegant spy. What is the equivalent for your game? What
are the qualities you want to communicate about your game? How does
each element from art to camera, from mechanic to narrative all help to
build up this identity? And why would your players think of your game
when reminded of those qualities in the rest of their life?

Easier Said Than Done

Building a brand is not an easy thing to pull off. There are very few truly
famous games brands out there. However, those that exist carry with
 Engagement-Led Design 155

them values and expectations of a playing experience that we under-

stand instantly. I only have to say “Lara” and most gamers know exactly
who I am talking about, and I don’t mean the classic cricketer.4 Don’t
expect that you can create a brand that will be the next Sonic the Hedge-
hog or Angry Birds. That kind of brand requires an incredible alignment
of luck, timing and usually a huge and well-spent marketing budget.
However, thinking like a brand is still really important and its impact
on the quality of your game and the expectations of your player will be
enormous, as well as helping you to coordinate your promotional mes-
sages about the game.5 The required consistency of art, design, writing
style, PR messages, etc., will pay dividends and should be rooted deep in
the concept of your game and what makes that unique and compelling
to players.

The Flash Gordon Cliffhanger

After the Bond moment, and assuming that we succeeded getting our
audiences’ attention, we then have to consider how we will encourage
them to keep playing. I can’t stress too strongly that the core differenti-
ation between a product and a service is about “repeated engagement.”
So what can we do to build or better still consolidate that repetition?
Let’s take another analogy from the film industry. The Saturday matinee
serial was the mainstay of the 1930s with actors like Buster Crabbe, who
played eponymous classic characters from Tarzan to Flash Gordon and
Buck Rogers. The writers of these classics knew that they had to satisfy
their audiences with incredible, self-contained stories that would not
only delight them, but keep them coming back each week for the next
episode. The writers had to leave the audience desperate for more each
week. The trick of having a never-ending story goes back at least as far
as One Thousand and One Nights and continues to be used in many
modern TV series,6 perhaps most notably the original Dallas when
we all wondered “who shot JR?”7 You could arguable that the Kiefer
Sutherland-fronted series 24 turned this into a fine art, with every
moment created to deliver a new and deeper twist.

Gordon’s Alive?
There are so many alternatives but, although I’m tempted to bring up
Doctor Who, it will always be Flash Gordon that sticks in my mind.
I remember as a kid watching reruns on a Sunday afternoon of Crabbe’s
famous character in glorious black and white, fist-fighting with one of
Ming the Merciless’ henchmen only to fall to his apparent death from
156 Games as a Service

the spaceship. Then in the next episode he would have suddenly have
grabbed some protruding pipe and survived. It was all a bit ludicrous but
finding out how he survived and how badly that scene was put together8
is all part of the fun. However, what’s important here is the build-up
of tension and the creation of a perceived peril. We might have known
that Flash would survive, but our suspension of disbelief allowed us to
the luxury of wondering how he could survive the latest death-defying
moment. This format didn’t just have to be about life or death, the writers
could mix it up with love interest (would they kiss or not?); would the
hero kill his enemy? Was the enemy really dead? Leaving an ambiguity
about the end of an episode meant you could revitalize any subplot in
later episodes and has been the model for soap operas around the world.
We need to look at each playing session within our games as if they
were a Flash Gordon episode. That means that they have to be inherently
satisfying and make sense to the player. The activity in the session needs
to draw the player inevitably onwards towards a greater objective (such
as defeating Ming the Merciless) while dealing with the current goals
(such as negotiating with Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen). However, we
need to end the session with the player wanting more and giving them a
reason to return for the next session. Indeed we could use this concept
to help us mix up the rhythm of play, creating the gameplay equivalent
of a musical “bridge.” This idea of a contrast to the overarching com-
posite of patterns of play is an appealing idea as, while it shakes up our
preconceptions of the game, it still remains intrinsically integrated into
the experience as a whole.

Building the Arch

So what is your equivalent of the long term story arch? With a game like
Candy Crush, not only is the narrative journey literally drawn out as a
pathway for you, it also has an “energy” mechanic variation that uses up
lives every time you fail to complete a level. Each playing session has a
unique layout and rule variations that challenge you in different ways
and of course you recover your lives at a slow rate. We can continue to
play levels we know how to solve as long as we want, but to move on
we have to risk our “lives.” In Firemint/EA’s excellent Real Racing 3 we
are drawn forward by our ability to progress through numerous race
courses and access more cars and different races. However, racing has
a natural consequence, causing wear and tear to our vehicles, which
impacts their performance. Both of the game examples I have given you
 Engagement-Led Design 157

are using a variation on the concept of “energy.” However, as I said

before I don’t want to focus on that from the point of view of using it to
earn money. At this time I don’t even want us to consider these tech-
niques as a way to introduce consequence for “failure.” Instead I want
you to think what this means from the point of view of getting the
player to come back to the game after playing it for some time.

The BlackBerry Twitch

Getting players to come back to the game can’t just rely on whether they
enjoyed the initial session or not. There have been many stats quoted
about this, but sadly I can’t find a reliable source to quote. However,
something like 85 percent of apps never get played twice. If I am waiting
for my lives to replenish or for my repairs to complete, that makes
the time I wait part of the strategy of play. The more I return to the
game, the more I engage with the game, and the greater likelihood that
I will want to invest in the larger story arch of the game, whether that’s
making my way to the Lemonade Lake or becoming the best racer in
the Muscle Car category. These techniques rely on the subconscious
awareness that something is going on inside the game and I’m not
getting to be part of it. This sense of “missing out” particularly applies
when a game has strong and meaningful social interactions. The use of
notifications can provide a great reminder of activity in the game, but
you have to be careful to make sure that this is valued and appreciated,
otherwise it can become a little like a “CrackBerry” and become annoy-
ing. Having too many nagging notifications is a reason to delete an app,
not to return to it.

Real-Life Interruptions
While we want player to return, we can’t control the frequency at which
they do so. Indeed we can’t control the circumstances when they quit
playing any given session. Players don’t even have the same needs every
time they pick up our game and the differences in their mode and mood
will (as we discussed in Chapter 5) have implications on the duration,
focus, and flow of each playing session. Sometimes the player will be
looking for a quick fix or an excuse to escape from the circumstances
they find themselves in, such as boredom on the train or perhaps a
mind-numbing activity at work. Of course that would never be to avoid
having a conversation with their partner . . . honest. To cope with all
of these external needs, we have to make sure our game has natural
158 Games as a Service

moments where the session can end and still be left in a way where it
matters that I come back later.
The Flash Gordon cliffhanger is a great tool to help us think about
how we can help each playing session to deal with these differences. This
is particularly important for mobile or tablet games, but thinking about
this can benefit all game designs. If we know that the flow of play might
be interrupted and we still deliver the means to lure the player back then
we will end up with a more compelling experience. The methods we use
to draw players back might use narrative, be based on a game mechanic,
even be socially driven. But the important thing is that we think about
how we get players to come back to the game. That’s imperative.

Never Seen Star Wars?

The next movie analogy is a little less directly about the film itself, more
about the subculture that has grown up around a blockbuster series of
movies. The original Star Wars had as much as cultural influence on my
generation (and many that followed) as any other movie, indeed it’s hard
to find many equivalents in any media. Its influence on games players is
probably due to the coincidence of the timing of the market introduc-
tion of video games in a similar timeframe as the release of the original
movies. Star Wars captured my imagination as an eight-year-old sitting
in the cinema and to be honest it still does, despite the damage I would
argue Lucas has done to the brand over the past decade. I’m not alone.
Indeed almost every aspect of popular culture has been affected in some
way by the events in a galaxy far, far away. But there are many people
who have never seen Star Wars. Including my wife. Yes, as shocking as it
sounds, my wife has never seen Star Wars. It simply doesn’t interest her,
largely as she knows there is no way it could live up to the expectations
I have set up in her imagination. Yet she loves Lord of the Rings so all is
forgiven.
Why is that important? Well, if I say that “Han shot first,”9 I know
that there is a percentage of people reading this book who will laugh or
cheer. OK, maybe a small percentage will actually do that out loud, but
the world is divided up into those who understand what I mean and
those who don’t. The people who don’t have never seen the original
Star Wars.10
Why does this matter? Well this is a clear way for particular Star Wars
fans (like me) to self-identify using the particular shared moments of
interest that only other like-minded fans understand. We talked about
 Engagement-Led Design 159

the importance of using rules to “belong” in Chapter 2. This is all tied

up with that sense of secret knowledge that we share with other players.
It’s not limited to games. This is also why we stand around the water
cooler talking about the latest TV series or football game. This is part
of our shared identity and it allows us to separate ourselves from those
who “just don’t understand.” Personally, I enjoy watching football, but
simply can’t be bothered to spend time learning all the intricate details
and history of every game for all the teams. That leaves me outside the
more mainstream conversations about sport. I’d personally rather spend
that time trying to understand how and why games work better. I’m just
that kind of geek.
Most people have their own “geek” areas that they love and want to
spend more time indulging in. It might be music, history, even tinker-
ing with model steam railways. Each of them has its own language and
secret history shared only by the participants. This is the same instinct
which Johan Huizinga’s described when he tried to define play in his
Homo Ludus.11

Understanding Social Consequences

So with the “never seen Star Wars” model we need to look at different
and competing factors within a game to understand the social impli-
cations of play. First, we want to understand who else cares about the
game we are playing. If there are thousands or millions of other people
playing this game every day what meaningful impact can that have on
the way I’m playing the game? At the very least, does the presence of
all those players allow us to reinforce for us that playing this game was
a good idea and that spending money will be good value? More than
this, as designers we need to consider how we instill meaning into those
interactions. While we can enjoy a game on our own and find that
deeply rewarding, a game matters to us most when we share that experi-
ence with others, particularly people we have a relationship with outside
the game. We can of course also gain considerable pleasure from simply
playing a game with another person who shares our values, or who at
least is compatible with the way we play.

Meaningful Moments
Meaningful moments are about the stamp we make on the game, either
for ourselves or for the other players we interact with. The more we can
directly influence this behavior—such as the way we control a physics
160 Games as a Service

game or the soft-variables we exploit to complete the success criteria

faster or with some alternative strategy—the more meaningful the inter-
action. We need to identify where these moments occur and think about
how that can be shared and retain its meaning.
Introducing social aspects into play isn’t about blanket-bombing of
Facebook walls as was once thought. Services such as Facebook, Twitter,
Sina Weibo (China) and GREE (Japan) remain vitally important as a
forum for communication and to find existing connections between
players; indeed new services such as Kakao Talk (S. Korea), Line (Japan)
continue to grow. However, they should be used carefully. Let us not
forget that part of what makes a game playful is our ability to self-
identify with a secret experience. We don’t want to share all aspects of
our gameplay with everyone and when we do want to share, that post
has to make sense and be meaningful to those people who don’t play.
Everyplay from Applifier12 is a great example of a tool that can record
your gameplay and that then shares that with your friends. When Rovio
updated their Bad Piggies game with Everyplay this radically changed
the emotional engagement with that game. For me at least it gave me a
sense and purpose for playing with all the experimental pig-engineering
projects and I found myself actively seeking out the Bad Piggies chan-
nels on the Everyplay site so I could watch the funniest clips.
I believe by considering what we mean by “never seen Star Wars”
and applying that sense of shared experience to our games I believe we
can find the meaningful moments of play in our game and find ways
for players to share that with people who matter to them. This doesn’t
just create a deeper bond in the mind of the player, it means that the
recipients of their Facebook updates and Tweets have a vested interest in
discovering what about your game matters to you. At this stage it’s not
advertising, it’s a genuinely viral force for good and through the social
sharing services this creates a natural form of advocacy, genuinely rooted
in the playing experience. That trustworthy communication makes the
people who receive the social game posts much more willing to accept
that the player has a genuine love for the game and that itself is the most
compelling reason for anyone to consider downloading your game.

The Columbo Twist

There is one last model I believe players should consider with engagement-
led design (and we have yet to start considering the monetization pro-
cess in earnest). And it comes from television rather than the movies.
 Engagement-Led Design 161

There was an American detective program that started 1968 starring

Peter Falk called Columbo.13 In case you don’t know, the main charac-
ter was an apparently bumbling detective in a shoddy old long coat; it
was his task to work out who had committed the murder and to bring
them to justice. The trouble with the format was that we already knew
who did it! Every program opened up with all the circumstances of the
murder quite obvious to us as viewers. There was no mystery! However,
the show performed a magic trick on us all; instead of trying to work
out who did it, the point was to watch how Columbo solved it. We saw
him stumble his way through and wanted to shout at the screen that the
murderer was behind Columbo, like some kind of pantomime. Then
as the show came close to the end, as the detective was questioning the
murderer for the second or third time, came the immortal words “Just
one more thing . . .”

Just One More Thing . . .

That was the point where the show revealed that Columbo wasn’t an
idiot unable to see the obvious in front of him. That’s when he revealed
not only that he knew who the murderer was, but where the evidence
was and, most importantly, why they had done it. You knew the twist
was coming, it was a formula. You knew who the murderer was. But
it was still a delightful moment, because you didn’t know why or how
Columbo would solve it.
In terms of game design, this idea of looking at the satisfaction
inherent in the final twist that concludes each episode of play is just as
important. But the Columbo twist can help us to consider the longer
lifecycle of the player too. What new extensions can we deliver to the
story or the gameplay that makes us look at the playing experience in a
different light? These processes are not for the initial product develop-
ment phase—we will talk about minimum viable product delivery later
in Chapter 12—however, it’s very useful to have at least thought about
the potential scope for product extension early in the design. If there
is no scope to extend the design or to accommodate some extension,
perhaps even an ongoing release of content that will continue to delight
your audience, then maybe your concept has a problem. If we can’t sus-
tain our development over time we haven’t built a service, just a prod-
uct. Our game will feel dead and quickly lose players. We need to find
our equivalent of that Columbo twist to make sure that even the most
familiar players still have an opportunity to be entranced by the game.
162 Games as a Service

The Most Important Question: “So What?”

There is something else that the Engagement Led Design model can
help us with. It forces us to ask a really important question, possibly the
most important question of all: “so what?”
I can’t stress how important this question is for any designer to ask
every time they write down a new idea, mechanic, plotline, etc. So what?
Why should your player care about that?
We mustn’t forget that we are at the end of the day making a game
for an audience and although I totally understand the desire to stay
true to your art and personal vision (indeed I insist upon it), to do so
without considering the effect of that idea, mechanic, or plotline on
your player is folly.14 We are creating an experience that, unlike film or
music, uniquely asks our audience to immerse themselves inside the
world we have created. We need to understand, satisfy, even confound
their expectations. However this only happens when we take the time to
consider the consequences of our design choices and whether any player
will care. We should always ask “so what?”

The Director’s Cut

This chapter has been about getting down and detailed with the way
you think about the design of your game, particularly in the transition
stages. The Bond opening is about looking differently at the transition
between discovering and learning. Where the player has already made
the decision to install the game, but where we know many simply don’t
proceed. The Flash Gordon cliffhanger is about creating the conditions
to support regular playing habits, especially as we move from learning
to engaging. It reminds us that we have to build up the habitual lure of
our game and to give reasons for players to return to that game. “Never
seen Star Wars” asks us to think not only about why we “belong” with a
specific game, but how social interactions influence our playing habits
depending on our engagement, whether this is conscious or subcon-
scious. Finally we come to the Columbo twist, which reminds us to ask
that last question “so what?”. This question is vital to our ability to fairly
review our designs as to ensure that we do our best by our players not
just in the short term but throughout their lifecycle, allowing us to look
for ways to extend the engaging life stage as long as possible before our
players reach the churning stage.
 Engagement-Led Design 163

These techniques are all focused around building deeper engagement

and, importantly, trust between the game and the player. The value of
that trust cannot be underestimated.

Notes
1 Personally I dislike the fact that game designers too often try to replicate the qualities
of films in games. They are different media and offer different qualities of engagement.
Books, music, film, and even TV formats all bring different constraints and opportunities
and we should embrace their differences. However, I have found some of these film/TV
narrative tropes to be useful tools to help explain some specific design concepts.
2 Time Entertainment did a list of the top 25 Bond openings in case you feel the
need to check out some examples, http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/09/
every-james-bond-opening-scene-ranked.
3 I use the term “foreshadowing” a lot. It’s a term used a lot in narrative or theatrical
writing. The idea is that we don’t tell the audience what is going to happen, but we set
up the circumstances that means that they might work it out for themselves, or at least
that they won’t be entirely surprised when a circumstance happens in the later part of the
book or play. For example in a Bond movie we might see a character in the background
observing Bond’s activity in a bar. This could easily be an extra just stealing the scene,
however, when that character turns up later and is revealed to be Bond’s CIA contact
we feel good as an audience—we noticed that character and just “knew” they would be
important. My favourite way to define it is “pre-emptive hindsight.”
4 In December 2013 an update to Plants Vs Zombies 2 removed a number of core mechan-
ics which simplified the progression mechanic but arguably limited the sense of personal
choice.
5 Brian Lara Cricket was a classic hit for Codemasters on the Sega Megadrive in 1995,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lara_Cricket; very different from the original Tomb
Raider heroine from Core Design and Eidos in 1996, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Tomb_Raider.
6 Every game designer can learn from the basics of marketing. Check out the Chartered
Institute of Marketing (CIM) guide for some of the basic principles if you want to know a
more, www.cim.co.uk/files/7ps.pdf.
7 If you want a list of some of the best cliffhangers from TV, this list might provide some
inspiration, www.hollywood.com/news/tv/7808358/greatest-television-cliffhangers?
page=all.
8 It was Kirsten apparently . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_shot_J.R.%3F.
9 These Saturday serials generally had very low budgets and of course they were filmed at
least 30 years before man landed on the moon. But I delight in them because they still
have that sense of hope about science and space exploration.
10 If you expect me to explain this line then obviously you have never seen the original
version of the Star Wars movie, only the special editions. You need to find yourself an
older version of the film and watch it. Seriously! Put this book down now and watch it!
Still here? Oh well . . . I never convinced my wife to watch it either.
11 As I have already said the special editions don’t count, not because they are intrinsically bad,
just that there were editorial changes that profoundly changed the nature of the story, par-
ticularly for Han Solo . . . and I told you go watch the original movie . . . it’s worth it . . . honest.
12 Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens_(book) for more information on
that book.
164 Games as a Service

13 OK, I know (at least at the time of writing) that I am the evangelist for Applifier, but
this isn’t included as a sales pitch for that. I started working for Applifier as a consultant
because I believe in this discovery and social sharing model.
14 Columbo is considered by some to be one of the best television programs ever made and
takes a fascinating approach to mystery drama where we already know who did it, but we
still want to see how he solves it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbo.
15 The driving principle behind marketing is “to understand and satisfy consumer needs.”
This might seem at odds with the creative drive to realise your vision, audience be
damned. However, I believe that asking questions of our vision that relate to the satisfac-
tion of the audience is extremely useful, especially if you want a commercial success as
well as an artistic one. However, I don’t think we should ever sacrifice the vision to the
mercy of the revenue. That way no one is satisfied.
 What is Your Columbo Twist? 165

Exercise 9: What is Your

Columbo Twist?
This is the last of the exercises from the themes of Chapter 9. In this
section we ask “just one more thing” and look at our game from the
perspective of the Columbo twist. This is about the character played
by Peter Falk as the bumbling detective in the eponymous TV series,
Columbo. We all knew how the murder was committed as we got to see
it at the beginning of the program—including who did it. We then got
to watch this ramshackle sleuth fumble his way through apparently fail-
ing to see what was obvious; until he said those immortal words, “just
one more thing . . .” This is what we were waiting for. Now we would see
why the crime had happened in the first place and, more importantly,
how he had worked it out. We would realize the character’s genius and
delight in the result. As a program format it should never have worked
but remains, in my view, one of the finest detective programs of all time.
The magic trick was creating a format that we felt comfortable with,
that we could trust and that told us what was going to come, but yet still
left us room to delight in the results. That’s a neat trick that you need to
bring into you games if you want to sustain play for more than 100 days.
In this exercise we want you to think about what about your game
will keep your audience coming back over the 8–12 days which is how
long it takes for the people who will spend $100+ per month on your
game to start spending at all. What will keep those players (as well as
the freeloaders who we also need) to stay for 100+ days of play? Think
about the ongoing events you plan to create that will create a sense
of life for your game and can further build anticipation and ongoing
excitement for the community as well as how they can create their own
events/experiences. It’s also vital to think about how quickly players will
take to perfect (or grock) the mechanic so it becomes second nature and
how to avoid that becoming boring. Indeed how can we instill a sense
in the mind of the player that the game always has new secrets to reveal
only to the most dedicated players, foreshadowing ongoing value that is
always yet to be revealed in full?
In essence this is about how we can sustain the level of interest as far and
long as possible; evolving the experience along the way so the players feel
there is scope to continue playing, perhaps through product extensions.
166 Games as a Service

What is the Columbo twist for your game?

Why will players keep coming back to play every day for
8–12 days?
What will keep players coming back for 100+ days?
What ongoing events/ activities will the game include?
How will you leverage community to sustain longevity?
How do you play to stop players from “grocking” the game?
How will the game foreshadow the value of keeping playing?
How will you provide ongoing predictable value?
How will you introduce a sense of anticipation of uncertain
value?

WORKED EXAMPLE:

What is the Columbo twist for In Finding Anthony we are playing with
your game? a mechanic that is designed to make people
think about mental illness and the increasing
difficulty that comes as our faculties
diminish. This is reflected in the increasing
complexity of the memory tile game in each
lesson as they are repeated as well as the
“failure” of brain slots that happens as we move
into other “districts” in the game world. Each
district will have different locations in it and
each location type will have a variation of the
puzzle, but because the complexity setting
is specific to each location there will be huge
replayability. Add this to the superfan games
and there is no end to playable content.
Why will players keep coming The game tantalizes the player with the promise
back to play every day for 8–12 of ever more districts for them to control,
days? perhaps even different cities (servers?) that
can be explored and new communities located.
Missions will appear in each district only for
limited windows creating a reason to return
in order to advance as quickly as possible.
Each time you repeat a mission in the location
mechanic will get gradually harder. The
appearance of the “girlfriend” is designed to
deliver a narrative element

(Continued)
 What is Your Columbo Twist? 167

What will keep players coming The social elements including competitive
back for 100+ days? scores as well as becoming part of a family
(indeed having the potential to run your own)
will help build longer-term commitment for
play.
What ongoing events/ activities The platform will include the ability to offer
will the game include? special missions that will be managed by a
web server. This overrides the standard missions
and replaces them with reskinned versions
of locations with an alternative look tied into
the theme; e.g., Christmas, Halloween, Golden
Week, Star Wars day, etc.
How will you leverage The social structure of the families will create
community to sustainlongevity? a sense of cooperation internally as well as
cooperation externally. The most committed
player will have an advantage if they can
recruit new users to their club/faction, perhaps
even getting to be the ultimate boss.
How do you play to stop players Each playing location has a level of increasing
from “grocking” the game ? difficulty as well as roaming enemies whose
paths can be programmatically generated;
making each mission slightly different. As the
player progresses, their “brain slots” start to fail,
which hinders the choices of play but at the same
time offers the opportunity to create permanent
versions of power-ups, each of which can be
improved by “burning” duplicate power-ups.
How will the game foreshadow the The ongoing appearance of the girlfriend will
value of keeping playing? provide a narrative arc which will last longer
than 100 days of play to fully tell and which
continues to offer a reason to gather online
at the same time as other players from your
family, creating a genuine shared experience.
How will you provide ongoing The family system combined with the
predictable value? girlfriend narrative create a sense of both
ambiguity and foreshadowed value. The control
of the metagame story arc is to a large extent
in the hands of the players themselves
How will you introduce a sense of The same source of predictable values drive the
anticipation of uncertain value? anticipation from the uncertainty as I cannot
predict (as a player) the outcome for me. I can
set up my own clubs and get a position of
authority, but how that influences my profile
in the community is a reflection not just of
the gameplay performance, but also my social
savvy. More practically, I never know when the
puzzle fragments for the girlfriend will appear
and how each encounter with her will reveal
new information about what she represents.
Chapter 10
Delivering Discovery
170 Games as a Service

Age of Digital Discovery

The digital distribution age we find ourselves in has created amazing
opportunities for games studios to self-publish their content without
needing the intervention of third-party publishers or wholesalers.
Indeed, as I have often argued, Apple’s genius is the way it completely
opened up the mobile market and set an incredible precedent for other
platforms. However, this process has meant that there is no filter (for
good or ill) over what content is available and indeed the fact that the
market is so open has meant that by the time you read this there will
probably be more than 1 million apps available on the app store.
The consequence is that we have a real problem getting our game dis-
covered. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t Apple’s fault or the fault of any of
the other app stores. Their objective is for users to be able to find a game
to play, not to find yours. They will promote content and that’s a vitally
important channel. But you can’t rely on Apple to promote your game.
Hope is not a strategy.

We Live in Interesting Times

The other problem is that this very age of digital distribution has also
brought with it a revolution in marketing channels. Social media has
changed the way we communicate with our potential players and this
has affected the effectiveness of more traditional media. For example,
TV and magazines simply don’t have the same level of audience they
once had; by contrast games have become a highly effective medium for
advertising, particularly for other games.
Traditionally, the game designer has had nothing to do with how the
game is sold or marketed. We designed a game, helped make sure that
the development team made what we had intended, and then passed our
masterpiece over to those “awful marketing people who have no souls
as far as games are concerned.”1 If the game made money it was because
of our genius, if it didn’t it was because the marketers didn’t under-
stand it. OK, that’s a terrible simplification, but we can’t work like that
anymore. Since 2011 and the seismic shift Free2Play2 has now put the
focus of monetization on the designer. More than that, increasingly the
marketing of a game is dependent on the design and flow of the game to
create moments worth sharing.3 Personally as a marketer and designer
I believe this is just a reflection of our industry maturing and realizing
what ever other industry has had to do, to become marketing-led.
 Delivering Discovery 171

Marketing 101
Having a marketing-led business essentially means that you need to
have a focus on your customers. Indeed I was always taught that the
very definition of marketing was the identification and satisfaction of
consumer needs. Marketing is not about fancy adverts and expensive
parties, although there might sometimes be good reasons for both.
There are some more fundamental principles at work and I strongly
believe these can help us with our design process and help us to build
discovery through the game itself.
This all starts with the 4 Ps;4 four simple words that help us think
about what we are making and why, as well as how much we will charge,
who our audience is, where they can be found, and how we are going to
talk to them.
The first P is product and there are several questions we have to
ask ourselves when considering our product (in this case service also
applies). What are we making? How will it be used? What does it look
like? How do I consume it? And so on. It’s important to fully under-
stand what it is we are selling and what it is we are using to attract and
retain our audience. We also have to consider the market context for our
game including the competing forces5 that affect its reception by players.
The list doesn’t stop there, we also have to understand the costs of
production and distribution. Marketing-led products aren’t just looking
to sell as many units as possible; they seek to find the optimum balance
between costs of production, price, and volume of customers. We have
already talked about how important a repeat customer is in Chapter 4,
and this becomes critical for a marketing-led business if we are to create
a reliable and sustainable income stream over time.

The Fifth P
All important stuff, however, I must admit to a personal twist on the
traditional approach. I believe that products are really about people (the
fifth P, if you like). If you reduce all of the decisions and creativity we
need to deliver a great product it comes down to understanding people.
Obviously we have to first consider the customer or player of our game.
This audience used to be as simple as “someone like us to plays our
games.” When we believe our customers are like us it makes a lot of
things easier. We already instinctively understand their motivations and
likes (they are like us after all). Unfortunately, this has never really been
172 Games as a Service

true. Even among the hardcore games audience there are variations
in terms of reward behaviors as we talked about in Chapter 2, when
we briefly outlined Richard Bartles’ “player types.” The other reality
is that by building games we want to play, we have been self-selecting
an audience who would be interested in the same things that we are.
We have not been trying to create experiences that other people might
play, because we believe that they “didn’t buy games.” Social and mobile
games have shown that to be a lie. OK, maybe that is a little too strong,
but it is clear that there is now a bigger audience and they are not all just
like me. Accepting this means that we have to spend more time looking
at the different drives and interests of each player. But with games like
Subway Surfers gaining 26 million daily users and Candy Crush getting
over 70 million, it’s not possible to understand every view or need of
every player. So instead we have to find some way to generalize by dif-
ferentiating or segmenting players into coherent types.

Who Are Our Players?

There are many approaches to how to do this. The first and most com-
mon method is demographics. Here we attempt to identify the age, sex,
and location of each player, perhaps also their cultural or occupational
context. However, these attributes are both very difficult to verify and
increasingly are not proving to be particularly useful. Assuming some-
one will behave in a particular way because of their age or location is not
very sound. A much better way is to look at how people actually act. This
is something we can do really accurately in online game services but it
does take time and lots of AB testing6 to understand the types of average
behavior. There are some variables we can know, such as how often they
play, how successful they are with the game, how much they spend, what
virtual goods they buy, how often they interact socially in the game, or
how often they share material through the social graphs. Of course this
doesn’t tell us what why people don’t do certain things or how many
people might have played if you had changed something about the game.
There are some high-level segmentation models we often fall back into
with F2P and they are the whale, dolphin, minnow7 and the freeloader
(non-payer). I find that approach unsatisfying. It assumes that the
objective is just how much money you spend rather than what motivates
you to play. I prefer to consider factors that are likely to affect adoption,
retention and monetization. However, how do we identify players who
have qualities that can help us improve performance in all three metrics?
 Delivering Discovery 173

Figure 10.1 What highly influenced your last five downloads?

Stop Hunting Whales

In February 2013 Applifier conducted a user survey, asking what influ-
enced players’ decisions to download their last game. This showed that
the principle influence the participants reported was “word of mouth
and social media” at 37.2 percent. This included personal recommenda-
tions from friends in person or via some social media, including videos
of play. You’ll notice that this is slightly greater than the impact of the
app store itself, including features as well as the search process. The role
of advertising was reported as only influential in 12.4 percent of the
responses. There is room for bias here.8 Users are notoriously reticent to
accept the influence of advertising and in these responses most players
declared multiple influences.

Sharers Stay, Share and Spend

Social factors turn out to be more influential than even this result shows
us. We discovered that 20 percent of the respondents self-identified as
a segment group we called the “sharers.” It turned out that this segment
downloaded more games, spent more and played more than other
players.
What is also interesting is that the playing behavior of “sharers” tends
to reflect a better balance of interests than the “whale” players. This
can be extremely valuable as it means their interests provide a better
174 Games as a Service

Figure 10.2 Sharers play more.

perspective of overall playing interest, which creates the conditions to

allow whale users to bubble up. While it’s very hard to generalize across
different games, it seems that the highest spending users appear only
when there is a strong pool of other “engaged” players.

All We Need Is Love

Of course don’t take my word for this, find out for yourself and check
with the data you can obtain and confirm how universally this applies
to your game by asking your players and checking the accuracy of their
responses by looking at their actual behavior. The key thing we want
to learn is what will make people care about our game enough to play
regularly and even pay, but we want this information broken down into
each of our segments. A lot of this comes down to how much they trust
you and how you show them in the game that you love them back.9

Heaven and Hell Are Other People

Potential players are not the only people that we have to consider. Think
about the people in our team who are making the product, as well as the
partners or colleagues involved at every stage of the project. If our team
 Delivering Discovery 175

doesn’t fully buy into the product we are making then there is no way
we can deliver the right product (or service). Understanding how those
people work at their best is just as important if we are going to make our
game experience as efficient as possible, and I suggest that this shines
through in the end experience itself.
If we understand the people elements of our game, this will vastly
help to make sure we have the right product. Then we can start looking
at the other 3 Ps.

Putting a Price On Success

The second P is price. There are many different pricing strategies, each
of which applies to different games in different ways. Premium
pricing is used to refer to games that are charged upfront, rather
than necessarily being a measure of quality of experience. Paymium
takes such a paid game and includes additional material within
the game for players to buy. Freemium removes the initial pay-way
presented with a premium game and concentrates on the in-app
revenue opportunities including virtual goods and advertising while
ad-funded games rely only on advertising revenues. We will talk
about monetization strategies in detail in Chapter 13, but when we
want to create a game as a service the answer is usually freemium.
We have so much to gain if we have the mindset that makes it free
to access our service and create a market of goods within our games
that continue to add value over the complete user lifetime. However,
making this realty is not easy of course. The trick comes down to
working out what we are actually selling and what we are using to
attract and retain an audience. With Free2Play we aren’t selling the
core gameplay anymore, that’s what we use to attract our audience
and to try to retain them. Instead we look to added-value services to
deliver us some income.

Kids and Credit Cards

Considering price is more than just the business model. We also have
to look at how easy it is for our players to pay for goods and how much
they understand the value of what we have to offer with our added ser-
vices. Most payment services rely on credit cards but what about people
who don’t have them? Credit cards are not used significantly in China
or Germany for example. Can we find other methods, perhaps operator
billing, cash-cards or similar services? Where we have a child audience
176 Games as a Service

this is particularly important as we need to ensure that players can’t

accidently make purchases and to engage with the parents who will act
as gateway to any purchase.
The damage that can occur to your brand and just as importantly the
trust between you and your players if this goes wrong can be consider-
able. To avoid this, it’s worth going the extra mile to make sure that the
process feels fair and deliberate. That might lose you a few sales in the
short term, but this pays dividends in the longer term as long as your
players feel they can trust you.

Location, Location, Location

The penultimate P is place. However, this isn’t just about the physical
place; in our digital age the nature of place has changed somewhat.
Instead it’s about understanding where your players’ attention is rather
than the traditional ideas of retail and logistical distribution.
For games we have an ever-increasing range of devices to target—and
I don’t mean the operating systems or OEM platforms. There are more
important questions such as what form-factor of device you are target-
ing; is the game played on a phone, tablet, “phablet,” console, smartTV,
or all of the above? What about “smart” glasses or watches? Will there
be a constant internet connection? How much local storage will there
be and will the users be restricted in the volume of data traffic available
to them? All these are practical considerations not just because they
affect the product design, but because they present different delivery
challenges.
As well as the practical limitations of the device come the situational
issues that players might face and that are likely to affect their playing
mood and mode as we discussed in Chapter 5. Place can affect the avail-
able choices, for example, playing a hardcore dedicated session requires
us to settle into a defined space for a long duration. Alternatively, a
casual “dip-in-and-out” collection of short bursts of play to pass the
time. This behavior is often linked to the situation the player is in; such
as on the commute, at school or work, waiting for a bus, or sat next to
their family while they are enjoying their favorite TV program.

A Place to Talk
The more traditional way to look at place relates to where the poten-
tial player will seek out information about games and how you find
the best opportunities to communicate with them. We have some
 Delivering Discovery 177

amazing techniques in the games industry that give us greater access to

customers than most industries. First, we know that players are often
using their phone to play other games. This led to the rapid growth of
cross-platform networks like Applifier on Facebook and Chartboost on
mobile; these allow games to swap installs with each other. Most other
industries don’t have this kind of direct communication channel. It’s no
surprise that we saw the cost of acquisition on Facebook and mobile
skyrocket in 2010–2011, with players like Zynga and GREE allegedly
spending more than anyone else on in-game adverts.10
Acquisition will probably continue to get more expensive, especially as
we have better mediation services targeted to support big brand media
buyers as they start to take mobile seriously. Some games now com-
mand larger audiences than most TV shows and this will in time lead
to greater demand. My guess is that we might just look back to this time
and think that these record-breaking prices were in fact quite cheap.

Any Other Place

Other games are not the only place we can communicate. They just
happen to be particularly direct and useful forms of access, which also
means that there is lots of competition for them. We can’t ignore other
places where players congregate when they are not playing. We can look
for correlations between playing behavior and other measurable (or at
least researchable) factors and find correlations between, for example,
whether they shop at a particular brand of supermarket or what specialist
magazines they might subscribe to, or even which TV services they use.

Clear Communication
This takes us neatly to the last of the Ps, promotion. We know what
our product/service is, whose needs it is designed to satisfy, what price
it will command, and where we can communicate with that audience.
Now we have to make sure we get across the right messages. As we
discussed above, advertising is the thing most people think they under-
stand. It seems pretty simple, we put out an advert of our game and we
see a percentage of players click through. Better yet we can know which
advert link triggered the download and use that to track value from
that source. Added to that we can buy on a cost per acquisition basis so
surely we have no risk, paying only for the number of installs. We can
even AB test11 different marketing approaches down to a very fine level
knowing whether a green or red call-to-action button works best. This
178 Games as a Service

kind of precision marketing helps us to make better campaigns but it

can’t make a bad game any better. It can also fool us into thinking that
we are being efficient.
The very fact that advertising is measurable means that we become
biased to its influence. After all, we can’t measure the benefits of PR or
other indirect communications. These activities don’t change behavior
in a measurable way, but does that mean that they are a waste of time?
There are influential industry leaders who claim that marketing, in
particular PR,12 doesn’t work. However, we should consider those games
that have become runaway successes without “any marketing activity.”
These games usually have a number of things in common, including an
intrinsically compelling experience and that they cause some kind of
“trouble.” This particular combination has the effect that those people
who play them want to show off the game to others or to write about
them in the press. They might even, if they are lucky, catch the eye of the
app stores and get the hallowed feature slot.

Create a Context
Remember our earlier survey of influences; 37.2 percent were highly
influenced by word of mouth or social media; with 15.3 percent
influenced by other media including web, print, and YouTube; slightly
greater than the 12.4 percent from advertising. Importantly, as most of
the respondents quoted multiple sources of influence, I suggest we can’t
afford to ignore any appropriate channels or forms of communication if
we want the best chance to get the largest audience.
There is an old joke about marketing which says “I know that
50 percent of my budget is wasted . . . I just don’t know which 50 per-
cent.” This kind of thinking is simply wrong. Marketing is not sales.
Sales is about creating a funnel of potential clients, focusing on those
that you can close and then closing them. Marketing is about creating
the widest possible reach as well as a positive context where players
become more likely to choose to get our game.

Immediate, Relevant and Gorgeous

Communicating with your players throughout their lifecycle is critical
and the more we do this in person the better. We have already talked
a little about the kinds of things that are important at the early stages
of discovery, the first pattern we talked about in Chapter 5, which
starts with the name of the game and the icon. When thinking about
 Delivering Discovery 179

communication however, we can go further and look for the intrinsic

qualities of our game and use that as the foundation for how we com-
municate with the player. During my time at 3UK we used a system to
gauge the potential of any game based on three parameters. Was the
experience (art & game) “immediate,” “relevant” or “gorgeous?” “Imme-
diate” asks us to consider how quickly the game concept will be under-
stood from the combination of its name, icon, and—if necessary—a
screen grab and description. “Relevant” is more about the internal
consistency of the game but also how this consistency is applicable not
only to the player, but also of any associated brand. The classic example
where this went wrong was the RiotE game Lord of the Rings Bowling.
Not only a terrible idea, but completely irrelevant to the brand’s fan
base. Finally, we should consider “gorgeous.” This is a trickier thing to
describe. It’s not just about artistic beauty. Simplicity, cuteness and irrev-
erence can all be gorgeous in their way. However, I’ve often been struck
that, while it’s often nearly impossible to say why something is gorgeous,
deciding which of two ideas is most gorgeous seems pretty straightfor-
ward and surprisingly consistent among audiences.

Getting and Keeping Attention

Once we get past the intrinsic qualities of the game we should start to
consider how we communicate to players within the game and how they
interact with each other. As we have said, social elements and sharing
are important factors. Think about what tools are available to both us
and them to communicate with each other. How will this be adminis-
tered and moderated, and how do you avoid damaging misuse? How
often do you make updates? A regular, even predictable frequency of
message or update can be extremely useful, but make sure it’s relevant to
their needs and don’t be too predictable as important information might
become overlooked.

Who Are We Talking To?

We also should consider a wider audience than our players themselves.
Who are the “publics” we want to talk to and what messages are we
trying to communicate? This is more than just to create awareness
among potential players, it’s also about making sure that we under-
stand the shadow our game casts on those others who may never play.
What impact will their opinion have on the people we hope to convert?
If we send out blanket Facebook spam, is there any wonder that the
180 Games as a Service

non-player audience might start to get angry about this? Isn’t it obvious
that this will put many potential players off from converting to play?
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use Facebook to communicate. Instead
it means we have to ensure that these messages are valued even by the
never-playing audience, or that what scorn we create does so in a way
which motivates players to more deeply engage with the game. That’s
not an easy trick to pull off deliberately but I would suggest that the
more negative behavior possible inside games such the Grand Theft
Auto series created a response that built the game’s reputation.

Magical Moments
The key for me is to find messages that ring true about the nature of the
game concept and are fully realized inside the game-playing moments.
These we need to create magical moments of delight that feel personal
and unique to our players and that they actively want to share and
give them the mechanisms to do so. Gameplay recording services like
Everyplay from Applifier do exactly that by sharing video created by
the players who want to show off what they are passionate about. This is
a perfect way to encourages potential players to become excited about
what the game represents and allows non-players to accept those mes-
sages as genuine expressions of delight.

Don’t Hold the Press

Another key public is of course the press and other media. Bloggers
and journalists need to feel valued and have the chance to say some-
thing unique about your game, something that will give their read-
ership a reason to choose their articles. Managing your relationship
with professional journalists is a very different thing to working with
bloggers. There is an expectation of more thorough analysis of the
content, although that is not always the case. Nurture the journalists
who care about their work and who don’t just push out the latest press
release. They almost always carry more weight with their audience and
will usually hang around in the industry longer. But be wary. They are
always looking for a good story and may take a particular spin that
wrongly represents your position. This can be negative, even damag-
ing to your brand, game or company. You have to accept that their job
is to write interesting articles for their audience, not to sell your game.
And you have to accept that not all journalists are to be trusted. How-
ever, the best of them will respond if you correct them, perhaps by
 Delivering Discovery 181

covering some new story or angle. The adage that there is no such thing
as bad press isn’t quite true, but Oscar Wilde was right that there is only
one thing worse than being talked about and that’s not being talked
about. With bloggers, the motivation is more personal and often unique
to each individual. It takes a lot of unpaid effort to build and then main-
tain a popular blog and that dedication requires a special type of person.
Getting these people on side means we have to think about what their
position or attitudes to the industry are about and how we respond to
those interests. Bloggers usually respond very well to you giving them
attention and especially if you take an interest in their motivations. If
you look after them you can create a fanatical voice working for you,
but it’s hard to sustain that kind of relationship with large numbers of
bloggers; just like journalists they want a scoop.

Getting Featured
If we want to gain a feature position on the app store we have to pay
attention to the platform holder. I don’t just mean Apple or Google Play
here, think about PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Steam, etc., even
Facebook! In some territories such as South America or South Korea,
the mobile operator still has a major influence. We need to give them
a reason to give us the time of day. Already having an audience helps,
but even when we are building that up we should try to pay attention to
what that platform is currently focused on. Are there new hardware or
OS changes that we support in our game that helps them in their needs?
Choosing to exclusively release an update on a single platform can help
get attention; perhaps even an advance, provided the opportunity is
significant enough to get on the platform management’s radar. As with
all promotion we have to understand why they should care and commu-
nicate that to them.
Interestingly, the extent to which your game is localized into different
languages, perhaps even culturalized,13 the more scope you will have not
only with the potential audience but also with the platform holders.

Thinking Professional
There may be many other “publics” you should pay attention to includ-
ing investors, publishers or trade bodies. There may be other chan-
nels to consider—from outdoor posters to a promotion in a chain of
cosmetic stores that happens to be the most popular with your players.
If you want to deliver discovery you need to find an efficient way to use
182 Games as a Service

these routes to market and make sure that the “publics” have not only a
reason to care but a method by which they can take action, ideally one
where you can measure the success as readily as precision advertising.

What’s the Point?

Delivering discovery starts within the game itself. It comes from under-
standing the values you want to communicate and the various different
audiences you need to communicate to. You can’t expect to be successful
if you don’t find the right balance of budget, effort and brand values
that attract an audience.
Designers need to spend time thinking about the core marketing
concepts presented here if they want a fighting chance to find other
players who are willing to part with their hard-earned cash. Building a
game for yourself is a hobby; building a game as a service requires that
we consider our wider audience and how we can satisfy their needs.

Notes
1 OK, this isn’t a real quote but does reasonably sum up a lot of the reactions I have wit-
nessed by developers or producers about marketing people. They were rarely flattering.
To be frank, a lot of marketing people had similarly unflattering opinions about the
business sense of the development teams, and not always without reason. I’ve always sat
somewhere between the two camps and tried to stay out of it as much as possible.
2 In the first six months of 2011 according to the Flurry Blog, the mobile games market
went from 39 percent Free2Play to 65 percent. I think that counts as a pretty seismic shift
in business model, http://blog.flurry.com/?month=7&year=2011.
3 I would generally argue that marketing has always been dependant on those magical
moments of play, but in the era of box retail products it was possible to hide a number
of sins with a good advertising campaign. However, there is a limit to how much you can
put shine on a terrible game or even one that just misses the mark regarding the audience
needs.
4 Technically the original 4 Ps have now been increased to seven; although there are con-
tenders for 12 Ps, which are essentially providing more detail on each of the original four.
For our discussion here we will stick to the classics.
5 In 1979 Michael E. Porter wrote How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy about how suppli-
ers, customers, new entrants, substitutes, and competition affect any business.
6 We will talk a lot more about AB testing in Chapter 11.
7 I understand the term “dolphin” was coined by Nicholas Lovell on his blog, www.games
brief.com.
8 We will talk about collecting data in Chapter 11.
9 This may sound a little strong, however, I’m serious. You need to pay a kind of loving
attention to your product and its consumers; if you have no love for either then this will
show through in the end.
10 I once got into trouble for saying this on a panel. I suggested that mobile advertising was
becoming too expensive for many developers because Zynga and GREE were outspend-
ing everyone else. I honestly don’t know how much they spent, however there was good
anecdotal evidence that it was considerable.
 Delivering Discovery 183

11 In case you don’t know, AB testing is a form of analysis where you present different
options (game/advert/etc.) to a user and can see how subtle changes can increase usage.
We will talk about it in Chapter 11.
12 Torsten Reil of Natural Motion said this at Games Horizon in 2012, a sentiment he
repeated in an article on GamesIndustry.Biz, www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-27-
mobile-games-marketing-doesnt-work-at-all-reil.
13 It’s important to consider cultural influences as well as language changes. For example,
you can’t default to underwear for female avatars in the Middle East and a game with
skeletons in China can be poorly received. For more on this, check out my article on
the topic on PocketGamer, www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Applifier+news/feature.
asp?c=53647.
184 Games as a Service

Exercise 10: What Makes Your

Game Social?
In this exercise we are going to look at the social aspects of your game.
Not every game need have a social factor; however, there are some
correlations between social factors and the proportion of users who
spend money in the game. We need to consider what we discussed in
Chapter 10 and how the different social levels impact our game design
and the interactions between our players.
The objective here is to avoid simply jumping to a decision to
blindly add social tools without considering the social meaning of
each element. There is no point putting items in just because we have
seen them in other games. We have to consider each in terms of their
impact and effort to sustain, potential versus realistic return and the
opportunity cost of other things we might be doing in our lives.
Key to your thinking through this exercise is the recognition of the
need to set positive expectations that exceed the effort required to sus-
tain the social interaction. There will always be external social pulls,
however, you should think about how to sustain positive associations
for connecting with others within this game. Thinking this way allows
us to realize that social features require effort and can create stress
among some players who can be fearful of a degree of humiliation,
while others will see games as an opportunity to display their prowess.
Think about how you will introduce social elements in the context of
trust, where players see the value of opening up their friendship profiles
to the game, as opposed to the risk of exposing those friends to imper-
sonal and unwanted spam. How you use this data should be trustworthy
and honest and there is no better way than to use the tools as they were
intended, i.e., to allow the player to express themselves. If this happens
to be about their experience of your game then great; if the way they
express this is unique to their performance or creativity while playing,
all the better.
Once we have established the social context, will you expand on that
with other social concepts? Will there be asynchronous or real-time play
and how does this fit with the superfan game?
 What Makes Your Game Social? 185

How will the game support the six degrees of

socialization?
How will you introduce social features safely?
How can the player express themselves through play
and share that with others?
How can we positively compare short- and long-term
measures of success?
How can we create meaningful collaboration
between users?
What type of deliberately competitive play is there
in the game?
What are the longer term social tools for the game?

WORKED EXAMPLE:

How will the game support the Finding Anthony uses a “family” system
six degrees of socialization? to allow players to collaborate on ownership
of each district in the cityscape of the game.
This is done asynchronously but with an
opportunity to get multiple “family” members
to coordinate their appearance in a space when
trying to find the “girlfriend.” However, access
to each of the degrees of socializations is
managed gradually and intended to expand
the playful opportunity only for the most
committed players; but turning that into
a recruitment process for helping deepen the
engagement of the other (less committed)
players.
How will you introduce social Players are only shown the social extensions
features safely? after they complete the first few play sessions
and only after they have completed the
game in a particular location. This initially
concentrated on the comparison of scores. Also
only when they complete their first district
there will be hints of the full “family” social
model.
How can the player express The chosen paths used during play as well
themselves through play and as the tactical use of power-ups will be stored
share that with others? in the recording for sharing so players can
compare strategies for each separate location.

(Continued)
186 Games as a Service

How can we positively compare Players have two core measures. Happiness
short- and long-term measures of associated with Anthonys family and status
success? associated with the “family.”
How can we create meaningful The family metagame will include
collaboration between users? opportunities to share resources between team-
mates. The girlfriend metagame will provide a
timing-collaboration mechanism.
What type of deliberately Competition comes in the player’s performance
competitive play is there in the with each location/district. It will be possible
game? to attempt to beat our friends under the same
conditions as well as the ongoing play where
the ever-diminishing number of brain slots
and ever-increasing difficulty of the memory
matching games will combine to provide a
level playing field where experienced players
have to take on ever more difficult handicaps
in order to be able to beat new players’ most
recent scores.
What are the longer term social The “family” you belong to will attempt to
tools for the game? take control of the city (which, given this
is a science fiction genre, can be any size
megacity complex) by outperforming other
families in a combination of top score and
number of attempts in each location. Scores
to hold any given location last only seven
days, but transfer of ownership requires a
player from an opposing family actively
takes that space; they can’t just be the last
player to have made a score. Bonus scores come
by completing the “girlfriend” hunt and is
based on the number of family members that
are present at that time and place. This will
of course affect the specific location meaning
that even a small family can take over a
district held by a larger family if they are
better coordinated. Players will be able to spend
their happiness or status to obtain positions
of authority within their clan (like a club
within a given family) or within the family
faction. These positions are always handled
as auctions, meaning they can cost minimal
amounts if they are agreed in advance but
you have to trust the other players not to bid
against you. The metagame will include tools
to support communication, moderation, “spy”
behavior, bidding for roles, advantages only
available through roles, etc.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 11
Counting on Data
190 Games as a Service

Coming out of the Dark

Once upon a time in the dark ages when we relied on physical distri-
bution, games had to be completed and ready to go before they could
be flashed onto a ROM or pressed onto a CD. In that era we were lucky
if the game even connected to the internet for an occasional patch, let
alone being able to be continually linked back to our own game servers.
Since the advent of reliable connections, even (largely) on our mobile
phones and tablets we have been able to make really intelligent use of
this stream of information, not only to create synchronous experiences,
but also to capture data on the real behavior of our players and adjust
the game experience in targeted ways for specific groups of players.
Connected servers can receive metadata from our various devices
containing named variables associated with a specific player session
and we can then use that captured information to see exactly how real
people actually play the game we lovingly created. The more we do this,
the more we discover how wrong we can be in our assumptions and we
can then find ways to make fine detailed iterative improvements.

Knowing What to Measure

Data can tell us all sorts of things. How much money we are making?
How many players do we have? How many we have ever had? Different
terminology and acronyms are thrown about to describe metrics we can
use to assess the health of our game.
Some of the most used terms include:

ARPU—average revenue per user (usually monthly).

DAU—daily active users.
ARPPU—average revenue per paying user (usually monthly).
ARPDAU—average revenue per daily active user.
MAU—monthly active users.
MAU/DAU—a percentage that helps assess the engagement level of
your game.
D21/D7/D30/D90—a percentage of registered users still playing after
the specified number of days.
Churn rate1—the opposite of retention and usually measured by the
total customers you had at the beginning of the month divided by
the number you had at the end of the month, excluding the new
customers gained that month. This number is closely related to the
lifetime of a customer and if you have a 25 percent churn rate each
 Counting on Data 191

month this implies that the average lifetime of your customers will
be four months.
K-Factor—the virality of your game; how many people an average
player recommends multiplied by the percentage that downloads
the game.
Conversion—the percentage of players who have ever paid; often
further broken down into whales (highest spenders) and minnows
(lowest spenders).
CPA/CPI—cost of acquisition or cost per install describes how much
you have to spend in order to gain one player on average.
LTV—lifetime value, or how much revenue on average each player
generates before they churn.

Beware of Vanity
All of this stuff is good for your business and as a designer these metrics
also help you understand how well your game is doing. However, what’s
most interesting is how these numbers change in response to your
ongoing adjustments and upgrades to the game. I’m not suggesting that
the numbers don’t matter of course, these are the variables that tell you
whether you have a viable game or not. However, there is no absolute
right number, as long as you are making more money than it costs to
build and operate the game.
These metrics allow us a way to track how much effect our incremen-
tal improvements over time are having and the direction (positive or
negative) they take each time, which is what matters. From a design per-
spective we need to avoid falling into a vanity trap. It might be great for
your marketing team to be able to talk about your total registered users,
but unless you keep track of your D30 retention you could find yourself
in real trouble. All-time statistics, like total registrations, only ever go up
and we can confuse that with success. Talking these things up might dis-
tract people such as data-confused journalists and investors, but beware,
as most of the credible ones will see that for what it is. Instead we need
to use data to help us improve our designs, so let’s look at a number of
techniques that everyone should use.

What Game Are You Playing?

The first technique we will look at will consider how we find the data we
are missing, that we can’t collect. That might sound odd, but think about
this. We can only capture things that a player actually does. With Apps we
generally can’t capture when they log out of the system, unless we are really
192 Games as a Service

lucky and they choose to press the quit button. Most people don’t. They
switch between apps and turn off their devices, which means that our
game almost never has the opportunity to upload the data of the closure
of a session. This becomes particularly relevant when a player doesn’t
ever return and we never get the last post of data, i.e., when they have
churned.
It’s actually not that easy to know with certainty whether someone has
actually churned or not. But it is likely that if they don’t return within
a month that the habit of playing has broken and usually we won’t see
them again. There are exceptions. With PlayStation Home we found that
a large percentage of users came back to see what new content we had
several months later, which is probably a factor of its role as a part of the
console experience.

Looking for Trends

We can’t know for certain if players will be coming back, but we can
look at trends. For example, where was the last data point the game
did best and does that seem to be a significant dropping off point for
other players? Better yet, if we can map the first-time user experience
against specific stages of the game we could post relevant data points to
measure what stages those players got through and where they dropped
out. If we are systematic about mapping this flow then we will be able to
identify where the player failed to reach the next stage of the game and
this gives us a very clear idea of where we might have a problem.
Comparing the progress of all of our players allows us to plot the
behavior of thousands of players across the user journey and will tell us
how significant an issue the problems we identify might be. This makes
it easy to prioritize what we do next.

Filling the Funnel

This kind of report is called a funnel analysis2 because when drawn ver-
tically it always ends up looking like one. More people go in at the top
than trickle out of the bottom section, which will progressively reduce
in size as players drop out at each stage.3
There is a problem with this, however. As we make changes to the
platform we will inevitably impact the flow of the players through the
game and we need a method to test the effectiveness of such changes.
The best thing to do is to break down players into sections or cohorts
of players with similar characteristics or who experience the same
 Counting on Data 193

essential service over a specific time span and then compare the behav-
ior between different groups. For example, we define one cohort of
players as those who started playing after we released version 2.3 of our
software and measure them separately from the cohort of players who
started with version 2.4.

Tracking Players by “Days Since Download”

This ability to filter out comparative groups of players can be extremely
powerful and allows developers and designers to get really useful ana-
lytical information based on actual behavior rather than just asking for
feedback. Personally, I like to use a slight variation on cohort analysis.
Rather than collating groups based on an actual dates—e.g., all users
who started playing after build version 3.12.1—I like to compare all
players using that version based on the number of days since each one
started playing. In other words, I want to see how long each member of
the cohort compares from the same baseline of behavior rather than the
release data of the version. Why? It’s all about asking the right question.
Focusing on the version of the build players are using is useful to allow
us to compare that release and its performance against other releases.
However, it assumes that players of that release are somehow identical.
They won’t be. Their commitment to playing our game will vary. That
doesn’t matter if you are only interested in the release performance.
However, if you want to illuminate players’ attitudes it helps to compare
their individual duration of play. Of course you could do a separate
cohort based on each day, but that not only risks data overload but also
makes it harder to compare like with like. Taking players of the same
build and then looking at how quickly they drop out based on their per-
sonal duration of play helps us illuminate more detail of what may have
gone wrong, and the funnel analysis will tell us where. Asking the right
questions in this way makes it much easier to identify how the lifecycle
process actually works in our game.

What’s Relevant?
Making the right choices about what data is relevant to capture or not
is essential if you want to be able to make the right decisions about how
to continually improve your game. We could just capture everything, as
we don’t know what will be relevant in time. But that can become costly
to store and can also can lead to you becoming blinded by the volume
of data, unable to isolate the relevant information. However, at the same
194 Games as a Service

time you don’t want to capture too little because often we don’t know
what we don’t know. So we have to ensure that we store as many poten-
tially relevant data points as we can, the last thing we want is to discover
a correlation to performance based on an attribute we don’t already
capture. This creates a dilemma that most designers have no experience
in solving, especially if you come from the console world. However,
there are models out there that can help us to get our heads around this
conundrum.

Food For Thought

For me I like to use a model from the food industry, which was first
developed in combination between the Pillsbury Company, NASA, and
the US Army Labs to provide safe food for manned space expeditions.
It’s called hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP)4 and is
widely used in the food industry to this day. There are seven principles:

1. Hazard Analysis
Identify the potential safety hazards and the potential preventative mea-
sures. In the case of a game, this is generally to identify the experiences
in a game that can lead to players churning from confusion, frustration
and boredom. We then need to know what we can do to identify when
those moments happen and how we can improve those when they
occur.

2. Identify Critical Control Points

These are the critical steps or procedures in the manufacturing process
where making a change will have a significant impact. For me one of
the best examples in the food industry is when to test for metal content
accidently dropped in the packaging or food. There is no point testing
for this early in the manufacturing process as the machinery itself may
subsequently introduce metal into the food (i.e., things drop off ). So
you leave metal detection until very late in the process. For our industry
we need to consider the game as a flow and identify what level of detail
becomes valuable to signal a decision made by the player, not least as
we have to balance data-posting against the processes of the game. It’s
unlikely that uploading every footstep made by a player in a game will
be useful. However, this will vary for every type of game. For instance a
first-person shooter noting the location of the player every ten seconds
as well as, perhaps, every shot they make or when they take damage.
 Counting on Data 195

This information could be used to create a heat-map to see how they

interact inside each level. For an MMO this would probably be overkill
and it might instead be more sensible to simply capture the players’
location every 30 seconds as well as the location of every combat
encounter and its outcome.

3. Establish Critical Limits For Each Control Point

In the food industry there might be some tests where it’s not as simple
as pass/fail for any given hazard so the process will consider whether
the degree of a hazard is considered significant or not. Similarly in the
games industry we want to identify how significant each of our data
points are and establish limits that allow us to know if we are meeting
our objectives or not. It’s hard to establish what we think this might
be until we go live, however it’s often worth looking at data captured
during free testing to establish a baseline of expectations. This will
quickly be replaced by the real data of your first cohort of course,
but having a baseline allows you to at least have considered your
expectations.

4. Establish Control Point Monitoring Requirements

This is the stage the food industry looks at the tools they have to
measure the problems and then will define how these are to be imple-
mented. In the games industry we will have to build into the game the
ability to post and capture the data points we have identified as critical
control points and to establish how we will report on these issues in a
format that the designer can use.

5. Establish Corrective Procedures

In food this is all about working out a systematic method to respond when
one of these hazards occurs and how they then go about fixing the prob-
lems before the issue leaves the factory. In games we need to establish how
we manage and interpret the data we have captured and feed that back into
future updates of the game or perhaps use existing service management
tools to communicate the problem to players so they can avoid the issues.

6. Review the HACCP Process

Finally it’s important to review that the process you have set up is
working properly for its intended purpose. There is no point following a
procedure that doesn’t actually achieve its goals.
196 Games as a Service

7. Establish a Record-Keeping Process

Documenting what you have done is essential, especially in the food
industry where this process is regulated. We also want to have appropri-
ate records in games, not least as it’s important that we learn from our
own history or be doomed to repeat it.
Thinking like this means that we have to take a holistic view of our
game and look for the process flows that each player will go through. It’s
an enormous area and to do it full justice we need both a good handle
of statistical mathematics and to take time to understand what each data
point means from a player perspective. However, what I hope to do in
this short chapter is to get you started thinking about what data can do
and how you can get started.

Data Protection or Too Much Information?

Once we have established the data points we want to collect we then
need to take some time to work out the data model that will allow us to
most efficiently collect, store and retrieve that information.
Using the HACCP model we can work out the information we want
to capture but we need to work with the development team to turn this
into a conceptual data model. That means looking at the data elements
and defining them in terms of what type of information they are and
how that information relates to other data points. So if we have a player
entering a scene we need to know the player’s ID, the session ID for that
game, and potentially the level or location they are interacting in. We
don’t need to know that player’s real name for the purpose of improving
the performance of the game, although there are places where we do
need to identify them in some way—for example to confirm their pur-
chases, to display their high-scores, or in relation to moderation pur-
poses. Outside these areas we have to be very careful about real names,
even alias names. There is a legal obligation in most countries to avoid
creating any identifiable information, especially if they might be children,
as part of our data protection responsibilities. This is an area where
it’s always worth getting legal advice and making sure that your terms
and conditions of play cover your use of data. Collecting data against a
PlayerID is a good start, but you will still have to be careful about how
this is made available and indeed largely you should prevent its use in
reports at all, except where absolutely necessary for the functioning of
the business. We usually don’t need the details of the individuals to get
 Counting on Data 197

useful information on performance so this isn’t really any loss from the
point of view of managing the game. We are more interested in the rela-
tionships between each data point and we need consistency in how they
are captured, for example each player will only have one PlayerID, but
they will play many sessions that might include multiple levels, which
may also include interactions with other players and multiple plays each
with different results for each player.

Infer What You Like

We also don’t need to capture every piece of information, just the vari-
ables that might change. We can infer other information from the com-
bination of these variables and the known reference data. For instance
we don’t need to know where in a level we find a specific corridor, that
location is static, contained in the level map. We just need to know the
XYZ coordinates. This kind of unchanging information we call ref-
erence data and we can use this to infer more detail about the events
we are capturing. It’s not that these data points never change but any
changes to them happen at predictable moments, such as updates, so are
outside the frequency of play.

Draw Yourself a Map

Drawing these out into boxes with lines connecting them5 can be very
useful as it also helps us not only map out the flow of our game but
also helps to rationalize what data points we actually need to capture
and what we can infer through the report. For example, we might want
to capture how many locations a player visits in a game session. We
can capture the date/time of entry into a given SpaceID by a specific
named PlayerID and using the same SessionID. This string of data tells
us everything we need to know on the database in order to work out a
specific player’s path through the locations in the game over any given
playing session. We can use our reference data to identify the map
used in the SpaceID and cross-reference other players who were also in
that location (identified by the SpaceID) during the same session (i.e.,
SessionID). Of course, the report we create from this data doesn’t show
the actual PlayerID, instead we show the total number of players who
pass that point in the game and we can even compare this process across
different cohorts.
It’s hard to stress how useful it can be to take the time to map out
this data. Not only does it make it much easier for your coding team to
198 Games as a Service

translate your data requirements into a database structure, it also allows

you to make sure that you really understand the flow of the game,
which feeds back into your game design. Part of this analysis should be
to work out how frequently this data will be uploaded and how much
structure and flexibility you will need to create reports. All of these
factors affect the costs, complexity and reliability of the solution you will
need to get useful results.

Losing My Connection
You also have to consider what happens when players are not con-
nected. Are they still able to play? Will the game store the data in cache?
How long will it do that for? What happens if that gets corrupted? Too
many developers assume that players will find themselves in the best
possible connection all the time, but we all know the reality is that there
are always black spots and being unable to connect at times is some-
thing we cannot avoid. However, how can we be running a service if we
allow the player to continue playing while they aren’t connected? Are
there ways to allow the game to continue, even at an impaired level?
We don’t want the lack of connectivity to break our carefully created,
regularly repeated playing habits. This creates lots of questions about
how the client-side of the software (the part run on the device) works
and how it interacts with the server side (the part that runs on the
network). How much data can we keep in storage in the cache, how long
can players continue playing without a network connection? How do
we encourage them to reconnect when there is data coverage? How do
we avoid players manipulating the locally held data? What happens if
players change the time/date on the device?

Connected Experiences
Similarly, we have to think about the server; what happens if too many
players update information at the same time? How do we separate live
operational data from historic data? How do we ensure that the refer-
ence data for a game is updated alongside other updates to the platform?
What about malicious hacker behavior? How do we avoid a “denial of
service” attack where we get thousands of spurious connections every
second? How do we avoid a “man-in-the-middle” attack where some-
one intercepts the output from a game to our server? There are lots of
potential problems. Many of which are resolved (or at least minimized)
by using HTTPS6 posting (which uses SSL validates that the source and
 Counting on Data 199

recipient are accurate and encryption to protect against eavesdropping

and tampering) but that comes at a cost in terms of performance.
Designers often underestimate the complexity and overestimate the
usefulness of using specific data points. Developers on the other hand
often over specify the robustness of data platforms, but we do need to
consider the security, flexibility and costs involved in such solutions.7

Expanding Possibilities
Once you have captured your data, the possibilities explode. We can
interpret historic data using techniques using prepared reporting tools
or even directly using SQL (Standard Query Language) to “slice and
dice” the available information into nuggets of insight, such as the
funnel analysis we have already mentioned, but in addition we can look
at real-time data. This requires a very different reporting system but can
provide brilliant information and an instant view of what players are
actually doing at that moment in time. This type of analysis is really use-
ful for live operations teams rather than designers specifically, however.

To Be or Not To Be
There is one technique that has radically changed the landscape,
however. AB testing. In this approach we offer up to different cohorts
of users different versions of our game. The differences can be very
simple, perhaps different colored buttons on the “buy” options. Indeed
it’s important that these changes are discrete and isolated from each
other, although there is no specific limit on the number of alternatives
we can test for each discrete change. The idea is we see the responses
of the players in the cohorts we have selected and determine which
alternative has the best effect in terms of the use of that feature. It’s an
extremely powerful technique as it allows us to adapt extremely quickly
to the needs of our audience based on what they actually do rather than
what they say they do. However, it’s not without its limits. We have to
be keenly aware of two things. First, that although the majority might
prefer one version of the change, other users might actually prefer one
of the alternatives. You may well be segregating your audience based
on the behavior of the larger number of users rather than opening up
the game to a wider audience. This process will, if you are not careful,
become more pronounced over time as each movement towards the
“majority” may further alienate the minority audience, reducing their
numbers further. The second issue is that AB testing doesn’t tell you
200 Games as a Service

why the change worked and quite often will have unexpected conse-
quences. The most telling of these is the longevity or lifetime value of
the customer. Take a game where the player is presented with a choice
of buying a small amount of in-game currency at one price or a much
larger amount at a heavily discounted price. We may well see a massive
increase in revenue in the short term if we emphasize the highest price
option; e.g., £69 for 10,000,000 gems. However, what this might hide is
that, although this price point works for our most engaged players, it
may alienate or even scare off other players who are still in the learning
stage. Putting reminders to buy things, and at higher costs, will inevita-
bly drive new sales but it may well do so at the cost of the lifetime value
of the players. Worse still, it may cause more delicate players to churn
early. It’s possible that these guys would never have spent as much,
but it’s more likely that you will have capped your potential long-term
revenue.
I’m not telling you that AB testing is a bad idea—quite the opposite.
I’m just saying that the use of data is complex and easy to get wrong with-
out great care. We need to appreciate exactly what our data means and its
consequences. That is like a form of shadow that each change to our game
design will cast. The only way to understand this shadow is to talk to our
users and get some insight, something raw data alone won’t give us.

Testing is a Process
Player surveys, focus groups and formal play-testing sessions have gone
out of favor recently given that we can capture such a huge amount
of information about what players do. They are unreliable and messy
and can’t help you predict future actions. However, this kind of qual-
itative research can provide you with a good understanding of “why”
players behaved in a particular way. Understanding motivations is key
to making the right choices about what we see coming out of the raw
behavioral data we capture, and without talking to players, how can we
get that right? This shouldn’t be considered as a one-time thing. Good
testing is a process that allows us to compare behavior over time, not
just in a single snapshot. It also doesn’t have to be too expensive and,
done well, can help your validate major feature changes in a way that
opens the game out to new possibilities and new audiences rather than
just relying on the feedback of the audiences you have.
This is important as your design process shouldn’t ignore opinions
of other users, especially those who don’t currently play our games.
 Counting on Data 201

Balancing data and insight together means you can adapt and expand
your audience appeal in both the short term and the long term.
On the other hand, we must also be careful to understand the
difference between opinion and data. When we show our games to
other people, we inevitably influence their responses to us. They may
want to please us or to show off how clever they are. I’m not suggest-
ing people will be deliberately awkward but they will inevitably be
influenced by your presence. This is one of the reasons it’s so import-
ant to create the right repeatable conditions for play testing; not just
going down to the local bar and showing random people. Similarly
when you make a release to a beta community, compare what they
say with what they actually do—especially, after you make significant
updates to the flow or difficulty of the game8. Compare the reactions
and behavior, but more than that, isolate the differences between new
participants to the beta after that release was made to the established
players. Something that used to be easy but is made harder might get
a bad reaction from established players, but may at the same time
enhance the retention level of the new players. We have to be careful
with our interpretations as they might not be as obvious as they first
appear.

Summing Up
Capturing data about how players play your game is now as much a part
of the design process as creating game mechanics or the monetization
model. This may seem to be adding more work and effort, but in fact
will pay dividends to you. The more data you have, the more insight
you will gain and the easier it will be for you to test and improve your
player’s experience. This has become a critical tool for the designer and
we should embrace it.
However, to make this work for you it’s really important to ask the
right questions. Knowing what you need to know is critical and often we
can be confused by a wrong interpretation of what our data means. This
often leads well-meaning developers who want to make better games to
fail and simply produce games that are better at making money but are
in the end unsatisfying and alienate their own core audience.
Getting this right is about capturing enough information so you can
isolate the unknown variables without risking the data blindness that
comes with capturing everything. The only way to do that is to look at
what actions correspond to genuine choices by the player and even just
202 Games as a Service

documenting that will help you have a better insight on how your game
will perform. That’s a worthwhile exercise in its own right.

Notes
1 There is a debate over whether we should use the term D1 or D2 to measure the first
days retention. Personally I prefer to use D2, but some prefer to think that the first day of
play is day 0 and use D1. Churn is an oddly useful measurement. It’s negative focus
(i.e., looking at the number of people who leave your game) but this allows you to think
about what you need to fix and how imperative it is to do that. It’s psychologically differ-
ent from how you might respond to increasing retention and also makes it easier to argue
for resources in your team, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churn_rate.
2 Funnel analysis is a tool commonly used in sales analysis as it helps understand where in
the cycle we have to focus our attention to increase the rate of conversion, http://en.wiki
pedia.org/wiki/Funnel_chart.
3 As well as looking at which players leave your game at particular points is also useful to
compare that with how many act in positive ways, for example, sharing their successes
and failures through the games social channels. We don’t necessarily want to entirely
throw away a moment in the game many players love if a few players leave at that
point—there might be other reasons they are leaving.
4 I first became aware of HACCP in my first full-time job (before I started in games) where
I was involved producing software for food technicians, mostly in chocolate manufacture.
It came up again when I worked in the pensions industry looking at online security and
electronic document storage and now seems to follow me into data capture for games,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_analysis_and_critical_control_points.
5 The brave among you will want to check out a systematic approach for documenting
entity relationships called UML (Unified Modelling Language). This is used in software
engineering, object-orientated programming and, of course, data modelling, but don’t
let that put you off—it’s pretty a useful approach to learn, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Unified_Modeling_Language.
6 While it’s not a universal panacea for all things in online security, the HTTPS protocol is
a vital component of what makes the internet function for businesses. Essentially this is
the combination of the normal HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) and the encryption
protocols provided SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)—more recently updated to TLS (Transport
Layer Security), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Secure.
7 On the plus side there are a number of services out on the market that can help, some
like Flurry are free (at the time of publication at least), as long as you don’t mind the
limited options and the fact that your data will anonymously go into the pool of market
data that Flurry reports on its blog. Personally, I think this is a good idea as it gives you a
real benchmark of your relative success.
8 Before we launched the 3G carrier Three in the UK we conducted countless focus group
tests to understand what users would want most from the new service. Video calling kept
coming up as the most important innovation, but it flopped. Why? Because making a
call in test conditions was nothing like the real-world where you didn’t know if you had
coverage, your friends had a compatible phone, etc. Add to that the risk of being found in
your underpants or having to stare at your boss when on a video call, even if they aren’t
telling you off. Reality and expectation are rarely the same.
 How Does Your Design Encourage Discovery? 203

Exercise 11: How Does Your

Design Encourage Discovery?
In this exercise we need to work out how our game design itself contrib-
utes to the discovery process and what elements in the design make it
more likely to take advantage of any opportunity for either in-person or
online social discovery. Additionally, we will look at some of the basic
elements you need to consider to make sure that players have the best
possible chance to understand what your game is about and why they
will select that game not only from the app store but also why they will
remember the icon on the device and select it again a second and many
subsequent times.
In working through this exercise we need to consider the way in
which our game design works for our objectives to be found. The art
style and gameplay can be extremely important in this as they have to
convey the relevance of the game to that player in an immediate and
gorgeous manner. We often only have the name and the icon to explain
why players should care and this means we need to capture their imagi-
nation as simply as possible. In the real world we should AB test both of

How does your design affect the oppor-

tunity for discovery?
What is the game’s name and icon that
instantly communicate what the game
is about?
How does the art-style, gameplay and
story concept feel relevant?
What about the art-style, audio,
gameplay and story concept feels
gorgeous?
Where is the opportunity for players
to share personally unique magical
moments?
Why will the recipients of social
messages from players care about this
game?
Why will journalists or advocate players
talk about this game?
What features allows the platform holder
to feature this game?
204 Games as a Service

these in detail, but for the purposes of this exercise just write down your
initial thoughts, we can improve on them later.
We should also think about how the game creates magical moments
of delight that players actively want to share with others and why their
friends will care about those moments. Will they be able to create
unique expressions of their gameplay ability or creativity through your
game? Further than this we need to consider not just the players and
their friends but also the other audiences. Why will journalists and app
store managers care about your game?

WORKED EXAMPLE:

How does your design affect the Finding Anthony is a game that will
opportunity for discovery? attempt to not only be entertaining, but
to explore the difficult human theme of
dementia. However, we don’t want this to be
at all patronizing or uncomfortable to play,
hence the setting in a science fiction context.
Throughout the design are opportunities for
meaningful sharing; however, to pull this off,
the interactions with mobile enemies (near
miss, collisions, and easy escapes) should
each have large number of alternative and
comical effects.
What is the game’s name and icon Finding Anthony should use Sopranos-style
that instantly communicate what gangster imagery but with a robotic twist.
the game is about ? It should be bold and simple and memorable,
e.g., the face of the gangster but with the
forehead not quite fitting properly.
How does the art-style, gameplay The Blade Runner art-style, repetitive, yet
and story concept feel relevant? constantly more difficult gameplay, and
issues with both family and “family” should
resonate with the increasing confusion
of the character and the use of repetition
and routine to overcome problems with the
memory system.
What about the art-style, audio, The illusions to Blade Runner and The
gameplay and story concept feels Sopranos should feel familiar, yet different.
gorgeous? The design should feel comfortable and
yet contained in them is the principle of
an untidy and decaying mind that is
struggling against all odds to keep control
of its environment.

(Continued)
 How Does Your Design Encourage Discovery? 205

Where is the opportunity for Each gameplay session will be recorded

players to share personally unique and shared as video through services like
magical moments? Everyplay. The interactions with the mobile
enemies as well as the successful matching
of memory tiles will have a visually
satisfying moment and the completion of
a level will display a momentary sense of
normality (which will decay over time if the
location is left unattended).
Why will the recipients of social The gameplay relies on the player selecting
messages from players care about the right path and timing to avoid mobile
this game? enemies as well gratifying animations
when you successfully combine memory
tiles. Watching your friends’ solutions
and timing should be intrinsically joyful,
especially where the timing is very close.
Failure should also be as funny as possible.
Why will journalists or advocate The twist about the game allowing us to
players talk about this game? think about dementia is interesting, but
we don’t want to labor that point in order
to avoid it becoming a cynical exercise.
Instead the concept and story of “finding
the girlfriend” should include sufficient
ambiguity as the real story will be revealed
over a story arc of several months—
communicated through each successful
discovery of her location.
What features allows the platform The game should always be created with the
holder to feature this game? latest iteration of the platform tools and will
seek to use new features wherever possible.
We want to avoid exclusives, but we will
look to create platform-specific exclusive
moments. Additionally, we will seek to
provide widespread localization into multiple
languages.
Chapter 12
Service Strategies
208 Games as a Service

Thinking Like a Service

The majority of the focus of this book has been the player experience
and the way that building games as a service adapts and adjusts to the
evolving engagement of the player over their lifecycle. However, as
a designer we can’t ignore the changes we have to consider from the
delivery side of the experience, including the necessary changes to the
development process itself.
This manifests itself most obviously in one term that is thrown about
by consultants and panelists at conferences all the time: the minimum
viable product (MVP). It’s a pretty simple principle but one I believe
is often misunderstood. This just isn’t about making the smallest thing
possible or the cheapest thing possible before launching it. This princi-
ple is about building something you can test and learn from. If we are
going to test something, we have to be able to measure it and we have
to create something from which we can build further. Of course we will
have to decide to constrain what we are going to build to something we
can release in a sensible timeframe, but more than that, we are building
a foundation for our eventual service. This doesn’t mean we have to
compromise on the vision we have for our game, it just means we have
to focus on the core values first and be willing to pivot as we discover
the players’ reactions.

Success Is Not a Straight Line

Pivoting is an often used phrase in business strategy and many design-
ers might find it uncomfortable to take on board. Yes, it means changing
what you are doing. Yes, it can be hard. However, successful pivoting
for creative content still has to stick to what was valuable in the original
creative vision, it shouldn’t ignore the original core objectives, even if
the changes have to be radical. If the core vision is wrong there is no
point trying to pivot, instead we need to rethink from scratch using the
information we have learnt. Usually, it’s not the core vision that is at
fault but the implementation approach we took. This might be about the
playing mechanics, the longevity of play, even the art-style, but essen-
tially any failure means that our hypothesis about our players’ reactions
was wrong. But rather than seeing this as just failure on our part we can
use it as an opportunity to learn. I have no problem with failure, which
is a good thing as I’ve been involved in many more “near misses” than
outright success stories, and usually it’s been because the concept was
 Service Strategies 209

way too early. Each one has provided me with a way to review the way
I think and many of the lessons in this book come from those “failures.”
You rarely learn as much when you are truly successful, but you can
only learn from failures where you are honest about the process. I know
how easy it is to blame yourself or others, rather than looking objec-
tively at the circumstances.

The Lean Startup

One of the most important lessons of The Lean Startup1 and other such
guides is that we shouldn’t fear failing,2 but rather make sure we fail fast,
and before we have spent all our money. Better yet, we should make sure
that we take special effort to ensure we can measure our results in a way
that will yield the best insight allowing us to learn as much as possible
for the next release.
This probably sounds like it’s just iteration. All game developers and
designers understand the importance of iterating in order to perfect game-
play. However, this is profoundly different. We are looking to minimize
the development impact and release something to our audience before it
is complete. We can’t spend months or years perfecting every aspect of the
game. Instead we have to pick our battles and focus on something we can
deliver efficiently and quickly. That also means we should try to avoid mak-
ing the same mistakes we have made before and learn from other develop-
ers’ failures to avoid their mistakes too, or at least the most obvious ones.3

Simply Focus
Development is always about compromise and there is the classic
conundrum described in the Triangle of Development, where we can
choose any two of the best quality, time to market, or cost; but never all
three. However, we can always choose to reduce our scope, to reduce the
number of features down to a level where it is possible to deliver good
quality, in good time, and at a reasonable cost.
The curious thing is that this kind of focus is that we often get the
best results by simplifying the game complexity down to a level that also
happens to be much more accessible to a wider audience. I believe this
is one (of many) reasons why some of the successful mobile and tablet
games are based on relatively basic gameplay concepts. If we use the
data capture principles outlined in Chapter 11, we can then measure the
meaningful control points in the game allowing us to work out where
improvements are likely to have the biggest effect.
210 Games as a Service

Figure 12.1 The Triangle of Development.

This kind of simplification is precisely why we spent time talking

about the game anatomy. If we can start with a repeatable core mechanic,
build that into a narrative context, set within a wider metagame,
then this allows us to better structure a game experience that can be
tested and developed further, iteration by iteration. Simplification for
our game becomes easy to achieve by focusing our attention on that
very repeatable core mechanic.

Getting Things in Order

Choosing the right features to concentrate on is incredibly emotional.
I have spent most of my career having to do this and it’s always painful.
The only way I have found to do this successfully is to make a simple
list of all the features and put them in order, the most important first.
Each feature needs to be defined as a distinct, single piece of work that
takes no more than a sprint (usually 1–2 weeks) to complete and test.
 Service Strategies 211

Anything larger than that needs to be broken down further into its
component parts. For example, implementing a commerce platform
needs authentication, inventory management, purchase flow design, UI
design, UI implementation, merchant process, etc.
Once we have our list then we put the list in absolute priority order.
This has to be entirely honest and you have to find ways to avoid emo-
tional decisions as far as possible. Where there is a decision to make,
try to consider the perspectives of our target players—at the end of the
day, it’s their needs we have to satisfy to be successful. Importantly we
are not deciding which features we want to deliver, simply the order in
which we will work on them. This is good news because that we never
need lose our most favorite feature,4 we only have to defer it to a later
release. That takes some of the emotional sting out of the decision-making
process. That one thing that you hold most precious in the design
concept might not fit into the initial release, but we can bring it into a
later update and use that to help make a big deal out of that later release.
Of course if a feature never makes it into a release then we will come to
realize that perhaps it wasn’t that important in the first place. At times
like this we have to “kill our darlings” (or perhaps use them to inspire
our next game).
Creating an absolute list is just the start of the planning process. This
information feeds into the development process and is used to create
schedules of work, but let’s come back to that when we talk about agile
development. Suffice it to say that we will find that we need to find an
advantage to staggering our precious features between different releases,
not least in order to sustain engagement. This allows us to “tell” our
players our vision for the game, step by step, building a progressive
anticipation of what is to come and, hopefully, trust that we deliver on
our promises.

What is Minimum? What is Viable?

As we work with the development team to allocate our priority tasks
to the available resources, we will find out quickly that it will take a
number of different sprints to build a product that is suitable for the
initial release. We have already worked out the priority so the ques-
tion will come down to which sprint delivers a product with sufficient
functionality to release. This will rarely be a level of quality of product
that you are happy with. Indeed if you are not at least slightly embar-
rassed by the experience, then you have probably waited too long.
212 Games as a Service

What’s important is that the initial release needs to convey the inten-
tion of the vision of your game (at least at its core) and be sufficiently
self-contained to function . . . i.e., it won’t crash and has just enough
playable material to make sure players won’t immediately give you a
terrible rating. Deciding if your game is viable is incredibly challeng-
ing and it depends on the specific market segment you are targeting.
Always start with a friendly alpha or closed beta audience.5 If you can’t
manage that then perhaps consider external test teams or an audience
in a limited location, such as New Zealand. The important thing is to
find an audience who are not emotionally involved and who can not
only provide honest feedback, but who you make feel special enough
that they trust you to respond to that feedback. This way you will be
more easily forgiven for versions of the game that fail to satisfy com-
pletely, therefore you can get their feedback earlier without causing
them to churn.
If for some reason you can’t do this kind of early release, then the
demands on quality of the initial release will be much higher. Indeed we
have seen that the minimum viable quality bar rising all the time. That
means that, although you should continue to keep your initial prop-
osition small, you have to ensure that the level of polish of that initial
section is as high as possible to avoid losing your audience at the most
critical time (i.e., full launch). That being said, get the game in front
of people who aren’t emotionally involved just as soon as it is possible;
what matters is that you test realistic user behavior.

Testing Times
Getting information for users about your game ideas is vital, and
not just when you release your MVP. Testing should be incorporated
throughout the development process including old-school focus-group
testing where possible. Have a group of people you trust to give regular
feedback on the ideas and the progress of the implementation, but make
sure you regularly test these assumptions with new people who are not
emotionally engaged with the project. This doesn’t have to be expensive,
but should be done as formerly as you can afford. Ideally using a series
of open questions that involve interaction with the game and that can be
recorded without the players being obviously observed.
This type of testing can only give you opinions. Focus testers notori-
ously can only tell you what they understand and, like all data research,
should only inform your decisions, not determine them.
 Service Strategies 213

Having a product in front of an audience with the ability to capture

real-user data is much more powerful than focus testing. The game is
no longer a theoretical concept; instead it is a living thing providing
telemetry that allows you to understand how each twist, turn, and
opportunity for play are explored by real players. You can compare their
behavior with your findings of how people played the game during your
internal usability tests and use all of these sources to inform your own
design insight. The military have a saying that no plan survives contact
with the enemy. The same could be said of your game design.

Life After Launch

The kind of information we can get from a live product is precisely
why it remains vital that we get a MVP to market as soon as practi-
cally possible. The faster we can start to get useful, unbiased data, the
faster we can adjust our prioritization process. I’m not suggesting that
you change what your team is working on in mid-sprint, that would
clearly be counterproductive. We should already have to plan for
ongoing releases. However, make sure your next sprint is able to take
into account information you have learnt from the one you previously
released. As far as possible, treat each subsequent release as its own
MVP, delivered predictably with each aspect measured in a systematic
way, meaning we can learn what works best for our game and build a
deeper engagement with the player base. It means our service is not
static, but continues to grow organically. However, in order to take
advantage of this we have to make sure we build into our develop-
ment approach the resources and processes that allow us to continue
building the service after launch. If you are used to building box-retail
games you know that by the time the game hits the shelves the team
has usually been all but disbanded and the collective expertise has now
been lost to other projects (or worse yet, made redundant). What little
remains of the team may not have enough detailed knowledge to make
more than minor adjustments to the experience beyond the most essen-
tial bug-fix patches.
This way of working is extremely inefficient and expensive. By
keeping our requirements focused and limited with many releases over
time, we don’t need as many developers to get to launch and we have a
longer period of time post-release to continue to invest in that experi-
ence while we have an income coming into the organization. Don’t get
me wrong, you will find the balance of staff needed for a service changes
214 Games as a Service

over the lifecycle of the product, however this will be a much easier
transition than we see with large games product releases.
Of course that means that much of the development will happen after
the initial release. There are many estimations as to what proportion of
development happens after the release of a MVP, but I would suggest
that it’s around 80 percent of the total development effort, perhaps more
for products with the best life-time value. I appreciate that this sounds
like a lot (and it is) but this effort is about building on the original
implementation and creating a long-lasting full experience over many
years. Most importantly, this has to be sustainable with the revenue
from the game. That’s the difference here. We are not taking years before
we release a product, we are releasing something fast and using that rev-
enue to sustain our ongoing development in order to build an audience
and a revenue stream.

Small Teams, Fewer Specialists?

There are risks of course because it will be much harder to employ rare
specialist skills to create the ultimate experience if we can only have
smaller teams. We also lose out on the broader experience presented by
the larger team structures. However, the gains are huge. The efficiency of
running a smaller team more removes layers of bureaucracy overheads
and makes it so much easier to collaborate between different disciplines
of art, code and design. The more specialized tools and expertise we
can buy in through third-party services such as middleware platforms,
payment systems, cloud server infrastructure, and game engines such as
Unity, Unreal Engine, Cocos, etc.

Staying Alive
However, even with smaller development teams using high quality
third-party tools, we can’t be sure of success. If the audience has to wait
for months for each update they will think the game had died and will
quickly lose interest. We need to be able to update changes to the game
regularly, at least weekly but better yet daily. Indeed from my time at
3UK we found that the more regularly you changed what players saw,
the better. In our case this was the front page of the games product.
We went from changing this from once per week to once every four
hours—3Italy went even further and changed theirs every ten minutes.
The more regular the change the more frequently players returned to the
service.6 Obviously it’s not possible to adjust the underlying game code
 Service Strategies 215

at this kind of pace, but it is possible to create a pipeline of new content,

configurable events, and automated promotions, as well as functional
releases over time. By planning a process of releases each week in
advance you can make it look to the audience that you are producing
material each day even though in reality it might take months to deliver
any one feature through code, test, and publishing cycles. You don’t
have to make everything available just because the features have been
completed. Staggering the release of content and experiences over time
really pays dividends.

Falling Down the Waterfall

This takes organizational change and may well be resisted by the
development team. There are techniques out there that are well worth
investigating but I will focus on “agile” and in particular “scrum.” But
first let’s talk about the traditional method of project managing software
development is known as “waterfall.” In this model, development is seen
as a sequential process, flowing inevitably downward. It comes from the
manufacturing tradition where making design changes later in the flow
are prohibitively expensive and have knock-on consequences that are
unpredictable. It all starts with requirements analysis.7 This would be
more systematic than just thinking up whatever features we want. This
is about documenting our designs in detail and expressing them from
the perspective of what our consumers will need to enjoy the game.
Writing our ideas out and breaking them into specific sprint-sized
requirements has the added advantage that it forces us to consider all
of the specific necessary steps to play the game, which, usually, in turn
means we know all the things our developers need to build. Sometimes
the document is called a “project initiation document” or sometimes a
“marketing requirements document,” but I prefer to call that the “game
design document.” This document shows our requirements in a form we
can communicate with the technical team to convert the design into a
specification, which should then tested against the requirements before
coding starts.

Getting the Team Onboard

The design document also serves as a great tool to help the designer
to get the rest of the team on board with the project. Hopefully, they
will have spent time talking to all the members of the team in order to
ensure that they not only understand the game idea, but are committed
216 Games as a Service

to it. There is nothing worse than a development team that is apathetic

about your game concept. The development team’s role then is to
translate the designs into technical specification documents that outline
the planned development approach, then these specifications need to
be agreed back with the design team to check they satisfy their require-
ments. Once the tech specs have been agreed, the development team can
proceed and, assuming you got everything in the design right when it
comes to testing, we simply test the results against the original specifi-
cation, which of course should match the original requirements. Finally,
once that testing is complete, we release the product and everything
works with only occasional maintenance. At least, that’s the theory.

Getting Agile
The trouble with the waterfall approach is that games aren’t easy to
pin down into absolute conditions or test cases. We don’t always know
whether players will find our game entertaining or not. We can’t know
how different mechanics will work in combination, even if we try to
time-box things. In short this process fails because it doesn’t support
iteration.
The agile system8 is based on the acceptance that project require-
ments and solutions evolve and proposes that the best way to deal with
these changes is through collaboration and time-boxed iteration steps,
rather than fixed deliverables. It works well by starting with the under-
lying vision for the project, agreeing a short and regular release cycle,
and focusing on prioritized deliverables that can be completed in that
timeframe. This approach has its problems too and is not as efficient for
larger projects as well as making it difficult to deliver large and complex
features that don’t fit into the agreed release cycle timeframes. However,
as a way to direct the development team within the context of a wider
strategy it can be hugely beneficial.
The most common version of agile development seems to be scrum,
which has a number of “rules” that the development team needs to
adopt. These can seem a bit odd to veteran developers, but many have
become fanatical converts to this approach.

The Product Owner

There are three core roles in the process. The product owner9 is the person
who owns the strategy. They have to be the representative of all the
stakeholders, most importantly to champion the customer (in our case
 Service Strategies 217

the player). It’s their role to translate the vision into a strategy for the
project as a whole. Each requirement needs to be defined using self-
contained customer focused user journeys, each of which are broken
down into functionally simple user cases. These are simple phrases that
describe the user (the player) and what they want to be able to do using
everyday language such as:

As a player, I want to be able to quickly locate the next avail-

able level suitable for my playing ability. In the event that I am
an experienced player, I want the option to be able to select my
own choice of level, overriding the choice I am presented with
automatically.

These requirements often benefit from discussion with the develop-

ment team or the scrum master to assess their suitability in terms of size
and structure; however, the validity in terms of customer experience
should be outside their remit. Personally, as a person who has often
been in the product owner role, I like to have a good idea of what their
impact will be in the overall experience and especially in terms of acqui-
sition, retention and monetization. We use these factors to determine
their priority and we use that to position them in the product backlog.
As we have said before, avoid using vague priority settings such as P1 or
VeryHigh; use an absolute order for each and every line item from most
important down to least with only one item at each priority number,
even if that causes you hours, even days of anguish—it’s worth it.
Each sprint is expected to deliver each requirement as “ready to go,”
but that doesn’t mean the product owner will want to release the code
at the end of every sprint. They need to have an idea of where the MVP
line is on their backlog—in other words to know what is the true bot-
tom line as to what you can release—but despite that, they still have to
put all the requirements in a single order.

The Development Team

The second role is the development team, whose collective role is to
take all the requirements according to their separate specializations and
skills and try to turn them into deliverable tasks that can ideally be com-
pleted and tested in isolation within the sprint. The duration of a sprint
is typically 1–4 weeks within which the development team will concen-
trate on the deliverables they have committed to focus on, based on the
218 Games as a Service

product backlog prioritization. The progress of each sprint is generally

displayed publicly with a “burn-down” chart showing the remaining
work to be complete for that sprint each day. They need not be par-
ticular hierarchies within a team, although in larger groups there will
often be a mentoring role for some of the most experienced members.
Agile development is more about making better products together and
quicker rather than reinforcing artificial labels.

The Scrum Master

The third role is that of the scrum master. These are the people who
keep track of the progress and who attempt to maintain the momentum.
Interestingly the scrum master need not always be a producer or project
manager, sometimes having a lead coder take on this role can also be
highly effective, as long as they are able to commit to the process. They
host a daily meeting (same time and location each day) where everyone
can attend, but only the developers can speak. They are asked what they
have done since the previous day, what they are planning to do that day
and what blocks they have encountered. These are documented and the
scrum master will help work through a resolution of that problem out-
side of the meeting with only the relevant people. These meeting should
always end after 15 minutes—a tricky task at best, but with everyone
knowing the time this creates a sense of urgency that avoids wasting
time unnecessarily. In the end if something needs further discussion,
that should happen outside the daily scrum anyway.
If you are dealing with bigger teams, then rather than expanding the
time available it’s better to separate out the different scrums into sepa-
rate teams. Then after the daily scrum, there will be a scrum of scrums,
allowing each team to present its activity and blocks to the wider
business. This “cell” structure is particularly powerful for scale, provided
that each scrum (cell) can focus on the solution of its own problem,
rather than splitting large problems across multiple cells, which usually
breaks down.
The objective is to limit the management overhead and productivity
impact on the development team while still giving the wider business
a clear idea of what the real progress is and what might be causing
problems for individual team-members. The scrum master is critical to
this progress and their working relationship with the product owner is
critical to the success of the project. They are each other’s check and bal-
ance and both need to be committed to the team’s vision for the project.
 Service Strategies 219

In my experience as product owner I am aware that the reality of this is

that you and whoever is responsible for production delivery will fall out
at times, even on the best of projects. However, you both need to appre-
ciate the other’s perspective and be able to separate the project from the
personal. Successful teams can argue passionately and still happily go
for a beer or play Call of Duty with each other afterwards.

Time to Review
At the end of each sprint there are two further (also time-boxed) meet-
ings to review the progress. In the first, the “sprint review meeting,” the
purpose is to present the results to the product owner and other stake-
holders as well. This usually includes demo of the features currently
complete and “ready to ship,” as well as an assessment of the progress
against the sprint backlog (that section of the product backlog commit-
ted to by the development team for the sprint). This meeting should also
be time-boxed, typically for between two and four hours depending on
the project. At the end of this, the deliverables should be signed off by
the product owner who will determine if the current deliverables are
sufficient to justify a release (either the MVP or a new update). If that
happens then this should be passed off to a team to complete end-to-end
QA testing and commence the submission process.
The second meeting is a “sprint retrospective” where the team-
members will review the process, progress, and ability to resolve block-
ages. The purpose is to first understand what worked and what didn’t,
then to identify opportunities to improve the process for the next time.
This isn’t a witch-hunt, it’s about empowering the team to continually
improve their capabilities and should be a chance to people to air their
concerns, frustrations, and, importantly, congratulate themselves on
their ongoing effort.

Have a Break
After the sprint it’s useful to give the developers time to recuperate
and have a change of pace. This is a great opportunity to have the
team spend time experimenting with ideas, to learn new things, or
to prototype complex elements for the project. This has to be a time
limited period—for example 2–5 days depending on the normal size of
your sprints—and should usually be driven by the development team
themselves, although that doesn’t mean it can’t involve the product
owner. Indeed its often a good idea to switch around the roles and to
220 Games as a Service

get some of the team to try something outside their normal skill set, if
only to get a perspective of those roles. There is no expectation that any
of this work will be used in future projects, but this should be used as
an opportunity to identify new creative possibilities and reward team
members who exhibit the most innovative contributions. This is not
wasted time; at best it can transform a project, perhaps even scope out
the seed of a completely new game. At worst your team will have had
a chance to stretch their skills in areas that they normally don’t get to.
Just as importantly, it’s an opportunity for them to feel appreciated for
making their own choices as well as helping to re-energize them for the
next sprint.

Publishing is Not Development

The publishing should be treated separately from the development
process, although many small developers don’t have the resources to
run more than one team. This requires us to first validate the quality
of the deliverables from the development team, which is hard to do if
you are evaluating your own work or that of your team. There are many
agile developers who swear by the test-driven development approach10
alongside scrum, where each technical specification includes a test that
confirms the feature has been delivered correctly. This implies that there
will be no need to do separate QA testing at all. I’m a little more dubious
about this as I feel that you should always do end-to-end testing to
ensure all the pieces map together. That being said, the scrum process
requires that a developer takes responsibility for the quality of their
code before they check it into the project, including taking into account
not only the functions of the section they have built but also its compat-
ibility with other systems.
Despite this, as a product owner we also have a responsibility to
ensure that the end product is in a suitable state for release on behalf of
the consumer. With that in mind, here is a breakdown of the different
stages of QA testing.

Unit Testing
We usually start with unit testing, taking the specific class or module
relating to a single feature and check this against the test script written
by the developer themselves to match the original requirement. The aim
is to test that the function performs to the specification within its own
context. At this point we are not considering any interactions with other
 Service Strategies 221

systems and if those are important to the ability to test this specific unit,
the interaction would use a “test stub” or simulation of the dependent
modules.
Once we know that the feature works according to the specification,
we need to test it in context with the other modules of the platform,
which means we need to complete and test the integration,11 while along
the way demonstrating the performance and reliability of the combina-
tions. We have already demonstrated that both modules work correctly
according to their specification, so we can usually narrow down any
issues to the way they interact.

End-to-End Testing
Once all the modules have been tested against each of the other mod-
ules they are directly integrated with, we should be able to raise our
sights higher. Here we need to confirm that the end-to-end experience
is performing correctly against the original specification. If it is we can
proceed to launch. Doing this, however, requires us to consider a num-
ber of different testing approaches. User acceptance testing allows us
to confirm that the overall experience is working against the objectives
originally set out by the product manager, while stress testing allows us
to prove that the platform will be reliable under extreme conditions, and
in particular it’s worth considering hacking issues such as packet-sniffing,
distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, and man-in-the-middle
attacks, as well as just simply how the platform would function should
you get 10–100 times the volume of users you currently expect all turning
up at the same time.

Release Candidates
It will take a number of sprints to get a polished, functional release that
you have the confidence can deliver the minimum viable experience,
including all the data capture you need to be able to learn for the next
release. It will involve compromise and won’t be exactly what you had
originally envisioned, but it does have to be a self-contained “complete”
experience in its own right. You are now ready to release it through your
publishing process. This might be as simple as following the submis-
sion guidelines for the platform you are working on, whether that is a
publisher, Steam, iOS or Android. This will take some time and may
often involve rejection. There may be changes to policy, or even regu-
lation, in specific territories that, as a developer, you won’t necessarily
222 Games as a Service

have been aware of. This will require someone to make the fix and to
do that in a rapid manner—throwing out your otherwise perfect sprint
planning. How do you deal with that if you don’t have multiple teams?
I’d recommend that you always allocate time in the sprint to bug-fixing
and use that time when necessary. If you don’t need that time in the end
there will always be bugs the developer can look at or perhaps we just
get started on the next highest priority feature on the backlog that didn’t
originally make it into the sprint. The joy of scrum is that we aren’t
worrying about how many features make it into the sprint, instead we
are focused on how much time to dedicate to that development phase.
There should be no need to do crunch again, ever!

Preparing For the Next Sprint

If we are careful and line up the process there should be tasks that run
in parallel during the development and publishing processes. We might
have a week window to review our backlog, fleshing out the specifica-
tions and write our requirement specifications. This could be followed
by a week where the development team write their technical specifica-
tions and unit test scripts that would be reviewed by the product owner
and their peers. We get 2–3 weeks of intense development, with unit
and integration testing happening in parallel. Finally 1–2 weeks of
end-to-end testing, including user acceptance testing before it’s submit-
ted to the platform holder. Over the next week the development team
gets to experiment and learn new things while we await the results of
the publishing process, and the product owner works with the team
leaders on the details of the next sprint, including time to resolve any
bug fixes with the second week before going live being used on the tech-
nical specification process. The whole pipeline might take 7–9 weeks to
complete. If we have the resources to support multiple teams there is no
reason why they can’t push forward a release twice as fast, handing the
baton of the “current” version to each other, but you should absolutely
remember that your team-members might have a life or family and you
will have to accommodate for little things like sickness or holiday.

Releases Without Releases

Features aren’t the only thing we release over time. We also have to look
at the goods we offer and consider how we can deliver these more fre-
quently than each software upgrade release. There are two key strategies
here. The first is to have some time or procedural unlocking process
 Service Strategies 223

for “new” items that happen to have been embedded in the application
all along (and therefore have to be created prior to the release being sub-
mitted). Or alternatively (and my preference) we should have a method
that allows the game to user the server-side to deliver updated content.
Server-based distribution of in-game content is a really powerful
design strategy that can really unlock your revenue potential as well as
your ability to deliver rapid improvements to your games experiences.
However, you have to be careful that you comply with the require-
ments of the platform you are using and you must realize that servers
have an associated ongoing cost linked to the level of usage, although
cloud-based systems such as EC2 servers from Amazon or Azure from
Microsoft can help you mitigate problems with reliability and scaling.
There are even complete service providers such as Game Sparks and
other specialist server infrastructure providers, such as Exit Games for
multiplayer platforms.
You then need to create (or find a provider with) a platform that
allows the game to identify what assets are available to each player and
make these available to them alongside the unlocking of achievements
or specific purchases made in the game, and usually this has to be done
working with the platform provider.

Thick and Thin Clients

Thinking about servers means we have to think about whether the client
can function when the user is unable to access the internet. We can
make the decision that the game can only be played when the player
can access the internet, but that comes at the cost of the overall experi-
ence. Whatever our decision (and sometimes its unavoidable depending
on our game design) we have to ensure that we take care to separately
consider the design of the client software and how that operates when
there is no connection to the server. Can we cache the activity of the
player and upload that in the background when the connection returns?
Do we enforce a reconnection within a specific timeframe, or do we
simply throw away the data of their behavior while not connected?
There is a tension between a “thin client” approach, which treats the
server as the main source of functionality and a “thick client” approach,
which delivers the minimum reliance on the server infrastructure. Both
approaches are a compromise and need careful planning. Regardless of
the approach, only the server can be trusted in terms of data integrity,
any client can be hacked.
224 Games as a Service

Server Deployment and Roll-Back

Getting back to the server whatever solution we implement needs us to
have a mechanism that allows you to test and check content going live
can’t accidently bring the game down or other less critical problems
such as “missing textures.” Even then you should ensure that there is a
method to roll-back any release if you later find there is a problem.

Build for Flexibility

Think carefully about the flexibility and range of goods and assets
you want this process to support. That will affect how the client func-
tions and how it needs to function to be able update each element. In
particular how will you deal with the fact that you can’t take away or
significantly change assets that people have already paid for—even if
you update the quality of your graphics engine? Think in particular how
you can skin or otherwise customize the playing experience driven by
the player and by the platform. I’m not just talking about selling custom-
ization goods (although that can have value), I’m talking about how
we can manipulate the player experience from the server in order to
create events that at least visually (perhaps also adding some specific
minigame) update the experience without necessarily updating the app
itself—provided you don’t break the rules of the platform holder. Apple
in particular has some quite restrictive rules designed to avoid misuse of
server process that you should be aware of.
It’s not a trivial process to set this up. It needs careful planning and
generally the platform support is something that needs to be managed
in parallel. If you have a small team this might even be out of the ques-
tion without third-party support. But its potential if you want to be able
to deliver regularly changing experiences including daily challenges,
monthly events, and quarterly “seasons” in your game can be phenome-
nal for retention and monetization.

Delivering Ongoing Service

Service doesn’t end there. Service also means having the tools to sup-
port moderation, community interaction and, of course, to engage with
players as directly as possible whether that’s through Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube, or other more specialist platforms like Everyplay. Focus on
how you will deliver that experience and how you can maintain its sup-
port (and costs) over time. Choosing the right service tools is vital but
 Service Strategies 225

we don’t have space in this book to be able to discuss that in any detail
and, as with every area of this book, I strongly recommend you research
the key areas for yourself.

Summing Up Service
The point of this chapter is that delivering a service requires a funda-
mental change in the way we approach development. It’s about smaller
focused teams delivering ongoing sections of our game offering over
time so we can test each section in isolation as well as demonstrate to
the users that the experience has life and ongoing investment that they
can choose to reciprocate. We are not trying to create everything in
advance of their engagement and instead will respond to their needs
from a functional point of view, just as we will respond to their com-
munity, moderation, and social needs. I didn’t go into detail about
how these latter essential components of service can be delivered, as
that probably deserves its own book. The key in my mind is that we
approach each step in the delivery chain one at a time, break down
each problem into its components, and work out the priority. If you can
understand that approach you will be able to resolve every problem as
you will have understood the fundamental point of creating a service . . .
we only have to do each step at a time, but there will always be more
steps to take.

Notes
1 Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup has quickly become the bible of many small indie studios.
Personally I wasn’t all that interested in the book as I rarely see much value in business
strategy gurus, until I read that one of the quotes in the book came from Geoffrey Moore,
author of Crossing the Chasm, http://theleanstartup.com.
2 One of the key differences between UK-based investment and that of the USA (particu-
larly in San Francisco) is that the UK investors seem to find failure in previous ventures as
an entirely bad thing, whereas US investors see failure as an opportunity to learn—
provided you demonstrate that you have! I suspect this is partially because the larger
funds in the US mean that they can afford to be less risk-averse, but this attitude also
clearly pays dividends.
3 Avoiding making the same mistakes as other people have already made is what makes
it difficult for me to decide how I feel about Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity from 22 Cans.
Molyneux has often said that this project was an experiment, but I find it hard to identify
what lessons they may have learnt from the project that weren’t already obvious from
researching other projects. Don’t get me wrong, they certainly will have learnt a lot as a
team, but was that project the best way to learn them? The game presented a significant
networking challenge, and they unsurprisingly had a significant server outage in the early
days—a problem that was both predictable and avoidable. It might have been expensive,
but cloud server infrastructure was created specifically for managing unpredictable
226 Games as a Service

scaling problems and there were plenty of precedents out there on how to avoid such
problems. There were other obvious things, such as the behavior of some users creating
crude imagery and offensive comments, while others tried their best to “clean up” those
messages—so far so obvious. Of course the real answer is that Curiosity wasn’t a mini-
mum viable product at all. It was a marketing tool where the team had to learn the hard
way how to pull all these techniques together, allowing their mistakes to be public, show-
ing their commitment to learn, and building trust with 3 million players. In the end the
reveal we had all been waiting for was about their next title Godus. Now that’s brilliant
marketing. www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10084700/The-end-of-Curiosity-teenager-
crowned-God-after-winning-game.html.
4 To extend William Faulkner’s quote in games, like “in writing, you must kill all your
darlings,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Faulkner. This remains true even with
service-based delivery; however, prioritizing features to a later release is much less painful
to do that the actual slaying of your favorite ideas.
5 Traditional software development defines the alpha as the first release and usually to
friendly or internal audiences. A closed beta is a release to a select invited audience
where as an open beta is open to all comers who pass specific criteria (e.g., signing an
non-disclosure agreement). Some services spend years in open beta, while others, like
PlayStation Home, never leave the beta stage, largely to communicate to the public users
that the platform will constantly be in development.
6 There is a level of diminishing returns to the frequency of change, but the average return
rate of the active user generally matched the rate of change.
7 There are some formal processes that help developers use waterfall development
approaches for software development, most notably PRINCE2.0. Apparently this is an
acronym for PRojects IN Controlled Environments and derived from a UK government
standard for IT system project management, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2.
8 Agile has many forms but essentially focuses on the collaboration of cross-functional
teams, which fits neatly with the games as a service model, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Agile_software_development.
9 I know some people don’t like the term “product owner” as it denies the shared nature
of the creative process. You could use terms like “champion,” “requirements manager,”
or “producer,” but in the end someone has to represent the consumer and “own” the
product in some way. It doesn’t have to diminish the role of the rest of the team.
10 It’s often a good idea that the developer writes a technical specification and test script
for each section of code they are to develop and then have that signed off by the product
owner. This ensures that both sides have a clear understanding of what is needed and
how to demonstrate that it functions correctly. It is also worthwhile having a senior
developer—often the scrum master or a person responsible for other modules with
which this code has to integrate—to review to tests and consider potential integration
problems.
11 There are several approaches to integration testing, including smoke-testing, big-bang,
top-down, layer integration, etc. However, this is more detail than we need to go into in
this book, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integration_test.
 How Will You Capture Data? 227

Exercise 12: How Will You

Capture Data?
One of the most powerful tools that comes from using a connection
with a server is the wide-scale capture of data. However, while there is
a temptation to capture everything, we should take time to work out
what data points will allow us to understand what things, as it can be as
bad to have too much information to sort through as having too little.
Worse still is to have the right information but to have collected it out of
context, making that information irrelevant. This is a tricky balance to
reach as its often only after launching your game that you can identify
the oddments of data that prove to be the most insightful. However, that
doesn’t mean we should collect meaningless confusing data.
In this exercise we will consider how you can collect as much mean-
ingful information as possible by understanding the data that actually
matters to the commercial and design performance of the game. We
will use the HACCP model described in Chapter 11 as a way to help us
understand the flow of the game and use this to identify data points in
the game that are most likely to help us understand the performance in
our game.
This starts by looking at what kinds of hazards we are trying to mea-
sure as well as where in the game we can find the control points that are

How will you capture data?

What are the hazards we are trying
to identify in terms of access to play,
behavior, churn, etc.?
What are the control points that allow
us to identify patterns in use of our
game?
What about the critical limits or KPIs
that we will us to measure success
objectively?
What monitoring strategies will we use?
How will we review the monitoring
process to confirm it is accurate?
How will we store and use historic data
separately from live operational data?
228 Games as a Service

most meaningful in terms of their value in interpretation. We should

also try to have an idea of the expected range of the data points for each
of these tests so we have some kind of benchmark to know what success
looks like. Finally we need to consider how we monitor and review
the whole process, including the separate storage (and comparison) of
historic and operation data.

WORKED EXAMPLE:

How will you capture data? We plan to collect data on each

meaningful interaction within the
game and to use reference data as far
as possible to extrapolate the specific
interactions where possible.
What are the hazards we are trying We want to know where in the overall
to identify in terms of access to play, experience players stop playing so we
behavior, churn, etc.? can fix them.
We want to identify the triggers
that successfully lead to the use of
purchasable items.
We want to know how to improve each
level and understand what make them
enjoyable to play or cause players to
churn.
We want to identify the most valuable
players in terms of acquisition,
retention and monetization.
What are the control points that allow us App is started.
to identify patterns in use of our game? Player personalization is selected.
Player set-up is competed.
Game location is selected.
gameplay commences.
Player selects a path (spawn point and
target location are needed).
Player is intercepted by a mobile
enemy (location, time and effect).
Player completes a successful “memory
match” (including type).
Player received a reward (including
type).
Player uses a power-up (including
type).
Player achieves target objectives.

(Continued)
 How Will You Capture Data? 229

Player achieves secondary objectives.

Player connects game account to their
social network (including reference
to player’s historical performance at
that time).
Player joins a “family.”Player
participates in a “family” dialogue/
action.

What about the critical limits or KPIs that We are looking to obtain at least
we will us to measure success objectively? 40 percent day two retention,
20 percent day seven and 15 percent
day 30 (ideally significantly
higher).
We are looking for at least 80 percent
successful completion of the target
objectives first level for all players who
initiate that game level.
We are looking for at least 60 percent
successful completion of the target
objectives first level for all players who
initiate those game levels.
We expect 10 percent of players to
connect their account to a social
network.
We expect 4 percent of players to
engage with the “family” metagame.

What monitoring strategies will we use? Data will initially come through a
load-bearing queue, stamped with its
arrival time (allowing a comparison
with time sent). Data collated while
the game was offline and sent via
the cache will be marked as such. All
data will pass through an operational
database, which will keep track of
the current status of play; however,
the information will also be passed
through two additional systems.
The first is live monitoring, which
will show the rate of incoming
packets and comparing the sent and
received timestamps broken down
by each measured activity. This will
allow alerts in the system to identify
inappropriate behavior as well as early
warning of potential technical issues
in the game.
The second is the historic database,
which is used for offline reporting by

(Continued)
230 Games as a Service

the commercial and design teams for

their analysis of the performance of
the game as a whole.

How will we review the monitoring process The live monitoring system will show
to confirm it is accurate? the rate of data into the platform as
well as the deviation from the historic
data in terms of last week, last month,
last year, etc.
Additionally, every sprint will include
a task to review the data requirements
of that sprint and its impact on the
data capture as well as reference
information used on the platform.
How will we store and use historic data The platform includes separate long-
separately from live operational data? term storage database as well as a live
monitoring tool. The accuracy of the
historic data will take precedence over
that of the live monitoring.
This page intentionally left blank
Chapter 13
The Psychology1 of Pricing
234 Games as a Service

The Karate Kid

Throughout this book we have talked about design, rhythm of play,
socialization, and even agile development in the context of the lifecycle
of the player. But none of these chapters have really, except perhaps
superficially, addressed the one burning issue of all developers engaging
in Free2Play design—how do we make any money?
My objective in the writing structure of this book has been to prepare
the groundwork so that in this, the later stages of the book, your game
design is already ripe for effective monetization. I’m trying to pull off
a Karate Kid moment where Mr. Miyagi2 gets you to clean his car (wax
on . . . wax off ), which happened to create a kind of muscle memory
that supports good martial arts techniques.
If you have been working through the exercises you should have a
game concept in mind for which you will have isolated what elements
contain the essential “fun” as well as those elements that create the
context, allowing the player to repeat play time and time again. All this
has then been applied across the lifecycle of the player and we have used
several lenses to review our game from such as the Bond moments or
Columbo twists we introduced in Chapter 9, or the ideas of levels of
player interaction we introduced in Chapter 8.

Why Should I Buy? (AIDA)

Now we can get down to the meat of making money without fear of
compromising the playing experience, but first we need to try to under-
stand what happens when people make a purchase.
The way we buy things has been analyzed in detail for decades and in
particular one model remains a core part of sales and marketing theory.
AIDA3 (awareness, interest, desire, action) makes us think of the transi-
tional nature of a purchase decision and has been intricately linked with
the idea of doing funnel analysis since the 1960s; arguably this is where
our use of funnel analysis to help us analyze player behavior from game
data came from.
Assuming that we have already considered how to get our game
discovered, the important take-away here is that it’s not enough for
potential players to be aware of our product, or even interested. We have
to create a sense of desire and create a reason for them to act; to get
them to take the step to install, play . . . and then pay.
The AIDA model is important for designer to understand because
it provides us with our first understanding of the levers we can use to
 The Psychology of Pricing 235

increase our revenue. We all know that discovery is a problem and that
we can only generate money if we first have people finding our game.
That leads us to identify strategies that can increase the proportion of tar-
get players becoming aware of our game. Taking this as the only criteria
would be a mistake of course, because it becomes increasingly expensive
and inefficient if we don’t also take into account the audience who are
likely to be interested. We can’t take this interest for granted, as we have
already said, and we need to stimulate that interest as part of our market-
ing effort but more than that, if we are to create action we have to provide
a sense of urgency. Making any purchase is risky and the dynamic of the
uncertainty of the outcome of a purchase against the consequences of
not making that purchase contribute to buying anxiety. These are further
complicated by the social consequence of such a decision (what will
others think?) and other more practical needs we might have at that time.
Games are essentially luxury products, which means we have to go
further than just demonstrate that the player needs our product. We
have to create the conditions that allow them to give themselves permis-
sion to play and purchase. We shouldn’t be afraid to admit our products
are valuable to their players. We can confidently offset players’ natural
uncertainty by creating an expectation of delight. We can build in social
value, even make clear to users what they might be missing out on, and
this will help them make that step to invest in our game. However, to do
this we have to acknowledge that games have a self-indulgent quality, an
impractical but delightful value that is different than for more functional
goods. It requires the player to be able to set aside their other needs for a
period of time, something some call the “abnegation of responsibility.”

Let Me Off the Rollercoaster

It’s something people do all the time. We know we should do the wash-
ing up but we would rather watch our favorite TV program, so we set
aside the things we should do in favor of things we want to do; we want
someone to let us off the rollercoaster of our mundane lives if only for
a minute or so. Doing this and choosing to play a game is easy enough
if you are already a committed games player, but for a mass-market
audience the option of playing a game used to be considered alien.
The Facebook revolution for games was to introduce simple, easy to
access games content in a social context, which made it a simple way to
communicate with people you care about as well as others who just had
a shared interest. Now this revolution has spread across multiple devices
and has broken down almost every barrier.
236 Games as a Service

We are All Marketers Now

But there have been consequences and one of them is that as designers
we can no longer expect the marketing team to build that excitement.
We have to take part of the responsibility and create conditions within
the game that help them to engage with our game. We can’t take that
step for them. We can remove blocking events, such as poor UI or rely-
ing on prior “gamer” knowledge and we can use narrative, art and social
context to create anticipation for our game. However, our audience still
has to make the decision to play on their own.
Part of understanding what motivates players is to understand the
nature of need states. This way of looking at buyers comes from the
model proposed by A.H. Maslow, which suggests different levels of
need start that determine the motivation of people. He postulated that
until the lower-level needs states were fulfilled, people couldn’t aspire
to complete the higher levels. It’s a model that has been debated and
questioned endlessly and there is no scientific evidence that the model
is valid. And yet it has been one of the single most useful tools I have
found in my career. Obviously, games are different from food, water, etc.
They are an entertainment product. Therefore, I made a variation on
Maslow’s model, arrogantly called “Oscar’s Hierarchy of Games.”
Thinking about this model allows us to make sense of the player
lifecycle in a different way. If we don’t entertain our players, there is no
game. If we don’t create trust, there is no revenue. If there is no one else
playing, why I should continue playing? If I can’t show off, why should
I keep buying? Only when all of these levels are satisfied and I still see
value in playing and paying, can I really make the most of my game and
therefore only then will I spend as much as I want on the game.

Playing is a Delicate Thing

We have to appreciate that the decision to play is a delicate and fragile
thing. It requires a level of confidence on the part of the player and
willingness to engage. That willingness—like the suspension of disbelief
we talked about in Chapter 2—fluctuates differently at different stages of
the player lifecycle.
“Discovering” life-stage players will have taken the first step to play
your game, but other than time and the bytes of storage needed to
install the game they have no investment (or utility) in your game.
“Learning” life-stage players are already investing their time and trying
 The Psychology of Pricing 237

Figure 13.1 Oscar’s Hierarchy of Games.

to gauge how the game fits into their lifestyle, which makes them
particularly vulnerable, but at the same time they are closer to reaching
the point where they become, at least in principle, willing to make a
first purchase—if they can see that this will make their gameplay even
better.

Buyer Remorse
Getting to the first purchase, indeed even getting the player to down-
load at all follows a conversion process. We have to generate enough
anticipation of value that exceeds the barriers to install/purchase such
as fear of the unknown, cost, fear of looking stupid to others, willing-
ness to invest the effort, etc., of the potential players/payer. Immediately
after taking the action to download or buy we find that the player/payer
experiences what psychologists would call “post-purchase evaluation”
or what I (as a marketer) prefer to call “buyer remorse.”4 This is a sense
of regret that comes after making a purchase, especially luxuries, that
stems from a number of influences including the guilt of extravagance
or suspicion of being overly influenced by the seller. In the case of
games, it can be thought of as a form of post-cognitive dissonance
238 Games as a Service

Figure 13.2 Buyer Behavior Curve.

brought about by the gap between the anticipation required to buy or

download the game in the first place, the reality of their initial experi-
ence of play and the awareness of other games they might have selected
instead.
The graph above is an adaptation of the Gartner Hype Curve,5 which is
normally used to look at the reactions to the adoption of new technology
from the initial trigger, through the peak of inflated expectations and
into the trough of disillusionment. From my observations, buyer behav-
ior for technology adoption as well as games follows this same path.6
A player’s initial expectations prior to accessing a game, whether pur-
chased or not, have to exceed their expectations of the difficulties and
opportunity costs associated with that action or users won’t download
or purchase. Players have imperfect knowledge about your game and
the value of your game to them, and they will automatically fill in those
gaps with something idealistic and personal that you can’t possibly
supply. This remorse can be a temporary state as long as we continue to
deliver value as a service and as long as they believe they can gain value
or utility. The greater the gap between their expectations of the game
and the reality of the experience, the more likely they will just churn.
 The Psychology of Pricing 239

Setting and Beating Expectations

If we want players to survive this buyer remorse, we need to get them
through this stage quickly. We should do our best to set their expecta-
tions as accurately as possible before they make their decision
and, where possible, deliver more than we promised. Think back to
Chapter 5 where we talked about six seconds to get them playing. This
was specifically to help us deal with manage the initial “remorse” follow-
ing the download of the game. This chapter also talked about giving
players a sense of achievement within one minute. This stage is about
taking the player further into the game, to provide deeper engagement,
and to encourage them to see the value in the game, reinforcing their
confidence. Similar principles apply with purchasing. We need to deliver
on the value we are promising again and again, if we want to encourage
repeat purchases, and we want to find ways to remind them why that
decision to buy was worthwhile. If our users feel we used underhanded
techniques to “sell” them goods they didn’t want, they will resent us and
churn anyway, probably complaining to most of their friends about our
game along the way.

Showing Friends What You Have Bought

Having social elements in games can really help create a positive atmo-
sphere around the purchase of goods. Players tend to feel more willing
to try making a purchase in the first place when they see others doing
so, but they will also have the opportunity for positive feedback in their
choices to buy. This creates a significant reduction in the risk that buyer
remorse will damage your player’s commitment to your game. However,
we should consider the principles outlined in Chapter 8 in order to get
the best effect from such social elements.

Building Utility
If you look again at the Buyer Behavior Curve you will see that after
“buyer remorse” comes maximizing “utility.” This is an economics term
to describe the invested value of an asset. For the purposes of this book
it isn’t about money, time invested, or even entertainment, it’s more
about the remaining value a player attributes to the asset. Maximizing
utility is about players wanting to get the most of playing the games they
have already invested in.
240 Games as a Service

The motivation to continue and work back up this curve is driven by

the player’s need to maximize whatever utility remains in the game and
the ability of the game to provide ongoing expectations of future value.

Buyer Remorse Business Models

It is usually easier for a premium game to sustain the interest of the
player after the initial purchase because the level of investment is tangi-
ble. A premium game has to be pretty terrible if I’m going to quit before
I’ve given it a good try.
Freemium games can’t assume that there is any utility to exploit and
therefore have to put much more emphasis on the ongoing experience
of the player. We need to try to build utility through positive experi-
ences before the player feels they have to start spending money. For
example, we should try to expose the player to some of our paid-for
virtual goods through the free play of the game. Imagine we offered lim-
ited access to consumable goods or new aspects of gameplay that would
otherwise be exclusive to paying players as a reward for successful
play, either directly or through some kind of in-game currency. Players
would see these as benefits, valued by the effort required to obtain them.
This way we not only align their expectations with the reality (thus
minimizing the buyer remorse), but we can use this to create that sense
of anticipation encouraging them to make a real money purchase and,
importantly, feel good about the value they receive. This approach is
about communication the value of our virtual goods, not exploitation.

Tease or Try?
I would also say that this model helps explain one of the conundrums
about the limited success of trials and level-based sales. For decades we
have seen games offering a “lite” or demo version, perhaps as a cover
disk on a magazine. The trouble is that as easily as they increase value,
the demo can just as easily diminish the potential sales. The reason is
that although a demo will communicate things about our game, they
also tend to satisfy our curiosity about that game. It allows us to play
for real without having to part with our hard earned cash, dropping us
straight into buyer remorse based on the gap between our expectations
and the reality, even if the cost/effort to access this was relatively small.
Our imperfect knowledge of the game is now cleared away and there
is little opportunity to build excitement. If the demo doesn’t lead the
player up and out of this trough to re-engage with us then the likelihood
 The Psychology of Pricing 241

is that the player will churn. However, because demos generally cap the
experience in some way, the player is left unable to gauge the potential
value of the full game as they never get to experience it. Demos suffer,
like freemium games, from the lack of invested utility, but (usually)
without ongoing scope to retain and tantalize the user for what’s coming
next. Trailers don’t have this effect because they simply contribute to the
anticipation of the game, the player never gets actually experience the
game.
Level-based games suffer from exactly the same problem and are usu-
ally a terrible way to monetize a game. Countless otherwise great games
have been broken from a commercial perspective because they ignored
the need to tantalize players about what was coming next; the same
lessons we learn through Chapter 9 with the Flash Gordon cliffhanger.

Engaging Players
I’m taking a long time to talk about this Buyer Behavior Curve for
another reason. It matches directly with the player lifecycle we have been
discussing throughout this book. The “discovery” life-stage is all about
building up anticipation to get users to the point where they download
our game. The “learning” stage is about retaining the delicate, tentative
engagement as the player learns about how the game fits into their play-
ing habits and builds their confidence until they are able to reach “true
engagement.” If we look at player lifecycles in this way it reminds us of
what’s happening for the player at each stage, and asks us to consider
every play and purchase as part of their journey as they immerse them-
selves within our game. That’s what it takes be build lifetime value.

Premium Problems
As we have talked about in Chapter 5, the different business models
affect buyer behavior differently. The premium (upfront payment)
purchase casts a shadow on the behavior of the user. First the upfront
price creates a pay-wall, which adds to the other barriers and blocks the
player has to overcome before they access the game. We have to create
sufficient anticipation in order to get them to decide to download the
game and part with their cash. The effect is that a significant number of
people will abort the download as a direct result of the upfront cost. It’s
hard to estimate how many people would have downloaded, but looking
at the number of downloads in the Paid and Free Chart gives us an idea
of the scale. In May 2012 Distimo7 showed that to get in the top 25 Free
242 Games as a Service

App Charts in the US store required 38,400 downloads per day, while to
get in the top 25 Paid App Charts took only 3,530 downloads per day.
Similarly, just for the games category this needed 25,300 downloads for
the free chart, but only 2,280 daily downloads for the paid. If we assume
this ratio is typical, and that the aggregate quality of the top paid and
free games is equivalent, then it’s a reasonable hypothesis that having
a pay-wall at all inhibits up to 90 percent of potential downloads daily.
That’s an exponential number of potential users we will never play
our game. We don’t have the chance to entertain them, to try to con-
vince them to play, to generate revenue from them. Of course there are
counterarguments.

Premium Positives
Setting a price above the minimum ($0.99 on mobile) is also a way to
communicate positive values about a game and, when combined with a
known, trusted brand, you may find that you can get a sizable audience
past the pay-wall. A price tells the player something about the product’s
quality, at least in the mind of the developer, and increasingly includes
a promise that we will limit the financial exposure of the player. For
those players understandably concerned about the never-ending costs of
“free” games it makes some sense, but it won’t sustain a service model in
the long run.
There are games where this is really the only choice as they won’t have
been designed to sustain a service approach. I don’t believe that there is
any game genre that can’t work as a service, but that doesn’t mean every
design will incorporate that thinking. If you design a one-off product,
premium may be appropriate but never go with the lowest possible
platform price. That way lays financial ruin.
In addition, a premium price ensures that the player has utility
invested in the game, which provides them with an internal incentive
to play through the game past their buyer remorse. It’s much easier to
keep them playing and, ironically, it makes them more willing to spend
money with you again.

Paying Every Way

No wonder the idea of a “paymium” game with both upfront price and
also in-app revenue models has a lot of appeal for developers. The trou-
ble is that by charging upfront and inside the game we are breaking the
promise implicit in the premium price, that this is all the player will be
 The Psychology of Pricing 243

required to spend. There are some great examples like Rodeo’s War-
hammer Quest where the quality of the app both satisfies my desire to
play and creates anticipation for future levels, but their failure to deliver
regular map updates has meant that I have fallen out of that habit of
playing that game, leaving my desire to spend unsated8.
From a buyer behavior perspective, paymium is the worst possible of
models. It creates both a pay-wall before purchase as well as a sense of
distrust among players who feel there is no end to the demands of the
game on their wallet. However, commercially, especially if you have a
strong gaming brand, it can deliver a reliable upfront as well as ongo-
ing income stream. This in turn can make it easier for the developer to
focus on improving the playing experience. My sense is that in the end
paymium is a fudge, a way for designers who are too timid to adapt to
the freemium model to find a compromise at least in the short term. My
suspicion is that this approach can work, but it will damage the potential
size of the audience, caps the spend of players, and damages the lifetime
value of the players. Of course you can drop the upfront price later, but
you will still have lost huge number of potential players and there will
only be a few games where this is worth the risk.

Finally Free
This leaves us with the freemium model, games that monetize through
some combination of in-game goods and advertising. There is no pay-wall
to cross, but of course there remains the opportunity cost presented by
the huge range of alternative games available. Getting players to download
your game is no trivial matter as we have already discussed. But once we
have the download we have to face a real problem. Players still have the
equivalent of buyer remorse but have no invested utility in our game to
help them get through that and up to the engagement stage. We have dis-
cussed in detail strategies to overcome this problem throughout the book,
but particularly in Chapter 5 and Chapter 9. These focus on leveraging
what we are best at to sustain the audience’s attention, by making a better
game. It is my assertion that this process is so necessary for the survival of
a freemium game that it will drive game design forward in a Darwinian
way; survival of the fittest game design. Freemium designers in the end
have to make better games. But if we can do this, and build confidence
and trust along the way, it will be easier for some of those players to be
open to spending money with us. Not just once, but if those purchases are
themselves satisfying, perhaps they will purchase time and time again.
244 Games as a Service

One important difference between premium games and the freemium

model is that we are the retailer inside the game, we are not reliant on
the app store to do our retailing for us. There is no competition for
where we get energy crystals inside our game, only us. Equally, we can’t
blame someone else if we have picked the wrong price, wrong bundle,
etc., and no one buys our goods.

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Assuming we manage to get our players past their initial buyer (or
download) remorse and up into the stage where they are truly engaged
we will find it increasingly easier to repeat the process, time and again.
But, there are limits to this. Regular spenders often will have a personal
threshold8 or budget that they are prepared to spend (or at least a price
point below which they won’t think about how much they have spent).
They may temporarily go past this limit, but each time they do the risk
is that the subsequent buyer remorse will cause them to reconsider their
engagement with the game at all. Bill shock—in other words the dis-
covery that you have spent considerably more than you expected on a
service at the end of the month—is a genuine cause for concern and will
not only lose you a customer, but they will also tell their friends.
However, even if we keep our player satisfied, enjoying our game, that
is not enough for them to continue spending money.9 There needs to
be a motivation and incentive to help them decide to take the action to
make the next purchase. We need to consider every stage, every play,
every purchase to be a new start on the lifecycle; with discovery, learn-
ing, engaging and churning stages for each element. This is tremen-
dously challenging to perfect, but in the end it is a game design exercise
as much as it is a marketing one.

Don’t Nag, Give Reasons to Act

We should of course be careful to ensure that our legitimate attempts
to maximize revenue don’t become counterproductive. We can’t afford
to be seen as nagging and if we are this will detrimentally impact the
longevity of our players, causing them to churn.
On the other hand it’s worth considering the impact of a decision by
J.C. Penney10 in the US to remove misleading sales, such as 20 percent
off for a shirt that had never been sold in that store at a different price.
They also removed misleading pricing, such as $4.99, which of course is
essentially $5, but feels like it’s closer to $4. This failed spectacularly and
 The Psychology of Pricing 245

they lost customers and lots of money. Was this because treating your
user-base as intelligent is a bad thing? No, even though these policies
were actually better for the consumer, they didn’t feel better for the
consumer. Seeing a cheaper price for the same item is not the same as
being told that the price is cheaper, buying a $60 pair of jeans for $20
feels awesome, even when we know we are being kidded. There is no
excitement in finding a “bargain” when you are just told the straight-
forward price. The way the experience feels really matters. For example,
when I am presented with a special offer of 25 percent off a new car in
CSR Racing, that feels awesome, even if its impact in the gameplay isn’t
all that significant.

Spending Your Subway Fare

Of course how a purchase feels changes according to the circumstances
and we should consider the different mindset of the player prior to
playing a new level as compared to when they are just about to die
because they are running out of health. The psychological principles can
be explored by looking at the ideas of Hot Cold Empathy11 where we
see people’s decision-making process being affected by their emotional
state. The more visceral a physical or emotional affect (hunger, desire,
fear) the greater effect this has on our short-term decision-making
process. Games are masterful at building engaged emotional experi-
ences. Imagine that you were playing Space Invaders in Tokyo in 1978,
you fail to beat your high score for the nth time and you are so mad
you want to smash the machine in a rage. If instead of going home and
trying another day, you are presented with an option to “continue” by
putting in another 100 yen coin12 then you will almost certainly do so.
When we are hot with emotions like this we feel compelled to rummage
through our pockets and spend our subway fare home. This principle
means that we are open to manipulation by cynical companies—it’s a
disturbing thing to realize. On the other hand, the lack of emotional
engagement can also be problematic. Although this means we can make
more rational decisions, we are also likely to underestimate the value of
opportunities when we approach a subject matter coldly.

A Warning
You might think that me talking about Hot Cold Empathy means
I think we should exploit the phenomena; in fact I believe it’s a warning.
If players succumb to a decision to buy only because we “trick” them
246 Games as a Service

into it while they are in the throes of some visceral emotion, we will
exacerbate the buyer remorse they feel later. Any short-term gain will be
irrelevant compared to the ongoing revenue formed from a habitual and
rewarding engagement with our players. Service-led experiences need to
provide a balance between emotional engagement and delight; we have
to care about our users making their second, third, fourth, etc., pur-
chase and still loving our game. That isn’t to say we ignore the value of
emotions to help trigger a call to action. If we don’t deliver goods at the
point where players engage emotionally we not only lose a sale, but we
fail to satisfy what they expect from game—I’m just saying we mustn’t
do it cynically.

Can I Afford To Lose?

Another emotion-led factor involved with purchase is the idea of loss
aversion.13 This is an economics principle that explains that people will
feel a much greater impact from the loss of $100 than the impact they
feel from a windfall of $100. Similarly we tend to place a higher value
on something we don’t own than something of the same financial price
that we do. It has a particular effect when there is some element of social
competition at play, making this particularly relevant to game design.
There are a number of ways we can use this. The first is called the
“puppy-dog sale,” where we imagine that we are a pet shop salesman.
A family comes in and the child and one parent are interested in having
a puppy, but the other parent isn’t fully convinced. So you offer to allow
them to take the puppy home, to see how things go for a week; they can
always return the animal after that week. Once the dog is settled into the
home, it’s going to be pretty hard for the reluctant parent to convince
the rest of the family to return the animal after that first week because
they will have to take this away from them. I like this analogy as it also
allows us to talk about the biggest problem with relying on fear of loss.
What if the new puppy is a nightmare? They might bite cables, eat slip-
pers or leave “presents” on the carpet. It doesn’t take much to go wrong
to outweigh any level of loss aversion when the buyer remorse is this
palpable and the dog may end up back at the shop before the week is up.
Examining loss aversion lead us to consider the idea of what it is we
might be losing. If we use the virtual goods in our game to build utility
into the player’s gaming experience then we are deepening the engage-
ment over the longer term, rather than diminishing the lifetime value of
the player.
 The Psychology of Pricing 247

If You Can’t Stand the Heat . . .

Let’s not forget the influence competition has on loss aversion. If others
can see and then admire or disapprove of the goods we can buy/don’t
have in a game this will multiply the impact of any loss aversion. This
means that if what we offer is obviously “cool,” there might be consid-
erable pressure to spend money on that asset. Of course the opposite is
also true, once it has gone out of fashion, the fact that we own the item
can suddenly become quite negative in terms of popular perception.
Different people have different reactions to social pressure. Some lead,
some follow, and others carve their own path; what is consistent is that
they need to be seen to act in that way. Part of how we define ourselves is
in comparison with others, even in games. We should not underestimate
the benefits from finding a way to ensure that players can see others pur-
chased goods, partly as discovery and partly in terms of social capital.

The Price is Right . . .

There is one core economic principle at the heart of the success of the
freemium model and this is the reason why in the end services will
continue to be so dominant in for games. Price elasticity of demand is a

Figure 13.3 Exponential Demand Curve.

248 Games as a Service

way to show how demand responds to changes in price, assuming that

supply remains constant. There are many factors to take into account,
but we typically expect the changes in price to have a relatively constant,
say that most games will conform to the classic Exponential Demand
Curve, which means that the rate of change in demand itself changes
in proportion to the reduction in price. At the highest price, we see
the smallest number of purchasers and similarly at the lowest price
we see the largest proportion of users taking up the game. In this case
each time we reduce the price, the proportion of new players we can
acquire will increase by a larger proportion. The biggest difference will
be between free and any minimum price. When we are selling goods
upfront, our objective is usually to find the optimum price in order to
obtain the largest number of users. However, by removing the initial
price we move the spending decision into the game, where there are no
other competitive suppliers. The same mathematics shows the effect on
price of an increase in supply for the same level of demand causes the
price to drop in the same way. Given that we already have an almost
infinite supply of good games content on the Apple and Android app
stores there is no doubt in my mind that this would have naturally
driven the price down to free anyway.

Affecting Demand
There are factors that affect the nature of these curves, including brand
loyalty or marketing hype, which can affect the elasticity, perhaps even
making it possible that reduction in price to free might have little
benefit to the overall audience. It is also true that moving to free only
unlocks access to an audience who will now be available to target with
goods from inside the game, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those
users will spend. There are some reasons why we might adopt a pricing
strategy that doesn’t target the “optimum” balance for price elasticity of
demand. We might, usually for competitive reasons, reduce the price
to gain market share or increase the price to position our content at a
premium. As we have already mentioned there is value for a premium
approach where you select a significantly higher price than the “default”
in order to communicate the game’s quality and brand. However, unless
you have an exceptional brand that has no repeatable value, then you
will almost inevitably be better off with a well implemented F2P model.
Freemium, at least according to the consultants,14 is a model that
allows players to pay at the level that most suits them. That should mean
 The Psychology of Pricing 249

that we get every possible combination of price and users. The trouble is
that’s not quite true. As we have already noted, the second and subse-
quent purchases are affected by the context of the previous experiences
and the changing nature of risk.

Pricing and Risk

Different types of goods have different risk profiles and this affects
the how much involvement15 a user will take in their decision-making
process. Complex goods tend to require a greater level of investigation,
even when the cost isn’t all that significant. A simple consumable good,
such as an energy crystal that gives me a temporary boost to perfor-
mance, is a low risk in the short term. It’s usually cheap, cheerful, and
has no long-term complications as it disappears after use. This isn’t a
complex decision, but the context of an almost infinite supply of games,
players need to be fully immersed16 in your game for this to be a simple
decision.
The complexity level increases when we are looking to make our
tenth or 100th purchase; longer term questions affect our decision.
While consumable items have an immediate value, they don’t (gener-
ally) generate any added utility in the game. In fact the paradox is that
because they get used and then are gone, in the long term they represent
a significant risk to the player. On the other hand, a durable good, for
example a well of energy crystals that gives you ten crystals every day
(as long as you return) has a sustained benefit in the game, something
that I enjoy most only if I come back every day. This type of good gen-
erates ongoing value and additional utility for the game. It’s usually at a
more significant price than a single crystal and represents a longer-term
commitment than perhaps recently converted users might be willing to
make, which conversely means it represents a greater short-term risk.

Rent and Buy

The effect of time-based risk and pricing is something that became
highly important to the success we had at 3UK with the games service.
We initially launched with rental games at 50p for three days. Seemed
like a great idea at the time, but with the added complexity of a billing
API we found it hard to get enough games ready prior to launch. It was
a disaster. We failed to get any significant number of sales and had to
react sharply, offering full-price games to buy outright at £5 each. The
really interesting part came when we analyzed the results of our sales.
250 Games as a Service

We saw that the majority of sales were from “buy” games, but we found
that there was a significant anomaly. Games with rent and buy versions
sold more than three times the others, and rent reflected only 20 percent
of the total revenue.
Part of the reason for this success was that presenting two prices with
different levels of value proposition makes it easier for buyers to choose
the more expensive option, but it also allowed them to choose the lon-
ger term, more stable, more expensive option.

Opening the Gateway

Hopefully with all this you can see the importance of the psychol-
ogy of buying behavior. In practice we can’t identify the influence of
what drives a player to buy, but these key aspects can help inform our
thinking and increase the chances that we have to convert more players
to payers at the same time as building lifetime value; increasing the
perceived utility in the game.
The best examples of how we can apply these techniques come during
the transitional moments of the player’s engagement with our game.
These are also the points that require the most attention in terms of
game and monetization design, particularly the first purchase.
As we have said before, after the initial download we find the import-
ant lesson of the learning stages is to help deepen our engagement with
our players. We want them to stay with us, to become engaged. We
need to ensure that we demonstrate that spending money is going to be
worthwhile, even an aspirational goal. But it’s not something we expect
from the player. Indeed we understand that doing so when their level of
interest in the game is at its lowest point is going to backfire on us. It is
later, once we have shown them the value of their investments in terms
of time and effort and shown them the value of truly engaging that we
can start to consider how we convert them to actually buying some-
thing for real money. When we do it needs to be what I call a “gateway
good,”17 an in-game item that is designed to be so obviously of value that
it shows new players that spending money isn’t a big deal.
It needs to be a simple, obvious benefit for the players and at the same
time create a level of delight that will charm the player as a reward for
investing in the game. This idea of charming and generous delight is
important when designing all of our goods as it’s just as important to
build retention after the purchase as it is to gain the money for each
individual item. More than that, however, a gateway good needs to be a
 The Psychology of Pricing 251

promise, not only of the value of the item itself, but something that sets
the expectations for all future purchases in the game. We will look into
this more in Chapter 14.

Setting Price
It will probably be quite clear that nowhere in this chapter do I give
any specific advice on setting price. I appreciate that might be frus-
trating, but it’s deliberate as (of course) I want to limit how quickly
this book goes out of date. The other reason is that every game is
different. We usually have a minimum price we can sell any items
for, based on the platform; for iOS this is $0.99. This is useful for
low-pain threshold items, but as we have already stated elsewhere
charging higher than the minimum payment allows you to com-
municate something about the value of the game or in-game virtual
good. More interesting is the dynamic of changing price. The price
elasticity concept should apply to goods inside your game as much as
it does to whether players buy upfront or not. However, there is no
competition for virtual good suppliers for your game, and the deci-
sion to purchase is specific to their playing experience. As a result,
although there will always be an associated opportunity cost for
other purchases, it seems that in-game goods are essentially inelas-
tic.18 This means that reducing the price won’t dramatically affect an
increase in sales; that’s not a license to charge a ridiculous amount
for those items of course. The only way you can really know what the
right price is for the goods you sell is to test it. Use common sense
and competitive comparison to avoid obvious mistakes and always
start with slightly higher prices that you can easily reduce later. You
will get a lot more negative feedback if you put prices up. Then again
even this can be mitigated if you introduce new items as “introduc-
tory price” as this warns players upfront that the price might change
later and at the same time makes purchasers feel special as they were
clearly smart early adopters.

Beware Shadows
Whenever we introduce revenue items into the game we have to
remember the shadow they place on the experience and in particular
how they impact the flow from the game. Interruptions for advertising
interstitials can be as damaging to the overall experience as a poorly
designed payment process.
252 Games as a Service

Making the decision to make the first payment is a huge psychological

barrier for anyone; regardless of the price. If there is anything that gets
in the way of them fulfilling that process they will blame you and your
game—even if it’s an unrelated, unavoidable problem. Make sure you
test this process repeatedly, even after launch as you will have to rely
on third-party services at some point in the flow. One of the reasons
Apple’s AppStore has been so successful is that the vast majority of its
users have already entered their credit card details into the service. That
means those users don’t have to do anything new to pay for their items
in your game. They will have already experienced the familiar flow and
will feel it is safe to do that. However, this isn’t always the case with
other platforms like Android and especially when you are using other
third-party payment systems like Boku or WorldPay. Using external
systems is a very good idea, but your responsibility as a developer is to
make sure that the set-up process to spend money with you is done as
simply and easily as possible. Trust is the most valuable currency; with-
out it no one will spend real money.

Making Your Mind Up

The more I research the psychological triggers to making a purchase the
more it seems to come back to the question of trust. There is a natural
aversion to being “sold to” and yet we find ourselves buying goods all
the time and sharing our best purchases with our friends. There is a
“hunter-gatherer” aspect to the act of shopping, which itself is a source
of gratification.
The question of how we support players through the inevitable buyer
remorse that comes from the act of downloading or buying items in our
game is I believe key to success, but more simply it defines the difference
between a product and a service. Do our players “buy” our experience
or do they “belong” to that experience? How we respond to the question
changes the way we create content—hopefully for the better.
There are some basic ethical principles that all business should all
adhere to:

• Disclose any risks associated with your product or service.

• Identify the added features that will increase the cost.
• Avoid false or misleading communications.
• Don’t use high-pressure sales tactics.
• Don’t mask selling as another activity (e.g., market research).
 The Psychology of Pricing 253

There is good evidence19 that shows that being upfront with users
about what is free and what costs money can actually build trust and
confidence in the game. That kind of clarity means that there are no bad
surprises; no shocks to the bank account. Services have to build trust,
it’s the most valuable currency.
Freemium games at their best inspire players to become more deeply
engaged; at their worst make them feel used and exploited—and inevita-
bly churning.

Notes
1 Using the term “psychology” as a chapter heading calls for a little more due diligence
and scientific research than other chapters and my fast and loose “marketing mindset”
couldn’t do this justice without some external advice. So I want to thank Berni Good
of http://cyberpsychologist.co.uk for her kind feedback and support in this chapter. Of
course any mistakes are my own and, to be clear, I’m not a trained psychologist. The
other flaw is that I’m mixing psychological principles and economic principles and, to be
further clear, I’m not a trained economist. However, the good news is that I am a trained
marketer, and we are used to blurring such boundaries.
2 In the classic 1980s film The Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi was the caretaker at the school
who just happened to be an amazing karate instructor. I’m not referring to the more
recent update, which is a fine movie but not the one I loved when I was also being taught
karate by my own father.
3 The term AIDA is attributed to E. St Elmo Lewis, an American advertising and sales pio-
neer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing)#Purchase_Funnel.
4 Buyer remorse is also thought to be linked to the “paradox of choice,” a theory by Amer-
ican psychologist Barry Schwartz in which, as the range of choices increases, the level of
distress associated with making a decision also increases. More than that, as the range
increases, customers start to expect that one choice will be “perfect” with no drawbacks,
and this leads to circumstances where it’s almost impossible to be satisfied with any
purchase, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyer’s_remorse.
5 The Gartner Hype Curve is a tool used by technology companies to understand the
potential consumer response to new technology triggers from the initial excessive expec-
tations and how they build up based on the limited information available prior to the
release of the concept. This is followed by a dramatic negative realization of the realistic
limitations of that technology, at least in the initial practical delivery. However, this disap-
pointment can be recovered as the approach becomes normal and gradually we return to
a positive acknowledgement of the technology’s contribution.
6 The buyer remorse curve is based on observation of the sale of games content. However,
this is an assumption, a hypothesis, yet to be rigorously tested. However, don’t take
my word on buyer behaviors. There are some great books on the subject including
Michael R. Solomon’s Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, Being, www.amazon.com/
Consumer-Behavior-Edition-Michael-Solomon/dp/0132671840.
7 Distimo’s article on the number of downloads to be able to get in the top 25 chart can be
found at www.distimo.com/blog/2012_05_quora-answering-series-download-volume-
needed-to-hit-top-25-per-category.
8 In October 2013 Rodeo released a new Region and playable characters which I imme-
diately purchased and playing this has delayed proof-reading this book. I’ve not found
254 Games as a Service

any academic sources to support this principle, but I have found in several different
businesses that players allocate for themselves a “personal threshold” in their spending.
This might be a number of games or goods per month or a subconscious budget. This
might appear to be suspended when we offer a retail sale offering cut-price deals across
the whole platform, but I often find that the player take their spending into account by
lowering their purchase behavior in subsequent months. At 3UK in particular, we dis-
covered that classic retail sales were actually counterproductive; players would spend-
ing three times their threshold in the month of the sale but those who didn’t churn
through “bill-shock” would subsequently reduce their ongoing spend down to a third of
normal over the next two months. In the end we would have slightly less revenue. This
might be anecdotal, but I believe it’s something that warrants further study.
9 Bong-Won Park and Kun Chang Lee, in an article in Computers in Human Behavior
uncovered that game satisfaction with the gameplay was not enough to ensure the gamer
has perception of “value” when confronted with the decision to purchase. See “Explor-
ing the Value of Purchasing Online Game Items,” Computers in Human Behavior 27(6):
2178–2185 (2011).
10 J.C. Penney’s change of strategy may not have been a bad idea, but it was at least poorly
implemented and the consequences for the business was dramatic. The following article
talks outlines the issues and questions the execution problems, www.forbes.com/sites/
stevedenning/2013/04/09/j-c-penney-was-ron-johnsons-strategy-wrong. Addition-
ally, there is a great video on Penny Arcade that compares the J.C. Penney situation
with the use of in-game loot drops in Firefall, www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/
the-jc-pennys-effect.
11 American psychologist George Loewenstein looked at how human behavior was affected
by intense, visceral emotions, causing us to act against our best interest when agitated
and to potentially underestimate effects when we are not, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Empathy_gap.
12 In 1978 the classic Space Invaders game was cited as the reason why the Japanese Treasury
had to dramatically increase the production of 100 yen coins, used not just for playing
games but also widely in order to use the Tokyo subway system, http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Space_Invaders.
13 Interestingly there have been some studies that question whether the idea of loss aver-
sion even exists; however, I believe that it is useful at least as a lens when thinking about
virtual goods design, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion.
14 Again I have to admit to doing this myself. It’s a useful shorthand, but the reality as
I explain is more complex.
15 It is useful to learn about the buyer decision-making process and the differences between
high and low involvement purchases and the following link has a good short summary,
www.tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_decision_process.asp.
16 Building immersion is one of the key strengths of games, although there is some debate
over what exactly immersion is from a psychological perspective. J. Kirakowski and N.
Curran did some interesting research looking at RPG games and immersion which pro-
vides a useful framework to think about this, see their chapter “Immersion in Computer
Games,” in Computational Informatics, Social Factors and New Information Technologies.
17 The “gateway” term comes from theories about drug-taking and hypothesises that the
use of less deleterious drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis lead to a movement
onto stronger substances. There are many criticism of this idea in particular that it com-
mits the logical fallacy of “post hoc ergo propter hoc,” however it does provide a shorthand
that makes it easy to explain some of the attributes we want for our first purchase.
I should also stress that this isn’t intended to equate virtual goods with selling drugs.
 The Psychology of Pricing 255

18 On September 5, 2013, at COL 3.0 in Bogata, Colombia, Jamie Gotch of Subatomic

Studios talked about how their data confirmed in-game virtual goods were essentially
inelastic within their tower defense game Fieldrunners.
19 In press.
256 Games as a Service

Exercise 13: Writing Use Cases

Now the exercises get a little more serious. So far we have just been
exploring our ideas and, hopefully, you have been testing them with
paper-prototypes or perhaps even exploratory coding during voluntary
downtime.
Before we start investing real valuable time and coding in earnest we
need to make sure we really understand the details of what it is we are
going to make. We need to have confidence that we have communicated
each element for the development, art and audio teams so that there is
no ambiguity over our objectives. We will then ask them to respond to
us with their proposed solution to our use cases for us as product own-
ers to sign-off. This way of working vastly reduces the risk of building
something different than we intended, although until we go live that is
still no guarantee that the result will work as we envisaged.
Start by looking at the core mechanic of your game and break that
down into specific separate elements. For each of these elements we will
consider who the “actor” is (i.e., the person initiating the use of that
element) and the circumstances of that action. You also have to consider
what the function is expected to do and the relationship of that use case
with other functions. If you are familiar with UML (Unified Modeling
Language)1 that can make it easier to communicate in a more formal
way; however, it’s not always necessary.
You will want to repeat this process for each of the features of your core
game mechanic as well as each feature in the context loop and metagames.

Priority Feature Actor Use case Function Related

1

5
 Writing Use Cases 257

Finally you need to determine the priority of these use cases in abso-
lute order. This means marking the most important feature as number
one and then working down from that priority with only one feature
occupying each priority number.
N.B. if you want to do this online, the system will allow you to list lots
of different use cases and then prioritize them as needed.

WORKED EXAMPLE:

Priority Feature Actor Use case Function Related

1 1.0 District map Player . . . sees a map of a Map used to select
section of the city levels and show
district with locations playing progress.
where I can play.
5 1.1 Mission Player . . . sees a UI popup with Popup is used by 1.0 District
pop-ups a hint about the game player to prioritize map
type at that location missions to play.
and the duration that
the mission remains
available.
2 2.0 Location Player . . . sees a 2D flat Map is used as
map plane layout with a 3D playing area for the
perspective. Map contains game.
a range of 20–40 objects
as well as obstacles.
3 3.0 Anthony Player . . . uses Anthony as an Player draws a path 2.0
avatar by drawing a path on the location map Location
form the spawn position which Anthony will map
to one of the objects. follow at a set pace.
4 4.0 Mobile Player . . . sees a mobile enemy The game includes 3.0
enemy who moves across the map a series of mobile Anthony
of the location. Collision enemies which act
causes Anthony to have as mobile obstacles
to restart that specific to play. The more
move. sophisticated the
pattern the more
difficult the mobile.

Note
1 Personally I’m not as familiar with UML as I would like to be. It is a useful standard and
helps with the communication with developers and data analysts. To find out more
about UML check out www.uml.org.
Chapter 14
Tools of the Trade
260 Games as a Service

Making Money
You should now have your head around some of the key theories and
principles about how players buy content and how as designers we need
to think in order to engage users and keep them paying. In this penul-
timate chapter we are going to take a look the practical reality of what
we will actually do to make money. To do this we will take a look at
the various potential sources of revenue and how we can present those
elements to give us the best chance to build the widest possible paying
audience as well as maintaining high lifetime values.

Brought To You by Our Sponsors

Let’s start with advertising. This is often one of the first revenue mech-
anisms considered by developers when they think about a “free” game.
It’s a formula that has been used to deliver content “free at the point of
consumption” and has historically been synonymous with radio and
television1 programming. It’s also something that has been widely used
to generate revenue for web and mobile developers; but with games this
has sometime caused problems in terms of the reaction of the user, usu-
ally when the adverts unduly interrupt the player experience. Despite
that, the advantage of being able to gain some revenue without having
players themselves make the purchase decision is significant. This is an
approach that really rewards scale and where players contribute simply
by coming back and playing.

Paid, Cross-Promotion and Incentivized

There already exists a healthy ecosystem for advertising in apps,
particularly games with several companies specializing with different
approaches and tools. Indeed, I would argue that games are one of the
most effective markets for advertising. Where else can you advertise
within your competitors’ product (where your target audience will be)
without negatively impacting their performance? The most obvious
approach in advertising is the classic “paid” adverts, which are pretty
straightforward, with costs charged off a rate card or auctioned off using
a calculation based on either useful views (effective CPM2) or response
(CPA3). As well as classical paid ads there are cross-promotion net-
works such as Chartboost, Appflood and Applifier’s Facebook service,
which introduced the concept. These often combine the traditional paid
approaches, often using some form of bidding system, allowing the
 Tools of the Trade 261

developer to buy installs at a better price, but perhaps from less effective
games (from a conversion perspective). What makes a cross-promotion
network different from paid ads is the opportunity to offer an “install
swap” mechanism, creating an exchangeable currency from each install
your game delivers for other games in the network. Importantly, this
means you can bank the value of your installs helping the discovery pro-
cess for your later releases, even your new products.
Then there are incentivized download services, such as TapJoy. While
these have been barred from iOS apps, there can be good value gained
on other platforms by using some form of incentive to encourage the
player to act, often using in-game currency. This becomes particularly
clear if both games share the same virtual currency. However, adding
any incentive will change the dynamics with the potential for unin-
tended consequences; for example, if you pay only on install this can
create a wave of players only interested in getting the virtual cash and
never playing the game.

Getting On With It
Choosing the right partners requires you consider a wide combination
of factors. First there is the relationship with that partner, not always
an overriding factor but if there is a level of trust then this can help
with problems as they arise. Next we have to consider the simplicity of
the integration process. There is always an API involved and you never
know when this will conflict with another API you are already using;
testing and implementing always have a cost implication. You need
to know what revenue you can expect from each impression or install
and what their fill-rate will be; in other words how effectively they use
your inventory (that’s the number of places in the games where you can
place an ad). There are mediation services out there that can help you
access multiple ad networks with just one integration, but you do need
to be careful how much they impact your end revenue for the game. It’s
especially important to understand how the ad revenue for your game is
calculated by those networks. It’s often done on a different basis than the
way it is sold—for example, you might buy on a cost per install and sell
on eCPM—this approach gives the ad platform some wiggle-room for
their profit.
Implementing the API is usually the easy part, apart from the regres-
sion testing. The complication comes in how you decide where in the
game you are going to place the adverts and whether these will be links,
262 Games as a Service

banners, interstitials, still images, animations, or even full videos. The

placement and timing of adverts is crucial. Despite the temptation, try
to avoid putting adverts in the way of the flow of play for the freeload-
ing players. Advertising might seem to be the only revenue we get from
them but without them we don’t get the ‘Network’ value that encourages
other players to discover and spend money. We can’t afford to lose them
so we can’t just shove an advert in their way at every possible point.
This wears away at their willingness to continue to return to the game.
We want non-paying users to think that our game is valuable enough
to justify the advertising and that without it they wouldn’t have the free
experience they enjoy.

Keeping the Flow

When placing the ads, look for points in the game that naturally work
alongside the state of the player—such as loading screens or just before
returning to the menu screen—and make the ads easily skipped.
Measurement of the player response here is really important. Test and
confirm that your placement of an ad supports the longevity of a player
as well as working out whether it helps gain an increase of revenue.
Also consider the use of “opt-in” advertising, such as GameAds from
Applifer 4, where the player accepts the “burden” of watching an advert in
order to obtain some in-game currency. This makes the “free” currency
more valued as the player understand that it helped generate some
income for the game and at the same time it required some effort on
their part to obtain, even if that was just to watch a fun clip of another
game. At worst this will help extend that player’s engagement with the
game and may just show them the value of spending money directly
helping convert them to become paying users.

Is Advertising Up To Standard?
Advertising has its place but, at least at the time of writing, the vast
majority of advertisers were either other games or they related to gam-
bling services. This means that there is a lot of recycled cash passing
through the system, i.e., where I spend the advertising revenue I earned
in my game on advertising that game in other games. I suspect this will
change rapidly as mainstream consumer brands start to see the poten-
tial audience size within games, which already has overtaken anything
offered within the TV industry. Brands like Red Bull and Audi have
a reputation for being willing to experiment, but for other brands to
 Tools of the Trade 263

embrace the opportunity within games we have to demonstrate reach,

frequency, and repeatability. Reach4 means the size of addressable audi-
ence among the target demographic the brand is interested in. Impor-
tantly this is about the potential audience size offered by the medium,
not the actual numbers of people who will be exposed to the commer-
cial messages in reality. Frequency refers to the number of occasions the
user will be exposed to that advert. This is a key factor that influences
the effectiveness of the advert, alongside the message, format, and
creative quality. Repeatability, on the other hand, refers to the advertis-
er’s needs to be able to take the same promotional material and use that
unchanged across lots of different providers; it’s about packaging the
advertising material so that it can be leveraged across as wide a range of
channels as possible. Outdoor billboard posters all conform to a set of
standard sizes ranging from the Adshel (1800×1200cm) to the 96 Sheets
(12000×3000cm).5 It’s this last part that we have yet to really work out,
from the perspective of the bigger brands. They expect to some predict-
ability of where their advert will appear, how frequently, and to know
that the experience will be suitable for their art style. If we are going to
reach out to brands on a more consistent basis, we have to find easier
ways to ensure they can create consistently repeatable experiences
across multiple applications.

What Measure Success

It’s hard to find good data, to judge success in advertising for games;
anecdotally the cost of acquisition can be up to $6, but the best reli-
able source I can find is Fiksu’s cost per loyal user6 which in July 2013
reached $1.80. This is a milestone in that mobile acquisition costs now
have reached the same heights as Facebook games did prior to the
downturn in social games.
From personal experience, largely taken from data based on social
games from Papaya Mobile, is that I would expect 24 percent of total
revenue to come from the contribution from advertising. However,
this seems to vary widely. Some developers, notably Rovio and Kiloo,
once their audience reaches a daily critical mass advertising of multiple
million daily active users, can achieve the necessary reach to generate
very significant revenues. Without this critical mass, ad revenues can be
disappointing. Rovio went further than this by creating their own media
channel with their own weekly Angry Birds animated series embedded
into the games. They are now working with Disney and, if successful, they
are likely to change the way many people consume this kind of content.
264 Games as a Service

Virtual Goods
The sale of in-game items is critical to the success of a game as a service;
to be able to make this work we have to be able to separate which part of
the game is central to the experience and which generates a sustainable
audience from aspects of the game that are added-value propositions
that can be sold to that audience. The term “added-value” is essential.
We are not trying to remove the reasons to keep playing, but we do need
to create value that encourages players to get ever more deeply engaged.
We also want to find ways to be make our game scalable in term of
efficient production. That means we need to find things that are easy to
duplicate or encourage repeated use of the rest of the game, rather than
having to incur large costs to sustain the experience.
For example, if we take the time to hand-make something beautiful
in the game, we want to make sure that it is going to be used by as many
people as possible. Similarly, we want to sell things as efficiently as pos-
sible, the posting of a new database entry that counts how many health
potions you have is incredibly cost-effective and has a clear value-add to
the player.

But What Do We Sell?

In order to work out the right products to monetize we need to go back
to what we talked about in Chapter 3 and start with the mechanic. In
that chapter we talked about the importance of challenge, which is
essential to the fun of any game, and the conditions that can improve
the flow of the play. The challenge might come in the form of how much
damage you have do, how fast or accurately you have to drive, or even
the ability to think enough steps ahead to place an item correctly. Using
this knowledge we need to isolate items where we can adjust those ele-
ments, ideally through the soft variables that change the strategy rather
that the “win/lose” conditions as we discussed when we talked about
uncertainty in Chapter 7.
To put this in more practical terms, let’s take the example of a
first-person shooter where we might consider of alternative weap-
ons or upgrades that deliver the same damage (leaving the difficulty
unchanged) but with different combinations of accuracy, power, or
frequency of shot; playing into the preferences of the user. In a driv-
ing game we might adjust the components of the vehicle from tires
to suspension, even the exhaust, and adjust the car’s performance
 Tools of the Trade 265

within a range of ability. This kind of thinking applies to any game

and helps you identify any number of different potential virtual
goods. Anything might make a suitable candidate for goods to sell—
from in-game currency, energy crystals, ammo, different weapon
choices, different vehicles, power-ups that clear matched lines of
gems, new levels, etc. We then have to think about how selling those
items will affect the overall experience and what value they will add
to the player from their perspective. To do this requires us to apply
the concepts of the buyer behavior we talked about in Chapter 13 to
these goods. Will creating alternative weapons (and their associated
strategy) add to the joy of playing the game or simply create a mech-
anism to guarantee winning by spending? Will adding a new level be
an efficient way to increase revenue or might it be more effective to
increase retention? If we use a fuel mechanic, will the “friction” we
add to the game to make this work increase players’ engagement due
to the impact of notifications to return back to the game later? At the
same time we have to ask ourselves that most important question,
“so what?” Why should the player care about this new virtual good,
in what way does it solve a need for them, and how does it make the
game better?

Sometimes We Have To Say No

Not every game has mechanics that easily support monetization without
causing too some kind of a negative reaction among the players. How-
ever, it is always a useful exercise to think about the role of each variable
in the game and how we might be able to convert them to a revenue
model, even if it’s uncomfortable. The deliberate choice to not use a
potential monetization method, to preserve the integrity of the playing
experience, is as important as the need to avoid missing new ways we
might trigger a purchase, generating added value to the player.

Monetizing Context
Once we have assessed the mechanics, we need to look at the con-
text of the game and, once again, isolate potential elements that can
sustain the experience longer. This will consider elements that help
define out progression within the game, whether that’s about the
journey a player goes through or the narrative of the story. Often this
means looking at those items that multiply the rewards we obtain for
our efforts, so that we can buy a bigger, better-looking car or farm.
266 Games as a Service

Sometimes this will include the ability to purchase unique vanity or

narrative elements, provided they contribute to the telling of our own
story or provide a means of comparison with others, e.g., I completed
the “Kobayashi Maru.”7 Once again we have to consider the conse-
quences of charging for these items and determine if doing so will
increase the enjoyment and retention of the game. Selling a larger
storage area for your player to put their collectable items is a classic
example that affects the state between gameplay sessions. However,
the idea of restricted use doesn’t have to be limited to storage, it could
be a slot for a weapon you use in combat, a maximum capacity for
your in-game currency or the area you have available to farm your
crops. We can go further and apply emotional values to these goods,
even use them to help customize our experience. This about the effect
of an option to spend money to access my own Constellation Class
starship in Star Trek Online; for me, as a moderate Trekkie, this was
irresistible. Finding the ideal retail items within our game, whether at
the mechanic level or at the context level, is fundamentally a question
of game design. The only difference is that we have to again ask the
question “so what?” from a user perspective if we want to know that
this will be a viable product to sell.

Given Three Options—Pick Two

There are some general principles that help us ask the right ques-
tions about the implications of specific virtual goods. Tadhg Kelly8 in
his blog, What Games Are, talks about the Freemium Triangle as an
attempt to resolve the dangers of accidently creating a “pay to win”
scenario where players could in effect buy away any challenge. The
idea is that if you assume that monetization comes down to boosters
(temporary enhancements such as a special weapon with limited shots
or a token that turn the red gems blue), unlocks (permanent access to
a feature like a new car or larger farm) or skips (such as fuel to unlock
an energy restriction, healing potions, and the ability to skip a cool-
down period), then you decide that you can offer any combination of
two of these elements, but not all three. This way you can isolate at least
one of the core dimensions of game design from being beaten simply
by spending cash. This leaves the designer a safety net and means that
their game will continue to follow the principle that the shared rules of
play should be fair.
 Tools of the Trade 267

Figure 14.1 The Triangle of Free to Play.

Does Fairness Matter?

There are other designers who don’t believe this is necessary. At one of the
GDC 2012 Roundtables there was a discussion on F2P design where the
consensus was that “the only people worried about Fairness in Free2Play
games have never done it.” It’s hard to take a comment like that out of the
context (as I have just done) and still do it justice. What I think they are
saying is that much of the concern over game balance that is expressed
when it comes to F2P is a distraction, a straw man argument made out of
fear. On the other hand in late 2013 there was a counter reaction against
the idea of ‘Pay to Win’ suggesting goods should have no effect on play.
For me the trouble is that Designers (and Players) aren’t experienced
enough with F2P design to know the right strategy. Whatever design
strategy we take with monetization we should do this thoughtfully and
with that in mind I believe that Tadhg’s Triangle remains a useful way of
268 Games as a Service

thinking, especially when you are first experimenting with freemium. We

shouldn’t ignore the consequences and affects our decisions over moneti-
zation models will have on our playing experience.

Monetizing Metagames
As well as looking at the mechanics of play or the game’s context for
inspiration, for opportunities to create virtual goods we can also look
at the metagame. Here we need to consider all of the characteristics
that encompass the role of the game in our life from the physical space
around the game, the social interactions, and, of course, any higher-level
self-actualizing gameplay. There are some games that can realistically
benefit from monetization only in the metagame, or at least where the
real revenue opportunity only happens in this higher perspective. For
example, Clash of Clans comes alive in terms of monetization only really
when the player unlocks the clan system and the group collective com-
bat system. This social experience drives an almost “pyramid-scheme”
quality, but in a good way and without the criminal negativity implicit
with a Ponzi scheme. What I mean by that is that the engagement with
the player is extended by the other players they interact with. The sense
of community and belonging to the clan is only enhanced by the shared
wins and losses as well as the commitment to the challenge. Of course
you will invest more in the game if the “survival of your clan” depends
upon it.

Review Your Candidates

Once this review process is completed and we have worked out the best
candidate goods for our game and how they impact the flow of play we
need to consider exactly how they are going to be bought.

Consumables
Many of these items will be consumable, limited-use items that grant a
temporary bonus or ability, such as higher power ammo. They should
also tend to either have a measurable but still limited effect on perfor-
mance or, better yet, influence the softer variables; how we play rather
than whether we win or not. Other goods might focus on increasing the
results of our actions, such as a coin doubler or experience point boost,
which are only valuable once the specific play session has concluded.
Some of the items might even be specifically to protect against nega-
tive things happening, such as an insurance policy against your plants
 Tools of the Trade 269

withering. All of these contribute to play in some way and should be

easy things to appreciate and value. However, once they are used they
are gone (until you buy more of course).
When looking at a consumable good we have to think of them in
one of three conditions. First, what is their role as a “gateway good,” is
their value obvious and immediate? Second, why would you continue
to spend money on them over time, particularly later in the playing
experience? In other words, will players find the ongoing need for an
endless supply of these items still appealing at the later life stages, or
will these become a “nagging” influence? Finally, we need to consider
how players will respond to purchasing them at “hot” moments. For
example if we offer a health potion at the point of the player dying
(allowing them to continue), will that enhance the playing experience
or simply feel like we are being manipulative? The reality is of course
that it depends. Offering goods at the point of need is a good thing
provided that the design of the user flow is focused on the player’s
entertainment. For example, as well as offering that last minute top-up,
we can also reward players for thinking ahead, storing potions they
discover through play as well as offering a bundle or discount if they
buy health potions in advance. Paying close attention to these kinds of
details will pay dividends. Better yet we should think how the game-
play can be enhanced through the choice we offer the players through
of the goods available.

Balance In All Things

Consumable goods are not the only way to sell items in the game, but
they can be effective provided they deliver delight and some opportu-
nity advantage to the player when using them. We should also be fairly
generous about how we make them available to players free of charge,
not just at the beginning of play; perhaps not as much as a player
might want to use but enough that they don’t resent the game for
withholding access to them. We want to build a level of comfort and
familiarity among our players for the goods we have on offer, while
still giving the player a reason to want more of them. If they really add
value to play, rather than just being a tax on poor playing, then there
is good reason that players will actively want to purchase more. It’s a
very fine line between being generous and removing the need for buy-
ing them at all or the whole idea becoming seen as a source of nagging
for money.
270 Games as a Service

BOGOF Retailing
As we have already said, we are the retailers now, and as such we can
use the techniques any local shop might employ to encourage players to
spend more with us. Why not sell a bundle of our consumable goods?
Buy one get one free (BOGOF), a pack of 12 for the price of six, and
other volume discounts all become useful ways to increase the per-
ceived value and which in reality have no practical costs for us to deliver
the extra items, except regarding the opportunity costs of that player
making a subsequent purchase. These items are consumable of course
and the whole point of them is that the player will want to use them up
in order to gain the benefit. There are risks of course including the need
to avoid misbalancing the game if we give away too many consumables.
However, the biggest issue with consumables is that they generally don’t
increase the players’ investment in the game. Once they are used, that
gameplay benefit is realized and I have to buy another to get the benefit
again. There is no ongoing utility being built up inside the game.
One of the things that has surprised me with games like Candy Crush
Saga from King is why they only offer you one “save me” power-up for
69p when you get to the end of a level without meeting the success crite-
ria. If they offered a bundle of five, perhaps even ten, at that point then
the player would not just get better value, they would be helped through
their current level and still have a number of additional power-ups that
can only be spent by playing the game more. Perhaps they tested this
and it didn’t return the same revenue potential, who knows? However,
these are the kinds of things that are worth testing for your game.

Something More Durable

That takes us onto the durable goods where players make a (generally
larger) payment into our game to get access to an item that generates an
ongoing aspect of the game. That’s different from permanent goods such
as special weapons or one-time upgrades of the player’s tools, equipment,
or other abilities to play the game. These one-off purchases do have an
ongoing consequence, but I would argue that these rarely add ongoing
utility into the game. They don’t create deeper reasons to return to the
game. Permanents can be great sellers and some game genres, including
tower defense games such as Fieldrunners, reportedly get the majority of
their virtual goods revenues from them. They can also provide a touch
of glamour to a game. The appeal of buying a +5 Vorpal Blade is much
 Tools of the Trade 271

greater than buying five +1 Damage Crystals. Permanent items are aspira-
tional, but once obtained become part of the default setting of your game.

A Well of Crystals
Instead I want you to consider durables goods that you buy once, but
that expand the choices of play or stimulate the player to return to
the game in order to maximize their benefit. My favorite example is the
Well of Energy Crystals.9 This is a one-time purchase that generates
the usually purchased energy crystals that grant me fuel to do more in the
game and I will probably have already been buying them as a consum-
able. The Well might cost of about the same as buying ten individual
energy crystals, but delivers ten crystals over 24 hours if you come in to
collect them. This kind of virtual good delivers real utility into the game
for the player and doesn’t inhibit the player buying another extra energy
crystal should they feel excited enough to do just that one extra task that
day. Indeed, it gives players permission to feel more relaxed about buy-
ing the odd energy crystal because the knowledge that they are going
to get more tomorrow anyway makes it their choice to spend money,
rather than having the game overtly influence them to do so.

New Vehicles
Another example would be the purchase of a new vehicle in a driving
game or a new spaceship in space exploration game. Designed well,
these durable goods introduce new strategies and options that are only
possible if the player returns to the game. In Real Racing 3 the player
can access specific races based on the cars they have in their inventory
and they can race each car separately while their other cars are being
repaired. This means that the available time players can intensely engage
with the game expands as the player invests further into the game.

The Slot Machine

Durable goods can influence game progression in other ways to reflect
the progress of the player in the game’s context as well. Imagine that
you have a hover vehicle with three power-up slots. The player gets to
choose what items to put in those slots—perhaps a weapon or a shield
system, an extra life or rocket engine. All of which contribute to their
strategy of play. But as a durable good you might be able to purchase a
fourth slot. Unlocking a fourth slot doesn’t guarantee that the player will
beat the others, although it will influence the outcome.
272 Games as a Service

Collectable Card Games

The use of durable goods to influence strategy choices has long been
employed in collectable card games and these in turn are becoming a
heavy influence on the monetization design of freemium games. They
come in “booster” packs with a random selection of cards. Some of
these will have a temporary effect (e.g., mana or land) to be spend to
release other more durable cards (e.g., creatures or spells). However, the
strategy of their use and influence on the gameplay becomes ambiguous
as they are combined. Many mobile games that use this approach allow
cards to “improve” by discarding duplicate or unwanted cards, creating
a more significant card. Importantly players don’t have to have large
decks of cards to play, even to win. However, they will usually have an
easier and more interesting time if they collect additional cards. We
don’t have to take the metaphor of the cards literally. We could take a
racing game and have different brands of engine components that com-
bine together differently to improve the car in unique ways, right down
to the details like the number of teeth in the gear ratios, if the audience
will respond to that.

Sacrifice
An interesting side effect of the collectable mechanic emerges when you
introduce the ability to sacrifice duplicate or unwanted cards in order to
enhance other cards we prefer. This creates a way to significantly scale
the number of cards any player might need if they wanted to invest to
guarantee access to the most exclusive cards. Imagine a basic level 1
Fire Creature Card. We find a duplicate of this specific card and decide
to discard that in order to evolve our card into a level 2 Fire Creature
Card. In order to obtain a level 3 Fire Creature Card, we have to evolve
another pair of specific cards and then discard that resulting level 2 card.
As we keep going on this pattern, we start to exponentially increase the
number of cards a player needs to guarantee access to the highest level
creatures. Combine that with the concept of rarity often used in these
games and this becomes very interesting. Cards might come in different
levels of rarity—common, uncommon, rare, and super-rare for exam-
ple. Of course that value will only increase if you have a strong social
element allowing players to see each other’s “cards” and to exchange
them. The use of the collectable card game model probably deserves its
own book because it has subtle depths, yet is infinitely flexible. However,
 Tools of the Trade 273

be wary in your use that you don’t try to use it too literally or you risk
turning the mechanics of your revenue model into a game in itself. That
could easily distract from the game you intended to make. The objec-
tives and mechanics of a collectable card game are as much tied up with
the artwork and revelation of the next card as they are with the game
itself. That playing model is very much targeted to the collector reward
behavior described by Richard Bartle that we referenced in Chapter 2,
and unless that was your original intention it can introduce a lucre-
ludo-narrative dissonance as we discussed in Chapter 6.

Converting Currency
One of the most powerful tools available for monetization is the in-game
currency. These are usually a value generated through the action of
play that can then be used to exchange for items within the experience.
We talked about this in Chapter 7 when talking about the role of
uncertainty generated through imbalanced economies. The term “cur-
rency” is largely interchangeable with “resource,” except that a currency is
usually available for exchange with any item, where as a resource will have
a specific use and, by inference, restricts progression for items within its
type. For example, gold might be used commonly in a game to purchase
buildings, crops, and equipment, but buildings might also need clay, crops
might also need fertilizer, etc. The role of currency in gameplay is also
multifaceted. It’s a reward for progress, indeed in some games it is the
only relevant measure of our progress. Such games can often devolve
late in the player life cycle into an attempt for the player to earn as much
currency as possible. Currency can also act as a useful gatekeeper for
later stages within a game—you can’t defeat the werewolf unless you can
afford the silver-plate armor and sword as well having all the necessary
skills. The widespread use of in-game grind currency also gives the
freeloading player the sense that they can indeed explore every aspect
of the game, they just have to be willing to extend the level of grinding
they are willing to do.
Buying currency is possibly the most natural form of consumable
purchase. Players already understand what that currency can buy if they
have been playing the game and earning money through play. However,
if we sell that money then we need to seek other mechanisms, typically
other types of resource, in order to sustain the gatekeeping mechanic.
It’s vital, as we have already said, that buying currency doesn’t defeat
the purpose of playing late in the lifecycle. Resources have similar risks
274 Games as a Service

associated with them especially if you allow some level of “exchange” or

“conversion” between resource types—something that is usually a good
idea from a player’s perspective. However, if you allow this, consider
introducing some counterbalance mechanism to prevent another kind
of “pay to win” arising by mistake. For example I want to exchange clay
for fertilizer. I can do that if I have bought the market building, and
then I only get one fertilizer for every two clay and 100 gold I sacrifice.
Alternatively allow players to exchange material between them at an
exchange rate the players agree, perhaps even take a commission from
those transactions using the same resources or the in-game currency.
This is often at least as valuable for the social bonds that it helps build
between players as it is in terms of stimulating the desire for buying
more in-game currency. Another option might be to have a maximum
wallet size; the purchase of larger items needing a larger wallet.
Many games introduce a second or third currency, usually specifically
a premium currency, such as gems. These can provide a second rhythm
of play, in terms of the generation of value through play. Premium
currencies can often still be generated through play, but at a significantly
slower rate than the standard currency. They are also needed to pur-
chase the higher quality items within the game, the best examples will
be for all practical purposes out of the reach of freeloading players. We
can also clearly separate items purchased using a premium currency
from those available using in-game currency, both offer different aspi-
rational values. This makes sense as long as their value instills a sense of
increased value for that item and an increased desire. However, it can
just as be discounted if it seems impossible for a freeloading player to
access any of those items.
I believe the premium currency approach can usually be better
employed if it requires players to make a dilemma choice about how
they play. If this slow-burn currency can be used to either sustain the
player in their current game or saved for later to exchange for a valu-
able upgrade, which then matters more to the freeloading player? Of
course that means that paying players who spend money don’t have to
face that dilemma. This can create a reason to spend, but risks back-
firing should this become “pay to win.” To get around this problem we
might be tempted to increase the number of different currencies in the
game; rarely a good idea as this reduces the value of having a currency
at all, so it becomes just another resource. Another alternative is to
make it so that players can’t actually buy the premium currency directly.
 Tools of the Trade 275

Experience points are an example of premium currency that should

never be sold. Instead we can offer goods, consumable or durable, that
increase the rate at which we can earn those currencies. The idea of a
coin doubler is commonly used, or perhaps an experience point potion
(granting a 10 percent XP bonus for the next hour) although to be
honest I’ve never liked them myself.

Thinking Differently
Goods need not always be based on positive actions. Often it’s useful
to turn existing models “on their head” and consider them from the
opposite position. For example, is there a way you could create factors
in a game that impair the performance of the player in specific circum-
stances? For example, introduce wear and tear into a game when the
player is using their equipment; imagine I have a sword that is reduced
in sharpness—and hence the damage it can do—after 100 combats,
perhaps it might even break. I can invest my time and my grind money
in repairing this sword, indeed that would make a great minigame, and
in doing so I might happen to use up some resources. Perhaps I could
pay some NPC in the game (or even another player) to repair it for me?
Infinity Blade on iOS had an amazing model along these lines, which
I am surprised I’ve not seen again since. Each item of equipment pro-
vided the player with a bonus to their experience, but there was a cap
over time on how much extra experience in total they would gain. This
forced the player to change to the next weapon that they could afford,
etc. This stimulated change, broadened the experience with a range of
different weapons, increased the engagement with the game, and stimu-
lated the collecting instinct around those items as well as requiring the
player to spend some of their in-game currency. Wow! Just by having
swords give you experience boosts!

Turning Off Ads

There is a temptation with developers to offer a way to switch off adverts
by paying. This makes sense especially if we feel that the adverts are
driving players to leave the game, or if their presence is inhibiting their
propensity to spend money. However, I wonder if this option is some-
times used inappropriately. Often the negative reaction to adverts can be
attributed to a highly vocal minority and their removal has little positive
benefit in practice. I’m not saying we ignore this minority entirely, but
instead we should focus on what it is that they find problematic. This
276 Games as a Service

might be possible to correct by considering the placement and flow of

the advertising you use in the game. Another reason why this concerns
me is that only the paying players are likely to purchase the “no-ads”
option. These are the very people who potential advertisers want to be
able to communicate with, and who make advertising in your game
particularly valuable. Giving these users the option to opt-out may well
so badly affect the value of the audience to advertisers that the revenue
you gain from the “turn-off ads” purchase might not come close to off-
setting the advertising income you would otherwise have gained. Don’t
give in to an emotional decision, work out whether advertising revenue
is important for your game and, if so, make sure its implemented to
minimize any negativity from the audience. Getting the best implemen-
tation needs to consider the location and timing of display for each ad,
the player lifecycle, and the use of “opt-in” methods.

Levels and Episodes

There is another traditionally popular method of revenue generation
that I find problematic. The sale of levels is commonly used by platform
and puzzle games, as well as in the form of DLC for console games.
There is much similarity between level sales and “try before you buy.”
They rely on the player being exposed to the game first, getting a famil-
iarity with the experience and then making the decision to purchase
the next installment. The trouble is that players are often satisfied with
the experience they have just had and don’t have enough anticipation
of value from the next installment to make that purchase. The range of
players who access each subsequent level will diminish and with it the
critical mass of the audience. Further than that, the freeloading play-
ers can’t access that material and this further diminishes the perceived
value of that content. As we discussed in Chapter 13, selling levels and
trials rarely delivers good value as it creates barriers and buyer remorse.
It’s also a very inefficient approach, as the levels are usually the part
that takes the most effort and skill to create; wouldn’t we rather play-
ers get to experience all of the beautiful, expensive to produce, game
material we have spent months creating rather than sticking it behind a
pay-wall and have no one seeing it? That doesn’t mean that level-based
games have no place in a freemium world, but it does mean we need
to think very carefully about the best way to monetize them; perhaps
using grind currency to unlock each subsequent level. Ian Masters of
Plant Pot Games came up a superb metaphor that can help us when we
 Tools of the Trade 277

look at making a level-based puzzle game work as F2P. Think of each

level as a spinning plate. We have to return to them regularly in order
to keep them spinning, so we can set off the next spinning plate/level.
The idea of having to regularly return to previous levels in order to gain
the points/coins needed to unlock the next game is a powerful one and
gives value to ongoing repeat play.

A Mixed Model of Monetization

Every example of different virtual goods or advertising models we have
discussed in this chapter will have a role as part of a mixed approach
to monetization. Indeed the greater the range of choices and payment
methods available to players, the more you will convert to paying at all,
just as we discovered with the rent game discussed in Chapter 13.
We have a story to tell our players, not just in terms of the game, but
also in terms of the ways they can engage with the game that they love
and what works for them will change as their engagement with the game
changes. We need to offer predictable opportunities and calls to actions,
such as the bundles or last chance “save me” power-ups alongside appar-
ently “random” offers that seem personalized to that players’ needs and
likes.
The way goods combine is important and we need to continue to think
as retailers and consider opportunities to sell more items to the con-
verted player through the use of “bundles” or collections of related items.
This can include: BOGOF deals; a “booster pack” with a selection of ran-
dom power-ups; special offers on the next vehicle or weapon we would
love to get our hands on in the game. Even randomized mystery boxes
that grant the player a random item, as used so successfully by Kiloo.

Be Careful with Randomness

We have to be a little careful about how convoluted some of these
promotional experiences become, especially where there are random
factors. Randomness in terms of what you gain for your money can
take us a little too close to gambling for comfort. This became an issue
in Japan because of the concept of the “complete gatcha” (kompugacha)
mechanism, where sets of random cards/goods are purchased in order
to discover rare or ultra rare collectables. Complete sets of these collect-
ables are then used to obtain yet more rare items. The Japanese govern-
ment announced in August 2012 that they were going to investigate this
issue and that caused a drop in the share price for DeNA and GREE.10
278 Games as a Service

A Question of Ethics
It seems almost inevitable that we end this chapter talking about the
questions of appropriate use of monetization models. This “complete
gatcha” question and others like it continues to ask us to face up to
questions of ethical approaches to the monetization of games. Similarly,
in the UK, the Office of Fair Trading announced in April 2013 that
they would investigate the in-game marketing techniques being used in
games aimed at children. Their initial findings, which were announced
in September 2013,11 included eight key guidelines. The principles seem
relatively straightforward, but there is still concern over how some of
them might actually operate in practice, so we expect these will change.
They inform developers that they have an obligation to prominently and
clearly communicate all material information about the game includ-
ing the associated costs before it is downloaded. Developers need to be
contactable and able to respond to consumer complaints and refunds.
Developers should not imply that payment is necessary to continue
to play when that isn’t the case, should give equal weight to the non-
payment option, and in particular should not attempt to exploit a child’s
inexperience or credulity or directly coerce them. Finally, payments
should only be taken when there is informed consent and with the
agreement of the account holder. Of course it’s recommended that you
consult the documents themselves and perhaps a legal professional to
ensure that your games comply.
These findings don’t present an objection to the principle of selling
in-game items in particular, they are about ensuring ethical practice in
terms of retailing in-app purchases to children to and making sure that
there isn’t a reasonable likelihood of “accidently” triggering a purchase
on their parent’s card.
Other legal changes have also already come into force in the USA
with COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act)12 where
developers now have a responsibility to identify if the majority of their
audience for a game or service are children (under 13) and then manage
the capture of data and use of adverting material accordingly. This won’t
be the last such law on the subject developers will have to comply with.
There is no excuse for using excessive or aggressive practices in game
design. We are making entertainment products and these should focus
on the art of engagement, not how much money we generate. To my
mind this isn’t a question of ethics; the ethical arguments are often
 Tools of the Trade 279

hypothetical, even hysterical, rather than real.13 It’s a practical question

about what kind of business we want to create. If we go fishing with
dynamite we kill all the fish, if we go fishing with line we only get the
fish that are attracted to our line but the lake remains sustainable and
we can continue fishing forever. The problem with us constantly arguing
over the ethics is that the more we have that debate the more likely it is
that someone will come along and ban fishing (not dynamite).

Notes
1 The soap opera format of advertising-funded serial dramas is widely credited to Irna
Phillips, an American writer and actor, with Painted Dreams in 1930 on Chicago’s WGN,
www.otrcat.com/soap-opera-radio-shows.html.
2 CPM is cost per mille (thousand) views rather than cost per impression; eCPM is a hybrid
of cost of impressions and the click through rate (CTR). It allows buyers to gauge the
effectiveness of a campaign.
3 CPA is cost per action or acquisition, which usually for games usually refers to the number
of installs obtained.
4 Again I need to own up that (at the time of writing) I am working for Applifier and there
are other suppliers of opt-in advertising. Reach is a key metric for advertising buyers as
they are looking to maximize the potential opportunities for their brands at the lowest
cost. The advertising industry has had to evolve with the rise of the internet, but it’s been
a long slow progress despite the decline of TV audiences.
5 There are a limited number of standard-sized and shaped-for-billboard advertising that
significantly helps advertisers with reach and repeatability, www.clearchannel.co.uk/
useful-stuff/billboard-poster-sizes.
6 Fiksu define a loyal user as one who returns at least three times to the app, www.fiksu.
com/blog/cost-loyal-user.
7 In case you didn’t already know the Kobayashi Maru is an infamous no-win scenario test
at StarFleet Academy in Star Trek, where James T. Kirk was the first person to ever “beat”
the scenario by reprogramming the computers (in short he cheated!).
8 Tadgh Kelly, author of What Games Are and at the time of writing Developer Relations for
Ouya, www.whatgamesare.com/about.html.
9 Don’t worry, I understand that the use of “energy” has become a little suspect of late, it’s
just a convenient example for explanation of the concept. That being said, there remains
value in the ideas behind energy, if only because of its ability to create a reason to return
when the energy has recovered. I believe this came up in Chapter 5.
10 The founder of GREE and at the time Japan’s youngest billionaire, Yoshikazu Tanaka, lost
an estimated $700 million off the value of his shareholding in GREE the day that was
announced, www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2012/05/08/gree-dena-social-
gaming.
11 The OFT Report’s initial findings on children’s online games can be found at www.oft.gov.
uk/shared_oft/consumer-enforcement/oft1506.pdf.
12 Details of COPPA compliance can be found at www.coppa.org.
13 I’m not saying that there aren’t unethical designers out there. I’m not saying that there
aren’t apps that exploit people. I’m just saying that most cases of this argument are being
discussed based on hypothetical cases. The real cases should, of course, be prosecuted and
the perpetrators handled accordingly; they are damaging our industry beyond measure.
280 Games as a Service

Exercise 14: How Will

You Monetize?
In this the final exercise we come to the (potentially multiple) million
dollar question: how will you make money from your game? We should
now know the flow and structure of our game in detail and as a result of
taking the design approach for games as a service it should be a rela-
tively easy task to understand where and how we will use all of the avail-
able monetization processes. As we do this we have to be sensitive to the
psychological influences on the player’s purchasing decisions including
in particular buyer remorse and price elasticity of demand.
We want also need to consider how the attitudes to spending match
against the life stages of the player in order to maximize the potential
and in particular how we build value or utility into their experience.
We want to know if you will charge an initial fee prior to the download of
the game and if so how will you manage the impact on the number of installs
this will impede. Then there is the counterargument, if you don’t have an
upfront cost then how will you offset the lack of any initial invested utility in
the game? We want to understand what virtual goods you plan to incor-
porate and what combination of consumable (one-time short-term use),
durable (ongoing value) or permanent (one-time upgrade) you plan to use.

How will you monetize your game?

Will you charge an initial fee prior to the
download of your game?
If charging upfront, how will you offset
reduced number of downloads? If not, how
will you build initial utility?

Will you include advertising? If so, what

type and how frequently will it appear?
Will you sell consumable virtual goods?
If so, what types, prices, and frequency of
purchase?
Will you sell durable virtual goods? If
so, what types, prices, and frequency of
payoff?
Will you sell permanent virtual goods? If
so, what types, prices, and frequency of
purchase?
 How Will You Monetize? 281

WORKED EXAMPLE:

How will you monetize your game? Finding Anthony will be monetized
through a combination of virtual goods
and limited advertising.
Will you charge an initial fee prior to No the game will be free to download.
the download of your game?
If charging upfront, how will you We will get players into playing
offset reduced number of downloads? as quickly as possible and create a
If not, how will you build initial meaningful reward within a minute of
utility? play. This reward will be in the form of
consumable power-ups earned through
play as well as a mysterious narrative.
Will you include advertising? If so, Opt-in video advertising will be used to
what type and how frequently will it motivate the players to obtain “free power-
appear? ups.” The available power-up will vary
throughout the day in order to make sure
players get to try all of the items for free.
Push advertising won’t appear until the
player has at least completed the first
district of play. Where it does appear
will be when the player has just been
successful and about to move onto their
next game.
Will you sell consumable virtual Yes—all the lowest level power-ups will
goods? If so, what types, prices, and be available for purchase in bundles of
frequency of purchase? ten items for $0.99. However, higher level
power-ups can be purchased or created
by “burning” the lower level ones. These
include speed-up, pause movement,
rewind, slow-down, etc.
Will you sell durable virtual goods? If Yes—players can buy durable goods that
so, what types, prices, and frequency are placed at appropriate locations in a
of payoff? district they own and that create the
named power-up at the stated level at a
rate of 12 per day. The costs range from
$1.99 for level 1 power-ups; up to $9.99 for
a level 5 power-ups.
Will you sell permanent virtual Yes—permanents include additional
goods? If so, what types, prices, and brain slots and customization for the
frequency of purchase? avatar (all of which offer the effect of a
“permanent” power-up depending on level).
Chapter 15
Conclusions
284 Games as a Service

Reaching the End

So here we are at the end. Throughout the book we have take the time to
look at the design principles and psychology involved with the creation
of a service and to use that to generate revenue. But more that that, what
I hope we have done is to make you reconsider what gameplay means
and how we can expand the choices available to us by reimaging a game
as an ongoing relationship with the player.
If I have succeeded in my objectives, the question of whether to
go freemium or not will have become irrelevant. Instead we will be
focusing on the delight of players and finding a more sustainable way to
deliver entertainment to them.
However, this isn’t a book that will tell you exactly what the formula is
for success, I have only tried to get you to ask yourself the questions that
matter. No one can teach you to be a better game designer through a
book, but I hope to help you make that step for yourself by considering
the values and factors at every stage of your design.
Being a successful commercial designer means taking the time to
consider the art (in its widest sense) and the experience as well as the
revenue potential for our games. To do that we have to consider the
roles of the game mechanics we use as well as the context in which we
use them. We cannot ignore the real-world impacts on that gameplay,
whether that’s the social experience or the external pressures on our
players. If we want longevity we have to consider how the metagame
empowers players to sustain their engagement, we can’t assume that
having a fun game is enough.
Understanding the rhythm of play, our use of pace, and schedules of
reinforcement are essential to delivering our promise of a service, rather
than just another game we play once. Building on that engagement by
using familiarity, but still bringing a sense of uncertainty is essential
if our players are going to find the fun in the game and better yet feel
compelled to share that with other players.
It’s not just about the player of course, although they are central to
our thinking. We also have to consider how we function within the
market place and engage with the other audiences including publish-
ers, app stores and the wider press. Responding to those audiences will
impact how we design our game and the way we empower players to
share their experiences with others. That sharing process has become a
critical success factor given the scale of the competitive environment,
 Conclusions 285

and understanding the effort needed to sustain those social connections

is similarly important.
Then we have to consider how we assess our success and build into
the experience mechanisms that allow us to fairly judge whether we are
satisfying our players’ needs without overly compromising the vision
we have for our game. This leads us further into having to consider how
we work with our colleagues in order to deliver the game and find ways
to resolve the associated technical problems that arise because we have
taken the decision to use the power of the internet, whether as a “thin”
or “thick” client experience.
Finally we looked at the psychology of paying and how this affects
our objectives as designers. It’s the objective we started out with—make
something entertaining people are willing to pay for. At the end we still
have to put the players’ fun first, otherwise we have no answer to our
most important question, “so what?”
If there is one thing I want you to take away from this book, it’s that
question. “So what?”

Amazing Possibilities
This is an amazing time to be a game designer and the challenges will
only increase. However, I hope that my experience as collated in this
book has provided some small insight into how you can still change the
gaming world. Even if you don’t have the biggest, smartest team you
can still create a work of art that is unique to you and that others will
want to enjoy . . . even be inspired by. And if I’m right, then you can still
make enough money to be able to do it again.
There will still be stand-alone premium AAA (marketing budget)
console game products, although certainly fewer than in previous
generations. There will be a similar number of freemium services that
will hit the zeitgeist enough to make mind-blowing profits like Supercell
and King did in this generation. But there will continue to be success for
many more games companies outside the top ten lists.
I believe that the move to services will create a more stable, sustain-
able business climate supporting a larger ecosystem of games developers,
making more than a modest living from clusters of loyal happy players.
That seems like a perfect environment to encourage more focus and
attention to making better games, perhaps even to create experiences
we want to tell our kids about. After all, if we just wanted to make huge
amounts of cash, we could have gone and gotten a “proper job,” couldn’t we?
This page intentionally left blank
Index
288 Index

3Italy 214 Bartle, Richard 32, 34n, 35, 56n, 108,

3UK 5, 69, 214, 249 112n, 134, 172
22 Cans 225n Battleships 142
24 (TV show) 155 Bejeweled 26
AAA projects 10, 11, 16n, 285 Big Point Droid X 5, 15n
AB test 172, 177 – 8, 183n, 199 – 200 BlackBerry 85, 157
Adshel 263 blind man and elephant story 55, 56n
advertising 173, 177, 182n, 260, 279n blogs, bloggers 33n, 128n, 180, 181,
APIs 261 – 2 182n, 266
frequency 263 board games 43, 46, 118
measuring success 263 BOGOF retailing 270
opt-in 262 Boku 252
outdoor 263 Bond moments 152 – 3, 154, 234
paid, cross-promotion, incentivized Boss Alien/Natural Motion 109
260 – 1 box-products 3, 10
partners 261 – 2 brand building 154 – 5
placing 262 Breakout 111n
reach/repeatability 263, 279n Brian Lara Cricket 163n
standards of 262 – 3 Brick Breaker 105
turning off 275 – 6 Brislin, Simon 56n
see also marketing British Telecom 65, 71n, 94n, 134
agile approach 216, 218, 226n Buyer Behavior Curve 238, 239
AIDA (awareness, interest, desire, buying products 265
action) model 234 – 5 AIDA model 234 – 5
Aitcheson, Alistair 123, 128n and buyer remorse 237 – 8, 239, 240,
Amazon 223 253n
Android 6, 111n, 221, 252 charging upfront 242 – 3
Angry Birds 104, 155, 263 and customer satisfaction 244
app name 104, 111n decision-making 237
Appflood 260 and decision-making 249, 254n
Apple 3 – 4, 170, 181, 252 demos 240 – 1
Applifier 141, 163n, 173, 177, 180, 260 don’t nag/give reasons to act
apps 4, 5 244 – 5
AppStore 3 – 4, 104, 252 engaging players 241
Arkanoid 105 – 6, 111n ethical principles 252 – 3
Assassin’s Creed 153 freemium model 243 – 4
asynchronous games 123, 124, 135 and gateway good 250
Atari 105 influence of competition 247
Azure 223 maximizing utility 239 – 40
motivations 236 – 7
Bad Piggies 160 premium positives 242
Barnson, Jay 128n premium problems 241 – 2
 Index 289

pricing strategy 247 – 50, 251 – 2 CounterStrike 89, 94n, 134, 143, 144n
psychological principles 245, 250, CPA (cost per action/acquisition)
252 – 3 advertising 260, 279n
puppy-dog sale 246 CPM (cost per mile) advertising 260,
social elements 239 279n
tricking buyers 245 – 6 CrackBerry 85, 157
wants/needs dichotomy 235 Csikszentmihályi, Mihály 102, 111n,
119
Caillois, Roger CSR Racing 51, 245
Definition of Play 30 culture 122 – 3, 183n
Man, Play and Games 33n Curiosity 225n – 6n
Call of Duty 135, 142, 219 Curran, N. 254n
Candy Crush Saga 12, 51, 91, 94n, The Curse of Monkey Island 30
104, 134, 156, 172, 270
card games 46 – 7, 272 Dallas (TV show) 155
Casual Connect Hamburg 2012 15n, Dark Orbit (Big Point) 5
16n data
Casual Connect Magazine 145n AB testing 199 – 200
Catron, Jesse 128n background 190
Chartboost 177, 260 capturing 113 – 15, 201 – 2
Chartered Institute of Marketing connected player problems
(CIM) 163n 198 – 9
chess 26, 44, 128n and data protection 196 – 7
Children’s Online Privacy Protection expanding possibilities 199
Act (COPPA) 278, 279n finding missing data 191 – 2
churning 69 – 70, 86, 190 – 1, 202n and funnel analysis 192 – 3, 202n
Clash of Clans 12, 127, 128n, 143, 268 and hazard analysis 194 – 6, 202n
clue objects 87 importance of metrics/statistics 191
Cocos 214 looking for trends 192
Codemasters 163n making inferences 197
cognitive bias 94n mapping out 197 – 8, 202n
collectables 272 – 3 non-connected players 198
Columbo twist 160–1, 164n, 165–7, 234 relevant 193 – 4
computer games, gamers 30 – 1, 47, 89 terminology 190 – 1
consoles, console games 7, 135 testing as a process 200 – 1
consumables 268 – 9 tracking players by ’days since
context loop 51 – 4, 72 – 6, 91 – 2 download’ 193
Cook, Tim 4 see also surveys
Core Design 163n decision-making
core vision 208 and allocation of actions 93n
Costikyan, Greg 27, 34n and ambiguity 120 – 1
Uncertainty in Games 30, 128n buyers 249, 254n
290 Index

and complexity level 249 engagement-led design 152

emotional 65, 88 Blackberry twitch 157
and game design 42 Bond opening 152 – 3, 162
and games of progression 45 brand building 154 – 5
and loss aversion 49, 56n Columbo twist 160 – 1, 162
and pattern-making 44 core experience 153 – 4
and probability 26, 119 core values 154
soft variables 121 Flash Gordon cliffhanger 155 – 6,
Demon Souls 120 162
demos 240 – 1 long term story arch 156 – 7
Deus Ex 44 meaningful moments 159 – 60
A Developers’ Guide to Surviving the never seen Star Wars model
Zombie Apocalypse 15n 158 – 9
development team 217 – 18 opening experience 153
device overlap 9 – 10 real-life interruptions 157 – 8
dice-based games 43 so-what question 162
Digital Chocolate 135 understanding social consequences
digital distribution see marketing 159
Disney 263 ethics 252 – 3, 278 – 9
Distimo 241 – 2, 253n Everyplay 141, 160, 180
distributed denial of service (DDOS) exercises
221 Bond opening 113 – 15
Doctor Who (TV show) 155 – 6 Columbo twist 165 – 7
Dove brand 63 concept creation 17 – 22
download services 261 context loop 72 – 6
downloadable content (DLC) 9 data capture 227 – 30
Duffy, Colin 71n encouraging discovery through
Dungeons & Dragons 11, 30 design 203 – 5
durable goods 270 – 1, 272 Flash Gordon cliffhanger 129 – 31
game mechanics 57 – 9
EA 12, 16n, 32, 156 games as social 184 – 6
Earl, Nick 12 metagame 95 – 8
Easter Eggs technique 124 – 5 Star Wars factor 146 – 8
EC2 223 who are your players? 35 – 9
Eidos 163n writing use cases 256 – 7
emergent behavior 121, 125 Exponential Demand Curve 247, 248
emotions
and emotional engagement 245 – 6 Facebook 12, 31, 32, 86, 89, 106, 123,
Hot Cold Empathy 245 – 6, 254n 134, 135, 139, 141, 160, 177, 260,
and loss aversion 246, 254n 263
puppy-dog sale 246 Facebook poke 135 – 6
end-to-end testing 219, 221 familiarity 118
 Index 291

and balance 107 – 8 ongoing experience 240

and building expectations 106 – 7 player experience 14
and contempt 103 and price elasticity of demand
and disruption 104 247 – 9
and lucre dissonance 107 – 8, 110 problems 7
and mass-marketing 109 revenue 10
and player types 109 social games 12
and reward behaviors 108 – 9 From Software 120
and risk of disruption 107 fun 26, 33
and social interaction 106 finding 102
and time 104
and trust 102 Galaxy on Fire Alliances 92
Farm Town 106 Gamasutra article 94n
FarmVille 12, 30, 32, 48 – 9, 86, 89, gambling games 29 – 30, 34n
106, 111n, 128n, 135 game anatomy
Faulkner, William 226n conditions, challenges, methods
feedback loops 121 – 2, 128n 45 – 6
Fieldrunners 270 – 1 control systems 47
Fiksu 263, 279n creating context 52, 54
Firemint 156 games within games 52
first-person shooter (FPS) game 45, gossip effect 53
48, 94n, 264 – 5 hub and spoke 44
Fishlabs 92 in-game reminders 28
Flash Gordon cliffhanger 155 – 6, 158 interactive techniques 44
Flurry 15n, 202n intrinsic/extrinsic rewards 49 – 50
foreshadowing 72, 83, 84, 106 – 7, 141, metagame 54 – 5
153, 163n pattern-matching 26, 27, 42 – 5
Free App Charts 341 – 2 pull/push elements 53
Free2Play (F2P) 5, 28, 170, 172, 182n reasons to return 53 – 4
additions to 6 – 7 repetition 46, 155
benefits 53 rules 27, 28, 159
design as manipulative 82 story/narrative 51 – 3, 54
dominance of 6 victory condition 27, 28
and fairness 267 – 8 visual/artistic elements 47
importance of non-payers 67 – 8 game design 2
symptom not cause 14 avoid punishing players 48 – 9
freemiums 3 copying/borrowing 105
benefits 243 and data collection 190 – 202
challenges 14 – 15 engagement-led 152 – 63
devices 7, 9 – 10 indie-ism 13
difference with premiums 243 – 4 monetization tool 110 – 11
monetization in 107 – 8 old school 13
292 Index

paper prototyping techniques 112n GamesBrief 15n

persistent world aspect 54 Gartner Hype Curve 238, 253n
player objectives 107 gateway good 250 – 1, 254n
reborn vets 13 GDC 2012 Roundtables 267
tough but interesting 15 GDC Europe 2012 15n
visual aspects 47 GDC Online 56n
Game Horizon 2013 15n, 123 Google Play 104, 181
Game Monetization Europe 2013 GREE 160, 177, 182n
(London) 94n Greedt Bankers 128n
game theory 127 Greedt Bankers Against the World
game-loops 45 – 6 128n
games GTA 180
added-value 264
bones/muscles of 42, 153 Harvest Moon 106
different types/genres 42 HayDay 89
doubt/uncertainty 30 hazard analysis and critical control
farming for gold 29 points (HACCP) 194, 202n
as fun 26, 33 establish control point monitoring
inside knowledge 30 – 1 requirements 195
lifetime value 62 establish corrective procedures 195
material interest/profit 28 – 9 establish critical limits for each
motivations 29 – 30, 32 – 3, 48, control point 195
49, 51 establish record-keeping process 196
and musical forms 89 hazard analysis 194
as play 27 – 8, 30, 32 identify critical control points
playing lots of games 94n 194 – 5
psychology of 27 review process 195
range of devices 176 Heavy Rain 44, 56n
social 31 – 2, 239 Hierarchy of Games see Oscar’s
standing out from the crowd 104 Hierarchy of Games
success/failure 47 – 8 hierarchy of needs 93n
games of emergence 44, 44 – 5 Hocking, Clint, Bioshock 107
Games Horizon 2012 183n Homo Ludus 159
games of progression 45, 50 – 1 Hot Cold Empathy 245, 254n
games as a service hot-cold empathy gap 94n
conclusions 284 – 5 HTTPS protocol 198 – 9, 202n
framework 2 Huitzinga, Johann 27 – 8, 30,
rethinking 3 33n, 159
rise in 3 Hutch Games 7
soul of 70, 71n, 152
successful 53 – 4 imbalanced economy 126 – 7
and whole player lifecycle 102 in-game currency 108, 273 – 5
 Index 293

In-N-Burger 120, 128n lucre-ludo-narrative dissonance

Infinity Blade 275 107 – 8
Innogames 90 Ludo 43, 56n, 118
innovation 5 – 6 Ludo-narrative dissonance 107
interdependence theory 137
and communication 139 Magic: The Gathering 43
and complacency 139 Manning, Adrian 144n
emotional aspects 138 Maple Story (2003) 5
measuring relationships 137 marketing 109, 163n, 164n
satisfaction with relationships 4Ps 171, 182n
137 – 8 communication 170, 177,
internet 10, 134 178 – 80
investment 225n designer/developer involvement/
iOS 5 – 6, 111n, 221, 261, 275 attitude 170, 182n
iOS App Store 9 and digital distribution 170,
iPhone 3 – 4, 6 176
fifth P (ie people) 171 – 2
Jackson, Gina 16n investors, publishers, trade bodies
J.C. Penney 244 – 5, 254n 181 – 2
JetPack Joyride 92, 126 knowing the players 172
Juul, Jesper, The Art of Failure 30, 33n place (ie location/type of device)
176 – 7
Kahneman, Daniel 56n and PR (Public Relations) 178
Karade Kid 234, 253n press/media 180 – 1
Kasparov, Gary 128n price 175 – 6
Keller, K.L., Strategic Brand Manage- process 171
ment: Building, Measuring and promotion 177 – 8
Managing Brand Equity 70n sharers 173 – 4
Kelly, Tadhg 266, 279n surveys 173, 178
King Com 91, 270 team players 174 – 5
Kirakowski, J. 254n trust 174
Kobayashi Maru 266, 279n whale players 173
Koster, Rafe 27 see also advertising
A Theory of Fun 26, 33n, 55n Maslow, A.H. 93n, 236 – 7
Kyoryu 128n Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO)
5, 11 – 12, 45, 135
Lee, Kun Chang 254 gold-farming 29
Lewis, E. St Elmo 253n Masters, Ian 276 – 7
Loewenstein, George 254n Meridian 59 45
Lord of the Rings Bowling 179 metagame 54 – 5, 95 – 8, 268
Lord of the Rings Online 11 microncosole 5
loss aversion 49, 56n, 246, 247, 254n Microsoft 223
294 Index

minimum viable product (MVP) 208, paradox of choices 253n

213 – 14, 219 Park, Bong-Won 254
Mobile 7, 12 pattern-matching 26, 27
mobile games 172 complexity/repeatability 44
Molyneux, Peter 225n dice-based or board games 43
monetization 107 – 8, 110, 175 human skills 42 – 3
and buying consumables random 43
268 – 9 rules 44 – 5
context 265 – 6 Pavlov, I.P. 82, 93n
exercise 280 – 1 Penny Arcade 56n
and fairness 267 – 8 permadeath model 120
in-game currency 273 – 5 Pet Society 12, 16n, 32
metagames 268 Picasso, Pablo 111n
mixed model 277 Pillsbury Company 194
not using 265 pivoting 208 – 9
picking an option 266 Plant Pot Games 276 – 7
product challenges 264 – 5 Plants vs Zombies 92
and randomness 277 Plants vs Zombies 2 51, 153
Monkey Island 87 play, players 33n
Monopoly 43, 118 as absorbing 27 – 8
Moore, Geoffrey, Crossing the Chasm achievers 32
64, 70n – 1n, 225n casual gamers need permission
MPlayer 71n, 134 64 – 5
Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) 32, 34n, and data collection 190 – 202
112n, 134, 144n emotional range 33
MyFarm 106 engagement 68, 174, 241
enjoyment of game 67
NASA 194 exercise 35 – 9
Natural Motion 183n explorers 32
Neopets (1999) 5 as fun 27, 33
new product introduction 63, 70n gender similarities 65
NewZoo Global Games Market hardcore gamers as visionaries 64
Report 7, 16n Huitzinga’s definition 28
nich games 134, 135 importance of non-payers
67 – 8
online games 94n, 134, 142 as interaction 32
open access 4, 5 in isolation 30
operant conditioning 46, 56n, 82 killers/trolls 32 – 3
Oscar’s Hierarchy of Games 236 – 7 knowledge of 172 – 4
methods 46 – 7
Paid App Charts 242 multiple motivations 28 – 9
Papaya Mobile 68 as non-static 109
 Index 295

with others 31 – 2 and personal threshold 244,

performance metric 110 253n – 4n
player-directed 86, 93n positive aspects 242
potential 174 – 5 problems with premium (upfront
process 65 – 6 payment) 241 – 2
punishing 48 – 9, 86 rent or buy 249 – 50
reasons to return 53 – 4 and risk 249
regular changes 69 setting 251
repetition 45 – 6, 67 upfront/inside the game charges
rewards 49 – 50 242 – 3
sharers 173 – 4 and value 244, 254n
skill of player 119 – 20 price elasticity of demand 247 – 9
socializers 32, 33 PRINCE2.0 226n
style of 47 probability 26, 119
success 66 product development 161
updating content 69 agile system 216 – 18, 226n
whale players 68, 173 alpha/beta audience 212, 226n
player lifecycle 102, 234 and core vision 208 – 9
acquisition/retention 68, 69, delivering on-going service 224 – 5
171 design document 215 – 16
churning 69 – 70 end-to-end testing 221
discovery stage 65 – 6, 237, 241 and fear of failure 209
early adopters 64 feedback 212
early majority 64 – 5 flexibility/range 224
engagement stage 67 – 8, 141, 244 frequency of changes 214 – 15,
learning stage 66 – 7, 140, 237, 241 226n
product lifecycle analogy 62 – 4 integration testing 221, 226n
Playfish 16n, 31, 106, 112n, 135 and life after launch 213 – 14
PlayStation Home 5, 10, 56n, 123, 192 and MVP 208, 212 – 14
PlayStation Network 135, 181 and new product introduction 63,
poker strategy 26, 33n 70n
Ponzi scheme 268 preparation 222
Portal 104 prioritising features 210 – 11
Porter, Michael E., How Competitive publishing as separate activity 220
Forces Shape Strategy 182n releases without releases 222 – 3
Post, Jack 56n releasing 221 – 2
premium market 6, 7, 10 – 11, 12 reviewing process 219
press/media 180 – 1 scrum master 218 – 19
price server development/roll-back 224
and advertising 260 – 1 small teams/less specialists 214
counterproductive actions 244 – 5 taking a break/switching team roles
ease of payment 252 219 – 20
296 Index

technical specification/test script monetization/virtual goods 264 – 8,

226n 273 – 5
testing the product 212 – 13 and randomness 277
thick and thin clients 223 review meetings
Triangle of Development 209 – 10 sprint retrospective 219
unit testing 220 – 1 sprint review 219
viability 211 – 12 rewards
waterfall model 215 – 16, determining progress 50 – 1
226n diminishing effects 50
product lifecycle extrinsic 50
chasm in 65 – 6 intrinsic 49 – 50
diffusion of innovation 64 understanding behaviors
player lifecycle comparison 63 108 – 9
product extensions 63, 161 rhythm of play
stages 62 compulsion to play 85 – 6
product owner 216 – 17, 226n CrackBerry effect 84 – 5
PS4 5 early patterns 82 – 3
psychology 245, 250, 253n, 254n energy technique 85 – 6, 87, 157
puzzle games 45 first impressions 81 – 2
friction factor 86, 87m 110
QA testing 219, 220 game loops 83
Quake 89, 94n, 143 habitual behavior of returnees 84
Quake II 134 heartbeat 82
interruptions 83
Real Racing 3 12, 87, 156, 271 making progress 83 – 4
Real-Time Worlds 7 metagames 93
real-world concept 122, 144n mode of use 87 – 8, 108, 157
and culture 122 – 3 mood 87 – 8, 108, 157
and physical presence 123 notification system 90
and social bonds 124 pace 88 – 9, 94n
Reil, Torsten 183n patience and context 90 – 2
resource management games 45 – 6 and player subconscious 85
Restaurant City 32 player’s journey 80 – 1
revenue generation regularity not addiction 82
advertising 260 – 3, 275 – 6 rewards and challenges 92 – 3
BOGOF 270 social aspects 89 – 90
collectables 272 – 3 time delay/friction 86
consumables 268 – 9 Ries, Eric, The Lean Startup
durable goods 270 – 3 209, 225n
ethical considerations 278 – 9 RiotE 179
levels and episodes 276 – 7 Rodeo 243
 Index 297

Rogers, Scott 27, 104 effect of Facebook on social games

Level Up: The Guide to Great Video 135 – 6
Game Design 33n emotional drivers 138
Rovio 160, 263 engagement with audience 139
RPG games 123, 127, 254n increase in audience 135
RuneScape (2001) 5, 15n, 34n interdependence theory 137 – 9, 143
Ryan, Nick 56n six degrees of socialization 140 – 3
social media 10, 12, 160, 170, 173
SCE Japan 120 social pyramid 144
schedules of reinforcement 46, 106, soft variables 121, 125 – 6
112n, 284 Soli, Daniel 128n
Schriber, Ian 128n Sonic the Hedgehog 155
scrum master 218 – 19 Sony Liverpool Studio 7
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 202n Sony London Studio 123
Senet 43, 56n Space Invaders 27, 245, 254n
server-based distribution 223 Standard Query Language (SQL) 199
servers 223 – 4 Star Trek Online 11, 266
service approach 12 – 13, 208, 224 – 5, Star Wars: The Old Republic 11
246 Star Wars (films) 158 – 9, 160, 163n
see also product development Steam 135
Shades 144n Subway Surfers 172
Sim Social 32 Super Mario Bros 30
SimCity Social 32 surveys 173 – 4, 182n, 200
Simpsons Tapped Out 12 see also data
Sina Weibo 160
Singstar 89 Tablet 7, 12
six degress of socialization 140 Taito 105, 111n
go head-to-head 142 – 3 TapJoy 261
I beat your score 141 Telltale Games 128n
I see you play 140 – 1 Tetris 44, 56n
let’s collaborate 142 Time Entertainment 163n
see me play 141 Tomb Raider 51 – 2
we are guild 143 tower defense games 121, 128n
Skinner, B.F. 46, 56n Transport Layer Security (TLS) 202n
Skinner Box 46, 56n, 70, Triangle of Development 209 – 10
82, 112n Triangle of Free to Play 267
Slamjet Stadium 123 Triangle of Weirdness 103, 104, 111n
social games 12, 31 – 2, 89, 184 – 6 Tribal Wars 90
background 134 – 5 Tribes 143
complexity of 138 Trubshaw, 134
defining relationships 137 TV cliffhangers 155, 163n
298 Index

Tversky, Amos 56n The Walking Dead 104, 120, 128n

Twitter 160 Warhammer Quest 243
Warman, Peter 16n
UK Office of Fair Trading 7 Warren, Richard 71n
uncertainty 264 waterfall approach 215 – 16
ambiguity 120 – 1 web games 89 – 90
balanced with repeatability 118 websites 2, 15 – 16, 33 – 4, 56, 93 – 4,
and building social bonds 124 111 – 12, 128, 144 – 5, 163 – 4,
and complex systems 121 – 2 182 – 3, 202, 225 – 6, 253 – 4, 279
Easter Egg technique 124 – 5 Well of Energy Crystals
emergent behavior technique 125 – 6 271, 279n
and imbalanced economies 126 – 7 whale players 68, 173
and probability 119 Wireplay 65, 71n, 94n, 134,
real-world considerations 122 – 3 144n
skill of player 119 – 20 withering concept 48 – 9, 86
sources of 118 Words with Friends 124
taking a chance 118 – 19 World Of Warcraft 11, 135, 143
Unified Modelling Language (UML) WorldPay 252
202n
Unity 214 Xbox Live 50, 123, 135
Unreal 134 Xbox LiveArcade 10
Unreal Engine 214 Xbox One 5
US Army Labs 194
Zelda 44
video-on-demand 71n Zombie Lane 89
virtual goods 264 Zynga 31, 106, 111n, 135, 177, 182n