Christina Norman (@truffle) is currently working for Bioware. She designs Mass Effect games. Here are her tweets livereporting Game Developers Conference 2011, particularly about player retention in social games.
Social games focus too much on short term tricks to try and retain and squeeze players at the expense of long term relationships #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Fewer meaningful social relationships are more rewarding than many superficial relationships. #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Example of a meaningful relationship is tank healer in an mmo, strong dependency. Less is me visiting your farm and harvesting corn. #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Motivators: competence/mastery, giving improved capabilities to players (like health) or gameplay that involves skill #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Autonomy: purely linear games with no player choice have low autonomous appeal, truly open world games are strong in this area #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Relatedness: the ability to play the game with others in a variety of ways. Games don't need all of these but each increases appeal #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
This guy's basic hypothesis is relatedness, mastery and autonomy are three ways of providing intrinsic motivation to players to play #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Extrinsic motivations are rewards, badges, basically paying some kind of currency for achievement or loyalty. #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Intrinsic motivators are more likely to produce a sense of satisfaction, enjoyment, and loyalty. #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Metrics help track and modify player activity but not player motivation. Are you increasing satisfaction or pressure/obligation? #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Tip: telegraph future opportunities, this is basically showing long term progression so players can have aspirational goals. #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Old example: in farmville you used to be able to see corn unlocked at 24, but didn't know the stats, now you can see stats before it unlocks—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
Quest lists (lists of things you haven't done yet) encourage players to return, once it's done players don't care, drop it #gdc11—
Christina Norman (@truffle) March 01, 2011
You may also be interested in:
GDC 2011: @truffle’s Tweets on Behavioral Economics Talk
GDC 2011: @truffle’s Tweets on Developing Story in Social Games
Sumatran
June 2, 2011 at 4:45 PM
Good review, as usual! Nice post, btw.