Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)

Aug. 23, 2013
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)
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Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)

Editor's Notes

  1. It can help to think about social structures in games as metaphors for relationships that we have in the real world. This gives perspective and context for interactions and can help you better understand what a player may be looking for depending on the type of group.
  2. These types of guild are a clever extension of typical systems and worth noting, even if they lack features we will consider necessary for this talk.
  3. I violated rule #1 in this slide: “Know your audience”. Making an obscure reference (“You don’t have to take my word for it!”) to an 80’s children’s TV show when talking to a European audience of game developers went about as well as one would expect. *sigh*
  4. This isn’t pure causation of course, but represents an extremely strong correlation. Thank you 5th Planet for sharing your stats!
  5. Similarly we see a strong correlation in ARPPU, which between that and buying percentage means that overall ARPU/LTV can easily be 10x – 20x for guild members compared to those who aren’t. Thank you Synapse for allowing us to share these numbers too!
  6. I borrowed/stole this slide from my co-worker David Chiu’s talk he gave on monetization of Eastern vs. Western games, but the pattern holds for both. The real takeaway is that long term retention is extremely powerful – here, only 2% of players get to 100 gameplays or more (that’s the left column), but those 2% represent 80% of the revenue. Guilds are a powerful long term retention feature (along with competitive PvP and really deep PvE content).
  7. By “the Draw Something effect”, I meant that many players may have forgotten about the game on their own but continued to come back for the sake of friends/family who were continuing to play. They were retained not just by their own inherent interest in the game but also by wanting to play for the sake of others.
  8. A great question was asked by an audience member about whether or not communication is a requirement for an MVG. Because players will often find their own communication methods I hadn’t considered it necessary, but there’s a very good argument that you need at least some basic ability to post an announcement.
  9. Please note, this talk is by no means an exhaustive list of decisions to make. There are plenty of other elements too (guild membership hierarchy, alliances between guilds, dealing with idle/dead guilds, handling an overly-dominant guild, etc.), but this is an attempt to be a checklist of some of the bigger and more essential things to consider as you design a guild for your game in particular.
  10. We’re going to imagine how we might add a guild construction to a more casual game. I needed a game that the audience would be familiar with but that didn’t have guilds, so this seemed like a good option. And if guilds can work for a casual game it should be an easier fit for a more core game. Hence the earlier reference to Rip Torn’s immortal quote from the movie Dodgeball, “if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”
  11. Swords & Potions, an item shop simulator, did a lot of things really well. But they had no cost for guild creation, and since you had to be in a guild with someone to trade items the result was that guilds were created frivolously, sometimes for the sake of a single trade between two people. Some guilds were still competitive and big, but it created an odd dynamic where lots of guilds were just temporary shells since there was no creation cost.
  12. As I touch on each of these design decisions to make, I’m going to then try to apply them to Candy Crush Saga as if we were given the assignment of designing guilds for the game.
  13. In Dawn of the Dragons, the purple “Honor” energy bar is only usable for guild raids. As such, to play most effectively you need to be in a guild, otherwise you’re wasting 1/3 of your energy. It’s less explicit than Game of War’s pitch, but still very effective for anyone who cares about the game.
  14. While Candy Crush may be best not to have the RPG elements of guild leveling, for core games you want to very strongly consider this. RPG elements end up being a better predictor of monetization than having multiplayer – that sense of progression and improvement is very compelling and lends itself well to free to play mechanics. Tying it in to guild features makes a lot of sense for core genres.
  15. You can see in the Clash of Clans leaderboards that national pride comes out quite often in big guilds.
  16. Being a bit more limited to aesthetic improvements, I would consider having a pretty sophisticated banner creation tool to allow the guilds to differentiate themselves, especially once they start unlocking and buying additional options.
  17. This first option, “announcements”, is the most important and probably the one that is required (potentially even for an MVG, as mentioned in an earlier slide).
  18. Guild “banks” are a pretty common construct in Asian MMORPGs and should definitely be considered for any guilds as they create some very fun and engaging experiences while also opening up options for monetization and economy adjustment.
  19. There are two primary implementations of a bank system. Leveling up is the simpler one, albeit still fun for guilds. Having a spendable guild currency gives more sense of control over progress within the guild.
  20. Membership dues change the dynamic so that instead of just occasionally putting currency into the guild to help it grow, you have to continue to donate to keep the guild at a baseline, and then go above that to grow. This helps promote regular retention while also sinking currency out very effectively.
  21. This is a case where Candy Crush is more limited, but guild bank systems should be strongly considered for every core game with guilds.
  22. I haven’t seen collective purchasing done well in a game yet, but it seems like it could be a powerful and fun system. For example, let’s say your game has sprockets, widgets, and doodads. If members of your guild collectively own a golden sprocket, a diamond widget, and an opal doodad then the guild gets a 5% damage boost. This would allow guild members to each work toward, or purchase, different parts of the collection. Spending can be spread out, or a single guild member could acquire them all, providing flexibility for members.For that last bullet point, I mean that purchased items should still be tied to the purchaser account rather than the guild. The reason is that drama will invariably occur, and if someone leaves or gets kicked out, they should keep their purchased items – otherwise you have an annoyed spender who feels cheated by both their guild and the game.
  23. By “intra-guild” I mean cooperative elements among members of a guild (as opposed to “inter-guild”, which is between different guilds). Dawn of the Dragons has guild-exclusive raids that only guild members can participate in and that use their extra purple “honor” bar instead of the normal stamina bar.
  24. Kings & Legends has regular events that guild members can participate in with each other to help the guild grow and to earn their own rewards.
  25. Swords & Potions 2 groups players into cooperative towns of shops. Players work together to fund growth of external buildings and resources to unlock new materials and customers in a persistent meta game.
  26. Not every point in this talk is going to apply to every game, and this is an example where Candy Crush is not likely to have a good explicit intra-guild cooperative element, though guild members will still cooperate to be competitive against other guilds.
  27. In Clash of Clans, only the top 10 members of a guild can get rewards if the guild places in a tournament, so there is competition to try to be in those top 10 slots. Regardless of whether there is an explicit reward, you want to give your players information to see how they measure up against other guild members.
  28. Additionally, you want to help players, and especially guild owners, track recent progress and contribution to the guild. Wartune is a great example of lots of guild design elements, but you can see in the “Contribution” column there are two numbers, the first is weekly, the second is lifetime.
  29. This sort of passive competition can be great even in casual games (which often feature high scores of friends) and help guilds optimize their members as best as possible.
  30. Clash of Clans only rewards the top 3 guilds each 2 weeks – we’ll talk about that more in the Leagues section later.
  31. First, we identify what we want our metric to be able to measure. A metric is not inherently good or effective, you need it to capture the right information. We could for example just track most games completed, but that wouldn’t reward skill or persistent growth. We could track highest level completed in the campaign, but that wouldn’t require regular participation or have any optimization.
  32. This construction for a score metric hits our 3 main goals. We normalize the score by the 3-star score (I’m assuming King has roughly balanced 3 star scores for difficulty) to measure the skill of that particular play – were you at or above the 3-star score? If so, was it by a lot? Then we multiply by the level number to scale based on difficulty roughly, but also to reward players who are farther through the campaign (thus persistent growth). And finally contribution resets each week and requires each player to complete at least 10 games to participate effectively, so we get good retention and engagement on a weekly level.
  33. Tyrant features asynchronous, ad hoc (on demand) guild battles. One guild challenges another, and then each guild has 6 hours to do as much damage as possible to the other guild’s decks. Wartune on the other hand has huge, weekly 50v50 live guild battles, which is part of the reason why the guilds get so big, since you need 50 guild members online at a time for an hour, each week.
  34. For a first pass at guilds I probably would focus on the passive design from earlier, but active challenges can certainly be added in a later release. A challenge would be best done similar to Tyrant’s system. In the talk I went with 24 hours, but I actually think that could be shortened to 4 – 6 hours on further reflection. Because this is a mobile game players always have their phones, so having to play a single round over a 4 hour period is not unreasonable and could lead to some pretty intense competition.
  35. With rewards given to only the top 3 guilds, competition is limited to only the top sliver of guild rankings. Even if you consider the passive reward of showing up on the leaderboards, only the top 50 or so of the tens of thousands of guilds really care. If I’m guild rank #1024, do I really care to move up to #1021?
  36. Similar to how we designed our Candy Crush metric, we first want to figure out what properties we want our guild competition to have, then try to create a system that satisfies those.
  37. In the 2011-2012 season, the Charlotte Bobcats won less than 11% of their games, but still remained in the NBA. Clearly this is not a system Americans are used to, but it’s a pretty interesting one, and one that I think would work well for guild competition in F2P.
  38. There are bands of competition centered around each 1/3rd of a league as guilds try to avoid being on the wrong side of the relegation/promotion line. We can also give out rewards to the top few guilds in each tier to provide good competition up there as well. In reality we would likely not have evenly-distributed tiers but instead get more narrow at the top to make it feel more exclusive and to constrain the rewards we’re giving out for membership in the better tiers. A great question was brought up after the talk: if you need to scale, do you increase the number of guilds in each tier, or the number of tiers? At the simplest level you should be fine increasing the number of guilds in each tier. Because each relegation/promotion is based on a percentage you still have lots of movement and competition. A suggestion was made to have sub-tiers instead so that guilds are grouped into smaller sections (perhaps of a fixed maximum of 100), giving closer-range competition and even more sense of movement and growth.