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

1. Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design Anthony Pecorella Director of Production for browser games Kongregate.com

2. Who am I? ● At Kongregate for 5 years, directing our browser-based virtual goods business ● Also an indie game designer, cofounder of Level Up Labs

3. ● Open platform for browser-based games ● Flash, Unity, HTML5, Java, etc. ● 15M monthly unique visitors worldwide ● Core gamers – 85% male, average age of 21 ● MMOs, RPGs, CCGs, TD, shooters, etc. ● Platform level virtual currency, “kreds” ● Mobile publisher of F2P games for core gamers ● Acquired by GameStop July 2010 What is Kongregate?

4. Some of Kongregate’s Developer Partners

5. Context for the Talk • Focus will be on free to play games, generally core-gamer in design • Primary experience is in browser, but most lessons carry over to mobile • There is no “ideal” guild, but this talk will try to help guide your design process with the right questions to ask

6. Social Structures in High School ● Ad hoc teams (dodge ball) ● Social group or friends ● School Team (football, basketball, algebra) ● School Population

7. Social Structures in Games ● Ad hoc teams (Halo, League of Legends) ● Friend list (Mafia Wars, Candy Crush Saga) ● Guilds / Clans (WoW, Clash of Clans) ● Factions / Races (SW:TOR, Planetside 2)

8. A Note on Ad Hoc Guilds • Nimblebit has tried “ad hoc” guild designs • Super flexible, but this can be a disadvantage • Decentralized membership • Little to no mutual relationships • Acts better as a fluid leaderboard than a guild

9. How Important are Guilds?

10. All That Glitters is Guild • Every one of our top 10 games has some type of guild construct • Guilds are an essential part of high-level monetization in core F2P games

11. Numerical support for guilds • Dawn of the Dragons, by 5th Planet Games • Of players who reached level 10, 49% joined a guild • Didn’t join a guild: 3.2% buyer rate • Did join a guild: 23% buyer rate

12. Numerical support for guilds • Tyrant, by Synapse Games • Looking at installs over the past year… • Non-guild members ARPPU is $36.59 • Guild members ARPPU is $91.60

13. Long Term Retention is Key

14. What can Guilds do for Me? ● Retention – regularly returning to your game (rolling D7 retention, regular players, etc.) ● Social connections create sense of belonging, and duty ● Players don’t want to let the guild down ● Keep coming back for sake of others (the Draw Something effect)

15. What can Guilds do for Me? ● Engagement – playing deeply into your game (session time, user level, advancement pace, committed players, etc.) ● Guild members are great teachers for new players ● Share late game strategy and wisdom ● Powerful elder-game content ● Members need to perform at a high level for the guild to be competitive

16. What can Guilds do for Me? ● Monetization – spending among guild members (% buyers, ARPPU, LTV, etc.) ● Indirect monetization as members upgrade their own status to be able to perform better for the guild ● Direct monetization can be done in the form of guild items and bonuses ● Helps mitigate “pay to win” feelings when you have a big spender on your team ● Some guilds exclusively recruit spenders and require continued spending from members

17. The MVG • What are the characteristics of a Minimum Viable Guild? • Guild Name: needs to be persistent and visible outside of itself • Controlled Member List: membership persists and is managed • Guild Owner: a leader/organizer that at a minimum controls the member list • [Shared content: Some sort of content, even just a score, to unify the guild members]

18. Guild Features & Decisions ● Now that we have an MVG, what, if anything, should we add to it? ● What other design questions should I consider for my game? ● We’ll use an example game…

19. Guild Design Example Game

20. Guild Attributes

21. Creating Guilds ● Should I charge money to create a guild? ● Avoid creating too much friction ● Guilds are only a means to an end, a powerful tool ● You want as many legitimate guilds as possible ● Soft currency prices make sense to avoid careless guild creation, add more sense of ownership, or to pace the player lifecycle Swords & Potions Edgebee Studios

22. ● Call them “Teams” not “Guilds”: appeal better to the demographic ● For consistency, will be referred to as “guilds” in this talk anyway ● Collect 7 tickets from friends to start a guild and become Guild Owner ● Enhances sense of ownership ● Acts as initial seed for guild members Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

23. Joining a Guild ● Introduce guilds at an appropriate time to players. Once they unlock them then they’ll be interested in exploring them. ● Have a good matchmaking algorithm for players who want to find a guild. ● Guild owners will generally want options for open enrollment, approval, or invite-only

24. Joining a Guild ● Provide incentives for joining a guild. Game of War Machine Zone Dawn of the Dragons 5th Planet Games

25. ● A player searching for a guild will be matched up based on having similar game progression to the average guild member ● Players are encouraged to join a guild after they finish level 20, incentivized to do so with a free power-up or free progress to next section Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

26. Guild Size ● Not a clear best practice that I’m aware of ● Many games max out guilds in the 40 – 50 range (Tyrant, Clash of Clans, Clash of the Dragons) ● Other games much larger (Wartune: 210, Dawn of the Dragons: 250) ● Some games use alliances, officially or unofficially, to increase guild size ● In many cases guild size increases as it levels up or gets items. Tyrant ranges from 15 – 50, Wartune from 30 – 210.

27. Guild Size ● Focus on the functionality within your game ● Do you need lots of concurrent players in a guild for live, real time events? Larger may make more sense. ● Is it important for members to know each other well and coordinate strategy and plans? Keep it small and intimate.

28. ● More casual, social demographic, likely to already know everyone, or want to get to know everyone, in the guild ● Ideal size is probably around 20 ● Keeping with the more simple, casual style we won’t have guilds level up or increase in size Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

29. Guild Identity ● Help your players develop bonds to their guild and guild mates and to express themselves ● Name – often has hobbies, national pride, or puns ● Guild colors/emblem/image to show off ● Many will build their own guild pages, forums, etc. Clash of Clans Supercell

30. ● Guild emblem creation ● Option of background shapes, textures ● Choose main overlay image ● Choose primary and secondary colors Candy Crush Guild Battles Game of Thrones Ascent Disruptor Beam Diablo III Blizzard • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

31. Guild Features

32. Guild Communication ● Guilds are a social construct, so let people communicate! ● Focus first on guild-specific, necessary communication ● Asynchronous ● Announcements: one-to-many from the guild leader, useful and important ● Forums: much more flexible, good for persistent discussion of strategy, planning, recruitment, etc. ● Guilds will often do this for you!

33. Guild Communication ● Synchronous ● Chat: good for larger guilds, real-time games, or long session games ● Semi-persistent gives a “best of both worlds” Clash of Clans Supercell

34. ● Guilds are likely to contain a lot of real-life friends ● A semi-persistent chat would be a fairly simple and effective communication channel Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

35. The Guild Bank ● A place for players to donate or contribute currency to a shared pool for the guild ● One-way process, typically converted into a guild-specific currency that may or may not be spendable ● A fantastic sink for soft currency out of the economy ● Typically hard currency can be used at a substantial multiplier to soft currency

36. The Guild Bank ● Leveling up ● Simple implementation, more akin to XP. Players contribute to the guild which adds to the guild XP. Guild levels up at various thresholds. ● Spendable bank currency ● Similar to leveling up, but gives the guild owner the ability to select guild-wide upgrades to buy with the currency. Gives more direct ownership over the guild growth, allows leader to give goals for players to meet.

37. The Guild Bank ● Membership dues ● An even more effective way to sink soft currency. This is a guild-wide, weekly amount that must be paid to keep the guild from demoting. Scales with size, very useful lever for balancing. ● Contribution credits ● Members get a credit for each donation to spend at a guild shop. ● Opens up possibility of guild-exclusive items. ● Gives top guild members an individual benefit scaled to their own contribution.

38. ● Lacking a currency there won’t be any way to donate or contribute to a guild bank ● That said, I would strongly consider adding a guild bank to house winnings from competitions so team captains can buy cool stuff for the team Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

39. Guild Items ● Bonuses for the entire guild, acquired either from the bank or by players ● Paid guild items seem be to fairly rare, but a great opportunity ● Caesary had a $100 item that would increase the guild size by 200 people, sold quite well ● Collective purchasing is a possibility too ● Items should travel with the purchaser

40. ● Guild Store ● Allow captains to spend team points to buy guild banner customization ● Some options in the store would also be locked off by league level ● Purchased Guild Items ● Aesthetic items can be sold to guild members directly to share with the guild ● Potential for high-priced shared items: all guild mates get +1 life permanently for $99.99 • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues Candy Crush Guild Battles

41. Guild Competition / Cooperation

42. Intra-guild Cooperation ● Cooperative PvE ● Often not guild-specific, but may offer bonuses for doing it with guild mates ● Guild raids ● Summon guild-exclusive raids to challenge with just your guild mates for rewards Dawn of the Dragons 5th Planet Games

43. Intra-guild Cooperation ● Event participation ● Guild members work together to achieve goals during events Kings & Legends ChangYou

44. Intra-guild Cooperation ● Cooperative construction ● Work together toward persistent improvements Swords & Potions 2 Edgebee Studios

45. ● There really isn’t anything that would make sense for intra-guild co-op, at least not for a first pass Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

46. Intra-guild Competition ● Not necessarily explicit, though sometimes is (Clash of Clans) ● Provide player progress metrics for members to see how they compare to everyone else. Level, trophies, etc. ● Am I pulling my weight? Am I behind everyone else?

47. Intra-guild Competition ● Provide short term metrics to track recent activity. Last login, weekly contribution, etc. ● Did I do my fair share this week? ● As a guild owner, is there anyone I need to speak to or cut? Wartune R2 Games

48. ● Provide leaderboard within a guild ● Player name ● Highest level unlocked ● Games contributed this week ● Score contributed this week ● Tapping on a player’s name brings up a second page that shows the specifics of their weekly contribution Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

49. Inter-guild Competition (Passive) ● If you have a metric you can rank all guilds. ● Provide a regular benefit for high-ranked guilds to incentivize performance. ● Clash of Clans does this well…somewhat. Clash of Clans Supercell

50. ● We need a guild metric to compare ● Requires regular, continued participation ● Rewards skill ● Rewards persistent growth week to week Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

51. ● Weekly contribution from each member to the guild score ● Completing a game generates a guild contribution value ● Top ten contribution scores from each player count toward the guild’s weekly total points Contribution = Level _Score 3_Star_Score ´ Level _ Number Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

52. Inter-guild Competition (Active) ● If it makes sense for your game, active competition can be very powerful ● Can be synch or asynch, scheduled or ad hoc Tryant Synapse Games Watune R2 Games

53. ● Don’t need any direct, active competition – the ranking system should suffice, especially for a first version ● Could potentially be done through a challenge system on a particular, or randomly-generated level ● Each guild has 24 hours to post scores ● Top 10 scores from each guild count Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

54. A Quick Look at Leagues

55. Leagues ● In Clash of Clans, the top 3 clans get a reward. Competition is fierce at the top, but what about everywhere else? Weak Strong All Guilds Intense Competition

56. Leagues ● Leagues are sometimes used in highly-competitive games like League of Legends and StarCraft II. ● Clash of Clans actually has leagues too, but they’re individual rather than clan-based. ● Players move into higher leagues by increasing their core metric, being promoted when they hit various thresholds.

57. Leagues ● Could we design a better league for free to play? Can it work for Guilds? What would it do? ● Have a relatively short season or cycle ● Provide rewards to promote retention and engagement ● Be directly competitive, zero-sum to promote fierce competition and indirectly engagement/monetization ● Provide sufficient number of tiers to allow for feeling of growth

58. Relegation/Promotion Leagues ● This is pretty foreign to American sports fans ● Move away from score tiers, instead make it population- based ● Each level has a fixed percentage of population, guilds must fight to move up or down each “season”

59. Relegation/Promotion Leagues ● Reconcile on a weekly basis ● Each week, process promotions and demotions ● 1/3 jeopardy rate: 33% of each level moves down one level, corresponding guilds from lower level move up ● After the moves, give out weekly rewards for membership Weak Strong All Guilds Intense Competition

60. ● A 16-tier promotion/relegation league system ● Weekly rewards would include team cash (to buy emblem customization items) ● Special rewards for top 10 teams in each league (small number of boosts) Candy Crush Guild Battles • Creation • Joining • Size • Identity • Communication • Bank • Items • Intra-guild cooperation • Intra-guild competition • Inter-guild passive • Inter-guild active • Leagues

61. Wrap-up ● Design guilds with a focus on retention, engagement, and monetization ● Think about how decisions affect player behavior and relationships ● Be creative, look for new applications and mechanics that make sense for your game

62. Thank you! ● For these slides & more talks, visit dev.kongregate.com ● Web games: apps@kongregate.com ● Mobile publishing: mobile@kongregate.com ● Follow us on Twitter: @KongregateDevs

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)

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