Every Kongregate talk they're always saying "guilds, guilds, guilds". Sure, but does that even work for my type of game? And what should a guild design for my game look like?
In this design-focused talk, guilds will be deconstructed into their kernel and then built back up feature-by-feature with an eye on implications for retention, monetization, and engagement. Examples from the industry will be used to look at best practices and missed opportunities while it explores traditional and experimental guild elements. It will also walk through the exercise designing a guild system for a popular casual game, challenging the audience to step outside the boundaries of traditional genres when thinking about guilds in games.
With free-to-play games, you need to plan your live operations strategy as carefully as you plan your game. Learn how to use in-game events and promotions to drive retention and monetization of your game.
Idle Games: The Mechanics and Monetization of Self-Playing GamesKongregate
Idle (or incremental) games is one of the newest genres of video games. At first glance this may be perplexing to "core" gamers, but there are a lot of interesting systems at play that keep the games fun and entertaining, and can even make them into a viable free-to-play business.
Killer Design Patterns for F2P Mobile/Tablet GamesHenric Suuronen
Presentation on Design Patterns for Mobile and Tablet games presented in July 2013 at ChinaJoy in Shanghai by Henric Suuronen, President & Co-Founder at Nonstop Games
Life After Launch: How to Grow Mobile Games with In-Game EventsSimon Hade
Presentation from a talk by Space Ape COO Simon Hade at GDC Europe in June 2016. To see the video of the talk and related presentations see http://links.spaceapegames.com/liveops
Kongregate - Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Gam...David Piao Chiu
Presentation from Digital Taipei 2013 on Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Games with a Comparative Analysis of Asian & Western F2P Games
Space Ape's Live Ops Stack: Engineering Mobile Games for Live Ops from Day 1Simon Hade
To view the accompanying video see http://links.spaceapegames.com/liveops
Around half of the $80m revenue generated by Space Ape’s three mid-core build and battle games is attributable to in game events. By adopting a flexible forward looking approach to tools development Space Ape efficiently operates their games with very small non-technical teams maintaining major weekly content update cycles.
In this talk, Space Ape’s senior Live Ops specialists give a demo of their tools and workflows and share the content strategies that have allowed them to grow revenues whilst enabling the studio to focus the majority of its development capacity on creating new games and IP.
DESIGNING SUCCESSFUL LIVE OPS SYSTEMS IN FREE TO PLAY GACHA ECONOMIES
Space Ape shipped Transformers:Earth Wars in the Summer pre-baked with the community events tools that had worked so well in their previous game, Rival Kingdoms. However, they soon realised that many of the old tricks did not apply to the game’s gacha collection economy which had more in common with Kabam’s Contest of Champions than the linear economies of most Build and Battle games. In this talk Space Ape’s Live Ops Lead Andrew Munden (formerly Live Ops Lead at Kabam) will share the content strategies that work in gacha collection games as well as how to build a manageable content furnace and balance player fatigue in a sustainable way.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF IN-GAME TARGETING.
Analytics lead Fred Easy (ex Betfair, Playfish/EA) will share the evolution of his offer targeting technology from it’s belt and braces beginnings to sophisticated value based targeting and the transition to a dynamic in-session machine learning approach.
UNDER THE HOOD: RIVAL KINGDOM'S CMS TOOLS
Game changing content is introduced to Rival Kingdoms every month, with in game events at least every week. Product Manager Mitchell Smallman (formerly Rovio, Next Games) and Steven Hsiao (competitive StarCraft player turned community manager turned Live Ops lead) will demonstrate the content management tools that allow them to keep the game fresh for players without developer support. This will include the tools for configuring competitive events, inserting new content into the game as well as how they measure performance of the changes and optimise on the fly. Learn how these tools enabled them to grow revenue for 6 consecutive months with no marketing spend.
To find out more about the developer go to www.spaceapegames.com
With free-to-play games, you need to plan your live operations strategy as carefully as you plan your game. Learn how to use in-game events and promotions to drive retention and monetization of your game.
Idle Games: The Mechanics and Monetization of Self-Playing GamesKongregate
Idle (or incremental) games is one of the newest genres of video games. At first glance this may be perplexing to "core" gamers, but there are a lot of interesting systems at play that keep the games fun and entertaining, and can even make them into a viable free-to-play business.
Killer Design Patterns for F2P Mobile/Tablet GamesHenric Suuronen
Presentation on Design Patterns for Mobile and Tablet games presented in July 2013 at ChinaJoy in Shanghai by Henric Suuronen, President & Co-Founder at Nonstop Games
Life After Launch: How to Grow Mobile Games with In-Game EventsSimon Hade
Presentation from a talk by Space Ape COO Simon Hade at GDC Europe in June 2016. To see the video of the talk and related presentations see http://links.spaceapegames.com/liveops
Kongregate - Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Gam...David Piao Chiu
Presentation from Digital Taipei 2013 on Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Games with a Comparative Analysis of Asian & Western F2P Games
Space Ape's Live Ops Stack: Engineering Mobile Games for Live Ops from Day 1Simon Hade
To view the accompanying video see http://links.spaceapegames.com/liveops
Around half of the $80m revenue generated by Space Ape’s three mid-core build and battle games is attributable to in game events. By adopting a flexible forward looking approach to tools development Space Ape efficiently operates their games with very small non-technical teams maintaining major weekly content update cycles.
In this talk, Space Ape’s senior Live Ops specialists give a demo of their tools and workflows and share the content strategies that have allowed them to grow revenues whilst enabling the studio to focus the majority of its development capacity on creating new games and IP.
DESIGNING SUCCESSFUL LIVE OPS SYSTEMS IN FREE TO PLAY GACHA ECONOMIES
Space Ape shipped Transformers:Earth Wars in the Summer pre-baked with the community events tools that had worked so well in their previous game, Rival Kingdoms. However, they soon realised that many of the old tricks did not apply to the game’s gacha collection economy which had more in common with Kabam’s Contest of Champions than the linear economies of most Build and Battle games. In this talk Space Ape’s Live Ops Lead Andrew Munden (formerly Live Ops Lead at Kabam) will share the content strategies that work in gacha collection games as well as how to build a manageable content furnace and balance player fatigue in a sustainable way.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF IN-GAME TARGETING.
Analytics lead Fred Easy (ex Betfair, Playfish/EA) will share the evolution of his offer targeting technology from it’s belt and braces beginnings to sophisticated value based targeting and the transition to a dynamic in-session machine learning approach.
UNDER THE HOOD: RIVAL KINGDOM'S CMS TOOLS
Game changing content is introduced to Rival Kingdoms every month, with in game events at least every week. Product Manager Mitchell Smallman (formerly Rovio, Next Games) and Steven Hsiao (competitive StarCraft player turned community manager turned Live Ops lead) will demonstrate the content management tools that allow them to keep the game fresh for players without developer support. This will include the tools for configuring competitive events, inserting new content into the game as well as how they measure performance of the changes and optimise on the fly. Learn how these tools enabled them to grow revenue for 6 consecutive months with no marketing spend.
To find out more about the developer go to www.spaceapegames.com
An introduction to how Space Ape Games runs Live Operations. This lecture will cover a variety of topics from pricing to event schedules. This is an ideal starting point for anyone new to Live Operations or who simply wants to sanity check their own processes against another's.
Personalisation as the key to optimising your game's revenue & LTV.GameCamp
What are good and bad approach towards personalisation based on the data? How to use personalisation to improve LTV in mobile games. Good examples of personalisation in mobile games.
Game Design - Retention
The Deck covers some of the basic aspects and mechanisms of social game design. This is the 1st out of 4 decks, covering the aspects needed for amplifying RETENTION among players and users
The series includes 4 chapters: Engagement, Virality, Retention, Growth
ABOUT SPACE APE
Space Ape's hit real time strategy game, Samurai Siege, has been played by over 11m people and generated over $50m in revenue since it's launch in October 2013. The game was built by a team of 12 over 6 months.
Samurai Siege has sustained in the grossing charts where many come and go in no small part because of the team's focus on live operations. Every week new content is pushed live, marketing strategies are refreshed and the game is optimised based on a combination of player research and analytics.
ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
This presentation shows the evolution of the Samurai Siege analytics stack and some of the applications of the data by Space Ape's product, marketing and community teams.
The stack started as a simple MVP but evolved over time as the game matured and the competitive landscape changed. It is now a fully functioning service that was easily replicated to support the launch of their next game Rival Kingdoms (currently in public Beta). As such, the presentation will be of interest to smaller games studios who are figuring out how to prioritise investment in data as well as established studios who might be re-thinking their legacy systems and figuring out how to bring the data focus needed to succeed in the modern free to play games business.
This presentation was made by Space Ape's analyst Richard Reyes and shared with local game developers at the Great British Big Data Game Show & Tell in London on 25 February 2015.
For more on Space Ape's Live Ops and Analytics stacks see
https://tech.spaceapegames.com/2016/12/07/space-ape-live-ops-boot-camp/
Idle Clicker Games Presentation (Casual Connect USA 2017)David Piao Chiu
Idle Clicker Games: Why are they so popular and how can I get in on the action?
Idle clicker games are a young genre that has seen explosive growth in the last few years thanks to the popularity of games such as Clicker Heroes and AdVenture Capitalist. This session will explore the evolution of the idle genre from simple indie projects to games with major licensed IPs and celebrities (Chuck Norris, WWE, Crazy Taxi, He-Man, etc.). We will also share best practices for improving retention and monetization (both IAP and ads).
PlayFab runs a LiveOps backend services platform that handles more than 35 million monthly active players, on more than 450 live games, from studios and publishers that include Miniclip, Rovio, Hyper Hippo, Capcom, Bandai-Namco, and Atari. Getting to that level of scalability hasn’t been easy, and this talk describes the times when PlayFab nearly went down – and what architecture changes we needed to make each time to reach the next level of growth. This talk also shares some of the unique challenges of operating a shared platform, where problems are often not PlayFab’s fault, but always PlayFab’s responsibility, including game bugs that look like DDoS attacks, platform partners who break their APIs, and the joys of cascading server failures.
Anthony Pecorella's talk at GDC Europe covering the math and design of idle games. This talk goes into details about formulas and progression systems as well as tools available for balancing these systems. Bonus sections include a quick look at stupidly-large numbers and a summary of some recent notable additions to the idle game genre.
You can try the spreadsheet models out at http://kon.gg/idle-math-spreadsheets.
Game Design - Monetization
The Deck covers some of the basic aspects and mechanisms of social game design. This is the 1st out of 4 decks, covering the aspects needed for amplifying MONETIZATION among players and users
The series includes 4 chapters: Engagement, Virality, Retention, Monetization
Lean Live Ops - Free Your Devs (annotated edition) - Joe RaeburnSimon Hade
Space Ape has become well known Live Ops through the success of it's mobile games Transformers:Earth Wars, Rival Kingdoms and Samurai Siege. Combined these games have generated over $90m in sales from over 35m people. In this GDC presentation, Space Ape's Joe Raeburn talks about how the studio organized itself for Live Ops, to free up the majority of the studio to work on new projects.
For more on Space Ape and Live Ops see: https://tech.spaceapegames.com/2017/03/06/space-ape-live-ops-boot-camp-part-2-gdc-edition/
The benefits of operating a free-to-play "game-as-a-service" are well known: elastic pricing, a direct relationship with your players, longer lifespan, and an opportunity to fine-tune after launch. But to fully realize these benefits, you need to plan your live operations strategy as carefully as you plan your game. This talk will show how you can build an effective LiveOps strategy using PlayFab.
A high-speed run through some of the most important and interesting patterns and advice that we've discovered about our games on Kongregate. This talk was given by Anthony Pecorella at Casual Connect Kyiv.
An introduction to how Space Ape Games runs Live Operations. This lecture will cover a variety of topics from pricing to event schedules. This is an ideal starting point for anyone new to Live Operations or who simply wants to sanity check their own processes against another's.
Personalisation as the key to optimising your game's revenue & LTV.GameCamp
What are good and bad approach towards personalisation based on the data? How to use personalisation to improve LTV in mobile games. Good examples of personalisation in mobile games.
Game Design - Retention
The Deck covers some of the basic aspects and mechanisms of social game design. This is the 1st out of 4 decks, covering the aspects needed for amplifying RETENTION among players and users
The series includes 4 chapters: Engagement, Virality, Retention, Growth
ABOUT SPACE APE
Space Ape's hit real time strategy game, Samurai Siege, has been played by over 11m people and generated over $50m in revenue since it's launch in October 2013. The game was built by a team of 12 over 6 months.
Samurai Siege has sustained in the grossing charts where many come and go in no small part because of the team's focus on live operations. Every week new content is pushed live, marketing strategies are refreshed and the game is optimised based on a combination of player research and analytics.
ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
This presentation shows the evolution of the Samurai Siege analytics stack and some of the applications of the data by Space Ape's product, marketing and community teams.
The stack started as a simple MVP but evolved over time as the game matured and the competitive landscape changed. It is now a fully functioning service that was easily replicated to support the launch of their next game Rival Kingdoms (currently in public Beta). As such, the presentation will be of interest to smaller games studios who are figuring out how to prioritise investment in data as well as established studios who might be re-thinking their legacy systems and figuring out how to bring the data focus needed to succeed in the modern free to play games business.
This presentation was made by Space Ape's analyst Richard Reyes and shared with local game developers at the Great British Big Data Game Show & Tell in London on 25 February 2015.
For more on Space Ape's Live Ops and Analytics stacks see
https://tech.spaceapegames.com/2016/12/07/space-ape-live-ops-boot-camp/
Idle Clicker Games Presentation (Casual Connect USA 2017)David Piao Chiu
Idle Clicker Games: Why are they so popular and how can I get in on the action?
Idle clicker games are a young genre that has seen explosive growth in the last few years thanks to the popularity of games such as Clicker Heroes and AdVenture Capitalist. This session will explore the evolution of the idle genre from simple indie projects to games with major licensed IPs and celebrities (Chuck Norris, WWE, Crazy Taxi, He-Man, etc.). We will also share best practices for improving retention and monetization (both IAP and ads).
PlayFab runs a LiveOps backend services platform that handles more than 35 million monthly active players, on more than 450 live games, from studios and publishers that include Miniclip, Rovio, Hyper Hippo, Capcom, Bandai-Namco, and Atari. Getting to that level of scalability hasn’t been easy, and this talk describes the times when PlayFab nearly went down – and what architecture changes we needed to make each time to reach the next level of growth. This talk also shares some of the unique challenges of operating a shared platform, where problems are often not PlayFab’s fault, but always PlayFab’s responsibility, including game bugs that look like DDoS attacks, platform partners who break their APIs, and the joys of cascading server failures.
Anthony Pecorella's talk at GDC Europe covering the math and design of idle games. This talk goes into details about formulas and progression systems as well as tools available for balancing these systems. Bonus sections include a quick look at stupidly-large numbers and a summary of some recent notable additions to the idle game genre.
You can try the spreadsheet models out at http://kon.gg/idle-math-spreadsheets.
Game Design - Monetization
The Deck covers some of the basic aspects and mechanisms of social game design. This is the 1st out of 4 decks, covering the aspects needed for amplifying MONETIZATION among players and users
The series includes 4 chapters: Engagement, Virality, Retention, Monetization
Lean Live Ops - Free Your Devs (annotated edition) - Joe RaeburnSimon Hade
Space Ape has become well known Live Ops through the success of it's mobile games Transformers:Earth Wars, Rival Kingdoms and Samurai Siege. Combined these games have generated over $90m in sales from over 35m people. In this GDC presentation, Space Ape's Joe Raeburn talks about how the studio organized itself for Live Ops, to free up the majority of the studio to work on new projects.
For more on Space Ape and Live Ops see: https://tech.spaceapegames.com/2017/03/06/space-ape-live-ops-boot-camp-part-2-gdc-edition/
The benefits of operating a free-to-play "game-as-a-service" are well known: elastic pricing, a direct relationship with your players, longer lifespan, and an opportunity to fine-tune after launch. But to fully realize these benefits, you need to plan your live operations strategy as carefully as you plan your game. This talk will show how you can build an effective LiveOps strategy using PlayFab.
A high-speed run through some of the most important and interesting patterns and advice that we've discovered about our games on Kongregate. This talk was given by Anthony Pecorella at Casual Connect Kyiv.
Breaking Labels: Core, Casual, and Other Misconceptions -- Casual Connect Eur...emily_greer
As video games become more and more mainstream the industry labels of "core games" and "casual games" become less and less useful. I'll look at the forces that drove the categories, what's breaking them down, and how it changes how we should think about games.
In the last five years, data analysis, A/B testing and predictive modeling have transitioned from an afterthought to a given in the game industry. Data can be invaluable in understanding the player and making decisions, but it can just as easily lead us astray. This talk exposes common mistakes and pitfalls, both technical and emotional, as well as provide practical guidance on how to improve the rigorousness of your tests and the quality of your data.
GDC 2014 Core Games, Real Numbers: Going Cross-Platformemily_greer
Kongregate has been sharing great data on web games for years - now they're launching mobile games and are ready to start sharing iOS and Android numbers as well. Learn how monetization differs by platform, country, and device, what type of CPIs to expect for different kinds of games, and what's most important in making your free-to-play mobile game a success.
Don't Call Them Whales: Free-to-Play Spenders & Virtual Value GDC 2015emily_greer
Individual large spenders -- so called "whales"-- form the foundation of the free-to-play business model that has overtaken the game industry in the last few years. This talk from GDC 2015 examines this phenomenon by looking at demographics, play and buying patterns for big spenders on the Kongregate web platform and mobile games, how expectations of game spending and value are formed, and how attitudes toward spenders and spending shape the whole industry -- not just free-to-play.
Effective Testing of Free-to-Play Gamesemily_greer
Mobile games have become increasingly high-stakes over the last few years. Successful games make billions, but most games launch to failure, and few get a second chance from either platforms or players. Most developers test their games in various ways, from individual playtest sessions to geo-locked launches in Canada and Australia. But many games still launch with poor retention, monetization, tech problems, or some combination of the three. What's going wrong?
Kongregate has now put more than 20 games through test markets, learning valuable lessons along the way. This talk from GDC 2016 is a pragmatic guide to creating a test strategy, taking into account budget and schedule along with the benefits and pitfalls of various methods and the psychological traps that teams fall into as they evaluate results. The talk is illustrated by case studies and metrics from Kongregate's portfolio including AdVenture Capitalist, Spellstone, Raid Brigade and more.
Kongregate - Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Gam...David Piao Chiu
Kongregate - Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Games: Comparative Stats for 2D & 3D Games and Asian & Western Games (MIGS 2013 Presentation)
The Great Escape from the Prison House of Language: Games, Production Studies...Sebastian Deterding
My talk at the DiGRA/FDG 2016 "Why production studies? Why now?" panel, asking how production studies can answer to basic cultural and hermeneutic questions.
Slides from the GDC Online presentation of 5th Planet Games' Robert Winkler, on "Guilds, Councils and Community: Monetizing Cooperation in Free-to-Play Games"
Kongregate - Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Gam...David Piao Chiu
Tokyo Game Show 2013 JETRO presentation:
Kongregate - Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Games: Comparative Stats for Asian & Western Games
DavidPChiu Kongregate - Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-...David Piao Chiu
Presentation from the Brazil Independent Games (BIG) Festival 2014 on Maximizing Player Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Games with a Comparative Analysis of Asian & Western F2P Games
This presentation was given at the first London Game Developer Meet-up (http://www.meetup.com/London-Game-Developers/) at the Innovation Warehouse on 27/01/12
For more information, visit: www.adriancrook.com
There are many reasons to opt for the Free-To-Play monetization model. At the forefront is that Free-to-Play games are generating more money than premium sales at nearly a 10-1 margin.
It is not just the big AAA productions that can succeed. With an average of 15,000,000 Steam Players online at any given time and 90 million console gamers in the US alone, strictly considering a mobile publishing avenue severely limits your audience reach. In addition, plenty of these platforms are doing their best to embrace the F2P evolution in gaming.
A+C has 10 years and over 130 clients worth of freemium experience. From increased monetization to retention and virality, we have delivered for clients such as LEGO, Pokemon, Electronic Arts, Zynga and many more.
This is a presentation we gave at Gameplay Space in Montreal recently, to a room full of indie developers.
Contact us at www.adriancrook.com today.
mixi’s (XFLAG) Pursuit of Growth in Esports and Community | Langer LeeJessica Tams
Delivered at Casual Connect Asia 2017. Esports and community go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other. With the ongoing growth of the esports scene, mixi (XFLAG)’s strategy for current and upcoming games revolves around creating synergy between both the competitive scene and the community that supports it. Learn how mixi will take esports to the next level.
Winning More Customer Engagement with GamificationCara Pluff
South Florida Code Camp presentation by Cara Pluff, Director of Marketing at www.appliedi.net, and Kody Betonte, Interactive Marketing Manager at www.arrowdesigns.com.
Learn about gamification and how you can use it to further engaged your customers and increase sales.
Tammy Levy at GDC 2019: Nature vs. Nurture: Unpacking Player Spending in F2P ...Kongregate
Have players committed to spending money in free-to-play games before they even install the game? Are you wasting time trying to get more people to spend money in your game? What monetization metrics should you be focusing on improving instead? In this GDC 2019 talk, Tammy Levy uses several case studies from live Kongregate games to explore how and why some player behaviors are easier and more rewarding to change, while others have a nearly unbreakable ceiling.
Emily Greer at GDC 2018: Data-Driven or Data-Blinded?Kongregate
In the last decade of data analysis, A/B testing and predictive modeling have transitioned from an afterthought to a given in the game industry. Data can be invaluable in understanding the player and making decisions, but it can just as easily lead the industry astray, or worse, narrow the way the industry thinks. When should you be driven by data, and when should you let your imagination roam free? This session will expose common mistakes and pitfalls, both technical and emotional, as well as provide practical guidance on how to improve the rigorousness of your tests and the quality of your data, and how to make sure you don't lose the forest for the trees.
Emily Greer at GDC 2018: Data-Driven or Data-Blinded?Kongregate
In the last decade of data analysis, A/B testing and predictive modeling have transitioned from an afterthought to a given in the game industry. Data can be invaluable in understanding the player and making decisions, but it can just as easily lead the industry astray, or worse, narrow the way the industry thinks. When should you be driven by data, and when should you let your imagination roam free? This session will expose common mistakes and pitfalls, both technical and emotional, as well as provide practical guidance on how to improve the rigorousness of your tests and the quality of your data, and how to make sure you don't lose the forest for the trees.
All the Families: The Making of Animation Throwdown (GDC 2018)Kongregate
Ever wonder what it would be like to create a AAA game with a skeleton crew, split between two developers, one publisher, one IP owner, and five individual IPs? Join two producers from Kongregate (Peter Eykemans and Katrina Wolfe) to hear how "Animation Throwdown" was created in an unusual way, and how they turned an incredible production problem into a major success.
Josh Larson’s Talk at White Nights Prague '18Kongregate
During a special Valentine’s Day session at White Nights Prague ‘18, Josh presented “Mining the Web for Cross-Platform Gems." The talk explored how Kongregate has used its web platform to discover games that have potential for cross-platform success on mobile, PC and console. By looking at hits like AdVenture Capitalist, Realm Grinder and Bit Heroes, the presentation extracts the characteristics and KPIs for cross-platform potential.
Casual Connect Seattle 2017: Did That Publisher Just Ghost Me?Kongregate
This session is a humorous look at the current state of publishers and developer relationships. It will cover everything from publisher/developer speed-dating (it exists!), ghosting, breakups good and bad, and more. Attendees gained actionable insights into better networking, creating and maintaining relationships, and what to look for in a potential publishing partner.
PC and Mobile: Going Cross Platform Post LaunchKongregate
These are slides from Mel Montano’s talks about PC and Mobile cross-platform game launches at Casual Connect Berlin and White Night Prague 2017. She uses her experience in publishing and cross-platform games via Humble Bundle to provide real-world actionable items to help in pursuing a secondary (or tertiary or more) launch on a very different platform.
Going cross-platform increases your potential audience, pleases your current userbase, and can grow your lifetime revenue. The leap from mobile to PC and vice-versa is fraught with complications from perceived game value, freemium/premium, to the specifics of UX/UI changes. This talk gives actionable insights for your cross-platform PC and mobile plans.
Enterprise Excellence is Inclusive Excellence.pdfKaiNexus
Enterprise excellence and inclusive excellence are closely linked, and real-world challenges have shown that both are essential to the success of any organization. To achieve enterprise excellence, organizations must focus on improving their operations and processes while creating an inclusive environment that engages everyone. In this interactive session, the facilitator will highlight commonly established business practices and how they limit our ability to engage everyone every day. More importantly, though, participants will likely gain increased awareness of what we can do differently to maximize enterprise excellence through deliberate inclusion.
What is Enterprise Excellence?
Enterprise Excellence is a holistic approach that's aimed at achieving world-class performance across all aspects of the organization.
What might I learn?
A way to engage all in creating Inclusive Excellence. Lessons from the US military and their parallels to the story of Harry Potter. How belt systems and CI teams can destroy inclusive practices. How leadership language invites people to the party. There are three things leaders can do to engage everyone every day: maximizing psychological safety to create environments where folks learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo.
Who might benefit? Anyone and everyone leading folks from the shop floor to top floor.
Dr. William Harvey is a seasoned Operations Leader with extensive experience in chemical processing, manufacturing, and operations management. At Michelman, he currently oversees multiple sites, leading teams in strategic planning and coaching/practicing continuous improvement. William is set to start his eighth year of teaching at the University of Cincinnati where he teaches marketing, finance, and management. William holds various certifications in change management, quality, leadership, operational excellence, team building, and DiSC, among others.
Kseniya Leshchenko: Shared development support service model as the way to ma...Lviv Startup Club
Kseniya Leshchenko: Shared development support service model as the way to make small projects with small budgets profitable for the company (UA)
Kyiv PMDay 2024 Summer
Website – www.pmday.org
Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/startuplviv
FB – https://www.facebook.com/pmdayconference
Digital Transformation and IT Strategy Toolkit and TemplatesAurelien Domont, MBA
This Digital Transformation and IT Strategy Toolkit was created by ex-McKinsey, Deloitte and BCG Management Consultants, after more than 5,000 hours of work. It is considered the world's best & most comprehensive Digital Transformation and IT Strategy Toolkit. It includes all the Frameworks, Best Practices & Templates required to successfully undertake the Digital Transformation of your organization and define a robust IT Strategy.
Editable Toolkit to help you reuse our content: 700 Powerpoint slides | 35 Excel sheets | 84 minutes of Video training
This PowerPoint presentation is only a small preview of our Toolkits. For more details, visit www.domontconsulting.com
Attending a job Interview for B1 and B2 Englsih learnersErika906060
It is a sample of an interview for a business english class for pre-intermediate and intermediate english students with emphasis on the speking ability.
Tata Group Dials Taiwan for Its Chipmaking Ambition in Gujarat’s DholeraAvirahi City Dholera
The Tata Group, a titan of Indian industry, is making waves with its advanced talks with Taiwanese chipmakers Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) and UMC Group. The goal? Establishing a cutting-edge semiconductor fabrication unit (fab) in Dholera, Gujarat. This isn’t just any project; it’s a potential game changer for India’s chipmaking aspirations and a boon for investors seeking promising residential projects in dholera sir.
Visit : https://www.avirahi.com/blog/tata-group-dials-taiwan-for-its-chipmaking-ambition-in-gujarats-dholera/
Implicitly or explicitly all competing businesses employ a strategy to select a mix
of marketing resources. Formulating such competitive strategies fundamentally
involves recognizing relationships between elements of the marketing mix (e.g.,
price and product quality), as well as assessing competitive and market conditions
(i.e., industry structure in the language of economics).
[Note: This is a partial preview. To download this presentation, visit:
https://www.oeconsulting.com.sg/training-presentations]
Sustainability has become an increasingly critical topic as the world recognizes the need to protect our planet and its resources for future generations. Sustainability means meeting our current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. It involves long-term planning and consideration of the consequences of our actions. The goal is to create strategies that ensure the long-term viability of People, Planet, and Profit.
Leading companies such as Nike, Toyota, and Siemens are prioritizing sustainable innovation in their business models, setting an example for others to follow. In this Sustainability training presentation, you will learn key concepts, principles, and practices of sustainability applicable across industries. This training aims to create awareness and educate employees, senior executives, consultants, and other key stakeholders, including investors, policymakers, and supply chain partners, on the importance and implementation of sustainability.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental principles and concepts that form the foundation of sustainability within corporate environments.
2. Explore the sustainability implementation model, focusing on effective measures and reporting strategies to track and communicate sustainability efforts.
3. Identify and define best practices and critical success factors essential for achieving sustainability goals within organizations.
CONTENTS
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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?
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
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
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…
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
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
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
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
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
Editor's Notes
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.
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.
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*
This isn’t pure causation of course, but represents an extremely strong correlation. Thank you 5th Planet for sharing your stats!
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!
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can see in the Clash of Clans leaderboards that national pride comes out quite often in big guilds.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
This is a case where Candy Crush is more limited, but guild bank systems should be strongly considered for every core game with guilds.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clash of Clans only rewards the top 3 guilds each 2 weeks – we’ll talk about that more in the Leagues section later.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.