This document discusses key considerations for designing games with a LiveOps strategy focused on long-term engagement and retention of players. Games designed for LiveOps must have evolving progression systems that reward player investment over time to keep them engaged. They also need tools to frequently modify and update content without client patches. Specifically, the document advocates for modular, configurable content and systems that can trigger live events and target experiences differently for new and veteran players. This allows the game to change over the player's lifespan and community experiences to remain fresh.

1. Crystin Cox
LiveOps Evangelist
Azure PlayFab
Designing for LiveOps
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2. Games that use a LiveOps strategy, a strategy focused on engagement and retention, need to have great core
gameplay loops and interesting content just like any game. But games that are designed to be LiveOps native have a
few additional things they must consider.
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LiveOps
Designing for now, right now

3. The first is the element of time. LIveOps is about building a relationship with your players over a long period of
time. Having great core gameplay will help players stick but to keep players engaged their experience must change
as they invest more in the game. This means an increased focus on progression systems, especially those that can
extend over many hours of play.
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Design for LiveOps

4. Progression systems can revolve around player power, skill, resource management, or social standing. No matter
what is progressing, your design needs to acknowledge and reward player investment ideally with something
intrinsically valuable. Systems that reward investment with only more resources quickly lose their appeal and
become optimization exercises.
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Progression Systems
Power Skill Resources Social

5. Progression systems can revolve around player power, skill, resource management, or social standing. No matter
what is progressing, your design needs to acknowledge and reward player investment ideally with something
intrinsically valuable. Systems that reward investment with only more resources quickly lose their appeal and
become optimization exercises.
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Progression Systems
Intrinsic Extrinsic
Mastery
Interest
Curiosity
Purpose
Praise
Rewards
Points

6. Not only does the player’s experience need to change over time, but the game itself needs to evolve as well. Static
games have a difficult time retaining players over long periods for a few reasons.
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Design for LiveOps

7. First, players needs change as they progress through your game. What is optimal for a new player is rarely optimal
for a veteran. LiveOps games need to design for the player lifecyle, crafting experiences for different groups of
players.
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Player Life Cycle
Visitor
Novice
Learner
Explorer
Enthusiast

8. And on a larger scale, game communities need milestones to mark the passage of time to stay engaged. Without
shared experiences like live events and major balance updates, communities can stagnate or become unwelcoming
to new players. LiveOps design should consider how the game will grow and change over time.
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Communities Need Change

9. These considerations mean LiveOps designers need tools and pipelines that could look quite different than what is
found in traditional game development. Content must be organized for ease of modification, it must be
maintainable, flexible, and modular. Systems should be planned to be changed once live frequently, expanded
upon, and segmented so that experiences with the system can be different depending on which player is engaging
with them. Ideally as much content as possible will live in the cloud so it can be modified without a client update.
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Design for LiveOps
Agile Modular Changeable

10. Designing a Live Event
Simple RPG
• Drop event
• Add Candy Hearts to all creature tables
• Add vendor for Candy Hearts with heart
themed cosmetic items or sale
Let’s take a simple example of a live event in a basic, loot based, RPG. Players defeat enemies in the open world to
gather loot and level up. We want to run a seasonal event. For the month of February all the enemies in the world
will drop a new item called Candy Hearts and that new item will be used by players to purchase in game cosmetic
items from a new Candy Heart vendor.
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11. Because we knew this game would be a live game from the start, we have all our drop tables stored in Excel and
organized so that it is easy to add temporary drops without touching every drop table in the game.
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12. And using PlayFab we can translate the tables we work with in Excel into new in game drop tables and an in game
store to sell our holiday items. All of this can be updated inside PlayFab with no client build.
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13. And if for some reason we decided that this event would only be for veteran players, we can easily set our new
drop tables to only drop for players that are above a certain level.
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14. Designing for LiveOps
• Experiments
• Content configuration
• Rules
• Event Triggers
• Leaderboards
• Prizes
You can do a lot more with PlayFab to help support your LIveOps design.
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15. Want to Learn more?
10 demo stations right here in the Microsoft booth
The PlayFab Definitive Guide to LiveOps
Tech-spert Lounge
playfab.com
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