This document discusses social validation as a player motivation for user-generated content games. It summarizes Traplight's experience with their game Big Bang Racing, in which player creators generated a large amount of high-quality content. Creators were more engaged and brought significant revenue. The document then discusses how social media relies on user-generated content and social validation through likes and shares. It introduces self-determination theory, which finds people are motivated by competence, autonomy and relatedness. For games, this means progression systems and cooperation with others. The document argues UGC games should focus on satisfying these needs for creators through content creation, social feedback systems, and creative tools.

1. SOCIAL VALIDATION AS
PLAYER MOTIVATION
IN TRAPLIGHT'S USER-GENERATED CONTENT-BASED GAMES
Sami Kalliokoski
Co-Founder, Creative Director
sami@traplightgames.com

2. TRAPLIGHTFINNISH F2P UGC MOBILE GAME STUDIO
• Founded in 2010, now team of 26 enthusiastic developers
• Used to do outsourcing for Redlynx, Supercell and others
• In 2013 pivoted to create our own UGC based games
• Released Big Bang Racing in 2016
• Raised $4,8m to merge social media and games

3. THIS TALK IS ABOUT
• What have we learned from Big Bang Racing
• Shortly visit Social Media, Social Validation, and Self-
Determination Theory
• How does Traplight motivate creative players in
upcoming games

5. BBR trailer

6. LEARNINGS FROM BBRFROM UGC PERSPECTIVE
• With UGC you don’t run out of content
• Players are insanely creative and produce high quality content
• UGC brings value not only for the developer, but also for
players
• UGC is inherently social and players expect features known
from social media, and we use those features to find the best
content also

7. CONTENT CREATORSTHE PLAYERS WHO CREATE
• Creators want to have more ways to express themselves
• Creators want to get more players to their levels in order to get
more likes
• Creators are more engaged and monetize better

8. ENGAGEMENT &
RETENTION
PLAYERS WHO CREATE ARE MORE ENGAGED

9. MONETIZATIONCREATORS (7% OF PLAYERS) BRING 35% OF REVENUE

10. FOCUS ON CREATORSAND UNDERSTAND WHAT DRIVES THEM
We want to convert more players into creators.
We want to create progression for creators, and to include them
into our target audience in addition to regular player segments.
We wanted to address needs of creators, and in order to
understand those, we looked into Social Media.

11. SOCIAL MEDIA IS UGCIT IS CREATED BY USERS AND IS SELF-EXPRESSIVE
Most content in social media is user created. Also advertisements look
like user created nowadays.
Content expressed in social media is created with tools that are
external to their platforms, thus limiting their monetization possibilities
on content creation.
When people express themselves, they expect feedback in return. This
feedback can be generalized as Social Validation.

12. SOCIAL MEDIA IS UGCSOCIAL VALIDATION IS MECHANISED IN SOCIAL MEDIA
In social media, social validation is mechanised into many different forms:
view, like, dislike, comment, share, copy, mix, modify, follow, subscribe…
In addition to this mechanisation, social validation builds relationship through
empathy and exchange of meaningful experience.
Many times the social validation itself becomes socially actionable content.

13. DEFINING TRAPLIGHT’S UGCAND WHAT CONSTRAINTS DOES THE DEFINITION IMPOSE
UGC in our games is self-expressive and rewarded by social validation
Created content is goal oriented and created for other players’ enjoyment
Creators have clear progression and they are motivated through creation
specific rewards – for this, we looked at Self-Determination Theory

14. SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY
IS A THEORY OF MOTIVATION AND INHERENT GROWTH TENDENCIES
Theory revolves around satisfaction of three intrinsic motivations that
initiate action that is interesting and satisfying by itself.
The three motivations are COMPETENCE, AUTONOMY and
RELATEDNESS.
Check out PENS (Player Experience of Need Satisfaction) model by Scott
Rigby and Richard Ryan. Excellent papers and GDC talks about the topic.

15. COMPETENCEIN F2P MOBILE GAMES
Feeling of being effective, successful, good at, and feeling of
meaningful growth.
Competence in arcade games roughly had to do with personal
competence of mastering the controls to achieve highscore.
In many F2P mobile games, personal competence is minimized and
competence deals with mechanized competence, like character
power – kind of competence that you can buy with money.

16. AUTONOMYIN F2P MOBILE GAMES
Having meaningful interesting opportunities for action and choices in front of
me; sense of being free from the external control.
Early days of autonomy in games used to deal with map exploration,
choosing from multiple goals and narrative that had multiple routes to the
single endpoint.
In many F2P mobile games, autonomy deals with character collectibles,
decks and using collectibles as resources in crafting/combining for
mechanical competence. As well as strategic placing of buildings in city
builders.

17. RELATEDNESSIN F2P MOBILE GAMES
Feeling of meaningful connection to other people and mutual support
for competence and autonomy.
Most of the successful F2P mobile games have clans/guilds and
possibility to communicate and rely on other players to progress
together.

18. COMMON TAKE FORCOMPETENCE, AUTONOMY & RELATEDNESS IN F2P MOBILE GAMES
COMPETENCE is mechanized power increase through cue-action-
reward driven progression loops.
AUTONOMY is freedom in e.g. character combinations and city
layouts to achieve power through tactical and strategic synergy.
SOCIAL RELATEDNESS is co-operation with other players to
progress faster in competence.

19. THE CREATOR LOOPBASED ON COMPETENCE, AUTONOMY AND RELATEDNESS
COMPETENCE deals with progression and is connected to CONFIDENCE
AUTONOMY is connected to SELF-EXPRESSION
RELATEDNESS is connected to SOCIAL VALIDATION

20. (RELATEDNESS)
SOCIAL VALIDATION
(COMPETENCE)
CONFIDENCE
Tasks Content
Feedback
(AUTONOMY)
SELF-EXPRESSION
+ rank & achievements + influence & audience
+ tools & parts
Progress through creation
Progress through social actionsProgress through task completion

21. TAKEAWAYS!USER-GENERATED CONTENT GAMES
There is not just one way to use UGC in games, define yours.
Don’t think UGC only as “free” content for you, and gold and diamonds for
creators. It will mess up your F2P economy.
If you are creating UGC focused game, concentrate on creators and their
relationship with players. The relationship and rewarding mechanics define
what kind of content is created.

22. TAKEAWAYS!FULLFILLING CERTAIN PLAYER NEEDS ARE BENEFICIAL FOR YOU
Understand difference of INTRINSIC and EXTRINSIC motivations
• Satisfaction of competence, autonomy and relatedness will result in
intrinsic motivation where the action is reward itself.
• Usually F2P mobile games use extrinsic motivations like “welcome gift
rewards” for first 30 days, daily tasks, events and quests to get feeling of
competence going.

23. THANKS!QUESTIONS?
Sami Kalliokoski
Co-Founder, Creative Director
sami@traplightgames.com