WGE MAG: 21
“
...there is a great deal of potential behind a more community-centric approach to gaming both in terms of how you deal with the communities that are already out there and how you can design games that will create even stronger ones in the future.”
Building a community from these early stages right up to maturation requires an awareness of what kinds of facilities players will need at different stages in the process, but this is an organic rather than a scientific process, it is about individuals building bonds with each other and that takes time.
However there are ways to stimulate and maintain growth that are in the hands of the developers.
On a more obvious level rewarding players for continued participation works well, recognising that there is a micro-life cycle of play that exists within a game and releasing rewards or punishment avoidance schedules to bolster this cycle does maintain play levels.
What we noticed by looking at daily average use data was that spikes in usage and adoption are more often than not tied to successful events, events that not only got people talking but got them playing as well. A good event creates a shared experience that the game community can talk about together and that directly enhances their experience of the game.
the game itself does not cater to people’s different playing styles then they will not be there to join the community in the first place but what we found interesting is the way that these playing styles spill out beyond the game and into a games community.
From the Farmville strategists with their lists of crop rotation values for extracting the most profit from a harvest, to the massive facebook ‘add me’ campaigns of the Mafia wars resource gatherers, successful and thriving game communities extend and enhance the experience of playing the game. The community is just as much a part of the game as the game itself.
Thriving game communities do not spring up over night and knowing how they develop to cater to the needs of their players is a big part of ensuring they become successful.
What we found was that in the early stages of a community’s lifecycle there is not much differentiation between players. Early adopters are mainly concerned with learning the ropes and unlocking all of the games features. Gameplay is essentially all about strategy and resource accumulation and so everyone behaves like strategists and collectors. The way they socialise at this stage reflects this as well, interactions are far more transactional and driven by specific objectives rather than interaction for its own sake.
It is not until the later stages that people are able to differentiate themselves and start to talk more broadly, we were surprised that another common thread amongst mature communities was forums for things like recipe swapping and movie reviews.
Oddly enough some of the most successful examples of events that drove up both conversation and participation were occasions where the game had been hacked. Rumours of ‘1000,000 free rubies’ in Dragon’s of Atlantis or the ‘multi- coloured flashing sheep mod’ in Farmville spread like wildfire through both games respective communities.
Whilst we do not expect developers to hack their own games the underlying truth here is that out of the many events and devices we have seen that developers have attempted to use to stimulate growth and retention, those that impacted both on the game itself and the community surrounding the game were the ones that achieved the most success. Promotions that offered in game benefits but failed to acknowledge the kinds of things that would appeal to the values of the community were just as likely to fail as events that appealed to a wide range of people but offered no in game benefits.
To round up, what we have found is that successful social games may well be the ones that have a bag full of psychological tricks up their sleeves but they also always have strong communities at their back. Strong communities are those that serve to enhance and extend players enjoyment of the game itself by becoming an integral part of the game and catering to all of the different playing styles and experience levels of their members.
Strong communities grow by recognising the changing needs of their players as the game moves through the development cycle and by releasing a steady stream of rewards and well timed events that have a value within the game itself but also speak to the values of the community.
We here at Pomegranate think that there is a great deal of potential behind a more community-centric approach to gaming both in terms of how you deal with the communities that are already out there and how you can design games that will create even stronger ones in the future.
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