Games Addictive Game, How??

ilan

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Hi, b4x gamers,

I am not a big game player guy but I do like to play War Games like Medal of Hornor, Battlefield or Call of Duty. A few Weeks ago I have purchased BF5. I have already finished BF4 and wanted to try the latest BF5 game. I started to play it and I really liked the graphics a lot and the gameplay of course. it's an awesome game and I kept playing it from time to time. I need to mention that the purpose was to buy it and finish it within few months as I did with BF4 and because I am a very busy person with a full-time job and also developing apps in my free time I was thinking of spending 1-2 h laying per week. BUT what happened was a very different story. After finishing the first 3 levels I tried the MULTIPLAYER mode and WOW. it was so cool to play against real people and see how bad you really are because against the PC I was very good but against those players from all over the world, I felt like a big noob. and as more I was killed in the game I wanted to play more to get better and kick some a*** :) so from a 1-2h per week, I went to 2-3h per day. I stopped working on any b4x project and I got more and more addicted to that game until I decided that I had to uninstall it because it was consuming to much time. so I uninstalled it and guess what 2 days letter i installed it again and played few weeks and again decided to uninstall it. I went through this process 3 TIMES!!! so the current status is that I have uninstalled it for the 3 times (it was yesterday) and I hope I will not install it again (at least until I finish some b4x projects)

anyway, now I am thinking of it from a developer perspective. what made it so addictive for me? how did it come that from a 1-2h per week I spent 2-3h per day? why I was thinking of the game so much at day and could not wait to get home and play it?

I wanted to analyze it and learn from the best how to make a user addicted to your product. I don't think it because of the graphics. I mean the graphics are awesome but again playing against the pc was not that addictive for me so after analyzing it I came to a conclusion that a multiplayer game where you compete with other players has much more potential than playing games against yourself. the other thing is that only play time will unlock more and more features in the game and not game coins. until today I let the player collect coins and with them unlock stuff but he could unlock all stuff within a few days with some good hours of gaming and maybe that's not the right choice. so what EA does is they unlock stuff by playing time so if you play 3 days you get this and play more days to unlock this, etc... the even write that a weapon will be available for purchase in 1d and x hours and so on.

so bottom line we as game developers need to try to learn from those big companies. of course, we cannot create such a game but we also don't need to. just understand their strategy and implement it in your games.

I will try to do that in a future project. I know that a real-time multiplayer game is a very complex task but maybe try to do something similar to this. real-time scoreboard where if someone bit your score you get a notification and if you keep being the 1st place for x days you get free stuff etc...

ok, this was maybe one of my longest post I guess but I wanted to share my thought with you and hear from you what you think and also if someone here has tried BF5? :)

best regards, ilan

ps a small intro to the game:

 
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sorex

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Oh no! Now we lost you completely! :(

;)

Achievements are indeed a factor to keep you busy. I hear that from my colleague aswell who's 10 year old kid plays that fortnite game on his playstation.
And sometimes he MUST finish a level just to get something stupid like an empty backpack.
It's just the urge to get that and hoping that the other kids from the class didn't get that far yet.

Unfortunately achievements don't really fit in all game types and it wasn't also a requirement to have a successful game.
If you look at how many people still play for example Tetris even those who played it 30+ years ago.
The game idea is so simple but still addictive. Not sure how to analyze that.

The scoreboard is nice but I noticed that when I changed it from just showing "ranking: 125" to an overview where you can see the 9 scores just above you and the top 3 that people give up faster as the top 3 is way out of reach. So it's also something to think about.
 

ilan

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Oh no! Now we lost you completely! :(

dont worry i am back in the game :)

Unfortunately achievements don't really fit in all game types and it wasn't also a requirement to have a successful game.
If you look at how many people still play for example Tetris even those who played it 30+ years ago.
The game idea is so simple but still addictive. Not sure how to analyze that.

i think that people then played tetris because there was not a big collection of good games and today they play it only to remember their childhood. so its not really a very addictive game. try to give it to a 10 years old i would like to see how long he will play it.
anyway an acrchivement for tetris could be to add more shapes after you have completed a level like a new shape will be available in the game that could be interesting.

The scoreboard is nice but I noticed that when I changed it from just showing "ranking: 125" to an overview where you can see the 9 scores just above you and the top 3 that people give up faster as the top 3 is way out of reach. So it's also something to think about.

yes i know what you mean and this is why i dont thinkg the standart scroeboard is a good choice. there must be some modifications like inform user via notification if his score is in danger or has been broken, show only relevant scores like spliting the scoreboard to low level, middle and expert. like this he will see scores that are near to his and get more motivation (so show scoreboard for each game mode [beginner, pro, expert]) and so on...

so in my opinion it is a waste of time to create a very nice game but keep it only an offline game where there is no competition with other player. i spent a lot to create really nice games (have a look at my ios collection and also android collection) but all games have the same scenario. you play and complete levels until you have completed the game. and i dont see any success from them and if you see the brain game from a user here that has more then 10 million installs you understand the difference.

when you play agains others and there is a competion then you have the motivation to come back to the game and try to beat other players.
 

LucaMs

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1)
ps a small intro to the game:
"small"? About 16 minutes! It's a full movie :D

2)
I wanted to analyze it and learn from the best how to make a user addicted to your product. I don't think it because of the graphics.
I agree; how many hours did people spend playing Arkanoid or Pacman?

3)
the other thing is that only play time will unlock more and more features in the game and not game coins. until today I let the player collect coins and with them unlock stuff but he could unlock all stuff within a few days with some good hours of gaming and maybe that's not the right choice. so what EA does is they unlock stuff by playing time so if you play 3 days you get this and play more days to unlock this, etc... the even write that a weapon will be available for purchase in 1d and x hours and so on.
Your (our) main vice is to try to improve yourself continuously and accumulate things. The best thing, I think, would be to give the player something that allows him to pass a level; money, weapons and things like that.

Zynga poker increases the percentage of income you can get from a slot machine, which is available every few hours (4 or 8, I don't remember), if you play every day, otherwise the percentage will be reset to zero.
 

LucaMs

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I forgot point 4: in games where you shoot we want to vent our anger, possibly killing as many people as possible. In this regard, I suggest a game where you have to make a nuclear bomb :D

Finally... there are still too many wars around the World, I don't see why we should have nostalgia for even the First World War!
 

sorex

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actually for that time and limited video display hardware Arkanoid looked damn good and added a lot of originality/features compared to the traditional breakout game.

I'm not following the mobile gaming too much so I don't know what's being played these days but I don't think all games are focussed on online/leaderboard playing.

As long as the concept is addictive or challenging enough to keep trying I guess it might be successful if it gets enough exposure (going mini viral)
 

Sagenut

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For sure the MultiPlayer option is a big boost to the longevity of a game.
And the best results seems to come out from game with MultiPlayer and Cooperation, I mean where You can create a Guild or a Team to Play/Fight against other Teams.
Special Weekly Events that give You prizes (in game) to Upgrade Your Situation.
And where possible being able to constantly add characters, items, levels and so on during the game lifetime to keep the Hype On.
Of course it depends on the game type to see which points are realizable.

Then there is an aspect that I can't completely understand:
Price and Payment of the app.
Sometimes I see very nice games that (for example) cost 2.99 euro (or even less) and in the comments people scream out the hell to the developer like he was a robber or worst.
Then I see games that are Free to Install and Free to Play but with Upgrade Packets for Your Hero that can cost even 50 or 100 euro and Magically People are Happy to Buy These Packs.
Probably it's just a psicological trick.
Let the User get addicted to Your Game and create a situation that need extreme ability to be passed.......and make it easier proposing the Upgrade Pack.
Many people probably will leave the game.......but a certain percent will buy the packets making You (and Them) Very Happy.
Unluckily getting all of this means to have a good server base, nice graphics (this is not a knot but help really a lot), time to manage everything and so on...... impossible for 1 Man Software House in my opinion.

These was just my 2 cents to the discussion, a very nice one by the way.
 

sorex

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you're right about that price... when I grew up it was normal to pay almost €20-25 just for 1 tape or disk with a (C64) full price game on it.
if it wasn't what you expected you had to live with it. now you can get a refund.

these days they expect everything to be free and if it's free with ads they complain again.

I guess they all think that every dev that has an app with ads in it earns 50K/day like that flappy guy claimed.
 

Sagenut

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I think that people are unable to give app a Value because they are Untouchable Things, they are Ethereal.
So it looks strange to pay for something that You Don't See.
Instead it's ok to pay 800 euro for a TV because You have something concrete to check.
Only Developers can understand the stress and difficulty behind even what seems a simple and basic app.
 

Sagenut

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Another good strategy seems to be having limited time/steps for every game sessions.
Steps that got recovered 1 by 1 every X minutes.
This can give various benefit:
- user know that he can play a bit when he had a free moment
- user want to come back to finish something incomplete because of lack of steps/time
- user can be convinced to buy something to extend steps/time
 

LucaMs

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Then there is an aspect that I can't completely understand:
Price and Payment of the app.
Sometimes I see very nice games that (for example) cost 2.99 euro (or even less) and in the comments people scream out the hell to the developer like he was a robber or worst.
Then I see games that are Free to Install and Free to Play but with Upgrade Packets for Your Hero that can cost even 50 or 100 euro and Magically People are Happy to Buy These Packs.
Quite simply ... they are different people ;)
 
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