Creative ways for live service games to retain and attract players
By Creative and Research teams. Top image: Adobe Stock
Combating player drop-off is a constant battle for Games as a Service (GaaS) titles. Creative thinking married to deep insight can help turn the tide
The struggle to acquire a sustainable playerbase (and prevent it from evaporating again) has only increased this year in the live service game sector. While high-profile casualties have hit the headlines, the challenges are near universal:
Content droughts - A lack of updates that are frequent and impactful enough to rekindle player excitement and drive a fresh engagement cycle.
Unaddressed issues - Persistent bugs, exploits, imbalances and performance-problems that can drive players away if not promptly fixed.
Player alienation - Any number of missteps can sour attitudes towards a GaaS game including excessive grinding, aggressive monetization practices, unchecked toxic player behavior, feature removal, a lack of entry-points for new and lapsed players, poor communications, and failing to meet expectations.
Natural attrition - Personal lives and interests naturally change over time, leading players to move on from certain games.
Evolving trends - As new gaming trends emerge, players may gravitate towards newer experiences that better align with their current interests.
Ferocious competition - The promise of recurring revenue and the success of the blockbuster hits has flooded the sector with new entrants: increasing the pace of innovation, raising player expectations, and causing genre saturation.
More power to you
The success of a GaaS title hinges not only on its content pipeline but also on your capacity to build and maintain a community around your game.
That in turn requires the bandwidth to keep your finger on the pulse of the playerbase, hold constructive two-way conversations with them, understand their psychology, and being able to convert that understanding into meaningful engagement.
It’s a big ask when GaaS games consume developer resources like the Sarlacc pit.
Our solution is to:
Use research and data to build an accurate picture of your audience.
Apply those findings to each marketing push: thus maximizing the appeal of every content update by targeting your audience’s sweet spots.
Harness wider cultural trends to ensure your comms cut through.
Defeat player fatigue with fresh creative thinking.
The secret weapon
Effective marketing relieves pressure on the development team by increasing player engagement with new content, thereby extending the lifespan of each update.
Achieving that result relies upon knowing your players inside out.
An important weapon in our armory is the deep behavioral insight provided by psychographic segmentation. This qualitative research technique uncovers your audience’s psychological motivations, wants, and needs.
That enables our research team to build behavioral profiles that unlock fresh messaging strategies depending on the player type. For example, some gamers will be:
Performance-driven gamers who love the thrill of competition.
Connection-driven gamers who prioritize playing with friends and family.
Time-driven gamers who are simply killing time and want to enjoy some instant escapism.
Peel back the onion layers of the performance-driven segment and we discover that some are:
Status-driven gloaters who delight in showing off.
Chaos lovers who revel in mayhem and destruction.
Glory hunters who care about being the best and topping the rankings.
These are topline examples excerpted from the full model, but ally that granular data to quantitative metrics and we can identify:
The size of the opportunity set i.e. which segments are the most populous and ready to convert?
What messaging resonates with each group? For example, glory hunters respond well to stats, gameplay feature sets, and the sense that they are an underdog who can defy the odds.
Psychographics has three further advantages:
It enables us to enlist creators and influencers who align with each key segment’s values.
We can identify the brand partnerships most likely to excite your potential audience.
The cultural touchpoints that resonate with your players are revealed.
Psychographic research is teamed with social listening, in-game analytics, plus deep playerbase engagement via reddits, Discord, and Q&As etc to build the robust consumer insight that underpins awesome creative.
Creative thinking
Creativity in the context of GaaS marketing is the art of capturing attention so that the value of new content is understood by existing players, while lapsed and new players are stoked enough to take the plunge.
But what turns a run-of-the-mill activation into a promo that moves the needle? Crucial considerations are:
Identifying what makes your IP unique then boosting it via relevant pop culture moments and hot trends, so your work breaks out to a wider audience.
Ideas that tread lightly on developer resources are gold dust.
Being mindful that player retention is cheaper than player acquisition.
Striking the right balance between hype and authentic excitement is key. As videogamers ourselves, we’re acutely aware of how over-promising and under-delivering damages trust.
Here’s some concrete takes on creatively re-energizing players for a game:
Innovative brand partnerships
Crossover collaborations with relevant brands are a great way to generate buzz, leverage the fanbase of both properties, freshen up the game experience, and reach Gen Z - so long as the partner is appropriate and the execution genuinely adds value.
Few people will have missed the Travis Scott and Ariana Grande gigs in Fortnite, but other cool collabs include:
Call of Duty: Warzone x Godzilla vs. Kong event - A limited-time mode that pitched Godzilla and Kong into the in-game mayhem.
Overwatch x Kpop group LE SSERAFIM song promotion - The campaign included LE SSERAFIM playing Overwatch versus content creators, a live performance at Blizzcon, and themed cosmetics that could be earned through challenges or purchased in the game store.
League of Legends x Coca-Cola - Coca-Cola produced a League of Legends Coke marketed as the taste of XP! Meanwhile, bottle-based QR codes enabled players to unlock limited edition emotes.
Roblox x Logitech-sponsored music awards show - We worked with Logitech to bring to life the first music awards show on Roblox, attracting over 6 million visitors to the event hosted by Bretman Rock and featuring performances by multi-GRAMMY award-winning artist Lizzo.
Overwatch x LEGO - The Damage hero Bastion was souped up with a LEGO-themed skin.
Meanwhile, LEGO have released several real-life Overwatch sets.
While the partnerships above are exciting, it’s important to remember collaborations come in all shapes and sizes. There could, for example, be sub-cultures that crossover with your game, creating opportunities to work with creators, artists, musicians, or athletes who resonate with your community and don’t require buy-in from a global corporate.
A native understanding of what makes your fanbase tick, and hanging out in the same cultural spaces - both professionally and for fun - help us sniff out credible collabs.
Thus we evaluate potential brand partnerships using the following criteria:
Is the brand relevant to the target audience and does it align with the game’s KSPs?
Will the crossover boost awareness and consideration?
Does it have the power to recruit new players?
Will it have a sustained cultural impact?
What is the creative secret sauce that makes this collaboration next level? For example, how can we transform it into an exciting in-game event amplified by IRL activations?
Naturally, these criteria translate into measurable KPIs that enable you to assess the ROI of any partnership.
FOMO trailers
It’s amazing what impact the humble trailer can have upon raising awareness of fresh content. A talented video editor, with a nose for the cinematic, can transform key sales points into juicy player benefits while demonstrating how the content elevates the game - as per this banging promo we produced for Shrapnel’s Extraction Packs.
Trailers are highly cost-effective as social contagion bombs - prompting players to tag their compadres and say: “We need to be all over this.”
The skill lies in not only informing existing players but also showing non-players all the cool stuff they’re missing out on. FOMO is our friend here.
Clearly communicating value is another vital role for the trailer. For example, when promoting a season pass, it’s critical to show players that the total value of included items exceeds the cost of the pass when fully utilized. If players can offset the cost of an item through meeting challenges, or earning in-game currency, then we need to highlight that too.
Community building
We’ve written a UGC playbook that explains how to supercharge your community through user-generated content.
Organic community building feels like magic but can be distilled down to:
Frequently interacting with your players.
Celebrating and rewarding their achievements.
Running events that tap into gamer’s innate sense of creativity and skill without sacrificing inclusivity.
Devising repeatable formats that people look forward to and talk about.
Listening and responding to community ideas and feedback.
Making everyone feel welcome and valued and part of something bigger than themselves.
Mitigating negativity with smart community-management tactics.
Pulling this off successfully means investing in dedicated community managers.
Of course, the bonds of a community are only as strong as its shared experiences. Hence we’ve devised a creative framework for running a brilliant live service event:
Great events are all about participation and a sense of occasion.
Gamers love to take part in challenges, competitions, and co-operative efforts.
Create a sense of occasion by showcasing the very best of the community.
That means enabling the top players to wow the crowd with their skills.
It may also include collaborations with a creator or influencer that the community admires.
Enable everyone to participate by building in voting mechanisms for competitive elements e.g. the people vote for the best stunt or map or design.
Curate the event into a watchable highlights package that becomes a sharable advert for the game in its own right. (We also tag participants so they share the videos with their friends.)
Enlist winners or creators to make masterclasses that enable others to learn the skills and compete next time.
Repeat successful events monthly.
Repeatable formats create a sense of anticipation as the community spins yarns about what happened previously, and banters about what will happen next time. Meanwhile, individuals become pantomime heroes and villains, legends are born, and the collective wonders whether the current champion will extend their reign or be toppled by some young pretender.
UGC challenges are a wonderful source of inspiration for game items that both celebrate the community and can be used as desirable rewards in the future.
Ideally build events around core gameplay elements that are easily understood by low-skill players and those who’ve never played.
Create different competition categories to widen participation rates. Think different weight-classes in boxing as an analogy.
Mix things up occasionally by drafting in influencers to compete against your community champions.
Plug your events for all they’re worth on your socials.
Make it fun!
Influencers can play a leading role in bootstrapping GaaS communities. Find out how to choose the right opinion-formers for your game.
Viral stunts
An obvious danger for mature games is that they become over-familiar. People think they have you pegged, so it becomes important to shake things up and help them see you from a new angle. That’s where the viral stunt steps in to surprise, delight and generate buzz in fresh quarters.
A good technique is to take a core gameplay concept, mechanic, or iconic visual, and reactivate players by reminding them you’re still out there.
We did this as part of the 1.0 launch campaign for SWAT-team shooter, Ready or Not:
We superimposed a giant-sized, GCI SWAT helmet and body armor onto the US Bank Tower in LA. Live reactions from pre-positioned actors completed the effect, creating superb impact footage that smashed it on social media.
Fast reaction squad
Just as GaaS players need to be fed with a constant stream of new content, the same is true on the marketing side too.
Here the challenge is to combat natural wastage by continually renewing excitement for the game and extending its reach.
Our experience has taught us that speedy reactions and flexibility are vital because release dates change, plans fall through, player sentiment shifts, and fleeting cultural opportunities arrive to be converted, but only if you’re quick enough.
Drop us a line to talk to a videogame agency with the know-how and the data-led, creative chops to help you succeed in the live service space.
If you would like to discover more about our integrated approach and work together on a project, get in touch.
