Ingredients for a Successful Game
Article
Ultimately, for a game to be successful, three things must happen:
1: People must see, and want to buy your game
2: People must want to speak about your game
3: People must want to play your game repeatedly
You are competing over your customers’ time. A game sale is a two-way transaction – customers buy your game and you buy their time.
The greatest challenge in accomplishing either of these three tasks is the sheer amount of competition. Tens of thousands of video games are released yearly, or dozens every single day. This gives potential, or even existing customers, a lot of games to see, a lot of games to talk about, and a lot of games to play.
But what is it that you’re actually competing with these games over? …The answer: time.
You are competing over your customers’ time. A game sale is a two-way transaction – customers buy your game and you buy their time. Unfortunately, it is not only other video games competing for their time, but also every other leisurely action a person can have, from books to YouTube to sports to night clubs to Snapchat messages from cute girls. All of these products/activities are after peoples’ time. And to give an idea of just how little time people have left to spend, here’s how the average US adult in 2018 spends their day:
With such little extra free time to spare, what can you do to make sure those customers spend it on your game, or even reassign some of their currently reserved free time to your game? Let’s tackle each of the three tasks individually.
People must see, and want to buy your game
Generally, the core actions that players will repeat when playing any given game – or its ‘core gameplay loop’ (CGL) – last about 2 minutes when put together. This could be the killing of an enemy and looting of a building in Fortnite, the completion of a lap in Mario Kart, or to chop down a tree, slay a few monsters, and craft an item in Minecraft. People are most likely to want to purchase a game when they have an understanding for what its CGL is, but it is not always easy to get them to view two entire minutes of gameplay footage. People have an attention span of about 5-6 seconds when looking at adverts, sometimes clicking/looking away even when they do like what they see, so it is important to get the CGL into their heads in that time. The best way of doing this is with GIFs and short videos, but posters/cover images can work pretty well too. Here are some examples of posters/covers that do a great job at revealing what their respective games are about:
This is a poster for Gears of War 3. On the left side are helicopters, and on the right side are alien ships. Beneath them, a destroyed city. And at the front, 5 characters each holding very different looking weapons. This poster makes it clear that this is a shooter game with multiple classes and class customisation, where you kill aliens and possibly other people, in a realistic and dystopian setting.
This is a cover image for Mario Kart Tour. The go-karts and various iconic landmarks reveal that this is a racing game with tracks based on famous real-world locations. The item boxes in the corner, as well as the banana in front of Mario’s kart, reveal that this game contains pick-ups and power-ups.
This is a poster for Call of Duty: Warzone. The helicopters and paragliders and 3 distinct teams reveal this to be a battle royale-type game. But the realistic helicopters, buildings, and guns reveal this game to be nearer to a real war simulation than its cartoony Fortnite counterpart.
As well as your game’s CGL – or, if it is not possible to showcase your game’s CGL in one GIF of poster, then instead of it – you could showcase your game’s ‘killer app’. This would be the game’s single-most powerful moment or feature – something unique to that game. Here are some examples in video games and movies:
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Jurassic Park: the t-rex
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Tomb Raider: the hot chick with duel-wield pistols or a bow & arrow
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Breaking Bad: the rugged old man in his hazmat suit surrounded by blue meth and money, or in his meth-lab caravan
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Fortnite: the building/editing
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Kill Bill: the blonde woman in a Bruce Lee jumpsuit with a katana.
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Cuphead: the Disney art style
As for GIFs, if you can somehow ‘teach’ people to play your game in that short space of time, by showing them what the steps are to completing the game’s CGL, even better. To use Fortnite as an example, this could be showing a player looting a crate, defending against another player’s attack by building a wall, then countering by shooting back through an edited window.
In short, to get people to see and take in whatever advert for your game is being shown to them, and to get them to want to buy it, then have to “get” your game. And they have to do so in the space of about 5-6 seconds.
People must want to speak about your game
For people to speak about your game, they must be thinking about your game. For people to be thinking about your game, they must be interacting with your game continually (playing or watching others play). For people to interact with your game continually, your game must stay relevant by changing and have a beating heart… “a pulse”. There are 3 ways to give your game a pulse:
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it must get updates, DLCs, or in some way new content
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it must remain community-relevant
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it must remain streamer-relevant
Giving your game updates is self-explanatory. This could be in the form of map packs, skins, new characters, new weapons, celebratory themes (Xmas, Halloween, etc), or any number of other DLCs.
Keeping your game community-relevant is difficult, but there are a handful of useful tricks to keep your community engaged. Adding intriguing lore to your game and making space for theories is one way. Giving your game a share/record feature is another. Enabling mods and level creation is yet another. Treating every port as a new launch and giving existing fans something to hype can also be powerful. And let’s not forget the competition element in the form of records, K/D ratios, and leaderboards.
In regards to remaining streamer-relevant, streamer and YouTuber DrDisRespect made a great point that developers no longer ought to only think about how fun a game is to play, but also how fun a game is to watch. And making a game fun to watch can be accomplished in a variety of ways. For example, the game could be designed such that:
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players can show their personal idiosyncrasies via their play-style, such as having trivial in-game interactions and a wide range of character customisations
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there is a high skill-ceiling separating newbies from experienced players
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puzzles and tactical decisions can be approached in an array of creative ways
People must want to play your game repeatedly
Making the decision to play a video game, even one that you like, is not always an easy thing to decide to do. Sometimes friction is built up between a player a game, and that friction can cause them to delay their decision to return to it, or even abandon it altogether. This friction can be built in many ways… a player might:
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not recall where they left off
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find the game stressful
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forget the game’s rules/controls
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not have an ideal group online to play with
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be stuck on a particular level
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or not afford the latest DLC.
A great way of helping players back into a game (or for that matter, preventing them from leaving) is to give them a ‘Home’. By this I mean a way of playing, be it a mode or activity, that is tranquil and of low-consequence yet enables the player to make satisfactory progress or gain meaningful rewards. Here are some examples of a ‘Home’ within a game:
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playing side-quests
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minigames
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time trials
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sandbox mode
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running patrols
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collecting bounties
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completing objectives
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gathering materials
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tending to a farm
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finding secret items in past levels
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or running/driving/swinging around the map.
Summary
Show (or even teach) your game’s CGL and its ‘killer app’ in GIFs, artworks, and short trailers.
Nurture and update the game continuously, keeping it relevant to your community and your streamers.
Give your game a brilliant ‘Home’ for players to return to.