Retaining players and demise of preorders at GDC
March 2016 – At GDC Akamai presented two sessions on the changing landscape of the gaming industry. One of the areas of change is with pre-orders. In the era of physical delivery, pre-orders for the disk media were a major driver to getting first access to a game and unique gaming experiences with extra maps and/or equipment. The shift to electronic delivery and the social aspects of the game have changed this.
In the new era of electronic delivery and on-demand DLCs, there is no more concern over “the disk will not be available” at the local store. Because of the removal the “scarcity” aspect of media and the access to the game, the pre-order marketplace shifted to “game exclusives” with the order. The problem with these exclusives, is in a time of sharing game play, eSports and social connectivity in the games rather than a single player scenario, is the exclusives do not lend themselves to a sharable experience. If you have these maps or accessories, you are non-conforming with the rest of the community and it devalues the results and experience you create. The pre-orders also tend to be full price, non-discounted products, which is contrary to current ecommerce trends.
There are a number of movements to end Pre-Orders as they are an artifact of a rapidly expiring business model. The method was created to help with the estimation of the game manufacturing supply chain and to promote player traction and loyalty. The traction and loyalty have aspects have shifted to the social community and shared game play (Twitch, Hitbox, etc) from the pre-orders. Downloads have replace the manufacturing supply chain.
For Pre-orders to continue, they need to move to modern ecommerce models – discounts and rewards. Pre-release purchases on the web are dominated by discounts from the MSRP for pre-pay. For the rewards side, collectibles and unique loyalty items – hats, tshirts, jackets, discounts to group events – as opposed to in-game rewards. In this model, the game player can receive the recognition for his loyalty to the game and still allow for in-game play to be shared on an equitable level with others who also have the game from either a new or continuing basis. If companies want to engage in Pre-orders for cash flow and loyalty reward they need to update their methods to modern business practices for the web.
This shift to electronic delivery and shared experience gaming has also changed the player retention models. In the current environment a delay by as little as 2 minutes due to buffering or data transmission errors/latency can cause customers to leave a game and not return. The issue is not just discovery and initial attraction to the game, but engagement and responsiveness that are need to hold players.
These issues bring a new question to the development and publishing community – when is a game too old to fix or update. While there is value to a legacy story, game play and player attachment, the core technology of the game may be out of sync with the current transport methods and shared experiences. This brings the decision – when to patch and when to abandon the core technology of the game. These tradeoffs have player retention issues.
Another issue is the on the mobile side. Free to Play (F2P) has a rapid “download and try” model with the least barrier of entry, but is hampered with monetization issues. If the game is free but with ads, at what level of ads does the placement and frequency of the ads impact the game play and the traction vs an uninterrupted game. If there are no ads, but in-game purchase is the model, the predictability per user for revenue goes down. On the other end, full game pre-payment for download has the strongest game experience, but also has the highest barrier to acquisition due to the price. In this mode service and performance are keys to player retention and repurchase of future versions.
Another major player friction point is registration and installation. There is a tradeoff needed between starting the gaming experience / play and information about the user to begin the monetization model. A recommended flow is to drop the player into the level immediately after installation, and at the end of the level initiate the registration routine to record the level and score. However, this approach limits some of the social aspects of the initial level, and minimizes the reporting back of installations vs downloads.
These changes are all part of the shift to on-line or cloud based delivery, game play, registration, updates, monetization and social media from physical media and single player environments. All of the tradeoffs are best made from metrics on past games and the mechanisms of the CDN you are working with for delivery of the games.
