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Social casual

Casual games today are a very popular genre in Odnoklassniki with their well-established format. Arthur Shakalis, a producer with eight years of experience, talks about the peculiarities of the development and creation of casual games, possible mistakes and recommended steps.

What are casual games? These are games with short and intense gaming sessions, addressed to inexperienced players, with very beautiful, pleasant visual effects, minimal text and very catchy. This is useful to remember when you make such a game in order to understand for whom you are doing it at all and what principles the game must comply with. A little over a year ago, top casual Odnoklassniki games looked like this: basically there was hardcore, that is, games from Plarium, midcore and all sorts of interesting twists, for example, the game “Heaven” from 2reallife. But in September-November 2013 there was a turning point. The gaming audience suddenly began to grow rapidly, an increase of about three million completely new players. And this happened thanks to the game "Find a cat." This is a simplified hidden object, where in each room you need to find just one object: a cat. This game was all built.



She was not perceived by our audience as a game. It began to play by those who previously especially games and not fond of. Users who visited the portal saw some sort of viral post, where their friend asks to help them find a cat. "It's easy, I will come, see, help, hop, here's a cat, and I'm already playing."
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Before that, as I said, we had quite hardcore games. And this is normal for a platform that is relatively recent on the market. As soon as link-games appear, those users who consider themselves as players who understand that they want to play just start to enter. We call them "savants" - from the English seek, "seek." They are purposefully looking for new games, and they were interested in precisely the hardcore theme. And “Find the Cat” raised a completely new layer of players. Casual

Constantly generating pictures with cats is very hard, and in the end the content in the game ended, but the players already understood: “We like to play”. They began to look for something that I would like to play - and discovered casual games.

Most of the players we have are women. They pay smaller amounts, the average check is much less than that of men, but they pay more often. We can say that Odnoklassniki audience is a casual audience. And when you enter the Odnoklassniki market with a casual game, you need to understand who you are doing it for. Now our top looks something like this: match-3 casual games occupy the top positions, midcore and hardcore games that are left from the old top are rarely interspersed with amber.

We’ll go back five or seven years ago, at a time when casual games were on the rise, when they were first being formed, when studies appeared - what the player plays, how he plays, and so on. At that time, an analyst was not developed in casual games, there was not so much data to analyze what was happening in the game. Usually it was either “one shot - one kill”, or nothing. You make a game for nine months, launch it, and it does not fire. Amba

Therefore, at that time there were a lot of theories about what a casual game is, how and what to play. Everyone was happy to share these theories; there was a lot of “socialization” at all conferences, some interesting postulates were formed. One of these postulates was presented at that time by the general producer of PopCap, Jason Kapalka. His presentation was called “Ten Ways to Make the Worst Casual Game.” To paraphrase in a modern way, let's go from the opposite: “How to make the best social casual game.” So let's go.

Simplicity is the key to success

It often happens that my colleagues and I start to play a new game and see that it is simply furious. You do not understand much: how does it all work, why should I make so much effort? This is a direct path to the file. For a casual game, the most important thing is to develop a player’s habit. A casual player is not a hardcore player, he doesn’t invest too much of his time in the game, he doesn’t concentrate on any achives, etc. He comes into the game to have a good time. And therefore it is necessary that the player came into your game when he has a free minute. So at the first stage, the most important thing for a casual game developer is retention. You can think about monetization later, because if you don’t have high retention in the first weeks and beyond, you can’t talk about monetization.

Tutorial? Does he even need your game?

Back in the days of old kazualok we had this interesting joke. If your casual game needs a tutorial, if you start to play it and don’t understand what is required of you, then most likely your game is not casual. Any casual game should be played without a tutorial at all. This does not mean that the tutorial should be thrown out of the game, but the point is that any casual game mechanics should be clear to everyone and described in a maximum of three sentences.

Do not ignore the community

By “community” I mean keeping the group of fans of the game, communicating with them, etc. The casual audience is probably the most socially active on our portal. These are people who like to communicate, like to exchange photos, they like to “classify” photos of children, to participate in all kinds of discussions and so on. In no case can not ignore them. Instead, arrange in the group of your game different events: for example, “Take screenshots of how you play, turn them into comics - the best comic will get 100,500 diamonds”. Announce updates that you are going to make to your game, discuss them with your audience. You will get a lot of information, because these are people who want to communicate with you. Arrange a vote for the next feature that needs to be done in your game.

Download speed

Previously, we said that the distribution of casual games should not exceed 20 MB. This was done because a casual player has a weak comp, a weak Internet, weak nerves and the same patience. He can't wait for your game to load. You can talk for a long time about the need to optimize the load, make it diversified, that is, first load the data only for the first run, and then load the rest. This is a purely technical question. But there is another option: for example, in two games in which the load is really long enough for the user to wait and not get bored, a mini-game is implemented for the duration of the download. While the main game is loading, you can shoot at the flies, click on the falling elements. That is, the game begins to entertain its casual audience at the download stage. Maybe this is a surprise for someone, but we are also engaged in producing some games that are represented on our platform. And we checked: the boot loader was optimized so that the game on weak computers would load for some imputed time - up to 15-20 seconds. This increased the retention of the first day by about 60%.

Payment wall and promotions

Again, back to monetization. Do not immediately make paying a casual player. You do not need to put in front of him a payment wall, about which he beats his forehead: either invite friends, or pay, or go from here. He wants to play your game - you need to give him this opportunity.

There is an interesting point: the player never loses. Casual games are essentially toys. They can not play, they can only play. Of course, in the social aspect this concept was slightly transformed, and the player still sometimes has to lose. But there is a certain positive theory: when a player loses, he must remain with the feeling “I was a little unlucky,” and when he wins, then “I did everything right.” And on this you need to build a game. It is necessary to create levels in such a way that, if a player loses, he does not feel that this level cannot be completed. That is, the level design should set the tone: “Dude, you are a little unlucky, but if you use the bonus, you will try one more or 50,000 times, you will pass this level.”

Diversify stocks. Although the casual audience is distinguished by certain features, but still people are different. And to do the same actions for the entire audience is wrong. Therefore, in particular, in Odnoklassniki there are certain methods that give you the opportunity to mark your users, understand from which region they are, and direct their actions precisely to the audience that will be more favorable to this action. Of course, if a person is constantly pestering, his eye becomes blurred, and he begins to react worse. Therefore, more shares are better for a smaller audience than large stocks for all.

Experiment more

Now it is fashionable to do as "King." At one time, the casual industry, namely downloadable, which was sold by try before you buy, went through the same stage. You understood that there is a hit that has reached the heights and, if repeated, you can achieve the same. The reason for this heyday of cloning was that at that time the risks were much higher than now. As a developer, you had only one chance - after all, you couldn’t later update your game to users who have already installed it. Now there is such an opportunity. You can try one mechanic, another, and understand what works and what does not. Therefore, it is not clear to me why now, when it is easier to experiment, we clone more. This is strange.



I rummaged through my archives and found three games that were made by developers from Eastern Europe and contributed a certain twist to the well-established mechanics. In particular, the game Dynasty is a clone of the game “Zuma” (we later called them “zumanoids”), where it became possible to shoot not from a static point, but from any place on the tape, and this radically changed the gameplay. The game Totem Quest, which I produced, is made on the mechanics of Chains, or Pipes, is when you do not just change elements in places, but you can rotate a certain element around its axis and connect it with another element. That is, each tile has entry zones and exit zones. And your task, turning the element, is to connect the entrance zone with the exit zone of the neighboring element. If you make a chain of elements of the same color, they are connected, you can adjust the new ones, and everything breaks. At the moment I have not seen such successful social casual games. The next game is 4 Elements II from the company Playrix, where the mechanics are implemented, which we call “pasfading” ( path finding ). This is when you have a certain path encrypted on the usual “mache-3” field. When the user starts to play, he does not see this path. But if he makes “mach” in the right place, a piece of the path opens. When the path is connected to a single whole, either a character moves along it, or something flows somewhere, and the field moves on. Here I also do not see such mechanics at the moment anymore on the market.

In general, the modern market of casual social games is just an open field in terms of what mechanics can be modified, used, monetized. By the way, “King” introduced, probably, only one mechanic, which I had not seen before in casual games.

Scary theme of the game

Casual game about space bugs. How do people think of making a casual space game for the above audience? Housewives do not like space, they love bunnies, buns, they love, at best, as the social industry has shown, to plant a carrot, but not to shoot beetles in space. Remember who you are making the game for.

Elements of different colors and different shapes

The audience usually responds to either color or form. Therefore, if you, for example, make elements of the same shape, but of a different color, many simply will not see potential “mobiles” on the field. There are a lot of color-blind people in the world, about 11% of people do not clearly distinguish colors. Different form of elements - this is the growth of profitability by 10%.

Greed on rewards

I do not mean promotion in the form of bonuses and attractions of unprecedented generosity. I'm talking about the responsiveness of the game and that if a player makes a click, then he is good, you need to pat him on the head. The player made an awesomely cool match - Chain Reaction or a combo - you need to make a wow-effect, everything should explode, bubble and sparkle. Because the casual player likes to see the game encourage him for what he does. Multiply all your rewards, that is, all the points that are flying, by one hundred, for example. If you had one point for a match of three elements, then let it be a hundred. It does not ruin your balance, but the players like it, they want to earn a lot, they want to see this responsiveness of the game.

Give the player a story

Many players and developers who have already worked on the social market and consider themselves luminaries, say: “Oh, a casual toy? Easy as a penny! Now we do. Two weeks - the mechanics will be ready. " The mechanics will be ready, the game - no. Give the player a story. Remember that any casual mechanics you use are just mechanics. This is not a game. If you have something like: “Bam - level 1, field 10 by 10, collect 5 elements of this type. Gathered - well done. Level 2 - collect 20 elements of this type ", it is not interesting! It will not play. Make your player solve global problems with his matches. Let him decide the fate of the world. Let him feel that, passing a certain level, he is moving towards the goal that he has been set for him. It is very good if a player associates himself with some hero he sees on the screen. There was such a hit - Magic Match, there was absolutely fan character advisor. He constantly prompted: “Oh! Good Master! You are running out of time! ” But when we tested on the target audience, many associated themselves with this dude. When a person has a binding to a particular character, this greatly increases his retention. He feels that this character is “it’s me”, and if something else happens to him during the game, if something goes up, he grows up, he adds, the clothes change - this is very pleasant, and casual players are very love

Do not ignore the "Viralka"

As I said, a casual audience is the most socially active audience. They like to generate “viralka”, they actively react to it. The same game “Find a cat” got out only due to “virality”. I’ll tell you a little about what “viral” methods are used in Odnoklassniki.

If we are talking about a notification, this is Send Simple / Send Mass - a method that allows you to send a notification directly to a player without the participation of another user. There are notifications "user-user", like "Send me some kind of bun, send me something else." In the first case, the text is generated by the developer himself. Think about what you are doing because there are a lot of such notifications for the player. And you need to somehow stand out among the rest. Prepare the text purposefully for those who want to receive this notification, who will be interested. Do not write simply: "The new levels are open." It's boring, they won't play, they won't react. This is especially important in light of the fact that we recently launched the so-called Black Box, which introduces a limit on notifications to each application, depending on how actively they click on notifications from this application.

We also recently launched a method called the Mediatopic Post. This is an opportunity to post a big beautiful picture in the ribbon. At the time of "Kota" this method was not used photo content. Users posted in the tape, in the profile. Clicked on the photo, read the comments to it or saw in the comments link to the game, and went. Therefore, now the effect would be even more avalanche.

The voice of the people

If your casual audience is not playing your game, maybe you shouldn’t continue working on it. Make it play. It hurts me wildly when I look at another strange clone of a strange game that comes to us for moderation, since I really love casual games, and this is the industry that I grew up with.

Adequate Invitations



Two options: on the left - the right, on the right - the wrong. Why is the left correct? First, it’s immediately clear why you need to send it. A person on one screen understands that he either has to “buy” or “invite”. It is from the point of view of the layout of the window itself, which leads to "virality", this is a very good option. In the second window you will not understand why, what, to whom, what I will get - horror!

About pricing

A casual player pays in fairly small amounts, but more often. And when you form a showcase for your goods, remember this. Always sort products by price increase. This is not hardcore, here ARPPU is much smaller, like the average check.

Calculate prices adequately. Remember the difference in income in different regions. Schedule stocks to deposit and withdraw funds. It is very reasonable to make a share at the beginning of the month, say, for depositing funds (we, for example, cheaper to buy an in-game currency), and at the end of the month a share for withdrawing funds ("And now boosters are cheaper for you to spend that money that you bought then "). Alternate these promotions. Do not abuse discounts and sales. Discounts and sales are very good only very rarely, because if you buy goods only during a discount, it means that you have problems with pricing. , . , - - , , . , , .

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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/250299/


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