Game design f2p games or how not to make mistakes

According to statistics, in the American AppStore and in Google play, games with in-app purchases account for about 92% of all games. In Asia, 90% of games on mobile platforms use monetization of in-app purchases. Monetization of f2p is familiar to many segments of society, which is why it served as an influx of a huge number of customers into the industry.

How to achieve such a game balance that will allow everyone to play and at the same time work on the inflow of money from users to your project? I will try to answer this question in the article.

First you need to understand that the presence of f2p monetization in an unsuccessful project will not prolong his life. Monetization alone is not able to save the project if the game play is of no value or interest to the player. You also should not forget that all people play differently. It depends on their age, generation, income, attitude to the gaming industry and the relationship specifically to your game.
Now there are statistics on the market that f2p monetization becomes a successful addition only to a successful game project. Game play of the game is obliged to give users the experience that they can experience only in your project, as well as unique experiences related to immersion in virtual reality. And only if there is such a gaming experience, it is worth embedding f2p monetization into the game.

What is not friendly monetization free to play in other words, normally do it - it will be normal

Boring game play. The user, seeing a boring and uninteresting gameplay, will turn off the game and remove it from the device. And let you have a trump card in your hands - free download, however, it will not keep the user. Remember, it’s much easier to remove a game than to love it.

Detachment from the host. The game must respect the player. Every person who plays games - feels or wants to feel himself the master of events, he controls his own destiny in the role that the game gives him, which means you need to be reminded of yourself in the spirit of what is happening in the game. Remember "Tamagotchi" - a harmless creature, which you need to take care of, watch out and not throw him for a long time, otherwise an unfavorable final will occur, which is not the player's goal. Your game should cause the same feelings: it should be bored and worried about what is happening in it while the user is not.
')
Play against robots. People must compete and help each other, they must play against each other. When you show the user that there are many other players who want to defeat him, take first places in the ranking, or if there is a community of people in the game who have something in common - fighting with a common enemy, sharing craft or mutual assistance, then you will see that ready to play and make payments for your gaming pleasure. Multiplayer, in which people can and help each other, and fight against each other - one of the most important criteria for the success of the game.

Lack of traffic. The game must have a huge number of users to live. Without enough players, the project risks becoming boring, too simple and with a lack of competitive spirit.

Short project life. Without a well-developed plan for updating the game for the long term, without the support and assistance of users in matters relating to your game, the game risks quickly becoming forgotten. A project with f2p monetization should be created for years, regularly updated, add intrigue, interest and confidence to users that they are working on the game and it will live for a long time.

Disregard for the user. You should definitely think about how you will hear feedback from your users, where to communicate with them, what gifts you will please them and how often you will be surprised with updates. I deliberately made it apart, and it may seem to someone that I repeat, but no, I want to emphasize that you should love your players, and they should feel their individual value for you, should see that from the user to the developer by hand file and you are always there.
Every game designer should understand that the job of attracting new users to the game is the work of marketers and advertisers, but after the game is installed and the person launches it, the responsibility to go to the game designer is how the person passes the first user scenarios .

Some principles of building user engagement

Lack of tedious learning. It is necessary to quickly immerse the user in the game process, i.e. to start a game for a user where there could be a boring long splint, but instead of him not to show the user that he doesn’t know how to play yet, but to show, using the example of easy levels, how easy it is to play your game, infect it with an interesting game play. You need to immediately immerse the user in the gameplay. You have to create an immersive game scenario, showing what you can earn in the game and how to convert it into subsequent improvements to demonstrate the entire gameplay and future experience that the user will receive. Always remember that it is not possible for a few minutes to tell the user what to do. It's boring! You need to get him to play right away. Give a call to the user, show that he can start up himself and spend longer time in the game.

Remove excess. At the very beginning of the game, avoid that the user performs any actions that do not directly relate to the gameplay. For example, immersion in the process of the game should not be associated with requests to name a character, distribute some points (skills), etc. Do not bother this user, let him immediately enjoy the game and after becoming acquainted with the game we play, the user will be happy to take the time for the rest.

Do not lie to the user. If you have a splash screen in the game that promises the user an interesting game play, then these promises should be kept. You must immediately give the user what you promise.

Do not encourage in advance. During the dive and during the first minutes of the game, the user first needs to show the game progress, show the result from the correct actions of the user, for example, it can be an improvement of any game object as a result of his actions and only after that, it is worth rewarding with asterisks and coins or any other game currency or experience. This should be done due to the fact that at the very beginning the user doesn’t care what types of awards are in the game, stars, coins, etc. The main thing is that you immediately give what you stated at the beginning - some action, the gameplay itself, and only after that is a reward that can be spent.

Experiment. It is good, when in the general game-play the internal game-play is replaced. A kind of change in the player's activity for a while, and I'm not talking about the gameplay and meta-gameplay. I'm talking about the fact that you can change the game mechanics, in order for the user to feel a variety of gameplay. For example, playing Call of Duty or other shooters, most of the time you are a soldier and interact with a set of weapons of a soldier-infantryman. But sometimes the game gives you the opportunity to drive a car, a tank, an airplane, and so on. This will greatly benefit the user experience and its positive feelings from your game.

Do not disturb the user and do not simplify his life. The game should not stop the progress of the player’s development, should not be extremely difficult, but cannot be simple, should constantly challenge the player. The player should not have time to miss.

Hold the user in the game. The time spent on upgrades of any objects, works to keep the user, as well as to make an internal purchase, this causes temporary frustration, during which the user can make an in-game purchase, which will help him to minimize this frustration. A direct link between the upgrade and temporary frustration is a big plus for game developers. If you have achieved that the user does not leave the game, but is trying to improve, then temporary frustration will lead him to make a payment in the game only if the purchase in your game store saves him from the feeling of a long wait. Use this, as the production in itself is easy in the production (thinking and drawing 10 levels of one building does not provide for drastic changes from level to level), and the effect for you, as a developer, will be very noticeable, both in keeping users and in the form of their payments.

Reward user. User progress must be made even if a player loses a certain game scenario, which means that even in the event of a loss, you cannot leave the loser with nothing. This will lead to the fact that attempts to learn how to win will be minimized, because the user will have to spend resources on learning, and if there is no reward for failure, resources will disappear faster, just like interest.

Give control. There is such a thing as multitasking in the game. When the user is forced to do several different things one by one. Multitasking gives the user a sense of process control, and this sensation makes the user of the boss. For example, in the Dominations game, after entering the game you must collect food from farms, collect gold from caravans, collect apples from apple trees, empty gold mines and hunt animals. All these actions are different from each other, but they have the same essence - obtaining resources. The user, performing these actions only replenishes the supply of food and gold, but the game gives him the opportunity to do it in different ways. But multitasking needs to be controlled in order not to produce manipulations in the game.

The balance of complexity. The transition from simple to complex, for example, from simple and fast upgrades to long and expensive, makes the game demanding of the user. It is necessary to keep the correct time balance of this complication, not losing players because of a long and easy game or because of quickly becoming complicated game process.

Open loops. These are tasks that are set for the player. Open loops are like achivki. The difference between them is that the player can complete open loops in the near future or right now and immediately receive a reward for closing the loop. The player will seek to close the loop, because he sees an important reward for himself in the near future. This is a rational explanation of the player's actions. There is an irrational explanation - a person often wants to resolve what he started. Especially if you need a very small number of forces. In many games, such open loops end in either awesomes, for which you receive in-game currency, or premium characters, etc. As soon as a player completes one loop, the game should immediately offer him the next loop with an even more interesting reward. A striking example with constant open loops - Dominations. While playing, the user will most likely close such loops, because open loops are generated in such a way that in order to close them, you just need to play and often do nothing specifically.

The key features of open loops are a clear challenge and a clear reward. At the beginning of the game, the loops are short and few. Further they become larger, they become longer and sometimes can lead to frustration. However, it is necessary to give the player the opportunity to close the game loops just by playing, so that the person performs the usual game scenarios for himself and at the same time ends the open loop. This will add satisfaction from their actions and improve their attitude to the game. The reward for closing the loop should be valuable. You can not award points rating, increasing the level of the player or the assignment of any image-pumping. The reward must be good and justify the time and effort spent, for example, a great reward for closing the loop - a little hard game currency. You can also associate such open loops with exhaustible resources in the game, for example, if your game produces an “elixir” and it is not a hard currency in the game, then you can reward it in tangible amounts for the player. Also, you can make dependent the closure of one open loop from another. In this way, the player will follow from one global goal to another, closing small loops and receiving gifts. But remember that the player must close each loop simply by playing and with a little, well, or average amount of effort.

No unconditional donat! The player must be sure that he can play without spending a penny of his money. If this confidence is not, the player will leave.

In conclusion, I want to say that naturally, the work of the whole team on the game is very important for the future success of your project. But remember that mistakes for example designers, artists or modellers can be corrected. After all, if your game has an exciting game play, users will forgive you for shortcomings in graphics. You will improve the game, and users will be happy about it. But if you give people a product with a boring gameplay, you will have to work not only to improve the gameplay, but also to return the users who have left, and this is extremely difficult and sometimes can be unprofitable. In games, just like everywhere else, we are not able to make a double first impression.