DR CHARLES KRIEL tiga.org DICTIONARY OF FREE-TO-PLAY GAME DESIGN 02 Dr Charles Kriel is an Emmy-nominated game designer and free-to-play consultant. He was born in the back of a circus wagon, and grew up a carny on the American circus, where his father taught him to run games of chance. He ran away from the circus at 15, and spent most of his life as a broadcaster in the US. He eventually landed at BBC Radio 1 as Resident Artist with Ibiza for his turf. Simultaneously he served as The UN’s UK About the National Expert in New Media. He is a Microsoft Ventures Mentor, a Wellcome Trust People Award recipient, and has Author awards from Ars Electronica, Arts Council England, ICA and dozens of others. His work has been featured by the BBC, The Guardian, Channel 4, the Times and Telegraph, to name a few. Charles is the Founder of 12 Stories Tall, an IP and games production company, and consultancy. In his other life, Charles regularly travels to frozen conflict zones – Ukraine, Kurdistan, Kosovo and more – promoting free press, consulting on data journalism, data visualization and digital privacy. He’s a contributing writer at Mixmag, and has written a few books. @charleskriel Copyright © Dr Charles Kriel, 2014 The moral right of the author has been asserted All rights reserved www.12StoriesTall.com DICTIONARY OF FREE-TO-PLAY GAME DESIGN 03 Thank you to Charles for allowing us to share this comprehensive guide to the language of Free-to-Play with 12 Stories Tall’s fellow TIGA members. As the network for game developers and digital publishers in the UK, facilitating Introduction the sharing of expertise and experience is once of the core purposes for which TIGA exists. In our fast-moving industry, especially regarding relatively new game design and business models like Free-to-Play, developing a shared and mutually understood language is essential if we are to define and follow best practice. I hope this resource proves as useful to you all as I expect it to be. Dr Richard Wilson, CEO, TIGA Welcome to the Dictionary of Free-to-Play Game Design. Free- to-play is a relatively new field, with a good deal of debate and confusion around terms. Wade through a few articles on free- to-play design, and the need for a reference becomes clear. This dictionary is a living volume for professionals in a rapidly changing field, undergoing regular change and revision. Debates over free-to-play still rage and the nomenclature is subject to constant negotiation. If you disagree with something, your opinions and contributions are important. Please email your thoughts to [email protected]. One term to immediately address is the definition of the “gaming” industry, vis-à-vis the “games” industry. In this book, gaming refers to gambling, and “games industry” to the broader field of interactive entertainment encompassing console, mobile, social and analogue games. Why write about gambling? The free-to-play games industry owes a great deal to gambling. From the whale / dolphin / minnow metaphor through basic gambling mechanics like near miss, as well as industry-wide adoption of the language of behavioral psychology, gambling was there first. They were just quiet about it. Anyone who tells you there are no gambling mechanics in free-to-play games — whether for adults or children — is either poorly informed, or has a financial interest in your deception. It is traditional in free-to-play books to write a page or two about why the book isn’t free, excusing a $9.99 retail price while extolling the virtues of free. This book is free. Thanks for checking it out. May it lead you to epic wins. Dr Charles Kriel DICTIONARY OF FREE-TO-PLAY GAME DESIGN 04 About the Author Introduction Index References Achievements Continuous Gaming Productivity Addictive Play Properties Conversion Rate Ambient Awareness Core Loop Analytics Cover Charge API CPA Appointment Triggers Currency ARPDAU Daily Prizes ARPMAU Daily Sessions ARPPU DAU Definitions Asynchronous and Synchronous Play Day One Retention Average Daily Conversion Denomination of Play Balance Device Bartle Types Drop Out Behavioral Economics Dynamic Play Rate Biometric Playtesting Entry Event Distribution Bite-Sized Gaming Epic Wins Experience Event Casual Gamer First Purchase Churn Effect Flow Churn Rate Formulas Coin Multiplier Freemium / Free-to-Play Competitive Return Trigger Free Spin Compulsion Loop DICTIONARY OF FREE-TO-PLAY GAME DESIGN 05 Definitions continued Functional Advantage Peak Usage Funnel Peggling Gacha Pinch Points Golden Feedback Loop Play-to-Extinction Gold Farmers Player Delight Grind Power-Ups Intermittent Variable Reward Pyramid K Factor Rarity Language and Region Retention Leaderboards Return Triggers Lifetime Overheads Reward Schedules Loss Aversion ROI Losses Disguised as Wins Sessioning LTNV Session Length LTV Skinner Box MAU Social Commitment Triggers MAUU Social Proof Mental Transaction Cost Status Items Minimum Viable Product Synchronous Play Missions, Achievements Time-on-Device and Level Video Poker Multiline Slot Machines Virtual Reel Mapping Near Miss Volatility New User Flow Wait Loop Pareto Distribution Whale Pay-to-Win Zero-Sum Games Payout Percentage DICTIONARY OF FREE-TO-PLAY GAME DESIGN 06 Achievements are symbolic trophies awarded for acquiring skills or demonstrating progress through a game. These trophies typically contribute to multithreaded player scores on networked leaderboards. Many casual games given Achievements their limited scope have a maximum possible score, but with achievements, leaderboards also display a number of badges, trophies, or other symbols, adding complexity and richness to the game experience. Achievements are designed as viral tools. They encourage other players to check out games their friends enjoy and boast over, however abstractly. Achievements standardize and systematize bragging, making it relevant to gameplay. They mark the boast as a manageable goal for another player to pursue. Challenges are another form of achievement, where a player initiates a challenge to another player by selecting one of a set of achievements they’ve completed, and dares the other player to accomplish the task. Challenges are also issued by the game itself. Player-to-layer Achievements typically depend on connected play, and became ubiquitous across social games. Nearly-always-on mobile systems with social layers — iOS, for example —exploit achievements’ viral qualities. Typically operating on a fixed reward schedule, achievements can carry both functional and status value. Achievements also lend themselves to analytics, yielding insight into what players enjoy, and given the option, which part of the game a player chooses to pursue. See LEADERBOARDS Back to INDEX DICTIONARY OF FREE-TO-PLAY GAME DESIGN 07 Addictive play properties are mechanics that induce flow states, and encourage “just one more” behaviors. In game design, Addictive play properties are expressed as positive Addictive play qualities, although addictive as a term is pejorative in clinical properties or regulatory descriptions of video games. Addictive play mechanics include grind, free spin, the illusion of victory, return triggers, coin multipliers, competitive return triggers, epic wins, gacha or collection mechanics, intermittent variable rewards, etc. See COIN MULTIPLIER See COMPETITIVE RETURN TRIGGER See EPIC WINS See GACHA See INTERMITTENT VARIABLE REWARD See RETURN TRIGGERS Back to INDEX DICTIONARY OF FREE-TO-PLAY GAME DESIGN 08 Ambient awareness is a type of social awareness experienced through online social networks. It is “very much like being physically near someone and picking up on mood through the Ambient little things; body language, sighs, stray comments,” according awareness to New York Times journalist Clive Thompson. Often through mobile devices, which dominate social networks, users “capture and produce their own media, and stay in constant ambient contact with each other,” according to UC Irvine professor Dr. Mimi Ito. Game executive Dallas Snell argues in Tim Fields and Brandon Cotton’s “Social Game Design: Monetization Methods and Mechanics” that the content of the thousands of messages consumed passively on social networks is less important than the presence of the message itself, and how those messages lead to an awry awareness of one’s social tribe. In this sense, the content of social streams is similar to a phatic expression — one whose sole function is to perform a social task, rather than convey information. Snell argues that ambient awareness makes users happier and more secure in their social tribes by creating the circumstances for a state of homeostasis in the user — one where emotions and stresses are in balance. In game design, Snell says, “We design the reward mechanisms in our social gaming systems to lead them towards homeostasis by taking them through the highs of rewards and engagement, and along the way they’ll be building the infrastructure around them that will be their permanent tribe, permanent friends list, filled with the people they like to play with.” See LEADERBOARDS Back to INDEX DICTIONARY OF FREE-TO-PLAY GAME DESIGN 09 Analytics are data patterns, read from a number of sources, informing developers about the performance of their games. Analytics sets range from simple sales data, to tracking of individual user journeys, records of users’ spending within Analytics the game, marketing performance both within and around the game, and a game’s overall profitability. Use of game analytics has increased with online play, particularly on mobile platforms. And where analytics might historically be used to gather marketing data for premium games, they have now also become fundamental to the game design process. In free-to-play games, analytics help designers tweak game mechanics, art assets, game flow, social behaviors, and marketing-to-player features within the game. Some companies push analytics to the edge. In 2011, Ken Rudin, a Zynga vice president in charge of its data-analysis told the Wall Street Journal, “We’re an analytics company masquerading as a games company.” And ngmoco CEO Neil Young told GamesIndustry International, “[T]his is the best time to be a game designer….