Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)

Building Games for the Long Term:Pragmatic F2P Guild Design

Anthony PecorellaDirector of Production for browser gamesKongregate.com

Who am I?

● At Kongregate for 5 years, directing our browser-based virtual goods business

● Also an indie game designer, cofounder of Level Up Labs

● Open platform for browser-based games

● Flash, Unity, HTML5, Java, etc.

● 15M monthly unique visitors worldwide

● Core gamers – 85% male, average age of 21

● MMOs, RPGs, CCGs, TD, shooters, etc.

● Platform level virtual currency, “kreds”

● Mobile publisher of F2P games for core

gamers

● Acquired by GameStop July 2010

What is Kongregate?

Some of Kongregate’s Developer Partners

Context for the Talk

• Focus will be on free to play games, generally core-gamer in design

• Primary experience is in browser, but most lessons carry over to mobile

• There is no “ideal” guild, but this talk will try to help guide your design process with the right questions to ask

Social Structures in High School

● Ad hoc teams (dodge ball)

● Social group or friends

● School Team (football, basketball, algebra)

● School Population

Social Structures in Games

● Ad hoc teams (Halo, League of Legends)

● Friend list (Mafia Wars, Candy Crush Saga)

● Guilds / Clans (WoW, Clash of Clans)

● Factions / Races (SW:TOR, Planetside 2)

A Note on Ad Hoc Guilds

• Nimblebit has tried “ad hoc” guild designs

• Super flexible, but this can be a disadvantage

• Decentralized membership

• Little to no mutual relationships

• Acts better as a fluid leaderboard than a guild

How Important are Guilds?

All That Glitters is Guild

• Every one of our top 10 games has some type of guild construct

• Guilds are an essential part of high-level monetization in core F2P games

Numerical support for guilds

• Dawn of the Dragons, by 5th

Planet Games

• Of players who reached level 10, 49% joined a guild

• Didn’t join a guild: 3.2% buyer rate

• Did join a guild: 23% buyer rate

Numerical support for guilds

• Tyrant, by Synapse Games

• Looking at installs over the past year…

• Non-guild members ARPPU is $36.59

• Guild members ARPPU is $91.60

Long Term Retention is Key

What can Guilds do for Me?

● Retention – regularly returning to your game (rolling D7 retention, regular players, etc.)

● Social connections create sense of belonging, and duty

● Players don’t want to let the guild down

● Keep coming back for sake of others (the Draw Somethingeffect)


● Engagement – playing deeply into your game (session time, user level, advancement pace, committed players, etc.)

● Guild members are great teachers for new players

● Share late game strategy and wisdom

● Powerful elder-game content

● Members need to perform at a high level for the guild to be competitive


● Monetization – spending among guild members (% buyers, ARPPU, LTV, etc.)

● Indirect monetization as members upgrade their own status to be able to perform better for the guild

● Direct monetization can be done in the form of guild items and bonuses

● Helps mitigate “pay to win” feelings when you have a big spender on your team

● Some guilds exclusively recruit spenders and require continued spending from members

The MVG

• What are the characteristics of a Minimum Viable Guild?

• Guild Name: needs to be persistent and visible outside of itself

• Controlled Member List: membership persists and is managed

• Guild Owner: a leader/organizer that at a minimum controls the member list

• [Shared content: Some sort of content, even just a score, to unify the guild members]

Guild Features & Decisions

● Now that we have an MVG, what, if anything, should we add to it?

● What other design questions should I consider for my game?

● We’ll use an example game…

Guild Design Example Game

Guild Attributes

Creating Guilds

● Should I charge money to create a guild?

● Avoid creating too much friction

● Guilds are only a means to an end, a powerful tool

● You want as many legitimate guilds as possible

● Soft currency prices make sense to avoid careless guild creation, add more sense of ownership, or to pace the player lifecycle

Swords & PotionsEdgebee Studios

● Call them “Teams” not “Guilds”: appeal better to the demographic

● For consistency, will be referred to as “guilds” in this talk anyway

● Collect 7 tickets from friends to start a guild and become Guild Owner

● Enhances sense of ownership

● Acts as initial seed for guild members

Candy Crush Guild Battles

• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items

• Intra-guild cooperation

• Intra-guild competition

• Inter-guild passive

• Inter-guild active

• Leagues

Joining a Guild

● Introduce guilds at an appropriate time to players. Once they unlock them then they’ll be interested in exploring them.

● Have a good matchmaking algorithm for players who want to find a guild.

● Guild owners will generally want options for open enrollment, approval, or invite-only

Joining a Guild

● Provide incentives for joining a guild.

Game of WarMachine Zone

Dawn of the Dragons5th Planet Games

● A player searching for a guild will be matched up based on having similar game progression to the average guild member

● Players are encouraged to join a guild after they finish level 20, incentivized to do so with a free power-up or free progress to next section


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

Guild Size

● Not a clear best practice that I’m aware of

● Many games max out guilds in the 40 – 50 range (Tyrant, Clash of Clans, Clash of the Dragons)

● Other games much larger (Wartune: 210, Dawn of the Dragons: 250)

● Some games use alliances, officially or unofficially, to increase guild size

● In many cases guild size increases as it levels up or gets items. Tyrant ranges from 15 – 50, Wartune from 30 – 210.

Guild Size

● Focus on the functionality within your game

● Do you need lots of concurrent players in a guild for live, real time events? Larger may make more sense.

● Is it important for members to know each other well and coordinate strategy and plans? Keep it small and intimate.

● More casual, social demographic, likely to already know everyone, or want to get to know everyone, in the guild

● Ideal size is probably around 20

● Keeping with the more simple, casual style we won’t have guilds level up or increase in size


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

Guild Identity

● Help your players develop bonds to their guild and guild mates and to express themselves

● Name – often has hobbies, national pride, or puns

● Guild colors/emblem/image to show off

● Many will build their own guild pages, forums, etc. too

Clash of ClansSupercell

● Guild emblem creation

● Option of background shapes, textures

● Choose main overlay image

● Choose primary and secondary colors


Game of Thrones AscentDisruptor Beam

Diablo IIIBlizzard

• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

Guild Features

Guild Communication

● Guilds are a social construct, so let people communicate!

● Focus first on guild-specific, necessary communication

● Asynchronous

● Announcements: one-to-many from the guild leader, useful and important

● Forums: much more flexible, good for persistent discussion of strategy, planning, recruitment, etc.

● Guilds will often do this for you!

Guild Communication

● Synchronous

● Chat: good for larger guilds, real-time games, or long session games

● Semi-persistent gives a “best of both worlds”


● Guilds are likely to contain a lot of real-life friends

● A semi-persistent chat would be a fairly simple and effective communication channel


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

The Guild Bank

● A place for players to donate or contribute currency to a shared pool for the guild

● One-way process, typically converted into a guild-specific currency that may or may not be spendable

● A fantastic sink for soft currency out of the economy

● Typically hard currency can be used at a substantial multiplier to soft currency

The Guild Bank

● Leveling up

● Simple implementation, more akin to XP. Players contribute to the guild which adds to the guild XP. Guild levels up at various thresholds.

● Spendable bank currency

● Similar to leveling up, but gives the guild owner the ability to select guild-wide upgrades to buy with the currency. Gives more direct ownership over the guild growth, allows leader to give goals for players to meet.

The Guild Bank

● Membership dues

● An even more effective way to sink soft currency. This is a guild-wide, weekly amount that must be paid to keep the guild from demoting. Scales with size, very useful lever for balancing.

● Contribution credits

● Members get a credit for each donation to spend at a guild shop.

● Opens up possibility of guild-exclusive items.

● Gives top guild members an individual benefit scaled to their own contribution.

● Lacking a currency there won’t be any way to donate or contribute to a guild bank

● That said, I would strongly consider adding a guild bank to house winnings from competitions so team captains can buy cool stuff for the team


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

Guild Items

● Bonuses for the entire guild, acquired either from the bank or by players

● Paid guild items seem be to fairly rare, but a great opportunity

● Caesary had a $100 item that would increase the guild size by 200 people, sold quite well

● Collective purchasing is a possibility too

● Items should travel with the purchaser

● Guild Store

● Allow captains to spend team points to buy guild banner customization

● Some options in the store would also be locked off by league level

● Purchased Guild Items

● Aesthetic items can be sold to guild members directly to share with the guild

● Potential for high-priced shared items: all guild mates get +1 life permanently for $99.99

• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues


Guild Competition / Cooperation

Intra-guild Cooperation

● Cooperative PvE

● Often not guild-specific, but may offer bonuses for doing it with guild mates

● Guild raids

● Summon guild-exclusive raids to challenge with just your guild mates for rewards

Dawn of the Dragons5th Planet Games


● Event participation

● Guild members work together to achieve goals during events

Kings & LegendsChangYou


● Cooperative construction

● Work together toward persistent improvements

Swords & Potions 2Edgebee Studios

● There really isn’t anything that would make sense for intra-guild co-op, at least not for a first pass


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

Intra-guild Competition

● Not necessarily explicit, though sometimes is (Clash of Clans)

● Provide player progress metrics for members to see how they compare to everyone else. Level, trophies, etc.

● Am I pulling my weight? Am I behind everyone else?

Intra-guild Competition

● Provide short term metrics to track recent activity. Last login, weekly contribution, etc.

● Did I do my fair share this week?

● As a guild owner, is there anyone I need to speak to or cut?

WartuneR2 Games

● Provide leaderboard within a guild

● Player name

● Highest level unlocked

● Games contributed this week

● Score contributed this week

● Tapping on a player’s name brings up a second page that shows the specifics of their weekly contribution


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

Inter-guild Competition (Passive)

● If you have a metric you can rank all guilds.

● Provide a regular benefit for high-ranked guilds to incentivize performance.

● Clash of Clans does this well…somewhat.


● We need a guild metric to compare

● Requires regular, continued participation

● Rewards skill

● Rewards persistent growth week to week


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

● Weekly contribution from each member to the guild score

● Completing a game generates a guild contribution value

● Top ten contribution scores from each player count toward the guild’s weekly total points

Contribution =Level _Score

3_Star_Score´Level _Number


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

Inter-guild Competition (Active)

● If it makes sense for your game, active competition can be very powerful

● Can be synch or asynch, scheduled or ad hoc

TryantSynapse Games

WatuneR2 Games

● Don’t need any direct, active competition – the ranking system should suffice, especially for a first version

● Could potentially be done through a challenge system on a particular, or randomly-generated level

● Each guild has 24 hours to post scores

● Top 10 scores from each guild count


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

A Quick Look at Leagues

Leagues

● In Clash of Clans, the top 3 clans get a reward. Competition is fierce at the top, but what about everywhere else?

Weak Strong

All Guilds

Intense Competition

Leagues

● Leagues are sometimes used in highly-competitive games like League of Legends and StarCraft II.

● Clash of Clans actually has leagues too, but they’re individual rather than clan-based.

● Players move into higher leagues by increasing their core metric, being promoted when they hit various thresholds.

Leagues

● Could we design a better league for free to play? Can it work for Guilds? What would it do?

● Have a relatively short season or cycle

● Provide rewards to promote retention and engagement

● Be directly competitive, zero-sum to promote fierce competition and indirectly engagement/monetization

● Provide sufficient number of tiers to allow for feeling of growth

Relegation/Promotion Leagues

● This is pretty foreign to American sports fans

● Move away from score tiers, instead make it population-based

● Each level has a fixed percentage of population, guilds must fight to move up or down each “season”

Relegation/Promotion Leagues

● Reconcile on a weekly basis

● Each week, process promotions and demotions

● 1/3 jeopardy rate: 33% of each level moves down one level, corresponding guilds from lower level move up

● After the moves, give out weekly rewards for membership

Weak Strong

All Guilds

Intense Competition

● A 16-tier promotion/relegation league system

● Weekly rewards would include team cash (to buy emblem customization items)

● Special rewards for top 10 teams in each league (small number of boosts)


• Creation

• Joining

• Size

• Identity

• Communication

• Bank

• Items





• Leagues

Wrap-up

● Design guilds with a focus on retention, engagement, and monetization

● Think about how decisions affect player behavior and relationships

● Be creative, look for new applications and mechanics that make sense for your game

Thank you!

● For these slides & more talks, visit dev.kongregate.com

● Web games: [email protected]

● Mobile publishing: [email protected]

● Follow us on Twitter: @KongregateDevs

Building Games for the Long Term: Pragmatic F2P Guild Design (GDC Europe 2013)

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