This morning, around 0940 GMT (Or 1140 in Helsinki) Dave Bradley hosted one of the talks on Game Innovation at PGC. This talk focused on the hot topic of game features in mobile gaming. Focusing on live-operations, pushing updates, player retention and KPI, he put questions to Nick Murray, Design & Product consultant, Agnieszka Besz, Design Manager with Decentraland, Samantha Keane, developer at Mag Interactive and Jan Litecky-Sveda, Lead Game Designer with Pixel interactive.
Why do we Add New Features to our Games?
One of the key questions of the session was the above. “Early in the days we added features because they were cool,” answered Jan. Now, listening to player feedback, retention and covering motivators that haven’t yet been included are key. “One part of course is to make sure we add as many players as we want to the game, so we need to cover all the bases to make sure people join our game,” added Agnieszka.
She added that there’s no such thing as a ‘Perfect Feature’, but what’s important is to understand the core pillars of what you want to build, adding features to support this initial idea, “Keep the core of your game, what keeps it good in the first place.” Killing poorly received features quickly, playtesting and using systems such as a Prioritisation Matrix to track progress and important features were all agreed to be key.
Retention, Retention, Retention
One of the key discussion points was around player retention, and indeed how to add new features in a way that was complimentary to the game. Being able to switch off features remotely without using updates may sound a bit Draconian, but it makes sense if you want to toggle off something new and possibly controversial without adding the extra inconvenience of an update.
However, overall the discussion agreed that innovation is key. Making a game that’s based off another popular one simply putting you in contest with a developer that already has greater resources. Listening to player feedback can be good as long as you’re prepared to hear “A thousand different answers, three of which are viable.”
It’s not too late to check out more of the discussions in Helsinki this week! Both the rest of today, and tomorrow, are still accessible with the right ticket. Check out PGC Helsinki here.
