Metagame Design – Presentation Transcript

1. MetaGame Design Reward Systems that Drive Engagement Amy Jo Kim CEO, Shufflebrian
2. What is a Metagame?
3. Using out-of-game info or resources to affect in-game decisions Gaming definition
4. Layering an rewards system onto an existing activity
5. Metagames are Everywhere
6. Collecting Complete Collections — Gain Status, Access, $$
7. Behavior Chart Collect Stickers – Earn Privilege or Prize
8. Karate Develop Skill – Earn Rank, Prestige, Powers
9. Scouting Complete Tasks – Earn Badges, Rank, Prestige, Powers
10. Frequent Flyer Programs Spend Money – Earn Points – Redeem for Flights
11. Arcade Spend Money – Earn Points – Redeem for Items
12. Text RPG Complete Missions – Earn Points – Redeem for Items
13. Contest/Raffle Take Action – MAYBE Win Item
14. Contest/Raffle Take Action – Maybe Win Item
15. Tournament Play Sport – Enter Tournaments – Earn Ranking/Trophies Leagues & Teams are part of this
16. Tournament Play Sport – Enter Tournaments – Earn Ranking/Trophies
17. So how do you design a Metagame?
18. Metagame Design Framework Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
19. Metagame Engagement Loop Post updates, give gifts, send taunts Get feedback, earn rewards Take actions, earn points
20. Act React Customize Create Earn Spend Step 1: Assign points to actions Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
21. Which ACTIONS earn points?
22. Which REACTIONS earn points?
23. 3 Types of points
    • Experience Points (XP) – earned directly via players’ actions – track & reward socially/economically useful player actions
    • Skill Points (Score, Rank) – earned via interacting with the system – based on mastery of the activity or game
    • Influence Points (Rating, Reputation) – earned via the actions of other players – proxy for quality/reputation/influence – track & reward socially valuable contributions & actions
24. Is your points system tracking skill, experience, or both?
25. Is your points system assigning ratings to people or objects?
26. Can you Spend your points?
27. Levels Leaderboards Roles Reputation Missions Challenges Achievements Collections Step 2: Add Feedback & Rewards Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
28. Levels are shorthand for participation and achievement
29. Leaderboards identify, motivate and reward your most devoted players
30. Social Leaderboards drive competition and enable missions
31. Leaderboards can cause problems – don’t be afraid to remove/hide/change
32. Missions tell players what to do next
33. Mission-driven engagement loop Post updates, give gifts, send taunts Get feedback, earn rewards Accept Mission Update Mission List Take actions, earn points
34. Reputation and Ratings track quality/skill + motivate contributions
35. Achievements provide short-term goals + sense of progression
36. Motivate newbies with easy-to-earn rewards
37. Motivate power-users with scarce resources
38. Motivate contributors with a rating system
39. Updates Gifts Sharing Invites Step 3: Grow through Viral Outreach Viral Outreach Points Feedback & Rewards
40. What are the ‘social moments’ in your game?
41. Competition Bragging, Taunting, Challenging
42. Cooperation Sharing, Helping, Gifting
43. Self-Expression Check out my character/outfit/farm/page
44. Case Study: Farmville
45. XP + coins earned by completing tasks
46. Customize your character
47. purchase seeds
48. Plant & Harvest Crops
49. Help Neighbors
50. Design & Develop Your Farm
51. Buy exclusive items with $$$
52. Tutorial introduces pts, levels, rewards
53. Earn coins, level up, buy more stuff
54. Leaderboards facilitate social interactions
55. Achievements come early & often
56. Achievements displayed as collections
57. Achievements displayed as collections
58. Help your neighbors, then brag about it
59. Many opportunities for self-expression
60. Gifting pulls people into the game
61. Case Study: Stack Overflow Technical Q&A site w/crowd-sourced moderation
62. Ask/answer good questions to build Reputation
63. Leaderboards for Reputation score
64. Earn badges by performing basic site tasks
65. Question: why no viral outreach?
66. 5 Tips for Designing a Compelling Metagame:
    • Create a coherent experience that unfolds over time
    • Define a points system (XP, social pts, redeemable pts) that supports your purpose and audience
    • Introduce feedback and rewards that motivate newbies, enthusiasts, and contributors
    • Design rewards that players will be eager to share
    • Use “game pacing” to grant rewards over time

See Amy Jo Kim’s profile on GDC 2010.

The paper analyses the viral spread of an application and how/why are these processes occurring. SocialTimes.com did a great post that summarizes the academic paper. Alternatively, you can view the entire paper here.

Some of the key findings are summarized below:

• On average, each inviter has invited 26 friends while the median number is 10
• Just 10% of users account for 50% of successful invites
• Around 90% of users share their locale information
• Around 40% of users share their friend list
• Only 1% of users share their relationship status
• Invited users remain in the game longer: over 50% kept on playing for more than a day and 20% of all invited users were still playing 80 days later.
• Around 80% of non-invited players leave the game within the first day
• Overall, they find that invitation strategy is more important than demographics in determining invitation success rate

To determine how to create a profitable social game, please explore my previous blog post on the importance of Customer Acquisition Costs for startups.

I was checking out the latest over at DIGG, and came across this cool flash applet make by Nikon Japan called Universcale that takes you from picometers to billion of light years in scale, showing objects (albeit, I expected a little bit more quality here) from neutrons to the edge of the universe.

Also, I’m reporting on a new discovery in the realm of viral research. Researchers at the Niels Bohr institute used optical tweezers to grab the ends of an RNA molecule produced by a bird flu virus. They found that the viral-encoded RNA has psuedoknots that cause human RNA polymerase to create the wrong protein (for human), but right for the virus! Check out more at the Science Daily article.