On a slightly side topic, Will the store eventually have a "More Games by This Developer" button? That's my favorite way to find cool games on Google Play and iTunes store.
FOR SURE this has to be there!! Once I like a game I usually like most of that dev's other games.
You could also have a user setting that says, "hide till updated", "hide for a long time", "hide forever, never show me again!" That way if someone is gaming it, they end-user could "block them" ... "forever"
That's genius!! It gives the user [limited] choice and also serves as a back-end data point to fight spam/visibility-gaming.
I just realised that my own game will probably get shafted by a system that works on the basis of number of plays / number of hours spent playing.
Essentially, it's a board game; local multiplayer you invite your friends round to play. Each game/play session lasts about an hour or two and you're unlikely to play it more than a couple of times in a row.
So it'll probably get played every couple of weeks, or once a month, and only for a couple of hours at that....
I just realised that my own game will probably get shafted by a system that works on the basis of number of plays / number of hours spent playing.
Essentially, it's a board game; local multiplayer you invite your friends round to play. Each game/play session lasts about an hour or two and you're unlikely to play it more than a couple of times in a row.
So it'll probably get played every couple of weeks, or once a month, and only for a couple of hours at that....
I think you'll be fine there as long as there's more than one way to search/sort (and there should be) and the play frequency is not the default one (and it shouldn't be).
I like the idea of marking a game as "viewed" too. This adds to the user experience dramatically.
Just remember that there needs to be an easy way to "undo" something like this. Not everyone performs an action on purpose. Maybe a simple check box that's always available to "show only non-viewed games" would be enough to provide a means of fixing a mistake. A list of the last 3 or 4 items viewed would probably help with this too.
In the opposite direction, a means of marking a game as a "favorite" or "add to my watch list" would also be good.
Mobile app stores should have taught us (indies) that you can't just throw something onto the store and expect technology to do the rest. A marketing strategy is more than just distribution, and I'm planning on doing plenty of marketing type things to make people want to rush home and turn on the OUYA to find my game
How would you measure engagement. Welcome to all ideas. :)
It's easy to measure engagement for individual games. Using analytics, you can find out all sorts of information. For example, you can measure which level users chose to replay the most to find the level that was the most fun or has the most replay value. Equally to find which levels players were playing when they quit allows you to go in and do more detailed analysis on those levels to find out why. If players are dieing a lot on that level, it might be too hard. If players are spending a long time between checkpoints, they might be getting lost. Or if they complete the first two puzzles of the level fine, but then spend a long time on the third, that third puzzle might need tweeking
That's all game specific though, and is going to be different for every game. Plus it requires developers to code in the analytics.
Asking people to rate games on quitting is also a bad idea, as it's likely to always lead to negative reviews. People who rage-quit will in the heat of the moment, rate the game badly. People who are bored will be annoyed by the extra hoop they have to jump through to get back to the home screen to pick another game
Another approach might be to try and measure the size and energy of the community that forms around a game. However, a single player, narrative style game is always going to be a personal experience, and not something you are likely to replay or can easily share with friends. Whilst a competitive, e-sports type online multiplayer game lives and dies on its community.
Measuring the number of times players return to the game after the first play session, and the time between them playing the first time and returning to it are another option. This always runs the risk though of developers trying to manipulate their games towards this, (such as offering a free item when players visit the second time, or front loading all the good content into the first couple of levels, with the rest just being crap filler). And again, if the game is something like the game Portal, it might be good enough that people just play through the whole game in the first play session.
Also, with all games having a free element, people might download any game that looks vaguely interesting, then quickly poke their heads in to see what the game is all about. I.e. they are still shopping, whilst the store is interpreting them as having tried the game and not enjoyed it
Agreed, I think having something like 'Y' exist to "SHOW ALL" would probably work fine. And when showing all you can toggle "Hidden/Show" with 'U'.
As for Favorites/Watchlist, I've never really found myself using such a feature in game libraries... probably because Downloaded Games/My Library/etc. pretty much covers things that I want to keep my eye on already. There have been blue moon cases of me watching a game without downloading it. Just my experience though. I'm curious if anyone here would find a favorite/watchlist marginally useful over a My Games section where you can just go straight to the store page of the game from there.
Aggro Tactics - A tactical strategy virtual board game built with Unity3D 4.0, designed around the concept of Threat/Aggro inspired by the mechanics of chess and a customizable party like in table top games.
@SpoonThumb (you posted as I was posting above... lol)
I definitely think rating a game on exit is a terrible idea. However, keeping track of when a person comes back and having them rate it when they load up the game a second or third time would probably be great as they obviously are in the process of loading up the game and wanting to play it.
Aggro Tactics - A tactical strategy virtual board game built with Unity3D 4.0, designed around the concept of Threat/Aggro inspired by the mechanics of chess and a customizable party like in table top games.
Asking people to rate games on quitting is also a bad idea, as it's likely to always lead to negative reviews. People who rage-quit will in the heat of the moment, rate the game badly. People who are bored will be annoyed by the extra hoop they have to jump through to get back to the home screen to pick another game
Agreed, and this is why mobile games will typically ask a user to rate a game on their 2nd or 3rd session, at an appropriate break in gameplay. While this does tend to bias ratings upwards, it also removes the strong negative bias of players who are simply uninterested in that type of game.
With the new store, I realize it's early, but I wanted to list some (probably obvious) issues: When a game in the store is selected and ready to be downloaded, we need more information: -Text description is too small -Number of players, offline/online -Content rating (is the content for a more mature audience)? -Screenshots (Possibly allow video too ) -Show user rating/Allow set user rating -Size of download -Date released -Version number of release -Developer name -Support website/email
Also when a game you've downloaded is selected, the following don't work: RT/LT buttons to change games, U button to Delete, Y to Search. (Obvious, but I wanted to detail in case it helps)
As for the storefront, I'd like: -Recommendations based on previous downloads -Games being played by friends currently -Editor/Featured lists -All-games sorting options: genre, number of players, alphabetical, age rating (everyone, teen, mature), top rated, highest grossing, most players, new updates, list of downloads recently by friends
The worst rating system ever is what Apple did for a while: it asked you to rate apps *when you uninstalled them*. Just make sure this doesn't happen :)
I'd like to see some of these analytics be more transparent. Keep track of play duration and how often a game is being played (in general or in relation to how often the player plays other games). A game that sees play sessions of an hour or more would most likely be considered engaging, even if it's only played once or twice. A game that sees sessions of two or three minutes would seem to not be engaging, but then it probably is if it's getting chosen to be played on several occasions.
Ideally, all of these metrics would be transparent, but I'd at least like to see a play-length weighted by play-rarity metric.
Another metric is how long a user holds on to a title. If it gets deleted after it's first play, that's most likely a bad sign. If it doesn't, even if the player doesn't love the game, hanging onto it often means that he is willing to give the title another chance at some point, and that's good for a game.
Something that would have to be taken into account with how long a user holds onto a title is how much harddrive space they have (i.e.: how much they've added). Clearly, someone with only the base HDD will need to remove games more often than someone who has extended it, but that doesn't invalidate the metric.
Another metric is how long a user holds on to a title. If it gets deleted after it's first play, that's most likely a bad sign. If it doesn't, even if the player doesn't love the game, hanging onto it often means that he is willing to give the title another chance at some point, and that's good for a game.
Something that would have to be taken into account with how long a user holds onto a title is how much harddrive space they have (i.e.: how much they've added). Clearly, someone with only the base HDD will need to remove games more often than someone who has extended it, but that doesn't invalidate the metric.
That's really subtle, but I love the idea behind it!
Personally I would like to know what OUYA exactly means by measuring engagement. What are they exactly looking for and for what purpose, because this sounds to general for me.
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Essentially, it's a board game; local multiplayer you invite your friends round to play. Each game/play session lasts about an hour or two and you're unlikely to play it more than a couple of times in a row.
So it'll probably get played every couple of weeks, or once a month, and only for a couple of hours at that....
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It's easy to measure engagement for individual games. Using analytics, you can find out all sorts of information. For example, you can measure which level users chose to replay the most to find the level that was the most fun or has the most replay value. Equally to find which levels players were playing when they quit allows you to go in and do more detailed analysis on those levels to find out why. If players are dieing a lot on that level, it might be too hard. If players are spending a long time between checkpoints, they might be getting lost. Or if they complete the first two puzzles of the level fine, but then spend a long time on the third, that third puzzle might need tweeking
That's all game specific though, and is going to be different for every game. Plus it requires developers to code in the analytics.
Asking people to rate games on quitting is also a bad idea, as it's likely to always lead to negative reviews. People who rage-quit will in the heat of the moment, rate the game badly. People who are bored will be annoyed by the extra hoop they have to jump through to get back to the home screen to pick another game
Another approach might be to try and measure the size and energy of the community that forms around a game. However, a single player, narrative style game is always going to be a personal experience, and not something you are likely to replay or can easily share with friends. Whilst a competitive, e-sports type online multiplayer game lives and dies on its community.
Measuring the number of times players return to the game after the first play session, and the time between them playing the first time and returning to it are another option. This always runs the risk though of developers trying to manipulate their games towards this, (such as offering a free item when players visit the second time, or front loading all the good content into the first couple of levels, with the rest just being crap filler). And again, if the game is something like the game Portal, it might be good enough that people just play through the whole game in the first play session.
Also, with all games having a free element, people might download any game that looks vaguely interesting, then quickly poke their heads in to see what the game is all about. I.e. they are still shopping, whilst the store is interpreting them as having tried the game and not enjoyed it
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Founder of ReachingPerfection.com
Founder of ReachingPerfection.com
When a game in the store is selected and ready to be downloaded, we need more information:
-Text description is too small
-Number of players, offline/online
-Content rating (is the content for a more mature audience)?
-Screenshots (Possibly allow video too )
-Show user rating/Allow set user rating
-Size of download
-Date released
-Version number of release
-Developer name
-Support website/email
Also when a game you've downloaded is selected, the following don't work: RT/LT buttons to change games, U button to Delete, Y to Search. (Obvious, but I wanted to detail in case it helps)
As for the storefront, I'd like:
-Recommendations based on previous downloads
-Games being played by friends currently
-Editor/Featured lists
-All-games sorting options: genre, number of players, alphabetical, age rating (everyone, teen, mature), top rated, highest grossing, most players, new updates, list of downloads recently by friends
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