Why do players quit social games?

After reading an article about players quitting the game, I began to think about why players quit social games so quickly. I think of some of the reasons I have developed the game and the player who has developed the game for others to quit. So here I put my findings together and summed up the following 10 main reasons.

1, eliminate the player process vulnerabilities

When your game needs to be updated regularly, it is always possible to create vulnerabilities that will remove the player process. This can happen as long as the game is updated, but there are several ways to avoid this danger.

The main step to improve the stability of the game is in the process of developing the game, must be combined with the quality assurance process. When you do the update, you can designate a person to be responsible for the vulnerability. Or you and your team members play a week-by-day development version, trying to identify all the potential vulnerabilities.

Angry dude Gamer (from Gameanalytics)

2, too complex

Some developers simply don't accept the idea of keeping the game simple. Their game may throw too many things into the player in the tutorial. Therefore, the player can not understand the tutorial, forget the focus of the game. Even if they understand the game, when they find that there are too many things to remember in the game, there are too many resources to manage, there will be problems.

Keep the game simple, with the player's progress slowly introducing new features. For example, if your game is 5 rounds a day, the tempo of introducing new things should be at least once every 5 rounds.

3. Pay Wall

If your game is free, but you ask players to pay for more in the long run, you may lose most of your audience. Now people are used to playing games for free, and if they suddenly build a pay wall in front of them, they feel compelled to pay.

4, friends do not play

A game released for a long time, for free games, may be more than a year, then the game probably began to lose long-term players. At this point, those players who have friends in the game will start to find that their friends are no longer updating their farm/restaurant/city with the latest content.

A friend's virtual home is still hanging Christmas decorations, even now it is June. Players notice this, they will think that friends are not going to come back to play. Perhaps the player will ask the exit friend what game is playing now, so follow the transfer position.

To prevent this, you should give players some value related to friends, even if they have quit the game. You may be able to let players "cash out" friends who are already out of the game and exchange friends with people who are actively playing games. Create social bonds between active players, because real-world relationships don't always reflect our interests in the games we want to play.

5, new games or more interesting games released

There will always be new game releases to take your players away. If more than one game studio is on the same platform to launch the same type of game with your game, then your loss is big, because the player is always new.

It is inevitable that players will run to new games, but when the initial enthusiasm for your competitor fades, you may be able to pull back the players who have withdrawn. For example, add new features to the game and evoke a player's memory of the game experience. If players are willing to return, give them more free props or freebies. Let the players see your good game there is room for improvement.

6, the content consumption is over

Your players are already playing the game, there is no new thing to unlock, and there is nothing to upgrade the building or virtual props. They start to feel that the game has been played through, began to less and fewer online, finally not online. Even the players who spent a lot of money on the game felt that there was nothing to do, and they thought, although it cost a lot of money, it was time to go and try a new game.

You don't want them to think that. Players who play through the game, level-capped players, and unlock players may still have a craving. Add something that will make the ultimate players feel different, because your tricks are already well understood, so you should surprise them. Give them more difficult challenges and give them new ways to make decisions.

See how Zynga deals with doomsday games? Either let the developer play through the game, or find the Doomsday game on the forum, and then modify the game according to the discovery.

7, tired of heavy task

If you ask players to do the activities they have been doing every day since they started playing the game, they will eventually get bored with the event. In a social simulation game, for example, perform a task that requires completion in two minutes.

In my previous game, Disco Empire, players were able to produce some kind of beer in two minutes. At the end of the game, it still takes two minutes for the player to produce the same beer. Players are naturally bored with this repetitive task.

Players will keep progressing in the game, and you should keep looking for repetitive tasks that you can remove. Of course, you can allow the player to do the same task in the first to second week, while providing other things to do. But be sure to change these repetitive tasks in a timely manner, or at least add some new elements to these tasks, making it possible for the player to do these tasks automatically. Maybe you can add a player robot helper.

8, the platform is not good

I mainly use mobile phones and tablets to play games. I have a few friends on Facebook who play games with games consoles and computers. These are very different platforms, and the biggest difference is the way we play games.

A potentially interesting game, but put on a completely wrong platform, mainly because of the game on that platform operating mode.

For example, you use a mobile phone to play a multiplayer memory card game. You have to remember to flip the card quickly, but not to match the elimination, you suddenly realize that it is impossible, the fun disappears, so you quit the game.

Another example is playing a sync game on an asynchronous platform. You have a team-work shooting game, the platform is Facebook, players need to collaborate to complete the task immediately. Because Facebook is basically an asynchronous platform, it's hard for players to find people playing for a long time.

When designing your game, consider how the game is played, and then decide on the ideal length of the game on your target platform based on the habits of your target players. This will save you a lot of trouble in the future.

9, to change the old game "vest"

If your first game is very successful, when you are ready to play a new game, you will easily fall into the trap. You will be tempted to copy the core mechanisms, operating methods and profit strategies of old games to new games. I do not blame you, after all, it is difficult to reinvent the wheel, let alone to break the previous success.

Players will always notice that you are using a "changed" trick, so it is impossible to cheat them. You may incur the dislike of the core players, and they will feel that you are "out of your wits" and that there is no further change. It may also have a bad effect on the game you posted earlier.

If you want to do a similar game, try to do the following three things, so your new game will not be too cottage:

1 Change the game and ask the player to learn something new

2 Change the profit strategy, give players more or less free props

3 from the regular 2D game into 3D games

10, loading too slow

Your game may be good, but if the load time is too long, some players may be overwhelmed. This problem is especially important when the player is playing a mobile game on a less connected condition because the load can be delayed or never loaded.

You may think that players are willing to wait, some may have the patience, but in this era, their investment in the game is not so high as to allow them to endure the degree of forbearance. They install the game and try it out, that's all they put in, not much.

To mitigate this problem, you can postpone some of the loaded parts of the game by dividing the load into several steps and putting the actual game content between these steps. Developers may not realize the load time problem until the game development is over, so the time of partition loading is not considered in advance in design.