作者：Nathan Lovato

Marc Robinson在2013年GDC演讲中指出，“一般来说，只有不到40%的免费游戏玩家会在首次体验后重新回到同款游戏中。”

大家都知道，作为一名专业游戏设计师，我们的首要职责就是创造引人入胜的体验。我们创造游戏就是要给玩家取乐，如果他们过早和过频地离开游戏，我们就失败了。

想想玩家离开游戏的原因，是一个让我们站在他们角度思考问题的绝佳机会。要知道，你经济上的成功很大程度上也取决于你对用户的把握能力，这一点对含内置道具的游戏收益影响尤甚。

GameAnalytics的科学团队最近发现，优良的玩家留存率与游戏收益成功直接相关。这意味着如果你想谋生就很有必要留住用户。

本文总结了一些玩家离开游戏的原因，其中最重要的两者就是受挫和无聊——它们是心流状态的天敌。所谓心流，就是全身心投入某项活动的一种心理状态。不说是激情，也是一种深度愉悦的状态。也就是我们让玩家陷入游戏的状态！也是我们全力以赴追求的一种状态。

这就是我们作为游戏设计师要从积极心理角度出发所实现的首要职责。优良的玩家留存率来自追求心流的设计，即一种济而深度回馈的体验。请注意不要将此同基于刷任务机制的休闲游戏混淆！你的游戏进程也许设置了诸多障碍，但在合适的玩家眼里也仍然可能十分流畅。

我不打算在此赘述人人皆知的设计通病，仅列出玩家可能离开游戏的潜在原因，一定要对照这些内容确认玩家究竟是不是因此而离去。

玩家为何离开你的游戏？或者说，他们为何受挫或无聊地离去？原因如下：

1.你的游戏介绍很糟糕

人们都迫不及待地想开始试试你的游戏究竟如何。在他们一打开你的应用那一刻，你就得想法留住用户。任何时候都是如此！你的启动画面，载入页面和首个关卡对于创造玩家初次印象十分重要。这个初次印象会一直影响玩家，即便他们没有马上卸载你的游戏。

2.你的游戏会话过长

现代社会节奏让大家忙得不想浪费时间。

你的玩家很可能面对众多推送通知和其他精美应用的频频招手而不知所措。如果你是针对成人创造游戏，要知道他们除了日常上班外，多数时间还要照顾家小。他们没有办法连续数小时耗在游戏中。

所以你的游戏不可以设置需要连续1小时闯关的环节。这并不意味着你必须遵从当前手机游戏趋势，即设置2-5分钟的游戏环节。如果你瞄准的是深资玩家，你还是可以设置长达半小时的游戏环节。如果你如果你锁定的是大众手游市场，你就要尽量让玩家在3分钟内就能获得相应的体验。

桌面游戏的会话时长取决于你所开发的项目类型。但即使是魔兽或最终幻想这样的MMORPG也还是允许玩家在15到30分钟内扫清一个普通的地下成。MMO则可兼容更多类型的用户，不会局限于特定的玩家类型。

3.你的项目没有瞄准正确的用户类型

打斗型的游戏无法吸引60多高龄的老人，你也无法用暴力动作游戏招徕少女用户。

这已是人尽皆知的游戏设计原则，也还是需要我们时常自我提醒。作为设计师，我们是在为他人创造体验框架。因为我们无法取悦所有人，就必须选择一个目标用户。也就是选择我们所认为的有可能对我们的作品感兴趣的群体。我们必须研究这些群体，从这些人群中挑出一些样本，在开发过程的早期让他们来试玩我们的产品，让他们给予反馈。

选择了错误的用户也意味着糟塌你的营销预算。试图取悦错误的用户是个极端危险的行为！费钱又耗时！

4.你瞄准的是已经饱和的市场

让我们假设这样一种情况：我们瞄准的是40多岁的女性，她们多数是没有经验的玩家，但有一些闲暇时间。我们基于这种假设创造了一款新颖的连线消除游戏。它是一款制作精良的原创作品，获得了媒体的广泛赞誉，我们也收获了一些粉丝基础。

但这可能行不通。为什么？因为市场上已经有大量优质的谜题物理游戏和连线消除游戏。像King这种已经拥有广泛用户的大型公司尤其如此。人们不会轻易转向其他游戏，无论它们的质量如何。

我们投身于娱乐行业，虽然游戏是我们的作品，但它们本质上仍是市场上的商品。无论我们在市场推出多少新产品，都要确保它能够解决人们的需求。今天的连线消除游戏已经没有什么市场需求可言了。

即使人的产品质量堪比竞争对手的游戏，你也还是难敌像King这样大型公司，毕竟它已经同用户建立了持续的积极关系。

5.你没有进行足够的测试

今天，漏洞百出的游戏和软件似乎已成常态。我们甚至很难看到润色充分无漏洞的AAA大作。但漏洞是一个麻烦。你产品的任何瑕疵都可能危及产品的生命及其所提供的流畅体验。漏洞也是用户的困扰，所以也会成为他们卸载游戏的一个原因。

我们必须让终端用户尽早尝试游戏。这几乎可以追溯到首个原型阶段。作为独立开发者更是如此，因为我们无法独自查找出游戏的每个漏洞。即使我们自己进行测试，也还是因为过于了解自己作品的运行方式，从而无法施展纠错能力。

6.你的新手教程阻碍了玩家

新手教程不应该迫使资深玩家经历冗长而无趣的首个游戏环节。教程通常是玩家对游戏玩法的初次体验，所以开发者很有必要在此下一番功夫。在此我只想强调教程应该充分考虑你所瞄准的目标用户。

如果你制作的是JRPG或FPS游戏，你就有相当一部分终端用户根本不需要教程。不要强迫他们去体验教程。《暗黑之魂2》就是一个出色教程的范本，将其纳入一个设计良好并且可选择的区域（游戏邦注：玩家可以直接穿过主路径到达游戏的中心城市）。

7.你的游戏太难上手了

作为独立开发者或小型团队开发者，我们一般会自己测试游戏，并据此调整游戏玩法。但是，游戏难度必须适应目标用户而非我们的技能。进行迭代测试及使用游戏分析工具是平衡游戏难度的关键。

如果游戏提供了不公平且具有惩罚性的初次体验，玩家就很可能会离开，没有经验的玩家尤其如此。如果你的游戏控制方式不灵光或者不准确时也会出现这种结果。糟糕的控制方式会让你的游戏难于上手以及根本不顺手。

后期卸载游戏

我们的首要目标是避免玩家在早期就离开游戏，否则他们就不会玩游戏。但我们还要让他们一直玩下去！一般来说，你只有少部分的玩家会一直坚持到终点。他们会在游戏接近尾声之前就退出。所以在此我总结了一些玩家在后期可能离开游戏的原因。

8.难度骤然提升

多余的难度提升会破坏用户体验。不要误会我的意思：我并不是说你的游戏不应该具有难度。但是，它应该一直保持公平状态。《暗黑之魂》系列就是一款拥有出色难度曲线的游戏。它甚至允许玩家自己选择难度。《超级食肉男孩》和《以撒的结合》也都非常困难，但都是成功之作。

9.机械式的刷任务

在马里奥游戏中短暂的数秒胜利感是种很棒的体验，因为它只是暂时的。

不要忘了你的游戏挑战要与玩家技能相匹配，这样才能让他们沉浸在心流状态。心流可以让玩家一直待在游戏中，也是一种困难的平衡措施！

在《天际》中有一个节点出现了只是走走过场的恶龙。我的盗贼可以拿一把匕首轻轻松松地屠龙。对我来说，这破坏了游戏的沉浸感和氛围。这也正是我放弃该游戏的原因。

10.游戏过于依赖刷任务机制，缺乏内在奖励。

刷任务是一个强大的工具。如果使用得当，它可以增强玩家的技能进步感。它为玩家提供了具体而量化的物质奖励。但刷任务并不足以创造一款出色的游戏。

暴雪就是刷任务方面的大师，它仍投入大量时间用于润色核心机制，视觉设计以及游戏背景。《暗黑破坏神3》不仅仅是一款砍杀游戏，还是一款精美而多变的动作游戏。魔兽呈现了大量独特的地理区域和供玩家探索的地下城。虽然刷任务是这两款游戏的核心，但它却是用于增强游戏的主体质量，核心玩法。

11.游戏要求玩家投入大量时间

这曾是MMO游戏的一个通病：《Prophecy》和其他的《Dark Age of Camelot》系列要求用户投入大量时间才能获得深度的游戏体验。需要再次指出的是，今天并非所有玩家都能够在游戏中投入如此多时间。正如之前所言，多数现代MMO游戏也在根据这一新用户特征而进行调整。

《最终幻想13》是一款含有30小时教程的单人游戏典型。它在这段冗长的时间中向玩家线性地逐个呈现游戏系统，之后才会出现一个巨大的开放式关卡。这也是该游戏的主要诟病。

你的游戏应该在早期就提供一些娱乐性的内容。

针对社交及免费游戏

以上所述原因适用于广泛的游戏类型。但并非所有游戏都是社交、免费类型，所以有必要在此将其单独列出。

开发者一直在反复分析免费游戏中的留存率。社交游戏留存率偏低的原因很直观，也很容易上网查找。以下是我所列举的一些非直觉性的原因。

12.玩家社区氛围不佳

在“社交游戏”中，我们可以看到“社交”一词，但此类游戏多数时候却并不具有社交性：它们戴上这顶帽子只是因为它们连结了游戏与社交网络。但多人模式游戏通常会为玩家提供与对方交流的途径，可能是通常的聊天工具，游戏通知或私信。

如果游戏支持玩家在其中聊天，你就应该仔细追踪玩家社区建立与发展的过程。经常对菜鸟出言不逊的社区可能会将多数新玩家吓跑！真正的社交游戏应该要有良好的社区管理系统。

13.资源太少

这是免费游戏的通病之一。也就是人们所谓的“付费获胜”策略。如果我们给免费玩家提供的资源太少，他们就很容易受挫。无论是在游戏早期还是晚期阶段均是如此。

迫使玩家付费的盈利策略不会奏效。向玩家抛出大量广告让他们购买更多资源只会令玩家离开游戏。正如Seith Goding在《Permission Marketing》一书中所言，用户有大量的可替换选择。你要与用户建立一种关系，用游戏设计来塑造这层关系。

14.你的游戏环节很空洞

社交游戏玩家想在游戏中参与多种类型的活动。每个游戏环节无论时长大小都要活跃而富有回报。举个例子，《Zombie Catchers》通过切换基于狩猎的玩法和一些简单的商店管理任务保持游戏的新鲜感。你可以在短短几分钟时间里享受多种玩法阶段。

15.你的游戏惩罚非活跃玩家

一方面，让不常重返游戏的玩家受损可能有利于培养他们的游戏习惯，但是，大家都需要易喘气的功夫。玩家有可能因为某一要事而离开游戏，比如考试或者过生日……他们有时候还要去度假。当他们重返游戏时，如果发现自己的游戏进程，资源和基地受损，就很可能退出游戏。你应该为重新归来的老用户提供奖励而非惩罚！这可以强化他们对游戏的感激之情。

16.游戏更新不够快

社交和多人模式游戏必须保持更新。如果你想长期留存玩家，你就必须让他们有事可忙或者给予他们重返游戏的理由。每个月每季度常规而可观的游戏更新，是让用户念念不忘的关键。

如果你的更新太慢，用户不但可能卸载游戏，还可能永远将其抛在脑后。

总结

总而言之，玩家离开游戏无非就是两大原因：

*无聊

*受挫或焦虑

这两者是游戏设计师的最大阻碍，心流状态的天敌。（本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao）

16 Reasons Why Players Are Leaving Your Game

by Nathan Lovato

This tutorial was originally published on the GameAnalytics blog

Players leave games. According to Marc Robinson’s 2013 GDC talk, “On average, less than 40% of players return to a free-to-play game after just one session.”

And as you know, our first duty as professional game designers is to create compelling experiences. We make games for the players enjoy, and to play! If they leave our games too fast and too often, we have failed.

Thinking of the reasons why players are leaving your game is a great opportunity to put yourself in their shoes. Not only that, your financial success largely depends on the size and fidelity of your audience. In particular if you are monetizing your game with in-app purchases.

The science team here at GameAnalytics recently unveiled the results of their latest study. They showed that a good player retention is correlated with your game’s financial success. In particular keeping your very first players entertained. This means that it is critical to retain users if you want to make a living off of your work.

There are but a few reasons why players are leaving your game. The 2 most important ones are frustration and boredom: the archenemies of flow. If you don’t know what flow is already, it is a mental state characterized by a feel of energized focus and a complete absorption in a given activity. That is a state of deep enjoyment, if not passion. That is the state we want our players to fall into with our games! Regardless of the genre we going for.

This is, once again, our first duty as game designers – approached from the angle of positive psychology. A good player retention boils down to a design that calls for flow; a fluid and deeply rewarding experience. And please do not mistake that for a casual and grinding-based game! Your game’s progression could feature many chosen bumps and still look fluid to the eyes of the right audience (as in the Die and retry genre).

In this article, I didn’t want to simply list cliché design mistakes that we are all aware of. Instead, it is a checklist. The notes below are a collection of potential reasons why your players might leave the game, ordered from the most to the least important one. Make sure to double check them all to keep players in the zone!

Why are players leaving your game? Or rather, why are they either frustrated or bored to the point they quit? Here are a few reasons.

1.      Your game intro sucks.

In pretty much every domain of their lives, people want to get started. They don’t want to wait before they can get a taste of what your title has to offer. From the very moment they start your application, you should give your users a reason to stay. At all times! Your title screen, your loading and your first level will make up for the players’ first impression of your game. This impression will stick with them, even if they don’t uninstall your game right away.

You can check our previous article for a more detailed rundown of the topic: How to create immersive intros.

2.      Your game’s sessions are too long.

We now have busy lives. Or maybe we don’t. But our modern society makes us feel like we haven’t got time anymore!

Chances are your players are overwhelmed with notifications and other polished apps trying to grab their attention. If you are creating a game for grown-ups, they likely have a day job and a family taking most of that time. They cannot afford to play for hours in a row.

It shouldn’t take a whole hour to go through a meaningful chunk of your game. Nor to reach the next checkpoint. This doesn’t mean that you have to follow the trend mobile games established, where 2-5 minutes long sessions is the norm. If you target experienced gamers, you can still get away with half an hour long sessions. And well, if you aim for the mobile market, you will have to make it possible for the users to play for as little as 3 minutes if you aim for a large audience.

The right session length of a desktop game depends on the type of project you are working on. But even MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV made it possible for busy players to clear a normal dungeon in 15 to 30 minutes. MMOs tend to account more and more for the needs of a whole range of target users rather than a specific profile.

3.      You are not targeting the right audience for your project.

It wouldn’t be efficient to target 60 years old players with a Beat Them All. Or teenager girls with violent action games.

Although this point is game design 101, it is always a good reminder. As designers, we build a framework of experiences for others. Because we can’t please everybody, we have to pick a target audience. That is to say a group of people whom we know will be interested in our creations. We have to study that audience. We have to go seek some of those individuals, get them to try out our product and give us feedback early on during development.

Picking the wrong audience also means dilapidating your marketing budget. Trying to appeal to the wrong users is utterly dangerous! It wastes both your time and your money.

4.      You are targeting a saturated fringe of the market.

Alright, let us imagine that we nailed our audience: women of age 40 and above, mostly unexperienced players, who have some free time. With that hypothesis, we are creating the next fresh match-3 games. It is an original title, highly polished, it receives great feedback from the press and we are starting to build up a small fan base already.

Chances are it won’t work. Why? Because there are already plenty of good puzzle physics and match-3 games available out there. In particular, big companies like King have a large and faithful audience already. People won’t easily switch to other similar games, regardless of their quality.

We work in the entertainment industry. Although our games are our creations, they are still products sold on a market. Whenever we bring a new product out there, we have to make sure that it solves a need. There is no real need for new match-3s today.

And even if your production matches the quality of your competitors’ games, a company like King has something you will hardly outweigh. It has had a lasting positive relationship with its users.

5.      You didn’t run enough tests.

Nowadays, buggy games and software tend to be the norm, sadly. It is even surprising to see AAA titles released in a highly polished state, bug free! Yet bugs are a plague. Any quirk hurts the viability of your product, the smoothness of the experience it offers. Bugs frustrate the players (even if some are pretty funny!), thus can push them to uninstall your game.

We must have end users try out our games very early on. Almost from the very first prototypes! As independent developers in particular, we cannot track down every single bug in our games alone. Even if we take the role of a tester, we still have an exhaustive understanding of how our creation works that hinders our ability properly track down all of its defects.

6.      Your tutorial slows down the player.

Dark Souls 2’s tutorial is quick and accessible to all players, yet it is optional.

A tutorial shouldn’t force the experienced player through a long, boring, patronizing first game session. As the tutorial is often the first taste the player will have of your gameplay, it is critical to pay great attention to it. Here, I just want to stress out the fact that your tutorial should take in accounts the whole audience you are targeting.

If you are making a JRPG or an FPS, a fair part of your end users won’t need a tutorial at all. Don’t force them through it! Dark Souls 2 offers us an example of a great tutorial, contained in a both well-designed and optional area (you can run through straight through the main path to reach the game’s hub city).

If you want to learn a few more insights about what can break your tutorial experience, Ernest Adams compiled 8 Ways To Make a Bad Tutorial.

7.      Your game is too hard to pick up.

As independent developers or in small teams, we tend to do our own testing. We also balance our gameplay accordingly. However, the game’s difficulty should be calibrated against our target users’ skills, not our own. Iterative beta testing and the use of game analytics are key to staying objective with our game’s balance.

If the game offers an unfair and punishing first experience, the player will likely leave. Unexperienced users in particular. This is also true if your controls are unresponsive or imprecise. Poor controls make your game hard to pick up and unpleasant to play.

Uninstalls in the later stages of the game

Our first goal is to prevent players from leaving in the early game. Otherwise, they won’t play. But we also want them to keep playing until the later stages! On average, only a fraction of your players will ever see your game’s ending. They will quit the game before they reach that point. So here are some reasons why players may leave your game in the later stages.

8.      Sudden rises in difficulty.

Unwanted difficulty spikes will ruin the user’s experience. Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that your game shouldn’t be hard. However, it should be fair at all times. The Souls series is a solid example of an unforgiving game with a beautiful difficult curve. It even lets the player choose his own difficulty, without knowing! Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac are both very hard, and were successful.

9.      Grosbilling or a backfiring grind.

Being invincible for a few seconds in a Mario game feels great. Because it doesn’t last.

Do not forget that your game’s challenge has to match the player’s skills in order for him to stay in a state of flow. Flow is what will keep the player on your game ultimately. And it’s a tough balancing act!

In Skyrim, I remember reaching a point where dragons became a formality. My skinny thief could slay them with a single slice of a knife. This broke the immersion and the epic dimension of the universe for me. Guess what? That is also when I stopped playing.

10. The game relies too much on grinding, lacks intrinsic rewards.

Grinding is a powerful tool. Used well, it boosts your player’s feel of skill progression. It offers concrete, quantifiable series of material rewards for the player. But grinding isn’t enough to make a great game.

Blizzard, the masters of grinding, still spend ages polishing the core mechanics, the visuals, and the background of their games. Diablo 3 is not only a hack and slash: it is a beautiful, dynamic action game. World of Warcraft features dozens of unique regions and dungeons to explore in groups! Although grinding is central to those 2 games, it is only present to reinforce their respective main qualities, their core gameplay.

11. The game requires a big time investment to become enjoyable.

This used to be an issue with MMOs: The 4th Prophecy and other Dark Age of Camelot required the user to invest a lot of time before they could really enjoy the depth the gameplay had to offer. Once again, not all players nowadays can invest that time in a game. And as I showed above, most modern MMOs are adapting to this new user profile.

Final Fantasy XIII is an example of a single player game that features a 30 hours long tutorial. The game systems are shown one by one to the player during that period of time, along a linear path. Only thereafter, the game offers a huge open level. That is the main critique it received.

Your game should always offer some entertaining content early on.

The specifics of social and Free to Play games.

The points outlined above should ring true for a wide range of games. Not all games are social, so that is why their specifics are coming last in this list.

Retention in Free to Play games have been and are being analyzed over and over. Most reasons of poor retention in Social Games are straightforward and easy to find on the Internet. Below, I have tried to pick a few not-so-intuitive reasons.

12. A toxic community.

In “Social Games”, we can read the word “social”. Most of the time, those games are not really social: they bear that name only because they integrate interactions between the game and social networks. But multiplayer games generally offer a way for players to communicate with one another. Be it through a general chat, in game emotes and interactions, or private messaging.

Well, you should carefully track how your community builds up and evolves if players can chat in your game. An aggressive community towards rookie players will scare most of your new users away! Real social games need to have good community management.

13. Resources are too scarce.

Zombie catchers (Apple store link) makes it easy for the player to find more game accelerating resources by simply playing more.

That is one of the plagues of Free to Play titles. What people call Pay to Win, or as I like to call it, Free to Pay. If we give non-paying players too few resources to make good progress, they will soon feel frustrated. Be it in the early or later parts of the game.

Monetization strategies that revolve around forcing the users to pay don’t work. Throwing prominent ads at them to buy some more resources will result in the players leaving the game. As Seith Goding explains it very well in Permission Marketing, the users have plenty of alternatives to choose from. You are building a relationship with them. The design of your game shapes that relation.

14. Your game sessions feel empty.

Following on the last point, social games players want to engage in a variety of activities in your game. Each gameplay session should feel lively and rewarding, regardless of its length. Using our previous example once again, Zombie Catchers stays fresh by alternating fun hunting based gameplay and some simple shop management. You can play for a few minutes and enjoy multiple gameplay phases.

15. Your game punishes inactive players.

The 21st slide from Kongregate’s talk summary at the Casual Connect Asia in 2013 says it all. On one end, making it dangerous for the player not to come back to your game often will force him to get into a playing habit.

However, people need to take breaks. At any moment, your users may have to stop playing because of an important upcoming event. An exam maybe, or a birth…They also need to go on holidays sometimes. When they come back to your game, if they have lost their progress, their resources and their headquarters, they will likely quit. Instead you can reward an old user for coming back after a long absence! Fortifying their appreciation of the game.

16. Updates are not coming fast enough.

Let us and with an easy one: social and multiplayer games need to be kept alive. If you want to retain users on the long run, you need to keep them busy or give them a reason to come back. Regular and substantial game updates, every 1 to 3 months, are key to staying in the mind of your users.

If your updates are slow, chances are your users will not only uninstall the game, but they might also forget to check it again later.

Summary

Next week’s article with focus on long-term retention and habit formation. This should give you some clues to keep players coming back to your game in the long run.

To sum today’s article up, players leave your games for 2 key reasons:

Boredom

Frustration, or anxiety

Those are your greatest enemies as a game designer. The antagonists of flow.（source：gamasutra）