作者：Henric Suuronen

在Facebook上获得成功的关键因素不是病毒性机制或大笔营销资金，而是用户留存率。许多社交游戏行业从业者和公司都认为Facebook平台的改变使得游戏成长几乎无望，他们大加抱怨甚至为此感到愤怒。我给他们提的建议是，停止抱怨并将注意力转到制作更好的内容上，开发出吸引用户回头的游戏。看看Wooga（游戏邦注：本文作者是这家公司的雇员）的表现，过去6个月内日活跃用户总数增加1倍以上，现在公司在Facebook的日用户数超过400万，这个数据着实令人敬畏！

2007年我开始制作Facebook游戏时，发现很难测算留存率度量值，也不知道基准数。大部分只是传闻而已，可用的确切信息非常少。为公众所接受的DAU/MAU（游戏邦注：日活跃用户与月活跃用户的比值）是留存率度量时代的开端，但还不足以帮你制作出更好的游戏。

在下文中，我将用“40 – 20 – 10”规则来解决这个问题。规则中的数字表示的是日留存率、周留存率和月留存率。规则所传达的信息如下：如果你想让游戏的DAU超过100万，那么日留存率应该大于40%，周留存率和月留存率分别大于20%和10%。本文第一部分将主要探讨日留存率。

cityville(from sid.cl)

日留存率超过40%

也就是说，在所有首次安装应用并等待Flash文件加载的玩家中，超过40%的人会在第二天继续玩游戏。应用流量来源和玩家总游戏时间都会使这项数据产生较大波动，所以游戏发布后数天内达到45%并不意味着成功。但是，如果在发布1个月后留存率仍然大于40%而且DAU在20万和40万间，那才是真正值得庆幸的事情。如果这项数值跌到20%以下，那么游戏便极难获得成功。要使日留存率达到最大值，哪些才是你应该考虑的主要因素呢？

初次加载时间。初次加载越快越好，超过1分钟的加载时间会让你的游戏陷入困境。然而，减少时间所产生的效果似乎并非呈线性，从50秒缩短至40秒与从30秒缩短至20秒产生的效果不同。

本地化。如果你未将游戏本地化，离开游戏的玩家比例会相当高。比如，法国玩家发现游戏使用英语时就会迅速离开。

教程。这是最重要的因素之一。你应当简化教程，同时还要在此过程中传达游戏的趣味性和情感。你必须说服玩家，这款游戏很有价值而且比其他游戏更好玩。不断开展用户测试，重复检验教程中各个步骤。需要当心的是，在优化时不可只盯着教程完成率。短教程显然会获得很高的完成率，但可能导致日留存率或月留存率很低。

任务系统。在完成教程之后，应该直接将用户引向有趣且充满吸引力的任务系统。决不可让用户对接下来要做的事感到茫然。

可玩性循环。主可玩性循环是否有趣且易于理解？是否有意义？现实世界中是否有类似的东西？可玩性循环的重要性自不必说，这是游戏的核心！如果该因素无趣且无法发挥应有的作用，那么周留存率和月留存率将惨不忍睹。但糟糕的可玩性循环仍有可能侥幸获得超高的日留存率。

情感因素。游戏前3分钟是否向用户传达某种情感？游戏中是否有用户之前从未见过的动画、可爱的动物或某些精美的效果？认真观察测试用户脸上的表情，是微笑还是厌烦？

首次间断前的游戏时间。要使游戏对玩家产生足够的吸引力，至少需要10分钟的持续游戏时间。以20分钟为目标，随后设置某个间隔，这样玩家便只能在等待和付费间做出选择。

约定游戏机制。玩家在首日离开游戏时能否约定某些在第二天完成的事？游戏中应该有些用户可自行安排的奖励或完成行动等待时间。这些与日常奖励不同，后者对留存率的影响极小。

结束。应该让用户首次离开游戏时感到自己已经完成游戏中所有能做的事，事物都保持“良好的状态”。比如说，《Cityville》中所有的商业建筑均已供货，农场种下过12小时或24小时方能成熟的作物。用户会觉得即便他们没在玩游戏也能有效运转，这真是种奇妙的感觉！第二天回到游戏中时，点击所有图标就可以获得奖励。

影响日留存率的因素显然还有很多，但以上列举出的是主要因素。

上文主要谈论游戏第1日用户留存率，下面会侧重阐述游戏第7日和第30日留存率，这些留存比例源自40-20-10规则，规则认为游戏第7日留存率大于20%，第30日留存率大于10%。我不会说明哪些元素对第7日或第30日留存率影响更大，下述方面都会影响游戏用户长期留存率。

游戏循环设置

前部分已有提到游戏循环设置，但没有加以说明。游戏循环设置必须保持趣味性，这里强调的是保持。最佳例子就是《Cityville》，其中累积收入，获得奖励就一直饶有趣味。制作嵌入庞大游戏循环设置的动画是个缓慢过程，循环10次或许就十分有趣，但若是100或1000次呢？慢动画带来的不是趣味，而是会令人生厌，将给游戏第7日和第30日用户留存率带来消极影响。

巧妙-深度

若你将策略置于游戏主要循环设置之上，巧妙-深度元素从长远看就十分重要。即便“最有趣”的游戏循环设置，若没有进行战略性选择或考量，长久之后都会变得枯燥。巧妙-深度元素对第30日留存率影响最大，而对第7日就不那么明显。巧妙-深度策略生效的最佳体现是你仍然拥有活跃高级玩家，即便他们已经完成所有任务/目标（游戏邦注：他们还有战略/优化部分可供体验）。

可视扩展内容

可视扩展内容是用户刚开始就能看到但无法访问的领域，这是促使玩家继续体验的长期目标和动力。《Cityville》用户希望知道他们能够在嵌有山峰或海湾的空间完成什么活动。扩展内容是玩家的天然目标；这同好奇心结合就是个强大动力。人类都希望征服/扩充更多实际空间。征服空间越多，玩家对游戏的依附程度就越大，放弃体验造成的损失就越多。

玩家“空间”

不论是建造城市、餐厅、农场还是小岛，你自然希望每个游戏回合都能够把体验目标（游戏邦注：就是你的空间）变大变好。这也是电玩游戏缺少的元素，因为这些游戏通常都是基于等级。玩家同空间之间的密切联系会促使留存率提高。这就是为什么首个游戏回合要持续较长，要给创建者提供充足资金。玩家因此能够建造充满房屋和装饰品的城市，产生依附性，持续回访。

社交性竞争

好友数量会影响玩家留存率以及好友之间的互动内容。这里我不详述社交活动。如果你能够在游戏中融入玩家在现实生活中相互竞争的元素，那么留存率将会得到明显提高。这里指的竞争元素是金钱、美貌、名气、速度和相似性。如果你打算设计诸如此类的竞争内容，那么同时要确保该元素在游戏下方的高分榜单中体现。不要以玩家的经验值排列次序，相反应根据上述元素。最典型的例子就是《Millionaire City》，游戏参照玩家资本净值排列次序，谁更富有呢？

millionaire-city-screenshot(from 1888freeonlinegames.com)

同游戏循环机制绑定的要求

我知道这不是传统游戏设计要点，但就Facebook当前渠道来看，这对留存率很重要。这里的意思是你要把要求（游戏邦注：如完成房屋建设所需的道具、聘请好友填充职位）同游戏循环机制绑定。玩家想要前进，就得完成这些要求。植入不时要求玩家发送请求的独立道具并不够。游戏需要植入众多要求，不论玩家等级如何。若设置得当，这会带来相当可观的营收。

清晰的长期目标

这点有时容易忽略。玩家的游戏目标是什么？玩家从游戏开始到体验2-3个月后是否对此了然于心？在《Cityville》中，我希望能够成为Mayor，占领整片版图，在《Frontierville》中，我希望结婚，明确森林版图。有时玩家理解的目标会令人错愕。我曾问过一位测试玩家《Frontierville》的长期目标，她回答表示：“就是实现淘金标语目标”。玩家认为“淘金-即将来临”信息的意思是她只有体验足够久才能实现目标。检验你是否有效传递游戏长期目标的最佳方式是让体验游戏30分钟的初级玩家用10个词语形容游戏重要目标。如果玩家回答不出或答案和预期不同，那么情况就不容乐观。

记住，留存率是王道，“40-20-10”规则是目标！（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

RETENTION IS KING!

Henric Suuronen

Retention is really key to being successful on Facebook, it is not virality or deep pockets for marketing. Many persons and companies in the social games industry rant and rave about how it is impossible to grow on Facebook due to the changes in the platform. My suggestion to them is to stop ranting and make better games instead, games that users want to come back to. Look at wooga (my employer) over doubling the Daily Active Users in the past 6 months now bolsting >4MM Daily users on Facebook. Pretty awesome!

When starting out to make Facebook games in 2007 I found it hard to know what retention metrics to track and which are the benchmark numbers to aim at – there was just a lot of hearsay and very little concrete information available. The publicly available DAU/MAU is a start but not nearly enough to help you make a better game.

Next I will tackle this with what I call the “40 – 20 – 10″ -rule. This rule looks at 1-day Retention, 7-day retention and 30-day retention. The message of the rule is that if you want to create a >1MM DAU game your 1-day retention should be >40% and the 7-day and 30-day rates should be >20% and >10% respectively. Since this blog-post would be pretty long I will in this first part focus on 1-day retention.

1-Day Retention -> Target >40%

This means that out of all players installing your app for the first time and starting to load the Flash file >40% of them should also play the next day. This value can fluctuate quite a bit depending on the source of your traffic to the app and also lifetime, so don’t think the war is won after having 45% a couple of days after launch. If you however have >40% let’s say 1 month after launch with 200-400K DAU you should feel really good. If this value is <20% you will have hard time having any success with your game, ever. So what are the main factors you should consider for maximizing the 1-day retention rate?

Initial Loading Time. The faster the better, if your loading time is over 1min you will be in trouble. However there seems to be a pretty steep cliff the drop-off is not linear, the improvement is not nearly as big when shortening from 50s to 40s as when dropping from 30s to 20s.

Localization. If you have not localized your game a surprisingly high % of for example French players will instantly leave your game when they discover it is in English.

Tutorial. This is one of the most important things. Think about simplicity but in the same time delivering FUN and EMOTION. You must convince the player that your game is worth a while and more fun than others. Do real user testing over and over again to iterate the steps. Be careful not to stare only at the tutorial completion rate when optimizing it, a short tutorial will obviously have great completion rate but might result in poor 1-day or 7-day retention.

Mission System. After completing tutorial user should directly be lead to a fun and engaging mission system. User should never be left with the feeling “what now?”.

Gameplay Loop. Is the main gameplay loop fun and simple to grasp? Does it make sense? Is there something like it in the real world? I can’t stress enough the importance of the loop – it is the game! If it does not work and is not fun 7-day and 30-day retention will be very bad. You can actually get away with a bad gameplay loop and still have good 1-day retention.

“wow” or “emotion” -factor. Does the game deliver any kind of emotion to the user in the first 3 minutes? Is there a nice animation, a cute animal, some nice effects or something the user has not seen before? Watch the faces of the test users, do the smile, laugh or just look like they are bored?

Length of First Session. There should be at least 10minutes of play to hook the player deep enough to the game. Aim at delivering 20minutes before the game stalls and the user has to either wait or spend money.

Appointment gaming. Can user set something to happen for the next day when leaving the game on the first day of playing? There should be some user set reward or action completion waiting. This is not the same as the daily bonus, which has VERY little effect on retention.

Closure. User wants to leave the game after playing for the first time with the feeling that he or she has done everything possible in the game and left it in a “good state”. This means for example that all commerces in Cityville have been supplied with goods and the farms are seeded with 12h or 24h plants. The user will feel like the game is making money even though the user is not playing – amazing feeling! And when coming back the next day there will be all this yummy icons and rewards to click.

Okay, there is obviously dozens of other factors affecting 1-day retention but the listed above are some of the main ones. Stay tuned for the next part where I will tackle 7-day and 30-day retention. (Source: GAMES CHANGED MY LIFE)

Retention is King! (part 2)

In this post I will continue on exploring factors that affect greatly retention in social games. In my previous post: “Retention is King (Part 1) I focused on 1-day retention. In this post I will move on to 7-day and 30-day retention. As you may recall the target ratios for these came from the 40-20-10 rule which said that 7-day retention should be >20% and 30-day retention >10%. I will not distinguish which aspect affect more 7-day or 30-day, just treat the list as things that affect long-term retention. Obviously there are more things than in the list but these are some that came into mind.

Repeatedly Fun Gameplay Loop

The gameplay loop was already mentioned in the my previous post but in can’t be stressed enough. The main gameplay loop must be repeatedly fun and here is stress the word repeatedly. Good example can be found in Cityville where it never seems to stop being fun collecting the income and seeing the rewards pop-out. You can make a very animation heavy gameplay loop with will be slow and maybe very fun 10 times but how about after 100 or 1000s of times? All the slow animations can instead of fun become very annoying and have a huge negative effect on your 7-day and 30-day retention.

Smart-Depth

Smart-Depth is crucial in the long-term when you want to build strategy on top of the main gameplay loop (Check my previous posts for the definition for Smart-Depth). Even the ‘funnest’ gameplay loop might become boring in the long-term if you don’t have to make any strategic choices or think. Smart-depth will typically have the greatest effect on 30-day retention and not so visible in 7-day retention. The best way to know that your smart-depth works is that you still have very active advanced players even though they have run out of missions/goals to do (since they have the strategic/optimization part to play around with).

Visual Expansions

With visual expansions I mean areas that the user can see from the start but not yet access. They give long-term objective and desire to the player to continue. The users want to know what you can do in the area with the mountain or the bay in Cityville. The expansions give a natural objective for the player; this combined with curiosity is a powerful driver. Human beings want to conquer/expand to more and more physical space. The more space you have conquered the more attached you are to it and the more you would lose if you stop playing.

Your “Space”

Whether you are building a city, restaurant, farm or an island you want each play session to make the object (your space) you are working on look better and bigger. This is what arcade games usually can’t deliver since they are level-based. The user becomes very attached to the space increasing retention. This is why it is very important to have a long enough first session with plenty of cash in a city builder. The user will be able to develop a nice city with many houses and decorations and become attached to it thus returning the next day and later too.

Social Competition

The amount of friends (not so surprisingly) affects the retention of a user but so does what you can do with the friends. I will not go into the social actions in this post but instead talk about social competition. If you manage to create in your game something users in the real world also compete against each other the retention benefit can be great. Here I talk about amount of money, beauty, popularity, speed and similar. If you manage to define a subject of competition like this also reflect that in the High Score List below your game. Don’t list users based on XP level, instead on the amount of this attribute. Good example of this is Millionaire City that lists players based on Net Worth of the player – who is richer?

Requests tied to the main game loop

I know this is not a traditional game design point but on Facebook with the current channels they offer this is very important for retention. The point here is that you have to tie the requests (items needed to finish houses, hire friends to fill positions etc.) to the main game loop. User must be required to do this over and over again as he advances in the game. It is not enough to have a separate item or items that every now and then will require the user to send a couple of requests. Your game must be able to consume hundreds and hundreds requests regardless of the players level (newbie to advanced). If done properly this will also boost your monetization nicely.

Clear long-term Objective

This one is sometimes very easily overlooked. What is the player trying to achieve in the game? Is it clear to him from the first session to 2-3 months into the game? In Cityville I have the desire to become Mayor and occupy the whole map (see the point on visual expansions above), and in Frontierville I want to get married and clear the whole map from woods. Sometimes the objective the users perceive is a bit surprising. When I once asked a test user what is the long-term objective in Frontierville she answered: “To get to the Gold Rush sign-post”. The user thought the “Gold-Rush – Coming soon” post meant that she has to play long enough to get there. The best way to check whether you nailed the long-term objective of the game is to ask a vanilla user who has just played the first 30min of the game to describe the main objective of the game in 10 words. If the user can’t do it or the response is not what you thought in the gameteam you might be in trouble.

Remember, retention is King and the “40-20-10″ -rule is your target! （Source：gameschangedmylife）