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Building Games for the Long Term:Pragmatic F2P Guild Design
Anthony PecorellaDirector of Production for browser gamesKongregate.com
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Who am I?
● At Kongregate for 5 years, directing our browser-based virtual goods business
● Also an indie game designer, cofounder of Level Up Labs
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● Open platform for browser-based games
● Flash, Unity, HTML5, Java, etc.
● 15M monthly unique visitors worldwide
● Core gamers – 85% male, average age of 21
● MMOs, RPGs, CCGs, TD, shooters, etc.
● Platform level virtual currency, “kreds”
● Mobile publisher of F2P games for core
gamers
● Acquired by GameStop July 2010
What is Kongregate?
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Some of Kongregate’s Developer Partners
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Context for the Talk
• Focus will be on free to play games, generally core-gamer in design
• Primary experience is in browser, but most lessons carry over to mobile
• There is no “ideal” guild, but this talk will try to help guide your design process with the right questions to ask
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Social Structures in High School
● Ad hoc teams (dodge ball)
● Social group or friends
● School Team (football, basketball, algebra)
● School Population
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Social Structures in Games
● Ad hoc teams (Halo, League of Legends)
● Friend list (Mafia Wars, Candy Crush Saga)
● Guilds / Clans (WoW, Clash of Clans)
● Factions / Races (SW:TOR, Planetside 2)
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A Note on Ad Hoc Guilds
• Nimblebit has tried “ad hoc” guild designs
• Super flexible, but this can be a disadvantage
• Decentralized membership
• Little to no mutual relationships
• Acts better as a fluid leaderboard than a guild
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How Important are Guilds?
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All That Glitters is Guild
• Every one of our top 10 games has some type of guild construct
• Guilds are an essential part of high-level monetization in core F2P games
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Numerical support for guilds
• Dawn of the Dragons, by 5th
Planet Games
• Of players who reached level 10, 49% joined a guild
• Didn’t join a guild: 3.2% buyer rate
• Did join a guild: 23% buyer rate
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Numerical support for guilds
• Tyrant, by Synapse Games
• Looking at installs over the past year…
• Non-guild members ARPPU is $36.59
• Guild members ARPPU is $91.60
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Long Term Retention is Key
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What can Guilds do for Me?
● Retention – regularly returning to your game (rolling D7 retention, regular players, etc.)
● Social connections create sense of belonging, and duty
● Players don’t want to let the guild down
● Keep coming back for sake of others (the Draw Somethingeffect)
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What can Guilds do for Me?
● Engagement – playing deeply into your game (session time, user level, advancement pace, committed players, etc.)
● Guild members are great teachers for new players
● Share late game strategy and wisdom
● Powerful elder-game content
● Members need to perform at a high level for the guild to be competitive
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What can Guilds do for Me?
● Monetization – spending among guild members (% buyers, ARPPU, LTV, etc.)
● Indirect monetization as members upgrade their own status to be able to perform better for the guild
● Direct monetization can be done in the form of guild items and bonuses
● Helps mitigate “pay to win” feelings when you have a big spender on your team
● Some guilds exclusively recruit spenders and require continued spending from members
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The MVG
• What are the characteristics of a Minimum Viable Guild?
• Guild Name: needs to be persistent and visible outside of itself
• Controlled Member List: membership persists and is managed
• Guild Owner: a leader/organizer that at a minimum controls the member list
• [Shared content: Some sort of content, even just a score, to unify the guild members]
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Guild Features & Decisions
● Now that we have an MVG, what, if anything, should we add to it?
● What other design questions should I consider for my game?
● We’ll use an example game…
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Guild Design Example Game
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Guild Attributes
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Creating Guilds
● Should I charge money to create a guild?
● Avoid creating too much friction
● Guilds are only a means to an end, a powerful tool
● You want as many legitimate guilds as possible
● Soft currency prices make sense to avoid careless guild creation, add more sense of ownership, or to pace the player lifecycle
Swords & PotionsEdgebee Studios
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● Call them “Teams” not “Guilds”: appeal better to the demographic
● For consistency, will be referred to as “guilds” in this talk anyway
● Collect 7 tickets from friends to start a guild and become Guild Owner
● Enhances sense of ownership
● Acts as initial seed for guild members
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Joining a Guild
● Introduce guilds at an appropriate time to players. Once they unlock them then they’ll be interested in exploring them.
● Have a good matchmaking algorithm for players who want to find a guild.
● Guild owners will generally want options for open enrollment, approval, or invite-only
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Joining a Guild
● Provide incentives for joining a guild.
Game of WarMachine Zone
Dawn of the Dragons5th Planet Games
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● A player searching for a guild will be matched up based on having similar game progression to the average guild member
● Players are encouraged to join a guild after they finish level 20, incentivized to do so with a free power-up or free progress to next section
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Guild Size
● Not a clear best practice that I’m aware of
● Many games max out guilds in the 40 – 50 range (Tyrant, Clash of Clans, Clash of the Dragons)
● Other games much larger (Wartune: 210, Dawn of the Dragons: 250)
● Some games use alliances, officially or unofficially, to increase guild size
● In many cases guild size increases as it levels up or gets items. Tyrant ranges from 15 – 50, Wartune from 30 – 210.
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Guild Size
● Focus on the functionality within your game
● Do you need lots of concurrent players in a guild for live, real time events? Larger may make more sense.
● Is it important for members to know each other well and coordinate strategy and plans? Keep it small and intimate.
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● More casual, social demographic, likely to already know everyone, or want to get to know everyone, in the guild
● Ideal size is probably around 20
● Keeping with the more simple, casual style we won’t have guilds level up or increase in size
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Guild Identity
● Help your players develop bonds to their guild and guild mates and to express themselves
● Name – often has hobbies, national pride, or puns
● Guild colors/emblem/image to show off
● Many will build their own guild pages, forums, etc. too
Clash of ClansSupercell
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● Guild emblem creation
● Option of background shapes, textures
● Choose main overlay image
● Choose primary and secondary colors
Candy Crush Guild Battles
Game of Thrones AscentDisruptor Beam
Diablo IIIBlizzard
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Guild Features
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Guild Communication
● Guilds are a social construct, so let people communicate!
● Focus first on guild-specific, necessary communication
● Asynchronous
● Announcements: one-to-many from the guild leader, useful and important
● Forums: much more flexible, good for persistent discussion of strategy, planning, recruitment, etc.
● Guilds will often do this for you!
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Guild Communication
● Synchronous
● Chat: good for larger guilds, real-time games, or long session games
● Semi-persistent gives a “best of both worlds”
Clash of ClansSupercell
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● Guilds are likely to contain a lot of real-life friends
● A semi-persistent chat would be a fairly simple and effective communication channel
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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The Guild Bank
● A place for players to donate or contribute currency to a shared pool for the guild
● One-way process, typically converted into a guild-specific currency that may or may not be spendable
● A fantastic sink for soft currency out of the economy
● Typically hard currency can be used at a substantial multiplier to soft currency
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The Guild Bank
● Leveling up
● Simple implementation, more akin to XP. Players contribute to the guild which adds to the guild XP. Guild levels up at various thresholds.
● Spendable bank currency
● Similar to leveling up, but gives the guild owner the ability to select guild-wide upgrades to buy with the currency. Gives more direct ownership over the guild growth, allows leader to give goals for players to meet.
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The Guild Bank
● Membership dues
● An even more effective way to sink soft currency. This is a guild-wide, weekly amount that must be paid to keep the guild from demoting. Scales with size, very useful lever for balancing.
● Contribution credits
● Members get a credit for each donation to spend at a guild shop.
● Opens up possibility of guild-exclusive items.
● Gives top guild members an individual benefit scaled to their own contribution.
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● Lacking a currency there won’t be any way to donate or contribute to a guild bank
● That said, I would strongly consider adding a guild bank to house winnings from competitions so team captains can buy cool stuff for the team
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Guild Items
● Bonuses for the entire guild, acquired either from the bank or by players
● Paid guild items seem be to fairly rare, but a great opportunity
● Caesary had a $100 item that would increase the guild size by 200 people, sold quite well
● Collective purchasing is a possibility too
● Items should travel with the purchaser
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● Guild Store
● Allow captains to spend team points to buy guild banner customization
● Some options in the store would also be locked off by league level
● Purchased Guild Items
● Aesthetic items can be sold to guild members directly to share with the guild
● Potential for high-priced shared items: all guild mates get +1 life permanently for $99.99
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
Candy Crush Guild Battles
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Guild Competition / Cooperation
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Intra-guild Cooperation
● Cooperative PvE
● Often not guild-specific, but may offer bonuses for doing it with guild mates
● Guild raids
● Summon guild-exclusive raids to challenge with just your guild mates for rewards
Dawn of the Dragons5th Planet Games
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Intra-guild Cooperation
● Event participation
● Guild members work together to achieve goals during events
Kings & LegendsChangYou
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Intra-guild Cooperation
● Cooperative construction
● Work together toward persistent improvements
Swords & Potions 2Edgebee Studios
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● There really isn’t anything that would make sense for intra-guild co-op, at least not for a first pass
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Intra-guild Competition
● Not necessarily explicit, though sometimes is (Clash of Clans)
● Provide player progress metrics for members to see how they compare to everyone else. Level, trophies, etc.
● Am I pulling my weight? Am I behind everyone else?
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Intra-guild Competition
● Provide short term metrics to track recent activity. Last login, weekly contribution, etc.
● Did I do my fair share this week?
● As a guild owner, is there anyone I need to speak to or cut?
WartuneR2 Games
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● Provide leaderboard within a guild
● Player name
● Highest level unlocked
● Games contributed this week
● Score contributed this week
● Tapping on a player’s name brings up a second page that shows the specifics of their weekly contribution
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Inter-guild Competition (Passive)
● If you have a metric you can rank all guilds.
● Provide a regular benefit for high-ranked guilds to incentivize performance.
● Clash of Clans does this well…somewhat.
Clash of ClansSupercell
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● We need a guild metric to compare
● Requires regular, continued participation
● Rewards skill
● Rewards persistent growth week to week
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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● Weekly contribution from each member to the guild score
● Completing a game generates a guild contribution value
● Top ten contribution scores from each player count toward the guild’s weekly total points
Contribution =Level _Score
3_Star_Score´Level _Number
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Inter-guild Competition (Active)
● If it makes sense for your game, active competition can be very powerful
● Can be synch or asynch, scheduled or ad hoc
TryantSynapse Games
WatuneR2 Games
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● Don’t need any direct, active competition – the ranking system should suffice, especially for a first version
● Could potentially be done through a challenge system on a particular, or randomly-generated level
● Each guild has 24 hours to post scores
● Top 10 scores from each guild count
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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A Quick Look at Leagues
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Leagues
● In Clash of Clans, the top 3 clans get a reward. Competition is fierce at the top, but what about everywhere else?
Weak Strong
All Guilds
Intense Competition
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Leagues
● Leagues are sometimes used in highly-competitive games like League of Legends and StarCraft II.
● Clash of Clans actually has leagues too, but they’re individual rather than clan-based.
● Players move into higher leagues by increasing their core metric, being promoted when they hit various thresholds.
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Leagues
● Could we design a better league for free to play? Can it work for Guilds? What would it do?
● Have a relatively short season or cycle
● Provide rewards to promote retention and engagement
● Be directly competitive, zero-sum to promote fierce competition and indirectly engagement/monetization
● Provide sufficient number of tiers to allow for feeling of growth
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Relegation/Promotion Leagues
● This is pretty foreign to American sports fans
● Move away from score tiers, instead make it population-based
● Each level has a fixed percentage of population, guilds must fight to move up or down each “season”
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Relegation/Promotion Leagues
● Reconcile on a weekly basis
● Each week, process promotions and demotions
● 1/3 jeopardy rate: 33% of each level moves down one level, corresponding guilds from lower level move up
● After the moves, give out weekly rewards for membership
Weak Strong
All Guilds
Intense Competition
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● A 16-tier promotion/relegation league system
● Weekly rewards would include team cash (to buy emblem customization items)
● Special rewards for top 10 teams in each league (small number of boosts)
Candy Crush Guild Battles
• Creation
• Joining
• Size
• Identity
• Communication
• Bank
• Items
• Intra-guild cooperation
• Intra-guild competition
• Inter-guild passive
• Inter-guild active
• Leagues
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Wrap-up
● Design guilds with a focus on retention, engagement, and monetization
● Think about how decisions affect player behavior and relationships
● Be creative, look for new applications and mechanics that make sense for your game
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Thank you!
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