Designing for Engagement
Designing for Engagement
Engagement is an important metric that influences both retention and monetization. Engaged players will come back more often, play longer, and are more likely to spend money in your game.
Creating engagement requires understanding what motivates engagement. In this article, we’ll examine five primary motivations for engagement: social, variety, convenience, achievement, and investment.
| Glossary of Terms | |
|---|---|
| Term | Definition |
| Daily Active Users (DAU) | The number of unique players playing your game in a day. |
| Monthly Active Users (MAU) | The total number of unique players who play your game in a month. |
1. Social
Creating and enabling social connections between players is a strong motivator, especially on a platform like Roblox. Social features can encourage players to form an emotional investment in your game.
| Feature | Explanation | Suggested Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Social areas | Provide areas in your game that encourage social gameplay, such as lobbies and roleplaying spaces. |
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| Community forums | Build a community around your game through channels like Roblox groups, Twitter, and Discord. |
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| Competitive and/or cooperative gameplay | Design gameplay that requires multiplayer interactions, such as player-vs-player (PVP) battles or cooperative puzzle solving. |
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| Avatar customization | Players like to show off! Allow your players to customize their avatar with hats, unique in-game items, and other vanity items. |
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| Social groups | Allow your players to create in-game social groups like leagues, clans, guilds, and families. |
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2. Variety
Include a variety of gameplay modes and things to do to keep your game interesting to players.
| Feature | Explanation | Suggested Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Progression | Unlock additional game modes or levels with new content through progression. |
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| Provide both casual and enthusiast gameplay | Casual: Roleplay, round-based play, mini games, click-based gameplay. Enthusiast: Grinding, exploration, skill-based gameplay, multiple ways to "win." |
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| Regular updates | Train your players to expect updates with new content and/or features at regular intervals. |
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| Player-vs-Player (PVP) content | PVP content is a scalable way to provide players with an almost unlimited variety of experiences. |
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| Emergent gameplay | Emergent gameplay results when your game offers flexible systems or level design that allows players to do the unexpected and find ways of playing your game that you didn't intend. | Identify the actions taken by players engaging in emergent gameplay to define related engagement metrics. |
3. Convenience
Make it easier for your players to start and continue playing your game by providing multiple ways to access it. Features like game update notifications can help re-engage players with new content.
| Feature | Explanation | Suggested Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-platform availability | Allow players to join your game on their computer, mobile, or Xbox for maximum engagement; make sure your game is fun and easy to play on all supported platforms. |
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| Game update notifications | Send articles/Promoting Your Roblox Game|game update notifications to re-engage players who may not be actively following your game. |
Once Game Update Notifications Analytics are available:
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4. Achievement
Some players are motivated by the sense of achievement, competition, and/or mastery. Balancing your progression is one way to create a sense of achievement and variety.
| Feature | Explanation | Suggested Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Leaderboards | Inspire players to strive for the top and compete with one another by articles/Leaderboards|showing leaderboards. |
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| Badges | articles/Badges Special Game Awards|Create badges that can be achieved through mastery of gameplay mechanics or spending time in your game. |
For each badge:
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| Skill-based gameplay | Design gameplay mechanics such as combat moves that require precise timing or particular button combinations, allowing players to train and improve their skill at those mechanics. |
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| Visual progress indicators | Visual indicators such as an "experience points" bar that demonstrates a player's progress towards the next level, providing a satisfying reflection of their efforts and the remaining distance to the next goal. |
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5. Investment
Investment refers not only to the money that players spend in your game, but also the amount of time, effort, and dedication they’ve put into it. The more they have contributed or built in your game, the more invested they are to continue playing.
| Feature | Explanation | Suggested Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Housing/property ownership | Allow players to have a space that is theirs to customize, such as a home which they can buy or build out. |
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| Building systems | Enable players to demonstrate their creativity and ingenuity by creating items or structures in your game. |
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| Currency over time | Provide short-term and long-term goals (valuables or vanity items) that your players want to save up currency to buy. |
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| Skill-based gameplay | Inspire players to invest time and effort into mastering skills in your game, creating a stronger sense of investment. |
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Now that you have an idea of how you can design for engagement, learn how to track the impact of your design in articles/Measuring Engagement|Measuring Engagement.