The Secret Sauce of Living Games | Matt Casey
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Delivered at Casual Connect Europe 2019. Today RuneScape exists beyond a live game; it’s a rich, deep, social and persistent “living game” that connects and inspires millions of players. Over its 18 years in operation, RuneScape has brought together and entertained hundreds of millions of people. In this session, Matt talks about Jagex’s living game philosophy and how it has created a game-centric culture amongst its players that comes from a player-driven development and operational ethos.
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The Secret Sauce of Living Games | Matt Casey
- 1. The Secret Sauce of Living Games Matt Casey Senior Product Manager Jagex
- 2. THE SECRET SAUCE OF LIVING GAMES HOW EMPOWERED PLAYERS BECOME INVESTED PLAYERS Matt Casey, Senior Product Manager, Jagex | @JagexMIC
- 3. WHAT IS A LIVING GAME? EMPOWERED PLAYERS “Our players have a visible impact on shaping the game” ACTIVE & EVOLVING “We constantly offer something new” MEANINGFUL SOCIAL “Our content creates a sense of belonging amongst our community” OUT OF GAME EXPERIENCE “We enable players live their game as a hobby” EVERGREEN DESIGN “Games built to offer deep, long-term engagement"
- 4. EVERYWEEK 18YEARS OF NEW CONTENT ALMOST
- 12. TO HAVE AVISIBLE IMPACT ON SHAPINGTHE GAME EMPOWERING PLAYERS
- 16. OVER 1,700 IN-GAME UPDATES DECIDED BY PLAYERS IN 5YEARS
- 17. PITCHTO PLAYERS
- 18. MULTI LEVEL PLAYER DECISION GATES
- 19. 2019
- 23. THUMBS UP OR THUMBS DOWN?
- 24. 90%+ THUMBS UP
- 25. INVESTED PLAYERS STAY FOR THE LONG GAME INVESTED PLAYERS STAY FORTHE LONG GAME
- 26. INVESTED PLAYERS STAY FOR THE LONG GAME Matt Casey | @JagexMIC
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hi, I’m Matt Casey, Senior Product Manager at Jagex, home to the living games of RuneScape and Old School. So RuneScape has grown pretty consistently since its release in 2001; we’ve enjoyed a resurgence in recent years exceeding our highest membership levels ever. I believe that’s because we’ve genuinely embraced our community as the leaders of what we do. It’s one of our corporate values at Jagex – we’re Player Obsessed, and this is the secret sauce of living games.
- We believe Living Games are the evolution of live games. Games that have evergreen design for long-term engagement Games with active and evolving living worlds that keeps players engaged Games that empower players to have a visible impact on shaping the game Games that have meaningful social features that creates a sense of belonging And games that provide Out of Game Experiences where players live their game as a hobby This player obsession means that we engage with them and do our best to understand them, whether that’s through surveys, polls, interactive chat, in person or through game analytics; we blend all these things together. Today, players not only want to attain mastery of what they’re playing, but also feel they’re an influential member of a community. And so, we empower them by giving them more than a say; they’re more like shareholders – our interactive livestreams are their investors calls, our deep-diving polls are their meeting votes – their input contributes to how the game evolves. And – when you can give someone the feeling that they’ve got a stake in the game’s future – they’re in for the long game (which is good because RuneScape is a pretty long game). Let’s start with some of the rules of engagement we’ve learnt along the way.
- Engagement – with the game – by updating the game, keeping it fresh and exciting – is obviously important. Almost since the start, our RuneScape games have had weekly game updates – that’s 18 years of new quests, locations, monsters and equipment being added every week This makes the game world feel vibrant and active – a place that’s truly alive. Then it becomes a bit more like real life - there’s always something going-on in our living world, and it’s an exciting and sometimes unpredictable place to be. The challenge is to change the world, add to it in a way that doesn’t feel predictable – and allow player curiosity to become a reason for players to stay or provide the reason to come back.
- Through content, we’ve created in-game social experiences that enable meaningful in-game player-to-player engagement: This is content that connects players, brings them together to collaborate in a significant way. This is different to being auto-joined into a clan after 10 minutes, where you don’t know anyone, and all you’re seeing is a list of people on a screen. Instead, we aim to offer deep social connections – where you’re in the same game world as someone else facing perils together, tackling opportunities, or solving problems
- Or just enjoying an activity together like: Deep Sea Fishing - an offshore hub where players join together to cast their nets and reel in their fishing skill XP together.
- Or hunting dinosaurs and other big game in the new landmass releasing this summer called the Land out of Time. This provides a genuine emotional connection between players – working and enjoying time with each other in the game. And this goes beyond one-to-one connections to clan connections, and wider social group – friendships and rivalries between communities. Those things make it really exciting.
- So, how do you listen to individual player voices but also pay them attention as an audience scales? We found that an aggregation of data analytics and personal player input provides our best way of reacting to what players were saying at scale We can all review data, but going the extra mile and giving players the personal touch, entering into a real dialogue with them is where it becomes a true two-way street. We’ve created multiple ways for studio-to-player & player-to-studio engagement, a particular focus is our live stream schedule which gives us a platform to talk to and discuss content with our players We do live streams almost every day; Simple, entertaining, a peep behind the curtain for players… and millions of views for us over the years
- And in a move that would normally give any social media manager a nightmare – we have taken our Twitter approach one massive step further: We have around 150+ Jmods – Jagex moderators - our developers - with their own official Jagex twitter accounts… This provides a deeper and direct level of engagement on specific development disciplines than one social manager could offer.
- We also found that personal engagement works when we reached into the real world as well Whether it’s inviting players to our studio, organizing player meet-ups… we do a big annual fan convention – bring people together with our dev teams – and not just community managers – is at the heart of each event. Simple player visits have become a key part of our content updates development process. Yes, they started as marketing-led fan visits… but now we’ve evolved this Now, our invitations to players to visit us focus on the best RuneScape players in the world. Selected through analytics, we will fly them in from anywhere in the world to test, feedback, and test again. It’s a full consultative loop that makes them part of the team on a specific piece of content.
- And then, when you scale up, you can go big with a fan festival – ours is RuneFest We’re privileged to have a large community to participate in big events such as these, but we started small and it’s totally scalable… There’s no reason why a pub room take over couldn’t be a starting point and follow the same golden rules as we do for RuneFest… a space where - Players meet each other - Players meet the developers - We play the game together
- We want our players to be more than just listened to, we want them to see that they have a visible impact on shaping the game. Because, the more players have a say in the game that’s being made, the more they are personally invested in it. So we empower them to put those needs and desires into game-changing actions. Through engagement, it’s no surprise that we see different tastes, and different appetites for different content, emerge from the community – to the point where factions can emerge… At most, where big wide divides become apparent within the community.
- Six years ago, after RuneScape had been evolving for 10-plus years, there was an increasing tension between the traditionalist players who wanted the game kept as it used to be, versus the more progressive players who wanted it to evolve and modernise. We offered the community the chance to split the game in two – here’s the offer we put on the table to the player base:
- We would keep the evolving, contemporary RuneScape but also bring out Old School RuneScape, a slice of the game as it was in 2007, with all its PVP, with its vintage style and retro looks We put that to a player vote…
- …and almost half a million players voted on it, and made it happen… six years ago the Old School servers went live and so begun the longest running A|B Test in history. Today, Old School is our biggest investment in, and example of, player empowerment We continue to run the player vote system in OS to introduce player guided content and mechanics into the game. ANY change to the game requires a poll to pass with a voting majority in favour.
- In five years of running player polls in Old School, we’ve offered up 1,700 player polls and 95% of them have passed the player vote. In just the last year, they’ve cast more than 11 million votes to decide every update for Old School RuneScape The 5% of proposed updates that haven’t passed – haven’t been missed; we honestly feel that their player-decided rejection hasn’t been to the detriment of the game. Through the polls, Old School players feel the game is theirs, we’ve made them co-producers – it’s been a major part of Old School’s success and it’s at an all-time peak right now
- So our content guys have to pitch updates to the community by sharing docs, discussing the plan in livestreams And then the player poll kicks in. This is not just a binary Yes/No vote. This questions all aspects of a proposed piece of content… For example, The Theatre of Blood was proposed as a new progression raid – the second piece of raid content ever for the game.
- The poll took players through 15 layers of questions opening with the simple: “Should we add Theatre of Blood to Old School?” And then took players into deep decision making with over a dozen individual questions engaging over 40,000 players to give their overall greenlight for the content.
- From polling everything in Old School, RuneScape itself also runs an annual player survey. This help us paint the big picture – what’s important to players, what do they want to change, what do they want to see introduced over the next 12 months? We show them the list of forthcoming content and updates – and ask them to vote and prioritise what they want first. They’re empowered them to feed into the product roadmap. They stay with the game because they want to see how their preference in the vote outcome will affect the game’s evolution over the next 12 months.
- Through engagement and empowerment, players feel genuine emotional investment in the future of game world and their community. If you listen, you make a better product through that feedback cycle. Players are happier with the game, and are more loyal. And – more to the point - you can measure it! Obviously, there are everyone’s regular KPIs, PLUS There’s customer satisfaction, as well as plenty of anecdotal information that our players delight in expressing as
- MEMES Memes have come to be an essential part of online culture and that’s true within gaming communities too. We find that memes give us a good sense of the current mood within different pockets of the player community. We’ve also taken some memes into the games
- Recently, a derided piece of concept art for new amour became meme.. It became a community talking point, which we engaged with, using it and the player sentiment to make something better… After weeks of non-stop memeing, our developers and our fans came together with a common goal and turned a bunch of Reddit memes into the best armour in Old School RuneScape. For all the memes, the majority of players genuinely want to help us improve the game. In this case, they weren't happy, they offered suggestions, and because we acted on them, everyone got a better piece of content. But back to player satisfaction, we wanted to take this idea further – be more granular and understand player satisfaction as one of our live reporting outputs
- So we introduced ‘live’ in game player satisfaction tracking, so we can see the impact of game updates, community issues and engagement each day in (almost) real time. And we can see these levels, live. What’s interesting is that, some players always vote Thumbs Up to everything, and, of course because of games, some players always vote Thumbs Down…
- This information all feeds into the full consultative loop our players have with our developers. And, right now, our engagement and empowerment is paying off with player satisfaction at over 90%.
- In conclusion, dealing with communities and keeping them onside is challenging and a major investment, but it is key to operating a live game or, if you follow this progressive approach, a living game. Yes, you will need to scale at different points of a game’s lifecycle – and, as the number of players and the size of your studio grows, it can gets more complicated – But, THE BENEFITS! - Players become invested in an experience that their opinions shape - They’ll stick around to see how you implement their decisions - The game reflects evolving player preference. - Leading to high levels of satisfaction and retention Yes - those who play together, stay together – our engaged community play longer, and have a 100% higher LTV. They came for the game and they’re staying as part of an engaged and empowered community. Thank you all and enjoy the rest of the conference. Questions?