User Experience and Social Features in Games

Remember Tom from MySpace? The familiar face who was everyone's first friend on the platform and a pivotal figure in the early days of social networking. Not only did he help create one of the first major social networks, but he also introduced a feature that gamified friendships: the "Top 8." The "Top 8" Impact Being in someone's Top 8 was a coveted status symbol that fueled user competition and engagement. This feature led to frequent updates, boosting interactions and time spent on the platform. Moreover, the Top 8 facilitated the discovery of friends through mutual connections, making it crucial to include close friends, which helped attract new users which fueled exponential growth. Finally, it allowed users to express their social identity, giving them a sense of ownership by enabling them to create curated profiles. Today’s social media platforms still use similar concepts—whether through followers, likes, etc. and the same can be applied to games. Here are a couple of ideas below (some of which are already being deployed): Top Friends or Teammates List: Display a list of top friends or teammates on player profiles. Dynamic Challenges + Badges + Perks: Special quests for players who frequently play together, offering unique rewards and/or unlockable custom badges + additional boosts or bonuses. Customizable Social Spaces: Allow players to create and personalize social spaces or guilds. Social XP: Allow sharing of in-game achievements and/or grant extra XP for playing with friends regularly. Co-op Crafting: Unique items or abilities that can only be used/created when friends collaborate. Curated Tourneys: Competitions where players must sign up as a pre-registered group to participate. Shared Progress Bar: Joint milestones, with rewards being unlocked as groups achieve goals.

🐼 The recent launch of the "Kung Fu Panda 4" game on Roblox by Sawhorse and NBC Universal offers valuable insights into crafting successful brand experiences in the metaverse. Huge congrats to everyone involved. I went in and played this morning and here are three great things they did that every brand should focus on. 1) Seamless Soft Tutorials 📖 We usually try to stay away from building standard tutorials which might sound weird but the idea is most players on Fortnite or Roblox want to dive into the action and at this point we believe there are more user focused ways to teach a core game loop. Kung Fu Panda does this great by introducing a short, engaging cinematic with Po that serves as a soft tutorial. It's concise yet packed with essential information, allowing players to quickly dive into the action without the usual tutorial drag. This approach respects the players' eagerness to start playing while ensuring they're well-informed. 2) Social Encouragement 😎 Right from the get-go, the game encourages players to team up with friends, tapping into Roblox's inherently social nature. This not only enhances the gaming experience but also boosts game metrics, as playing with friends or making new ones in-game significantly enriches player engagement. 3) Player Interest Over Monetization 💸 The game's stance of "No Robux. Everything is free" is a bold and refreshing strategy. It prioritizes player experience over immediate monetization, signaling to the community that the brand values their enjoyment and engagement above all. This approach can foster a positive brand image and long-term loyalty among players. The result? An impressive 95% like rating from nearly 6,000 votes and a rapidly growing player base, with 13,000 concurrent users and climbing. These metrics speak volumes about the effectiveness of their strategy. 🧠 What Brands Can Learn - Crafting engaging, non-intrusive tutorials that respect the player's desire to start playing dramatically increases initial playtime. - Encouraging social interactions to leverage Roblox's community-driven platform boosts all around game stats. - Prioritizing player experience, possibly even over immediate monetization, to build brand loyalty is a refreshing way to build a community. As we at Atlas Creative continue to explore and innovate within Roblox, these insights serve as a valuable guide for creating brand experiences that resonate deeply with the platform's vibrant community. The "Kung Fu Panda 4" Roblox game sets a compelling precedent for how brands can engage meaningfully in the metaverse, and it's an approach worth considering for any brand looking to make a lasting impact. #Roblox #BrandEngagement #MetaverseMarketing #KungFuPanda4 #GamingCommunity

What are social games? Currently, games can be called social if they have leaderboards, friends lists, messaging (if players are lucky), and are connected to social networks in some way. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and a lackluster one at that. Truly social games encourage players to play together. This can come in a number of different flavors. The cheapest, easiest flavor is in the form of competitive gameplay - classic PVP - and many games employ this as a tactic toward engagement. And by cheap, I mean cheap. Games can come out faster and at lower cost with PVP at its core. Think League of Legends, Fortnite - when players are the enemy, you don’t need to design creative content, because your players are your content. Sidebar: There’s a dark side to PVP - PVP games tend to have toxic communities. This is another post for another day. The Holy Grail, however, is PVE - Player vs. Environment - games where players have to work together to thrive. Games that feature player to player interdependence, where content is BLOCKED without engaging other players, is what creates booming, hockey stick style engagement and retention. Why? Basic human behavioral economics states that deep lasting relationships are formed through repeat serendipitous interactions, particularly if there are acts of service involved in the engagement. It takes 5 positive encounters with a stranger to make them a friend. It takes many many more to make them good friends, let alone great friends. If you can get people in your game to be friends with each other, however, watch out - you’ll need a lot more cloud space to serve your game to more and more customers. Players whose friends are in your game will return to your game simply to see if their friends are online. Getting players to engage with each other is hard - and expensive - as you have to create content that they will want to engage with. Players need to spend time with each other, so you have to give them compelling content to complete together. You also need enough single player content to keep a lonely player engaged enough for another player to log in .This takes time, money, and a large team (hence why most MMOs have bloated budgets and timelines). The trick is to find social engagement that doesn’t bloat your costs. The ultimate rewards are in making games that bring people together. If you invest in creating reasons for players to work together, and they have fun doing so, you might get yourself the next HELLDIVERS II. What ways are you bringing social engagement into your titles?