Making a gaming app that hooks your audience: 05 KEY COMPONENTS!

Video gaming is one of the most popular leisure-time activities around the world, with more than two billion users. Over the past five years, video game time has grown steadily, from 5.1 hours/week in 2011 to 6.5 hours/week in 2017. There is some evidence that video gaming can improve focus, multitasking, and working memory, but if it is heavily used it may also have costs.

As a part of the process of creating a new game, it is very important to keep certain points in mind that help to make it more engaging and productive at the same time.

Let us take a quick look at these considerations and how one can design a game that is engaging and interesting;

01. Develop for “micro-sessions”:

As a developer, you would like to make something that allows users to accomplish something meaningful in a remarkably short period of time — most of the most addictive games are built in this way. One of the key themes of the more successful games is that you are able to get incremental rewards very quickly. A major factor behind any game’s massive success is the simplicity with which it makes something seemingly complicated easy to do.

There is a “footnote” to this point, which is the fact that it is essential to get users to a “wow” moment with the game as soon as possible when they play it for the FIRST time. That’s what’ll bring them back a second time around.

02. Create a great first splash screen:

Developing mobile games that are truly successful requires more than just great ideas and beautiful storytelling. The Zork trilogy, a text-based adventure game from the 90s, captured imagination back then, but today’s mobile users expect much more. Visually, you should be on top of your game. It does not hurt to have killer sound effects and music as well, if you plan to use headphones.

Swing Copters 2 is one of our favorite recent examples of mobile gaming that looks amazing. It was created by the same team that made Flappy Bird, an excruciatingly difficult game that is incredibly addicting.

03. Make sure the onboarding experience is absolutely perfect:

If there were ever an exception to the rule that “perfect is the enemy of good,” mobile game onboarding would be it. It must feel like you woke up like Beyonce.

Mobile apps leave a lasting impression — or last impression in some cases. Whether your game ends up in the digital recycling bin or sticks around for everything it has to offer depends heavily on the onboarding experience.

04. Induce a competitive edge:

Something mundane or administrative can become quite addicting by introducing competition. There are games that encourage competition between users, and others that promote competition with oneself. Regardless, all do well, because users are constantly reminded how they are doing in the competition, thanks to notifications, dashboards, and leaderboards that show their progress.

Users of RunKeeper and Strava share benchmarks with their peers, which motivates you to continue exercising. In many games, you compete against yourself and are constantly reminded of your high score to push you to the next level.

05. Encourage collaboration:

When you promote collaboration and include teamwork in the essential plots of your game it is more likely to succeed well. You’ll create social pressure to re-engage your users when they have to work together to achieve something as a team — no one likes to let the other team down.

Multi-player games like Xbox Live do this well!

CONCLUSION:

Games with high levels of addictiveness might use all of these techniques, while others might only use one or two of them. It depends on the type of game you are developing as to what will be a good combination for your game, but don’t just benchmark yourself against your competitors and copy their engagement strategies.

Good engagement can be a differentiator in itself, just one that most users won’t be able to quite put their finger on. The best way to make your game better than the rest is to design it for high engagement.

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