Chillingo: you need to respect the player

Levi Buchanan, head of development at Chillingo, talked about which games have a chance of success and which do not.

The user appreciates those games that give something valuable in return for the time and money spent. “We need to give the user a good gaming experience. It is necessary to respect the player’s time. It is necessary to respect the money he spent on the game, regardless of whether he paid in advance, viewed an advertisement or made an in-game purchase. The players are smart and thrifty. They have thousands of choices in front of them, so they won’t spend money on games that they don’t get fan and respect from,” Buchanan shares.

The feeling that his time and money are respected should accompany the player throughout each stage of acquaintance with the game. Therefore, it is impossible to produce a hastily made product, Buchanan believes.

“Launching an unfinished alpha version is a stone age. Do not think that the user will wait patiently until you screw all the features that should have been released from the very beginning, such as multiplayer, to the game,” Buchanan advises.

The user will not play a “raw” game if the market is full of full-fledged projects. So a trial run is a necessity. Moreover, even at the softlonch stage, it is necessary to ensure that the key metrics are at an acceptable level. This is especially true for conversion and user retention.

However, even if you managed to launch successfully, you should not relax. A small percentage of “whales” are responsible for most of the game’s revenue. So you need to make sure that the game has enough high-quality content that they can spend money on. Ideally, the longer the “whale” plays the game, the better the content available to it should become. “If you deceive a paying player in the late stages of the game, he will leave, and he will definitely dissuade other users from playing your game,” Buchanan is convinced.

In conclusion, Buchanan advises not to hide the goods tab away from the user. The player needs to be shown where to spend the money. And if the project turned out to be worthy, then he will do it with pleasure.

A source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz