GDC 2014: Wooga talked about the FUUU factor

“Anger is a very strong emotion,” Florian Steinhoff, Chief Product Officer at Wooga, began his speech at the GDC 2014 currently taking place in San Francisco.

In his opinion, creating a game, you should not make it “cute and fluffy” in everything. There should be a place for hatred.

“If a player hates the game, it means that he feels very strong emotions about it. This may well mean that he also loves her a little,” said Florian.

Based on this philosophy, he talked about the difficulty levels in Jelly Splash.

Difficulty levels

During the work on the project, many options for increasing complexity were tried. 

We tried to constantly increase the complexity (by analogy with a straight line, which is located at an angle of 45 degrees relative to the axis of the abscissa).

Alpha = 45 degrees.We experimented with an exponent of complexity resembling a “hockey stick”.

As a result, Wooga came to a line studded with peaks. 

Peaks are “very difficult levels” that slow down the player’s movement through the campaign. The problem is that at these stages, the percentage of player defeats reaches 95%.

Immediately after the difficult levels, there are “valleys” of easier levels, where the player gets a break. 

Wooga also added BuildUp levels, challenging stages on slopes leading to peaks. 

It is not necessary to introduce peaks and BuildUp levels at the first stages. However, this does not mean that the game should be simple from the very beginning. 

“Players have to lose, they have to lose even at the very beginning, otherwise they will think that the game is for children,” Florian notes. 

FUUU-factor

The main thing when creating such sensations is a properly balanced FUUU factor. 

Its formula looks like this:

# – the number of attempts to win / # – the time when the player almost passes the level.

The lower the FUUU factor, the more motivated and involved the player is.

For example, a player needs 100 attempts to complete a level. At the same time, only 5 times there is a moment when the player is as close to victory as possible. In this case, the FUUU factor is 20. 

Another case is that the player will almost fall 25 times. In this case, the FUUU factor is 4. Of course, in the latter case, the level will look more disappointing, but the disappointment is more firmly chained to the project. 

“Don‘t be afraid to disappoint the players, look at the data and ignore the whining of users,” advises Florian.

He also adds that all levels with FUUU-factor above 10 – need to be removed from the games.

Luck 

Players can write off their loss on luck. In this case, they will continue to play even when passing difficult, peak levels. Moreover, players feel an incredible emotional uplift when they pass such levels. 

However, designers should also love luck. It accelerates the progress of weak players and puts a spoke in the wheels of those who are stronger. 

It’s funny, but at the same time, players want to believe that it’s not luck that helps them win, but their own skill. For this reason, they are mentally ready for a game where passing a level will depend only on 50% of their luck. Florian, in turn, notes that he, as a developer, is more interested in a game in which everything depends on luck by 70%.

To compensate for the necessary 20%, it is necessary to resort to clever tricks so that the player believes that more depends on him than in reality.

How to do it? 

Florian advises in Match-3 to resort to the following “technique”:

• 3-7 available combinations each turn;
• 1 “best move” in most moves;
• 3 “best moves” in some moves.  

Fuck Yeah moments

The so-called “Fuck Yeah – moments” are when everything starts working in favor of the player when passing a level that seemed lost for a couple of moments. 

As an example, Florian cites a series of combos in Bejeweled at an almost lost level. 

Such an experience gives players hope for a miracle when passing the next stages. Hope, in turn, is a very strong motivator in terms of engagement and retention. 

Wooga recommended “Fuck Yeah – moments” to be placed in the game at the early stages, thereby investing in keeping users at much more difficult levels in the future. 

Another important advantage of “Fuck Yeah levels” is that they like to share.  

Results

The main tips from Florian sound like this: 

1. Make the game challenging;
2. Leave it casual;
3. Make it so that the game depends more on luck.

Source: http://www.pocketgamer.biz