Today’s video games can encompass multiple different platforms, elements and media.
The majority have evolved far beyond what used to be considered as games. Originally, many, like seventies hit Pong, had basic functionality and were aimed at a limited audience when compared with today’s huge video game success stories with sprawling narratives, Hollywood-style plotlines and adventures. Game design degrees can play an important role in equipping students with the knowledge to understand how games of all kinds work, why they are so popular and how to create engaged communities surrounding them.
In this blog, we’ll explore what game engagement means, how design has shaped it and some essentials for video game designers and developers to remember when creating games.
Interested in studying a Game Design Degree or other gaming course at SAE? Then contact our team to find out more.
How Game Engagement has Evolved
Game engagement describes how invested users are in a game and is considered a metric of success for game development. Multiple factors can influence engagement, including a game’s format, story and user journey.
Game engagement comes in different forms and often depends on the kind of game. For example, the majority of console games require your full attention and are usually played at home in a designated space. Mobile games can be played on your handset while travelling or when watching television.
Other mobile games are played once a day like Wordle where the levels of attention they require can depend on the game itself rather than the form. With some mobile games, plenty of action can happen while you are away with gamers checking back to get rewards. Anyone studying a game design degree will need to be familiar with the different techniques required to enhance game engagement and how best practice works across various formats and platforms.
Essential Tips to Remember when Creating Engaging Player Experiences
Studying a game design degree can equip you with the skills, knowledge and expertise to master the world of game engagement. Here are some foundational pillars of designing engaging games.
Know your audience
The first essential behind engaging gaming experiences is knowing who you are making a game for. If you are making a game for a certain player, then you need to understand that market and what features gamers expect. An engaging player experience begins with marketing and ends with them playing the game for many hours.
For example, if it’s a game for parents, then Wordle is a great example of a non-traditional game with very high levels of engagement and player retention which surpasses many mobile games.
Understand the genre you’re working within
Sometimes designers aim to make a real-time strategy game but they don’t fully understand the nuances or expectations from the players and what a game needs to provide.
It’s very easy to have ideas for games in mind and sometimes they might be in genres that developers are not necessarily experts in. If you are thinking about who you are making a game for, then you also need to think about player demands and expectations.
Fully understanding a genre is also key – and this can be a laborious process as it involves playing all of the successful games in a specific genre as well as the less successful ones to understand why they didn’t work.
Know what success and failure looks like
Studying examples of games that have been hits and those that have failed to resonate can be really beneficial for game design degree students.
A high profile and recent failure is Concorde, created by Sony. The company invested $100m in development for eight years but was pulled from sale about two weeks after release.
Effectively, this shooter game didn’t resonate with players who didn’t emphasise with the characters and criticised the game for failing to introduce anything new to the genre. As a consequence, it’s been one of the game industry’s most high-profile failures of recent years.
Many mobile games appear and disappear all the time. They are less high profile as there are so many and the market is flooded with new games every day.
The only ones that survive are those that target a specific player and satisfy their wants and needs. AFK Journey is Google Play’s game of the year and requires only a small amount of time from players each day. This free-to-play game offers a balance of rewards with third-person isometric role-playing adventure. It’s free to play and is the follow-up to AFK Arena, released in 2019.
Get feedback from players
Put a game in the player’s hands as early as possible in the design process to see how they engage with it. Game designers need to test the game and the best way to do this is to create a beta version, then make this available to your gaming community. By seeking this kind of first-hand feedback, designers are able to get insights on what works and what needs to be tweaked.
Rewards/Goals
In-game rewards and goals can help incentivise players to keep returning to a game, whether it be on mobile or console. It can ensure that they feel the need to advance through a gaming narrative, overcome any challenges and invest more time and energy into playing.
Game designers should also ensure that any rewards are balanced with a game’s difficulty. If they are too easy to access, then they will be taken for granted. Too hard and players may get frustrated with the gaming experiences and play something else.
Study Game Design and Development at SAE
From Games Programming to Game Development and Design, we offer a variety of game development degrees for aspiring industry professionals and creatives.
Find out more about our Games degrees and contact our team for more information.
