From the perspective of games, what are the “routines” that can be learned to increase user stickiness?

Games and gamification activities naturally have strong user stickiness and user activity. Therefore, the author has sorted out the various "routines" used in games to enhance user stickiness and retention, as well as the application of gamification in ordinary Internet products, hoping to bring inspiration to the retention of ordinary Internet products.

Games have high user stickiness and retention, and the use of "gamification" is becoming more and more common in the general Internet.

For example: Alipay’s “Ant Farm” and “Ant Forest” on major Internet platforms; Taobao’s “Get Gold Coins” and “Taobao Amusement Park”; JD.com’s “Early Check-in”; Pinduoduo’s “Duoduo Orchard” and “Duoduo Mine” are all applications and attempts of gamification, and Internet products and designers all have the desire to understand the “routines” of game products.

In an environment where the Internet dividend has disappeared, after the difficulty in acquiring traffic, the key is how to cultivate users to grow into high-stickiness, high-retention, high-quality loyal users.

It is human nature to love playing, and humans inherit the instinct to play since childhood. In the 10 years since the App Store was launched in 2008, games have accounted for half of the 10 most profitable apps, and the rest are all audio and video apps that meet people's entertainment needs.

Games and gamification activities naturally have strong user stickiness and user activity. Therefore, the author has sorted out the various "routines" used in games to enhance user stickiness and retention, as well as the application of gamification in ordinary Internet products, hoping to bring inspiration to the retention of ordinary Internet products.

1. Game User Types

The core of the game function is to meet the different levels of needs of these types of users.

User types in the game ecosystem are generally divided into the following three categories based on their willingness to pay (amount, R comes from RMB):

1. Big R: At the top of the food chain, it gains glory and status, its functional design needs must be met as much as possible, and its retention cycle is also short (this is different from e-commerce apps).
2. Medium R/Small R: Good payment habits, generally play an organizational role, functional design selectively meets their needs, and improves user retention (developers generally focus on return visits, user testing, etc.).
3. Free players: an indispensable and important part of social interaction, playing a role in word-of-mouth publicity. Functional design will consider how to improve the conversion from free to paid.

Figure 01 Game user types

2. User stickiness and user retention

User retention is divided into long-term retention and short-term retention, and the core of retention is "having something to do online."

Game players have a certain retention period. If the players' "needs" are met or are not met at all, users are not far from leaving. For example: completing a stand-alone game to satisfy the user's pursuit of completion, being unable to obtain the joy of "victory" in competitive games, teammates who often play together abandoning the game and causing a lack of social interaction, etc., may all lead to user loss.

To enhance user stickiness and user retention, it is actually about keeping users busy when they go online, making sure they don’t feel “bored” after going online, and constantly exploring user needs and satisfying them.

There are two ways to maintain user stickiness in the game: "long-term retention" and "short-term retention".

1. Long-term retention: Provide users with long-term pursuits, which is the core gameplay of general games;
2. Short-term retention: Help players break down long-term pursuits into daily activities, create short-term pursuits and incentives for users, and continuously form positive incentives and cycles, thereby helping users achieve long-term pursuits.

1. Long-term retention

Long-term retention is based on the user's long-term pursuit, which involves the core gameplay of a game and extends the user retention time through the core system design of the game.

As shown in Figure 02, the level-clearing game Candy Crush allows users to eliminate obstacles and gain a sense of accomplishment by clearing levels one after another. Therefore, the levels will be made long enough and the elimination methods will be rich enough to continuously attract users, gain stimulation and maintain retention.

Figure 02 Candy Crush level map

As shown in Figure 03, the core gameplay of the MOBA game Honor of Kings is team confrontation + hero collection. Therefore, the developers will continue to enrich the types of confrontation (multiple gameplays, multiple events), continue to launch new heroes, constantly create "demand" and guide users to obtain satisfaction.

The detailed method will be illustrated in the third part, the core system design of the game.

Figure 03: King of Glory gameplay & hero map

1. Short-term retention, short-term pursuit

It mainly stimulates users and increases user activity through short-term activities and gameplay. Common practices include regular holiday events, payment systems & paid experiences, seven-day sign-in & monthly sign-in, daily tasks, etc.

3. Core system design of the game

Introduce the system classification of games and their respective effects on user retention.

1. Core Gameplay

The core gameplay of the game - the indispensable system in the game is the core of user gameplay.

As mentioned earlier, each type of gameplay takes advantage of the user's "gaming" nature, and this core gameplay of course determines user retention.

Common game types include:

(1) RPG (Role-playing game) and its derivative MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game)

The purpose is to create a virtual world for users to play role in the game, for example, the more famous "Legend of Sword and Fairy", "Fantasy Westward Journey", "Jian Wang 3", etc.

Figure 04 Fantasy Westward Journey

(2) MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena)

The most famous examples are: "Honor of Kings" and "Battle of Onmyoji", which are more competitive in nature, but generally have complex hero and development systems, and many types of gameplay, and are rarely used in daily activities on the ordinary Internet.

(3) Card games

It takes advantage of the user's collecting habit, constantly collecting cards, and adds many strategic elements, such as the well-known "Hearthstone" and "Dota Legend". There are also many activities applied on the Internet, such as: Alipay's "collecting five blessings" game in which everyone can participate, NetEase Kaola's "catching chickens" game in the Year of the Rooster, etc.

Figure 05 Hearthstone

Figure 06 Alipay's Five Fortunes Game & Koala's Chicken Game

(4) SLG

In a broad sense, it refers to simulation management games, and now mostly refers to strategy games. There have also been many attempts on the Internet to improve user stickiness and retention, such as: Alipay's Ant Forest & Ant Farm (SLG development games).

Figure 07 Alipay’s Ant Forest & Ant Farm (SLG development games)

For example: Pinduoduo’s Duoduo Orchard. The core of the gameplay is to transform the core functions of the App into "tasks", log in daily to obtain "game currency (water drops, number of chicken catching, etc.)", and use the user's game "cultivation" habit to promote the use of core functions and motivate user stickiness and retention.

Figure 08 Pinduoduo’s Duoduo Orchard & Duoduo Mine

(5) FPS (First-person shooting game)

First-person shooter games - the currently popular chicken-eating game, casual games, etc. The application of gamification on the Internet often adopts a relatively lightweight attempt, and the system design of the game is often combined with elements of the App itself to stimulate user stickiness to a certain extent.

Different game types have different core systems, and the same is true for ordinary Internet products, such as e-commerce and financial products.

Take the popular "Honor of Kings" as an example: the core gameplay is to collect and cultivate various heroes, and use the heroes to form teams to fight. Its core system is shown in Figure 09. It collects various heroes and upgrades the levels/skills of the heroes to the strongest. The daily activities of players are to constantly form teams with heroes to play, drop gold coins and props, and use props to upgrade heroes in a cycle. Continuously deepening the core gameplay, continuously updating new heroes, expanding the gameplay, and hosting multiple events are all for the purpose of constantly creating and continuing the core needs of users.

Figure 09 King of Glory System Diagram

The same is true for e-commerce.

The core "game play" of e-commerce is search, big data recommendation, transaction system, after-sales and evaluation, etc., which are its core functions and the foundation of the App.

Therefore, before expanding other gameplay and functions, the core functions also need to be continuously optimized. Taking the e-commerce mentioned earlier as an example, the continuous expansion of product richness and quality control, the accuracy of search and big data recommendations, the convenience of the after-sales system, etc. are the basis for user retention. When the core system is imperfect, pursuing messy functions is a waste of time.

1. Social System

In addition to the core system, adding a "social system" of varying degrees of intensity has almost become a standard feature of games.

Why do we need social systems in games?

In Maslow's need theory, the need for belonging and the need for respect are both related to "social" relationships. "Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes." What cannot be ignored is the social attributes of human beings. The existence of games is to hope that players can immerse themselves in them and satisfy experiences that users cannot get in reality. They can also use social systems to interact and compete with friends in real life or players in the game, establish emotional bonds, foster intimate relationships, and form relationship stocks.

Between “playing alone” and “playing together”, it is obvious that the latter is easier to retain users. In different games, the following types of relationships are established to build social relationships: alliance and support relationships, competitive relationships, and hostile relationships.

Note: The summary is inspired by the author Morag's proposal to rebuild your interpersonal relationships, cultivate allies, unite supporters, master competitors, and deal with enemies.

(1) Alliance and support relationship

By shaping positive and intimate relationships, we can provide positive incentives to users.

There are many applications in the game:

1. Create a sense of belonging: such as world chat system and game player forum to support offline interaction between players;
2. Establish mutually beneficial relationships: such as guild/gang systems and multiplayer team play;
3. Establish close relationships: such as friend system, marriage system, master-apprentice system, home system, pet system; and support teaming, watching games, and gifting among friends.

This is often used on the Internet, for example: it is often used when traffic is spreading, friends help to open red envelopes, friends provide support, etc.

This year's popular social networking methods also take advantage of alliances and support relationships, such as community e-commerce platforms Yunji, Huiguo, and Beidian. Both the inviter and the invitee can receive rewards to bind interests and use community relationships to spread the word.

Figure 10 Social e-commerce "Huiguo" VIP invitation VIP benefits & invitee benefits

(2) Competitive relationship

By setting goals and rewards to establish a competitive relationship, users are stimulated to remain active in order to gain maximum benefits or show off (respect needs).

Take Honor of Kings as an example: by displaying the medal system rankings of friends, a competitive relationship is formed among the close social circles of friends.

For example, the King of Glory Professional League uses the official spring and autumn seasons to drive "universal" participation, forming a competitive relationship with all players and ensuring continuous investment; sharing on social circles after winning the MVP also satisfies the user's desire to show off. Even some stand-alone games will develop features such as Facebook login to compare progress with friends, sharing game progress/achievements on Moments, screenshot sharing, etc.

Figure 11: Competition among “Honor of Kings” players (rankings, quarterly competitions, and team rankings)

This is often used on the Internet, and the most common approach is to add ranking elements, such as: inviting new users to participate in activities.

Figure 12: Competitive relationship design in conventional Internet products

(3) Hostile relations

By establishing hostile relationships, we can enhance "antagonism", restrain each other and counterbalance each other. Through this kind of "contradiction" and "conflict", we can build a full and multi-level interactive relationship and enhance the fun.

This approach is often used in games, for example, the classic World of Warcraft successfully creates the "Alliance" and "Horde" camps, each with its own distinctive features, constantly creating their interests and conflicts, making players unable to stop.

Another example is the popular MOBA game. The gameplay of this type of game is: players are usually divided into two teams, and the two teams compete with each other in scattered game maps until one team surrenders or is defeated. Its strong confrontational nature attracts many players. For example, typical representatives include "LOL" and "Honor of Kings".

Figure 13: Alliance and Horde in World of Warcraft

It is widely used in ordinary Internet, such as "stealing vegetables" and "stealing" friends' energy in Alipay, which can increase interaction between friends.

1. Payment system

Members are more likely to stay than "scattered soldiers" and have greater user stickiness. This is why barber shops require users to apply for cards when they make their first purchase, because it will lead to secondary consumption and even more recharges, such as supermarket shopping cards. It is also about continuously improving the payment experience in the game, enhancing convenience and security, and strengthening the incentives for member-exclusive privileges. The membership system is often used in ordinary Internet. Users become members by paying and enjoy membership "privileges".

• For users, "membership" privileges are used to stimulate users to make purchases, such as: member price discounts (discounts, low price advantages), member-exclusive benefits (shipping coupons, etc.), paying low costs to obtain high "rights and interests".
• For the platform, on the one hand, after the users pay with the bait of "membership benefits", the sunk cost + sense of belonging + the mentality of "it's a waste not to use it" will greatly increase the user's retention and activity. This is also the reason why Tony in the barber shop keeps encouraging you to apply for a card. On the other hand, it can build its own membership system, expose various core functions, and support the development of multiple businesses.

For example: JD Plus membership, Taobao 88 membership (naughty value), Koala Black Card membership, and Daily Youxian membership.

Figure 14 Membership systems of major platforms

4. Other Gameplay Designs

Some short-term game retention cases and specific gameplay designs are listed to facilitate comparison and provide inspiration.

1. Festival gameplay

Why develop holiday gameplay?

For gaming products, players have "holidays" during holidays and have more free time to immerse themselves in games. Therefore, gaming products will continue to develop different gameplay methods for specific holidays to stimulate user activity.

For example: Traditional Arena is an overseas version of the mobile game that I have participated in. Before the game goes online, several activities will be reserved and continuously launched after the launch. After the launch, regular props delivery activities will be maintained almost every half month. We organize Christmas events, Halloween events, Torch Festival events, etc. for overseas players. In addition to the rewards for holiday events, we also introduce new heroes to stimulate user activity.

Domestic game activities are even more abundant. For example, the activities of the mobile version of "Fantasy Westward Journey" in the picture below, almost every festival will "create" activities, such as: Dragon Boat Festival dragon boat racing, Mid-Autumn Festival activities, Spring Festival activities, etc.

Figure 15 Fantasy Westward Journey Festival Activities

For e-commerce, during holidays, increased offline activities of users lead to more shopping times, and promotional activities on major sales platforms stimulate and increase users' desire to shop. Therefore, e-commerce will "create" consumer demand during holidays, and even large platforms will "create" carnival days themselves.

For example: On Black Friday (Christmas sales in American shopping malls), American shopping malls will launch a large number of discounts and promotions, hoping that people's crazy rush to buy products will bring more profits.

Figure 16 Black Friday (Picture from Baidu)

For example: For the Mid-Autumn Festival, a variety of activities can be derived - Mid-Autumn Mooncake Special, Mid-Autumn Crab Gift Box Special, Good Wine Special, Souvenirs for Visiting Relatives and Friends Special, and even the development of small game play to encourage user activity and dissemination, to meet the needs of moon watching, drinking, eating crabs, visiting relatives and friends, and leisure during the event.

For example: Taobao’s “Double 11” and “Double 12” online shopping carnival events, JD.com’s “618” store anniversary promotion, Koala’s 11.11 Super Foreign Goods Festival, 816 Foreign Goods Festival, etc.

Figure 17 Koala 11.11 Super Foreign Goods Festival & Taobao Double 11

1. Seven-day sign-in & monthly sign-in & daily sign-in

The most common and low-cost way to enhance short-term viscosity, a standard configuration for gaming products and Internet products. The main purpose is to increase user activity. By signing in and cultivating users' daily login habits, it can drive traffic to the core functions of the game. The platform provides certain reward incentives for users who sign in continuously every day. The longer the consecutive signing time, the more difficult it is. Therefore, the reward value is gradually increased, and generous rewards or physical rewards are set at nodes prone to user loss such as 5 days/7 days to reduce user loss.

Monthly check-ins are more common in games but less common in general Internet applications.

Figure 18 Monthly Sign-in

As mentioned above, as the current daily sign-in has gradually become a "standard configuration", users have developed fatigue, and the usual coupons, WeChat red envelopes, physical rewards, etc. have gradually lost their stimulation. Major platforms are gradually trying to "gamify" the "daily visit" rewards. For example, the “Daily Scratch Card” in the mobile version of “Fantasy Westward Journey” has added the element of “random rewards”, which increases the fun and differentiates it from other competing products.

Figure 19: Ordinary seven-day sign-in VS gamified daily sign-in

Figure 20: JD.com monthly check-in & JD Finance early check-in & Taobao gold coins collection

For ordinary Internet products, many companies have been trying to gamify them, bringing new daily check-in experiences. For example, the early-morning clock-in on JD Finance and the gold coin collection on Taobao mentioned in Figure 20 are both “gamified” “daily check-in” behaviors, combined with functions such as daily tasks.

1. Long-term tasks, main tasks, side tasks

For game products, long-term quests/main quests/side quests are all about connecting and packaging the core gameplay of the game. They serve as story lines for players, turning lengthy quest chains into interesting long-term quests, which not only reduces the difficulty of the tasks but also retains users' stickiness for a long time.

For example, the more representative "Fantasy Westward Journey" has 300 ring-running tasks, which cover various systems (such as: Zhong Kui catching ghosts, sealing monsters, dungeons, escorting, treasure maps, god of war tasks, race tasks, married people can also do couple tasks, after becoming a disciple there are master-apprentice tasks, gang tasks after joining a gang, etc.), and attract big R players and free players to exchange items.

For ordinary Internet apps, a more common application is to guide novices, disassemble core functions, and combine them to create "newbie tasks/tips". After users complete basic newbie tasks with the system, they can basically stop being novice users.

1. Daily tasks, daily activities, weekly activities

Daily tasks are also a typical way of splitting long-term retention tasks into short-term tasks, reducing the difficulty of tasks. The user's daily limit is "having simple things to do". Daily tasks - do not take long - daily retention. As long as users are retained, there is a chance to develop users into paying users.

1. Random probability activity gameplay

The famous animal experiment is called the "Skinner Box". There is a switch in the box and a little mouse is placed in it. If the mouse accidentally presses the switch, peanuts will appear. After repeating this several times, the little mouse will keep pressing the switch. But if peanuts come out every time, “Press the switch or not, the peanuts are there”, the little mouse will not press the switch even if it is full. This is the attraction of randomness, and it is also the reason why many games make people "burn their livers".

Figure 21 Card drawing in the game

This is true for common things in life, such as raffles and lotteries, where users become addicted like “little mice”. The "One Yuan Treasure Hunt" game that was popular for a while took advantage of this gambling mentality. Some of the more well-known ones in the game include: opening card packs in "Hearthstone" and drawing cards in "Onmyoji".

Figure 22 Common random gameplay

In common Internet products, the more commonly used "routines" such as roulette, lotteries, slot machines, etc. all take advantage of this psychology of users. For example, receiving red envelopes on WeChat also provides random stimulation that makes users enjoy it.

5. Reduce platform user churn during gaming

The above lists several major gameplay designs commonly used in games to increase user stickiness. In addition, there are many ways to stimulate user activity.

1. Reward delivery mechanism

(1) Node deployment

Appropriate use of reward delivery can increase user stickiness. First of all, it is necessary to control the delivery cost. The delivery of resources in the game needs to maintain the numerical balance of the "currency" system, and the delivery of rewards on the ordinary Internet requires the calculation of the "input-output ratio"; secondly, it is necessary to choose the appropriate delivery node to make the reward activity more effective.

For example, the "Growth Rewards" in Fantasy Westward Journey distribute upgrade packages as an incentive at key points such as user level 10, 20, and 30. We provide returning old players with return gift packages to encourage old players who were about to churn out to continue playing.

Figure 23 "Fantasy Westward Journey" Growth Rewards & Return Gift Pack

For example, in the popular "Dota Legend" (now called "Little Ice Legend"), physical strength is called "chicken legs" - it is very important and is needed for fighting in the game. Players have four opportunities to receive physical strength for free every day, namely in the morning, noon (12:00-14:00), evening (18:00-20:00), and night (21:00-23:00). Rewards are used to guide users to play the game in different time periods - which happen to be the time periods when users have more free time/leisure time, and users are more likely to retain in this time period.

For Internet products, the distribution nodes are very different due to different purposes. For example: in loan products, whether the coupons are issued during the pre-login stage, credit process, borrowing process, or repayment process is closely related to the purpose. Whether it is to stimulate login, first loan, repeat loan, or reduce bad debt rate, the effective nodes of issuance are different.

(2) Random delivery

As mentioned in 4.6 above, random reward delivery is more attractive to users.

1. Hunger Marketing

From iPhone to Xiaomi, to limited-time flash sales, why is hunger marketing always effective?

There is a term in psychology called the scarcity effect - a psychological phenomenon that rare things are valuable, creating "user hunger". The fewer chances to get an item, the harder it is to get it (imbalance between supply and demand: the less supply of items, or the more people competing for them), the value of the item is magnified, and the more attractive it is to users.

Figure 24 "Dota Legend"

There are also many applications in the game. For example, the stamina in the popular "Dota Legend" (now called "Little Ice Legend") is called "chicken legs" - very important, it is needed in all battles in the game. The chicken legs are obtained in the following way: the hero can increase 1 point of stamina every 6 minutes, 10 points of stamina in 1 hour, and 240 points of stamina in a day. However, if the player's stamina reaches the upper limit during the growth process, it will stop growing. There is an "upper limit", so players will constantly log in to check whether their physical strength has reached the limit, and constantly consume the physical strength they have obtained (to perform core gameplay). In this way, the game achieves high activity and retention.

1. Interesting

What’s the use of fun?

Fun can enhance the emotional connection between users and products and satisfy users’ playful nature. This stimulation can also create a deeper impression and make it easier for users to accept and recognize it. This is also why the "gamified" sign-in method mentioned above is more effective than regular sign-in and regular tasks.

Fun can be reflected in many aspects. The gameplay mechanism, the visual communication of the page, interesting interactive operations, and even the page copy can add eye-catching elements to your event design.

The above briefly introduces the "routines" of user stickiness and user retention in games. I hope it will be inspiring to Internet products and designers.

Source: Qingqing CeCe