Developing Guidelines for Improving Player Retention in Multiplayer Games by Designing Experiences Beyond Gameplay

在与诺斯费尔的合作中，我们的目标是探索旨在增强玩家长期留存的游戏中和游戏后机制的设计，并了解是什么使这些互动有效地维持玩家的兴趣。我们的核心目标是更全面地了解玩家如何长期参与数字游戏，以及开发人员可能会如何因此改进他们的设计。这一研究项目将重点放在游戏体验之外的玩家敬业度评估上，这一领域在该领域的研究相对较少。考虑到设计师在吸引和保持相当大的玩家基础方面必须克服的挑战，对这个主题的调查在当代游戏市场特别相关。这是诺斯费尔工作室目前的研究挑战，因为他们目前的项目是一个具有持续游戏内进度的多人游戏，这意味着游戏中的事件可以在玩家离开的时候发生。例如，开发人员致力于设计鼓励保留的系统，通过平衡游戏中的机制来促进更高的玩家参与度，并创建游戏后系统，使玩家在不玩游戏的时候随时了解游戏中的事件。通过这个项目，我们希望为玩家保留机制的设计创建一套正式的指导方针，为游戏开发人员和研究人员的集体知识提供宝贵的贡献。电子游戏行业为加拿大GDP贡献了超过37亿美元，雇佣了相当于21700多名全职员工。这项研究的结果将直接适用于游戏行业。

In collaboration with Norsfell, we aim to explore the design of in- and post-game mechanics intended toenhance long-term player retention, and understand what makes these interactions effective in sustaining playerinterest. Our core goal is to gain a more complete understanding of how players remain engaged with digitalgames over the long term, and how developers might improve their designs as a result. This research projectwill focus on the evaluation of player engagement outside of the play experience, an area which has beenrelatively understudied in the field. Given the challenges that designers must overcome in attracting andretaining a sizeable player base, the investigation of this topic is especially relevant in the contemporary gamesmarket.This is the current research challenge for Norsfell Studio, as their current project is a multiplayer title withpersistent in-game progression, meaning that in-game events can occur while players are away. The developersare concerned with designing systems for encouraging retention, by balancing in-game mechanics to facilitatehigher player engagement, and creating post-gameplay systems for keeping players informed of in-game eventswhile they are not playing, for example.With this project, we hope to create a set of formalized guidelines for the design of player retention mechanics,providing a valuable contribution to the collective knowledge of game developers and researchers alike. Thevideo game industry contributes over $3.7 billion to Canada's GDP and employs the equivalent of over 21,700full time employees. The outcomes of this research will be directly applicable to the game industry.