Brief Summary
Nick Popovich, the co-founder and CEO of Monomi Park and game director of Slime Rancher, discusses strategies for making your game stand out, get noticed, and retain players in a crowded market. The talk focuses on three key areas: using GIFs to quickly communicate your game's essence, staying relevant through consistent updates and community engagement, and creating a "home" within your game to reduce friction and encourage repeated play.
- Use GIFs to sell your game quickly
- Keep your game relevant with updates
- Create a "home" within your game to reduce friction
Introduction
Nick Popovich introduces himself and the talk's main topics: selling your game with a GIF, staying relevant, and providing a place to call home within your game. He clarifies that the talk isn't a guaranteed formula for success but rather insights to help your game get noticed, bought, and played repeatedly. He highlights the sheer volume of games released each year, emphasising the competition for players' time and attention.
Rad Game Facts: The Competition for Time and Attention
The speaker emphasises the intense competition in the gaming market, noting thousands of games are released annually, many with marketing budgets. He stresses that every game competes for players' limited time and attention, not just with other games, but also with streaming services, social media, and even news. He presents statistics on how adults spend their day, highlighting the limited free time available for new information and entertainment, reinforcing the need to capture attention quickly.
Sell It With a GIF: Communicating Your Game's Essence
This section focuses on the power of GIFs in marketing your game. GIFs are mobile-friendly, easily shareable, and effective for quickly communicating your game's core gameplay loop or killer app. The speaker introduces the concept of "grokking," where a player intuitively understands and emotionally connects with your game. He suggests designing your game to fit inside a GIF, asking what feeling you want the player to have and ensuring the GIF conveys that emotion.
Examples of Games That "Sell It With a GIF"
The speaker provides examples of games that effectively use GIFs to communicate their essence, including Spelunky, Super Hot, Portal, Rocket League, Human Fall Flat, Subnautica, Factorio, They Are Billions, Slime Rancher, and Baba Is You. He analyses what each GIF conveys about the game's mechanics, emotional impact, and unique selling points. He highlights the importance of simple ideas with complex execution and using familiar elements to make the game more accessible.
Staying Relevant: Keeping Your Game Alive
Staying relevant involves keeping players engaged over time through new content, community involvement, and streamer/YouTube visibility. The speaker believes a game needs a "pulse" to survive, which can be maintained through content updates, multiplayer or sharing features, community-created content, community scene and competition, and porting to other platforms. He stresses the importance of treating each port as a new launch and actively engaging with the community.
The Importance of Concurrency and Long-Term Support
Long-term support is increasingly expected by players. Concurrency, the number of people playing your game at any given moment, is crucial, even for single-player games, as it drives viral mechanisms on platforms like Steam, PS4, and Xbox One. Consistent updates lead to wish list conversions, gifting from sales, and joining the bandwagon discussion, generating buzz and familiarity with your game.
A Place to Call Home: Reducing Friction and Encouraging Relaxation
This section introduces the concept of "home" within a game: an environment, mode, or activity that allows for relaxed, low-consequence play while still offering meaningful rewards or progress. The speaker argues that friction kills engagement and that providing a "home" reduces this friction. He provides examples from various games, including Destiny, Diablo 3, Fortnite, Mario Odyssey, MMO daily quests, Spider-Man, Minecraft, and Breath of the Wild.
Examples of "Home" in Different Games
The speaker details how different games implement the "home" concept. In Destiny, it's running patrols and bounties; in Diablo 3, it's the rewarding feeling of going in any direction; in Fortnite, it's the battle pass objectives; in Mario Odyssey, it's collecting moons from past levels; in MMOs, it's daily quests; in Spider-Man, it's swinging around the city; in Minecraft, it's gathering for projects and building; and in Breath of the Wild, it's wandering over the next horizon. He also discusses Dark Souls as an example of a game that offers temporary reprieve from its challenging gameplay.
Why "Home" Matters for Players and Your Business
Players respond to "home" because games are recreational, and "home" allows them to relax. It provides a starting point and a go-to during play sessions, making it easier to engage with the game. For businesses, "home" increases overall playtime, leading to increased sales. The speaker encourages copying successful business practices, even from seemingly unrelated industries, and adapting them to your game.
Slime Rancher as a Case Study
The speaker uses Slime Rancher as an example of a game that embodies the principles discussed. Despite being a single-player, offline indie game, it has received numerous content updates, weekly and holiday activities, and community contests. It sells itself in a GIF, maintains relevancy through nurturing, and offers copious amounts of "home," resulting in strong revenue and positive reviews.
Conclusion
The speaker concludes by reiterating that the strategies discussed are not the only path to success. He encourages taking what makes sense for your game and creating your own path.
Q&A - Key Lessons from Slime Rancher
In the Q&A, the speaker shares key lessons from Slime Rancher's development, emphasising the importance of setting a sales goal and having a plan to achieve it. He acknowledges the hard work required for long-term support and nurturing the game.
Q&A - Making an Effective GIF for Games with Non-Visual Mechanics
The speaker addresses the challenge of creating an effective GIF for games with non-visual mechanics, such as audio games. He acknowledges that GIFs may not be suitable for all games and suggests finding platforms that deliver audio information quickly.
Q&A - Best Practices for Making GIFs
The speaker shares best practices for making GIFs, including adding a "make GIF" button to your game.
Q&A - Slime Rancher as a Game as a Service
The speaker discusses Slime Rancher's early access experience and how they leveraged their MMO experience to create a games-as-a-service model.
Q&A - Designing for a Personal vs. Generic Sense of Home
The speaker addresses the question of designing for a personal vs. generic sense of "home," suggesting a bit of both. He emphasises the importance of non-punitive features, relaxed play, and freedom for the player.
Q&A - Optimal Frequency of Pushing Out Significant Updates
The speaker discusses the optimal frequency of content updates, suggesting looking at your game's tale and determining how deep and wide you want the valley to be. He emphasises the importance of building value into the game for both current and new players.
