First up, I should explain away my absence for the last 30-odd days. I'd like to say I'm busy attending GDC and other business stuffs (which is partially true), but the actual reason has been crushing disappointment.
I really shouldn't be disappointed. My brain is telling me that everything is allright, and I know things will work out in the end - as I believe I do have a viable product here. The problem is, my heart doesn't handle disappointment well, and it's screwing up how my brain is responding. Just today I've managed to bundle up all the emotion and kick it out the door, and I'm finally ready to move forward.
Let's rewind a bit and explore what went wrong.
When I launched Protonaut, I knew I had a serious content problem. It's the classic chicken-and-the-egg scenario; I have a game that heavily relies on user-made-content to generate traffic, and contained very little user-made-content. All of my fancy level promotion and ranking tools are useless until I have mass traffic. I decided to launch an "open beta" of sorts, and get some traffic flowing.
Colin had a tremendous amount of luck with JayIsGames in the past, for his game Fantastic Contraption. The traffic was of the perfect demographic and seemed to fit with what I wanted my userbase to be, so I got a review up on there - then halted all media interaction immediately. I didn't want this to get out; it is still a beta, after all. The big release is yet to come!
And that's the traffic graph that pretty much overlays over the week I was at GDC. What's funny is I actually garnered more traffic than Fantastic Contraption did in it's first week, and I got more traffic from JayIsGames than FC did after the review went online. My entire problem lies in retention.
That there is a delicious pie chart of where people left my game for good, their IP address never to grace my website again. 45% of my visitors were lost completely before even loading a level. I then proceeded to lose around 20% of my traffic at each stop in the tutorial, to the point where less than 1% of total traffic finished the tutorial in it's entirety.What's interesting, though, is that the average user spent over 10 minutes on the site, and loaded (or retried) levels on average 6 times each. A bit more digging shows me that quite a few people abandoned the tutorial partway through to get them to the user content. That's a lesson learned right there. Another lesson learned is that most of those people were restarting tutorial 1 over and over again - a sign that it's too hard, even in it's simplicity.
Sorry this one is unlabelled, but it is how many times each level was played - and essentially goes in order around the wheel - Tutorial 1, tutorial 2, tutorial 3, tutorial 4, etc...Half the people that played #1 never got to #2. It could mean tutorial 1 is too hard, but it could also mean that the player has already decided "nope! this game isn't for me." A more engaging first-user-experience could correct this.
I'm a real slut when it comes to charts, graphs, and analytics. The average user only viewed/tried 6 levels, but sent me 15 hits to Analytics for clicking in various places on the screen. But the real blow to my pride was this graph right here - the one that everyone gets excited about, TOTAL CONVERSIONS:
Yes, that's right. I'm seeing a THREE PERCENT CONVERSION RATE! *balloons fall from ceiling, cue dance music*
Well, I did on that one day, anyway. If you average out the conversion rate since launch, it's at a still-respectable 0.4%.
Thing is, my traffic has been so low, that the numbers are heavily skewed. On top of that, I made 5 test purchases during development, and this graph is nothing but smoke and mirrors; I actually have made a grand total of ZERO sales of Protonaut after launch (except the one I paid my girlfriend to make).
Anyway, I'm putting my emotions aside now and gearing up to kick some ass. I'm going to rewrite the entire tutorial system and make the whole experience more engaging for a new user; I really want to ramp up my retention figures.
At least I'm getting "SSSL Unblocking" traffic from google!
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You could try packaging a limited version of Protonaut and submitting it to major portals to drive traffic back to your actual Protonaut website. Including the tutorial plus some additional gameplay levels, and then enticing them to come to your site for more features.
ReplyDeleteGameplay wise, I would suggest a jump sound-effect (and possibly a landing one.) The auditory confirmation assures the player he actually jumped and whether he can jump again. Just make sure the sound-effect isn't tiresome, as it'll be heard a lot.
I didn't have as much fun playing Protonaut as playing Fantastic Contraption. For viral spreading, I think it needs to both be fun and have an element of sharing. With FC people wanted to share what they made, and it wasn't only level creation. Creation seems to be key to make people want to share with others.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the chicken and egg problem. I enjoyed FC very much even without seeing any user-created levels. I saw some solutions to the standard levels posted somewhere (reddit I think) and that got me interested. User level creation and ranking didn't draw me in.
That said, I think having FC in your head probably hurts because everything will be subconciously (or consciously) compared to it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring
If it weren't for FC, what would your criteria for success be? Finishing the development, game design, levels, art, payment, etc., for an entire game is a big accomplishment, and it's something I haven't done for a long time. I think you should be proud of yourself for that.
Where do you go from here? It's unrealistic to expect that every project will become a hit, and you're going to have to decide at some point whether you want to continue improving Protonaut, if you want to take core parts of Protonaut and repurpose them for another game, or if you want to start another game from scratch.
Retention via better tutorials and new user experience is the thing to focus on if you're relying on marketing / promotion to get people to try your game. For example, it's boring, but a big Play button would probably be nicer than a power button that you have to use a blinking arrow to get people to notice. But I think the new user experience is less of an issue if the game is viral (and I think Protonaut is not, sadly), because if your friends tell you to play it, you're more likely to stick to it.
The art and music look very nice and professional. However, I think faces draw people in more than equipment. The squid was super cute! The microscope is cold and uninviting. The atoms don't look as appealing or stand out as much as stars, coins, glowing balls, etc., that are used in many side scrolling run-and-jump games. So the theme/art might've hurt adoption a little.
There might be some changes to the controls that help too. Put someone new in front of the game and watch them play. Don't tell them how to play. If you can make the controls match what people do naturally, I think it'll be more fun for them than if they have to learn something new. For example, my instincts made me press Up to jump instead of Z, and I never did quite unlearn that, so it was always a frustration trying to consciously remember that.
The other thing to look at is other games like Protonaut to see how they “feel” (Sonic, Mario Brothers, etc.). I think a lot of the fun factor will come down to little tiny things, and it's quite possible that small tweaks to the movement (friction, gravity, etc.) and sounds (I agree with Quest on this one) will make a big difference. Games can look alike but differ on these tiny things, and it can make all the difference in whether it's fun.
Wow, interesting comment above me ^^^^
ReplyDelete(Audio guy here, btw)
Andy, sorry to find out about your disappointment. I was also a little disappointed that we didn't get much in the way of sales. BUT, there is so much to improve, and the game still has enormous potential, you just have to open your mind to see it.
In my opinion, its gotta gotta gotta have a small set of brilliant example levels. The new stuff I'm seeing is getting better and better.
Also I was thinking about something else but I don't wanna post it here, I'll tell you about it in IM later.
@Quest: Yeah, in terms of getting more traffic - not an issue right now. I have been actively shunning it for a while. :) Once I have the gameplay nailed...
ReplyDeleteAudio should already be handled but it looks like there was a few glitches to iron out there; working on it with Roger. :)
@Roger: Yeah I'm really thinking that quality content is going to win this over for us. Still waiting on that IM ;)
@Amit: Thanks for the lengthy comment! A definite interesting read. I am definitely comparing things to FC, but in a cautiously optimistic way - I thought I might get a dozen sales, or 1 or 2 sales worst case. I never expected a dramatic or a runaway success - but I was woefully unprepared for an absolute failure (even with the intentionally limited exposure).
Anyway, the game is not over! Limited release for a reason: Iterate, rework, relaunch, and see where it goes from there!