7 Ways to Drastically Improve Your LiveOps: Learning from Clockmaker
Guest post by Alexander Devyaterikov, Producer at Belka Games
In today's gaming world, it's not enough to just have a good game. We need to release regular updates: more content, more events, faster, and higher quality. There's no secret to how a good update should look: it should be engaging, profitable, and regular.
The question is, why do LiveOps work for some projects but not for others? Why do some have high engagement and profit while others face churn? Honestly, I don't know either.
But today, I'll tell you about how we at Belka, and specifically with Clockmaker, came to the point where our LiveOps took the project to a higher league.
Here in the screenshot, you can see how our position in the Top100 US App Store grossing games has changed from 2017 to 2020, according to data.ai. That was the time when we drastically rebuilt Clockmaker's LiveOps.
As you can see, the result is pretty good for a 9-year-old game.
So, today we're going to talk about 7 principles on how to make your LiveOps perform better.
I need to add a small disclaimer here: of course, there are more than 7 principles, but I've chosen 7 of them according to my own taste: these are mostly uncommon, easy to implement, and practical with proven results.
Let's start with the most common but most crucial.
A proper schedule
In this picture, you can see how Clockmaker's event schedule has changed over time. Yeah, the names of the events are unfortunately hidden, but you can see a huge difference.
How can your project come to a schedule like that, and what benefits will it bring?
First of all, create a 1-week cycle.
Fill your schedule with the existing events for at least a weekly cycle. Players need something more than just the core gameplay to stay engaged. This way, we can maximize ARPU by providing secondary goals in between difficult parts of the core gameplay. If you still don't have that number of additional activities to fill up the week, you should focus on creating them as soon as possible. It's crucial that there's always some kind of alternative goal in the game apart from "total completion."
Don't forget about discounts, and don't be afraid if some events overlap.The schedule is filled.
Excellent. Now we can start experimenting with the duration and frequency of events. Some events might bore players earlier than you expected, and others might be more engaging than you thought they'd be. Try to identify such events by looking through engagement funnels and shorten or extend them correspondingly.
Try to set parallel streams with events of the same type. It could come as a surprise that, for example, participation in 2 different types of tournaments at the same time could increase players' activity even more.
Try different combos, too. Events with different mechanics sometimes complement each other, but at other times they divert players' attention, resulting in reduced activity and monetization.Don't forget about calendar holidays. Everyone knows about them, but not all developers pay real attention to them. For example, people in the US start preparing for Halloween at the end of August, and the celebration lasts the whole month, from October 1st till the very end of the month. Don't hesitate to change and remake your established schedule so the main customized events and discounts are aligned with the right dates.
Reusing content
The next thing on our list is reusing and looping content.
Many game designers will instantly say: "How can we show the player the same thing? They're not going to play it again. Engagement will drop and players will start churning."
Yes, in an ideal world of paid games, this could be true: a unique gaming experience is played only once.
But let's look at how things really work.
For example, would you want to replay The Last of Us or Heavy Rain? Practice shows us that players really enjoy replaying old events, and the engagement in them not only doesn't drop but sometimes even increases.
And it's easy to imagine—remember rewatching Friends on repeat or seeing Terminator 2 for the 15th time? It didn't bore you, right? And have you got that platinum trophy for completing New Game+ in Dark Souls?
So, here are our tips on how to reuse and loop your content the right way:
1. Don't be shy about simply reusing successful old events. In just 2-3 months, your player base will refresh significantly. If your game is constantly filled with new players, they will happily play content they have never seen before, and at the same time old players can invest their time and money into the event to get all the rewards they probably missed the first time.
In this screenshot, you can see an event called "Clockmaker's Illusion," which has been relaunched more than 10 times.
2. Plan content looping during the feature design phase.
We had a case with an event based on merge mechanics. Players merged precious gems to create jewelry from them. They needed to create three pieces of jewelry to complete the main part of the event. But we also added a fourth, super-difficult piece of jewelry for players who would finish the event ahead of time.
The last piece of jewelry was looped, so it could be played again. After the first launch of the event, we found out that there were players who managed to collect the last piece of jewelry three or four times. They just liked the mechanics and continued playing until the event had ended. Need I say that the event was successful?
But there was a problem: we did not provide the possibility of adding new content to the already-launched event. Due to quite a strict pipeline, it took us several months to add more jewelry and support content variety. Looping helped us survive those two months without losing player engagement.
Another example is the 'Puzzles' collection mechanics, where the player farms puzzle pieces in hard match-3 levels to assemble pictures.
Players regularly complained that they lacked new pictures, since there were only ten of them in the game, and we tried to add pictures with each update, but it was never enough. So we decided to loop the puzzles at the same time as adding new ones. As soon as we looped the content and let players start collecting pictures from the beginning, all their complaints disappeared. The players were happy, and they haven't complained about the lack of pictures since then.
One last piece of advice here:
3. It's best to think in advance about what will happen when the LiveOps content runs out and players suddenly want more.
Easy to learn, hard to master
This is a principle that Nintendo uses in all of their games, and they certainly know more about how to win the hearts and minds of millions of people—whether they're gamers or not. Anyone who's watched the Tetris movie will understand what we're talking about. Playing Super Mario or Tetris, you start enjoying the game from the get-go. It seems simple and self-explanatory. But the further you dive into the gameplay, the more 'layers' you explore. You set new goals for yourself and always have something to do.
Why is this so important?
When designing events, it's very important to remember that, in addition to the event that is currently live, players have other layers of gameplay: the core gameplay, plot, meta, side mechanics, etc. Their attention in the game is already spread across multiple things.
If your event is too complex, it will be difficult to figure out how it works and stay focused. But if your event is too simple and you haven't designed how the gameplay will evolve over time, interest will be lost very quickly.
Let's take our jewelry merge event as an example. It's very easy to start collecting elements to merge and get the first results. But the further the player progresses, the more difficult the task becomes: they need to try harder in both quantity and quality.
Or the Clocksville Express event. It's quite easy for the player to collect 'tickets' in match-3 levels to move the train along the map. When the train stops at the station, the player is faced with a choice: take small rewards and try to continue earning tickets, or take additional tickets to get the main prize as soon as possible. So this choice brings this event the needed level of complexity.
It's important for the event design not to simply rely on a balance which becomes harder at the end of the event, but instead offer the player a more complex and difficult task based on pre-existing mechanics. This way, we can engage the player for longer.
Also, we can effectively relaunch such an event in the future. Events following this principle have been some of the most successful in Clockmaker's history.
The sooner, the better. Introduce LiveOps early
Have you ever heard the opinion that content should be served in portions—that the player can't figure out the game mechanics if you dump everything on them at once?
People usually start talking about triple-A games as examples. For example, games like the Final Fantasy series, where you can still be completing the tutorial even 10 hours into the game. Or it's quite common to refer to competitors where the introduction of mechanics is spread evenly over the first few sessions. But for the vast majority of mobile games, this approach will not work. And I'll tell you why.
Premium titles stretch mechanics throughout the game to keep players engaged after even 10, 20, or 100 hours of gameplay. And the market leaders in mobile gaming have conducted so many tests that they know exactly when and which mechanics work best (or perhaps they don't know, and we're just blindly following them as successful examples?).
All of our experiments have shown the opposite: the earlier we introduce performing mechanics, the better the result. Players play and pay more and churn less. A player who has downloaded your game is not going to wait forever. You have very limited time to show them the juiciest things.
I also think that this paradox is connected to the 'Las Vegas effect': the player is simply attracted by the large number of opportunities in the game. When players see that there's so much more than levels, that they can also participate in events and tournaments, buy bundles, and complete tasks, it's much easier to spend more time and money in the game and find something worth staying for.
If it failed the first time, it will (most likely) fail again
Our experience shows that if events don't perform from the start, they won't get significantly better no matter what you do. You may disagree with me on this, but exceptions only prove the rule.
Let me share a case study with our Hidden Object event.
Initially, we designed three locations. The players had to go through them one by one. Each location required more tries to finish than the previous one. Players were able to gather energy for the hidden object scenes in core gameplay or buy it directly from the event's shop. However, after the first launch ended, the results were below our expectations.
For the next iteration, we increased the number of unique locations and started rotating them. We also got rid of the strict narrative context and stopped selling energy directly. Yet the results hardly improved.
We decided to give it one more go: we redesigned the locations and added mechanics which made our simplified hidden object game closer to conventional HOPA games in the niche. But even then, almost nothing changed.
We could spend a lot of time debating what we did wrong here... But practice has made it clear: if an event does not resonate with your target audience from the start, nothing can save it from failure.
Quite often, we tend to give mechanics a second chance (and continue to do so), as we usually see their potential and can identify issues in the initial design. We tend to hold onto our ideas and try to see them through until the end. However, in order to understand when to abandon something that's performing poorly, it's important to feel that thin line between believing in the product and emotional attachment.
Teachers at school often tell you that if you fail at something, you shouldn't stop until you achieve the desired result. However, in the gaming industry, it's often better to turn the page and learn from the mistakes we've made.
Narrative matters
The narrative designers among us can start to celebrate. At last, someone said it out loud!
The narrative certainly plays an important role. But what do we mean by narrative, and how does it affect our project? A narrative, as defined by Wikipedia, is any account of a series of related events or experiences … presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these.
Sounds a bit complicated. But the most important thing for us in this definition is ‘related events or experiences’. For both the game and the player, this is the fundamental aspect of the narrative: it isn't just a wrapper of text, plot, or graphics for gameplay. In a well-crafted event, all components should work together in harmony.
Let me tell you about two competitive events in Clockmaker to illustrate this:
First, we have a competition for collecting 'bonuses' (left)—lightning, bombs, and 'crosses.' Here, the narrative is minimal: a juggler from a traveling circus suggests that we collect bonuses in order to compete with other players. The bonuses are represented as risky juggling objects.
As you can see, there are no cultural references, deep gameplay integration, or narrative logic: just a setting, a character, and a task. Play, gather bonuses, compete, earn rewards. This event performed well, but it wasn't anything particularly memorable, and it burned out quickly.
Next, we had a tournament for collecting a single 'lightning' bonus—a historic battle between Tesla and Edison. The rules didn't change much—in fact, they became a bit more complex, with the player required to collect only lightning instead of all types of bonuses. But, through creating a solid logical link between 'game mechanic—meta gameplay—characters,' we managed to craft a much more engaging narrative experience. The real-life characters from the game's timeline encourage the player to collect lightning to power their electrical devices and win the progress race. The more lightning they collect, the stronger the charge, increasing their chances in the competition. After we launched this event, it exceeded our expectations.
So, a well-thought-out connection between 'game mechanics—meta gameplay—presentation' can sometimes achieve more than simply gameplay alone.
Always ask your players!
Collect feedback, follow players' community posts, and conduct surveys. Many teams neglect this opportunity. Most commonly, projects with a data-driven approach, which dictates the use of data and analytics as the main tools for decision-making and experimentation. But numbers can't always tell you what players like.
We have been experimenting with themes for our regular events: chains of 20 levels with a story. In addition, we conducted a survey where we asked players to share their thoughts on which events they liked in the past month and which themes they would like to see in future events.
Of course, the responses were quite diverse and difficult to process, but we were able to identify a couple of themes that interested our players: animals and ecology. This surprised us, as Clockmaker is a mystical game. We have human characters fighting against time anomalies in a Victorian-era setting. It was hard to assume that our players would be interested in something so different from the main theme.
We did a little brainstorming and came up with a solution. We have added a mystical character, the Moon Fox, captured by the Clockmaker for his evil experiments. The response to this event was huge; players loved both the character itself and the plot to save him from the Clockmaker.
Without much hesitation, we created another event where the Moon Fox led us to a stream infected by the Clockmaker to incorporate an ecological theme. The ratings and engagement metrics for this event were noticeably higher than our usual storylines.
As you can see, sometimes it's better to ask than try to guess yourself.
The end
Let's wrap it up.
Fill in your schedule. And then—experiment! This will help to create alternative goals in the game and maximize your ARPU.
Follow Nintendo's rule: "Easy to learn, hard to master." This is how to create the best events for both your project and players.
Reuse and loop good content. Sometimes it's even better than creating something new.
Introduce your juiciest mechanics, the sooner, the better. You don't have much time for that.
Don't hold onto failed ideas. Learn and turn the page. It's painful, but it's more effective.
Apply the narrative smartly. It should resonate with the whole game. Good, logical connections make it stand out.
Ask your players! Sometimes, it's better to ask rather than guess.
Remember, make great games, and don't make games that aren't great. Good luck!
