Maximizing Success in Content Design: Understanding Audiences

2022 has come to an end and there were many incredible, new apps and games this year along with sequels, expansions, seasonal updates,… In summary, there were a lot of new things that met the consumers in a myriad of different ways. In this post, we will explore a unique perspective on how to effectively deliver new products and features, a crucial aspect that can determine the success of your business.

The focus is going to be on video games specifically, but all the steps we are going to discuss can be applied to any new feature any app or product is going to release as well. If you have any trouble visualizing the application of a concept to your area, please leave a comment and we can brainstorm together! Focusing on video games is going to make it easier to dial in on the approach, and the industry is rich with both good and bad examples of releasing new content.

Anything that adds a non-existing area, building, enemy, faction, or anything that the user can engage with is new content. It may be a very minor or New content can range from a minor addition, such as adding a single non-player character (NPC) to greet players during a holiday season, to a major expansion that adds months of gameplay for the highest-level players. No matter what the content is, or the size of it, new content fundamentally achieves a singular thing:

New content brings people to the game.

That is it. At its core, it is very simple. Interested players are going to play the game to experience that new content. The identity of the players and the duration of the experience are two factors we need to think about from the beginning to have the most successful release. Thankfully, marketing can greatly help with the target audience (and data does help with both, as usual).

Who is this new experience for?

In my career in the video game industry, I have encountered numerous instances where new content was created without considering the intended audience. It sounds very counterintuitive; imagine if you were a director making a movie and you were in a pitch meeting. If you can’t answer the question “who is going to watch this?” to a satisfactory degree, you will not get your funding or your movie. However, in the gaming industry, a lot of content is produced without asking this question.

Three different groups of players can experience your new content:

• Existing players.
• Churned players.
• New players.

This is a critical breakdown of your potential audience, and there will be a post explaining this in much more detail. In this case, we will go over each and show some good and bad decisions around content in the industry.

Existing Users: “Well, I am already here anyway”

Our existing players are usually the biggest share of users, especially in the relatively early stages of our game. Eventually, you will have millions of players who have quit the game over the years but that is a situation few companies find themselves in so we will cover it a bit later.

These players are already here and actively play the game frequently. When something new is added, they can just start with the new content assuming they are eligible to do it.

They will spend more time in total with your game thanks to having more to do. How they spend this additional time can be one of two ways:

• Increase their daily/weekly play time (more impactful)
• Increase the total lifetime without changing daily / weekly intensity (less impactful)

Content Locks

When designing new content, we should also factor in if we want to lock this content for some players. Maybe it is a complex system, so we put a level-cap; now new players can play this content. Or maybe it is a chance for returning players, so noone who played in the past year should be eligible to not gain unfair advantage. These are called “gated content” and is usually locked behind multiple different types of gates.

The key fact about these players is that they are difficult to do marketing on. They are already actively engaged, most likely paid for the game before (or actively paying), and unless that new system has its own monetization method they will not generate more revenue.

However, do not think that this makes them less important. The top trend in the industry is “living games” or “Games as a service”, where the game is constantly changing or new content is added very frequently. For example, the new season of Marvel Snap adds new cards to the game every month but does not charge money for them in any other way than the existing methods. (If you are interested in a review of the game, you can find it here)

If the players expect specific content every month, releasing it is barely “new” content. It is satisfying the player’s expectations and is critical for them to keep playing.

Returning Users: “I actually miss this game”

The returning players are a very interesting group in their behaviour compared to the other two. They already know and love(d) the game, but quit for some reason. It is difficult to pinpoint the reason to churn, so there is no guarantee whether they have permanently quit or they can be won back. Also, they have probably paid for the game before so are more difficult to generate additional revenue; similar to existing players. On the plus side, they can just jump into the new content without any barrier to entry.

There are so many different challenges around winning back players, but focusing on just two provides everything needed for the correct decision. First of all, these players are usually cheaper and/or have higher returns to advertise to than brand-new players. Second, this is a limited number of people; in fact usually very limited. You have to know how many churned players in total you need to have in total. Then, cut some per cent of them, as they will never return. Others may need to remember about the game.

After all of these cuts, ask yourself: “Is it worth creating this content for, or advertising specifically to, winning back players?”. This will make you make the correct decision for the players and the content.

New Users: “This content looks interesting; worth giving this a try”

The final group are the brand-new players. These players have no experience in the game, so how can we pique their interest? If they had any inclination to play the game, then they would already have at least tried it. How can this add to the game can make them interested if they weren’t before?

This dilemma has as many different solutions as there are creative people in the industry. From a content design perspective, we want to have brand new players flooding in as they have the highest potential value, and are, theoretically, millions of people. The simplest way to do it is to focus on the design and art of the content. For example, imagine we have a mobile RPG game. We will release a new mid-game zone, featuring dragons for the first time in our game. Advertising around the theme of dragons will bring in players interested in dragons, although they may not be super interested in RPG games.

To emphasize, this is the simplest method. Some other, especially creative solutions are:

• making a cross-franchise deal with another franchise: Ubisoft with Assasins’s Creed these days
• making a remastered / anniversary edition / special version: Skyrim, Witcher 3
• adding PvP to your mediocre zombie-survival game and becoming a giant franchise: Fortnite

Video Game Industry Examples

Let’s go over some examples in the video games industry and assess them from the perspective of the audience and the strategy.

• World of Warcraft: A masterpiece in both gaming and marketing, WoW is a wonderful game going strong for 15+ years. The game has a subscription system; so regardless of any additional monetization, returning and new players will be valuable. On top of this, they have an expansion schedule – every two years a new expansion is released. That is an additional purchase of the game, which monetizes all groups of players. The expansions are huge, and also they force players to have that specific expansion to be up-to-date with the latest version of the game. On top of this, they released the “Classic” version of the game; double tapping into new, existing and returning players all at once. A genius of a content strategy.
• Fortnite: We already talked about the amazing pivot from a co-op game to a PvP battlegrounds game. I would argue they also have the best seasonal battle pass system out there, and with each season they improve it further. The battle pass tiers, experience rate and rewards are mathematically optimized, and the new content they release with popular franchises like Marvel has carried them to create their game store.
• Path of Exile: I would be doing a disservice to Grinding Gear Games and Chris Wilson; who gave an incredible presentation on “Designing Path of Exile to be played forever” – I advise you to watch that video when you have time. They are a F2P game that has an evergreen store of items. These items are not pay-to-win, but highly convenient so new players are expected to purchase them if they intend to commit to the game. On top of this, they release “Leagues”, and the amount of content and duration is once again optimized mathematically. It is one of the staples of the Action RPG genre, and that is no coincidence with a brilliant content design strategy feeding sustainability and growth.

Conclusion

Thinking about some marketing concepts when designing new content is a very powerful approach to increase the chances of success of the content. Accurately measuring the potential audience with data, attributing correct estimates of revenue and cost of acquiring players, and designing the correct content strategy will make your game successful for years.