The Service Philosophy: Acquiring and Retaining Subscribers

Nearly every online game developed by a retail computer game publisher to date has made one error during design and launch: They have treated the game as if it were any other computer game.

That has been their experience and fort : building a game, launching it, patching it a couple times, and then moving on to the next project. This is akin to Safeway or Albertson's opening a new grocery store, stocking the shelves once or twice, and then ignoring the store and moving on to the next town. Eventually, the shelves will become empty and shoppers will stop going there.

Unlike other computer entertainment products, however, massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMRPGs) require more forethought during design and more work after launch. Knowing this now, your game has (we hope) been designed and developed with two cardinal rules in mind:

• This isn't just a product; it is also a service . Just as much work goes into the game after the launch as before the launch.

• The game itself is a vehicle that allows existing communities to congregate and socialize. Therefore, both acquisition and retention features have to be built into it, just like any other service.

Most MMRPG developers don't build following these rules and end up paying for it later on. For example, take volunteer organizations. Until recently, these were a standard part of every PW and most games launched with a volunteer group in place. However, three of the top four MMRPGs ” EQ , UO, and AC ”all launched without adequate tools or organizations built for recruiting, training, and monitoring/logging the actions of their volunteer support corps, which are good retention tools. They have paid for this error in sometimes very slow response times to player help requests . Players can wait hours for a request to be attended to. They are all playing catch-up in this regard.

Understanding from the start that you are providing a service, you need to keep in mind both acquisition and retention features, you need to build the tools and features necessary to support the five critical elements necessary for the success of any online PW, and post-launch , the team needs to pay attention to these tools and use them. The following elements are interlinked necessities for any MMRPG. They can each be built separately, but they work best when all are built into a game and inter- react with each other.

The Five Elements Necessary for Success

The five elements include Talk Soup, Band of Brothers, the Living Organism, Welcome Wagon, and Help Me!

Talk Soup

Your PW needs many methods for players to communicate, individually and in groups, and both in and out of the character of the game. Yes, this is a game that will allow tens of thousands to play simultaneously ; players, however, will naturally segment themselves into smaller community groups ( guilds , teams , towns, races) for their own ease and comfort .

If this communication is facilitated, the communities will be able to grow more easily and more quickly, and the game will have a much greater chance of becoming the player's primary entertainment vehicle. This is done by ensuring that there are many easy and intuitive means for players to contact and communicate with each other, and making sure the community relations and player relations teams take advantage of those tools to communicate effectively with the players. This encompasses everything from instant messaging between individuals, to player-configurable in-game chat channels, to special message boards for guilds and teams, to in-game email between players and groups of players.

This sounds like a very common-sense element that every game should have. However, most online games have had only minimal communications tools at launch and, after a hue and cry from the players, were forced to build decent communication features into the games later.

Lack of these capabilities has also limited the ability of the live team to communicate effectively during their support missions for the players. The essence of supporting the player is being able to communicate effectively. Being limited to web posts or 80 characters of text at one time slows down support and makes it more difficult to communicate.

Band of Brothers

In the final analysis, players don't continue to play a game because it is cool; they continue to play because their buddies are there. Once they join some kind of guild or team organization, the emotional attachment to that group of friends , that band of brothers (to paraphrase Shakespeare and HBO), makes it very difficult for them to leave the game for a competing product.

To facilitate this, you'll need to build in full-featured "guild" functions, allowing players to set up, manage, and control the membership of teams. The team element is critical; it allows friends to congregate logically, easily, and within the context of the game. They will do this whether you provide this service element or not; by providing it, however, you add to the acquisition and retention features of the game. Only UO and Asheron's Call ( AC ) currently have easy and intuitive mechanisms for accomplishing this.

The community relations and player relations teams also need to understand how the "band of brothers" phenomenon can play into enhancing the retention of new subscribers by providing ready-made, player-run support mechanisms. Many guilds are willing to train new players and recruit them into the fold to increase their own size and power within the game. This is a powerful means of locking in loyalty.

However, many games pay no particular attention to the needs or desires of the teams within their product. Providing them with the tools to create their own content, such as team events, faction wars, or in-game parties and weddings, should be a top priority for the live team.

The Living Organism

A subscriber's play style will change over time. Some customers churn out and stop playing, others move in with new ideas about how the game should be played , and new content and features are added. The longer someone plays, the more likely it is that his/her goals within the game will change. Someone who started out as an explorer may transform into a socializer, or a socializer may transform into an achiever.

This type of change contributes to the dynamic nature of a PW, but it can also cause problems if the live team isn't changing pace and objectives along with the customers. A responsive and flexible service philosophy takes into account the major playing styles and how they change over time, and then adds content and features that match. Historically, the opposite has happened more often; live teams have watched how the players play and then made changes to try to force them back into a cloistered vision of how the game should be played. Considering that these are virtual worlds as much as anything else, this is like Ford telling Taurus owners the car was never built for Sunday afternoon drives in the country and the vehicles are not to be used that way.

Inflexibility such as this will tend to set a live team into conflict with the players, as designers try to shoehorn players into a particular style and players keep trying to break the chains and move on with their virtual lives. The service philosophy should take into account the changes that will happen and work with them, not against them.

Welcome Wagon

Online games and other PW environments can initially be confusing for many users. How many times have you entered a new online environment for the first time and wandered around aimlessly for hours, trying to figure out the simple basic mechanics of how to move, talk, and interact?

Our experience in online gaming over the past decade has shown that games that have a human greet the new player within a few minutes of logging in for the first time have an extraordinarily low churn rate (20% vs. 50% for the industry overall). In-game tutorials can take up some of this slack , but nothing beats having a human drop by and say, "Hi! Can I help you get started?"

To get the most bang for your buck, the game should have a staff of paid or volunteer helpers specifically to greet new players and help them get to know the world. With the proper backend tools to allow them to support the players and then ensure that new players have someone to talk to and help them get started, the churn rate will be lower than average. Supporting the GMs and new player greeters by giving them the proper administrative tools and some leeway and discretion to solve player problems on-the-fly will lower initial churn faster than almost any other feature.

Help Me!

For some strange reason, some developers and publishers who are banking their future on games accessible from the Internet and web are failing to use them fully for support. No game currently has dedicated chat and message assistance available on a 24/7 basis; at best, such assistance is available for a few hours each day.

This ignores the 24/7 nature of the web's subscribers, who exist in all time zones and geographic locations. The live team can solve this problem by implementing a root structure that includes the following elements:

• A dedicated message board for use by the game's subscribers

• In-house and volunteer "sysops" to monitor the message board on a 24/7 basis and respond within two hours to all questions and inquiries

• A dedicated chat system capable of supporting a significant portion of the subscriber base

• In-house and volunteer chat hosts to facilitate the chat rooms and service the subscribers in them

• A complete and detailed knowledge base database dedicated to the game and available to both subscribers and volunteers on the web, and (perhaps) within the game as well

By implementing this structure, human beings will be available at all hours to assist your subscribers and direct them whenever possible and feasible to relevant portions of the web site and knowledge base.

The Volunteer Organization

There has never been a shortage of players willing to donate some time to the other players. Until about mid-2000, it was standard practice for online games ”indeed, for online services as a whole ”to have a large volunteer corps to assist in helping the other players or developing and managing online events and quests. These volunteers were recruited by the live team into loose "management" structures run by other volunteers; they set their own training programs and schedules, and generally , the specifics of their own " duties ."

Recently, however, because of civil lawsuits by former volunteers against both EA and AOL, ^[5] the long- term use of volunteers in US-based for-pay online games is in question. It may be that only European and Asian publishers will be able to utilize them post-2002. See "The Joys and Dangers of Using Volunteers" later in this chapter.

^[5] In late October, 2001, the Department of Labor dropped an investigation against AOL in this matter. Two civil suits , one in New York filed in 1999 and another in Cailfornia filed in 2001, continue. See "Labor Department won't pursue AOL complaints," USA Today , October 29, 2001.

For those companies planning to use volunteer organizations, note that these players have typically been unstructured, unsupervised , and not supported with the proper software tools and in-game abilities to truly help people. A good method for correcting this deficiency is by implementing an organization similar to that in Figure 11.6.

Figure 11.6. Volunteer organization chart.

If you expect your PW to have 100,000+ subscribers, the "very loosely supervised" model organization should use the matrix in Table 11.1 as its base for recruiting and meeting service goals.

Table 11.1. GameOp Time-Slice Chart

The Joys and Dangers of Using Volunteers

Whether or not it is legally allowable in the US to use volunteers in the online space is an issue still to be resolved by the courts. There are two court cases in progress, which, if taken to the bitter end, have the capacity for delivering an answer:

• HALLISEY and WILLIAM versus AMERICA ONLINE, INC. and AMERICA ONLINE COMMUNITIES, INC., Docket #: 99 Civ. 3785 in UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK.

  Filed in May of 1999, this one continues to drag on with little news about any progress in the case itself. In late 2001, however, the Department of Labor dropped an investigation into the matter with no action taken against AOL.

• KATHERINE R., GAIL LEE G., STEVEN J. F., and IAN R., ( names edited) versus ELECTRONIC ARTS, INC., and ORIGIN SYSTEMS, INC. Civil Action No. 00 “ B “ 1839 in United States District Court, District of Colorado.

  Filed in September of 2000 by Katherine Reab, a former contractor and previous volunteer for EA's UO , and three former volunteers. There has been no news on the case since late summer of 2001, when Ms. Reab announced that depositions were being taken. Class action status has been applied for, but no word has been given on whether it has been granted by the courts.

In both cases, the Plaintiffs have alleged that the Defendants violated the US Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 ^[6] by having a volunteer perform duties that a paid employee should perform, and are seeking back wages and penalties. There is no indication at the time of this writing when either case might actually go to trial.

^[6] The FLSA is US Title 29, Chapter 8, Sections 201 through 219. See the Legal Information Institute's US Code Collection pages at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/29/ch8.html.

Both cases have had a somewhat chilling effect on what had been a standard practice in the American online community. EA and Microsoft (publishers of AC ) have withdrawn support for their US game volunteers, and other publishers and developers have said privately that they are awaiting the outcome of one or the other suit to decide whether volunteers are a good idea for their products. Sony Online Entertainment continues to provide volunteer support for EQ . Publishers outside the US, not restricted to US law, continue to feature volunteer programs. For example, Norwegian publisher Funcom has a large volunteer program for Anarchy Online ( AO ) . Other European publishers and developers are also exploring the use of volunteer organizations.

Whether or not a volunteer support organization violates US law is not your only worry, though. The dangers of supporting volunteers in an online game are not restricted to legal matters; there are the personalities and psychologies of online gamers to consider as well. While some volunteers are extremely helpful and truly add to your game, there are some who want to be volunteers for different reasons, and those reasons generally have little or nothing to do with helping others.

Screening is necessary to try to eliminate the deadwood and abusers before they are turned loose on an unsuspecting player base. It is not all bad, however; there are a significant number of players who sincerely want to volunteer and give something back to the game and help others get started more quickly and easily.

Some suggestions follow for separating the wheat from the chaff.

The Chaff

Start by identifying the chaff:

• Me! Me!

  The players clamoring the loudest to be leaders in the program are, by and large, the last people you want to pick.

  A significant number of players love to have a title and a little power to exercise over other players but have no inclination to actually help support those players in the game. They love to construct elaborate organizations with themselves at the top, handing out assignments, holding court with their lieutenants, and generally doing nothing except basking in the glory of being the leader. Or, they may be micro-managing martinets, haranguing the troops at every turn and causing turnover in the program.

  For these "leaders," being top dogs in the program is part of a game within the game, becoming influential through contact with the "devs." Things may run smoothly for a while; these people do tend to be organized. Eventually, however, the temptation to exercise that contact power with the devs becomes too great; what use is power if you don't exercise it occasionally, right? Usually, they begin keeping volunteers in line with veiled threats of denunciation to the live team. ("You better watch your step with me. I have friends at the top, you know.")

  Soon thereafter, they begin using this tactic on the players, and then things begin to fall apart. The last thing the players want is some petty virtual bureaucrat threatening them, and they aren't afraid to point fingers publicly . The program then becomes a bit of a joke as the abuses are pointed out, the other volunteers start taking a raft-load of abuse, and turnover in the program shoots through the roof. If not handled in a timely manner, this abuse of trust can mar the program for months.

  Thankfully, the "Me! Me!" people are relatively easy to pick out. They are normally among the first people to queue up to be in a volunteer program. Before you even begin calling for volunteers, these people will be emailing to let you know they can "help" by organizing things for you with, you know, some of their friends. All through the test phases, they'll be posting messages of almost fawning support on your testing forums, shouting down anyone pointing out a problem or taking the design to task for flaws. They know that getting their names out there as avid supporters is flattering to the developers and makes it more likely they will be picked as volunteer leaders. Eventually, they manage to have regular and private contact with one or more of the developers through instant messaging or email, solidifying their positions even more.

  If you pay attention to these warning signs, you won't have a problem separating this kind of chaff from the mix.

• Thanks for the Toys, Boys!

  Some players will abuse any powers you give them. It is not uncommon to set up a series of volunteer-only commands to allow the volunteers to perform simple functions, such as teleporting across the world and going invisible. While these powers are nice for volunteers to have and make it easier for them to help other players, bear in mind that many player-volunteers are loyal to their friends, not necessarily to the game. Some people volunteer just to get the powers because they have already scoped out how to abuse them to their and their buddies' benefit. Using teleport powers to move friends around the world is one fairly common example.

  As with the "Me! Me!" people, any abuse of this nature will create an air of distrust among the players. The "Toys" people themselves are hard to spot up-front because they are generally smart enough to be polite, quiet, keep their heads down, and initially, not be too obvious with their abuse of power. The more they get away with it, though, the broader and more obvious the abuses become, until players start sending email that point them out. By that time, it is too late; you've already taken a "trust" hit.

  The abuses themselves are easy to detect if you have the proper logging and reporting tools in place. This has been discussed in detail elsewhere in the book; there is no need to further belabor the issue here.

• I'm one of the 10 best dungeon masters (DMs) in the world, no matter how many player/characters have to die to prove it!

  Every game sees a large stack of these types of applications. As volunteer programs are normally involved in helping set up and run in-game events and storylines, there is always a surfeit of wannabe game designers who feel, given the chance, the live team will recognize they are the cat's meow when it comes to writing and running them. These players have probably been running campaigns as DMs in pencil-and-paper role-playing games in their local area for years and are positive your game is the place to let the world know of their sublime talents.

  While they are well-meaning, the problem with these players is that the majority of them are not nearly as talented at writing and running online scenarios as they think they are. They almost always devolve into situations where the volunteer DM just keeps throwing more and more powerful mobs of creatures at or springing more powerful traps on the other participants until they all die or run. Their objective is to make sure they personally achieve satisfaction, not that the players necessarily have fun or are entertained.

  The only way to weed out the worst of these types is to hold auditions ”that is, make the prospective event volunteer write, cast, and run one or more scenarios; then observe and grade them, and only take the very best of them.

The Wheat

There is wheat out there if you analyze the players carefully :

• Not Me, Please!

  The already-helpful players who least want to be official members of the program most often turn out to be the best volunteers.

  These are the quiet players who always seem to have time to answer "newbie" questions, or give them some gear to help them get started, or even teach them the ropes for a few hours or days. They are often mature, "speak" in measured tones, and maintain an even keel. They just quietly go about their business, playing the game and helping other players, and never apply to be official volunteers.

  There is a school of thought that these players shouldn't be recruited; they are already helping other players, so why fix something that isn't broken? On the other hand, with proper tools to spot and immediately assist a new player or someone who needs help (even if the powers are only in escalating the request higher in the queue), they can help more people, more effectively, in a shorter period of time.

  Convincing "Not Me!" players to become part of the organization is tough, but well worth the effort. Even if they decline, they will be flattered by being asked.

Empowering Players: Alternatives to a Volunteer Program

Organizing a volunteer program can be a long and resource- intensive task, at least in the initial stages. For some teams, it can make better sense to spend that time on tools that allow players to empower themselves and their teams to provide help in-game.

The essence of any PW game revolves around the micro-communities that develop: factions, teams, squadrons, guilds, and the like. Many such micro-communities last for months, even years, as friendships build and the team has adventures together and creates for themselves a bond of history and legend. For any such micro-community to survive long-term, however, new people must be recruited into the family on a regular basis.

And this is where empowerment can have a huge effect on the game without a volunteer program in place. Except for problems associated with patch publishing and any ongoing player harassment issues, most help requests tend to come from new or less experienced players. Player micro-communities use new player training as a recruitment tool; hang with us, we'll train and equip you, and you get to be part of the security of our little family. Providing tools to help in-game communities identify and assist new players hooks these "newbies" quicker, provides more of a chance to make them long-term subscribers and increases overall player satisfaction.

Such tools can be as simple as a guild-specific command to list all players with less than a certain amount of time in-game, or new player chat channels that all new accounts default to. This allows communities to find the people who most need help and provide them the answers they need. There are some issues with these capabilities that require well-thought-out solutions; for instance, what if a guild or team uses these commands to locate and attack new players? How do you prevent that? The idea is to make it easy for micro-communities to find and help people, while still protecting new players from predators.

This does not need to stop at pure help functions, either. Volunteer programs also help out with in-game events such as player weddings, tournaments, and other competitions. Providing some basic event creation tools allows micro-communities to provide their own content. This also allows the live team to spend more time concentrating on higher priority items, which end up providing more varied content to the player base. As an example, the Atlantic server Mage's Tower Guild in UO used to offer regular skills tournaments with prizes of gold and rare game items. To assist, the UO GMs would set up a secure area for the tournaments, complete with communications crystals to allow non-participants to observe. Imagine if the Tower Guild had access to those tools themselves? How many more events could and would they have run if they didn't have to wait for scarce GM resources to become available?

The point is that there are alternatives to using volunteers, but they require the developers to give up some control of the game.