Testing Second Playable
Watch the participating Players’ Testimonials on YouTube HERE
During a frenetic week last month several groups of self-described “video game players” responded to our Craigslist advert to “test a new game in development” somewhere in Southern California (thankfully no serial killers showed up - always a worry, everyone was great!). Dozens of players through the doors later and we had an overwhelming amount of data gathered in the form of screen recordings, questionnaires filled out, recorded group interviews … but in truth the data distilled into essential success factors including:
There was a very high propensity to monetize (i.e. for players, initially playing the game for free, started paying their own money to continue playing … 86% of Focus Group participants monetized into the “Free Roaming” mode of play … and 93% of participants monetized by entering competition Tournaments of various flavors.
About 2/3rds of the Focus Group participants owned a STEAM account and/or Epic Games Store (EGS) account, showing they were definitely PC gamers. Nice. Of this group, 94% entered into the “Free Roaming” mode of play, taking a risk in pursuit of rewards (personally this is one of my favorite stats … gives us clear signal on where to find the players). The 1/3rd balance was a mixed bag of console and mobile gamers, to be expected.
Let me back up here … as much as we loved the monetization data (and what it portends) there was a data point after the first hour of play, when players were simply learning how to play without any concept of real money rewards being (somehow) part of the experience. Having spent an hour learning to navigate their in-game character (we call them “Pioneers” and there’s a bunch to collect and play as) everyone ticked a bunch of boxes while filling in their feedback questionnaires … and hey presto, 90% of the Focus Group Participants stated they would be prepared to buy the game when it’s released for up to $20 each (solid Indie pricing, far far - far - away from traditional ~$70 premium pricing, but heckfire, it’s a solid buy signal). Cue raging debates about monetizing the product … still unresolved, but this is a first world problem to solve in the coming months as we move to soft launch this Summer. Maybe there’s a version for STEAM, a version for EGS and a different version available for purchase/download elsewhere? Right now, the belief is to release as a Free-to-Play (F2P) title as the monetization was so strong (86-93%) from F2P to monetized play that we prefer to have the game in the hands of as many people as possible vs. gating it with an upfront purchase requirement. Still … it is tempting to charge upfront :)
Post-testing … so, we had a few things to fix (everyone moaned about the MiniMap being too hard to see where you’re at and where other important things are in the World … so we’ve already fixed that - bravo Team Engineering!). Everyone seems to love the “retro” (nostalgic?) look of the graphics, so we’re being careful in leveling them up (one of our myriad pre-launch deliverables) and will be carefully testing upgraded artwork to ensure we don’t lose the precious signal (nothing inherently wrong with nostalgia … but I’d love to see some consistent beauty injected into the visuals, which our newest team member & Art Director Eric Browning seems to be highly capable of). There’s also a bunch of client<>server authentication systems (now up and running, at least in a ‘first step’ kinda way) to ensure no hacking/cheating and Account/transactional integrity … all the important things that are hard to do unless you’ve “done them before” (thankfully selected members of the team have literal decades of experience here, so water of the proverbial ducks’ backs).
/onwards
