Or you can get your friends to give you some more. "When you are out of lives in Bubble Witch Saga you can buy some more. It's both absolute progress, as in have I completed this level and relative progress, have I progressed as far as my friends in the game?" It's this sense of progress that Facebook games are really selling. For example, if you go through a particularly difficult level and pass through that, we put a relatively easier level next because that doubles the sense of achievement the player gets. We also know what sequence of challenges work best. We can look at the time that people spend on it and the number of attempts they make to pass that level in order to optimise it. So we can see what works and what doesn't work in a particular puzzle level. "The process of creating new levels offers an opportunity to improve each level further. As they get used to waiting for new levels to come it keeps them within our game." They post their progress on Facebook and share their achievements with their friends. At the moment we have over 170 levels on Bubble Witch Saga and the players, through this map, know that the levels are coming. We work a two-week release cycle and add new levels essentially every fortnight. When we launched the game on Facebook we probably had between 50 and 70 levels available on day one. "We introduced a storyline and a map, which may seem very simplistic but having a map showing future levels is very important as it gives players a sense that there's always more to come. ![]() So the game essentially does its own marketing." We also introduced level unlocking requirements - in order to progress from one level to the other on Bubble Witch Saga you need to get three friends to use the game. For example, we made it easy to give coins or lives to your friends. "We introduced collaborative elements in to game progress. So you monitor, tweak, figure out what works and do it again." If you make it too difficult, you won't get enough people remaining with your game. If you make the tutorial too easy then enthusiastic players who know more or less what they are doing get bored and go away. We do a lot of testing around the tutorial experience. Getting players quickly into the game in a simple but entertaining way is vital for second day retention. "Second day retention - how many people who were there on day one come back on day two - is a key measure for Facebook games. The basic idea was to take the most popular games from and place them in a social wrapper." It took us a while but eventually we got to a winning formula that we call the saga format, because it is a long running story. "We learned that on Facebook players want something that is less competitive and more relaxing. We spent over a year testing different concepts, different formats, game hubs, games of chance like bingo - none of these really worked," said Alex Dale, chief marketing officer at .ĭale shared 's experience with other game designers at the Digital Shoreditch 'Play' event and explained how to create a successful Facebook game. "We knew that we had to get into Facebook because it was clear that was where our older female audience were spending more and more of our time. So how did come to be hot on the heels of the number one spot held by FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Words With Friends creator Zynga? ![]() That has not always been the case though and a year ago the social gaming company was only at number 30 based on users. has built itself up to be the number two games company on Facebook when it comes to daily active users.Its title Bubble Witch Saga is the largest game on Facebook with six million people playing daily.
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