Super Fans

The Key to organic game growth.

In light of the recent decisions by Microsoft to shudder some amazing studios I want to give an opposite and positive take on growing game loyalty. 

Last week I wrote about the erosion of the traditional marketing funnel and in that article I put forth that I believe the key to a games success in the future (particularly Live games) is this concept of building a Super Fan community. But what are Super Fans, how do you find them and then how do you keep them. Lets break down each of these questions.

What is a Super Fan? Well, there are lots of soft definitions right. They are your most loyal players, the ones that spend the most money, the ones who play the most and the ones that talk about your game the most. But how can we quantify them? I believe in the concept of “Regularity”. This was the main reason for the success of Marvel Strike Force while I was at FoxNext. It’s a simple concept that has far-reaching implications if adopted. Simply for Marval Strike Force a regular player was defined as someone who logged in and played seven of the last seven days. These players were called Regular Players and all their data was cohorted and analyzed separate to the entire player base. FoxNext organized their company and every division around maximizing growth of Regular Players. Long story short (I have written at length about Regularity in other posts) a focus on Regularity led to massive growth for MSF. This is as close to a perfect definition and measurement of a Super Fan as I have been exposed to.

But how do you find these Super Fans – “Regular Players”? Start early and deeply understand the people that are organically attracted to your game. Gone are the days of “Surprise and Delight” marketing. At least for gamers, your Super Fans want to feel like they were on the inside from the start. They want to feel a sense of ownership and community. This means you need to get comfortable talking about your vision, inviting them to play, sharing content before its perfect and listening to the people who are naturally attracted to your game vision. This means years prior to launch you are online, running alpha playtests, posting on social and in Discord and geeking out with them on your game idea as it morphs and changes. Once you have built this small, vocal passionate original group of people you need to deeply understand who they are. Not just demographics and geographics but who they are as people. What excites them? What other stuff do they geek out on? What behavioral similarities do they share? If you can get a detailed view of these folks then you can build plans to find more like them.

Finally, and most importantly, how do you keep and encourage them to bring in their friends? In my experience organically growing passionate game communities generally comes down to one important tactic – provide them value! This sounds like a trivial, generic statement but if you understand where value lies for Super Fans its massively effective. People are driven by needs and needs come in many flavors. Maslow teaches us that after you get past basic survival needs then humans long for things like: Belonging and Self-Esteem. This is the sweet spot for game teams because we have so much to offer in these areas. Recognizing, listening, acknowledging, and respecting these Super Fans builds deep loyalty. Many game teams think growing a community requires massive amounts of game content and new feature announcements. Really, I have found that it just takes a sprinkle of these thing around lots and lots of “value” based interactions. 

Growing your base of Super Fans is the key to organic game growth. You can measure your success by measuring Player Regularity. Deeply understanding the core elements that make up your Super Fans allows you to look in the right places for more of them and finally to keep them singing your praises provide them value.