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Getting players to stick around ✨ Community Dev Newsletter #49
Published about 22 hours ago • 5 min read
Community Dev Newsletter
Hello hello!
Confession: I've been struggling recently to keep up with the newsletter this year because it's been so busyyyyy. Apologies in advance if any months get skipped! Gah!
This is a slightly edited version of a section of Chapter 8 from my book Mastering Community Management, which focuses on post-launch community managment.
Churn rate basically measures how long your players are sticking with your game or community space.
I always think about churning butter when I say churn rate.
This is all about getting a sense of how strong your marketing/community efforts are at keeping players around. It's usually used for things like a multiplayer or live-service game, but can be helpful when just thinking of your community spaces (like Discord)!
Churn rate calculations aren’t anything magical or wild in the marketing world - you could use this formula for community members, change in player count, revenue, subscribers, etc. Here's the formula to calculate it:
It is NORMAL to have a churn rate. No matter how popular a game is, overtime it will inevitably see a loss in players overtime as newer games pop up or a lack of significant updates is apparent. The time you should be worried is if players leave at an alarmingly high rate because that could indicate a problem with an update, game, or community. This is why we want to keep track of churn regularly - what is considered a high churn rate will be determined by your own community measurements.
There are two ways churn will happen:
Voluntary - Your player is done with the game, there is no further content for them or it has gone stale, or they no longer find your community space helpful or interesting.
Involuntary - Your player was banned, their game is buggy and they’ve been unable to play for an extended period of time, or some other technical issue is getting in their way.
How do you find out which is which? This is where the qualitative work of churn comes in. Community is strongest when you can combine the best of quantitative with the actual lived experiences of members for context and understanding.
Mitigating Churn
One of the main reasons for having a community manager is having someone who, from the start, has implemented or planned for activities that will ease churn as much as possible. Mitigating churn is a supported by a three main pillars:
Community/Players
These activities should focus on keeping the player base interconnected with each other. The more players feel like they have friends or people to regularly connect with, the more likely they are to come back. The game is just another way to regularly hang out with friends, after all.
Even if your game is not a multiplayer experience, you can achieve this through other platforms people gather on like Discord or Reddit. If people feel like there is a place where they feel welcome to talk about their interests, it makes it a much more attractive community to stay in.
If you find your community has high churn in your community spaces, these are some ways you may be able to tackle the issue:
Rituals: These are events that your community can depend on happening at regular intervals - often involving their participation in some way. Think things like trivia games in the Discord, game night with the dev streams, etc.
Reward regulars: Recognition for those who show up can be a great way to encourage that behavior! Special badges, more permissions, or insider access are just a few ideas.
Game Content
The primary way to mitigate churn (but the most time intensive) depends on the game itself. Nothing will drum up as much initial attention or hype than a game update, especially if it adds new gameplay content. That being said, there are still ways you can get people invested in the game without needing a BIG update - and that’s to make them feel heard or like they’ve made their mark on the game in some way.
Community contributions: Create opportunities for members to improve or contribute to the game in some way, whether that’s voting on a poll to decide the colour of the next DLC pet or something else fun (but ultimately inconsequential).
Inside looks: Creating in depth, transparent, regular reports on the progress of the studio.
Community Manager
Don’t underestimate your role in mitigating churn! While community managers are not the reason a player may stay, they are still a pillar that can help combat churn in a game. This is not only through their work, but by ensuring players are getting what they want and need from the space itself.
For community managers, they can play to their strengths and do this to help mitigate churn:
Personal Touch: Taking notice of ways that can make a space feel warmer and more welcoming to members. Highlight what others in the community are doing or find ways to integrate in-community jokes into the space.
Feedback: On behalf of the studio, you can lend an ear to their biggest struggles and reassure them. It’s one thing for someone to feel like they’re just venting to the void, and another to feel like they’re talking to someone who can directly enact change. Gather feedback after every update or event in the community, or interview them. If you’re able to, have deep 1:1 conversations (through text is fine) about the community, what they want, and what they want to see going forward. This is especially helpful for those who may have recently left the community.
In all, you’ll want to track how well everything is going, with the knowledge that it’s normal for stats to go to a downwards trend until a new update or news comes around.
Something big to note is that social media will be incredibly unreliable in terms of determining churn - especially the ones most dependent on an algorithm like TikTok. While you do want to work towards a steady climb and engagement rate with your videos, because the real determining factor of success is based on getting on the For You page and algorithms, expect natural times where content will dip or even stagnate until you can work your way out of it.
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... And that's it for now! Hope you enjoyed that peek into my book - it tackles community activities from pre-production to post-launch, so if you found this helpful pick it up or tell a friend!
Community Activity 📝
Every month I ask a skill testing exercise! Have an activity idea or want to ask a question?Submit one anonymously.
The question:
How do you kee players interested in your spaces after the game is out? Anything in particular you do?
Feel free to email me back with your answer! I always respond.
Community Chatter 💬
Here are the interesting and helpful things I've seen this past month.
Game News
Twitter tweaked its algorithm to boost more posts of mutuals
Community & Marketing Game Jobs These are not endorsements.
ArenaNet - Senior Growth Marketing Program Manager (Remote)
Gamemode One - Community Manager (Halifax, Canada)
Success through shenanigans with community management.
Hi, I'm Victoria! Join my Community Dev Newsletter for insight into games marketing, social, and community management. Get actionable tips, a skill testing question, and a roundup of resources straight to your inbox every month.
