Raptr has announced its new Raptr Report, designed to examine the relationships players have with game companies. The data from the report says that game companies with frequent community engagement programs do well in their user acquisition, retention and re-engagement.
“The games as a service era is here and it would be a big mistake to think that simply means ongoing game updates and metrics-based iterations,” said Dennis Fong, CEO of Raptr. “Most publishers and developers tend to think of a robust community program as goodwill initiatives, but this data shows that it’s not just nice to have – it impacts the success of the game directly. Developers and publishers need to consider being player-first by design.”
A key part of the Raptr Report is gameplay habits of players being used to understand the value of key community activities – activities for players that they can participate with others, like mod tools, eSports events and loyalty programs. Both bring in new players along with lapsed players.
The company says that mods can bring in spikes of new players up to 20 times normal rates and an ongoing community engagement program can result in sustained monthly growth of more than 7 percent. These vibrant communities mean more gameplay activity and Raptr observes up to twice as much time spent in games with high support.
Specific examples include Portal 2, where mod tools and user-generated content brought in 23 times the new users, 11 times returning players (defined by players who had lapsed by two weeks or more) and increased the average playtime per user by 36 percent. DayZ, a popular user generated mod for ArmA II, helped drum up attention for the base game, generating 14 times more new players and increased re-engagement of lapsed users by more than 2 times within a month of release, while Bohemia Interactive reported that sales for ArmA II spiked 40 times greater within 4 months.
Additionally, League of Legends by Riot Games sees 7.6 percent user growth each month on average, in part due to frequent community engagement activities, boosted by eSport events. Perfect World’s use of Raptr Community Platform activities for Blacklight: Retribution increased daily active users by 4 times over the course of several months.
