Cooperation Boosts Retention

[Music] i'm going into my own presentation so we're going into the collaboration boost retention um so first like just to raise you and who use photon here we have one two three four five six and okay okay that's cool all right lovely welcome photonians i love you guys all right cool so let's start um cool so a little bit about photons so we uh we're actually having uh 4 000 live games today so it's a bit more always written again we're at 1.2 billion

monthly users which is very good so obviously there's more and more games launching with multiplayer elements into it and for those that doesn't know photon at all we're super cross platform it's mainly on unity it's very easy to use and there's nothing better out there so you're welcome to try it out it's free and then you guys can also have fun and actually bring people together and that's the subject of today's multiplayer so um so i want to talk to you about collaboration so first why collaboration is important in your game design and why you should look at it and then we're gonna go about the collaboration in games i have a few examples for you also with our own game which i want to share in a bit and also where you should start regarding like how how to implement it so let's start so okay so to talk about collaboration i had to dig very far away in time

so collaboration started in humans about hundred 000 years ago so before that like the humans we were really small groups of individuals about 10 to 12 people together and the population of on earth was about a million so we're not seeing a lot of humans right and also or uh you know old friends the neon their calls have a totally different brain than us and that is that is very important to understand regarding collaboration is the evolution of the brain because then you understand more about how to use it in uh gaming so we're gonna dive a little bit more into this and let's not forget that the neanderthals were cannibals and they were dying at around 20 years and 20 years of age and mainly it was about eating and making babies and that was it but 100 000 years ago 150 000 years ago it's not clear exactly something happened in the brain

so we started to have something that we call the prefrontal cortex which is the front of the brain and it is meant essentially to mirror others is that when you are a kid and you have kids today they learn just by watching each other that is coming from the prefrontal cortex and also we started to pick to to to not be afraid of changes and that's important to keep in mind so from there our brain started to evolve and because we were able to mirror each other but also take more risk then or or abilities to do things together as a group started to evolve and and slowly in africa came the homo sapiens and then really the year our key of families that work with another family started so that's when the first glimpse of collaboration between groups really really started

so i'm talking about going to get fruits together having like positions inside of their clan and delegating and trusting each other which was not existing prior to that is all coming from uh this area of the brain which obviously uh pushed collaboration forward and um so there's a game theory that we call the uh the stag pump so essentially what it is is that um to prove collaboration and why humans came together is that when you are more than one human you can go and hunt a stag and you will have more meat for you than instead if you go and go chase a rabbit on your own so obviously us with our brain evolving we understood oh if we are together we can do so much more we can learn by each other but also really get what we're looking for to survive

so um in game theory there's multiple examples about that and it's a really good start regarding teaching your players that if you are together with others you're going to be more successful than if you're alone um then we go back to them or a little clan that started to talk with other clans to organize hunting mammoths and actually giving objectives it says you will be over there i'm going to push the earth that way and then after that we're going to have all meet in the world right because now we're 40 people working together and actually achieving a goal and then with time obviously it evolved into having roles and having a big trust in the people so then agriculture started after that and obviously when you are a farmer you're not necessarily making tools you're not going at war even if you can and and that evolved after that in big war time that we know from you know like 12 000 or 20 000 years ago

and um if we look today collaboration is everywhere it's in the economy it's in education it's in healthcare uh we take care of each other right this is all collaboration everywhere so collaboration is mainly what make us human today so when we are trying to entertain each other if the players have this feeling of collaboration with others they can have outburst of dopamine because they have successfully helped others and they are actually a part of the group that is having the same culture and they can move forward so um yeah now it's everywhere right so obviously the world wouldn't be where it is today if it was not of collaboration so for those who saw my previous talk in channel i was talking about competition and there's a i really talked about

everything related to competition competition with collaboration together is the best marriage to improve your retention because you as i said earlier we have this dopamine effect that starts when we help each other and when we compete and actually beat each other it's also a moment of reward so um coordination teaching sharing are all big big big list of elements that you can look at that are important to keep in mind when you are bringing players together but let's look about games right so obviously this is all nice it's not great this is all theoretical but what what how do you implement that in a game so i'm going to show you a game that we launched a year and a half ago so that's our game it's called stumble guy anyone here knows tumble guys all right shoot hands cool so um we have sound there you go cool all right so stumble guys is a a game that uses photon

quantum and it's 32 players and the goal is to go from a point a to b without getting eliminated and once you reach the other end there's another map and in the end there's only one winner so very inspired by all guys and this game today has 22 million daily active user it's huge keeps growing it's 100 organic so why collaboration in this game when you're alone right because you are a little character that moves so if you remember what i was saying earlier which is you want to be part of a group you want to collaborate you want to achieve it so when you arrive at the finish line like this and you are not part of the 16 qualified players and you see the other players at cheating you have this sentiment in you which is oh all of these people made it but i did not it means i can do it as well if they did

it mirror effect remember that so so then it pushed the players to come back and play more and play more and play more so um there's all kind of different maps in stumble guy and for example at this particular moment it's a platform that moves and depending on the way the platform moves now we have to collaborate together to make sure that we can have the right level to jump around and go from one platform to another and eventually go all the way to the end so like here i am going first or on the second but if the other people did not went to the left side of this platform i would not have been able to move to the other side and here's another level where uh you know you sort of have to let the others go and let them fail but there's this sentiment of collaboration again which where you see everyone's like trying and you me i'm just the loser on the side waiting and i sort of felt like okay i'm

not participating so me too i'm going to try okay i'm falling down right because i wanted to be part of this group and move forward so even like in little games like this you will have you will find collaboration so definitely something else to look at sorry i have a bit following my microphone here it's coming back there we go it's falling now all right cool sorry okay there we go so um so yeah so what we added as well is a tournament system so the tournament system means that anyone can parse fit in the tournament if you have the our currency you can gain those art currency by grinding but what and then the streamers pick that up because they were like wow you know i want to i want to be part of that tournament and what we did is that we collaborated with those streamers we give them the opportunity to create their own tournament so it means at any time they can say well you know from this time let's see on friday at 6 00 pm all my viewers we're going to play

together stumble guys and actually compete so then now we have tournaments of 30 000 people and and what more and now simple guys is way more popular than kenny croshaga and multiple casual games and um and then if you go on that's a screenshot from yesterday on twitch all the people are streaming stumble guys right so so we're happy about that because we we give the keys to the streamers to to create those tournaments and create those views and um and it's been great so um uh so if you want to use this tournament service it's part of the photon offering you has to be part of the gaming circle tournament sdk.com is for easy to integrate and you guys can make fun of it as well so you have a full dashboard to decide when those tournaments are are going to be available for your players you can give the keys obviously those are all apis you can extend them so that means they

can give a user experience or gui or tournament management system for your players to play with so there's a lot you can do with that so be creative so just to finish up with someone guys i'm going to show you other games after that um so 22 million delectable users you see the pulse of the concrete user no advertising so this is all organic so yeah think about that it's currently in the top 90 most grossing games and we haven't done any ua we haven't done anything special it's an accident it's a one of our sample anyone here can go today on the photon website download the sample that this game is based on and do a stumble guy as well actually make one please that'd be great um so yeah so a tournament super good gives you higher retention we're going to see that the blue line is players who participate in tournaments retention much higher than the players who don't do tournaments so tournaments really is

something you have to look at regarding putting people together having fun competing collaborating so collaboration is actually many other games so this is art of conquest made by the league games and in this game you have a full democratic system where you can elect a king which is a player and then that king will have uh all kind of you can have like the priests you can have like the magician i believe everyone has roles and everyone works together as part of a some sort of a society right and then that society will will try to attack others inside of that big map so then it's so then collaboration is really embedded in the game and then you have this feeling when you play this game that you have to participate every day to help your friends and colleagues and um yeah they went all the way so it's a it's a mmorpg so you um so you

can even vote if you want the server to be merged with another server so they so they push this collaboration effect like uh to a very high level so that's very interesting there's a bunch of other games that do something similar but this is on mobile so it's good to to to dissect and look at what what made it good um there we go so um but then if you look at all the kind of games so for example like uh roblox roblox collaboration is absolutely everywhere all the way down to creating the levels so you have a roblox teamwork or team creator something like this where you can deal with other uh developers and build those levels together right so you're not alone behind your screen you actually a bunch of others and then on the bottom left that's um arizona believe where you can revive players but you can also buy out your

your colleagues that just died so then again you have this uh i call it the farmville effect which is i took my money to save you i work hard in my 15 minutes of play to gather some uh credits but i'm gonna spend them to save you and that gives me a good feeling we're like yeah i save you yeah and then we move forward and then bottom right is um lust art you should have done a raid you cannot do that alone so you have to be with others you have to organize and obviously it's a super good metagame to uh to bring the level much much uh you know at any level where people will spend more time in the game so have a look at those it's super interesting so um yeah so uh that was it you know it goes fast so uh obviously if you want to learn more about uh photon go on

photonengine.com uh meets marvel you can find me on linkedin feel free to ask questions right now it's up to you to ask anything you might want to learn either about full done about multiplayer or about collaboration thank you [Applause] any question don't be afraid or be afraid if you ask a question everyone else here is going to benefit collaboration [Laughter] okay i'm annoying cool all right so thank you so much you