What Are Good Ways to Retain Users in New Multiplayer Game?

Hi, I am looking to release a game that is similar in nature to games such as Murder Mystery or Epic Mini games in such the way that it is round based and you need a minimum number of players before the game can start. In my case, you will need at least three players in the lobby to start the game.

The issue that I am worried about is since this game is new, there may be the case that players may join and not want to wait until another player joins. I am afraid that the games interest in the player will be lost before enough players join to be able to start a match. Ads will be wasted on players joining and not waiting for others to join and potentially disliking the game.

I have considered obstacle courses or some sort of simple activity to do in the lobby, but that may stray too far from the main idea of the game and not give the users the experience they were looking for. I have also thought about AI that might be able to perform basic functions that would make the game playable, but this could introduce easy currency farming and would also be require much more resources (time and work) than it is truly worth.

In all, I am just looking to see how others would go about this problem and seeing how I could apply it to my own game. The end goal is to be able to establish the player base so that users will not have to wait long times before enough players are in the lobby, but the player base can not be built if players don’t have enough players to play their first game.

What would make you want to stay and wait for enough players for a match to start?

Thank you for any and all responses.

4 Likes

Make some mini games, that may keep the player in game since they have something to do while waiting.

Maybe quizzes aswell about the game since your first audience would be new players so they test to see if they are correct and learn from that if they fail by simply practising till they learn and complete it.

Maybe some boss fights for pros (e.g: Level 50+)

Cause pros wouldn’t have much fun. They already know alot about the game and how to play, so a challenge would be good.

After you complete this, make a few advertisements (for pc) and sponsorships (if your game is for another device, aswell if your worried people use ad blocker on your ads)

If you do these steps, congrats. Your game should become big in the future! (by my predictions).

Also buggy free models may make the players interest drop, cause it is buggy and doesn’t work, so try actually make the parts yourself and not from a foreign modeller.

If it still doesn’t work, ask the player base. The player base are the people who give suggestions and feedback. If you get bad feedback, listen to suggestions. Make the game better for them!

If you get very good feedback to your game, congrats! Your player base is happy.

3 Likes

I do see where your coming from. Although you don’t really want to add activities to the lobby I recommend doing so because many round based games have lobby activities.