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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> New Player Retention
        
(Message started by: mistre on Jun 16^th, 2008, 10:09am)

Title: New Player Retention
Post by mistre on Jun 16^th, 2008, 10:09am

Omar's decision to start new players at a rating of 1300, had me looking at the new players page. I was amazed to see that Arimaa is getting 50+ new players each month!

My question is - where are all of these new players disappearing to? Some of them probably sign up and never play a game - so we are losing some there. Some might try 1 game and then give up (lack of interest?, don't understand the rules?). Others stick around for a month or two and then fade away never to be seen again.

I know that every game is going to have its share of player turnover, but I think we could be doing more to retain new players. So what could be done?

Some vague ideas:

1) Split all human players into divisions based on number of human games played. Provide some incentive for players to play games against players in their division so they can move up into higher divisions.

2) Design an interface where players can see everyone in their division and only have to click on a name to challenge that player.

3) Encourage human games - postal and live. More education on how to set up a game? This goes along with #2.

4) Revamp player of the month contest - reward money going to the same few players every month for playing a ton of games could be put to better use.

5) Set up new player-only tournaments and likewise tournaments for players in different divisions.

6) Reminder emails that a player hasn't logged in in 30 days and to either log in again or delete their account.

7) Online visual tutorial on how to play.

8 ) Have each player set up preferences in their profile to determine interests (in a scale of 1 to 10 format). Are they only interested in bot games?, human games? postal games? tournaments? the community? bot developing? If nothing else, this would be a great research tool.

9) Expand game records pages to include items such as fastest goal, immobilization, best handicap versus each bot. This would be fun for the bot-bashers out there. Also exploits such as tournament games and record, championships, participation in Arimaa Challenge, points in the player of the month challenges, etc.

10) Arimaa Jr. version. I alluded to this in another post - smaller board, fewer pieces, less intimidating for new players.

These are just a few ideas to get the ball rolling. I am sure I could think of more. I am aware that many of these would require a time commitment (mostly from Omar - but others could chip in).

I just want to say that Arimaa is already great as it is, but if we can think of ways to encourage new players to stick around, it could be even bigger and better.

Edit: I changed the title to have a positive instead of negative connotation.

Title: Re: New Player turnover
Post by Fritzlein on Jun 16^th, 2008, 11:48am

My hunch is that the single biggest thing driving new people away is game interface problems. I know Omar has put a lot of work into this already, and the client has gotten more stable as a result of his efforts, but I still believe it is the top issue. We have to be really thankful to folks who care enough (and stick around long enough) to complain about it.

As a non-programmer, I'm unqualified to propose a solution. However, I do recall that I never had interface problems with the early Internet Chess Server. The ICS had many different platform-dependent interfaces, which obviously required more man-hours to maintain and debug than a unified interface for everyone, but at least I could find a stable interface for my platform among the crop.

Historically, the greatest boost in retention occurred when Omar set up the bot ladder. I was surprised by this, because I thought events and tournaments would be more important, but I guess people were more interested in having an immediate, graded challenge. I suppose there weren't (and still aren't) enough humans to have something equally attractive (e.g. graded tournaments) based on HvH games, although that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. The Internet Chess Club's tournament manager tool "Tomato" was quite popular last I checked.

I agree that Player of the Month has outlived its usefulness, and the money could be better spent otherwise. I'm leery of rewards based only the on the best of something (e.g. only for setting a bot-bashing record) since that is as prone to being won by the same people over and over as is the PotM. At the time PotM was changed to its current rules, we wanted to promote HvH games, but I think a tournament manager would do that better, and the contest money should be aimed at newcomers instead. Omar has suggested a payout for anyone who completes the bot ladder, which I think is a great idea, because it is specifically targeted at newcomers.

There is already a visual tutorial: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/learn/
I think people are just too lazy to use it. One sees a lot of computer games these days that have pop-up tips and instructions rather than a tutorial. So, for example, the interface might give hint balloons like "that piece is frozen" or "you must complete a push". Of course, the hints would be extremely annoying to me, as I would rather read the rules any day, but as long as I could turn them off it would be fine by me, and hopefully retain people who want entertainment with little or no up-front effort.

Title: Re: New Player Retention
Post by mistre on Jun 16^th, 2008, 12:39pm

on 06/16/08 at 11:48:45, Fritzlein wrote:

There is already a visual turotial: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/learn/
I think people are just too lazy to use it. One sees a lot of computer games these days that have pop-up tips and instructions rather than a tutorial. So, for example, the interface might give hint balloons like "that piece is frozen" or "you must complete a push". Of course, the hints would be extremely annoying to me, as I would rather read the rules any day, but as long as I could turn them off it would be fine by me, and hopefully retain people who want entertainment with little or no up-front effort.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention - I was not aware of the tutorial. Nice graphics! I remember when I first started playing Arimaa, the most difficult concept to remember and visualize was the freezing of pieces. If, like you said, there was a visual cue of frozen pieces (maybe the piece has a blue outline), I think it would really help new players.

Title: Re: New Player Retention
Post by omar on Jun 16^th, 2008, 9:52pm

Thanks for posting these ideas mistre.

A few days ago a new player invited me to play, but after chatting with him I realized he didn't know the rules yet and gave him the link to the tutorial. I was a bit surprised, but perhaps many people just jump right in and figure they will learn the rules while playing. I am going to add a link to the tutorial in the Welcome section of the gameroom.

I also noticed that it takes a while for new players to get familiar with the interface. I had to explain to this new player how to undo the steps; and that he needs to click the 'Send' button when done. It would be great to have a Video tutorial that shows someone using the game interface to demonstrate the rules while playing against a bot. When I made the Flash tutorials, I was still developing the game interface. Also video on the Internet was barely possible at the time. If anyone makes such a video and uploads it to one of the video sites, please let me know so I can link to it.

I agree with Karl that issues with the Flash game interface have probably resulted in a lot of players not returning. Hopefully I will get those taken care of soon. Eventually I would also like to have a JavaScript version which does not require any plugins.

I do need to make it easier for new (and old) players to start up postal games with others of their own skill level. I was thinking of something like a one click button to start such a game. The system would automatically pair you against an equal opponent. Under something like Setting->Postal the players can limit the max postal games they will accept and also specify their preferred postal time controls.

Title: Re: New Player Retention
Post by Tachyon on Aug 28^th, 2008, 9:32pm

AS n new player I thought I would post a quick comment.
I really enjoy going through the bot ladder. One thing that is really frustrating though is when you are required to play bots under strict time constraints when you are still learning the game. Sometimes situations arise that you do not completely understand but due to time constraints you do not have the opportunity to carefully think through it. This detracts from learning the game.
It would be nice to play a bot at a slow pace even if that means that you do not move up the ladder just so that you have time to get to grips with the game.
I am currently stuck with bot loc2007blitz and find it difficult to progress.

Title: Re: New Player Retention
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 29^th, 2008, 3:50am

Hi, Tachyon. This is a very good point. It is very frustrating to have to play fast or blitz bots early on.

As it happens, this is an accident. Omar just added the Loc2007 series of bots yesterday. He should have preset the ratings of the Fast and Blitz versions somewhere in the 1600 or 1700 range. However, he forgot to set the ratings, so those bots started with ratings around 1300. This is way too low for how difficult they are. They shouldn't be so low on the ladder, so you should not have to play them so early in your career.

I will send a message to Omar through the contact page about this. Don't hesitate to use the page yourself to report any problems to Omar. The URL is http://arimaa.com/arimaa/contact/

Title: Re: New Player Retention
Post by aaaa on Aug 29^th, 2008, 5:01am

Why adjust the rating of bot_Loc2007Blitz manually if beginners repeatedly losing to it will just cause it to end up in its natural position anyway?

Title: Re: New Player Retention
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 29^th, 2008, 5:39am

Because it is very frustrating to the beginners in the mean time, and because it causes rating deflation.

Title: Re: New Player Retention
Post by omar on Aug 29^th, 2008, 7:52am

Yes, I had forgot to preset the ratings for bot_Loc2007Fast and bot_Loc2007Blitz. Thanks for the reminder.

I am suprised to see bot_Clueless2006Blitz so low. Looks like it has been timing out a lot. Maybe I better replace it with the 2008 version ASAP.

Title: Re: New Player Retention
Post by Tachyon on Aug 29^th, 2008, 8:02am

Thanks for adjusting the bots ... Im able to get higher up the ladder now.

This does raise another interesting point though. How does difficulty and rating relate to speed of play. Surely it is not fair to use the same rating system for games with different time restrictions since the quality of play can be vastly different ??

When is a game a played well ... when you can make an average move fast or an excellent move slowly ??