Skate Elysium
Group Project
Skate Elysium is a conceptual mobile game that utilizes user experience and live service tactics to maximize player retention. Skate Elysium emphasizes community through competition and creative expression. The social atmosphere real time progression and freeform gameplay create a digital 3rd space. The demo showcases onboarding strategies, seasonal events, monetization, and the core loop.
Core Gameplay Loop
Creating A Social Platform
To build a player base the best advertisement a game can have is word of mouth. Skate Elysium allows players to visit and skate in one another’s skateparks. This is a critical feature of the game as it allows players to express themselves in addition to creating a digital 3rd space for players to hang out.
Features unlock a skate trick that is limited to the player’s park until they complete a corresponding challenge. The feature’s challenge serves as both a tutorial and skill check for the new trick.
Basic features like halfpipes and rails will be unlocked early on and will cost gold to build. Later upgrades cost unique resources gained through limited time events that would cycle weekly or monthly.
This gameplay loop provides a constant sense of progression through the player’s skatepark, upgrades, and tricks. Unlocking a new trick or feature creates a quest or goal for the player in a different area of the game. This makes the game loop feel organic as the players next goal is based on their actions.
It’s important to create opportunities for player agency so that the game doesn’t feel like a grind. Skate Elysium does this by letting players decide how they’ll spend their resources.
Player Retention and Monetization
How a game will be monetized is as essential as the gameplay itself. Skate Elysium is targeted a the mobile market which has a low barrier of entry and a similarly low rate of player retention. The game must hook players giving them a reason to invest both their time and money into it. To achieve this Skate Elysium employs a number of tactics.
Players can visit other players parks and customize their own. When a player’s park is visited they will earn gold (capped per day) and gold will be added to a pool for competitions in the park. The gold incentivizes players to spend time and resources designing and upgrading their park while competitions give you a reason to visit other players parks.
Player Retention & Pacing Content
By making unique resources time sensitive player progression is naturally stabilize. Additionally this will create a player behavior of where players periodically log in. This has the benefits of both extending gameplay and serves as an organic means of repeat exposure to the game store as new items and cosmetics are released.
The core loop of Skate Elysium has players compete in skating competitions to earn gold. Gold is used to unlock features (ramps, rails, etc.) in each player’s customizable skate park. Unlocking tricks allows for more ways to earn points in skating competitions as well as a means of expressing a player’s skating style.
After completing a competition players receive experience for tricks used and increase their player level. Player levels grant access to new skate park features (ramps, rails, etc.) to be unlocked. These features can be built in a players park.
Monetization is essential to live service products so by creating moments that emphasize player avatars and their skatepark we reward them for spending money on cosmetic items.
Seasonal events and daily quests incentivize players to login on a consistent basis. Recontextualizing parks with challenges special events and rewards are components that will increase player retention.
This digital space has the additional benefit of creating a “keeping up with the Joneses” effect between players. Seeing and interacting with players forces a constant comparison of their park and character avatar to those of others. This is where monetization comes into play.