My Casual Connect Kyiv session - Beyond the Expected: Get Creative with Leaderboards, Scoring and Achievements!

1. Beyond the Expected: Get Creative with
Leaderboards, Scoring and Achievements!
Almog Koren – CEO/Scoreoid

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Who's Almog Koren
Interactive Developer & Designer
I’m an interactive developer & designer specializing in Flash, Flex, Adobe
AIR, 3D Experiences, Interactive Games and Mobile Devices. Working
under “Almog Design” I provide development, design and consultation
solutions for a broad range of reputable clients including Nokia Asia,
Faction Media, Intel and various local and international companies.
I have had the privilege of speaking at multiple events, I’m an Adobe ACP,
UGM organize a community event “Flash Israel” and I’m the founder and
CEO of Scoreoid a small start-up for game developers.

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Session Outline
• Leaderboards – Benefits, importance and creativity
• Achievements – Why? What to do and what not to do
• Scoring – Go beyond the expected
• In-game Notifications – Connect with your players
• Player Saves – Benefits and values
• Geo Location – Not seen often and new
• Cross Platform & Content Awareness
• Game Monetization Contented to Leaderboards

4. What is a leaderboard?
• Leaderboards are lists - The most of something, or the best
(quantity or quality).
• Leaderboards are Awards and show and reward value - We use
leaderboards to show currency, and value.
• Leaderboards help us find stuff - Newbies like top lists, who you
should beat.
• Leaderboards are about Leaders. Leaderboards allow
influencers to connect.
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Leaderboards - Benefits, importance and creativity

5. Leaderboards are everywhere!
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Leaderboards - Benefits, importance and creativity

6. Every game has a leaderboard and a scoring system
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Leaderboards - Benefits, importance and creativity

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Leaderboards - Benefits, importance and creativity
How important are leaderboards?
• Drive retention of gamers
• Can easily increase retention by as much as 30 percent
• Makes gamers try harder
• Motivates you to reach higher scores and play again
• Have become a standard, players expect it
In a gaming environment, the needs of gamers are met by badges,
trophy rooms, and leaderboards.
Presence of a leaderboard changes the very nature of the game,
increasing its value and making it more unique than others.

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Leaderboards - Benefits, importance and creativity
All about creativity
• Custom design that fits with your game.
• Create a friends list.
• Show info graphics, use charts, text and custom images.
• Show score, best scores and rank.
• Try to make your leaderboard unique and easy to understand.
• Use geo location, show maps where players are playing.
• Use filters and options.
• If your game is cross platform, use it, show players based on the
platform they are playing on.

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Leaderboards - Benefits, importance and creativity

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Leaderboards - Benefits, importance and creativity

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Achievements - Why? What to do and what not to do
Achievements
Achievementys are a virtual or physical representation of
having accomplished something. Achievements can be easy,
difficult, surprising, funny, accomplished alone or as a group.
Achievements are a way for players to brag about what
they've done indirectly as well as add challenge and character
to a game.
Achievements done right can get players to openly compete
with friends over achievements and spend hours playing a
game and, in the best case, MAX out a game.

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Achievements - Why? What to do and what not to do
What not to do
Achievements that impose an arbitrary restriction on players
and limit their ability to explore and discover your game is
wrong.
Doled out achievements to reward you for standard play
(Oblivion’s 1,000 points of Gamerscore just required you to
hang around long enough to receive them, more or less).
Those are a waste of a lot of potential.
A good example is The Orange Box: 99 Achievements spread
across Half-Life 2 and its first two episodes, plus Portal and
Team Fortress.

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Achievements - Why? What to do and what not to do
What to do
• Present players with clear goals.
• Show players what they’ve accomplished.
• Use badges, icons, and custom images that fit with your game.
• Give players overexposure for the chance to take on ludicrous
challenges.
• Connect achievements across games.
• If your game is cross platform, use that to your advantage. Create
specific achievements per platform or achievements connected to
platforms.

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Achievements - Why? What to do and what not to do

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Scoring - Go beyond the expected
Scores?
Every game has a type of score. It can be money, points, time,
XP or anything you can think of.
Go beyond the expected
• Use a custom name that fits with your brand
• Combine different values (XP + time or XP + money)
• Use scores based on difficulty
• Think of new ways to show your game score or points
• Give your players lots of feedback, but make them earn it!

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In-game Notifications - Connect with your players
All about connecting
The gaming market is becoming more competitive. The more
you do to make your game stand out the better your chances
are. Connecting with your players is as important as every
other aspect of creating a game!
Create a brand
While reading a great blog post, Will Make Games for Food
by Sash, one of the key points that caught my attention was
building a brand. “Recognition and respect: the successes of
your previous works are presumed in your latest games.
People come to respect your brand and the games that you
make.” --Sash

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In-game Notifications - Connect with your players
What you can do
• Update your players about new features
• Update your players about new game titles
• Tell them about your blog or website
• Create promotions, raffles and challenges
• Maybe have your own ads or cross promotions
• Think beyond the expected
• Don’t spam. Provide relevant content
• Make the message fit within your game
• Use your game’s design and make it unique

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In-game Notifications - Connect with your players

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Player Saves - Benefits and values
Cross platform and web
Player saves is specific feature you should consider if your
game is cross platform or web based.
Consider the following
If you play Angry Birds on your mobile phone and then on
your tablet or at work in your browser, unfortunately you will
have different scores or level access per platform.
Users are expecting to play your game everywhere but not
lose their place or score; especially if they paid extra for the
HD tablet version.

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Player Saves - Benefits and values

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Geo Location - Not seen often and new
Location based games
Location based games like FoursqWar or Waze but think you
can use geo location for your leaderboards and achievements.
In side your leaderboards
• Show players or scores based on location
• Show your players people in there area
• Show stats, maps, heat-maps and graphs
• Let players challenge other players

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Geo Location - Not seen often and new

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Cross Platform & Content Awareness
What?
At the end of the day, having your game on more than one
platform provides you more value.
Key points
• More revenue and better exposure
• Think of ways to use this to benefit the gameplay
• Think of ways to create better and unique leaderboards or
achievements based on platform.

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Game monetization contented to leaderboards
Ads inside your leaderboard
Leaderboards are a great place for ad content
Key points
• It’s not intrusive to the player
• Does not interfere with your game
• Consider selling your own ad space
• Sell ad space based on the amount of players not click rate
• Create peel-away or interactive ads

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THANK YOU
@almogdesign
almog@almogdesign.net
Further reading
• Flash & Flex magazine, getting started with Scoreoid and the
importance of leaderboards - http://bit.ly/oVidZJ
• Casual Connect, Things that you can do with Scoreoid to make your
games better - http://bit.ly/n5SWPS
• @ndid_twits, highscores the easy way - http://bit.ly/rngIfy