Q: Many live games struggle to retain players over time. What do you think are the most common pitfalls studios face when designing for longevity?

Matthew: The most common pitfall is twofold: Misunderstanding the nature of live service products, and then failing to utilize social systems to their fullest potential within that space. Here's the trick: Live service games must be social. Without a well-integrated, deep, and satisfying social layer, it's a near-guarantee that you'll be caught in an untenable content-creation spiral as you scramble to retain players consistently over the long term.

This tripwire is incredibly easy to hit, and it almost invariably goes like this:

1. Talented game developers have an idea for a fun game.
2. They make this game, and it is fun, because a lack of fun would be obvious and they are talented enough to do it right.
3. The game is not heavily social, because it doesn't need to be social to be fun, and game development is all about shaving off unnecessary features for the sake of time and budget.
4. The game releases, but because the fun is primarily in the core gameplay experience, it fails to retain players.
5. By pouring in tons of time and effort to build expensive, quickly-consumed content to feed that fun core, the developers can keep the game afloat, but it's like holding back the sea.
6. The game continues to attract players who do have fun, but eventually leave before because there simply isn't enough in the way of content and/or updates to keep them around.
7. The game begins its death spiral; there aren't enough players to keep it alive and justify the cost of its content updates.

In the end, the painful truth is that not all game genres have the potential for a strong social layer, meaning not all genres have the potential for live service. For those games, social is all too often left as an afterthought, a disconnected checklist item that fails to matter to the core experience. For designers, their own talent and experience can often work against them in this space, because they aren't wrong - they know how to make games fun, but they don't realize that the nature of live service is merciless when it comes to the "types" of fun you must prioritize.

If you fail to design extensive, well-integrated, and long-term meta and social layers from the very beginning, it will not matter how fun your live service game is, because players won't stick around long enough to make it profitable.

Q: How do you balance the creative vision of a game with the business need for sustained growth and monetisation?

Matthew: I feel this question presents a false dichotomy, implying that growth and monetization are inherently at odds with creativity. The thing is, the need for these elements is merely a constraint, and constraints breed creativity. The problem in live service (and gaming in general) is not that growth and monetization are a strong factor, but rather that designers and developers do not fully understand the problem space, seeing it instead as some management-mandated millstone around their necks - something to design around, rather than for.

Everyone knows that games need to make money and keep players in a general sense, but live service comes with very specific requirements in this regard, and failing to capitalize on them from a design perspective is what leads to tragedy, not some creative poison pill inherent to the business model.

Q: Community and brand identity are key to long-term success. How do you approach building and maintaining a strong player community?

Matthew: With a two-pronged approach: First, as noted above, your game must be built for social, which means its systems, features, and content should be designed with the goal of directly fostering community engagement and growth. Second, you cannot neglect your community team, meaning you should have them hired at least a year prior to launch, built a full community and support strategy alongside them, and established clear lines of communication between them and your development team.

Community staff and game developers are often kept separate, and this split can lead to misunderstandings and spiraling ambiguities about your product - often in a very public setting. For those who dismiss this concern, yes, each instance of miscommunication between development and community is likely a minor thing, but remember that live service games tend to fail not due to any single issue, but rather the classic "death of a thousand cuts." Don't let your community-building efforts be a source for them.

Q: Can you share an example of a challenge your team faced in maintaining long-term engagement and how you overcame it?

Matthew: At one point, we were working on a F2P puzzle game which lacked a long-term social layer. Due to the nature of the game's design, there wasn't a lot of room for social competition, so we instead focused on making the game feel more alive and reactive by adding a strong recurring live events system. This system focused on celebrating seasonal events and holidays with a templated challenge structure, allowing players to win fun cosmetics they could use to differentiate themselves in the limited social setting available without requiring a high investment on our side after the initial implementation. The results were remarkable, with the new system providing a 20% boost in revenues whenever its events were active without cannibalizing our baseline KPIs.

Q: What are you most looking forward to at the Live Service Gaming Summit?

Matthew: Meeting experts in the field! I had a wonderful time at last year's event, due in large part to all the great conversations I had there. There's always more to learn, and one of the best ways to do so is by simply asking smart people to share their experiences.

🎮 Ready to shape the future of live service games? Don’t miss the Live Service Gaming Summit, where industry leaders will share bold insights, tactical strategies, and real-world lessons from the frontlines of game development, operations, and monetisation. Whether you're in production, development, or LiveOps, this is your chance to connect with the studios redefining player engagement and long-term game success. 👉 Register here