Grant: Engage Grants Program

In collaboration with Norsfell, we aim to explore the design of in- and post-game mechanics intended toenhance long-term player retention, and understand what makes these interactions effective in sustaining playerinterest. Our core goal is to gain a more complete understanding of how players remain engaged with digitalgames over the long term, and how developers might improve their designs as a result. This research projectwill focus on the evaluation of player engagement outside of the play experience, an area which has beenrelatively understudied in the field. Given the challenges that designers must overcome in attracting andretaining a sizeable player base, the investigation of this topic is especially relevant in the contemporary gamesmarket.This is the current research challenge for Norsfell Studio, as their current project is a multiplayer title withpersistent in-game progression, meaning that in-game events can occur while players are away. The developersare concerned with designing systems for encouraging retention, by balancing in-game mechanics to facilitatehigher player engagement, and creating post-gameplay systems for keeping players informed of in-game eventswhile they are not playing, for example.With this project, we hope to create a set of formalized guidelines for the design of player retention mechanics,providing a valuable contribution to the collective knowledge of game developers and researchers alike. Thevideo game industry contributes over $3.7 billion to Canada's GDP and employs the equivalent of over 21,700full time employees. The outcomes of this research will be directly applicable to the game industry.