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Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience In the highly competitive world of online gaming, developers and publishers must do everything they can to attract players. Once you get their attention, the first 30 minutes are critical to engaging and keeping those players. The following list suggests 10 best practices for improving the gamer experience to increase retention rates.

Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

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In the highly competitive world of online gaming, developers and publishers must do everything they can to attract players. Once you get their attention, the first 30 minutes are critical to engaging and keeping those players. The following list suggests 10 best practices for improving the gamer experience to increase retention rates.

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Page 1: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game

Experience

In the highly competitive world of online gaming, developers and publishers must do everything they can to attract players. Once you get their attention, the first 30 minutes are critical to engaging and keeping those players. The following list suggests 10 best practices for improving the gamer experience to increase retention rates.

Page 2: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Use a gaming focused CDN (content delivery network) with faster connection times and higher sustained throughput, optional P2P (peer-to-peer) technology, and an advanced download manager to increase the speed of the game download and reduce abandonment.

Speed-up downloads to get players into the game faster. 1

Page 3: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Engage players during initial download.

Create a branded download experience that includes character development, storytelling, weapon selection and other content so players are engaged during the download and won’t leave before they play the game. You can also allow them to start playing the first level or world while other content continues to download in the background.

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Page 4: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Improve the point-of-play experience.

Use a full-featured game launcher to offer updates, new content, keep players informed, and monetize free-to-play games with advertising or special offers. Each time the player launches the game you have an opportunity to improve their experience.

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Page 5: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Keep all players on the current version.

No patch, no play. Use an advanced game updater and patching solution to publish new versions and add additional game content efficiently. By selecting a full-featured solution you can also perform byte level and non-linear patching.

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Page 6: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Measure twice,reconfigure once.

Making changes to the game experience should not be guesswork. Advanced delivery analytics enable you to test completion ratios, download speeds, regional delivery data and more. By testing and reacting to the results you can make changes to the game download experience that will effect player acquisition, retention and monetization.

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Page 7: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Secure your game, while making approved access simple.

You’ve invested heavily in your game, so protecting it is paramount. Doing so at the CDN level allows you to keep unauthorized players out without making it difficult for your approved players to play.

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Page 8: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Monetize in ways that add value for the player.

Make game play more affordable and accessible by implementing creative monetization strategies. By providing gamers with incentives to view advertising such as content, weapons, virtual currency, etc., you enhance the game while also creating a new revenue stream.

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Page 9: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Improve satisfaction by connecting players to the best server.

Make games more responsive by leveraging real user measurement (RUM) to connect individual players to the game server with the best connectivity. Happy gamers spend more time and more money.

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Page 10: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Shine during your game launch.

Nothing is more important than the initial launch of your game. Lean on the experience of a gaming focused content delivery provider to plan and execute a global launch strategy that guarantees server uptime, avoids bottlenecks, includes regionally focused capacity planning and more.

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Page 11: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Save money and reinvest in the game.

Don’t get caught up in managing infrastructure, monitoring servers and developing complicated download, update and patching solutions. By outsourcing these tasks you not only save money, you free up developer resources to focus on creating new games, adding content to existing games and ultimately adding value for your company.

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Page 12: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Top 10 Ways to Improve theOnline Game Experience

1 Speed-up downloads to get players into the game faster.

2 Engage players during initial download.

3 Improve the point-of-play experience.

4 Keep all players on the current version.

5 Measure twice, reconfigure once.

6 Secure your game, while making approved access simple.

7 Monetize in ways that add value for the player.

8 Improve satisfaction by connecting players to the best server.

9 Shine during your game launch.

10 Save money and reinvest in the game.

Page 13: Top 10 Ways to Improve the Online Game Experience

Are you overwhelmed by the amount of work it would take to execute on each of these suggestions? Don’t be. Highwinds built a complete set of solutions to address each item on this list as part of the GDN™ (Game Delivery Network). Now you can access the best game delivery, download manager, patcher, analytics, monetization, security and more.

To set up a live demonstration or to request a free trial, click here. Want to learn more first? Visit the GDN customers page to read how successful game companies like Valve - Steam, Online Warmongers, U4iA Games, Funcom, GameFly and Penny Arcade are leveraging the GDN today.

Visit www.highwinds.com/GDN to learn more!

Top 10 Ways to Improve theOnline Game Experience