Love Balls Mobile Game Case Study

Index:

• Introduction

  • Research Questions

  • Methods and Iterations

• Target Population, Personas, Scenarios

  • Target Population

  • Personas

  • Scenarios

• Top 3 Findings and Recommendations

  • Finding 1

  • Finding 2

  • Finding 3

Introduction:

Mobile gaming is on the rise. By 2021, this industry will be a 190-Billion-dollar business. It’s not just teenage boys who are contributing to the rise. In the US, the population age 25-34(21%) and age 34-44(19%) makes up the biggest segments of mobile gamers(Lutz, 2019), with more than half of them female(63%) (Statista). This case study will show how proper UX can be adjusted to improve the gaming experience for this population. This mobile game currently has a rating of 4/5 on Google Play store and a 4.6/5 on Apple App store.

Right, let’s get into it!!

Research Questions:

• Do the system offer effective tutorials to players of all levels?

• Are the ads placed at the right time?

• Do players encounter any other problems playing this game?

  
  

Methods and Iterations

Target Population, Persona & Scenarios:

Population:

• As market research results have indicated, a significant percentage of consumers who are playing casual puzzle games comprised of working population age 25 to 44 in metropolitan areas. Thus, this research will be focusing on this population to improve the playing experience for them. All the participants in this research are within this population.

Personas:

• The research on Lion Studios(makers of Love Balls) as well as the product market research results shows that there are 3 types of personas that fall into the target population for this research. Below are the 3 types

Scenarios:

Below are the scenarios that represent the current usage of the personas. Sketches were made in addition to the verbal descriptions to help demonstrate the physical and ergonomic constraints of each persona.

Alex:

• Alex is waiting for his turn for a doctor’s appointment. He finds a place to sit down. He already checked in, but one person ahead of him has yet to be seen by the doctor. “It’s probably going to take another 10 minutes,” he thought to herself. To pass the time, he pulls out his phone to play “Love Balls.” It is not polite to have the volume up while he is in the waiting room, so Alex turns down the volume. “Alex,” the nurse calls for his name after around 10 minutes. Alex answers, directly shut off his screen, and walks towards the nurse.

Darcy:

• It’s the weekend evening, Darcy just finished all the home chores and put her one-year-old baby to sleep. She is finally getting some personal time. First, she replies back to a few messages from her friends and reads some news. While she was on her phone, Darcy figures that she still has some time to play something fun before going to sleep. She clicks on the “Love Balls” game to play a few rounds. She thought her solution to one of the levels is particularly cleaver, so she shares the game capture picture with her best friend before getting ready to sleep.

Sue:

• Sue is keen on keeping her mind sharp. Other than Sudoku, Sue has been trying some new apps and gadgets that her daughter has been using. One of the games that her daughter plays is “Love Balls.” Sue tries it the first time on her daughter’s phone, and she thought it was fun with a little bit of challenge. After her daughter’s visit, she downloads it to her own phone to play. Sue tries to play a few levels every day to keep her mind sharp. When she can’t pass a level, she doesn’t like to use the hints; instead, she will take a lot of time to think through the problem. “It keeps my brain sharp,” she says to herself.

Top 3 Findings:

Finding 1: Inadequately placed interstitial ads disrupting the game experience which greatly contributes to player abandonment of the game

• Severity: 4

• Location: After players fail or won a level

• Detailed Description:

  • Players felt that their experience is greatly interrupted by lengthy ads after tries at a level, especially considering that the levels are very short in time span. All participants noted that these ads are especially annoying when they just wanted to quickly try again or move onto another level after a short session. According to Google’s Mobile Game Ads recommendations, a game should “think about your user’s mindset at the point you insert interstitials to make sure they do not become frustrated with the ads.” In this game’s case, because the gameplay sections are so short and player’s emotions are minimally stimulated as to requiring pacing, the breaks which the interstitial ads are playing in feel like obstructions to the flow rather than a short pacing break.

    • Note: As of July 2020, Google punishes mobile pages with Interstitial ads, most notably back to back interstitial ads like what Love Balls has. Even though Love Balls is on a webpage, it is extremely beneficial for this app to follow the guideline as both the mobile webpage and app share similar device limitations.

  • The problem is worsened by non-targeted advertising. All participants encountered exclusively mobile game-related advertising during their 7-day diary recording period and the observation interviews. Since none of the participants have regularly played any mobile games, the targeting seems to be very off. None of the participants expressed any interest in these games. In fact, participants 2 and 3 expressed negative attitudes towards the advertising content they were served. More targeted ads through understanding the players can increase the acceptance of the ads here.

The Emotional Stage of The Players and The Location of The Ads

• Recommendations:

  • Using player data and habits to apply more targeted advertising towards each of the players. Additionally, give the players options to give feedback on the advertising they chose to skip.

  • Example of feedback questionnaire when players skip the ads

(Recommendation continued)

• Eliminate back-to-back interstitial ads.

• Default to sound-off mode on the interstitial ads.

• Reducing the 30-second non-skippable interstitial ad before using hints to a 15-second non-skippable interstitial ad to avoid players’ attention leaving the screen, which reduces the ad’s effectiveness.

• Replacing interstitial ads after failed tries with pop-up rich media ads instead for less intrusion when players are in the wrong mood.(See high-fi prototype below)

• Reduce the length of the ads and the intrusiveness when players are on thinking mode and tap-mode.

• Utilize the revised advertising formats by stage below. The changes are marked in red. Notice the interstitial ads (not in rewarded format) occurrence is reduced to once before the hints are displayed. The end of level interstitial ads is changed to pop-up advertising, see example below.

Pop-up Advertising Prototype

Finding 2: Tutorials are ineffective in helping players to learn and progress due to the lack of proper explanation when presenting new obstacles or when players make mistakes.

• Severity: 4

• Location: During the initial few levels, When adding a new element that requires players to learn

• Detailed Description: The tutorials are not serving the players well on helping them to learn to solve the puzzle. This caused great confusion amongst participants during the harder “daily challenges” with all new obstacles added to the gameplay. The game assumed that the players should have a base understanding of the general “laws of the game,” whereas the audience of this game ranges from non-gamers to serious gamer. According to Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics, a system should offer “flexibility and efficiency of use” to both novices and experienced players. This system violates this best-practice.

• Here is when things start to go downhill with the lack of instructions. Participants start to think that there is something wrong with them or something wrong with themselves:

• On challenging levels such as the daily challenges, there were no instructions at all, which caused all participants to give up and close the game.

Recommendations:

• Providing instructions when multiple new elements are present. This way, the app can strike a  balance between giving players chances to learn and providing just enough instructions to reduce confusion.

• In the introductory levels, provide some necessary information so that players understand hat they can do and what they cannot do. If players keep making mistakes, keep reminding them what they CANNOT do.

Prototype for Showing Instructions When Multiple New Elements Are Present

Prototypes for When Players Make Mistakes

Finding 3: Unnatural signal or lack of signal to show system status or consequence of actions

• Severity: 4

• Location: During play, end of levels

• Detailed Description: The game does not follow the exiting mental construct such as green for success versus red for failure, or cheery voice for good versus awkward sounds for failure. According to Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics, the elements of the app should create a “match between system and the real world,” which the elements of this game fail to do. Additionally, the system did not signal system status efficiently, causing players to wonder the result of their last try or the effects of having additional items.

• Recommendations:

  • Changing the colors of the win/lose ques to be more intuitive, which includes changing the colors of the circle displayed in win/lose situation to green for success, and red for failure.

  • Adding short music to help with signaling:

    • A quick ticking sound for the loss of a star during the play

    • A quick sad tune for when the player loses

    • An upbeat tune when the player wins

      
      

Ending Remarks:

Several sources, including Game Analytics and Google AdMob, claimed that interstitial ads are the most effective. Per my experience from buying and measuring advertising for P&G previously, I am sure some quantitative measurements add up to their claims of effectiveness, at least short-term. Though, throughout this research, it was clear to me that the mobile games category has become a “cash fast and crash” industry because of these quantitative pursuits and lack of creative options. Delivering impressions has become THE KPI at the expense of player experience. Love Balls is not alone in this category. While grabbing the fast cash and potentially “poisoning the well,” these interstitial advertisings are leaving some sour taste in the players’ mouth. Can we set out to build a better advertising experience for the users while continuing to serve the company’s own financial interest? I challenge every game maker to prioritize their players’ experience FIRST. At the end of the day we create games for the players; players did not create themselves for the games.