One of the newest tropes to emerge in gaming in recent years is that of daily login games.
The idea is that players are rewarded for their consistent activity, either through bonuses and gifts or through the creation of new content each day.
Of course, some developers aren’t always on the ball when it comes to delivering on those promises, and so the gaming community is not universally sold on the prospect of daily login titles.
Even so, there are several producers pushing the envelope when it comes to ‘dailies’, and here are some of the techniques they use to keep their customers coming back for more.
Rewards & bonuses
It kind of goes without saying that incentivizing players is one of the easiest ways of securing their loyalty.
A casino bonus list reveals the sheer number of gaming sites that are willing to offer bonuses and rewards to their players, whether it’s free spins, deposit bonuses, cashback offers and so on.
Other daily games have taken the reward model on board as well. Hearthstone is a card game that delves into the World of Warcraft universe, and their ‘daily quests’ program is an example of how developers can secure repeat traffic while offering their players tangible benefits into the bargain.
Several MMO and other genres of gaming tend to have their own currency, be it gold (like in Hearthstone) or some other commodity. Many daily reward tasks are based around ‘earning’ in-game currency, and for new players in particular, this is an essential means of enhancing their experience – the more resources they have, the more they are likely to invest in new skins for their avatar, weapon/skill upgrades and so on, and so it’s a mutually-beneficial concept.
Content is king
For games with linear narratives and storylines, getting players back on a daily basis can be more difficult…Especially if they have completed the main game already.
Often, the creation of new game modes and characters is the key, as well as the development of side missions and bonus games.
And, of course, the online gaming space offers developers a universe of opportunities for expansion, and there are few better purveyors of daily login play than Rockstar, the firm behind the ever-popular Grand Theft Auto franchise.
For GTA 5, they have introduced daily objective rewards which, as the name suggests, rewards active players with all manner of extra content and side missions to complete. For context, the game was initially released in 2013, and by 2015 they were averaging around 30,000 unique players in their online version per month.
And yet, fast forward to April 2022, and the game is averaging around 80,000 players per month – so Rockstar have been able to add new players to their huge army of fans almost a decade after the original title was released!
So you can see how the shelf-life of games can be extended with daily login rewards and similar features, while players get to benefit from bonuses and rewards as well. It’s a win-win situation and one that is likely to be key to the future successes of the gaming industry.