Cubecraft Long-term Player RetentionHi everyone! Today, I wanted to bring up something not commonly talked about and its Cubecraft's long-term player retention strategy for the Bedrock server. This is going to be a little different as this is not a direct suggestion, more of something the Admin team needs to seriously discuss and a conversation starter. This entire suggestion is focused on Bedrock server as in the current moment of time I find no issue with Cubecraft Java.
Over the past year, Cubecraft has spared no effort into creating numerous popular games and updates to their server. This allowed their player counts to soar, reaching upwards of 40,000 concurrent players at its peak every day. This is no easy feat and I really want to say congratulations to Cubecraft for this amazing achievement! As the player counts increase, the number of new players does too. However, with this enormous new player base, Cubecraft needs to have a strategic plan to retain these players. I'm no business analyst nor qualified in this field in anyway but I'm genuinely concerned about Cubecraft's player retention plan. Player retention is such an important aspect in this kind of business. Cubecraft competes with many other servers that have similar gamemodes. Keeping players is so important to be successful in this industry. As majority of Cubecraft's playerbase play non long-term games a strategy needs to be developed on keeping players playing them. A long-term game is something like Skyblock, where its continuous game that saves across a long time frame. Since players who already invest time into their Skyblock island, they are less likely to play Skyblock on a competitor's server. Currently their strategy to retain players in non long-term games is to provide game and content updates. While these small changes and updates are a great way to keep players coming back, they shouldn't be the only things used to retain players. While Cubecraft may already be working on more ways to help retain players, I wanted to give some other examples in the industry and some suggestions on how to retain players.
Two of the leading player retention strategies for games today is the Battlepass reward system and an in-game currency system. While these aren't the only two ways, just the most common, they both heavily rely on rewarding players for their time commitments. While a battlepass system works great for any games, I personally don't think its a direction for Cubecraft to go. However, I wanted to still go into some detail about this idea just for a sense of how it works.
A battlepass system generally works on a seasonal state. Each season (a certain pre-determined time frame) gives cosmetic rewards for earning XP towards a free and premium tier system. The more games an individual played and how well they did in that game, gives them more XP. While players can start for free and earn the free tier rewards, the more they level up their pass they are enticed more to purchase the premium battlepass. One purchasing the premium battlepass, most make a commitment to finish it and are more likely to spend more time in the game than others.
A system better suited to Cubecraft's needs is a in-game currency system. Players would be rewarded on how well they played games(doing better equals more rewards) using an in-game currency. The in-game currency then could be spent on kits or perks to enhance that player's gameplay. This is currently similar to how Points work on Cubecraft Java. Players who invest time into the game get a slight advantage and more kits to select than players just starting. It entices new players to play more in order to unlock these features and entices current players to keep playing. Since there are many games similar to Cubecraft's gamemodes, current players are more likely to play that gamemode on Cubecraft just because they already have accumulated currency and other perks. The more time they spend playing on Cubecraft, the more likely they are going to purchase a rank or other cosmetic.
The end goal of all these strategies is for the player to make a purchase. A purchase is an important step from converting a player into a customer. Not only does this generate money for the server, and players get cosmetics and features they want. It provides another incentive for players to return to Cubecraft. Since Cubecraft is where they purchased items and cosmetics, they are more likely to play here. The more they play, they will likely purchase more items. A great real world example of this would be Amazon's Prime subscription. Once a customer has a prime subscription they are more likely to purchase items from Amazon even if they can get the same item at a lower cost from another retailer. A customer may not even check other retailers sites as they are so used to purchasing from Amazon and want to take advantage of their Prime benefits. The same principles apply here.
Why am I so focused on Monetization and purchases?
At the end of the day, Cubecraft is a business. They have operating costs, staff to pay, and other expenses. If Cubecraft has more money they will have more opportunities to spend that money improving the server and hiring new developers. Which means new games and experiences for players!
Long-term player retention is not a one fix one solution issue but an ongoing strategy that changes with players over time. This is an on-going process Cubecraft needs to consider in order to help retain players and keep growing their playerbase.
Let's Talk!This is an important topic, especially for Cubecraft's future. I'd love to hear some thoughts below. I really love talking about this and I'll try to reply as much as possible to questions and comments! :)
