3 Ideas for Building VIP Support

The Player Support Newsletter - 18 AUG 2024

Noteworthy News

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Deadlock Launching - Valve’s semi-open beta (my term for this kind of approach) is similar to what my past teams have done in mobile for quite some time. There is no NDA for players, but it is also by invitation only. Many times, we would do limited geo releases as part of gradual lead up into the official global launch/open beta. We preferred this approach because it gave us real player data to work, especially for technical items like CCU, general stability, bugs, and matchmaking. The game itself sounds promising and I tend to enjoy many of Valve’s titles. My hope is that it becomes a forever-game of skill, like Counterstrike.

Fortnite is Back on iOS in the EU - after a 4 year gap, the game is now available again for EU players. Back in 2020, when it was taken off iOS, we had close to 116mn players and growing. While it is great to see it available again, the financial damage caused by missing the global momentum of Fortnite, especially during the pandemic, is meaningful. Epic made a strong statement during this legal battle, even if at tremendous cost.

The Meta Quest is Still a Flop, Despite New Functionality - there is new HDMI link app that allows you to use your Meta Quest to display video from consoles and streaming devices. The problem is, it’s not straighforward to enable. Whenever I see devices add functionality that should have been a part of launch in complicated ways, I believe it is a signal that the device is comercially dead. Yes, there are no official sales numbers, but I would bet money that the division is still losing money and that total unit sales are down.

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Introduction: The Case for VIP Support

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There are certain places I have worked at that would never do VIP support due to a belief that it would somehow be unfair to other players. My response has always been the question, “but is it fair that a relatively small portion of players give us 90% plus of the money to fund the company?” Getting a free game and some level of free support sounds very generous to me.

Also, when I am in charge of defining VIP players, it is never purely based on how much they spend. Part of the equation is based on engagement and another is based on positive social impact in the playerbase.

Players generate different kinds of value for a game community and I believe that some level of recognition and reward should be given. One of the easier ways to do this is by prioritizing their support issues.

In this week’s issue, I share three ideas (there are many more) that are important for owners of VIP Support programs to consider; VIP definitions, first response times, and hiring profiles for agents.

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1. How Do You Define a VIP Player?

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The typical, and unfortunately the only method most companies use is “spend”. How much money has the player spent in your game? It should definitely be one of the metrics, but it should also not be the only one if you would like to maximize your engagement and sales over a longer period of time. Rarely does a game launch with its most sophisticated approaches to gameplay loops and monetization ready to go. Therefore, you need to keep your most engaged players around and to grow engagement while you figure these things out. Great support helps with this.

Here are the other metrics that I believe should be part of how you define your VIP players: