Recruiting Gamers

Posted by Jere on April 14, 2006 at 01:11 PM

Recruiting gamers is something that we spend a lot of time discussing. If you want to run a game you need folks to be interested and motivated in joining. Like everyone I’ve tried just about everything, some of it has worked and some hasn’t. In this post I’m going to discuss what I think is happening when I go out recruiting.

Recruiting usually seems to boil down to a few steps:

1. Gaining Attention
2. Informing individual of goals and objectives of game
3. Motivating them to want to participate
4. Securing agreement to change schedule

In short a potential game needs to get the following to its intended audience: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. In order for the game to happen these four attributes need to be considered, and frankly you should be thinking about them as soon as you decide it’s a game you want to run.

The first thing to do is to gain the attention of your potential audience and sustain it throughout the wooing. There are a lot of ways to do this, and the internet makes it easier. In my Boston area circle a lot of people do GILTs (Games I’d Like To…) and since a lot of us are on Live journal they end up there.

Relevance is a lot harder. While you may be able to get people’s attention for a short period of time it is difficult to sustain the attention if the game doesn’t seem relevant to them. Folks are busy and they will always ask themselves, pretty quickly, “Why do I want to play this?” This is usually why a lot of games don’t go beyond the cool idea stage.

The third component is Confidence. For gamers to be highly motivated they have to be confident that they can actually play in the game. This is where I usually tend to loose players. If they lack confidence they will be less motivated. The challenge her is to create an appropriate level of expectation for success in playing the game.

The final component is satisfaction. High motivation depends on whether the potential player is deriving satisfaction from the potential game. Some would refer to this as reinforcement. At this stage satisfaction has more to do with the coolness of the concept and the filling a need in someone’s schedule. The more ways for a player to touch the game usually the more success here.

Taken alone any of these four components are not sufficient to interest a gamer in a potential game. When you can incorporate all four – attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction – into your recruitment strategy the likelihood of gaining and maintaining interest is greatly increased.

So following exposure you can expect a potential gamer to ask themselves three questions. The first relates the relevance of the game concept presented. If the game is perceived as relevant to personal needs and interests then attention is gained and maintained. The second relates to how confident they are that they can be successful with the game. Everyone wants to do games where they’ll have fun so success really translates to fun here. The third question relates to how satisfied they are that the game presented meets their needs. If they are satisfied with each component then motivation is probably guaranteed.

You are on your own about dealing with the hassles of scheduling. Though I'd love to hear any tips and tricks that work especially for you.