How Call of Duty is maintaining a loyal user base?

Why this analysis?

• I love this game 🥸 (As if its not apparent, already)
• The game is being one of the top downloaded and one of the most revenue making game in FPS genre.

• I was amazed there are a lot of people who logs in consistently for past 5 years to play the game and I know most from my server virtually.

What are we analyzing here?

Analysis could have multiple arcs depending on who is analysing and in this case, we are looking at.

1. How the game provides adequate controls for players of different skill levels?
2. How is the game addressess different motivations of its huge userbase.
3. How the game handles elder player engagement?
4. How the game connects its coreloop and meta loops?

These were the questions I had in mind when I was thinking about how and what to analyze the game.

Being said, all these traits, along with the controls, aesthetics and events are keeping the players sticked to the game.

Game Overview

The game launched in 2019 october 1st and racked up a record breaking 100 Million downloads in first week and 148 million downloads in the first month.

The aforementioned staggering numbers could be due to multiple factors including the game’s ad strategies.

However the franchise name that the game bears also contributed heavily to the initial pull that the game received (Keep in mind that the name alone isn’t enough to maintain the user base. Case in point, COD Warzone Mobile.

In the analysis in Deconstructors of fun, it was stated that the game have an enormous number of downloads in the initial week but not a good number of revenue per download since launch when compared to its competitor PUBG.

Also, CODM s the revenue per downloads are almost half compared to PUBG.

While the aforementioned fact remains true the CODM maintains a good retention numbers when compared to the other games in the industry (based on Sensor Tower).

DAY	D1	D2	D3	D4
Retention %	54%	27%	13%	9%

The good news about maintaining great retention number is that the long term engagement translates to a steady flow of revenue as Lifetime Value of a retainined user far outweights the immeadiate revenue from a new user.

In the case of call of duty, the active user base gets converted to base users who becomes part of stable MAU of a specific cohort.

In the above image, notice that after a point, the retention curve tends to flatten out which is where the users gets converted to base users and then gets considered as a part of MAU.

First Impressions

While the game takes the renowned visual language from the ever praised COD franchise among lots of other elements, the game also have a tutorial reminiscent to other games in the franchise where a character, in this case, Simon “Ghost” Riley walks the player through on how to play the game.

Rules and Goals of the Game

At the simplest form, the game can be mentioned as a last man/team standing game with a military background. But most of you already know that and a lot of the users as well. Thanks to the popularity of the battle royale games.

However, unlike existing games in the franchise, the Call of Duty Mobile has lowered its entry barrier and then slowly raises it as the user progresses. Hence, the game forms a core loop of Play game -> Gain XP -> Unlock Rewards -> Level up -> Play Game

The coreloop is then supported with multiple meta loops to cater audience of different motivations and interests, which we will discuss in the following sections.

Apart from the battleroyale matches and 5v5 multiplayer matches, the game does not shy away from providing multiple limited time avenues such as Warfare and Tournaments to its Audience.

The Audience

For any product, let that be a game, application, music or even a physical store, Audience is the key factor in deciding its success.

Lets take a look at what motivates Call Of Duty Mobile players to get into the game and stay within.

Motivation Factor

Even though there are lots of triggers for the users in Call of Duty, the key Archetypes of users can be categorized as:

1. Skill Masters
2. Thrill Seekers
3. Networkers
4. King of the Hill

Thrill Seekers

Networkers

King of the Hill

While expressionism remains one of the least motivation factor for the users, There are a certain group of user group who is interested in spending for personalization of player skins and weapon skins.

Age and Gender distribution

The age and gender distribution of CODM is in synonym with that of other battleroyale mobile games with Males being a huge population and the age group of 25-44 being the dominant group.

Also, there are no surprises regarding the countries that provide more revenue with the United Status being on top.

Scientific models behind User Retention

As we are established that the CODM is doing better interms of Retention when compared into other games in the genre. Lets look into existing behaviour models that could serve as a guiding frame work for improving retention.

1. Hook’s Model
2. Fogg’s Model

While we will explain how these models are being used in CODM, here is an over simplified version of the models to give you a context.

Hooks Model

Hooked Model conceived by Nir Eyal describes that of a loop consists of four components.

• Trigger: Can be Internal or External
• Action: Action From the User
• Reward: Reward In return of the Action
• Investment: Action where user

The above mentioned is an over simplification of Hook’s model. If you are interested in learning more about the model, read from the Man himself here

Fogg’s model

The paper on the model is very detailed and can be referred here

How does Call of Duty Mobile Attract and Retain users?

Even though there are multiple First Person Shooting games such as PUBG and the prematurely dead Apex Legend Mobile, the CODM is showing tremendous numbers in terms of KPIs as we spoke above and we believe the numbers are coming as a result of Franchise, Aesthetics, Controls, Gameplay, Social and Session Design.

The Franchise

The call of duty franchise have a huge set of players and considering the targeted Age group of 25-44, The publisher, Timi has considered this heavily.

The Mobile version is reminiscent of the previous games in the franchise by using the familiar characters, maps and weapons.

The Nostalgia factor is further enhanced by the usage of characters such as Ghost, Price, Frost and even the antagonists.

Aesthetics

Do you know that users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as a design that’s more usable? Okay, I didnt say that, but Aesthetic Usability Effect did.

An aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains and leads them to believe the design actually works better.

The game looks greatly like the rest of them boasting a visually pleasing aesthetic. One could often wonder that a device that fits in the hand could run a game that provides console like experience.

While the game looks astonishing, the developers also considered about making the game accessible to mid/low level performance devices and provides controls to users over graphics.

Can you believe that these level of controls are from a mobile game?

Apart from looking “Cool”, the main goal for the UI is to communicate information to the players and this is done via feedbacks. Feedbacks provide players important things such as judgement, reward, instruction, and challenge.

“Without conveying to the player the state of the game, there is no game”. - Saunders & Novak 2007

The Call of duty Mobile uses 3 types of visual feedbacks to convey information to the players.

1. 2D Overlay - A.k.a HUD elements

These elements are super imposed to the screen to convey:

1. Health,
2. Direction,
3. Number of kills and
4. How close the player is to victory.

2. Filtered Graphics

Filtered graphics are used to convey the player getting hits, It can be:

1. Gun shots,
2. Explosion,
3. Concussion

3. In the game World

These are more subtle and natural indicators reminiscent of real world conveying a priori information

Types of Auditory Feedbacks and how CODM utilizes them.

Audio is one of the most powerful elements of a game. and it is considered to be as essential as the visual information provided within an interface as it communicates to the user about things they cannot see, and does this while their focus is elsewhere.

“Audio provides another avenue for the game to communicate with the player, and it’s particularly useful for eliminating ambiguity, providing feedback without interrupting the gameplay, reinforcing visual effects and creating atmosphere”. - (K. Saunders & Novak, 2007)

1. Sound Effects

Sound effects can be footsteps, gun shot, fire, door opening sounds and the players are expected to master the auditory feedbacks if one wants to master the game.

The game however, provides visual indicators for auditory feedbacks to ensure accessibility.

2. Dynamic Soundtrack

The game also uses soundtracks to build up distractions and ambient tones based on the situation.

Controls

Controls are imminent for the communication between game and the player as it provides the player with the control over what is happening in the game world or UI.

The Call of Duty, being an FPS requires frequent and often a combination of inputs to ensure optimal gameplay.

Until PUBGM, the industry has seen multiple FPS games trying to either simplify the controls or keeping copying the entire game pad layout and while doing so, they are either killing the depth of the game or complicating the heck out of it.

To cater to the audience of different skillsets and their never ending search for the best controls to get the competitive edge, CODM designed two types of controls:

1. Simple Mode
2. Advanced Mode

With the introduction of these modes, what the developers have essentially done is to create a system that would initially cater the novice player and then to their improved versions who managed to master the controls over a period of time. (Read more about how that could possibly happen here and here)

In the advanced mode, the game provides user to set HUD to their preference.

As the game is catered to a set of players who are heavily competitive as mentioned in the Archetypes, the game provides lots of avenues for mastery and the top tier percentage uses multiple finger claw layouts as follows to get their competitive edge.

But an controls isnt everything in an FPS game. To be a good FPS player, one has to master Controls, World Navigation, Target Tracking/Engagement and respond to auditory feedbacks.

Optimized Game Difficulty

Difficulty in games are a crucial elements for game retention. The Audience base could get very slim if the game aims for a high difficulty and hence the difficulty can be tuned dynamically.

To address the same, CODM uses bots in the initial tiers so that the new players would have less intimidating start and more time to learn and master the elements of the games and configure the controlling layout that they would want.

Moreover, filling matches with bots guarantees that players wont be waiting too long in the lobbies ensuring fast paced, action packed ambience thats inherent for the COD franchise lovers.

Hence, players will find themselves matched with lots of bots, resulting in lots of rewards and progressions for the early stages and slowly they new players are ramped with established players as they rank up.

How meta loop is contributing to retention?

While CODM coreloop consists of Playing games -> Gain Experiences -> Unlock Rewards and Level up, It is supported by a range of meta loop that would cater to different archetypes of the audience base.

1. Tournaments
2. Ranked Matches
3. Quest System aka Challenges
   1. Battle Royale
   2. Seasonal Challenges

Tournaments

To maintain the exclusivity of tournaments, they are always scheduled for weekends to ensure different modes for players to engage for a longer session length during weekends.

Ranked Matches

Ranked Seasons are targeted towards King of the Hill archetypes, those who loves to showcase their mastery in the game. The players, as per their ranks will have a badge and rewards to flaunt.

As each Ranked Season lasts approximately 2 months, it is targeting the base (MAU) users for the game. The Ranked is one of the biggest triggers for these set of users to come back every day to the game.

Inorder to cater different engagement groups and competitiveness of the said userbase, it is further divided into few segments.

4. Ranked Match: Where users grind to reach Legendary Ranking
5. 10000+ Ranks: Beyond 10000+ Points, (98-99 Percentile) Users will have a different set of reward and a badge to flaunt that they are the top percentile
6. 5000+ Ranks: Crème de la crème. Will have a different badge and an additional reward. These players will be the most competitive and will be featured in the global leaderboard.

While, the ranked seasons resets every 2 months, there is a concept of Year in call of duty which lasts for… an year (What a surprise. :P). and thats how the game rewards/recognize players who manages to reach Legendary rank consistently over the year.

While the Year, is a quest system, the game also have multiple quest systems that would cater to the engagement of players.

Quest Systems

We can consider the quest systems in the call of duty as two seperate tracks

1. Free track
2. Paid Track a.k.a Battlepass

How Coreloop and Meta loops are connected?

The coreloop and Meta are closely Knit allowing user to cover 90% of the Meta by just engaging with the game. (there are outliers such as Grinding Camos for weapons and weapon mastery. But lets discuss that later. This is already huge.)

Free Track

Free track ensures that non-paid users have a reason to stay loyal to the game and address their FOMO on missing out on great rewards within the game.

Free tracks lasts a season and starts afresh with new rewards and requirements providing novelty for the users.

Cache Tracker

In the addition to the existing milestone track the new update has introduced a new track which would allow users to get “Mythic Weapons” something CODM players consider highly of and only available through yearly rewards or via by purchasing.

This track is interesting considering that user could get an exclusive gacha box only by playing 3 matches a day, not winning, but playing. Thus ensuring that players would come back every day and play atleast 3 matches which would eventually provide an opportunity to convert the users to base users.

Battlepass

The battlepass in the CODM is connected to the coreloop of the game just like all other meta loops within the game.

However, unlike many battlepasses in other mobile games, the codm battlepass gives back the equivalent cost of battlepass as a reward once user completes all the battlepass milestones, which makes the battlepass essentially feel free of cost and thus potentially provide more conversion (Speculation: Need data to confirm).

Social Connections in the game.

The game provides a lot of avenues for social interaction mediums including voice chat, predefined messages, emotes and social spaces such as clans, friends, random team ups and tournament teams.

which in an implicit way trigger social validation within the user so that one would return back and grind to get rewards and league rewarding.

With the inclusion of social interaction in the game, the game allowed users to stay in touch with those whom they are acquainted to on a day to day basis and thus improve more collaboration within the game while the users would stay more active on the game with a percentage being logged in daily due to the social interaction.

However, avenues for social interaction also opens an avenue to seek social validation. The game uses multiple skins, weapons and of course the skill of the player for the social validation. While the former two can be implicit, the third one, skill can be explicit by surfacing the league badges and exclusive titles.

Summary

While the game is a huge success and maintains a loyal user base, they are able to do so by connecting their fun and engaging core loops to all of their meta.

The game also provides various avenues to satisfy various psychological needs of players such as social connections, validations and accomplishments while catering to different archetypes of players.

With all these in mind, the game has managed to achieve a lot of things and has become a huge success in the mobile gaming industry. Here, take a look at what sensor tower says regarding the Lifetime Player Spending in CODM