What drives retention

Raph Koster · 30 Jan 2019

Raph Koster did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
A service business in games rests entirely on retention: a genre that cannot hold people across sessions cannot be sold as a service.

Their wordsThere is no ongoing service without retention.
Our reading
A profit motive inside a game holds players there long past the point where they are still enjoying it.
Mental modelIncentives

Their wordsThe profit motive is incredibly powerful and will keep players engaging in your experience well past the point of actual enjoyment.

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