Game Mechanics How effective is a 'campaign' in a game

Bingdom

Googledom
Currently, I've released my second mobile game which is doing really bad compared to my first.
I'm planning on adding a campaign for it to hopefully get some more attention.

My question is; are campaigns in a game effective? Would a neat, complex storyline get users attention?
If a game is doing really bad, should I just scrap it and work on a different project rather than waste my time improving it?

I've already added achievements and leaderboards to hopefully add some progression system in my game, but that didn't work.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
IMO the main reason you'd add a campaign is to add a sense of progression. Just having a bunch of levels that escalates could add a sense of progression, but occasional cutscenes that explains how everything comes together can add a lot to that.

As an example of how a campaign can be done really well, I'd recommend checking out Earth Defense Force 4.1 - it has no cutscenes at all and only dialogue via radio in each mission. You can completely ignore the banter if you don't want to get bogged down by story, but it explains a lot about the context of all the giant insect slaying you're doing and gives you a sense of being part of a bigger context. Whenever new enemies are introduced, you get to hear a professor explain how the alien technology works or how the insects behave, and each time a new enemy is introduced, it's generally treated as a Monster Of The Week so that you can get used to how to fight them before you need to fight groups of enemies that compliment each other.


Each mission basically has no other objectives than "kill a ton of enemies placed somewhere on the map, possibly with more than one wave spawning", but the story presentation and level design makes it feel a lot more varied than that. You're not just shooting a bunch of extra strong hover drones, you've intercepted a bunch of prototype enemy scouts and must destroy them before they go off delivering info. You're not just shooting a bunch of ants underground, you're investigating a possible Queen nest that's disrupting public transports. And so on.
 

Phoebe Klim

Member
There absolutely must be some sort of campaign.

I have a game with few story quests and lots of content - monsters/bosses to kill, items to craft, etc. Game has enough content to be played for 10+ hours and quests take like 1 hour to complete. 80% of players stops playing shortly after finishing all story quests. Players like to be told what to do.

I think that campaign is very effective, even if it's not that good.
 
C

c3pu

Guest
yes having some sort of campaign usually help keep players involved. i personally try to do side quest while playing the campaign otherwise if i wait after the campaign i lose interest and don't do them.
 
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