The Count Of Candles Provides A Guiding Light To Live-Ops
Thesis: Drawing inspiration from service industries will help the next generation of games become bigger than ever.
Supporting Point 1: Over the past few years I've been working on making games that function as experiences, services, or more specifically.... games that provide an amazing ongoing experience for players. Games operating as Live Services is a topic well covered and debated, with plenty of material for you to find if interested. But in this post I'd like to explore principles and methodologies used in service focused industries that could help improve the next generation of games as a service.
Two principles in particular... Service Design and the Hospitality Industry. I've seen many developers, including myself, use elements of Service Design and Hospitality without realizing it. Team empowerment, collaboration, and relentlessly advocating for the player all support these practices. My most successful games have, without exception, included elements that are also advocated by Service Design and Hospitality.
Supporting Point 2: You've likely heard of Design Thinking, but have you heard of Service Design? The Service Design Network defines this evolving craft as follows…
Service design is the practice of designing services.
It uses a holistic and highly collaborative approach to generate value for both the service user and the service provider throughout the service's lifecycle.
In practice, service design helps to choreograph the processes, technologies and interactions driving the delivery of services, using a human-centred perspective.
Service design today is applicable across multiple sectors, helping to deliver strategic and tactical objectives for both the private and public sector.
The talented folks at Imaginary Cloud content that service design can, indeed, create better conditions for more engagement, benefiting businesses and society in the long-run.
Supporting Point 3: You've probably stayed at a hotel or been to a live event venue, but have you given much thought to how the Hospitality Industry keeps us engaged and coming back, or why some places make you feel special and others are just meh?
Angel investor Kelly Hoey has thought about this topic and written that with technology, products are being built faster and cheaper, but to succeed, those same products need to be delivered with a five-star hotel customer service focus.
In a post at Hotel Management, John Montgomery of Horwath HTL discusses the difference between simply providing a service and improving engagement through true hospitality; and how providing hospitality vs. services can improve your bottom line. In summary he writes…
Service as the "process of doing something for someone." Service is the act of handling a task.
Hospitality is a genuine smile and effort to make the guest feel welcome! An effort at exchanging a few words! A guest wants to be recognized, respected, validated, appreciated.
There really isn't much difference in the types of service provided at competing establishments, and customers typically don't remember a hotel for providing the same services as its competitors. But people do remember the hospitality, and this is what sets the great apart from the good.
Hospitality Management is a large and robust field, with many proven tools and techniques focused on customer engagement. It's an area ripe for reference and inspiration when designing games as a service.
Fun Fact: Irish grocery company Musgrave wanted to create an improved experience for parents shopping for groceries with small children. With help from Hellon they used Service Design methodologies with a focus on Hospitality to generate a number of great ideas, which were refined into the Parent VIP Hour concept. A time of the day/week when parents of young children know they can receive preferential treatment in-store, including Flexible Parent Parking, Parent-Friendly checkouts, and Assistance from Till to Car. The business impact of the project was estimated to be an annual incremental revenue increase of approximately €5 million through increased sales and footfall, as well as increased social media engagement and engagement levels.
Fun Fact 2: An article at Luxe Digital posits that the word concierge probably comes from the old French word "comte des cierges" or "the count of candles". The count of candles was a servant responsible for maintaining the lighting and cleanliness of medieval palaces.
Conclusion: Games are continuing to grow and, as Andreesen Horowitz states, are evolving into something like a cross between "social network, mall, and sports bar". In such a scenario it makes sense to look at other industries (Hospitality) and methodologies (Service Design) for lessons and best practices. Ask yourself this… will players come back for the service or the hospitality? Hopefully these thought starters help you become the Count of Candles who creates games where players "enjoy the service, but keep coming back for the hospitality".
Extra Credit: Have you found inspiration from other industries? If so, please share and help us all become better at our craft.
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About Chris Hewish
Chris Hewish is a game developer, executive and entrepreneur who's helped bring over 50 games to market, earning over $1B in revenue. You can follow him on LinkedIn and his website www.GameCraft.games.
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