In order to play online games together, people must connect and engage through a digital medium. To do so, players depend on communication tools (e.g., text chat) provided by the game or another product. Additionally, what players do together and how they do it is completely dependent on the game’s other social elements. These elements include avatars, game mechanics, quest designs, reporting tools, and much more.
This is important because it illustrates how social elements are essentially linchpins in online multiplayer experiences. If you want players to keep coming back to your game, it must be satisfying to play. And these social elements have a direct impact on how satisfying or dissatisfying a game is.
And satisfaction is key.
Games that leverage social activity to retain players must be socially satisfying in order to succeed. They must be socially sticky. So how can you tell what makes a game socially sticky? One way is with a Social Satisfaction Matrix.
Introducing the Social Satisfaction Matrix (a.k.a. the Tetraclass model)
The Social Satisfaction Matrix is a tool that can help you access the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of social elements in your games or other products. The matrix is a variation of the Tetraclass model, a tool developed by Sylvie Llosa (teacher-researcher at the Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management).
To ensure our focus remains on social satisfaction in games, we will refer to this as the “Social Satisfaction Matrix.” Two category names, Booster and Critical, have been slightly renamed to better speak the language of game developers.
There are four categories of the Social Satisfaction Matrix:
- Booster — Could-do elements that add satisfaction. Not expected by players and unlikely to add dissatisfaction.
- Critical — Should-do, make-or-break elements. Can add both satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
- Secondary — Elements with minimal impact on either social satisfaction or social dissatisfaction.
- Basic — Must-do elements. Create a lot of dissatisfaction if missing or done poorly. Low potential to add satisfaction.
The Social Satisfaction Matrix can be used qualitatively (as shown in this article) or quantitatively (please see Now what? below)
Restaurant bar analogy
Before we dive into how to use the matrix, it may be helpful to think about satisfaction in terms of a real world analogy: restaurant bars.
Restaurant bars are a good example of a critical element that can have a huge impact on social satisfaction and dissatisfaction. When they work as intended, restaurant bars:
- Give customers something satisfying to do while waiting for their meal.
- Build anticipation and positively bias customers toward the dining experience (helped by a bit of alcohol and social interaction).
- Increase restaurant profits.
This is assuming, of course, that the bar experience is actually satisfying. But what if it isn’t? Then you’ll likely get:
- Frustrated customers who are getting increasingly hungry (making them more frustrated).
- Negative feelings from the frustrated customers that affect everyone around them.
- Potential loss of restaurant profits through compensated items (e.g., free drinks).
Simply being there doesn’t produce the value of a restaurant bar, which is why measuring their worth by return on investment (ROI) is an incomplete picture. They must work well. You must understand how the bar is satisfying or dissatisfying in order to help it reach its full potential.
Furthermore, restaurant bars do not work in isolation. They’re a part of a larger system of potential satisfaction. And it’s with this lens of potential satisfaction that we’re best able to understand and apply the Social Satisfaction Matrix.
Simple mapping
Based on their potential to add social satisfaction and social dissatisfaction, all social elements in a game or other product can be placed in one of the four categories of the Social Satisfaction Matrix. Let’s look at some typical game features…
In the above image, we see four examples of categorized elements:
- Skin boosts (booster) — Ability to give teammates a free character skin as a gift for the length of a game, such as in the Howling Abyss mode of League of Legends. This isn’t necessary to play, but can make a game extra nice.
- Voice chat (critical) — This feature can both facilitate connection and harassment (among other things). Definitely high risk and high value.
- Parental controls (secondary) — Assuming the majority of your players are not parents, parental controls would likely not be crucial and therefore low potential for social satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Parents would likely disagree and map them differently (as critical).
- Friend list (basic) — Low potential to add satisfaction, but they must be there and perform well.
Placing an element into a category can sometimes be enough to determine whether there’s room for improvement, but mapping multiple elements can help you do much more.
Mapping multiple elements
While understanding the general category of social satisfaction / dissatisfaction is useful, much more insight can be gained when you use a Social Satisfaction Matrix to:
- See the whole social landscape — By visualizing all social elements, we can better understand the overall social satisfaction and dissatisfaction of a game.
- Compare elements — The relative positioning of features can help us weigh their pros and cons. For instance, text chat is less problematic and less personal than voice chat.
- Identify risks and opportunities — By knowing where elements fall on the matrix, we’re better able to determine how we can improve the social experience in targeted ways.
Note: Mapping social elements can be a team activity that incorporates player surveys and creative discussion.
How to make a Social Satisfaction Matrix
The process of using the Social Satisfaction Matrix is straightforward:
- Choose — Identify an element to evaluate.
- Assess — Evaluate how much potential impact the element has on social satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
- Map — Assign the element to the most appropriate place within the most appropriate category.
- Improve — Brainstorm ways to improve the element’s social satisfaction potential.
Let’s walk through each step.
Step 1. Choose
Start by identifying one or more social elements you wish to assess and improve. The following prompts can help get you started. Please note: These prompts represent only a small portion of possible social elements.
- Game mechanics (asynchronous, reciprocal, prosocial)
- Social mechanics (e.g., peer feedback mechanisms)
- Verbal communication tools (synchronous or asynchronous)
- Non-verbal communication tools
- Shared activities
- Group management tools (formal or informal)
- Goal-setting mechanisms (e.g., missions, emergent events)
- Social areas or hubs
- Connection management tools
- Expectation setting mechanisms (e.g., codes of conduct or company behavior policies)
Because games can include dozens of elements that play a part in the social experience, feel free to choose as few or as many as time allows.
Step 2. Assess
Now that you’ve chosen one or more elements, you’re ready to begin evaluating their social potential. We’ve assembled a few prompts to make this easier.
Satisfaction
- Prosocial actions — Does using this benefit other people, intentionally or unintentionally?
- Bonding — Does this meaningfully use proximity, similarity, familiarity, frequency, disclosure, reciprocity, intensity, external threats, or other methods to create lasting connection?
- Social rewards — Does this help players give positive reinforcement to others, directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally?
- Positive social interactions — Does this contribute to meaningful communication, peer feedback, or recognition?
- Social space — Does this give players room and reason to relax together for short periods?
- Contribution — Does this ensure everyone has a meaningful way to contribute?
- Active participation — Can this ensure everyone is actively involved in group activities?
- Selfish motives + prosocial motives — Does this align personal goals with prosocial outcomes?
- Rewarding shared activities — Are these goal-oriented actions that require others to accomplish?
- Meaningful relationships — Does this meaningfully contribute to long-term connection?
- Belonging — Does this create a tangible and meaningful connection to a group?
- Balance of attachment and autonomy — Does this facilitate a beneficial interdependence while ensuring individual players maintain some independence?
Dissatisfaction
- Disruptive behavior — Could this facilitate harassment, griefing, or cheating?
- Trust dependency — Does this depend on high-trust, which may not be present? Could this erode trust?
- Incompatible goals — Can this create or be affected by conflicting goals?
- Knowledge dependencies — Does proper use depend on arcane knowledge or unwritten rules?
- Skill dependency — Does success depend on everyone having good skills? Have you given new and inexperienced players meaningful ways to contribute?
- Task interdependence — Does personal success depend on teammate success?
- Inadequate social support — Will players not get what they need from others, such as tangible aid, required information, constructive feedback, and expressions of trust?
- Unclear expectations — Does this depend on a shared understanding? Are consequences known to all?
- Open affordances — Does this have guardrails for proper use, especially for communication systems?
You may find it helpful to mark as you go how many of the above items are applicable to the elements you’re evaluating. More marks could mean more potential for satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Step 3. Map
When you’re satisfied (see what we did there?!) with your assessment, you’re ready to map your elements to the matrix.
If this is a team activity, this step could take a little more time than others. That’s fine. Mapping is a great opportunity to build a shared understanding and gain deeper insight.
Step 4. Improve
Finally, we’re ready to brainstorm how the element could be changed or augmented to create more social satisfaction and decrease social dissatisfaction. The ideal target is the “sweet spot” in the top half, a little left of center. Here elements contribute significantly to social satisfaction with minimal, if any, risk of contributing to social dissatisfaction.
Please note: It is not always possible to make an element risk-free. Some risk is often unavoidable because, when it comes to social behavior, there’s nearly always some risk.
Suggested strategies for improving social satisfaction (with examples)
Here are a few recommendations for how to improve the social potential of an element. Each is illustrated by an example in the image below.
- Add a feature — Create new features that add social satisfaction. As an example of a booster, League of Legends added fist bumps — a low risk, reciprocal prosocial mechanic that makes great moments better.
- Change a feature — Change aspects of an existing feature. League of Legends added gamer tags to the report feedback feature, which may help increase player trust in punitive systems while making reporting disruptive behavior more satisfying.
- Bundle features — Develop multiple related elements for an aggregate increase of satisfaction. See How the Game Industry Turned Accessibility Into Profit for a great example involving accessibility features.
- Create a feature system — Develop a suite of integrated features to form a satisfaction-building and dissatisfaction-reducing system. To build social connection and reduce disruption, Sky: Children of the Light unlocks text chat and other social interactions as players increase friendship levels through prosocial activities.
If you’ve just completed all four steps, congratulations! You now have a plan for how to make your game more socially sticky through satisfaction!
Now what?
For more about the Tetraclass model as well as the shortcomings of ROI in game development, we highly recommend reading How the Game Industry Turned Accessibility Into Profit, by Jean-Baptiste Oger. This article was the inspiration for our research into the model and our adaptation of it.
If you’re interested in learning even more about the Tetraclass model, the basis for the Social Satisfaction Matrix, we recommend checking out the following resources:
- Marketing Reboot #1: Consumer attitudes: from satisfaction to loyalty
- TETRACLASSE
- Le sensory Tetraclass : un nouveau modèle de traitement des données pour définir les critères de l’appréciation d’un produit
References
Oger, J.-B. (2020). How the game industry turned accessibility into profit. Medium.
