Do Not Ask Players to Register Before They Understand the Game

Gaming services need players to generate revenue, and the rush to encourage sign-ups can create a counterintuitive issue whereby you manage to funnel plenty of prospects through the account creation process but lose them afterward because the game experience itself wasn’t adequately explained early on. In other words, conversions might be high, but retention rates will suffer because of a lack of clarity or a mismatch between what players thought they were getting and what the game actually offers. So, here’s why early registration can be a downside, and what to do to prevent it.

Killing Momentum

Registering for an account is a bit of admin most people don’t want to go through unless they absolutely have to. If it’s also a barrier to showcasing the experience you’ve worked so hard to build, it’s doubly damaging.

Instead, offer a taster of the action or instant access to the experience as a whole, then send reminders to register later, once players have that initial understanding and you can incentivize sign-ups in ways they’ll appreciate. Those incentives can take different forms depending on the genre. So for iGaming, the Slot Madness sign up bonus is a good example of what compels people to create an account after they’ve tried demos. In an online shooter, that might mean incentivizing registration with unique loot drops and cosmetics.

Damaging Trust

A second downside of asking players to register right away is that this can clash with their expectations around platform trust. If they’ve never played the game before, let alone heard of the developer and publisher, they’ll be naturally suspicious about whether they can have faith in them protecting their personal information.

Trust has to be earned by giving access to the game and explaining as much as possible about how it works and the benefits of registration. This will go a long way toward creating this bond between platform and player.

Obscuring Value

The first few minutes and hours of a player engaging with a game are among the most important to securing their ongoing support, and early registration limits the likelihood that they’ll have the moment when everything clicks, and you’ve won a fan for life.

Most of all, early registration might hide the true value of the experience you’re offering, making it exclusive in a bad way. Core mechanics and the fundamental fun factor have to be front and center. If not, they might never reach the people best placed to champion them.

If you want to make registration a first step without creating some of these issues, then offering guest accounts that limit sign-up friction without asking players to sign their lives away to your service is a good move. Likewise, highlighting the upsides of registering while still providing instant access to some aspect of the game can win people over while letting them learn the basics in a low-pressure way. It’s your best bet for making those conversions stick, and keeping the momentum going long after the launch window.

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