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CLIFF SAMANIEGO: Hi, I'm Cliff Samaniego
from Google Play Games Business Development team.
Let's talk about Google Play Game Services' Sign-in
in Best Practices.
First off, why should we care about signing users in?
For users signing in to Google Play Game Services,
it's the first step in unlocking achievements, creating
competition with leaderboards, saving a player's game state,
and opening up multiplayer game possibilities.
For game developers, getting users signed in
will allow you to utilize Play Games Analytics.
If you're unfamiliar with Play Games Analytics,
it's a near-zero analytics feature in the developer
console that provides more insight into your player base
and user engagement with games that will help measure
overall business success.
From these insights you'll be able to assess
the health of your game's business
through performance highlights, understand business drivers
through your games active players,
learn about retention numbers, and balance
your in-game economy with sources and syncs.
This in turn can help you better manage your game's mechanics
and performance, leading to higher game
retention and monetization.
OK.
So now let's look at sign in flow best practices.
There's three ways to integrate.
First, an automatic sign in upon game launch.
Second, an automatic sign in upon finishing the game
tutorial.
Third, feature a sign in button prominently
upon launching your game.
Automatic sign in on game start is the most effective sign
in option, and this is what we recommend.
Here's some examples of good sign in implementations,
"Clash of Clans" by Supercell and "Marvel Contest
of Champions" by Kabam.
As you can see, after launching the game,
Google Play Game Services will effortlessly walk the user
through the sign in flow.
Another interesting example of automatic sign
in is "Racing Rivals" by Glu.
Not only does the game show auto login or auto
sign in upon game start, but it also
provides a clear added value to the user for signing in.
As you can see, the dialogue box prompts the user to sign in
and shows the value proposition of accessing
the game on all devices.
Adding automatic sign in upon finishing the game tutorial
is another effective way to ensure high sign in rates.
This is the best for developers who
want their users to immerse themselves in game tutorial
before asking them to sign in.
This is a trade off between letting
the player get enticed by the game early
and locking sign in thereafter.
A great example of this is "Wonderball Heroes".
The last way to implement sign in
is to have a prominently placed sign
in button on the primary splash page upon opening the game.
Definitely avoid placing the login button behind a settings
menu or buried elsewhere in your UI.
Here's a few examples of how best to display the sign
in buttons within a game.
"Turbo Dismount" by Secret Exit and "Top Eleven
Be a Soccer Manager" by Nordeus are examples
of good implementations.
Let's check these out.
No matter what sign in flow you choose
you should always attempt a silent sign in whenever
the user starts up the app.
This will make sure that if a user has signed into your game
previously they will be automatically signed in again
as soon as they start your game, no dialogue or button
clicking required.
A good example is "BombSquad" by Eric Froemling.
Also, if you're going with the automatic sign in flow,
you should track and store whether or not
the user has declined to sign in previously.
If that's the case, then you shouldn't
try to automatically sign them in upon opening the game again.
You should still, however, add a sign in button
because you want to give them an opportunity to change
their minds at a later time.
Branding guidelines for Google Play Game Services
iconography can be found here.
In summary, there's three recommendations
we have for sign in best practices.
First, adding an automatic sign in upon game launch
is our preferred method and one that will provide the highest
sign in rates.
Second, add an automatic sign in upon finishing the game
tutorial.
This will immerse users in the tutorial
before asking them to login.
Third, feature a sign in button prominently
upon launching your game and avoid
burying it behind menu screens.
Now that you're armed with our Sign-in Best Practices
go out there and get your user signed in.
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