Learn to (Re)-Acquire an Audience by... Playing a Children's Card Game?

Losing an audience is never your goal, but sometimes it naturally happens in the course of growth. Whether you're managing your own personal brand or a multimillion dollar company, you're liable to alienate some of your previous audience members while acquiring new ones and expanding your portfolio. That being said, just because you've lost audience members at some point doesn't mean they're gone forever. Like entertainment company Konami has demonstrated through Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, a once-lost audience can be your next major target!

Chances are that if you've spent any time on the internet these past couple of weeks, you've heard about Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel. Honestly, even if you're living under a rock, it's likely that you're familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh! in some form. The franchise has been a household name for over 20 years now, and the trading card game that serves as its primary focus remains one of the most popular trading card games available alongside household staple Pokémon and industry forerunner Magic the Gathering.

That said, despite its laudable position, the game hasn't been the best at retaining older players. New mechanics, more complex cards, and numerous frustrating metagames have not only turned many long-time players away from the game, but have also made it increasingly less approachable and palatable for new ones. Master Duel, however, is drastically changing that.

Master Duel is a free-to-play digital version of the full physical card game, with the same rules as the physical game and almost all of the available cards. Yet, despite this adherence to the modern format, the game has become noteworthy for not only getting existing players to spend even more on the virtual version of their favorite card game, but for also drawing back in a vast number of players who had all but given up on the game.

How? I'm glad you asked! It's a combination of factors, some of which are pretty tied into the game's unique and tumultuous history. And to their credit, the game leverages its history very well, to the point that it should be explored further - and it just might! For now, though, we'll focus on two factors that you can easily apply to your own brand: A Rewarding Onboarding Process, and Excellent UI/UX design. Here's the breakdown:

Rewarding the (Customer) Learning Experience! - Onboarding

Very few people truly enjoy learning, whether they're learning a new skill or learning about a new product. Most do it because they're required to do it, or because there's an incentive for doing so. Master Duel provides both, to amazing effect. From the very beginning, the game breaks up necessary information with minor rewards. These rewards, given after each learning interaction, keep the player invested and engaged. For instance, the tutorial follows this structure:

• Introduction to a mechanic

• Short, hands-on demonstration allowing you to experience the mechanic (generally less than a couple of minutes)

• Reward (cards, currency, cosmetics, etc.)

Short, simple, and helps ease players through the basics, even if they're already familiar with some of the mechanics of the game (though there is a skip option for those who already know how to play). The brevity and the meaningful, if minor, rewards ensure that players actually learn how to play before jumping in without turning off players who have some prior knowledge.

After that, the player is turned to the Solo Mode for advanced instruction. Solo Mode provides players with the necessary tools to play and enjoy the game, regardless of prior familiarity. Likewise, it follows a similar structure as the tutorial with its "Episodes", each of which focus around a particular archetype, or theme, of deck:

• Introduction to the story/lore of the deck

• Short, hands-on demonstration allowing you to experience the main mechanic of the deck

• Practice game against an AI using a similarly-built deck

• Closing bit of story/lore

After each point, a reward is given. That may seem like a lot of rewards for minimal effort, but generally speaking the rewards are only just large enough to keep the player going. The only major reward in the list is a fully-constructed deck beating the AI in a practice game. The task requires more effort, and you receive an better reward. It's simple, it's predictable, and it's downright addicting.

Bigger, Bolder, and More Energetic! - UI/UX

If you read that heading and thought that it meant to make everything in-your-face, stop right there! That heading is not a blanket rule, it's a sequence, and it's important to understand that sequence. Let's take a look at Master Duel's main hub screen here:

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There's some movement there with the dragon in the back, and the menus pop when you scroll over them, but generally speaking its very relaxed. Movement is constant, but well-paced. It's not overwhelming and it's not cluttered with options and features. It's simple, understandable, but with a calm energy that keeps it from being boring. This kind of user experience may not seem like something that's immediately applicable to something like, say, a website, but it absolutely is. Rotating images, periodically shifting banners, animated backgrounds - all of these can provide the calm energy that you need to draw the eye without overpowering it. It's your baseline, and from here you ramp it up.

With each menu in the game, the visual input increases. You're given progressively more options, more visual and informational input, and it builds on the previous menu's calmer energy. This is your Bigger: that gradual addition of stimuli that draws the user deeper.

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As you enter the games proper, everything begins to pop. Cards fly out on the screen, movements are sweeping and dramatic with highlighting effects, zooms, and potent sound effects. This is your Bolder: everything begins to ramp up at a comfortable, but exciting, pace, while still maintaining tiers of visual importance. Much like the bolded phrases throughout this article, they highlight where the most focus should be given. This helps the user enjoy the experience, while making them easier to teach, until finally...

You hit them with the Energetic! The huge, most important stimulus that will linger with them and keep your ideas in their head. Everything else is essentially the bait; THIS is the net that completes the capture. For Master Duel, this building excitement and subsequent denouement is a substantial part of what makes playing the game enjoyable. It also highlights the key moments of the game, even if the player doesn't have a full understanding of why those moments were important. As a professional, doing this allows you to maintain the attention of a potential or returning customer long after they've left your touchpoints, even if they lack a full understanding of what you're offering.

Part of why this works so well, however, is the UI. The Master Duel interface isn't particularly unique, especially when it comes to the games themselves. Like many other major digital TCGs, like Shadowverse and Legends of Runeterra, the layout borrows heavily from digital TCG codifier Hearthstone. It's a tried-and-true design that's likely to be familiar and inviting even to people who have never played these games, since their popularity means they're liable to have been exposed to it at some point or another. The takeaway here is that when it comes to UI design, you don't have to reinvent the wheel; using strategies that work well, while putting the emphasis in the proper places for your particular goals, is an effective way to get your intended message out, and if far safer than trying to be overly experimental.

Well, They're Interested Again. Now What?

Well, now it's up to you to keep them involved! Yu-Gi-Oh! has a vast community of content creators on popular platforms like YouTube and Twitch and tons of discussion across digital spaces like Reddit and Discord. All of these further incentivize players to continue playing and advocating the game. Master Duel feeds into those resources to acquire new players and re-acquire previous ones.

The game. however, is still natal. There are plenty of complaints to offset its praises, and there is plenty of cards and features that have yet to be released. The game could very well fall apart because of a misstep along the way. Even if it does, though, there's no denying that it's off to an exceptional start, and that's in large part due to some exceptional design choices.

That said, there's plenty more you could learn by using Master Duel as a case study. My advice? Download it and play it for yourself! It's free to play, and experiencing it hands-on is the best way to picture how you might apply these techniques to your brand. And if you get hooked, well, just send me your friend code!

Thanks for reading, and best of luck!

-Joseph