Existential Threat

My main focus these days is Sigil.

We’re targeting a spring 2023 Kickstarter, and there is a lot to get done. I ordered manufacturer prototypes this week, am scheduling out our review campaign, getting the word out about Sigil Online wherever I can, building out the Kickstarter page, staying on top of our third party contracted work, and tackling through all kinds of ancillary tasks.

It’s a great game. And what keeps me up at night is whether we can do a good enough job marketing it to get it in front of enough of the right people.

However, there is another existential threat that while not as pressing, is sitting in the back of my mind.

Skill Gaps

Sigil is a two player abstract strategy dueling game. There is variability in set up – but once the board is established (one of 216k potential starting boards), games are deterministic.

Because there isn’t a significant amount of luck in Sigil – player win percentages as related to their skill level is much closer to something like Chess, than it is to competitive tcgs.

A corollary is that a new player may lose a number of games in a row against more skilled opponents.  

While this will frustrate some players – I don’t think it is too big of a deal. Players expect abstract strategy dueling games to be highly skill favoring.

Am I Getting Better?

While players may expect to lose their early matches – it’s important that they have an impression of improvement. This could be games being closer, understanding strategic nuance, or why they lost.

A player on our Discord who is pretty solid - and improving but up against stiff competition

My concern with Sigil is that for newer players it can be hard to pinpoint why they lost a game, and it can be hard to get that dopamine hit when they see their skills improving – because it can be hard to know that they are improving.

This isn’t unique to Sigil. It’s a feature of many abstract strategy dueling games, and games with deterministic gameplay in general.

But, smoothing that onboarding process, and helping players see their own growth – I believe will help us reach more players and convert more new players into seasoned veterans with a deep love of the game.

What We’re Doing

We’ve come up with some strategies to ameliorate the onboarding process. Some we’ve already implemented. Some are in the works. And, some are future future plans.

We’re always open (and actively looking for) more ideas – so please drop yours in the comments – or reach out directly.

Here’s what we have in the works:

• Smooth Rules Onboarding: Step one to improving from a strategic standpoint is understanding the rules. We’re making a number of efforts on this front including an interactive tutorial, and an upcoming how to play video from RFTM.

• A More Challenging AI: Sigil Online has a pretty basic AI. It’s good enough to get players familiar with the rules and controls of the digital implementation. But, it has a pretty low skill ceiling. We plan to roll out more sophisticated AIs over time to allow new players to improve their skillset to a higher level with clear milestones of improvement – “I beat the expert AI!”.

• Strategy Content: Andy is working on a series of strategy articles to help hone the skills of newer players and give them context in analyzing their own gameplay. I am pretty excited about the strategy articles (they’re what tipped me over the edge to write this article). I think a roadmap of skill-sets and strategies to internalize will make conquering Sigil less intimidating.

• Puzzles: Along with strategy content, I hope to foster more player discussion around strategy. Right now we have a strategy channel in our discord. To complement it we’re posting interesting gameplay situations.

• Skill-Based Pairing: When we initially roll out automatic matchmaking on Sigil Online, all the players will be in one queue bucket. We simply don’t have the player-base yet to accommodate tiered pairings based on ratings. However, eventually we plan to roll out ELO based pairings, along with hosting beginners’ tournaments.

Our target gamer for Sigil is someone who enjoys the challenge of mastering a game. My big challenges are getting Sigil in front of those gamers, and smoothing the onboarding process so that they can truly enjoy the full depth of the game.

What strategies have you seen other games communities employ to help onboard players?