What is the purpose of warm up games
Warm up games serve to maximize player enrollment, especially when you have many players and the registration process spans several weeks. Dynamics of warm up games consist of combining player communications with relevant information about the context of the game, rules, awards, calendar, etc., as well as launching automated challenges to keep registered players motivated and let them become familiar with the game dynamics (if you want to learn more about automated challenges and how to set them up, please click here).
Initial set up of a warm up game
If you want to help players make the transition from a warm up game to a real game, we recommend starting out by creating a game during the enrollment phase. You can later modify it and convert it into an actual game.
For a warm up game, you should use the following settings found within an actual game:
- Disable trainings and challenges between players so that game activity and dynamics happen only during the actual game (check the Disable trainings and challenges between players option in the Restrictions section of the basic game setup).
- Depending on the duration of the enrollment phase, you can send automated challenges to players every 2 or 3 days that expire after 2 or 3 days (check the Challenge lapsed days option in the Restrictions section of the basic game setup).
- It is important that communications clearly specify whether points earned during the warm up phase will count for the actual game. Given that players will gradually register for the game, as a general rule, we recommend that points obtained during the warm up phase do not count for the actual game. If you want to make an exception and speed up the registration process, you can motivate players to access the game right after notifying them about the game and indicate that points will count towards their score in the actual game.
Proposed schedule for a 2-week warm up game
The following example could serve as a plan for a 2-week warm up game. It could include different communications to players and involve sending automated challenges to players on Tuesday and Friday. You can obviously change the days of the week when you send these notifications to players.
Transition to the actual game
When you want to change the warm up game to an actual game, you must perform the following actions:
- Change game start and end dates: set them to the new dates versus the previous ones associated with the warm up game, something essential to correctly calculate the number of challenges permitted every day. Click here to find out more information about the maximum number of daily challenges.
- Change the game name: you should clearly indicate the game phase in the title.
- Allow challenges between players and apply a maximum limit of daily challenges deemed appropriate depending on the type of game and its context.
- If you indicated that challenges expire after several days during the warm up game, you should switch it back to the recommended setting of 1 day.
- Reset statistics: if you specify that points do not count for the actual game, you should reset the game statistics. This includes stats by player and global stats for the game (points earned, challenges completed, participation results and knowledge acquisition).
- Activate game: since the warm up game ended and appears as Inactive, you need to leave the game as Active for the upcoming dates of your actual game.
If you want to reset game statistics, you should go to Games > Game configuration.