Focus On Your Product – Case Study of How a Game Kept Users Waiting For 10+ Years.

A video game company had the perfect product. People loved it that they waited ten years for an update. Talk about customer retention and loyalty.

Image by Midjourney

🕒 TLDR;

• ⌨️ You build a great product; customers start using it. Then there are options:

  • 🥱 Option 1 - Saturation: They get bored of it.

  • 😍 Option 2 - Retention: They keep using it till they find an alternative.

  • 🤯 Option 3 - Ultimate devotion: They will be super excited whenever you update it and will use it for life.

• 📈 In entrepreneurship, you dream of creating a product like ChatGPT, where you get millions of users in weeks. But if this is level one, then the final level is reaching that entrepreneurial ultimate devotion.

• 🎮 Rockstar Games, a video game company, did this perfectly by transforming their users into ultimately devoted customers.

  • What did they do? They developed an amazing product that people fell in deep love with.

• 📊 (Paid Subscribers) My goth client who had amazing customer loyalty.

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Entrepreneurs build; Users react.

You’ll build a product one day or another. Then, you’ll wait for the perfect moment — that is when users start using your product. At that moment, you’ll know the result of your work. You’ll feel and see it.

Bam, you did it. Your product is considered a “success.”

Now, here’s what will happen:

Option 1 — Months will pass, and people will stop using it (aka Saturation).

BeReal? Vine?

Sometimes, apps and products just become boring, or users stop using them. There are no products that will be used forever. But there are apps that could have a prolongation of its life cycle, like Facebook or WhatsApp.

Image from Adobe

Option 2 — You’re the only option: They’ll use your product till they find an alternative (let’s call that retention)

You can’t replace WhatsApp because most people use it. Yes, there’s Signal and Telegram.

• Telegram is full of bots.

• Signal is not widely used.

So no, you don’t have any other option. Hence, if you have a complaint, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Option 3 — You sincerely love the product: You just love spending every minute with it and can’t imagine not using it (aka ultimate devotion)

This is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of product. Think of the invention of the mobile phone. Can you live without a mobile phone? You wouldn’t want that (even if it’s healthier.)

You can’t force yourself into creating this sort of feeling. If your product triggers something in users for a long time, then you’ve got it. But this can never be projected.

Rockstar Games, a video game company, did something similar when they created a video game (GTA).

The first one was okay, but the second was better. Then, it kept on improving it. But the fifth one was borderline addictive. Users loved playing this game and still do to this day. They became ultimate devoters to Rockstar.

Then Rockstar tested that. They haven’t released a new version of the game for over ten years. Until they released a trailer in December of 2023.

This trailer got over 100m views on YouTube in its first 24 hours. You can sense the power of customer demand.

This is not confined to gaming. The Avatar 2 trailer, for instance, gathered over 150 million views in its first 24 hours. Similarly, they created an experience that people wanted to re-experience, creating a frenzy.

Now let me tell you about a client of mine.

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(For Paid Subscribers) My goth client and how he created a similar effect.

I had a client who focused on a target segment he related to — goth. By putting his customers first, he created wonderful retention. It might not be as strong as Avatar 2. But it lasted years.