Churn, Sink, and Drift

Churn is the rate at which people leave a virtual community. The greater the level of community, the lower the churn, because the stronger the bonds that hold the community together. Most churn occurs in a newbie’s early days: They play, decide they don’t like the virtual world, and leave. This cause of churn is called sink: Newbies show up, play a little, don’t like it, and sink without trace. They may flit into a few communities, but none of these gain enough of a hold. (Indeed, they may loosen them: The virtual world itself might be compelling but have thoroughly obnoxious players.)

If players take a bite of a virtual world and decide they like the taste, they’ll stay longer. For most commercial virtual worlds, there’s a formal start to this: When their free suck-it-and-see starter period runs out and they have to commit to paying a monthly fee. From this point, they’ll only leave the virtual world if there are real-world reasons (e.g., they get married) or because they lose interest in the virtual world. This cause of churn is called drift.

Contrary to what many players and some community managers believe, most established players do not leave after blazing, public rows. Most of them simply disconnect and drift away. Players who complain the loudest care the most; they’re complaining because they see faults that they perceive as a threat to their world and their community, so of course they’re not going to leave! They may threaten to leave, and may even act on that threat, but in most cases they’re back within two weeks if they do.

No, most players—the “silent majority”—simply drift away without a word. They appear less and less frequently, until eventually they don’t appear at all. For a commercial virtual world, players may have to cancel their subscription explicitly for a break to become formal—a decision they’re often reluctant to make because of the investment they’ve made in their characters (it amounts to killing them). However, eventually the bonds fade so much that even this is not important any more.

Virtual world designers usually want to do as much as they can to minimize both sink and drift. Much sink is often impossible to address, being the result of marketing (direct, indirect, or viral) that draws to the virtual world people who simply aren’t ever going to like it. Beyond that, the more barriers to entry there are, the fewer people will care to surmount them; a virtual world with a beautiful character creation system still needs an “auto” button so that people who just want to play have the opportunity to do so.

Strategies for inveigling players after they’ve made it through the door include giving them a mentor the moment they’ve caught their breath, showing them “wow!” environmental effects within five minutes and rewarding them for absolutely anything they do. Good help facilities, easy early goals, and gentle hand-holding will increase the chance that they’ll make the decision to stay for a while; I’ll mention a few others later in this book.

For most virtual worlds, the newbie experience is not all that great, however. It can be argued that this may be good in the long term, as it means that those players who persevere really do like the world and are therefore worth investing time in; unfortunately, if three times this number of newbies are put off who would have grown to like the world had they spent longer in it, filtering in such a manner isn’t necessarily a wonderful idea.

Sink is about why people want to play virtual worlds; drift is about why they stop wanting to play them.

Immersion and community are the hooks that pull people in and the anchors that keep them there. Both can be used to address sink and drift. Remember, though, that they aren’t themselves the core issues, they’re just expressions of them. Immersion is a freedom thing; community is a friendship thing. Freedom and friendship are what designers should really be concerned with; immersion and community are convenient visualizations that can be used to overlay structure on the two more fundamental concepts.

With that in mind, we can look at specific ways for designers to influence community development and individual immersion.