Joy on the Line: How Player Satisfaction and Support Shape the Gaming Experience

I often say that the video game industry has one major difference from every other type of business: it’s critically dependent on how much enjoyment your user experiences while engaging with your product.

You can use the services of almost any other business without forming an emotional bond, and most of the time, that won’t significantly affect the outcome of the interaction. Of course, it’s always nice when the consumer is happy with what they receive, and any company will tell you it’s very important for them that their customers love them. But let’s be honest—this isn’t always strictly necessary. Being satisfied is one thing; actually experiencing pleasure can be optional.

However, for the video game industry, it’s a completely different story. You can’t play a game you don’t like. A game is entertainment; it’s about pleasure. And pleasure doesn’t mix with negativity.

A great deal of what’s unique about the video game industry stems from this fact. For instance, we often hear companies say how vital their players’ happiness is. That can sound like lofty rhetoric, but it’s the simple truth: your players need to be happy (and able to pay, and there need to be plenty of them).

Another outcome of this dynamic is the often-discussed toxicity in gaming communities. Everyone in the industry is aware that players can be extremely toxic. I believe that this critical reliance on providing enjoyment is largely responsible for that toxicity.

I’ll explain why. When we play, we slip into childlike modes of reaction and perception. If we’re enjoying ourselves and suddenly stop enjoying ourselves—if something displeases us—we react like a child who’s been denied their dopamine hit precisely when they needed it most.

Why do I bring this up? Because it’s crucial to keep this in mind at every stage of building a business. It’s not just about creating the game itself but about everything surrounding it, especially customer support.

Companies often like to call their support teams “customer care.” It sounds great, but if there’s no real care behind it, people feel that right away, and it genuinely affects your users.

This is particularly important for gaming services, or “games-as-a-service,” because they offer “pleasure on a regular basis.” If a user runs into a problem, it’s critically important not just to fix it quickly but also to make sure the pleasure they felt while interacting with your service (the game) remains (ideally), or can be quickly restored.

I have a personal example that sparked all these thoughts. For many years—basically since launch—I’ve been a customer of NVIDIA GeForce Now, 英伟达 ’s cloud gaming service. I’m very pleased with it overall: I use the highest-tier plan, and I believe cloud gaming is the future of the industry. As I mentioned, I use it to have fun: I launch the service, choose a game, play, and enjoy.

Unfortunately, I encountered a really unflattering side of this otherwise great gaming service when their support department seemed to accumulate every possible shortcoming. From a low-competence first-level support team—which might as well have been replaced by chatbots (since chatbots can follow a script and tell you to reboot your computer just fine)—to a total lack of feedback from higher levels of support. For more than a week, I had to write them day after day, asking, “So, what’s happening? When can I go back to my favorite game? When can I play again?”

At one point, I got the reply, “Well, the employees at the level where your incident currently is don’t work on weekends.”

But this is the entertainment industry—people play games on weekends, and problems can arise then. Putting your customer’s issue on hold just because your team is off for the weekend isn’t really acceptable.

In other words, the chain of enjoyment wasn’t just broken; it turned into a drawn-out negative experience. And I could physically feel myself becoming toxic. I wanted to flood forums with angry comments, to post on company executives’ social media pages, and provoke a response. My toxicity level kept rising.

So, colleagues, let’s focus on making great games and great gaming services, and remember that the “underside” of these services must be dedicated to preserving and protecting our customers’ joy.