Reception
Reception
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Why do some levels get more attention than other levels? Using the 4 Ps of the Marketing Mix, this guide explains why and how a level is received.
Made by Sparktwee, GD Colon and Psytranc3
Required Guides: Giving & Taking Feedback
Easy difficulty
Medium (13-15 minutes)
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Why do some levels receive mass reception and critical acclaim while a vast majority get left by the wayside? What’s the common thread that makes them hits? Is it strictly the level’s quality? Is it from its in-game rating? Or maybe there is an invisible force controlling the numbers behind the scenes? Can that success be controlled and repeated? This guide attempts to explain the factors that contribute to a level’s reception and how much influence you have over that reception.
It Starts with Attention
It Starts with Attention
Let's start by discussing what an audience watching or playing your level really is: attention. If your level is being noticed by another person, they are giving you their attention. The more attention something receives, the more powerful its influence is. We can think of it this way: on a highway, the headlights of one car are just dots in the distance. When you're in a traffic jam, however, the light pools together with greater and greater intensity, becoming blinding. Similarly, attention snowballs, with popular levels becoming increasingly popular over time.
Even you reading this guide counts as you giving your attention to the ideas that are being presented. Whether you agree or disagree with them is a different story, but right now you are noticing and paying attention to this guide.
On average, most of your audience tend to be practical, skeptical, and risk-averse when presented with new ideas, fresh perspectives, or new creators with zero reputation, which lines up with E.M. Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations Theory (1962). If you immediately go after these players and give them a call to action, for example, to share or play a level, they’ll be more hesitant to do so. Their main thought process typically goes like this:
- Who are you?
- How are you someone that I should consider important?
- Ah, you’re new; why should I trust you?
- How will your ideas, perspectives, or levels benefit me?
- Am I going to have fun playing this?
Keep in mind that attention is also scarce. With one day consisting of 24 hours, I hope you’ve spent 8 of these hours sleeping. That leaves 16 disposable hours where your mind can wander and explore and focus on whatever the world has to offer. Watch a movie? Read a book? Listen to a podcast? Play games? Scroll through another Instagram post? Chat in Discord? Regardless of the medium, others will be just as stingy and careful with their limited attention as you are with yours.
The general response after something has garnered attention is what we know as reception. Positive reception tends to garner critical acclaim and praise like that given to the entries in the GD Awards and the GD10 anniversary video while negative reception tends to lead to infamy such as map packs, content farming, and hate tracks. While others' attention is beyond your control, that doesn't mean you can’t influence it to an extent. This influence lies in how you set up your level's marketing mix.
Level's Marketing Mix
Level's Marketing Mix
Your level is a digital good; it’s an experience that you give to other players like a little arcade game. The kind of experience that you want to give the player consists of these four elements: product, promotion, price, and place. Get your elements in order, and the players and viewers will follow.
1. Product - What are You Providing That is of Value?
1. Product - What are You Providing That is of Value?
This boils down to the level you want to make. What kind of experience do you want to share? Do you want a generic classic level that eases players to the game? Or do you want to build demon levels that challenge their skills? Maybe you have a story or message that you’d like to express. Maybe you want to create a level based on a concept or idea that has never been explored within the game before. Are you building an entry to submit for a creator contest or build jam? Or are you building a level dedicated to someone as a gift or memento? Or do you just want to practice your craft and hone your creating skill?
I can blabber about what you might want out of your level all day, but the point is that you get to decide the type of value that you want to share from your level.
At the end of the day, you are the one building the level, seeking feedback, playtesting for quality control, establishing its selling point, creating those details, and polishing.
While you get to decide the level’s value, you can’t decide other players’ values. As a result, your level can’t please everyone, so target accordingly. Is this level made for a specific player or group of players? Or is it for yourself?
You might say,
> “No, I want to target everyone!”
Well, you’ll end up pleasing no one at all. One player’s value is another player’s disappointment. As a result, your safest option is to segment your target market, whether that segmentation is between communities, skill sets, art styles, or even specific people.
For that target market of players, what sort of selling point can your level provide that becomes the main feature that stands out to them? From a classic gameplay perspective, sync and rhythm can be the main selling point. From a decoration perspective, it might come from using the in-game objects to make details that look like they came from a different game or even real life. From a trigger-work perspective, it might be making trigger setups that can mimic other game engines, programs, and algorithms.
Also, while it’s ideal to build a high-quality and aesthetically pleasing product, you’ll see later that it’s not the only factor in a level’s reception.
2. Promotion - Who else Knows That Your Level Exists?
2. Promotion - Who else Knows That Your Level Exists?
Promotion comes in two categories depending on when you upload the level: pre-promotion and post-promotion.
Pre-promotion is when you promote the level before it is completed and uploaded publicly.
This usually comes in the form of previews, trailers, building streams, and progress logs. This is excellent for generating hype for your level. It gives players something to look forward to which inevitably hooks them until the level’s eventual release; ask Robtop regarding his pre-promotion for Update 2.2. HOWEVER, be aware that once you make a pre-promotion, there’s now an expectation from others for you to finish what you started, so if you want to hype your level in this manner, make sure you finish it and follow through with your words.
Meanwhile, post-promotion is when you promote a level that is already uploaded publicly.
This comes in the form of full showcases, creator commentaries, and retrospectives. If you're a beginner and just starting, your main focus is to practice building and get used to the editor. This means you're better off using post-promotion than pre-promotion to avoid disappointing the hype you've set up and relieve yourself of public pressure to finish your level. The last thing you want to show to an audience is desperation.
With that said, sometimes you don’t need to promote at all and let the level be found naturally.
Price - How Costly will Playing the Level Be?
Price - How Costly will Playing the Level Be?
Financially, this comes in the form of buying the game. More importantly however, this comes in the form of the amount of effort required to complete the level. This difficulty can range from auto to extreme demons. You may need only to watch, or you may have to be very skilled at playing the game.
Alongside difficulty, the level’s length, which shows how much time it will take to play the level, is another factor to consider. Most rated Geometry Dash levels are labeled as “Long,” which ranges from 1 to 2 minutes. Any level above 2 minutes will be labeled as “XL” or “eXtra Long.” Travel levels are well-known for their length, which tests the player’s endurance, while challenge levels are short sprints that test a player’s skill.
However, going back to the target market and their preferences, enjoyability becomes another factor to consider, as players rarely want to spend hours upon hours on levels that they don’t enjoy, even if they force themselves to.
Place - How is the Level Distributed?
Place - How is the Level Distributed?
This last element is probably the least talked about when it comes to a level’s reception: How is the level distributed and spread around the community? This can happen in the forms of Nexus and Viprin uploads, level request streams, and mod discord servers to submit IDs. In other words, like job hunting, be relentless in this area. This is especially true for creators who wish to get their first creator points.
Within the eyes of Robtop, collecting your first creator points will be your hardest battle compared to the creator points that come after. This is because with 0 Creator Points, you have neither exposure nor any significant reputation in Rob’s and the community’s eyes just yet. If you have been creating for a long time and haven’t received a rate nor the subsequent recognition despite the quality provided in the other 3 elements of the marketing mix, this missing element is probably why: a lack of distribution. When nobody knows your name, nobody knows whether you can provide something of value.
The game itself also contains its own distribution channels that affects a level’s reception through the game’s quick search tab:
- Downloads Tab: Levels get sorted in descending order from most downloaded to least downloaded. This does not affect the reception of new levels.
- Likes Tab: Levels get sorted from the most liked levels to the most disliked levels. Similarly to the downloads tab, this does not affect new levels.
- Sent Tab: When a moderator decides to send a level, it will be placed in the sent tab showing levels from most recently sent by a mod to least recently sent. After distributing your level to mods, this can be a relatively good way to gain exposure.
- Trending Tab: Acts similarly to the Downloads Tab, but only sorts the most downloaded levels within a 7 day timeframe. To that effect, levels that are found there are less than a week old. This is therefore the most promising avenue for new levels.
- Recent Tab: Sorts levels by ID. Every single unrated and rated level can be found in this tab.
- Magic Tab: This tab includes levels that fulfill certain editor requirements like object count and length. Although historically used to filter out rate-worthy levels, with the moderation system this is mostly obsolete. However, I personally go here to find underrated hidden gems.
- Awarded Tab: If Robtop decides to officially rate a level, it will be shown here. This tab provides insights to the trends that move within the rating system.
- Followed Tab: If you decide to follow a creator by pressing the heart button at the bottom left corner of the player’s profile, their level uploads will be shown here.
- Dailies: A daily level endorsed by Robtop with difficulty between 2 and 9 stars. Once a new daily level gets added, the previous one gets vaulted into the safe where all the previous daily levels are archived. This is an excellent way to get a quality level to as many players as possible, but this can also come with severe criticism for any shortcomings.
- Weeklies: Provides one demon level per week. Difficulty ranges between Easy to Medium demon, but there are a few exceptions such as Bloodbath & Congregation. Once a new weekly demon gets added, the previous one gets vaulted into the safe where all the previous weekly demons are archived. This has similar effects to the daily level.
- Map Packs: These levels need to be beaten in order to collect secret coins and achievements.
- Gauntlets: These levels need to be beaten to collect gauntlet-specific chests.
Extra Elements for Services
Extra Elements for Services
Levels by themselves can be classified as a good, but the act of creating levels themselves counts as a service; teaching also counts as a service. For that we need to add three more elements into the mix: People, Processes, and Physical evidence.
- People: Who creates the level? What are their skill sets and skill gaps?
For solo levels, this is you, the creator. It can also include playtesters, advisors, mentors, supporters, and feedback providers for your level.
For collab levels, there is the host who is responsible for the level’s direction and the creators who build and execute the level.
- Processes: How are these levels created?
Some creators wing it and build however they wish, and some others follow a creating process which was shown in the first few main skills guides.
Another layer to this is the mentality when you build levels. Is there any pressure involved? Are you obligated and forced to build? Or is this out of your own volition?
- Physical Evidence: How do your customers interact with you?
This concerns the level’s branding and context surrounding it. If players know you as a creator who steals other creators’ works, that has a huge effect on the customers who have that impression of you. Even if that creator releases an outstandingly high quality level, that context corrupts the product quality.
Expectation vs Performance
Expectation vs Performance
Going back to the intro paragraph, what’s the common thread behind all these levels’ success? When you take these popular levels in the community and look for a common factor, reception hinges upon how the level performs compared to the community's expectations of that level.
Connecting this with the marketing mix, how you build your level (product) and difficulty (price) influence performance, while how you advertise (promotion) and distribute your level (place) influences expectations.
- IF Performance > Expectations
These levels are the massively successful and unique entries in Geometry Dash history, absolutely blowing the community's expectations out of the water. Regardless of your opinions about Tidal Wave, you cannot deny that its deviation from the hell theme to a more blue and yellow beach setting gives it a strong selling point as a unique top 1 extreme demon level, making it much more memorable than many other top 1 levels.
- IF Performance = Expectations
These levels are considered average, basic, and specifically within the community, generic. Most rated levels fall under this category. This doesn’t mean they are bad or good, but it makes them forgettable. In the upcoming details guide in Deco 1, it will explain how aesthetic details can be used as a selling point, and these levels tend to lack that selling point.
- IF Performance < Expectations
If performance is below set expectations, that results in a letdown. Let’s see two interesting issues that creators tend to face when it comes to balancing expectations with reality:
- Overhype
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY UPCOMING TOP 1 MASTERPIECE THAT IS GUARANTEED TO HAVE A MYTHIC RATING BECAUSE I AM GOING TO MAKE THE BEST LEVEL IN EXISTENCE. YOU ALL WILL BOW DOWN TO ME BECAUSE UNDER 40K OBJECTS, I AM GONNA BLOW… YOUR… MIND!
I WILL PERSONALLY VERIFY THIS LEVEL ON MOBILE, AND ON STREAM. IT WILL BE A LEGENDARY MASTERPIECE OF A STREAM WHERE THOUSANDS OF VIEWERS WILL SHOW UP TO SEE HISTORY BEING MADE. IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING, SHOW YOUR APPRECIATION BY SUBSCRIBING TO MY CHANNEL, OR ELSE…
If you felt annoyed by what you just read, then you’ve just been on the receiving end of overhype. You can promote so much that it comes off as annoying, or you can give such lofty, vague expectations like “perfect masterpiece” that it’ll look like a flop no matter how much polish is given.
One notable example is Emerald Realm. After Culuc’s part was uploaded publicly, it got a showcase from Viprin, and then still didn’t come out for months after. It effectively died out because the community moved on from the hype before the level could even make an appearance.
“Hold It! White Space also had that same behavior where a Viprin showcase was made before the level itself came out months later and yet that did not die out.”
That’s true! However, keep in mind that White Space is a solo level made by one creator, while Emerald Realm is a collab with multiple creators. As collabs have more resources on their hands than solo levels, the community’s expectations are much higher. Because of the overhype and subsequent disappointment caused by Viprin’s showcase, Emerald Realm’s performance was not enough to give the community interest in seeing the level finished. Going back to the collab guide, one individual part cannot carry the entire level on its own.
Here’s another notable example of overhype: Update 2.2. Of course, the hype for the first update to the game in seven years can never really go away, but the more Robtop delayed the update, the more the hype decreased, being replaced with frustration instead. This frustration was also enhanced when Robtop failed to follow through with his pre-promoted “31st October, 2023” deadline inside the GD10 anniversary video.
2. Undersell
2. Undersell
In contrast, there are those who don’t promote their levels enough when they upload, to the extent that they fall to obscurity. Albeit, this is less severe than overhype, because when a level is in this category, they tend to be referred to as “underrated” or “hidden gems,” the connotations of which tend to be more positive and mysterious in nature. A large majority of levels in GD fall into this trap simply because they lack a strong presence.
Rating System's Influence
Rating System's Influence
While Rob gets to finalize the rate of a level, that doesn’t mean the community will agree with it. As a result, rate tiers and difficulty can get misclassified. This is especially severe for the difficulty aspect, because you could potentially be playing a challenging and difficult level, but have its “official” difficulty to be 3-4 stars.
In the case of Lilas by ILRELL, RNBW, and Oras, it was mislabeled as a 6 star level when it should have received a higher difficulty. As a result, players who expected 6-star gameplay ended up disappointed and annoyed because it drastically clashed with their expectations.
Another case where difficulty misclassification is prevalent is when it comes to 1-star Auto rated levels that are not actually auto. The typical expectation is that auto levels can be watched without making a single input; even if you did, that is usually for a coin route. These levels often get dislike bombed, receiving severely negative reception. With this in mind, especially when the rating system is mostly beyond the creator’s control, it does make one wonder if reception boils down to luck:
“My level is only popular because I got lucky.”
To an extent that’s true. While the performance vs expectation equation provides a framework, it heavily oversimplifies how reception works in the real world because it is much more complex than just the two categories I have placed. The marketing mix provides a foothold for the creator to control how they share their levels, but in the end no one can control the audience and their demands once the level is released. The only one factor that you can control is how you respond to the audiences’ reception, but this will be further explained in a later section.
Case Studies
Case Studies
iSpyWithMyLittleEye by Voxicat
iSpyWithMyLittleEye by Voxicat
On April 7th, 2023, after about one month of creating mostly for fun, Voxicat released a level that has awed the eyes of a large portion of the GD community: iSpyWithMyLittleEye. Looking at the level itself, let’s analyze its marketing mix:
1. Product: According to Voxi’s statements, the type of experience that they want to provide is a sense of uneasiness in the level. This is represented by contrasting a giant eyeball, the most sensitive exposed part of the human body, and its environment containing sharp objects. While the first draft had the eyeballs being pierced by sharp objects, they pivoted to a more lighthearted context by referencing the Eye of Cthulhu, which is inspired from another popular game, Terraria, but given a new spin.
Voxi also noted that:
“Another layer to this sense of uneasiness is in the whole idea of shaking eyeballs which is also associated with fear. People have taken the eyeball bossfight very literally, but the main idea when making the level was to think of a metaphor that is associated with anxiety or overstimulation. But it worked out in its favor as an 'antagonist' is very memorable for any form of media to have.”
2. Promotion: Eyewitness reports, and Voxi’s activity in the official GD server would suggest that most of iSpy’s development was built in secrecy; however, there were 2 exceptions:
- They sought feedback in the official GD discord server’s #creators channel.
- They showcased iSpy’s preview on Twitter one week before the official showcase.
3. Price: The difficulty of iSpy is easy demon. However, most of the difficulty is due to the visually epileptic effects that disorient the player rather than relying on timings. Remove the effects and playing only the layout will show that its pure difficulty is much lower, which technically makes it a difficulty misclassification that works to its advantage. As a result, iSpy became an accessible entry demon for players.
4. Place: Now this is where it gets interesting. Recall that when this level was released, Tiktok was still in its blooming stages. The flashiness and intensity of the level fit the popular style of short form content. As noted from Flub’s analysis, a regular showcase of iSpy garnered 2.4 million views in Tiktok without any edits made to the showcase whatsoever.
To say that iSpy blew up big time back in 2023 would be an understatement. While this type of cyclic repetition is more annual in nature, some creators have garnered high reception by timing it with the seasons, and this next level makes use of the summer season especially well.
LIMEADE by Audieovisual
LIMEADE by Audieovisual
July 20th, 2024 marked the release of a level that was fitting for the summer season: LIMEADE. Within a single day, it received a Viprin showcase, 1.2k downloads, an epic rating, and a daily. Needless to say, its reception was meteoric. Let’s analyze its marketing mix:
1. Product: This is aimed to be a reiteration of another existing level called Lemonade by Robotronx. Due to the song being such a bop for Audieo, he wanted to build using LIMEADE as the theme.
2. Promotion: While iSpy was built in secrecy, LIMEADE heavily used pre-promotion through public youtube streaming and Twitter. Audieo regularly made building progress videos for this level, and the live chat viewers gave their inputs as the level was made.
3. Price: This level is an 8-star through the normal route. However, going for the coin route leads to the SUOM chamber where inputs get finicky.
4. Place: Witnessing the release stream first-hand, the live chat commenters went crazy, serving as the hype men for the level. Added by the fact that a GD Moderator was also tuning in to that stream, its distribution was seamless being filled with memorable quotes:
“Level of the summer!”
“Sweet and sour makes your body feel numb”
“Lemonade was a popular drink and it still is.”
Costs of Reception
Costs of Reception
While this guide so far has discussed the different tools that a creator has to influence community reception, I would like to dedicate this section to give a heads up on the disadvantages of garnering high reception and critical acclaim.
For starters, if your level becomes massively received, you may receive attention… *too much attention*. In regards to the new Legendary and Mythic ratings, once one of your levels receive that type of rate, there will come those who will vehemently disagree with its placement:
“HOW DARE THIS TRASH RECEIVE THE LEGENDARY RATE?!”
There may also be those who love your levels so much that they overly obsess over you and want you to teach them so that they can become famous just like you… and this diverse cast of audiences that you’re going to meet can get intimidating.
Another potential cost of this type of mass reception is turning into a one-trick pony: you end up being known solely because of your most critically acclaimed work and nothing else. This can make it more difficult for you to release successful new works and can also prove discouraging to you when people put you into a box as “the creator who made this one level.”
Flipping this script around, let’s say you have garnered poor reception. Let’s suppose that one of your levels that hypothetically has bad gameplay for today’s standards becomes the new daily level. How do you handle that situation where potentially negative comments run amok? In the world of marketing, this aspect centering around handling situations like these is known as public relations. Most of the time, you only have one way to proceed: calm your mind down.
If you made a mistake with the gameplay, then make the necessary updates to fix it and learn from it; take notes and improve on the next project. If you made a severe mistake that betrays and loses the trust of the GD community, acknowledge those mistakes, learn from it, and strive to be better through your actions, not just your words. Recapping the feedback guide and how to receive it, the same applies to handling reception, Avoid feeding the flames and joining in the emotional rollercoaster, as that is a ride that rarely ends productively.
Wrap Up
Wrap Up
With all of this said thus far, I’d like to conclude with three points:
1. Treat this guide as a set of tools to help gauge a current audience's interests and trends, not as a definitive handbook on how a level should be received.
2. If you like a level that is poorly received, good for you! Don’t let this guide convince you that a level has to garner mass reception in order to earn your attention; sometimes you just love what you love.
3. You get to control how you build your levels. However, whether or not someone else likes them or holds you in high regard is beyond your control. Hence, stop focusing on what is out there, and focus on building and improving yourself and your levels.
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