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Game Development vocabulary · Monetization & Live Ops

Retention

Meaning in game development, with examples

/rɪˈtenʃən/nounCommon term

In game development, retention means: How many players keep coming back to a game over time, usually measured as the percentage who return one, seven or thirty days after installing it.

In Turkish: elde tutma oranı, oyuncu tutma, retention

How it is used

A key metric in mobile and live-service games, written as D1, D7 and D30 retention. Product managers and designers try to improve retention through onboarding, daily rewards and events. Low retention usually points to a weak core loop or onboarding.

Example sentences

  1. Day-one retention is 40%, but day-seven retention drops to 12%.

  2. The new tutorial improved retention more than any feature we added.

Common collocations

  • D1 retention
  • day-seven retention
  • improve retention
  • retention rate
  • long-term retention
  • DAUShort for daily active users: the number of different people who play a game on a given day. MAU is the same figure for a month.
  • onboardingThe first minutes or hours of a game, designed to teach new players the controls and rules step by step so they understand the game without feeling lost or bored.
  • core loopThe main set of actions a player repeats again and again in a game, for example explore, fight, collect loot and upgrade, then explore again.
  • live serviceA model in which a game is updated continuously for years after launch with new content, events and seasons, to keep players playing and spending.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Monetization & Live Ops

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