What Monopoly Go can teach developers about building lasting player communities

• Social options work greatest once they give gamers a cause to work together with each other.
• Small interactions comparable to buying and selling stickers and contributing to occasions will help construct lasting connections.
• Pleasant competitors can strengthen connections when they’re constructed right into a shared gameplay expertise.

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Beth Nations is vp and basic supervisor of direct to client at Scopely.

For years, many digital experiences have adopted the same rhythm. Folks open an app, scroll, react and transfer on. They could be surrounded by content material from pals and creators with out actually partaking with any of it.

In video games, we have to act and work together, whether or not with components on display or with fellow gamers. For a recreation to seek out an viewers and hold it, it must create a way of connection.

These connections can come from finishing a purpose collectively, exchanging a useful resource, strategising round an occasion, or competing in a means that’s gratifying for all gamers. The interplay is just not separate from the expertise. It’s a core a part of the gameplay.

Since launching Monopoly Go, we’ve watched a big group develop round these sorts of interactions. Gamers commerce stickers, workforce up throughout reside occasions, rejoice one another’s progress, and even face off in some pleasant sabotage. A lot of them describe the sport as a part of a significant ritual with pals, family members, coworkers, and companions.

One factor is constant among the many gamers who interact most with the sport: they play with pals. Engagement is notably stronger when a participant has 5 or extra pals who actively play. That’s as a result of the magic of Monopoly Go isn’t just accumulating, constructing, or competing, it’s sharing these moments with different individuals. 

The expertise bolstered an essential design precept for us.

Neighborhood options matter most once they create causes for gamers to take part in each other’s progress.

Listed here are a number of classes we realized whereas designing for this sort of participation.

1. Social interplay wants a gameplay objective

Including a communication channel doesn’t robotically make a recreation social.

Chat, messaging, and pals lists can assist a group, however gamers want a cause to make use of these instruments. 

In Monopoly Go, sticker buying and selling is one instance. Gamers work to finish collectible albums, however they can not all the time purchase each sticker on their very own. Duplicates develop into helpful as a result of they are often exchanged with different gamers.

That construction creates a number of overlapping motivations:

• A participant has one thing one other individual wants.

• Serving to another person has seen worth.

• The recipient is prone to reciprocate later.

• Finishing a sticker set turns into one thing shared moderately than a wholly particular person achievement.

The sticker itself is just one a part of the system. What’s most essential is the connection created by the trade and the chance to really feel valued, really feel grateful and really feel linked.

Designing mechanics round mutual utility requires asking what gamers can do for each other. The reply may contain sharing assets, contributing to a standard goal, providing strategic info, offering short-term help, or taking complementary roles.

A communication function provides gamers the flexibility to work together, however well-designed friend-based gameplay provides them a cause to do it.

2. Chunk-sized interactions can assist lasting connections 

Many gamers keep relationships by small interactions comparable to contributing to a associate occasion, opening the group chest collectively, or sending an emoji after a profitable financial institution heist.

We now have seen siblings commerce stickers whereas dwelling in several international locations. Coworkers coordinate round occasions throughout breaks. {Couples} play collectively on the finish of the day. Mother and father and grownup youngsters use the sport as one other option to stay current in each other’s lives.

These interactions might solely take a couple of minutes, however they create a reliable cause to attach.

A session doesn’t all the time should be lengthy or mechanically advanced, however it must create an motion that feels value sharing.

3. Reciprocity is a stronger basis than visibility

Many on-line platforms are constructed round visibility, encouraging customers to put up one thing, accumulate reactions, and measure how many individuals noticed it.

Video games can create a distinct social construction. As an alternative of asking, “Who seen my exercise?” they’ll ask, “What did we accomplish collectively?” or “How did one other participant have an effect on my expertise?”

Reciprocity makes an interplay really feel consequential. One participant sends one thing and one other responds. One individual contributes to a purpose and a teammate advances it. Even a aggressive motion can create a response. 

This doesn’t imply each trade must be completely balanced.

Skilled gamers might assist newer gamers. One member of a bunch might contribute extra throughout one occasion and obtain extra assist in the course of the subsequent.

What issues is that gamers can see how they’re serving to each other. 

4. Pleasant friction can strengthen connection

Communal design is just not restricted to cooperation.

Competitors, shock, and pleasant rivalry can create memorable interactions when the stakes and tone are applicable. In Monopoly Go, gamers will help each other whereas additionally interfering with each other’s progress. That pressure is a part of what makes the sport particular.

A pal can present a sticker you want after which knock down your property or rob your financial institution if you least anticipate it.

These moments work as a result of the sport offers a shared context the place the aggressive motion is enjoyable, short-term and a part of a system each gamers perceive.

5. As communities develop, they might want extra instruments

Some communities naturally transfer to exterior group chats, boards, social platforms, and messaging companies. That behaviour is helpful suggestions. It might point out that gamers need to talk in methods the sport itself doesn’t assist.

That want led our groups at Scopely to develop the standalone Monopoly Go Chat app in direct response to participant suggestions (chat was, in actual fact, the group’s most requested function). Participant adoption exceeded even our highest expectations. Shortly after its March 2026 launch, the app turned the most-downloaded free app within the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and Italy. 

The importance is just not merely that gamers need one other chat software. The communication is linked to particular actions and relationships inside the sport. Gamers use it to debate trades, strategise throughout workforce occasions, and proceed conversations sparked by in-game experiences, deepening current connections and creating new ones.

A companion instrument is not going to be the proper resolution for each recreation, and it carries its personal design obligations, together with applicable safeguards for various participant populations. However the need to interact extra deeply with the video games and communities gamers care about is value listening to. 

Designing for the long run

The teachings from Monopoly Go present that lasting video games should proceed creating new causes for gamers to attach as their communities develop and evolve.

Constructing an evergreen expertise requires frequently asking: What can gamers do for, with, and due to each other?

One of the best solutions give gamers one thing to do collectively and extra causes to return again to the sport and the individuals they play with.