As mobile games compete for attention in an ecosystem shaped by short-form content and constant stimulation, understanding why players leave has become one of the most critical challenges in game development. While shrinking attention spans are often cited as the root cause, real player data points to more nuanced issues like early game friction, unclear value, and a lack of meaningful long-term engagement.

In this interview, Jaroslav Stacevic, Head of Innovation at Nordcurrent, shares insights into what actually drives player drop-off and how teams can design for retention without sacrificing depth.

Many discussions around “TikTok brain” suggest player attention spans are shrinking. I agree it's the common narrative, but do you have data to support this?

Jaroslav Stacevic: We absolutely have real data to support the claim that people’s attention spans are shrinking. The psychologist Gloria Mark has been studying human-computer interaction for years, and studies she and other researchers conducted show that the average time people stay focused on one task has gone from about two and a half minutes in 2003 to approximately 40 seconds today.

You don’t need to be a Columbia-trained scientist to see why. In the 23 years between 2003 and now, the attention economy was invented, developed, and basically perfected. App design, marketing strategies, and revenue models aim to keep users distracted and stimulated with new-new-new. Short-form video on TikTok or YouTube Shorts is the pinnacle of this format. Many people are more willing to sample and passively consume multiple short clips than commit to longer content that requires sustained focus.

This fast-paced, endless scrolling reinforces habits of rapid reward-seeking and constant switching. This makes slower and more demanding tasks feel less rewarding and more effortful. The underlying reward mechanisms are not new, and scientists have studied similar patterns of behavioral reinforcement for a long time. A large-scale synthesis of 71 studies involving nearly 100,000 participants, as well as a 2024 study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, found associations between short-form content consumption and weaker executive control, including attention regulation. While the research is still evolving, the broader pattern is difficult to ignore.

It’s certainly not being ignored by the entertainment industry. It’s no secret that streaming platforms are adjusting scripts to accommodate second-screen viewing—this was, in fact, the subject of a joke at this year’s Oscars. In practice, this looks like action-filled opening sequences, fewer longer stretches that demand uninterrupted attention, and additional repeated explication.

Let’s avoid confusing correlation with causation here. It’s tempting to blame shrinking attention spans on one platform, especially TikTok, but I’m not sure it’s helpful. Demonizing technology or individual companies isn’t productive. We need to better understand both the effects and the broader social, technological, and behavioral factors behind this phenomenon.

From your data, what actually causes player drop-off in modern mobile games?

Jaroslav Stacevic: If I look at the data, player drop-off in modern mobile games usually comes from early friction rather than from a single root cause. The first session is critical, because early behavior is highly predictive of churn, and day-one retention is treated as a core health metric for mobile games.

The most common problem is poor onboarding. Players leave when the tutorial is too long, the UI is confusing, the goals are unclear, or the game takes too long to become enjoyable. A game can’t be too demanding before it has earned sufficient trust, fun, or momentum. Players can sniff out when their time, attention, and effort aren’t being valued, and they’ll quit a game over it.

If developers expect players to bring value to us before we have managed to create a sense of value for them, then we’re setting ourselves up for failure. Teams with great player retention abhor early friction and communicate value propositions clearly. They promise high-quality, immersive, emotion-driven experiences not available elsewhere, and they deliver on it.

Developers and publishers must abandon this idea that we’re competing with platforms like TikTok on equal ground. We never were, and we shouldn’t aspire to. If all we provide is a short-term dopamine hit, then we’re going to fail. Games are a fundamentally different medium, and they’re not supposed to be as frictionless as watching an Instagram Reel. Players come to games in search of a more meaningful, personal, and focused experience—and when we fail to recognize that, we lose them. This is why mobile games have seen an uptick in demand for deep meta-systems that offer long-term rewards, as opposed to relying solely on short-term, immediate dopamine hits.

Nordcurrent has sustained long-running titles like Cooking Fever for years. What systems or design frameworks help you maintain engagement over such long lifecycles?

Jaroslav Stacevic: I think long-term engagement in a game like Cooking Fever comes from treating it less like a finished product and more like a living system. That is where the depth and value for our players really lies. 

We built it through regular live ops, events, offers, content updates, patches, and expansions, all supported by performance analysis and A/B testing. Cooking Fever relies on layered progression through restaurants, upgrades, and structured challenge formats such as tournaments and challenge modes, which give players both immediate goals and long-term mastery targets.

The other key piece is cadence. We are still shipping major updates for the game, including anniversary content and new restaurant releases. Habit alone doesn’t keep players coming back, and our ongoing refresh schedule helps make up the difference.

To put it simply, we value both new players and long-time fans, and our design philosophy revolves around that principle. We view every decision through the prism of the value we want to provide, while also removing as much friction from the experience as possible.

When designing for long-term retention, how do you balance accessibility for new players with deeper meta-systems for experienced ones?

Jaroslav Stacevic: You have to keep the core experience accessible without making it shallow. New players need a smooth first-time experience, clear goals, and quick wins, but they also need to sense the long-term potential for their experience. They need deeper progression systems, mastery targets, and reasons to keep investing their time and efforts over the long term. Without this clearly communicated value, long-term retention is impossible. 

This does not mean we expose every system upfront. We teach the essentials first, then use progressive disclosure to unlock more complex mechanics as players become more confident and engaged. It’s the cadence and pacing of the introduction of these systems and mechanics that matters. That way, the game feels welcoming at the start while inviting players to stay. 

The other important piece is segmentation. New players and veteran players should not always receive the same events, offers, or prompts. They are at very different points in their journey, and live ops work best when tailored to behavior and lifecycle stages. Respecting every segment of the audience is a time-consuming endeavor, but it is essential for a successful live service game. If we tried to cater to all players without understanding and taking into account their individual needs, we’d only cause frustration. 

Mobile players today have access to an enormous library of free-to-play titles. What specific design or content strategies help a game stand out enough to earn hundreds of hours of player time?

Jaroslav Stacevic: The games that are successful are the ones that provide their players with something they can’t get elsewhere. This might sound banal or obvious, but I think it really is this simple. 

In a market full of free-to-play options, a game earns hundreds of hours only when it offers more than convenience or novelty. It needs to give players a sense of mastery, progression, and personal investment that deepens over time. However this personal investment arises, it always involves an emotional journey.

The game has to feel good immediately, but it also has to suggest depth so players understand early that there’s something worth committing to beyond the first few sessions. It might be unique and exciting mechanics or engaging stories. It might involve cool characters or a fascinating world that beckons me to explore it. It’s both an art and a science, and it can only be crafted by a team that loves their own creation. You really can’t fake it. 

It’s worth mentioning the monetization here. Monetization must above all support the game-player relationship. If the business model feels fair and the player feels respected, the game has a much better chance of earning player dollars and long-term trust, which is really what hundreds of hours represents.

How has your approach to narrative and worldbuilding evolved in casual and mid-core mobile games? Are players expecting stronger storytelling today?

Jaroslav Stacevic: Earlier on, especially in casual games, narrative tended to function as light framing around the core loop. Now I see it much more as an indispensable retention tool, a vital source of emotional engagement, and a way to differentiate a game in a crowded market. 

In casual games, I still think the storytelling needs to stay lightweight, clear, and well-paced. Since mobile sessions are comparatively short, the story needs to support the experience without overwhelming it. The writing has to be tight, hitting its story beats efficiently to maintain that strong connection between the narrative and the gameplay loop.

In mid-core games, players are generally more willing to invest in lore, character relationships, and world depth, so the role of narrative becomes broader. It doesn’t just decorate the mechanics but helps drive progression and reinforce identity. It’s there to make the world feel worth returning to over a much longer period.

I absolutely believe players expect stronger and deeper storytelling today, which, I’d add, isn’t equivalent to saying they expect longer or more complex storytelling. Games keep getting better, and player expectations evolve accordingly. Today even casual-leaning players expect clearer character motivation, stronger world identity, higher emotional payoff, and narrative that is integrated into progression, events, and live ops rather than treated as a separate layer. We’re all familiar with the “show, don’t tell” principle in cinema, but we often fail to translate it into “play, don’t tell” for games. That’s a shame since this is the only medium that can offer fully interactive storytelling. 

I’ve stopped asking, ‘Do we need story here?’ Now I ask, ‘How do we use story in a mobile-friendly way?’ If narrative helps players feel connected to the world and invested in their progression, then it is doing the real work of design, not just adding flavor.

What role does live operations play in sustaining depth and player investment, and how is your team structured to support long-term content updates?

Jaroslav Stacevic: Live operations play a central role in sustaining both depth and player investment because they keep a game feeling alive after launch. We use live ops to extend the value without constantly rebuilding our core game. You can introduce limited-time content, new progression beats, and even small meta layers that refresh the experience and don’t feel distracting.

Live ops only work when informed by data. Don’t just do them randomly. This means tracking participation, completion, retention, and player feedback, then using A/B testing and performance analysis to understand what is actually creating value and where friction still exists.

In terms of team structure, I think the strongest setup is a cross-functional one. Live ops should sit at the intersection of game design, development, analytics, marketing, and QA, with clear ownership of the live-ops calendar, content configuration, testing, documentation, and post-launch optimization. Strong vision ownership and cohesive communication between all departments is crucial. 

From a production standpoint, what tools or analytics pipelines does Nordcurrent rely on to understand player behavior and identify friction points?

Jaroslav Stacevic: The answer to this question is two-pronged.

On the one hand, we use human expertise and genuinely engage with our product. We are not only developing the game, we are also players and fans. This keeps us close to the real player experience. It helps us understand what feels satisfying or frustrating, where the pacing stalls, and where the game may be asking too much from the player.

On the other hand, all that aforementioned human intuition is supported and checked by data. We rely on internal tools and analytics pipelines to track player behavior, measure performance, and identify friction points across the experience. That gives us a more objective view of what players are actually doing. We know better than to just assume.

These two sides must work together. Passion for the game helps us ask the right questions, and data helps us validate them. If we see a drop in engagement, weaker completion rates, shorter sessions, or churn at a specific point in the journey, we can investigate whether the issue is onboarding, progression, difficulty, reward balance, or something else entirely.

Many developers struggle to identify the moment when a game becomes “too shallow.” What signals tell you that a project needs deeper progression systems or meta layers?

Jaroslav Stacevic: The biggest signal is when the core loop is still functioning, but the sense of progression starts to flatten. Players are not necessarily confused or frustrated, but they no longer feel each session is building toward anything. At that point, the game becomes more of a routine than a journey, and habit can only sustain a game living on borrowed time for so long.

You’ll see this in the data before you hear it directly from players. Early retention may look healthy, but it starts to weaken in the mid-game. Maybe you see engagement drop or a leveling-off of session value. Players begin to churn once they have repeated the core loop too many times without discovering new goals, systems, or mastery layers.

This shows up in monetization too. Spontaneous purchases—extra lives bought after failing a level, for example—may still perform well because low-priced microtransactions are designed to capture impulse spending in moments of tension or urgency. But outside those situations, players tend to hesitate. When they are uncertain about the game’s future value, they’re much less willing to invest proactively, and that’s a sign that the experience is not creating enough long-term trust or forward pull.

As developers, we are naturally biased here. After investing so much time and effort into a game, it’s unpleasant to admit that the issue might be structural rather than mechanical. It’s all too tempting to explain away the signals. We say the difficulty curve is off or the recent batch of levels is weaker or a minor tuning issue is dragging performance down. We then run A/B tests on small adjustments and get inconclusive results because the deeper issue was never polish but a lack of long-term depth.

Another alarm bell is when players consume content faster than the game can deepen. If they reach the end of meaningful goals too quickly or if progression becomes repetitive rather than expansive, that tells me the project needs stronger meta-systems or deeper long-term rewards. I also pay close attention to bottlenecks in the player journey. If players consistently drop at a specific stage, disengage after a feature unlock, or show lower completion and return rates once the novelty wears off, then something is missing. Their actions are requests for an extra layer of ownership, mastery, or anticipation.

A game becomes too shallow when it can no longer create forward pull. Once players stop caring about what tomorrow’s session might unlock or change, the writing is on the wall: Deepen your progression or perish.

How do you approach designing meta-progression systems that feel meaningful rather than purely retention-driven?

Jaroslav Stacevic: I try to design meta-progression to reinforce why the player enjoys the game in the first place. It shouldn’t exist only to keep them logging in. If it is meaningful, it should deepen mastery, expand choice, and strengthen ownership, not just add another reward track on top.

Used correctly, meta-progression demonstrates to players that they’re building toward something worthwhile. Used incorrectly, it’s just another system designed to require more player time in order to pad engagement metrics—and players don’t care about metrics! They only engage with something that evokes genuine emotional response. If a system feels like it was designed to serve as a time and currency sink, players will catch on and you’ll see no long-term improvement of game’s performance.

One principle I adhere to is that meta-systems should support, not replace, intrinsic motivation. Players stay when progression makes them feel competent and connected to the game. Purely extrinsic systems may drive short-term activity but lose their power once they start to feel manipulative or empty.

I avoid building any system that exists only to stretch playtime. I would rather create meta-progression that gives players clearer mastery targets, interesting customization, a stronger sense of identity, and a feeling of legacy or permanence beyond individual sessions. If that value is real, the KPIs will follow.

Looking ahead, do you think the future of mobile design lies in deeper systemic gameplay, or in hybrid experiences that combine short-session accessibility with long-term progression?

Jaroslav Stacevic: I think the future of mobile design lies in hybrid experiences that combine short-session accessibility with long-term systemic depth.

Mobile is still a convenience-first platform. Low friction, instant readability, and strong early-session usability remain essential. The market has nevertheless moved well beyond pure hyper-casual design, and many promising opportunities now lie in hybrid-casual models where simple entry points lead to deeper systems, progression, and live-ops support.

The real challenge is not choosing between accessibility and depth, but designing them in layers and communicating them to the players in a way that respects their time and their intelligence. The best mobile games increasingly offer immediate fun in the first minute, then gradually reveal mastery-driven progression and meta-systems that justify long-term investment.

Players want games that are easy to enter and rich enough to return to for months or even years. “Easy to learn, hard to master” is something of a cliché now, so let’s reword it. Design games that are easy to learn, and fun to master.

Jaroslav Stacevic, Head of Innovation at Nordcurrent

Interview conducted by David Jagneaux