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让玩家迷上游戏的五个社交游戏设计技巧

发布时间:2011-05-14 14:53:40 Tags:,

作者:AJ Glasser

尽管你可能会嘲笑那些玩社交游戏的人,但他们的“坏习惯”可能确实是优良游戏设计的成果。以下是可以让玩家爱上游戏的五个设计技巧:

社交游戏中肯定潜藏着某些内容,要么就不会有这么多玩家接受Zynga创造的神话和朋友在Facebook上的游戏相关内容。尽管游戏不断从玩家处收取金钱并鼓励他们邀请朋友的做法令人感到厌恶,但这些游戏确有某些迷人之处,让你对其能够吸引这么多人的现象产生疑问。

答案就在于:游戏设计很棒。所有的优秀视频游戏都以最吸引玩家的方式来设计,让你可以花上更多的时间。以下是社交游戏的做法:

1、虚拟的朋友

设计出供你的角色居住的主基地的社交游戏通常都允许玩家访问朋友的主基地。尽管如此,刚开始时玩家许多真实的Facebook好友可能并没有安装游戏,因而社交游戏就会为你创造出虚拟的好友。《FrontierVille》中有兔牙Jack,《Ravenwood Fair》中有戴着单片眼镜的Huggin,《Cupcake Corner》中有Betty Rocker。

frontierville

FrontierVille

这些“好友”有个比你更美观的主基地,通常都布置着游戏中较高端的物品或季节性促销道具。他们的等级也比你的角色高得多,在某些游戏中,这些角色永远比你高三级,让你保持竞争感。访问这些好友的主基地可能给你与访问真实Facebook好友主基地相同的奖励,也可能出现《Ravenwood Fair》之类的情况,即你访问Huginn会得到比访问真实朋友更高的奖赏。

虚拟朋友存在的主要目的是让你产生需要访问更多好友的想法,这样你就可以获得更多的物品。当你在自己的主基地或虚拟朋友的主基地把物品花光之后,才会有更多的物品供你点击。其次是向玩家展示游戏中提供的高端或季节性道具,比如只有让玩家在Jack的基地中看到,他们才会明白某个骨架或干草堆看起来多么精美。

2、免费的物品

你应该理解,社交游戏中的“物品”只是个幻觉。你为虚拟房屋购置的咖啡桌和存有虚拟金钱的小银行只存在于开发商的服务器上,并不在你的电脑或真实的家中。尽管如此,社交游戏想让你觉得拥有游戏中的物品,因而开发商做出许许多多的东西,并让你用金钱购买这些物品,这样他们看起来便有一定的价值。

多数社交游戏使用两种货币:游戏内置货币(游戏邦注:铜币和金币等)可以通过你的游戏中的行为赚取,某些特别稀有的货币(游戏邦注:纸币或元宝等)只能购买或每天获取一枚。对那些2010年4月后发行的游戏来说,第二种货币通常是Facebook Credits。

Facebook-Credits

Facebook Credits

当你登陆新款社交游戏时,许多游戏确实会给你游戏内置货币和Facebook Credit之类的货币。这些免费的金钱通常可以用来解决游戏希望你拥有的首批游戏内道具(游戏邦注:角色服装、家具或装饰),还会有盈余来培养你的花费意识。除了这些货币外,你还可以通过访问好友(游戏邦注:包括真实和虚拟的好友)和完成探索或日常等游戏内任务来免费获得金钱,有时也会免费获得游戏内的道具或能量点数。

尽管如此,没有游戏会不断免费给玩家货币。而且那些使用Facebook Credits的游戏通常在最初给予之后就不再向玩家奖励需要付费购买的货币,除非你注册开发商在Facebook上投放的其他社交游戏,如玩过《FarmVille》后再注册《Mafia Wars》。那些令人毛骨悚然的调查或Facebook决定发放免费Credits来推广项目,这些也可能让玩家获得此类货币。

3、真实的好友

Facebook严厉制裁社交游戏玩家骚扰其他用户的行为。通过Games频道,他们可以看到你在游戏中的升级以及你玩地最多的三款游戏,也可以收到那些曾经使消息栏爆满的“成为我的邻居”之类的请求。如果他们对此类消息不感兴趣,那么通常看起来就像是友善的老式现实生活请求,比如“嗨,来看看这款游戏。”之类的。

一旦你让自己的好友一起玩某款社交游戏,他们也就陷入许多类似的圈子中。即便他们觉得游戏很无聊不想玩,他们也会在游戏中停留一小段时间,因为他们会为拒绝你的邀请感到愧疚。当然,与你一起玩游戏的朋友交情会更好。

4、利用整洁怪癖的玩法

社交游戏满足所有人自然的追求整洁的怪癖。你刚开始有个只是长满树木和荆棘的农场、只有一个沾满污垢的烤炉的空荡荡的面包房或身处只有五个邋遢宾客的宴会上。游戏向玩家传达的信息是,这些事物是不应当存在的,污垢需要被清理干净。一旦你认同这个观点,你就无法视而不见。因而每次隔一小时、一天或一个月登录游戏,那些污垢就成为闯入脑中的头等大事。你会点击鼠标处理宴会上喝醉的宾客,这个行为甚至发生在你查看项目清单之前。

Farmville

FarmVille

自然,只有玩家喜欢清爽的场景,这个做法才行之有效。某些人确实对他们的《FarmVille》作物或宴会漠不关心。只要这种“肮脏”的程度部队游戏的分数直接构成影响,这个技巧对那些不是酷爱整洁的社交游戏玩家来说便不起作用。

5、事后反悔

“事后反悔”是因人脑受刺激多巴胺迅速增加后消退而引起的。多巴胺是自然在人体内产生的激素,与大脑的“奖励中心”有关,告诉你正在做的任何事情都是很棒且完全有价值的。购物等行为也可以轻易引起多巴胺的分泌。

社交游戏通过限制你在游戏中所能做的事情来刺激多巴胺分泌,多数通过玩家点击进行互动导致其减少的能量条来实现。有效点击事物成为了一种购买行为,犁地需要消耗一格能量,向女孩表白需要三点自信值等等。一旦你开始点击就很难停下来,因为这确实是个非常简单的行为,而且显然并不费时费力。

一旦你用光了能量值,游戏会告诉你不能再做你想要点击的事情。这种忽然产生的不能做某种事情的意识让你去查看已经完成的事物,并为此感到遗憾。为何你在本应该留能量收获作物的前提下清除那些树呢?你本应该先查看其他角色的状况,这样就不会花费五点信心值来打一场你不可能胜利的战斗。

事后反悔的感觉让你评估自己的游戏玩法并制定战略,比如我会先访问好友以获得足够的能量值,然后再清理树木和摆设热狗摊子。而正是这种想法让你会回到游戏之中。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

5 ways social games hook you

AJ Glasser

Sneer all you want at the people who play social games. The truth is their “bad habit” may be the result of good game design. Here are five design tricks to keep you playing:

There’s something inherently insidious about social games. There must be, or so many gamers wouldn’t hate on them whenever they see a news story about Zynga or an update in their friends’ Facebook feed that reads “Jessie clobbered a bear.” But while there is something unsettling about a game that shamelessly solicits money from its audience and then encourages them to recruit their friends, there’s also something fascinating about it that makes you question how something so obviously “bad” clicks with so many people.

The answer is: It’s good game design. All the best video games are designed to make you want to play more of the game, and the only way to do that is to hook a player like a fish and keep stringing them along. Here’s how social games do it:

Hook # 1 The Fake Friend

Any social game with a “home base” for your character to live in usually has the ability to visit friends’ home bases. Starting out, though, a lot of your real Facebook friends probably don’t have the game installed, so a social game invents a fake friend for you. FrontierVille has the buck-toothed Jack, Ravenwood Fair has a monocle-wearing raven named Huggin, and Cupcake Corner features Betty Rocker.

Each of these “friends” has a better-looking home base than you do — usually with higher-end in-game materials or seasonal promotion items in full display. They also start out at much higher level than your character, and in some games are consistently three levels ahead of you to keep your sense of competition up. Visiting these friends’ home bases either nets you the same reward you get for visiting a real Facebook friend’s place, or in the case of Ravenwood Fair, you actually get better bonuses from visiting Huginn than you do from visiting a real friend.

The main point of the fake friend is to kick start the idea that you need more friends to visit — so that you can get more stuff and so that you have more stuff to click on when you run out of things to do on your own home base or on your fake friend’s home base. The secondary point is to showcase high-end or seasonal items the game offers – because how else can you really see how awesome that skeleton or haystack looks until you’ve seen what Jack’s done with it?

Hook # 2 Free Stuff

Understand that “stuff” in a social game is an illusion. That coffee table you buy for your virtual house and the little bank with your virtual money exists on a developer’s server — not in your computer or in your actual home. Nevertheless, social games want you to feel like you have stuff in their games, so developers make a lot of it and they offer it to you in exchange for currency so that it feels like it’s worth something.

Most social games use two types of currency: in-game money you can earn by doing things in-game (coins, gold, etc.) and a premium type of money that is so rare you either have to buy it or only get one token of it per day (cash, horseshoes, etc.). The second currency is usually Facebook Credits, if the game went live after the program launched in April 2010.

When you sign up to a new social game, many games actually give you both in-game money and premium money or Facebook Credit. This batch of free money usually covers the cost of the first in-game items the game wants you to have (avatar clothing, furniture, or decorations), with a little extra leftover to keep you in a spending mood. Beyond that, you also get free money and sometimes free in-game items or energy points by visiting friends (both real and fake) and by completing in-game tasks in the form of quests or habitual behaviors.

No game will continuously give you free money, however, and games that make use of Facebook Credits usually won’t reward you with free premium money beyond the initial batch – unless, you sign up for one of that developer’s other social games on Facebook, like branching out from FarmVille to Mafia Wars. Or fill out one of those creepy surveys. Or when Facebook decides to give out free Credits to promote the program.

Hook # 3 Real Friends

Facebook cracked down pretty hard on the amount of spamming a social gamer can commit while playing games, but that doesn’t completely eliminate your friends’ ability to see what you’re doing. Through the Games channel, they can see your in-game updates and your top three most-played games as well as receive those “come be my neighbor” requests that used to bombard your news feed. If that doesn’t attract them, there’s always the good old fashioned real life request of “Hey, come check out this game.”

Once you get a friend to try a social game with you, they fall prey to many of the same hooks. Even if they get the feeling that the game is dumb or that they shouldn’t be playing it, they’ll stay for a little while because they feel guilty about “leaving” you. And of course, there’s that natural 1upmanship friends get when they play games together.

Hook # 4 The Clean Freak Play

Social games appeal to the natural neat freak in all of us. You start out on a homestead overrun by trees and brambles; an empty bakery with only one grimy oven, or at an amazing party with five wasted guests. The game suggests to players that these things are aberrations — dirt needing to be cleaned up — and once you’ve seen it that way, you can’t un-see it. So every time you visit the game after an absence of an hour, a day, a month, the “dirt” is literally the first thing your brain registers and you’re already clicking on drunk party guests to get rid of them before you’ve even checked your inventory.

Naturally, this only works if you like things to be clean. Some people genuinely don’t care if their FarmVille crops aren’t aligned or their party is overrun with paparazzi. So long as the “dirt” doesn’t have a direct effect on the game’s score, this is one trick that won’t work on the untidy social gamer.

Hook # 5 Buyer’s Remorse

“Buyer’s remorse” is a decrease of dopamine in your brain that comes immediately after a spike. Dopamine is a hormone naturally produced in the body that’s associated with the “rewards center” of the brain — telling you that whatever you’re doing is good, awesome, or totally worth having sex with. Shopping is one of the easy ways to trigger a dopamine spike, which is where the “buyer” part comes from.

Social games tap into the dopamine feed by restricting the amount of stuff you can do in a game. This comes mostly in the form of an energy meter that decreases whenever you click on something to interact with it. Clicking stuff effectively becomes “buying” an action — it costs one Energy to plow that piece of land, it costs three Confidence to have a showdown with that girl, etc. Once you get started clicking, it’s difficult to stop because it’s a very simple action that apparently costs you nothing.

Once you run out of energy, though, the game hits you with a notice that you can’t do the thing you clicked on. The sudden realization that you can’t do something makes you look at what you’ve already done and feel kind of bad about it. Why did you clear away that tree when clearly you should’ve saved your energy for harvesting crops? You should’ve checked that other character’s stats before blowing your list five Confidence on a showdown you clearly couldn’t win.

The buyer’s remorse feeling makes you evaluate your gameplay and come up with strategies (e.g. “I’ll visit my friend’s place first to build up enough energy to clear that tree and then build the hot dog stand”) — which pretty much guarantees that you’ll be back to play some more. (Source: Gamepro)


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