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解析社交游戏设计之病毒式传播功能

发布时间:2011-06-18 17:34:31 Tags:,

游戏邦注:本文原作者是游戏设计师Gregory,原文发表于2010年9月6日,所涉事件、数据均以当时为准。

社交游戏开发商及发行商通常所说的社交游戏三大特性是病毒性、盈利性留存率。本文我们将谈谈社交游戏的病毒性。

我在PAX大会期间参加了“World of Farmcraft”座谈会,与会人员有Tyler Bielman、James Ernest、Henry Stern和Paul Peterson。我终于能够一睹这些家伙的风采,但我这里要谈的不是这个。我只能说他们是非常伟大的设计师。

座谈会中,Tyler向在座人员提出这样的问题:你们是如何分配社交游戏粘性、虚拟交易及病毒式传播功能设计时间的?这是个好问题。

很多游戏公司在评价既有游戏或新游戏设计时,都是着眼这3个方面。我将在文中逐一展开陈述,首先从病毒式传播功能入手。在社交游戏设计领域,“病毒式”传播是用来说明游戏在玩家之间的传播情况,例如游戏从100名用户传播至1000万名用户历时多久等问题。

非社交游戏的设计通常不包含病毒式传播功能。这类游戏或许会打广告,但它们鲜少将宣传机制融入游戏设置当中,以实现游戏传播(游戏邦注:卡片交换游戏就是个明显的例外)。

在社交游戏初期阶段(2008年),多数游戏仅设有“邀请好友”按钮,通过生成消息或通知告知好友游戏信息。随后,机制便开始复杂化,玩家只有邀请好友体验方能晋级。而Facebook现已开始限制此类传播。

Invite_FarmVille_Friends(from frontierville.wikia.com)

Invite_FarmVille_Friends(from frontierville.wikia.com)

到了2010年,病毒式传播机制开始变得富有趣味性。以下是鼓励玩家传播游戏的机制范例:

* 你花1美元现金就能够扩大农场规模,或者你若邀请5个好友,便可免费获得游戏货币,晋升新等级。

* 你拥有的好友越多,攻击其他玩家时力量就越强大。

* 当角色受伤时,好友能够帮助治愈(游戏邦注:你拥有的好友越多,需要治愈帮助时,获得在线好友帮助的机率就更大)。

* 你获得100枚游戏货币时,若将此公布在消息动态,点击消息的好友也会获得100枚货币。

* 你可以聘请好友到商店帮忙,特别是当好友不在游戏中时,邀请他们参与进来。

* 你分数再创新高!告知全世界吧!若分数高过好友,是时候该当面炫耀一番啦。

也许你会发现这些机制是从不同方面切入的。我们可以根据游戏机制邀请好友方式及消息发布目的,将病毒式传播机制分成以下几大类型:

* 发布消息帮助好友(游戏邦注:他们能够从中获得货币)。

* 邀请好友解锁内容。

* 邀请好友使自己变得更强大。

* 发布胜利消息(通常是令人自豪的成就)。

玩家传播游戏的目的还有很多。以上不过是些常见例子。社交游戏平台目前两大主要病毒式传播渠道是:发布和邀请。

消息发布来自玩家,面向全球所有用户,或者至少是面向用户平台好友。这里是个常见消息范例:“喂,快看我的成就!”玩家发布此消息是出于表达欲望,希望分享其经历。获得高分,晋升新等级,发现稀有道具,这些都是典型的分享内容。“玩家发布消息,好友从中受益”理念是消息发布的一大有趣转变。且让我们拭目以待,看是否会有新转变诞生。

邀请是玩家同好友交流的直接方式。鉴于其私人性质,邀请多半会得到回应。从理论上讲,受到好友邀请,玩家应该心存感激,觉得自己有义务加入。但实际上,社交网络游戏邀请实在过于泛滥,很多玩家已不再像对待现实生活邀请那样对待此类邀请。

frontierville-gift-missions(from frontiervilleinfo.com)

frontierville-gift-missions(from frontiervilleinfo.com)

年轻的时候,我总是能在一些特定的节日收到很多礼物。小时候因为家里并不富裕,所以我不能自己决定想要什么样的礼物,也不会开口向家长要求任何昂贵的礼物。我曾经收到的礼物有袜子和自行车等,我非常喜欢打开礼物盒那一瞬间的惊喜,当收到任何一份神秘且“了不起的”礼物(对于孩子来说,他们所认为“了不起”的东西比成人们的范围广多了)时都会欣喜若狂。

现在却不是这样了!只要我明确说出自己想要的,我便能够得到。如果我不明确跟亲人说我想要什么,他们甚至会跟我急呢。但是当我还是孩子的时候,他们经常能够轻松地猜出我想要什么。因为很明显,孩子们的乐趣总是离不开游戏。

做为一个有着丰厚收入的成年人,我已经可以购买任何自己想要的东西,也不再要求或期望别人能够给我买礼物了。这显然是件不错的事呢,但是却必须受到一些原则限制,而且我也知道有些东西是我用钱买不到的。我好想念以前收礼物的日子,那时候不需要自己列出购物清单,也不会在非节假日给自己买礼物。

这就是我为何如此讨厌下图场景的原因:

Must Gifts(from designsideout)

Must Gifts(from designsideout)

不要假装你没遇到过这种情况。在《FrontierVille》的例子中,它会以各种“邀请好友赠送礼物”为障碍,阻止你在游戏中进一步前行(就像上图所示)。当你想要在自己的宅地中添加一座重要的建筑时,上图的窗口就会弹出来。你只有在收集到40个游戏道具后,才能添加新的建筑物。而你只能通过2个途径获得这40个道具:1)要求好友以“礼物”的形式赠予你,2)自己花钱购买。

我不知道自己为何如此讨厌Facebook游戏上的这种机制。但是似乎它确实是个有效的方法,因为每天至少有好几百万的玩家乐于赠送礼物给50名好友,并日复一日,不厌其烦地等待并收取着他们的回礼。对于那些拥有50名好友同时玩游戏的玩家来说,很容易能够收集到自己所需要的游戏道具,但是这对于我来说却很有困难。因为我的好友都不玩Facebook游戏,而如果我想要获得游戏道具,就必须自己支付现金去购买。所以每次看到这个窗口弹出来时,我便会毫不犹豫地关掉它。

赠送礼物可以说是一种为朋友着想的方式,思考他们喜欢什么,想要什么,并出于友情亲自制作或购买最适宜的礼物赠予他们。但是在这些游戏中,赠送礼物的性质却完全变了。每天例行赠送50个相同的礼物给所有的好友,不论他们是否喜欢,且赠予者也不带任何个人感情,只是希望能从对方手中获取回礼。这哪能算是礼物啊,简直就是对好友的垃圾轰袭!

所以我正在思考,如何做才能把现实生活中的礼物赠送融入未来的社交游戏中,而不只是作为一种烦人的“垃圾”制造工具。这些游戏的开发公司(如Zynga)都曾经针对玩家收集了一系列的分析数据而制作出游戏。他们之所以会采取如此平凡的机制(例如“赠送礼物”),是因为这些机制能够帮助他们快速吸收到更多玩家。因为通过玩家赠送礼物给好友,有助于提醒那些好友重新回到游戏中。但是如果能够换成其它更有趣的方法,而不是赠送这些“垃圾”,情况是否会更好一点呢?(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Social Game Design: Virality part 1

In attending PAX this past weekend I went to the “World of Farmcraft” panel, featuring Tyler Bielman, James Ernest, Henry Stern, and Paul Peterson. I could go on at length about how awesome these guys are but I have a lot else to talk about today. Suffice it to say they are good people and great designers.

During the panel Tyler asked the others what percent of their time they spend designing the engagement, monetization, and viral parts of social games. Good question.

Many social game companies focus on these three aspects when evaluating an existing game or the design for a future game. In the next several posts I’ll break down each of these beginning with Virality. In social game design circles the term “virality” is used to denote how well the game or application spreads from players to non-players. How fast does it go from 100 users to 10,000,000.

Non-social games don’t have viral features as part of their game design. They might have advertising, but very few (if any) have mechanics integral to the play of the game that help spread the game from existing players to non-players. Trading card games might be the notable exception.

In the early days of social games (2008) most games simple had a button to “invite your friends” that would generate a message or notification that told your friend the game existed. Then came the heavy-handed mechanics that required you to invite friends to play before you could progress in the game. On Facebook, rules came down from the platform that this had to stop.

Now (2010) viral mechanics are starting to get interesting. Here are some examples of mechanics that encourage players to spread the game around:

* You can increase the size (area) of your farm for $1 real money, or, if you have invited 5 friends, you can use the “free” earned currency from the game to make the upgrade.

* The more friends you have the more powerful you are when you attack other players.

* Your friends can heal your character when it’s injured (and the more friends you have, the more likely one of them will be online when you need healing).

* You won 100 earned currency. If you publish to your news feed, friends who click on it will also receive 100 earned currency.

* You can hire a friend to work in your shop – doing so invites them to the game if they are not already playing.

* You got a new high score, hooray! Tell the world!
Your new high score is higher than your friend’s score, time to rub it in their face.

You may have noticed that some of these mechanics seem to operate in different directions. We can break down viral mechanics into types based on how they recruit your friends and why you want to publish them.

* You publish to help your friends (they earn currency by clicking on it).

* You invite friends to unlock something.

* You invite friends to make yourself stronger.

* You publish a victory – personal achievement or competition our of a sense of pride.

There are many more subtle reasons a player can have for spreading the game around. These are just some of the more common and more obvious. You have likely also noticed by now that social game platforms have two main channels for viral spreading: Publications and Invitations.

Publications come from the player and are shown to the world – or at least to all of their friends on the platform. These are shouts: “Hey, look at what I did!” that are driven from the player’s desire to express themselves, to share a moment of their lives with others. Getting a high score, a new level, finding a rare item, these are typical things you want to tell your friends about. The “publish this and your friends will get something” concept is an exciting new twist on publications. It will be interesting to see if other new twists become popular.

Invitations are direct communications between the player and a specific friend. Due to their more personal nature they are more likely to be responded to. In theory when a friend invites you there is some feeling of gratitude and perhaps obligation to join. In practice invitations to games on social networks has become such a tsunami of annoyance that some people no longer respond in the same way they would to a real-life invitation to something. Is there a sociologist in the house?(source:designsideout

Social Game Design: Virality part 2 – Gifts (part 1?)

Happy New Year!

When I was very young, I received many gifts on certain holidays. Being a child, I didn’t have much control over these gifts, and because my family wasn’t wealthy, I didn’t ask for much. I got everything from socks to bicycles, and I loved the surprise of opening something and not knowing if I was going to get something really awesome. (Also, for a kid, “really awesome” has a much wider range than it does for adults.)

It’s not like that anymore. I ask for specific things, and I get them. If I don’t make a list, telling my family what to get me, they become cross with me! When I was a kid, it was easy for them to guess what I wanted. Being a kid, I obviously wanted things that were fun to play with. (Plus, I grew out of my socks on a regular basis.)

As an adult who earns a hearty income, I can now buy most anything I want, I don’t have to ask for it and hope it will come to me as a gift. It’s nice to be able to do that, even if it means discipline is required, and that I know there are some things out of my reach. I miss the old days, when gifts made me happy, when they were not just a shopping list I had to write – of things I would just be buying for myself if a gift-getting occasion were not approaching.

Perhaps that’s why I hate this so much:

Don’t pretend you haven’t seen this, or something like it. In this example, Frontierville blocks your forward progress with a lot of “gifts required” obstacles like this one. Each time you try to add an important building to your homestead, they show you this popup. You cannot add the building until you collect 40 items. These 40 items can only be acquired in two ways. 1) demand your friends send them to you as “gifts” or 2) buy them for yourself.

I’m not sure why I hate it so much in Facebook games. It certainly seems to work – there millions of people who are more than happy to send a gift to 50 friends each day, and go through the tedious process of collecting their gifts and sending more back, day after day. Also, for the players who have 50 friends playing the same game, it’s trivial to collect all the hammers and nails they need, but for me, it’s impossible. My friends don’t play Facebook games, so this becomes a pay cash or leave scenario for me. So I leave whenever I encounter this “mechanic.”

Giving a gift should be a personal expression of me thinking about a friend and deciding there is something that they would really like, and out of love for my friend, give of myself to get that gift for them (by making it or buying it). Sending out 50 identical gifts to all my friends, whether they want it or not, every day in a routine, without affection, and with the express purpose of getting them to send me something in return… that’s not gifts. It’s a spam.

So I am on a quest to figure out how I can incorporate the idea of gifting into future social games in a way that isn’t an evil spam engine. The companies making these games (such as Zynga) respond to the analytical data they collect about the players. They put in spammy mechanics like this “gifting” because in the short term it leads to better numbers in their games. The need to get these gifts makes players spam their friends, and the constant reminders to come back to the game are helpful. But wouldn’t it be better to have a fun reason to come back, not a spammy reason?(source:designsideout


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