作者：Brice Morrison

Zynga游戏《Cityville》席卷全球之前，《Farmville》在Facebook游戏中独占鳌头，在发布1年半后仍保持数千万用户。尽管如此，我很少在网络上见到有文章分析游戏设计以及使其如此成功的因素。

社交游戏需要玩家日复一日回到游戏中。如果玩家在首次安装游戏后就不再回到游戏中，这个玩家就只能算作是月活跃用户（游戏邦注：以下简称“MAU”），这是毫无意义的。这也是为何DAU/MAU如此重要，这项数据显示的是定期玩游戏的玩家规模，把那些只访问一次的玩家排除在外。

那么，《Farmville》用何种方法来留住这些用户呢？是什么东西让这些用户日复一日地回到游戏中？尽管《Farmville》的成功有多方面因素，但我个人认为其中的一项设计的贡献最大。

farmville(from kokugamer.com)

收获机制

大家都知道，《Farmville》中的主要活动是种植作物。玩家可以选择他们想要种植的作物，包括山莓、南瓜、花、窝瓜等。不同作物的外观、价格和收获时间都各不相同。

这样的游戏设计看起来甚为普通，但其中潜藏着一些导致玩家在种植作物后回到游戏中的强大设计。

收获时间。不同的作物有不同的收获时间。种子种下后，玩家需要过段时间后回到游戏中收获作物。玩家可以看到所有作物的收获时间，因而可以自行安排计划。如果他们知道自己在数个小时后就有空闲时间，他们可以选择山莓。如果需要等待更长时间才能回到游戏中，那么他们可以选择南瓜。

成本。第二个关键成分是，玩家投入成本的时间是在栽种作物时，而不是在收获时。这意味着玩家在种植时做了项投资，他们花钱买种子让它们成长。如果他们及时回到游戏中，他们可以获得超乎成本的回报。但是如果他们没有及时回到游戏中，作物就会枯萎。

投资、设定返回时间、如果失败则会失去成本，这种反馈循环使《Farmville》有很大的粘性。玩家种植作物，随后就必须回到游戏中收获，否则便会有所损失。因为游戏中设有虚拟货币，所以玩家为收回成本回到游戏中的概率很高。

枯萎机制的心理作用

心理学家表明，人类很害怕失去东西。经常提及的研究是：让研究参与者抛弃硬币，如果背面朝上就会失去100美元。然后研究者会问这些参与者，将正面朝上的奖励设为多少他们才愿意打这个赌？

你会选择多少呢？在我个人看来，奖励至少要有500美元我才愿意冒这个有可能失去100美元的风险。尽管人们给出的答案可能各不相同，但重点在于几乎没人愿意在奖励为100美元的前提下打这个赌。

为什么呢？因为人们讨厌失去。他们不想要失去机会，人们都希望所有的机遇之门都是敞开的。失去东西带来的伤害远比获得同样东西带来的喜悦要大得多。

这便是《Farmville》核心机制的心理学基础。让玩家预设需要回到游戏中的任务，如若不然，他们就会失去那些投入的成本。这样，玩家就会被迫回到游戏而且继续玩下去。这种收获约定每次玩游戏之后都会产生，于是这个精明的游戏设计便让玩家每次回到游戏后设定下次游戏的时间，如此循环反复。

吸引并保持玩家热情

当然，使《Farmville》获得成功的因素还有很多。其前身《Farmtown》有着许多与之相同的机制，但并未如此盛行。这款游戏的用户留存率与《Farmville》差不多，但涌入游戏的用户数便比Zynga作品逊色得多。

有些游戏设计师认为这是种不道德的做法，但我个人不这么认为。我觉得尽管这些道德讨论很重要，但游戏设计本身并无道德和不道德之分，开发商可以任何方式来进行游戏设计。想提高玩家回该游戏机率的设计师可以考虑采用类似的方法。让玩家进行投资，设定获得回报的时间，如果他们没有及时回到游戏中便会失去奖励。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Game Design that Made Farmville

Brice Morrison

Until Zynga’s Cityville took the world by storm, Farmville enjoyed its place as the king of Facebook games for quite some time, still holding over 60 million users after a year and a half. Despite this, I couldn’t find much online analyzing the design of the game and what contributed to it being so successful.

Social games depend on players returning to the game day after day. Games that have players install the game once, count as a Monthly-Active-User (MAU), and then never return are useless. That’s why the DAU/MAU, or “stick” of a game is so important — it shows how many people are actually playing the game regularly instead of just visiting once.

So what does Farmville do to retain all those users? What keeps them coming back for the second day, third day, and beyond? There are many aspects to Farmville’s success, but it is my personal belief that there is a single design that can take most of the credit for what made Farmville what it was.

The Harvesting Mechanic

The main activity in Farmville, as everyone knows, is planting plants. Players select what they would like to grow from a menu, including raspberries, pumpkins, flowers, squash, whatever you can think of. Each of these different plants have different looks, prices, and time to harvest.

This all feels and seems like a traditional game up until this point. But there are a few key components to planting a plant that make it an incredibly strong design for the player returning to the game:

Time to Harvest. Different plants have different times to harvest. Once a seed is planted, then the player needs to come back to the game at a later time to harvest it. The times for harvest are all displayed to the player so that they can pick their own schedule. If they know they’re going to be free in a few hours they can pick the raspberries. If they want to wait longer they can pick the pumpkins.

Cost. The second crucial component is that the player pays for the plants when they plant them, not when they harvest them. This means that the player has already made an investment, they have spent the coins on the seeds to watch them grow. If they come back in time then they get their investment back and more. But if they don’t come back in time, then their crops wither.

This feedback loop, making an investment, setting a time to return, and losing your investment if you don’t keep your promise to return to the game, is what is responsible for Farmville’s high stick rate. Players plant their plants and then arrange to come back to the game later on — or else. And since they have their virtual currency on the line, they are very likely to hold up their end of the bargain to come back and play again.

Psychological Power of Withering

Psychologists have studied the phenomena that humans are very scared of loss. One often referenced study is the following: participants are given a coin and told that if they flip the coin and it lands on tails, they will lose $100. The experimenter then asks the participant “How much would you need to win if it lands on heads in order to take this bet?”

What would you say? I personally would probably need about $500 or more to risk losing $100. And while people may vary in the amount they would need to take the bet, the important point is that almost no one will take the bet for a chance to win $100.

Why? Because people hate losing things. They don’t like opportunities being shut, ideally all the doors would always be open. When something is lost, it hurts a lot more than the enjoyment that was received from gaining that same item.

This is the psychological foundation of Farmville’s core mechanic. By having players sign that they are going to return and then having them face an embarrassing loss if they don’t, players are compelled to come back and enjoy the game further. Since these harvesting contracts are being made ever play session, the game’s design brilliantly has the player schedule a return session each time they play. Every session encourages the next, and so forth.

Getting Them In and Keeping Them In

Of course there are other factors that made Farmville so successful. Its unfortunate predecessor, Farmtown, had many of these exact same mechanics but was not marketed in the same fashion. Thus the retained users at a similar level but their user influx was much less than Zynga’s.

Some designers also think that tactics like this are immoral, but I don’t buy into that personally. I think that while those ethical discussions are important to have, the design itself is amoral and can be used however the developers want. Game designers who want to increase the odds of players returning to their game would be wise to consider similar designs. Have them make an investment, set up a time to reap the rewards, and then take away the rewards for a loss if they don’t return in time. (Source: The Game Prodigy)