作者：Mark Sorrell

孩子就像自然界的鲸鱼。如果你身边有小孩，你就会意识到这一点。当孩子们喜欢上任何事物，他们便是真心喜欢这些事物。不管是小马，恐龙，迈克尔·杰克逊，枪支，泰勒·斯威夫特（游戏邦注：美国乡村女歌手），蓝精灵还是摩西怪物，都有可能成为孩子们与你交流的话题。他们小小的身体里总是能够装下巨大的内容。

孩子也是愚蠢的。根据人类的进化方式，我们在幼小的时候只会蹒跚行走。小马在一出身便能够站立，而鲨鱼甚至在母鲨鱼的子宫里便会杀死并吃掉自己的兄弟姐妹。与之相比，人类的孩子算是“无用的”了。出生时的“无用”也影响着我们在成人时的心智和社交能力，但总的来说，人类的小孩就是愚蠢的。这也是为什么他们不能购买枪支，不能拥有信用卡，不能开车，以及不能结婚的原因。

而免费游戏的设计便是为了吸引“鲸鱼”们。有时候是面向有钱的“鲸鱼”，如Zynga的玩家，有时候则是面向拥有时间的“鲸鱼”，如《英雄联盟》的玩家，但不管怎样免费游戏对于忠实粉丝们都带有商业需求。就像我们网站的读者应该都知道，忠实粉丝总是乐意花钱去资助免费游戏体验。如果你创造了一款免费游戏，你就需要去吸引这些玩家，也就是“鲸鱼”们的注意。

免费游戏总是使用行为经济原理去吸引用户的注意。但并不只有它们在这么做，免费游戏设计师也可以从超级市场，广告商或博彩公司看出这一点。而实现这一目标也存在一定的技巧。首先，游戏设计师必须创造出需求并满足这些需求。创造不合理的价值认知。让人们产生想要获得某些事物的激情。平衡这种欺骗与玩家对于游戏的真正需求，也就是乐趣，便是免费游戏设计的神奇之处。

SHARE_TO_THE_TWITTER_AND_FACEBOOK_ACCOUNTS（from gamesbrief）

孩子是免费游戏最理想的目标——他们是最容易被操纵，也是最执着的对象。虽然他们手上并没有钱，但是他们的父母有钱就好了！从英国玩具市场本身的价值就超过30亿英镑便能够看出这一点。所以问题基本上是关于——孩子们该如何要求家长给自己买东西（游戏）？

“Playmobil”是苹果所认为的最棒的乐高游戏。它具有精致的外观与强大的吸引力，但是玩家不能自己创造任何事物，只能购买现有的内容。就像现在玩家可以在iPad上玩《Playmobil Pirates》。这是一款极其赚钱的游戏，突出了各种不负责的操纵手法。与之前的《蓝精灵的村庄》一样，玩家可以花费69.99英镑的真钱去购买游戏中的货币而用于提升速度（游戏邦注：但是我们需要记住，孩子们总是很有耐心，所以不希望任何事物具有较快的发展），或在游戏中下赌注。

SPEND_FUCKING_MONEY_KIDS（from gamesbrief）

这种做法是不道德的，将破坏“Playmobil”品牌，免费游戏产业的名声，甚至打压我们的生计。如果对象是成人也是不合理的。“Playmobil”玩具是直接面向4至12岁的孩童。所以从逻辑上来看，这还算得上是一款符合道德标准的应用吗？

Pirate_Boat（from gamesbrief）

上图是真实的“Playmobil”海盗船，售价59.99英镑，少于《Playmobil Pirates》游戏中的货币费用。但是这一玩具中的每分钱都能够传达乐趣，每分钱都能让你的孩子们在房间里沉浸于海盗探险中。

这是非常明确的价值主张。不管是钱，玩具还是冒险都不属于消费品，相反地，它们只能出现在最健全的想象游戏中。如果对象是成人也是不合理的。“Playmobil”玩具是直接面向4至12岁的孩童。这便是其闪光之处！

真正让人失望的还是，面向孩子们创造免费游戏并不存在根本性的错误。有关道德的争论焦点并不在于面向孩子们的免费游戏是错误的，而是因为为孩子们开发免费游戏其实是一种微妙的做法，不仅需要获得尊重，需要被约束，需要专注于钱的价值，同时还得获得家长们的信任，并且不能利用孩子们执着且天真的本质。

但是《Playmobil Pirates》却并未做到这些。这是最讽刺，且最具剥削性的免费游戏设计，它瞄准了那些深受传统，世俗与法律保护的部分群体。而这种做法不仅对“Playmobil”品牌造成了冲击，同时，不管是从个人角度还是专业角度来看，这都让我为之一震。

免费游戏的道德性必须受到规则的制约，并且随着时间的发展这种制约性应该越来越强。最重要的是我们必须先打理好自家的业务，才能避免遭到法律的制裁。自由总是伴随着责任。如果我们不能履行责任，我们也会失去自由。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Playmobil Pirates Takes Its Name Very Literally

By Mark Sorrell

Kids are natural whales. If you know any kids then you know this is true. When kids love something, by the power of Greyskull, do they love something. There is no fact about ponies/dinosaurs/Michael Jackson/guns/Taylor Swift/Smurfs/Moshi Monsters that a relevant child will not be itching to regale you with. There is no item of related that they won’t want to own with every fibre of their tiny, humorously proportioned bodies. No episode of a favourite TV show or movie that they won’t want to watch on an endlessly repeating loop until the earth is finally consumed by our dying sun.

Kids are complete idiots. Due to the way the human has evolved, we give birth to young of staggering uselessness. A foal can stand up almost immediately after birth. Sand Tiger Sharks kill and eat their siblings while still in the womb. A human child is, by comparison, literally a useless sack of shit. This complete uselessness at birth is all part of our exceptional mental and social ability in adulthood, but the point remains – children are idiots. This is why they cannot buy guns, have credit cards, drive cars or get married.

Freemium games are designed to attract whales. Sometimes it’s money whales, as in Zynga, sometimes it’s time whales, as in League of Legends, but always there is a business requirement for obsessive fans. As readers of this site well know, it’s the obsessive fans that spend the money that funds the free experience for the vast majority of free users that spread the game to find the whales that spend the money that fund the game that I can’t work out how to end this sentence. If you’re making a freemium game, however, you get them, you need whales.

Freemium games use behavioural economics to ensnare users. They are by no means unique in doing this, and indeed could learn a thing or two from supermarkets, advertisers and gambling companies. But the techniques are still there. First create and then serve need. Create irrational perceptions of value. Make people want things. Balancing this trickery against the obvious need for games to be, you know, fun, is where much of the magic in F2P game design lives.

Children represent the absolute ideal target for a fremium game – they are obsessive, easily manipulated idiots. But wait, we’re ethically ok because they don’t have any money! But their parents have money. The UK toy market alone is worth about ￡3 billion. The question is basically – what are kids pestering their parents to buy for them? Is it your game? Is it?

Playmobil is best thought of as a kind of fascistic Lego by Apple. Beautifully made, rugged and attractive, but you can’t make your own things, you just consume the existing stuff. Like an iPad. You (presuming you are between 4 and 12 years old) can now play a Playmobil Pirates game on the iPad. It is a brutally money-grubbing thug of a game, mean-spirited, manipulative and irresponsible. Like Smurfs Villiage before it, there is a bundle of the in game premium currency that costs ￡69.99 of actual real money and can be spent in-game on some boats or doing things faster (kids never want things to happen quicker and have enormous patience, let’s remember), or to have a go at a guessing (read gambling) game.

It is absolutely unethical and bad and wrong, damaging to the Playmobil brand, the F2P industry and hence all of our livelihoods. If it were aimed at adults, it would be just quite bad. It is not aimed at adults. Playmobil toys are aimed squarely and unambiguously at children aged 4 to 12. So, logically and honestly, is this app.

Here is a real-life Playmobil pirate ship. It costs ￡59.99, less than the largest bundle of in-game premium currency in the Playmobil Pirates game. Every damn penny of that is going into fun. Every penny is going on letting your child have pirate adventures of their own invention in their own head on the living room floor, right down to the tiny plastic parrot that will jam itself into the soft flesh of your foot at precisely the worst moment.

It is a clear value proposition. This money, this toy, this potential for adventure. None of it is consumable, none of it is gambled away, none of it is spent on anything other than the most wholesome kind of imaginative play. If it were aimed at adults, it would be just quite bad. It is not aimed at adults. Playmobil toys are aimed squarely and unambiguously at children aged 4 to 12. Therefore it is brilliant!

The really frustrating thing here is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with making F2P games for children. The moral argument isn’t that F2P games for kids are wrong. The argument is that making fremium games for children is a delicate exercise, one that requires respect, restraint and a focus on value for money, trust from parents and never, ever taking advantage of kids’ natural tendency to be obsessive idiots.

Playmobil Pirates does none of these things. It is the most uncompromisingly cynical and exploitative kind of F2P game design imaginable and here, it is aimed clearly and obviously at a segment of the population whose clear and obvious vulnerabilities are already protected by tradition, custom and law. That a brand as otherwise trusted as Playmobil would allow something this insidious to bear its name shocks and appalls me on a personal level and frankly scares me on a professional level.

The ethics of F2P games are going to come under the spotlight with greater and greater regularity and focus as time goes by. It is of the utmost importance that we get our house in order if we’re to avoid legislation’s hammer cracking our nut. With freedom comes responsibility. So we must act responsibly, or we will lose our freedom.(source:gamesbrief)