作者：Ramin Shokrizade

尽管这个话题让我觉得不舒服，但我觉得作为业内人士，我们有必要讨论一下我们怎么把游戏卖给孩子。许多大工作室曾经私下咨询过我过个问题，但我认为这场讨论必须公开。为了简单明了，我不打算把这篇文章写得像科学研究论文，但我确实得介绍一些相关的研究，因为这个话题涉及面太广了。

首先，我阅读了发表在2013年5月20号的《时代》杂志的封面故事《“我我我”一代》。那篇文章最让我感兴趣的部分是，千禧年一代比前面的任何一代人都更加自我主义。虽然确切原因未知，但我倒不认为这要归咎于饮食结构上的迅速变化，我们的快餐式媒体才是源头。

虽然我想所有人都会信誓旦旦地把责备的矛头指向社交媒体（如MySpace和Facebook），因为它们把孩子们带坏了，但我也不得不承认互动媒体也难辞其咎。当游戏对学习有如此深刻的影响时，把责任推到“其他人”身上实在是太方便了。

在美国，随着各种你能想象得到的基础设施（道路、桥梁、大坝、学校等）日渐陈旧破坏，你可以说之前一代人有点儿自私，因为他们没有把相等的机会留给他们的孩子辈。再加上实际收入减少、财政赤字上升、社会保障基金的诚信遭质疑，你可以说前面一代人的自私自利达到空前。发现这种趋势可能在最新一代人身上增加了甚至10%，也是灾难性的新闻。发现上涨了200%，好吧，人类的未来堪忧了。

大量研究表明，互动媒体影响大脑的发育。有些研究反映的是积极影响，有些证实的是消极作用，有些说明的是二者兼有。可以肯定的是，接触互动媒体会改变大脑。还可以肯定的是，至少在2013年，我们还不能知道互动媒体如何改变大脑以及改变了多少。

kid playing games(from kotaku.com)

前额皮质的作用

这里，我将使用美国卫生部的标准和维基百科的“成熟期（心理上的）”词条作为参考。

前额皮质是大脑发育最慢的部分，因为大脑的发育顺序通常是“由后向前”。

“当面临困难处境时，大脑使人具有‘良好的判断’能力。大脑研究表明，大脑发育要到25岁才能完成，特别是前额皮质。”——美国卫生部规定的“前额皮质成熟期”

上面这句话的意思是，能够做出长期性的良好判断不只是一种心理状态，还是一种取决于年龄的生理状态。

“前额皮质负责高级认知功能如计划、决策、判断和推理等，在青少年时期至20多岁时发育最快。随着突触修剪（极少使用的突触的削减）和大脑神经纤维的髓鞘的增加，前额皮质也得到成长，这隔绝和加速神经元之间的信号传输一。这个过程发育不全会导致当被要求不做出某个反应时，青少年比成年人明显地更少动脑和更少交谈（信号传输要运用不同的大脑区）。大脑的“交流”可能与风险相关的决策有关——一个关于美国青少年的研究发现，当要求他们决定某种危险的活动是好还坏时，大脑反应会延迟且扩散的脑区减少。Steinberg发现，在与社交情感和奖励有关的激活的大脑区存在紧密的重叠，这导致当人们面临风险同样高的情境时，会觉得难以下决定。一个研究表时，与大的、长期的奖励相比，偏爱小的、立即的奖励与负责社交情感决策的大脑区的活性增加有关。”

好了，现在如果再考虑Zynga所谓的“痛苦的乐趣”，我们可以知道，这种设计技巧就是把他们的游戏玩家置于非常不舒服的处境，然后靠消除这种处境来挣钱。虽然绝大部分成年人会做出的判断是最好不要花钱，退出游戏就好了；但对于一款有意伤害他们的游戏，从生物学上说，如果决策者是儿童，他们就很难做出这种明智的决定了。

儿童的强制消费

现在如果我的公司希望出售一种产品，大部分成年人会正确地判断出那种产品的危害性，那我应该怎么办？如果我可以向那些不能正确判断长期使用该产品有何影响的青少年营销，那事情就好办多了。营销人员很擅长这个，并且我们已经看到实例了——香烟公司设计了一个很酷的卡通角色Joe Camel来做香烟广告。这让人们意识到，应该规定烟草行业不得把儿童作为目标受众。

现在，我们看到Facebook已经成为儿童社交游戏领域的主力平台。在他们的游戏中，孩子的社会价值很大程度上取决于他们在该平台上的记录。我绝对不相信，Facebook上普及性地使用强制消费模式会是巧合。更让我不能接受的是，Facebook游戏几乎都使用卡通和儿童样角色（大头大眼的角色）也是巧合。在Joe Camel离开人们的视野的10多年之后，似乎这些相同的营销手段卷土重来了。

正如我在2011年《Zynga游戏分析报告》一文中所说的，当没有成人在场时，大型零售商会向所有年龄层次的孩子出售Zynga的游戏点卡。Facebook游戏即将取消他们的货币系统，把支付方式转向本地货币，可能会缓和这种现象，或者也可能只禁止未成年人进入那些自有货币卡的游戏。

解决方案

我认为使用真钱或它的等价物（游戏币）的功能应该禁用，如果游戏中父母知情选项没有勾选的话。我可不认为使用信用卡就一定表示家长同意。如果一个孩子“借”了父母的信用卡，结果把钱刷光了，父母会觉得自己是在不知情的情况下使用了卡吗？

在这里，我要说的是，我认为让未成年人使用游戏币也不是最好的办法。在没有父母的监督下，孩子并不能很好地判断购买物的价值。在游戏中让孩子使用通用货币是很好的，因为他们可以学习数学、预算，甚至经济学知识。我认为针对未成年的游戏中不应该出现IAP。如果你的反应是“喔，那微交易还怎么进行下去？”那么我不得不怀疑，你就是承认自己要把儿童当作最好的赢利来源。

向儿童出售游戏是一个非常困难的处境，因为你不是向一个人要钱。你是同时向孩子以及孩子的家推销你的游戏，家长和孩子的观点是有冲突的，且二者均有否决权。于是，我所谓的“二元”赢利模式应运而生了。这种模式兼顾了双方的需要，不必使用IAP和游戏币。透明度是关键，成年人应该能非常迅速地理解你销售的产品是什么以及意义是什么。

未来趋势

当公司布署游戏的“花钱买赢”策略时，他们基本是在说：“我重申出价赢过别人这个概念。只要你花足够多的钱，你可以打败任何人。那些花钱不如你多的人会离开，但我们的营销团队会保证走掉的人迅速被新玩家取代，因为如果你独孤求败了，你就不会再花钱了。”所以，也许这只是迎合了现在社会上越来越浓重的自我主义趋势。但如果我们通过奖励这种作风而导致它出现，又会怎么样呢？先有奖励再有自我主义，还是先有自我主义再有奖励？又是一个鸡生蛋蛋生鸡的问题。我想二者兼有，正如我之前所说的，游戏不是唯一的媒体。

我认为，有些公司更热衷于开发针对儿童的游戏是必然的。除了数值分析人员，最激进的公司甚至会雇用像我这样的科学工作者来优化未成年市场的开发战略。最终结果是，国家出台法律法规；某些亚洲国家和地区已经这么做了。但同时，游戏公司还是会继续靠游戏这片荒野地挣孩子的钱。

忧虑的消费者和有责任感的游戏公司可能会呼吁一种新的游戏模式——“儿童友好型免费模式”。我知道人们已经在研究这种模式了，但我认为他们还可以做得更好一些。据我所知，甚至目前在营销中的游戏仍然有IAP和游戏币。因为这类产品的需求量大，所以靠这些方式非常有利可图。

我们越是使用可疑的商业模式挣孩子的钱，游戏行业的社会声望就会越下降。并且，只要发生青少年暴力事件，其他媒体就可以更加理直气壮地叫嚣“这是互动媒体的罪过”。到那时，甚至最理性的决策者也不得不对游戏行业强硬了，无论我们是不是罪有应得。（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）

Monetizing Children

by Ramin Shokrizade

As uncomfortable as this subject makes me, I feel that as a community we need to start discussing the subject of how we sell games to children. A number of major studios have been asking me questions related to this under NDA, but I think this conversation needs to also be public. For brevity sake I am not attempting to make this a scientific-grade paper, but I do need to introduce some research because there are many layers involved in this discussion.

First I would recommend the cover article in the May 20, 2013 edition of TIME Magazine. The part that most interested me was the finding that the Millennial Generation exhibits three times the rate of narcissism as any previously studied generation. While the exact source is unknown, I don’t think it is our rapidly changing diet of food, but our rapidly changing diet of media that is the primary source.

While I think everyone will feel confident pointing fingers at the social mechanisms that children learn from sites such as MySpace and Facebook, I have to believe that interactive media is also to blame. It would be just a bit too convenient to blame “the other guys” when games have such a profound effect on learning.

With infrastructure decaying in the USA, in the form of just about every sort of infrastructure you can think of (roads, bridges, dams, schools, etc.), you could say previous generations were a bit selfish in not leaving the same opportunities to their children. With real incomes going down. budget deficits rising, and borrowing from the social security fund putting its integrity in doubt, you could say that the selfishness of previous generations was unprecedented. Finding out that this trend might be increasing by even 10% in the latest generation would be catastrophic news.

Finding out that it is increasing by 200% is, well, a good time to reflect on the future of our species.

Numerous studies have shown that interactive media affects brain development. Some studies show positive results, some show negative results, and some show both. What is certain, is that exposure to interactive media changes the brain. What is also certain, at least in 2013, is that we really don’t know how or how much yet.

The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex

Here I am going to use the US Department of Health and Human Services and the wiki on “Maturity (Psychological)” as references.

The Prefrontal Cortex is the slowest part of the brain to develop as the brain generally develops from “back to front”.

This brain region gives an individual the capacity to exercise “good judgment” when presented with difficult life situations. Brain research indicating that brain development is not complete until near the age of 25, refers specifically to the development of the prefrontal cortex.3

What this means is that the capacity to make sound long term judgments is not just a psychological state, but a biological state that is age dependent.

The pre-frontal cortex, which is responsible for higher cognitive functions such as planning, decision-making, judgment and reasoning, develops and matures most rapidly during early adolescence and into the early 20s.[17] Accompanying the growth of the pre-frontal cortex is continued synaptic pruning (the trimming of rarely used synapses) as well as an increased myelination of nerve fibers in the brain, which serve to insulate and speed up signal transmission between neurons. The incomplete development of this process contributes to the finding that adolescents use their brain less broadly than do adults when asked to inhibit a response and show less cross-talk (communication across diverse regions of the brain).[18] The brain’s “cross-talk” may be related to decision-making concerning risk-taking, with one study of American adolescents finding delayed reaction time and decreased spread across brain regions in a task asking them to determine whether a dangerous action is a good idea or not.[19] Steinberg observes that there is close overlap in the activated brain regions for socioemotional and reward information, which may pose a challenge when making decisions in the most high-risk peer contexts.[20] One study found that preference for small immediate rewards over larger long-term rewards was associated with increased activation with regions primarily responsible for socioemotional decision-making.[21]

Okay now if were to consider the design technique that Zynga describes as “fun pain”, the idea is to inflict some very uncomfortable situation on a player in their game, and then offer to remove that situation in return for money. While the vast majority of adults will make the assessment that it is in their best interest to not spend the money and to just exit the application that is designed to hurt them, it is biologically harder to come to this conclusion if the decision maker is a child.

Coercive Monetization of Children

Now if I was a company that wanted to sell a product to consumers that most adults would correctly identify as being a bad idea, what would I do? If I could market my product to humans that were too young to correctly evaluate the long term effects of using my product, that would make things a lot easier. Marketers are adept at this, and we already saw this with the Camel cigarette commercials that had Joe Camel in the form of a cool cartoon character. It took a generation to regulate the end of children being targeted by the tobacco industry.

Now we have Facebook which has become a staple of childhood socialization. A child’s social worth is largely determined by their mark on Facebook. I find it extremely difficult to believe that the almost universal use of coercive monetization models on Facebook is a coincidence. I find it even more unlikely that the almost universal use of cartoonish and child-like characters (with their large heads and big eyes) in Facebook games is a coincidence. Ten years after the end of Joe Camel’s pied piper rampage came to an end in 1997, it just seems like the same marketing campaigns found new life. I discuss briefly what makes a monetization model coercive in my Systems of Control in F2P paper.

As I discuss in my 2011 Zynga Analysis paper, major retailers will sell Zynga time cards for cash to children of any age, without the presence of an adult. The impending move by Facebook to remove their currency and shift sales to native currencies on FB games may improve the situation in the future, or it may just channel the traffic of minors to those games that have their own currency cards.

Solutions and Best Practices

I believe that the use of real money or its equivalent (premium currencies) should be removed as an option in games without the explicit informed consent of parents. I don’t think the availability of a credit card necessarily constitutes informed consent. Can a parent that has her credit card “borrowed” by one of her children have all charges reversed if she finds it was used without her consent?

What I am also getting at here is that I think the use of premium currencies by minors is not a best practice. Children are not in a good position to judge the value of purchases without parental supervision. The use of common currencies in games for children is great, since this teaches them math, budgeting, and maybe even economic skills. I don’t think in app purchases (IAPs) belong anywhere in games marketed to minors. If your response is “oh that is going to make it a lot harder to sell microtransactions”, then I’m going to suspect this is an admission that you know children are more vulnerable to suspect monetization methodologies.

When you sell a game to a child, it is a very difficult situation because you are not monetizing one person. You must sell to the child and the parent at the same time, both parties may have conflicting objectives, and both have veto power. This gives rise to the need for a new class of monetization models I call “dyadic” models. These models react to the needs of both parties and meet both simultaneously. This can be done without the use of IAPs and premium currencies. Transparency is key, the adult should be able to understand very quickly exactly what you are selling and why.

Future Trends

When a company deploys a pay to win game, they are essentially saying “I will reaffirm your notions of superiority over others for a price. You can beat anyone if you spend enough. Those that are not as narcissistic as you will leave but our marketing team will make sure they are quickly replaced, because we can’t sell to you if you can’t lord over anyone.” So perhaps this is just a natural adaptation to an increase in narcissism in society. But what if we are creating this narcissism by rewarding it? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I am guessing it is both, and as I have said earlier, we are not the only complicit branch of media.

I think it is inevitable that some companies will iterate towards even more exploitation of children in games. The most aggressive companies will hire soft and hard scientists like myself, in addition to quantitative scientists, to optimize the exploitation of youth. The ultimate result will be national regulation, which is already happening in some parts of Asia. In the meantime, such agents will try to make as much money as possible in this Wild Wild West of gaming.

Concerned consumers and the companies seeking to sell to them may create a new class of “Child Friendly F2P” games that savvy parents can steer towards. I know there have been some efforts in this direction, but I think they can still do better. To my knowledge even the games marketed currently as such still have premium IAPs and currencies. As consumer demand for these types of products increases, the money to be made via this path will get quite lucrative.

The longer we keep trying to exploit our children with our questionable business models, the worse our reputation in society is going to get. Every time there is a case of youth violence and the other branches of media say “the interactive media industry is at fault”, it is going to just get easier and easier for them. At some point even the more rational decision makers in society are going to have to put the hammer down on us, whether we collectively deserve it or not.(source:gamasutra)