作者：Mike Rose

Mark D. Griffiths教授是一名心理学家，同时也是Nottingham Trent University心理学部International Gaming Research Unit的主任。他是因为对于电子游戏上瘾和博彩领域的研究而出名。（请点击此处阅读本文上篇、中篇）

去年Griffiths发表了一篇论文，即讨论了社交游戏带有博彩元素，并且未涉及到任何有关钱的内容，只是通过应用内部购买引进了博彩的原则。

他说道：“第一眼看来，像《FarmVille》这样的游戏与博彩并没有多少联系，但这些活动背后的心里元素却非常相近。甚至当游戏并未包含钱时，它们也有可能将玩家带到博彩的原则与乐趣中。像Zynga等公司便因为利用博彩机制去创建游戏世界而遭到指责。”

Griffiths发现免费游戏中鼓励博彩行为的一个关键元素便是随机强化内容——也就是赢得或获得其它间歇性奖励的不可预知性。

他说道：“较小的不可预知奖励将创造较高的用户粘性和反复行为。在少数情况下这也将导致瘾性。”

Griffiths同样指出了“越来越多研究”表明那些面对着虚拟货币的玩家将发现消费这些虚假的金钱非常有趣。

在这些例子中，当不再有钱消费时，玩家“便会发现博彩机制，并思考一个严肃的问题，即关于使用虚拟金钱的博彩是否会鼓励他们对博彩采取一种积极的态度。”

在有关应用内部购买的主题中，Griffiths说道：“游戏内部虚拟商品和配饰的引进（即人们用真钱购买的）是一种心理主线。”

“这变得更加接近博彩了，就像社交游戏玩家知道自己在花钱并且未获得足够的收益回报。经常有人问我，为什么人们要在《FarmVille》等游戏中支付真钱去购买虚拟道具。作为研究了老虎机玩家25年多的人，我发现这其中的相似处多得惊人。”

Griffiths认为纯粹的博彩游戏与一些免费游戏的真正区别在于博彩游戏允许你赢回自己的钱，添加一个额外的维度而进一步驱动收益的发展。这也是为什么像Zynga等免费游戏工作室现在逐渐转向纯粹的博彩游戏市场的主要原因。

Griffiths继续阐述免费社交游戏与博彩游戏间界限逐渐模糊，并因此伴随着“各种道德，伦理，法律和社交问题”的出现。

在年初与同事Michael Auer共同发表的另外一篇论文中，Griffiths说道：“伴随着独立博彩玩家的个体敏感性与风险元素的最重要元素是与游戏的速度和频率相关的结构特性，而不是游戏类型。”

他补充道：“这里存在的一般规则在于，事件频率越高，博彩活动就越能引起个体问题（特别是当个体是敏感且脆弱的时候）的出现。问题和病态博彩从本质上看来是关于奖励，以及这些奖励出现的速度与频率。几乎任何游戏都可以设计为带有高事件频率或低事件频率。”

结果便是，他认为如果提供给玩家的奖励更具有潜能，那么活动将变得更具有问题且更让人上瘾。

Griffiths认为这对于获得“安全”情节具有潜在的可能性，因为基于游戏设计，玩家的消费不能超过一个强制的结构限制——这将保证玩家不会犯一个博彩问题，不管他们的敏感性。

Griffiths强调，游戏领域其实刚刚开始研究免费游戏中的心理影响。

他补充道：“从经验来看，通过社交网站我们几乎不能了解有关博彩游戏的心理影响，尽管有研究认为，青少年玩免费游戏是摄取真正的博彩与问题博彩的一大冒险元素。不管做了怎样的研究，我们都需要确保游戏产业始终比研究者和立法者快两步。”

争锋相对

最近，两个关于免费游戏消费强迫性vs付费游戏消费强迫性的分析在社交媒体上传开了。

产业顾问Ramin Shokrizade写了许多有关免费游戏盈利的论文，详细描述了自己关于社交游戏如何通过不完整的信息与虚拟货币欺骗玩家进行应用内部消费的研究。

部分方法包含提供给玩家“有趣的痛苦”——这是Zynga 的Roger Dickey在描述玩家进入一个不舒服的位置，然后能够通过花钱删除这种“痛苦”的情况所创造的术语。

也存在一些与之相反的盈利方法，Shokrizade将其称为“奖励删除”。即免费游戏提供给玩家巨大的奖励，而如果玩家不花钱的话便威胁他们要没收奖励。

他说道：“为了有效使用这一技巧，你必须告诉玩家他们已经获得了某些内容，然后再告诉他们这一内容没了。在剥夺玩家的奖励前允许他们拥有该奖励越久，这一方法效果便越大。”

Shokrizade说道，而虚拟货币的使用是当强制性真正发挥作用时。在Griffiths陈述虚拟货币教授玩家博彩机制前，Shokrizade抢先一步讨论了当玩家将现实货币当成虚拟货币时，他们的忧患意识便会降低，从而不会因为自己花太多钱而忧虑。

此外，Shokrizade还详细描述了他所谓的“赌注游戏”——当你一开始接触这些游戏时，它们扮演的是免费游戏，但逐渐地它们将演变成基于金钱的游戏，即更有经验的玩家将投入真钱去打败其他玩家。

在那之后几天，Spry Fox的Daniel Cook发表了一篇名为“Coercive Pay-2-Play techniques”的博文，在文章中他带着一种半玩笑式口吻反驳了免费游戏。

他强调付费游戏会邀请玩家在还未开始游戏前投入大量的金钱，而一些公司还使用了视频，广告以及预告片去提高用户对于他们即将问世的游戏的好奇度。

Cook补充道，事先的“宣传”意味着开发者不需要担心真正的游戏设计，可以简单地通过“设置一个吸引人的主题，华丽的图像以及能力去快速呈现出较短的序列游戏”而进行销售。

他也瞄准了斯金纳箱的游戏设计，像捆绑销售和限时折扣等各种销售方式。最后他开玩笑地说着付费游戏正在伤害产业，并且是一种不道德的实践。

当然，Cook有点轻视免费游戏参数，尽管整篇文章的要点是比较免费游戏模式到底有多“强制”——特别是当用这些最糟糕的情节与付费游戏的最糟糕情节相比较时。

其它观点

Laralyn McWilliams是电子游戏设计师兼制作人，曾经作为SOE的免费儿童游戏《Free Realms》的创意总监。她也曾就免费游戏模式的优势与劣势做出了详细描述。

我将自己在写这篇文章时所找到的许多信息发送给McWilliams，她告诉我：“从实践角度来看，人们总是会选择那个能够让自己抛弃其它活动的活动。”

她强调，不管我们是受到鼓励还是阻止，这一场景的人类行为都会归根为两个主要元素：

1.不管所包含的活动是被当成“有价值的”或者“值得做的”，不管被排除的活动是否是“必要的”。

2.像食物，睡觉，健康，卫生，维持收入来源以及支付重要费用等普遍元素。

她说道：“第一个标准是主观的，基于不同人的评估会出现不同的结果。大多数人同意当在赌场花钱时，如果你不去支付自己的账单便会被驱逐出去是一种不受鼓励的行为。大多数人也同意一天花许多时间，不睡觉或不吃饭而沉迷于游戏中，搞垮自己的身体也是不受鼓励的行为。”

McWilliams认为，当你开始比较免费游戏消费与传统零售电子游戏消费时，交谈将变得混乱。她还说到，当我们不能理解那种长达一年往一款免费游戏中投入数千美元的人时，却会为许多在同样时间短购买了主机和PC游戏的用户辩护。

她在谈及我所收集的一个故事时说道：“我猜，如果他是花钱购买一款零售游戏，他便会离开并说道‘因为每个月都在购买一款新游戏，我都没钱交房租了。我必须回头。”

她继续说道：“他可能不会从客观角度上思考游戏是否值得这些钱——只是考虑到自己是否太过频繁地为游戏花钱了。在免费游戏中有些内容会阻止他花钱，尽管这会让他质疑自己的钱是否花得对。当然，从社交角度来看这些免费游戏以及虚拟商品的价值与我们对于其它兴趣（包括零售哟徐i）费用的价值评估是不同的，但我猜他是基于同样的方式进行思考，甚至未考虑到任何社交元素。”

记着这一点，McWilliams认为免费游戏开发者应该问自己两个基本的问题：

1.我们是否该尝试着看清楚玩家的不健康消费模式并想办法限制他们？

2.我们是否该为消费提供有效的机制，如果我们已经这么做了，为什么许多玩家不能感受到这点？

McWilliams说道：“当你着眼于数据时（游戏邦注：如将其与博彩游戏中不健康瘾性行为模式进行比较），当发现第一类别的玩家数量很少，我们就应该意识到公众（甚至是我们自己的玩家）将更多玩家归类到‘不健康消费’类别中，因为他们认为不管往游戏中投入多少钱都不会创造出有意义的价值。”

简单地来说：“如果你现在坐下并在《勿忘我》中投入60美元，并且游戏质量就是你所期待的那样，那么你的想法是否与投入60美元与《Clash of Clans》一样？许多人不会这么想，即使他们是基于同样的时间长短在玩游戏。”

她继续说道：“虚拟商品是否是无形的？实际上当你购买了《勿忘我》后，当你下一周再打开游戏时它并不会要你再支付同样的费用。”

国际社交游戏联盟（ISGC）是年初所成立的一个组织，其目标是帮助他们了解社交游戏业务的内部运行。我与该组织的首席执行官Luc Delany分享了我的发现。

（需要说明的是，ISGC是由Zynga以及一些社交博彩游戏公司所设立的，与我进行交谈的是来自Zynga的代表。）

他告诉我：“许多人都认为社交游戏中消费与真钱博彩行为是一样的。但是玩博彩游戏与任何其它游戏，或者其它类型娱乐的动机却是不同的。”

他继续说道：“从历史上来看，人们总是会在电子游戏和其它娱乐形式中上瘾。就像我花了很多钱在iTunes上以及一些甚至从未看过的电影中，只是因为之前一时的冲动购买了它们。人们会花许多钱购买手提包，去高尔夫球俱乐部，或者其它形式的娱乐，但博彩却是明确被定义为存在投机，机会，与胜负的游戏。”

关于Chris购买了《军团要塞2》的钥匙并洗凭借“不寻常的”道具获得奖励，然后便继续购买钥匙直到发现这样的道具，我问他在这中间是否存在机会元素？

他回答道：“我不会将其当成是与博彩一样的问题。在这样的情境下，你会如何将其与基于相同本质的电视节目进行比较？人们会输入文本去玩游戏，尝试着在盒子里找钱—-然而这并不是一种常规博彩服务。作为一个社会，我们认为这具有花费动机，并在玩家间创造了一定的风险。因此我们认为这种标准的管理是必要的。”

Delany还强调社交游戏已经受到了严格的管理—-这里存在消费者权利，数据保护法，不公平的商业行为指令等等，他还问道：“是否有证据能够证明这种娱乐形式比其它娱乐形式更有害或更让人上瘾？”

这时候，我突然好奇，在我们认真看待这一问题时前，免费游戏到底是具有怎样的危害性或上瘾性？

Delany回答道：“我也不知道。如果你着眼于有关人们对某些事上瘾的故事，那么不管是怎样的娱乐形式都会被戴上这一徽章。在90年代是游戏主机，80年代是电视机，更早之前是收音机—-之前甚至有人说收音机将摧毁我们的文化呢。所以这并不是一个新的话题，人们总是会在新时代中仔细考察一种全新的娱乐形式。这是社会健康发展的一环。”

他继续说道：“但在今天却不存在任何证据能够说明这是一种特别危险的娱乐形式，即不同于人们花钱所进行的其它娱乐形式。我们知道人们花了很多钱在所有的娱乐形式上面。”

未来之路

这里还存在许多可挖掘的内容，而我所讨论的有关免费游戏的内容却只是冰山一角。不管怎样我们仍需要大量的研究去填充这一领域发展的背后宏图。

很显然，没有一个人的理念涉及到政府机构，不管它是否受益于免费游戏玩家。但是为了对本篇文章负责，我联系了联邦贸易委员会以及英国公平交易局的相关人士，并追问了他们的看法。不过考虑到他们每天都会收到大量信件，我并不期待能够听到回应，但一旦我收到了回应，我一定会与大家分享的！

我希望在我继续研究免费游戏设计的潜在心理元素的同时，免费游戏工作室至少能够着眼于当下传播的设计理念，并考虑它们是如何影响玩家的生活。

（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）

Chasing the Whale: Examining the ethics of free-to-play games

by Mike Rose

Research in the field

Dr. Mark D. Griffiths is a psychologist and director of the International Gaming Research Unit in the psychology department at Nottingham Trent University. The professor is well known for his research in the field of video game addiction and gambling.

Griffiths published a paper last year in which he argued that social games have gambling-like elements, even when there is no money involved whatsoever — rather, they introduce the principles of gambling through in-app purchases.

“On first look, games like FarmVille may not seem to have much connection to gambling, but the psychology behind such activities is very similar,” he argues. “Even when games do not involve money, they introduce players to the principles and excitement of gambling. Companies like Zynga have been accused of leveraging the mechanics of gambling to build their empire.”

One element that Griffiths has found to be particularly key in encouraging gambling-like behavior in free-to-play games is the act of random reinforcement — that is, the unpredictability of winning or getting other types of intermittent rewards.

“Small unpredictable rewards lead to highly engaged and repetitive behavior,” he says. “In a minority of cases, this may lead to addiction.”

Griffiths also points to a “growing body of research” that indicates that players who are presented with virtual representations of money (virtual currency) will find that spending and gambling with this fake cash is hugely exciting.

In those instances when there is no money changing hands, players “are learning the mechanics of gambling and there are serious questions about whether gambling with virtual money encourages positive attitudes towards gambling.”

On the topic of in-app purchases, Griffiths says, “The introduction of in-game virtual goods and accessories (that people pay real money for) was a psychological masterstroke.”

“It becomes more akin to gambling, as social gamers know that they are spending money as they play with little or no financial return,” he continues. “The one question I am constantly asked is why people pay real money for virtual items in games like FarmVille. As someone who has studied slot machine players for over 25 years, the similarities are striking.”

Griffiths argues that the real difference between pure gambling games and some free-to-play games is the fact that gambling games allow you to win your money back, adding an extra dimension that can potentially drive revenues even further. This, he says, is why some free-to-play game studios like Zynga are currently moving into the pure gambling market.

Griffiths goes on to reason that the lines between social free-to-play games and gambling is beginning to blur, bringing along with them “various moral, ethical, legal, and social issues.”

In another paper published earlier this year with his colleague Michael Auer, Griffiths argues that “the most important factors along with individual susceptibility and risk factors of the individual gambler are the structural characteristics relating to the speed and frequency of the game rather than the type of game.”

“The general rule is that the higher the event frequency, the more likely it is that the gambling activity will cause problems for the individual (particularly if the individual is susceptible and vulnerable),” he adds. “Problem and pathological gambling are essentially about rewards, and the speed and frequency of those rewards. Almost any game could be designed to either have high event frequencies or low event frequencies.”

As a result, he argues that the more potential rewards that are offered to the player, the more problematic and addictive an activity can become.

Griffiths goes on to argue that it would be potentially possible for a “safe” scenario to be achieved, by which a game is designed such that players cannot spend money past a enforced structural limit — this would ensure that players were not able to develop a gambling problem, regardless of their susceptibility.

Griffiths is keen to stress that, as of yet, the psychosocial impact of free-to-play games are only just beginning to be investigated by people in the field of games.

“Empirically, we know almost nothing about the psychosocial impact of gambling via social networking sites, although research suggests the playing of free games among adolescents is one of the risk factors for both the uptake of real gambling and problem gambling,” he adds. “Whatever research is done, we can always be sure that the gaming industry will be two steps ahead of both researchers and legislators.”

Tit for tat

Most recently, a pair of analyses on the topic of free-to-play spending coercion versus pay-to-play spending coercion was spread far and wide via social media.

Ramin Shokrizade, an industry consultant who has written numerous papers on the topic of free-to-play monetization, detailed his research into how social games will trick players into making in-app purchases through incomplete information and virtual currency.

Part of this method involves providing the player with “fun pain” — a term coined by Zynga’s Roger Dickey to denote the situation in which a player is put into an uncomfortable position, and then offered the chance to remove the “pain” by spending real money.

There’s also a sort of opposite monetization method to this, which Shokrizade calls “Reward Removal.” A free-to-play game offers the play a huge reward, and then subsequently threatens to take away the reward if the player doesn’t fork out cash.

“To be effective with this technique, you have to tell the player they have earned something, and then later tell them that they did not,” he says. “The longer you allow the player to have the reward before you take it away, the more powerful is the effect.”

But the use of virtual currency is where the coercion really takes off, says Shokrizade. Griffiths stated before that spending virtual currency teaches players the mechanics of gambling, but Shokrizade goes a step further and argues that when players see their real-world cash in terms of virtual currency, it lowers the sense of anxiety and allows them to be less apprehensive about spending larger amounts.

Elsewhere, Shokrizade details what he calls “Ante Games” — those free-to-play titles that appear to be games based on skill when you first boot them up, but gradually turn into a money game, as the more experienced players put real money in to beat other players. It’s worth reading Shokrizade’s entire article on the topic, which also delves into “Progress Gates” and sales boosts.

Though there’s no reference to Shokrizade’s piece in it, Spry Fox’s Daniel Cook posted a blog a few days later titled “Coercive Pay-2-Play techniques,” in which he takes to task many of the arguments against free-to-play with a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal of his own.

He notes that pay-to-play games invite players to spend large amounts of money without ever having played the game first, while some companies purposely use videos, adverts and previews to artificially increase excitement for upcoming and released games.

Cook adds that this pre-release “propaganda” means that developers don’t need to worry as much about the actual game design, and can simply make the sell by “having a catchy theme, pretty graphics and the ability to turn out short sequential games rapidly.”

He also targets Skinner Box game design, the various methods of sale such as bundles and time-limited discounts, and other forms of manipulation in free-to-play games. He closes by jokingly suggesting that pay-to-play games are hurting the industry, and are an immoral practice.

Cook is, of course, is making light of the free-to-play arguments a fair bit, although the overall point of the article is to compare just how “coercive” the free-to-play model actually is — especially when these worst-case scenarios are compared to the worst-case scenarios for pay-to-play games. Cook’s blog is well worth a read.

Other perspectives

Laralyn McWilliams is a video game designer and producer who has previously worked on SOE’s free-to-play kids’ game Free Realms as creative director. She has written at length about the strengths and weaknesses of the free-to-play model.

I sent McWilliams much of the information I had uncovered while researching this article, and she told me, “From a practical perspective, people will always find an activity that attracts them to the exclusion of many other activities.”

She notes that whether we should be encouraging or discouraging this common human behavior comes down to two main factors:

1. Whether the activities being included are considered “valuable” or “worthwhile,” and whether the activities being excluded are (or are considered) “essential.”

2. Universal elements like food, sleep, health, hygiene, maintaining a source of income, and paying important bills.

“The first criteria is largely subjective and varies tremendously based on who’s doing the evaluation,” she notes. “Most people would agree that spending money at the casino to the extent that your bills go unpaid and you get evicted is a behavior we shouldn’t encourage. Most people would also agree that playing a game so many hours in the day that you don’t sleep or eat and your health deteriorates is also something we shouldn’t encourage.”

Where the conversation gets muddy, McWilliams argues, is when you begin to compare free-to-play spending with traditional retail video game spending. She notes that while we might pull a face at someone spending thousands of dollars on a single free-to-play over a year or so, you could argue that many players who purchase console and PC games may spend just as much over the same period of time.

“I suspect that if he’d spent the money on retail games, he’d walk away saying, ‘I keep having trouble making rent because I’m buying a new game every month. I have to figure out a way to cut back,” she says of one of the stories I collected.

“He probably wouldn’t question too much whether games in general are worth the money from the objective perspective — just about whether he’s buying them too frequently,” she continues. “There’s something in the way he spent money in the free-to-play game, though, that made him question on a fundamental level whether his money was well spent. Sure, some of that’s probably the social perspective right now that free-to-play games in general and virtual goods in particular are not expenses we value as much as expenses for other hobbies (including retail games), but I suspect he might still feel the same way even without that social input.”

With this in mind, McWilliams believes that are two fundamental questions that free-to-play developers should be asking themselves:

1. Should we try to be aware of unhealthy spend patterns in players and find ways to limit/discourage them?

2. Are we providing good value for money spent, and if we are, why doesn’t it feel that way to many players?

Says McWilliams, “Even if the percentage of players who fit in the first category is very small when you look at actual data (and compare it to the behavior patterns recognized as unhealthy addiction in gambling, for example), we should be concerned about the fact that public perception — even from our own players — would put far, far more people into the ‘unhealthy spend’ category, because there’s a fundamental feeling that any significant amount of money spent in the game is money that didn’t result in meaningful value.”

To put it simply: “If you sat down right now and dropped $60 on Remember Me, and the quality of the game was what you expected, would you feel the same about that as if you sat down right now and dropped $60 on Clash of Clans? A lot of people wouldn’t, even if they play the games for the same length of time.”

She continues, “Is it the intangibility of virtual goods? The fact that once you buy Remember Me, it doesn’t ask you to spend that same amount again next week?”

The International Social Games Coalition is a group that was set up earlier this year, with the aim to better educate people about the inner-workings of the social games business. I spoke with the group’s CEO Luc Delany regarding my findings.

(I should note at this point that the ISGC was set up by Zynga alongside a variety of social casino game companies, and it was a Zynga representative that suggested I talk to Delany. I say this not to undermine any of Delany’s points, but rather to give you the full picture when reading his views, and to explain why much of the discussion is focused around comparing free-to-play “whale” spending with “whale” spending in the gambling industry.)

“Lots of people have tried to draw the parallel between people spending money in social games, and real-money gambling,” he tells me. “However, the motivations for playing a gambling game versus any other game, or any other type of entertainment, are very different.”

He notes that in gambling games, there is a risk of loss, and the opportunity of winning — therefore the addiction that players have to free-to-play games is very different.

“There is a documented history of people being addicted to video games, and other forms of entertainment,” he adds. “I spend too much money on iTunes, and films I’ll never watch, just because I make an impulsive buy. People spend so much money on handbags, on golf clubs, on all kinds of other forms of entertainment, but gambling is very clearly defined as games where there is a stake, a chance, and a win or loss.”

I ask him about the example of Chris purchasing Team Fortress 2 “keys” in the hope that he will be rewarded with an “unusual” item, and then continuing to purchase keys until he found such an item. Isn’t there an element of stake and chance there?

“I don’t see it as the same issue as gambling,” he answers. “Under that scenario, how do you compare it to certain TV shows that are essentially the same thing? People text in to play along with a game, trying to find the money in the box — yet that’s not a regulated gambling service. As a society, we’ve judged that to be the motivation of a payout, that creates a certain risk amongst players. Therefore we’ve decided that this level of regulation is necessary.”

Delany is keen to stress that social games are already heavily regulated — there are consumer rights, data protection acts, unfair commercial practice directives, and more — and he questions, “Is there proof that this form of entertainment is more harmful or addictive than other forms of entertainment?”

At this point, I questioned how harmful or addictive a free-to-play game would have to be before we, as an industry, should have to take it seriously.

“I don’t have an answer for that,” answers Delany. “If you look at stories about people being addicted to things, whatever is the latest form of entertainment gets hit with that badge. In the ’90s it was games consoles, in the ’80s it was television, before then it was radio — radio was going to destroy culture etc. So it’s not a new discussion, that people scrutinize new forms of entertainment. It’s a healthy part of society.”

“However,” he adds, “today there is no evidence to suggest that this is a particularly dangerous form of entertainment, as opposed to any other form of entertainment that people spend money on. We know that people spend too much money is all forms of entertainment.”

The road ahead

There’s a lot to take in here, and clearly my delving into the underbelly of free-to-play is just the tip of the iceberg. Whichever way the signs appear to point, a hell of a lot more research is needed to truly paint the full picture of what is going on behind the scenes.

It’s clear that no-one’s idea of a good step forward is to get government bodies involved in the process, regardless of whether it would benefit free-to-play players or not. As part of my due diligence for this article, I did get in touch with both the Federal Trade Commission and the UK’s Office of Fair Trading, to assess their views. I don’t expect to hear back from them for a while, given the volume of correspondence they no doubt receive, but I plan to relay any response to do receive.

In the meantime, it would seem foolish to let the topic lie, especially while the conversation is well and truly flowing. While research into the potential psychological elements of free-to-play game design continues, it’s my hope that free-to-play studios will at least take a hard look at the current design manifestos being carted around, and consider how they may be affecting the lives of their players.(source:gamasutra)