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游戏融入故事元素能够提高玩家留存率

发布时间:2011-08-01 18:24:43 Tags:,,

作者:Brian Poel

休闲免费游戏通过各种设计技巧鼓励免费玩家沉浸其中,掏钱消费。虽然当前媒介不乏古老游戏内容,但没有内容比故事叙述更古老,更通俗。故事作为传统娱乐方式,是人类相互交流,同世界沟通的原始精神渠道。在游戏中,故事是持续体验的刺激因素,因此其在创造长久粘性和真实病毒式传播方面存在巨大潜力。

第1日留存率

在免费游戏中,最重要的的营收参数是新用户留存率。你无法基于仅体验1次的玩家创收。那么游戏指南任务艰巨(游戏邦注:很多游戏都提供操作指南)。那么要如何让指南既提供充足信息,又富有娱乐性?那就是将其打造成故事。

是的,很多游戏都以关卡形式向玩家呈现任务列表,将玩家带入各种游戏玩法中。多么枯燥乏味!融入某些背景,某些含义,同关卡联系在一起:创造一个故事。

总结过去

若故事是吸引玩家的重要架构,那么3回合故事是创建结构模块的基本模式。3回合玩法已沿用多年,是个通用模式。

传统定义是:设置、应对、结局。而体现在休闲游戏中是:设置关卡,玩家应对和完成关卡任务,最终决定关卡奖励。

这似乎把所有步骤都归结至关卡一点上,但你收获的远要有趣得多:以3个独立关卡创建故事脉络。让首个关卡充当基础和故事背景,同第二个关卡的内容形成对比,然后让第三个关卡将所有内容串起来,然后创造故事情节的最终结局。

促进玩家消费

若第1日留存率是你的首要考虑因素,那么第7日留存率就仅次于此。那么要如何缩小最初体验同玩家消费之间的差距?将玩家消费转变成角色消费!通过在游戏中引入角色故事脉络,赋予游戏个性色彩。

你的首个角色应是通过指南指导玩家体验的旁观者,但不要仅停留于此!引入系列次要角色,让每个角色都有自己的故事,自己的关卡。这些角色在目睹关卡成功完成时都应有面部表情(游戏邦注:而这只有玩家能够实现)。

Frontierville from .rackspacecloud.com

Frontierville from .rackspacecloud.com

举例:《Frontierville》——游戏一开始就引入Hank、Fanny和Bess角色,每个角色都有其任务安排。迎合情人节,玩家需决定哪个角色会坠入爱河。这让玩家享有在其自身领域内实现故事内容差异化的权利。

高瞻远瞩

要想长久留住玩家,就需好好研究短期关卡。你需融入长远横向故事脉络,充当奋斗目标和发展方向。这样玩家既能完成个人任务,从中获得成就感,又知道前方还有更丰富的故事内容。

举例:《City of Wonder》——和传统游戏《文明》一样,《City of Wonder》的发展脉络是沿科技进步路线,将玩家从石器时代带入现代社会。这些众所周知的探索和创新时代给当前玩家选择和期望提供背景,而玩家同时又能叙述自己的城市故事。

city of wonder from rackspacecloud.com

city of wonder from rackspacecloud.com

结交朋友是关键

留存率显然非常重要,但我们都知道病毒式传播和随之而来的玩家获取投入是推动游戏发展的实际因素。如何促使玩家不仅邀请好友,而且真正关心好友活动内容?是的,就是通过故事。

以富有意义的方式将好友融入故事叙述当中(游戏邦注:而不仅仅是点击X道具),促使玩家好友在提供帮助时觉得自己也融入故事中。玩家应能回顾故事,观察好友参与足迹。

举例:《CityVille》——想要完成某些建筑,你需要X数量的好友提供帮助。游戏不是简单呈现目标发展状况,相反游戏让所有好友都在建筑中扮演某名称的角色,基于其给予帮助的先后含蓄呈现重要性差别。这就是在典型“收集X”关卡中融入故事内容。

错失机会:建筑完成后,所有人员任务分配记录便消失。

继续讲述好故事

优秀故事的作用在日常生活中随处可见——从我们听到的新闻,读到的博客以及观看的电影电视内容。故事是我们解释和理解周围世界及同其关系的方式。在游戏中融入故事元素,你就能把系列枯燥重复的内容变得富有意义,值得分享。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Solve Player Retention with the Oldest Trick in the Book

By Brian Poel

Casual freemium games utilize a variety of game design techniques to encourage free-to-players to stick around and spend money. While many are gamey artifacts of the medium, there’s nothing more old-school and non-techy than good old storytelling. As the original form of entertainment, stories tap into a primal psychological way for human beings to relate to each other and to the world around them. In games, stories provide powerful motivation to keep playing, and therefore the greatest potential for creating long term stickiness and heartfelt virality.

Day 1 Retention

With freemium games, the absolutely most important monetization metric is new player retention. You can’t monetize a player who walks through the front door on day one and walks right out again. This puts enormous pressure on the tutorial (your game has a tutorial, right? good!). So how do you make your tutorial both informational and entertaining? Package it inside a story!

Yes, many games use a string of quests to give players simple tasks to accomplish, introducing them to various aspects of gameplay. How dry! Give some context, some meaning, something to attach the quests together: give them a story.

Learn from the Past

If a story is the fundamental structure to capture your players — the 3 act story is the most basic set of building blocks for that structure. There’s a reason that the 3 act play has been used all these centuries — it just plain works.

The classic definition (according to Wikipedia) is: setup, confrontation, resolution. One way to read that in a casual game context is: set up the quest when you give it out, the player then confronts the quest tasks and completes them, and finally you resolve the rewards of the quest.

That kinda boils down all the steps into the one step of the quest itself, but you can get a little fancier than that: build your story arc with 3 separate quests. Have the first quest set up the ground-work and context, throw in a story complication for the second quest, then have the third quest tie it all up and create the final resolution of the initial story promise.

Keep your Players Invested

If Day 1 Retention is your first priority, Day 7 Retention is the next priority after that. So how do you bridge the gap from initial curiosity to player investment? Convert your player’s investment into character investment! Give some personality to your game by introducing a story arc for the characters in the game (you do have a cast of characters in your game, right? good!).

Your primary character could be the  narrator who guided them through the tutorial — but don’t stop there! Introduce a parade of secondary characters, each with their own story and their own quests. These characters should have an emotional investment in seeing their quests accomplished successfully, something that only the player can do for them.

Example: Frontierville — the characters of Hank, Fanny and Bess were all introduced after the start of the game, each with their own quest lines. Just in time for Valentines Day, players get to decide which of these characters will fall in love. Wow! That gives players the power to make a real difference in the ongoing story of their own frontier town.

Thinking Big

To really hook players for the long haul, you need more than a smattering of short term quests. You need a long term narrative arc that stretches out into the horizon, something to strive for, something to build towards. This way, even while they are completing individual quests and the sense of accomplishment that brings, players know that these are stepping stones to some larger story that they are participating in.

Example: City of Wonder – Like the classic game Civilization, progress though City of Wonder is guided by a technology tree taking players from the Stone Age to the Modern Age. These easily understood ages of discovery and innovation give context to current player choices and a sense of anticipation for what comes next while the player tells the story of their city.

Make Friends Matter

Retention is certainly important, but we all know that virality, and the accompanying savings on customer acquisition, is what’s going to really make your game population grow. How do you get players to not only invite their friends but really care whether their friends are actively playing? Yeah, you guessed it: story.

Find ways to incorporate friends into the quest narratives in meaningful ways — more than just clicking to send Item X, a player’s friends should feel like part of the story when they help out. A player should be able to look back at the story as it has unfolded and see the footprints from where their friends got involved.

Example: CityVille — In order to complete some buildings, you need X number of separate Friends to help out. Rather than simply showing a growing # towards the goal, each Friend is assigned a named position in the building, in an implied hierarchy of importance based on how soon they helped out. This adds a story layer on top of an otherwise typical “collect X” quest.

Missed Opportunity: After the building is complete, all record of these staff assignments is lost.

Go Forth and Tell Good Stories

The power of a good story is something that we see around us every day — in the news that we hear about, the blogs we read, the movies and tv shows we watch. Stories are how we explain and understand the world around us and our relationship with it. Use that in your games and you’ll transform them from a series of dry and repetitive tasks into something meaningful and worth sharing.(Source:plotluckgames


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