作者：Ramin Shokrizade

强制性盈利

强制性盈利是基于使用一些不完全信息“哄骗”人们进行购买，或隐藏某些信息而蒙蔽用户的能力。隐藏购买与掩饰行动和成本之间的关系一样简单。

研究表明，在用户和真钱之间放置一种媒介货币，如“游戏宝石”（付费货币）能够避免用户精通于评估交易价值。除了媒介对象，我还将其成为“分层”，即让用户的大脑很难评估情境，特别是在存在一些附加压力时。

这种附加压力经常是以Roger Dickey（来自Zynga）所说的“痛并快乐着”的形式体现出来。我曾在2011年的《Two Contrasting Views of Monetization》论文中描述了这一内容。这是指先将用户放在一个不受欢迎的位置上，然后再提供方法让他们删除这种“痛苦”，而因此赚取利益。这些钱在强制性盈利模式中被分割成多个层次，因为如果面对的是“现实”购买，那么用户便不大可能掉进这一陷阱中。

就像我在《Monetizing Children》论文中所讨论的，衡量短期“缓解疼痛”vs.长期机会成本的能力其实是前额叶皮层所处理的大脑活动。这一大脑领域通常是在人们25岁时完成发育。因此25岁以下的用户还可能具有更高的“痛并快乐着”和分层效果的危险，即用户越年轻便更容易被攻击。虽然那些25岁以上的用户也有可能因为强制性盈利模式而上当，特别是当他们并不熟悉这些内容时（游戏邦注：如第一代的Facebook玩家），但是这些产品的目标用户还是低于25岁的用户。所以这些产品大多数都带有卡通图像和较童真的角色。

需要注意的是，尽管通过18岁以下的用户获得盈利需要冒着亏本（可能遭到拒付）的风险，但是那些18至25岁间的用户仍然处在大脑开发阶段，但是他们仍是合法的成人。这个年龄层的人（被钉上了成年人的身份）似乎不大可能获得信用卡公司的援助。因此他们应该算是缺少法律保护的脆弱群体，并因此成为了这些方法的理想目标用户。不巧的是，这一年龄范围的用户也是信用卡公司所瞄准的目标群体。

关于上述瞄准孩童游戏的例外便是大量使用Supremacy Goods的产品，我将在本文最后进行讨论。这些产品瞄准的是更多对这些吸引力无抵抗力的用户。

付费货币

为了增强强制性盈利模式的效能，你必须使用付费货币，即带有购买所谓应用内部货币的能力。如果消费者需要推出游戏进行购买的话，这便会留给他们的大脑更多时间去思考你的意图，从而降低了最终消费的几率。如果你能够设置游戏允许“一个按键转换”，如许多iOS游戏中那样，这便是最佳方式了。在现实世界的零售商店中也会出现同样的效果，即允许使用信用卡支付的商品比只能用现金购买的更好出售，这便是源于分层效应。

购买应用内部付费货币也允许使用折扣，如如果玩家是大量购买的话每单位的价格便会更低。因此用户使用基本数学原理便能够知道买越多会“越省钱”了。用户越年轻，这一方法的效能越强，但前提是他们会做数学题。因此你希望能够确保购买选择上的数字足够简单，并且你也可以通过呈现横幅去告诉用户购买更多能“省”多少钱，以此去帮助较年轻或数学不是很好的用户。

比起看到现金金额，让用户能在界面上看到自己的付费货币数量更能避免焦虑。如果用户使用的是现金，那么当他们看到随着游戏钱的数量在不断减少时，这些用户们便会感到不安。这等于提供给用户更多思考的空间，并会因此减少收益。

技能游戏vs.金钱游戏

一款技能型游戏是指你能够做出明智的决定并影响着最终的胜利。金钱游戏则是指你的花钱能力决定着最后的成功。比起金钱游戏，消费者们总是更喜欢技能游戏。而使用强制性盈利模式的关键技能便是区分金钱游戏和技能游戏的主要元素。

candy-crush-saga(from appguru)

就这点而言，King.com的《Candy Crush》便设计得很巧妙。任何玩家都可以不花钱完成早期的游戏地图，不过它们也在逐渐提升难度。这是对于玩家技能的挑战，那他们在凭借自己能力获得前进时而兴奋。当用户被标记为消费者时，游戏的难度将大规模上升，并开始从技能游戏转变成金钱游戏，且更多地依赖于付费升级的使用而不再是玩家技能。

如果是以一种非常微妙的方式实现技能游戏和金钱游戏的转变，那么用户的大脑便很难意识到游戏规则发生了改变。如果设置巧妙的话，用户便会以为自己仍在玩技能游戏，“只是需要少量的帮助”而不断花钱。这最终会创造出一种差别定价，即成本将保持着上升，知道用户意识到自己正在玩金钱游戏。

夺走奖励

这是我最喜欢的强制性盈利技巧，因为它非常强大。这一技巧是指给予玩家一些真正强大的奖励，娱乐他们，然后威胁如果他们不付钱就会夺走这些奖励。研究表明，人类总是喜欢获得奖励，但是比起获得同样的道具作为奖励，他们更讨厌失去已经拥有的道具。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道具，然后再告诉他们这些道具没了。在抢走奖励前让玩家持有它们更长时间，这一效果便会更明显。

《Puzzle & Dragons》便有效使用了这一技巧。游戏主要是围绕着完成“地下城”搜索而展开。对于消费者来说，地下城是一种技能挑战，最初的设定便是这样。当然了每当消费者拥有足够时间去习惯这是一款技能游戏的理念时，游戏难度将不断攀升，并变成一款金钱游戏。这款游戏所采取的一种有效方法便是，让玩家在地下城中经历几波战争，并在每波战争后给予他们奖励。最后一波战争是与“boss”的对抗，这时候难度会上升到最高级别，如果玩家是处在被推荐的地下城，他们便有可能在那里遭遇失败。然后他们便会被告知，之前所获得的奖励都会消失，他们只能依靠耐力进入地下城（游戏邦注：这可能需要4个小时以上的时间）。

这时候，用户必须选择是花费1美元还是损失自己的奖励，耐性，以及进程。对于大脑来说，这不只是损失时间那么简单。如果我花费一小时写了一篇论文，然后因为某些原因所有的内容都被删掉了，这种痛苦远比时间浪费来得深刻。这在同样类型的成就损失中也是成立的。要注意的是，在这种模式下，玩家可以在与boss的对抗中多次被击败，并再次回到战斗中，因此他们在每个地下城中都需要花费一些金钱。

这一技巧本身就足以让处于任何发展水平的用户花钱。为了安全起见，《Puzzle and Dragons》在每个地下城的最后阶段也使用了同样的技巧，即以库存限制形式表现出来。玩家能够获得一些“鸡蛋”作为奖励，这些内容必须储存在库存中。如果你的库存空间已满，那么这些鸡蛋将被收回，除非你愿意花钱去扩大库存空间。

进程之门

进程之门能够用于告诉用户，如果他们想要在游戏中获得进一步的发展，就需要为此花钱。如果做得太过明显，这便不具有强制性。出于本篇文章的目的，我的专注点将放在如何通过分层去吸引用户投资在那些他们因为缺少完整信息而不愿意购买的内容。

现在让我们将进程之门划分为“强硬”和“温和”两种类型。在困难之门前，你只有在付钱时才能前进。Zynga的建筑类游戏里的中央建筑便是很好的例子。城镇/城市/基地中的所有其它建筑都被中央建筑给遮蔽了，从而创造了一扇强硬的进程之门。之所以会出现这种强制性是因为玩家不知道，如果他们花钱通过这扇门，很快便又要面对其它强硬之门，并需要为此花更多钱。因此消费者便会认为花钱能够帮助自己减轻痛苦，即使事实上并不是这样。

在温和之门前，玩家最终都会通过这扇门。《部落战争》便使用这种类型去延长建造时间，并允许用户通过花钱而完成建造。这是源自Zynga，Kabam，Kixeye等旗下Facebook游戏的惯例。为了完善温和之门的效能，这些游戏只有通过这么做才能让游戏内部资源生成早于玩家拥有消费这些资源的能力（游戏邦注：因为建造/消费需要花很长时间）。因此如果玩家未能花钱，他们所“挣得”的资源便会被夺走。这是将夺走奖励机制与温和之门结合在一起，而在分层的同时提高痛苦水平，以此哄骗用户这些效能是巧合的。

温和动力和强硬动力

金钱游戏的目的是为了推进销售动力。只拥有一次性效果的动力变为“温和”动力。而永远都留着或者知道转变成某些内容未知的动力则为“强硬”动力。《Puzzle and Dragons》中的1美元“不败”按键以及《Candy Crush Saga》所出售的所有升级道具都是一种温和动力。关于温和动力的最显著优势便是，只要玩家仍留在金钱游戏中，你便可以继续出售这些内容。

“强硬”动力包括《Puzzle and Dragons》中5美元出售的随机稀有生物。拥有这些生物便能够有效降低游戏难度，所以每次购买都能够进一步推动着玩家的前进。在亚洲游戏中（包括《Puzzle and Dragons》），基于强硬动力而最受欢迎的技巧便是“融合”强硬动力去允许更大的强硬动力的出现。因为更多掉落道具已经被隐藏起来，所以消费者是看不到这些内容。因此在这些游戏中，最佳强硬动力的成本通常都高达数千美元，而用户只有在投入了几百美元后才会察觉到事实。这会将消费者置于一个两难的境地，要么选择放弃而失去自己所购买的道具，要么继续前进而花费不可预知的金钱去获得最高的动力。在亚洲，有些技巧（有时候被称作“kompu gacha”）因为过度的分层和缺少透明度而遭遇了严格管制。

在包含社交层面的金钱游戏中，这一社交层面是作为一种额外动机，让玩家能够将“技能”呈献给那些还不知道自己处于金钱游戏中的玩家。这也是《Candy Crush Saga》的迷你排行榜的目的，让玩家觉得他们必须更努力去打败拥有更强“技能”的好友。甚至《Words with Friends》的“word-o-meter”机制也能被当成披着技能游戏外表的金钱游戏的温和动力。当然这是取决于你是否想要提供优势。如果你不这么做，消费者又有何购买理由？

Words With Friends(from wordgamestrategies)

赌注游戏

就像我在《How “Pay to Win” Works》论文中所描述的，这些游戏的关键便是先体现出技能游戏的外表，然后转变成多人金钱游戏，也就是我所谓的“赌注”游戏。游戏可以作为技能游戏而开始，但是当玩家投入了足够的金钱时，它就会变成金钱游戏。有时候，玩家将会继续提升赌注，并希望打败其他玩家。“胜利者”往往都是投入最大赌注的人。所以这种游戏中的胜利赌注甚至会超过5000美元。有些亚洲游戏开发者便只创造赌注游戏，如IGG便设有“VIP”席位，即让玩家可以通过每年消费3000美元以上去获得最高会员资格。

这类游戏的目标用户通常都是非硬核的竞争型玩家，即受到自尊驱使而赢得技能游戏，并且不管何种原因都不会意识到游戏属于金钱游戏。我在亚洲游戏产业中的一些同行们便表示，这只是一种炫耀性消费模式。

总结

虽然上面所提到的机制不够相近，但也算基本概括了基于强制性盈利模式的游戏所使用的主要技巧，并能阻止用户做出有关产品的成本和价值的明智选择。设置越微妙，你便能够越好地呈现出基于技能的游戏，并从这些产品中更好地获得盈利。《Puzzle and Dragons》便符合我心目中的标准水平。尽管它的游戏机制很简单，但是其奖励机制以及对于我所谓的Supremacy Goods微观经济模式的实践都突显了它的与众不同。特别是还巧妙地应用了夺走奖励机制，这真的让人印象深刻。

尽管我们可以不使用强制性方法而创造出具有商业竞争力的游戏，但却需要为此付出更多努力。在当今市场上，特别是关于大多数成人和儿童都不熟悉这些产品属性的情况下，开发者还可以在此获取快速盈利，并且这种情况还有可能持续好几年。但是需要注意的是，尽管这种方法能够在年轻且没有经验的玩家身上发挥功效，但是对于年长且资深玩家来说却无任何作用，更关键的是后者才是拥有更多游戏预算的群体。

（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）

The Top F2P Monetization Tricks

by Ramin Shokrizade

Coercive Monetization

A coercive monetization model depends on the ability to “trick” a person into making a purchase with incomplete information, or by hiding that information such that while it is technically available, the brain of the consumer does not access that information. Hiding a purchase can be as simple as disguising the relationship between the action and the cost as I describe in my Systems of Control in F2P paper.

Research has shown that putting even one intermediate currency between the consumer and real money, such as a “game gem” (premium currency), makes the consumer much less adept at assessing the value of the transaction. Additional intermediary objects, what I call “layering”, makes it even harder for the brain to accurately assess the situation, especially if there is some additional stress applied.

This additional stress is often in the form of what Roger Dickey from Zynga calls “fun pain”. I describe this in my Two Contrasting Views of Monetization paper from 2011. This involves putting the consumer in a very uncomfortable or undesirable position in the game and then offering to remove this “pain” in return for spending money. This money is always layered in coercive monetization models, because if confronted with a “real” purchase the consumer would be less likely to fall for the trick.

As discussed in my Monetizing Children paper, the ability to weigh this short term “pain relief” vs. the long term opportunity costs of spending money is a brain activity shown by research to be handled in the pre-frontal cortex. This area of the brain typically completes its development at the age of 25. Thus consumers under the age of 25 will have increased vulnerability to fun pain and layering effects, with younger consumers increasingly vulnerable. While those older than 25 can fall for very well constructed coercive monetization models, especially if they are unfamiliar with them (first generation Facebook gamers), the target audience for these products is those under the age of 25. For this reason these products are almost always presented with cartoonish graphics and child-like characters.

Note that while monetizing those under 18 runs the risk of charge backs, those between the age of 18 and 25 are still in the process of brain development and are considered legal adults. It seems unlikely that anyone in this age range, having been anointed with adulthood, is going to appeal to a credit card company for relief by saying they are still developmentally immature. Thus this group is a vulnerable population with no legal protection, making them the ideal target audience for these methods. Not coincidentally, this age range of consumer is also highly desired by credit card companies.

The exception to the above child targeting would be products making heavy use of Supremacy Goods, which I will discuss near the end of this paper. These products target a wider age range of users that are vulnerable to such appeals.

Premium Currencies

To maximize the efficacy of a coercive monetization model, you must use a premium currency, ideally with the ability to purchase said currency in-app. Making the consumer exit the game to make a purchase gives the target’s brain more time to figure out what you are up to, lowering your chances of a sale. If you can set up your game to allow “one button conversion”, such as in many iOS games, then obviously this is ideal. The same effect is seen in real world retail stores where people buying goods with cash tend to spend less than those buying with credit cards, due to the layering effect.

Purchasing in-app premium currency also allows the use of discounting, such that premium currency can be sold for less per unit if it is purchased in bulk. Thus a user that is capable of doing basic math (handled in a different part of the brain that develops earlier) can feel the urge to “save money” by buying more. The younger the consumer, the more effective this technique is, assuming they are able to do the math. Thus you want to make the numbers on the purchase options very simple, and you can also put banners on bigger purchases telling the user how much more they will “save” on big purchases to assist very young or otherwise math-impaired customers.

Having the user see their amount of premium currency in the interface is also much less anxiety generating, compared to seeing a real money balance. If real money was used (no successful game developer does this) then the consumer would see their money going down as they play and become apprehensive. This gives the consumer more opportunities to think and will reduce revenues.

Skill Games vs. Money Games

A game of skill is one where your ability to make sound decisions primarily determines your success. A money game is one where your ability to spend money is the primary determinant of your success. Consumers far prefer skill games to money games, for obvious reasons. A key skill in deploying a coercive monetization model is to disguise your money game as a skill game.

King.com’s Candy Crush Saga is designed masterfully in this regard. Early game play maps can be completed by almost anyone without spending money, and they slowly increase in difficulty. This presents a challenge to the skills of the player, making them feel good when they advance due to their abilities. Once the consumer has been marked as a spender (more on this later) the game difficulty ramps up massively, shifting the game from a skill game to a money game as progression becomes more dependent on the use of premium boosts than on player skills.

If the shift from skill game to money game is done in a subtle enough manner, the brain of the consumer has a hard time realizing that the rules of the game have changed. If done artfully, the consumer will increasingly spend under the assumption that they are still playing a skill game and “just need a bit of help”. This ends up also being a form of discriminatory pricing as the costs just keep going up until the consumer realizes they are playing a money game.

Reward Removal

This is my favorite coercive monetization technique, because it is just so powerful. The technique involves giving the player some really huge reward, that makes them really happy, and then threatening to take it away if they do not spend. Research has shown that humans like getting rewards, but they hate losing what they already have much more than they value the same item as a reward. 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. The longer you allow the player to have the reward before you take it away, the more powerful is the effect.

This technique is used masterfully in Puzzle and Dragons. In that game the play primarily centers around completing “dungeons”. To the consumer, a dungeon appears to be a skill challenge, and initially it is. Of course once the customer has had enough time to get comfortable with the idea that this is a skill game the difficulty goes way up and it becomes a money game. What is particularly effective here is that the player has to go through several waves of battles in a dungeon, with rewards given after each wave. The last wave is a “boss battle” where the difficulty becomes massive and if the player is in the recommended dungeon for them then they typically fail here. They are then told that all of the rewards from the previous waves are going to be lost, in addition to the stamina used to enter the dungeon (this can be 4 or more real hours of time worth of stamina).

At this point the user must choose to either spend about $1 or lose their rewards, lose their stamina (which they could get back for another $1), and lose their progress. To the brain this is not just a loss of time. If I spend an hour writing a paper and then something happens and my writing gets erased, this is much more painful to me than the loss of an hour. The same type of achievement loss is in effect here. Note that in this model the player could be defeated multiple times in the boss battle and in getting to the boss battle, thus spending several dollars per dungeon.

This technique alone is effective enough to make consumers of any developmental level spend. Just to be safe, PaD uses the same technique at the end of each dungeon again in the form of an inventory cap. The player is given a number of “eggs” as rewards, the contents of which have to be held in inventory. If your small inventory space is exceeded, again those eggs are taken from you unless you spend to increase your inventory space. Brilliant!

Progress Gates

Progress gates can be used to tell a consumer that they will need to spend some amount of money if they want to go further in the game. If done transparently, this is not coercive. For the purposes of this paper, the focus will just be on how this can be layered to trick the consumer into spending on something they may not have if they had been provided with complete information.

Now let’s break progress gates into “hard” and “soft” types. A hard gate is one where you cannot advance if you do not pay up. The central buildings in Zynga builder type games are a good example. All other buildings in a town/city/base are capped by the level of the central building, forcing a hard progress gate. What makes this coercive is that the player is not told that if they pay through that gate they will just be presented with another hard gate soon that will cost even more money. Thus the consumer may assume they are getting more pain relief for their money than they are.

A soft gate is one where the player can get past the gate, eventually. Clash of Clans uses this type in making building times ever longer and allowing the user to spend to complete them. This is a method presumably borrowed from games made by Zynga, Kabam, Kixeye, and others since it is a common Facebook game convention. In order to improve the efficacy of the soft gate, these games also make it so that resource generation in-game increases faster than the player’s ability to spend these resources (because building/spending takes so long). Thus these “earned” resources are lost (taken away) if real money is not spent. This is a method of combining reward removal with a soft gate to increase the pain level while at the same time layering, as the consumer may be gullible enough to assume these effects are coincidental or due to some strategic misstep they took earlier.

Another novel way to use a progress gate is to make it look transparent, but to use it as the partition between the skill game and the money game. Candy Crush Saga employs this technique artfully. In that game there is a “river” that costs a very small amount of money to cross. The skill game comes before the river. A player may spend to cross the river, believing that the previous skill game was enjoyable (it was for me) and looking to pay to extend the skill game. No such guarantee is given of course, King just presents a river and does not tell you what is on the other side. The money game is on the other side, and as the first payment is always the hardest, those that cross the river are already prequalified as spenders. Thus the difficulty ramps up to punishing levels on the far side of the river, necessitating boosts for all but the most pain tolerant players.

Soft and Hard Boosts

The purpose of a money game is to promote Boost sales. Boosts that have an instant one-time effect are “soft” Boosts. Those that stick around either forever or until they are converted to something else are “hard” Boosts. The $1 “un-defeat” button in PaD is a soft Boost, as are all of the power-ups sold in Candy Crush Saga. The obvious advantage of soft boosts is that you can keep selling them as long as the player stays in the money game.

“Hard” Boosts include things like the random rare creatures that are sold in PaD for $5 each. Having these in your stable effectively lowers the difficulty of the game enough to allow you to get a little bit further with each purchase. A technique that is very popular in Asian games with hard Boosts (PaD included) is to allow hard Boosts to be “merged” to allow for even bigger hard Boosts. This makes the math involved in figuring out exactly how expensive a very high quality hard Boost will be, daunting. It may even be completely invisible to the consumer due to the various drop %s being hidden. Thus the best hard Boosts in these games typically cost thousands of dollars, a fact that is hidden to the user until they are already invested for at least a few hundred dollars. This puts the consumer in the difficult position of giving up and losing the equity already purchased, or going “all the way” and spending some unknown large amount to get the top Boost. Some of these techniques, sometimes called “kompu gacha”, are already facing regulation in Asia due to their excessive layering and lack of transparency.

In money games that contain a social layer, this social layer is used as an added incentive to show off your “skills” to other players that may still not realize they are in a money game. This is the purpose of the mini-leaderboards in Candy Crush Saga, to make it look like you need to try harder to beat your more “skillful” friends. Even the “word-o-meter” in Words with Friends can be considered a soft Boost in a money game disguised as a skill game. This would, of course, depend on if you considered it to give an advantage. If it didn’t then why are people buying it?

Ante Games

As described in detail in my How “Pay to Win” Works paper, the key to these games is to start off with the appearance of a skill game and then shift to a multiplayer money game that I call an “Ante” game. The game could proceed as a skill game but never does since once one player spends enough money it becomes a money game. At some point players keep raising their antes, hoping that the other players will fold. The “winner” (and loser) is the player that puts in the largest ante. It is not unusual for winning antes to be over $5000, and some Asian game developers that make only ante games like IGG have “VIP” member sections that you have to spend $3000+ per year for the top level of membership.

The target audience here tends to be non-hardcore competitive gamers who need the self esteem boost that comes with winning a skill game, and who for whatever reason never recognize the game as a money game. Some of my peers in the Asian gaming industry suggest that there this is merely a form of conspicuous consumption. I would love to see some age demographics for these “whales”.

Last Thoughts

The above mechanics are not meant to be exhaustive, but give a basic overview of key techniques used in coercive monetization model based games to defeat a customer’s ability to make informed choices about the costs and values in these products. The more subtle the hand, and the more you can make your game appear to be skill based the more effective these products will monetize. Currently I would consider Puzzle and Dragons to be the state of the art. While it’s gameplay mechanisms are simplistic, the depth of its reward mechanisms and its adherence to most of the best practices listed in my Supremacy Goods microeconomic model make it quite elegant. Its fantastic use of reward removal in particular is quite impressive.

While it is possible to make commercially competitive games without using coercive methods, this is a lot more work. In the current market, especially with most adults and children not familiar with the nature of these products, the environment is still ripe for fast profits, and likely will continue to be so for a few more years. Note that while these methods can be very successful with young and inexperienced gamers, they find less success with older and more experienced gamers, and this population represents a group with potentially very large gaming budgets.(source:gamasutra)