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未来游戏开发者为何需要首席心理官?

发布时间:2014-02-17 10:57:46 Tags:,,,

作者:Melissa

游戏开发者应该知道刺激玩家的元素是什么

本文总结了Jon Jordan关于游戏行业主流公司应该考虑聘请一名首席心理官的观点。他根据自己与同事体验免费游戏《CSR Racing》的心得,提出了这一理念。这一观点也许并非常理,但却不乏价值,尤其是涉及人类行为研究的心理层面。

《CSR Racing》的心理层面

与所有伟大的理念一样,Jordan也是在想到成百上千万个其他的理念之后,才得到了最终结果。据他所称,这一想法始于自己与一名同事谈论关于《CSR Racing》的开发体验。他称,“有趣的是,在我所玩过的40多款游戏中,唯一让你在头5分钟经常失败的游戏却是《CSR Racing》”。

他觉得这款游戏的设计应该是让玩家在头两场比赛中获胜,之后才能失败。那时玩家就得走向车库,使用游戏内置货币购买新车。他继续表示,“多数新手教程是教玩家如何取胜,让玩家感觉良好,但《CSR Racing》却反其道而行,并立即让你进入升级汽车的过程。”

bigstock-the-concept-of-education(from bluecloudsolutions)

bigstock-the-concept-of-education(from bluecloudsolutions)

应用内置购买的心理原理

有位同事开始分享他对另一款相关游戏《速度与激情6》的观点时,这种讨论进入了一个高潮。

他反驳道,“它并不像《速度与激情6》让玩家限时用真钱购买你在两小时之后可以用虚拟货币购买的汽车这种设计那么糟糕。”

这种讨论就不可避免地提到游戏行业的一种新商业模式——应用内盈利。这些新游戏试图提供具有现实感的交易选项,例如限时加油,等待部件升级,就好像它们正在输入和出货一样。这是我们之前未曾见过的新应用盈利机制。

对于《CSR Racing》的不同解读

但是讨论并未就此终止。他们开始谈及《CSR Racing》的另一个层面——boss战斗。

Jordan称他打败首个boss时感觉很消极,他的对手迅速告诉他,他升级了汽车,所以他们可以再战一番,这样他也能够令人信服地获胜了。此时,他觉得游戏创造了一种自然的断点,它不可避免地让玩家反感,因为对手已经变得“不可靠”了。

他的同事对boss战斗则持有截然相反的态度。他对Jordan说,“你的问题在于,你将《CSR Racing》视为一款免费游戏。”但这个命题的讽刺性就在于——《CSR Racing》是一款免费游戏,但它只是让大家认识到每款游戏,无论是否免费,都应该植入已被50美元的主机游戏所采用的留存技巧。

手机游戏中的盈利和留存率

简而言之,游戏开发者很擅长制作游戏,在过去两十年中,手机游戏开发者已经历了分销、营销、用户获取和盈利性等新词汇——尤其是盈利性。但其中的鸿沟在于,定制用户体验以便融合玩法和留存率。

如果说所有公司都没有意识到玩未予与留存率之间的不协调,那就太草率了。事实上,有些公司在此领域已经开发出了专业知识,从他们5分钟的游戏教程中就可以看出这一点。

Jordan所指的是,游戏必须以真正的人类行为为模式。事实上,他认为游戏开发者应该积极聘请心理学家,从而打造一支专业团队,研究玩家行为,并积极调整游戏元素,以便提升留存率、粘性和盈利性。

心理专家如何帮助游戏开发者

至少,心理专家可以展开用户调查,这多半涉及玩家是否以开发公司所设计的方式体验游戏。用户调查人员通常会与制作团队合作,理解游戏目标,这样他们就能够将这些目标转变成可测试的问题。

例如,团队可能想确保游戏给予玩家一定程度的兴奋感或紧张感,那么心理专家就会设计一种可能将目标用户引向一个控制环境的设计,让他们玩游戏,然后再由管理人员通过一面单向镜调查或者观察他们。

这代表一种新执行方式,目前来看,行业的整个执行过程是本末倒置的。大家不是解决游戏开发阶段的所有不协调因素和鸿沟,而是通过发布前的分析方法找到数据中的关键点。与之相似,A/B测试等技巧也可以得到好结果,但只会提供一种预设问题的黑盒解决方法。

开发者应该在每款游戏发布之前就掌握情况,以便游戏玩法和情节中的微妙线索能够对应真正的人类行为,以便保证留存率,并最终实现盈利性。

游戏心理的未来

虽然心理学原理在游戏设计中的运用仍处于萌芽阶段,但仍要视为行业中的一个机遇而非弱点。这代表一个新学科的前沿——在这个时代尤其具有重要价值的学科。

随着游戏行业日趋分化,游戏开发者必须真正类玩乐的行为方式。这与营销公司如何针对顾客设计产品并无不同。只要很好地理解了真正的消费者行为,开发者就能够更好地设计出能够取悦目标用户的游戏。这适用于类似故事执行的战略决策,以及诸如按钮色彩的执行决策。

这种研究为心理专家提供了运用人类行为研究的有趣渠道。毕竟,游戏是关于粘性、动机、增强、注意力和其他心理学家所关心话题的内容。这正是游戏开发者以及心理学家为何应该展开合作的原因。(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

Opinion: Why Game Developers Need a Chief Psychology Officer

by Melissa

Game Developers Need to Know What Motivates Gamers

The Psychology of GamingThis article summarizes Jon Jordan’s opinion that major players in the gaming industry should consider hiring a Chief Psychology Officer. He toys with the idea, after having a discussion with his colleagues regarding his personal experiences with CSR Racing, a free-to-play game. The idea may be unusual, but there is merit to what he has to say, especially since psychology, after all, is the study of human behavior.

How CSR Racing Got the Psychology Wrong

Like all great ideas, the idea came to Jordan after he was thinking about a million other ideas. From what he can remember, it started off with him telling a colleague about his experience with CSR Racing. He said, “What’s interesting is that of the 40 or so games I’ve played, the only one to actively fail you within the first five minutes was CSR Racing.”

He felt that the game was programmed to let any player win the first two races in the game, then lose the next. Then the player has to go to the garage and buy a car using the in-game currency. He goes on to say, “Most tutorials are all about winning and making the player feel happy, but CSR Racing does the opposite and immediately gets you into the process of upgrading your car.”

The Psychology of In-App Purchases

The discussion gained even more momentum when a colleague started to share his opinion about another related game, Fast & Furious 6.

Fast & Furious 6 Game monetization

He counters, “It’s not as bad as Fast & Furious 6 where you’re immediately given a time-dependent offer to spend real cash on a car you can easily buy with soft currency a couple of hours later.”

Note that this discussion puts to a light a new business model in the gaming industry – in-app monetization. What these new games attempt to do is provide a real-life sense of monetization options, such as dealing with limited fuel slots and having to wait for part upgrades to arrive, as if they were being imported and shipped.  This is a new trend in app monetization that we have not seen before.

Different Interpretations of CSR Racing

However, the discussion did not stop there. They started to talk about another aspect of CSR Racing – the boss battles.

For Jordan, he felt negatively about the fact that when he beat the first boss, his opponent immediately told him that he’s upgrading his car so that they can battle again, also just so he could win convincingly. At this point, he felt that the game created a natural breaking point, where it inevitably turns players off because the opponents become “unreliable.”

CSR Racing Game Psychology

His colleague had a completely opposite reaction to boss battles.  He said to Jordan, “Your problem is that you’ve approached it [CSR Racing] like a free-to-play game.” While there is irony in the statement – as CSR Racing is a free-to-play game – it only leads to the realization that every game, whether free-to-play or otherwise, should always employ the retention techniques employed by all the $50 console classics.

Monetization and Retention in Mobile Gaming

In short, game developers are very good at making games, and over the past couple of years, mobile game developers have toyed with new terms like distribution, marketing, user acquisition and monetization – especially monetization. The big gap, however, is tailoring the user experience so it bridges gameplay and retention.

It is a hasty generalization to conclude that all companies fail to recognize that there is an obvious dissonance between gameplay and retention. In fact, some companies have developed expertise in this area, as evidenced in their five-minute pre-game tutorials.

What Jordan is simply driving at is the fact that games must be patterned on actual human behavior. In fact, he believes that game developers should actively hire psychologists, so that there would be a team of professionals who could study the behavior of players and actively change small elements of the game to improve retention, engagement, and monetization.

How Psychologists Can Help Game Developers

At the very least, psychologists should conduct user research, which largely entails testing whether players experience games the way companies intended. Basically, user researchers work with the production team to understand their goals for a game, then they can translate those goals into testable questions.

Game Development and Psychology

The team might want to make sure a certain level of a game gives players a sense of excitement or anxiety, for example. As such, the psychologist will design a study that might bring people from the target audience into a controlled environment, get them playing and then administer surveys or observe them through a one-way mirror.

This represents a new way of doing things, as currently, the industry is doing the entire process backwards. Instead of addressing all inconsistencies and gaps during the game development stage, they look at analytics post-launch to find obvious pinch points in the data. Similarly, techniques such as A/B testing give good results, but only provide a black box solution to pre-set problems.

Developers need to have expertise on-hand before the launching of every game so that subtle cues into plot and gameplay can be patterned by actual human behavior in order to guarantee retention and ultimately, monetization.

The Future of Psychology in Gaming

While the application of psychological principles to game design is still in its infancy, this should be seen as an opportunity in the industry rather than a weakness. This presents a forefront of a new discipline – one which will have significant value, especially in this time and age.

As the gaming industry becomes more and more fragmented, there is a need for game developers to truly understand how humans play. It is no different than how marketing companies design products for consumers. As long as there is a good understanding of actual consumer behavior, developers are more equipped to design games that will make their target audience tick. This can be applied to strategic decisions like the storyline execution as well as to executional decisions like the color of the buttons.

Such studies offer a fascinating means for psychologists to apply their understanding of human behavior. After all, games are all about engagement, motivation, reinforcement, attention and other topics dear to psychologists.  That’s why game developers and psychologists should start working together in the future.(source:bluecloudsolutions


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