Live Events: 利用有限的内容发挥巨大的影响力

原作者：Crystin Cox 译者：Willow Wu

开发团队想到他们的运营内容计划时，他们脑中浮现的可能是华丽的游戏特色规划、积极响应社区反馈，或许还有由A/B测试驱动的迭代。而线上活动（live events），或者说是临时性内容一般都不会被放在特别优先的位置——如果有被纳入计划的话。很多游戏的设计并不是为了频繁插入这些小规模的临时性内容——比如节假日活动、锦标赛、限时收集奖品之类的活动，它们对游戏本身来说就像是多余的、没有意义的东西。但是我认为大多数开发团队并没有足够重视线上活动，或者说没有认真设计。虽然它的内容并不多，但是巧妙的线上活动策略能够在参与度、社区积极性以及盈利方面产生极大的影响作用。我之前设计、分析过很多线上活动，有的非常成功，有的完全是哑炮。这些年来，我总结出了一些经验，似乎能够适用于各种类型和平台。就如其它设计话题一样，用“为什么”开头总是个不错的选择。

一、为什么要投入线上活动？

如果你去询问那些在游戏中使用线上活动的开发者，为什么要花费这么多时间&精力来做这种临时性内容，大多数人的回答都是相同的：留存率。开发者们认为，如果能保证内容的稳定输送，玩家们会更频繁地登录、游戏时间更长、消费更多。游戏开发者们加入线上活动的主要原因之一当然是提高留存率，但是只专注于开发者的期望，往往很难获得最好的效果。我们必须得理解为什么玩家会喜欢线上活动，然后在此基础上做出更成功的活动内容。

线上活动能为玩家做三件事：

1.回到核心玩法中

通过提供新的内容或者突出游戏中某些被玩家冷落的模式，线上活动能够很好地让玩家回到核心玩法中。线上活动往往可以提供充足的理由让玩家重温他们已经玩过的内容，不会让玩家觉得只是单纯地回溯。这样既能在不用引入新机制的情况下带来新鲜感，也能提醒玩家游戏的真正有趣之处。

2.提供共同的经历

线上活动能够让玩家社区感受到时间的宝贵，发展共同经历。共同经历、对事件进行反思或讨论的能力是促进社区发展的关键。人们需要这样的公共活动来创造历史、激发讨论。玩家们一起交流游戏中发生的故事，或者猜测今年的万圣节活动与去年相比可能会有什么不同。非实时运营的游戏可能会因为没有持续发展共同经历而难以建立活跃的社区。

star trek timelines（from pocketgamer.biz）

3.给予短期奖励

长期目标有利于增加玩家的粘性，但是一般情况下，玩家在游戏中投入的时间越长，他们获得真正有意义奖励的间隔时间也会越长。而且，即使在核心进阶过程中，奖励还是频繁出现，这些奖励时刻也会随着玩家的心理状态改变，成为一种可以预料的东西，从而失去对玩家的原有影响力。线上活动可以用相对容易实现的目标和奖励来打破原有的奖励循环。比如在一次或两次游戏时间里就能拿到的奖励，这样可以帮助玩家保持积极性，因为他们会继续努力争取更多跟核心进阶玩法关联的长期、内在的奖励。

二、线上活动策略

所以，如果我们的线上活动能够很好地满足玩家对回到核心玩法、共享经历，以及短期奖励的需求，那么线上活动就能给我们带来更高的留存率。然而，除了优秀的设计之外，成功的线上活动还需要其它条件。没有好的流程和策略，即使是再好的设计，也无法让玩家留下来。

可预料但又出人意料

想做出有效的线上活动决策，最关键的在于活动必须是可预料又出人意料。可预料指的是玩家需要知道他们可以指望在某段时间玩到一系列新的内容。出人意料指的是活动内容应该是丰富、令人感到惊喜的。如果你能按照既定的日程表展示新内容，但每次更新时都会提供一些稍有不同的东西，保持玩家的兴趣，这样的策略就算是极为成功的了。

连贯性对线上活动是非常重要的。程序化和日常化是兴趣爱好形成的关键，也是促成任何娱乐活动长期参与的重要因素。制定一个你可以遵守的时间表，把按时发行视为第一优先考虑。从我自己的经验来看，就长期留存率而言，你需要更看重的是能按照计划安排定时发布新内容，这甚至比内容本身还重要。那些想要充分利用线上活动的团队，最好的做法是把按时发行放在首位，对内容进行灵活处理。把你的线上活动更新想象成是一辆火车，每隔X天就会有一辆到站。让线上活动往模块化和独立化的方向发展，这样不管来的是哪列车，玩家都可以上去一探究竟。

当然，保确保线上活动的趣味感和新鲜感也是至关重要的。简单地设置事件自动循环会让玩家很快失去兴趣，并将重点转移到优化策略而不是享受体验上。游戏中的机制丰富性总是有限的，你所提供的玩法可能很快就没有花样可展示了，具体要取决游戏本身动作设计的多少。正因为如此，线上活动的丰富性大多依赖于情景和设定。依托于现实世界的事件（比如说节假日）是非常常用的一种策略，但不要害怕基于自己的社区或游戏世界创造属于你自己的情景。我们的目标是在提供直接挑战、奖励的同时，也能保证情境的新鲜感。

目标和结果

成功线上活动策略的另一个重要因素是设定目标和评估结果。就跟实时运营所涉及的其它大多数事项一样，如果你对成功没有什么概念，或者是不知道你是否有朝着那个方向发展，就很难持续专注于内容计划。为你策划的每一个线上活动设定一个目标，然后在结束后认真分析你是否达到了这个目标。在活动上线之前，确定目标和评估成功的标准至关重要。这既有助于让大家保持目标、期望的统一，又能防止偏向性反馈对你的后期评估产生严重影响，导致你的研究成果产生误差。目标不一定要是跟商业成果有关的（比如消费、登录人数等等），虽说这样会比较好跟踪、评估。它可能是跟社区凝聚力相关的，也可能是单纯的惊喜和喜悦，只要你能在活动结束后作出一个诚实的评价，那么这个过程就是有价值的。

三、线上活动类型

虽然线上活动的惊喜感很大程度上是依靠情境营造出的，但扎实的机制设计才是决定一个活动是否能够达到目标的关键因素。大多数线上活动都可以粗略地分为五大类，每种类型都有自己的优势和最佳做法。它们都不复杂，绝大多数设计师都不会感到陌生。但要说清楚每种类型的由来，可能得用很长的篇幅才行。下面只是一种基本的分类法：

1.登录活动

描述：这类活动会给登录游戏的玩家奖励。玩家的基本目标就是登录拿奖励，就这么简单直白。虽然很多手游都把登录奖励作为核心机制之一，而不是特别活动，但是登录奖励确实能在活动中产生不小的影响。登录奖励本来就是外在的奖励，很容易就会失去它的魔力。只在特殊情景或其它背景下偶尔使用它们，有助于保持新鲜感，防止玩家对它们麻木。

目标：鼓励连续登陆，让玩家养成习惯，并且挽回之前流失的玩家。

最佳做法：除了单纯的登录，你可以再多费一点心思，让活动变得更有影响力。举个例子，你可以要求玩家每天去游戏世界的每个区域逛一下，或者每天完成一场比赛。你给玩家设定的目标应该是非常简单的，但也能够鼓励玩家做更多事，停留更多时间，而不是登录登出，拿完东西无情走人。另外，在活动中加入少量的进阶元素，比如每日奖励的升级等等，也可以让这些活动更加吸引人。

2.游戏模式

描述：这些活动在有限的时间内提供了另一种游戏模式或游戏规则。可以是胜利条件的不同，可以是一种全新的玩法。游戏模式活动其实也是一个很好的尝试新功能的机会，你并不需要太多投入。或者你可以利用某个你知道不具有长期吸引力，但在短期内还是值得一玩的游戏机制。

目标：挽回流失的玩家、防止玩家放弃游戏、为以后可能会应用的游戏点子收集反馈。

最佳做法：游戏模式活动的设计关键就是要提供不同的内容，但又不能太过不同。新奇的东西确实能够吸引用户，但如果加入的游戏模式与你的核心玩法相差太远的，即使是暂时的，玩家也不会轻易去尝试。比如有战利品奖励的第一人称射击游戏，这些玩家可能对静态精准射击挑战不感兴趣，如果你的下一次更新都是围绕这个点子的，可能会让玩家对游戏发展方向产生误解。即使你的游戏模式活动引起了玩家的共鸣，也要非常清楚地表明这个游戏模式会存在多长时间，通过充分的沟通避免玩家的失望。

3.掉落活动

描述：掉落活动这个词来源于RPG游戏。在RPG游戏中，掉落事件通常被看作是打败敌人后奖励物品的随机改变，但掉落事件在任何类型的游戏中都可以指对现有奖励进行的临时改变。这是最容易展开的活动之一，因为它通常不涉及添加新游戏内容，只是调整奖励。掉落事件可以是对现有奖励的临时增加（比如周末的双倍经验），也可以是在日常奖励基础上增加一个全新的奖品。

目标：延长游戏时间、防止玩家流失，以及增加短期奖励。

最佳做法：要记得慷慨一些。这些短期活动的好处就在于我们能表现出慷慨，而且这种奖励模式只是一时的，不会对平衡性造成明显影响。当然，还是要注意下那些可以从无限循环中获得的奖励。但只要尺度得当，这些活动的重点还应该是让玩家能够获得更多奖励。消息的传递也是非常重要的，即使奖励调整得再丰厚，也有可能被玩家错过。要确保玩家知道正在进行的活动，有一种明确的期待，能够感受到核心玩法所带来的不同体验。

4.锦标赛

描述：我想大多数人都已经很熟悉这个概念了吧：就是一系列的比赛，选手之间互相竞争，表现最为突出的为胜者。锦标赛一般都是由有意向打比赛的选手自发组织的。玩家的参与和成绩录入可能是在游戏内部执行的，也可能是通过单独的网站或个人活动展开。比赛的类型和规则有很多种，但都有时间限制，都会涉及到某种类型的成绩。

目标：延长游戏时间、防止玩家流失，以及提供社区公共活动。

最佳做法：锦标赛通常被认为是主要面向高技能玩家的同水准竞技比赛。然而，锦标赛如果可以更具有包容性、降低门槛，那么它会产生更广泛的吸引力。思考一下如何通过使用天梯模式或提供奖励让普通玩家享受到锦标赛的乐趣。也可以考虑在不完全基于技能的游戏玩法上应用锦标赛结构。基于进阶的游戏玩法，甚至是带有随机元素的游戏玩法，它们都可以套用锦标赛模式，只要你烘托出一定的严肃感。

5.目标活动

描述：这种活动会给玩家定一个目标，或者提供一种挑战，必须要在活动期间内完成。通常会有一系列需要达成的任务，玩家所获得奖励会随着挑战完成数量攀升而变得越来越珍贵。这些任务可以是由个人完成的，也可以是社区共同完成的，最后一起分享奖励。

目标：延长游戏时间、提高登录人数&次数，以及鼓励社交参与。

最佳做法：需要共同合作的目标活动比单人就可完成的更具有影响力。这种类型的活动最擅长通过集体目标和共同努力促进社交参与。即使你的活动是围绕单人目标设计的，也要记得对玩家慷慨一些，不要吝啬奖励。你应该希望这是一个全民狂欢的活动，而不是单纯的可达成目标。最后，对目标进度的公开跟踪要谨慎一些。一般很难预测玩家需要多长时间才能达到目标，特别是当游戏中有社区共享任务的情况下，如果玩家仅用1个小时就能完成你认为需要1周的任务，你可能就不想在游戏中用大喇叭广而告之了。

四、无穷无尽的乐趣

线上活动目前依然是让实时运营游戏保持新鲜感、吸引力的最有效方式之一。此外，设定目标、设计内容、评估内容的效果是实时运营游戏迭代的核心流程。线上活动能够允许开发团队利用定期的小规模、临时性的内容完成迭代任务，因此，线上活动对玩家、对开发者来说都是有益的，是一种双赢策略。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

When development teams think of their live content plans they think of big feature roadmaps, how they will respond to community feedback, and maybe A/B testing driven iteration. Often, live events, or temporary content, isn’t a high priority if it makes it into the plans at all. Many games are not set up to allow frequent, light-weight, temporary content and on paper, things like holidays, tournaments, and time-limited collections seem like extras, fluff. But I think live events don’t get enough respect or enough serious design attention from most teams. While the content may be bite-sized, the impact of a well-designed live events strategy is significant for engagement, community sentiment, and monetization. I’ve had the opportunity to both create and analyze a lot of live events, some very successful and some total duds. Over the years, I’ve learned some lessons that seem to apply across genres and platforms. Like many design topics, I find it’s useful to start with the why…

Why Do Live Events?

If you ask most developers that use live events in their games why they put so much time and energy into their temporary content, most will have the same answer; retention. Developers believe that if they can provide a steady content treadmill players will login more often, play longer, and spend more. Certainly the desire to increase retention is the primary motivator for game developers to include live events, but focusing on what we as developers want rarely leads to the best results. We must understand why players enjoy live events to deliver the best, more successful live events.

There are three primary things live events do for players…

Connect Back to Core Gameplay

Live events offer a great way for players to connect back to core gameplay by offering a new context for gameplay or by highlighting modes or parts of your game some players may have missed. Live events can often give players a reason to revisit content or gameplay loops they have already moved through during normal game progression, without making the player feel they are back tracking. This connection back to core gameplay can help keep your game fresh without introducing new mechanics and can remind players what is intrinsically enjoyable about your game.

Provide Shared History

Live events allow your community to experience the passage of time and develop shared history. Shared history, the ability for people to reflect upon or discuss events, is a vital part of community development. People need common events to provide anchors for discussion and bonding over shared experiences. Your players should be able to tell stories to each other about the time X happened in the game or speculate about what might be different in this year’s Halloween event versus last years. Games that are static can struggle to build active communities because they are not continually developing shared history.

Deliver Short Term Rewards

Having long term goals can be great for player engagement but the more time a player puts into your game, the longer the gap between meaningful reward moments often becomes. And even if reward moments in your core progression continue to come frequently, those moments lose their impact on players as their baseline is reset and rewards become expected. Live events can break up the reward loop with relatively-easy to achieve goals and rewards. Rewards that can be achieved in a single session or two can help keep players motivated as they continue to work toward more long term, intrinsic rewards designed into your core progression.

Live Events Strategy

So, If we can deliver live events that do a great job of satisfying players’ needs for connection to core gameplay, shared history, and short term rewards, then our live events can reward us with increased retention. However, there is more to live events than just good design. Without good live events process and strategy even great live events won’t do much to keep players engaged.

Predictable and Surprising

The most important thing to remember about effective live events strategy is your live events must be predictable and surprising. Predictable in that players need to know they can count on you to deliver on a consistent schedule. And surprising in that the particulars of your live event content should be novel and varied. The most successful live event strategy delivers events on a set schedule without fail but keeps the player interested by delivering something slightly different with each update.

Consistency really is key to live events. If you want your players to treat your game as more than just consumed media, they need to know they can count on you to deliver. Ritual and routine are big parts of hobbies and long term engagement with any form of entertainment. Pick a schedule you can commit to and then really prioritize hitting your ship dates. In my experience, shipping on a consistent schedule has been more important for long term retention than details of exactly what content is delivered with every update. Teams that want to make the most out of live events, do best with production processes that prioritize shipping dates and are flexible about content. Think of your live updates as trains; one arrives at the station every X days. Build your live events to be modular and independent so that they can board the next train no matter which train that happens to be.

Of course, keeping your live events fresh and interesting is also important. Simply setting an automated schedule of rotating events will lose players’ interest quickly and lead to players focusing on optimization strategies instead of enjoying the experience. There are always limits on functional variety in games and depending on how many verbs your game has, you may hit the limit of how much different gameplay you can offer very quickly. For this reason, live events rely on context and setup for most of their variety. Leaning on real-world events like holidays is a popular strategy but don’t be afraid to develop your own context based on your community or the world of your game. The goal is to keep the context fresh while delivering live events that offer straightforward challenges and rewards.

Goals and Results

The other important element to a successful live events strategy is setting goals and measuring results. Like most things in LiveOps, it can be hard to stay focused on a content plan if you don’t know what success looks like or whether you are achieving it. Set a goal for every live event you release and then critically examine whether you met that goal once the event is over. It is vitally important that the goals and criteria for measuring success are set before the event is released. This both helps align the team on purpose and expectations for the event and prevents bias from overwhelming your later assessment making your learnings less useful. These goals do not need to be business outcomes (such as spending, login numbers, etc.) although they are easier to track and measure. You goals may be community sentiment related, or simply to surprise and delight, as long as you can make an honest assessment of how well the event met the goal once it is complete the process will be valuable.

Live Event Types

While much of the necessary surprise of live events comes from context, solid functional design determines an events ability to fulfil its purpose and meet its goals. Most live events fall into one of five event types, each with their own strengths and best practices. These types are simple and will be familiar to most designers. Entire papers could be written about the ins and outs of design for each of these types. Below is just a basic taxonomy to get started.

Login Events

Description: These events reward players for logging into the game. Often simple and straightforward, the primary objective for players is to login and get rewards. While many mobile games use login rewards as a core feature instead of an event, login rewards can have greater impact when used as an event. Login rewards are inherently extrinsic rewards and as such, they lose their effectiveness quickly. Offering them only sometimes in association with a special occasion or other context can allow them to be effective over and over again without players becoming numb to them.

Purpose: To encourage login consistency to help develop login routine and to entice back lapsed players.

Best Practices: Adding a little more effort than simply logging in can make these events more impactful. For instance, you may have a login event which asks players to visit every region of your world each day or complete one match each day. Goals should be simple but encourage the player to do more than login and then log back out. Additionally, adding a small amount of progression, such as an escalating reward each day of the event, can make these events feel more exciting.

Game Modes

Description: These events offer up an alternative mode of play or rule set for a limited time. These can be anything from different win conditions to new gameplay. Game mode events are a great way to try out new features in your live game without too much commitment or to make available gameplay that you know won’t have long term appeal but is fun for a while.

Purpose: To entice back lapsed players, prevent churn, and elicit feedback on potential core game ideas.

Best Practices: The key to game mode events to offer content that is different but not too different. Novelty is fun and will keep people engaged but adding gameplay that is too far removed from your core gameplay, even temporarily, can alienate your players. Players of a loot based first person shooter might not be interested in precision platforming challenges, and making your next update all about them might give your players the wrong idea about the direction of the game. Even if your game mode events are resonating with your players, make sure to always be very clear about how long a game mode will be available. Players can easily mistake a game mode event for a new, permanent addition to the game. Avoid disappointment by over communicating.

Drop Events

Description: The term drop event comes from RPGs where the events usually constitute changes to loot tables for enemies, but drop events can be used in any genre to mean temporary changes to rewards for existing content. These are some of the easiest events to implement as they usually don’t involve adding new gameplay content, just adjusting rewards. Drop events can be temporary increase to existing rewards (think double experience points weekends) or they can the addition of an entirely new reward to what is usually received.

Purpose: To increase playtime, prevent churn, and add short term rewards.

Best Practices: Be generous. The benefit of these events being short term is they allow us to be generous with rewards while capping the impact to a game’s reward balance. Of course, be careful of rewards that can be earned in an infinite loop, but provided proper due diligence is done, these events should be about players getting more. Messaging is also very important for these types of events as reward adjustments can be missed by players even if they are generous. Make sure players know what is happening, what to expect, and that they can feel the difference in their normal play.

Tournaments

Description: Most people are familiar with the concept of tournaments; a series of contests in which a player’s performance is judged relative to others. Tournaments in games are usually organized and scheduled with players opting in to participate. Participation and results may be an automated part of your game or they may happen through a separate website or in person event. There are a variety of tournament types and rules but all are time limited and involve some type of results.

Purpose: To increase play time, prevent churn, and provide a shared community event.

Best Practices: Tournaments are usually thought of as primarily targeted at high skill players looking for high even competition. However, tournaments can have a broad appeal when designed to be more inclusive and easier to engage with. Consider how you might make tournaments fun for average players by using ladder structures or offering rewards for more than just the most wins. Also consider using tournament event structure for gameplay that is not entirely skill based. Progression based gameplay or even gameplay with random elements can be fun bases for tournaments as long as you present them with the appropriate amount of seriousness.

Goal Events

Description: These events provide players with a goal or challenge that must be completed within the event time frame. Often there is a series of goals with an increasing reward depending on how many of the challenges the player can complete. Goals can be individual or cumulative with the entire community working toward something to get a shared reward.

Purpose: To increase play time, increase logins, and encourage social engagement.

Best Practices: Working together on goal events is more impactful than goals that are isolated to an individual player. This type of event is best at producing social engagement through shared goals and shared effort. Even if you keep the event focused on individual goals, be generous with your rewards. You want this to feel like an event, not simply more achievement content. And finally, be careful with public tracking of goal progress. It can be hard to predict how long it will take players to reach goals especially if you have shared community goals, if it ends up taking the players 1 hour to complete something you thought would take them 1 week, you may not want to have that broadcasted automatically.

The Fun Never Stops

Live events remain one of the best methods of keeping a live game feeling fresh and relevant to players. Additionally, the process of setting goals, designing content, then measuring the effectiveness of that content is core to LiveOps iteration Live events allow development teams to complete that core loop with small-scale, temporary content on a regular basis making them good for players and good for developers

(source:gamasutra.com )