This article will talk about the price discrimination phenomenon in the lottery mobile game from the perspective of pricing to explain two problems:
1. Why are free-to-play games earning more than buyout games at the same level of production?
2, Why is the pricing of card drawing games generally high?
Most free-to-play games have a common phenomenon: a very small number of people contribute the vast majority of the game's profits.
According to a prospectus published by a two-dimensional mobile game company in 2017, about 2% (0.2× 10% of the payment rate) of players contributed 80% of the game turnover.
The extreme proportions tell us what kind of people most of the average players in the game are and where they are.
It also reveals to us the veil that makes free games so popular.
1. What is price discrimination?
In plain language, it is the act of pricing the same goods differently.
It is based on a very common phenomenon: the highest price that different people can accept for the same thing is not the same.
For example, in a 3A game, A thinks that the slot is five hundred to win, but B may feel that this thing is dead and selling a hundred.
Assuming that the price of this game is 300 yuan, then of course A will buy it without thinking, and B will treat it as if he did not see it.
Then at this time its income is 300 yuan.
Then, the manufacturer's boss slapped his head and said:
"If I can give A a price of 500 yuan and B a price of 100 yuan, won't I be able to earn 600 yuan?"
Price discrimination is common around us, including but not limited to:
Big data kills
Limited-time discounts
Buy more, get more
Coupons
In essence, it is all some kind of application of it.
Price discrimination is divided into three levels, depicting different differentiated pricing phenomena in society. This is not the point, interested friends can understand on their own.
Games, on the other hand, due to their high production costs and extremely low cost of dissemination, have become a good commodity for the use of price discrimination.
If you add the word "free" in front of the game, some of them become... Extreme.
Second, how to achieve price discrimination in the lottery mobile game?
(1) Goods with fixed prices.
As mentioned earlier, price discrimination is actually the sale of the same commodity for different prices.
You may think that some people play games Krypton without blinking, and some people play games like to be a server moth, is this price discrimination?
No.
Although this phenomenon seems to be "paying different prices when playing the same game", objectively speaking, the services enjoyed by the two are not equal.
So, let's first look for that constant price anchor.
Here is the example of "Original God":
So, in the game "Original God", what is the product with the same price?
role.
(2) Single commodity, different prices.
In the game Protos, a single specific character has a definite expected price: 15,000 rough (card resources).
That is to say, the result of collecting all the players' draw data will be infinitely closer to the frequency of one UP character per 15,000 rough stones.
And 15,000 rough, converted into our commonly used currency is 1202 yuan.
Twelve hundred dollars to buy a character's Tivat use rights.
I'm sure more than half of the people here wouldn't want to spend $1,200 on a Raiden General.
However, you will find a magical phenomenon: obviously not as much krypton, but you still have General Raiden?
Here are the different pricing for a single character in Protoss.
Krypton player: 0~1200 RMB
Monthly card players: 0 ~ 150 yuan
Zero Krypton player: $0
For Zero Kr players, the character is given away in vain.
I know that maybe you put a lot of time and effort into trying to get the character for free, but your "bursting" behavior will not have any direct benefits for the game company.
Sometimes we have a misunderstanding, that is, we do "daily tasks" in Tivat, doing "activities" is a kind of "part-time work" behavior, and "rough" is the "reward" of my "part-time work" behavior.
In fact, in order for you to be able to "work", the company also has to paste a server fee...
That's not to say that free-to-players don't have any value for game companies, but it has nothing to do with today's theme.
For monthly card players, the maximum price of the character is 150 yuan.
That is, five monthly passes, 5×3000.
You should be able to find that in order to ensure that free players also have a basic game experience, "Original God" will release a lot of accurately calculated rough stones in the game.
So, if the rough you use to draw cards is a free card drawing resource given to you by these game companies, it is equivalent to the character being obtained for free.
The larger the percentage of free rough when drawing cards, the lower the actual price of the character.
In this way, price discrimination can be automatically realized based on the choices of different players.
(3) For example:
Suppose you are a Kryptonian player and your expectation for the character of General Raiden is $500.
But unfortunately, the price given to her by "Original God" is 1200 yuan.
So at this time, will you give up kryptonite?
No, because "Original God" has prepared a lot of free rough for you, as well as a monthly pass.
If you get a monthly pass (30 yuan) in advance, the final reward is 3,000 rough stones (240 yuan).
Then General Raiden becomes a psychological expectation of 470 (500-30) yuan for you, and the list price is 960 (1200-240) yuan.
The difference between these fell from 700 (1200-500) yuan to 490 (960-470) yuan.
If at this time, "Original God" happens to prepare a rough stone worth 490 yuan for you, are you krypton or not krypton?
You will be kryptonian, because at this time the real price of General Raiden has dropped from 1200 yuan to 500 yuan, which is in line with your psychological expectations.
For manufacturers, they really earned this 500 yuan.
If they don't send these rough stones in the game and open a monthly card function to vaguely reduce the actual price of the product, then the manufacturer will not be able to earn you 500 yuan.
Third, the price is inflated due to price discrimination.
The unit price of the characters in the card draw game is indeed quite expensive in terms of the senses, and one of the reasons is that:
Due to differentiated pricing, most people do not buy the right to use the character at the market price of the product, so the manufacturer will increase the surface price of the character to offset the decline in the actual price of the product due to various free rough and monthly passes.
For manufacturers, price increases can easily cause consumer dissatisfaction. So they generally raise the price and use various ways to make the goods cheaper.
For free-to-play games, this phenomenon is even more extreme, and the actual price of goods can even be zero, so the price inflated as a result will be more exaggerated.
IV. Conclusion.
Of course, price discrimination and differentiated pricing are not something that can be done if you want to. Buyout games will also try to make the same game sell at different prices through partitioning, discounts, etc. Just to say that free-to-play games are a more suitable carrier for differentiated pricing, then you can naturally earn the part of the money that the buyout system can't earn. But until the Internet matured, free-to-play games had no room for birth.
If you have any questions or ideas, please leave a message in the comment area.
Probably just like that, think about it or ask for a thumbs up.