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Have you ever played a game of entertainment?
Maybe a little knowingly asked. As a long-established type of light gameplay, I believe that most people have been exposed to several elimination games in their gaming careers, and by coincidence, they may have been addicted to it for a while.
The era of playing Tetris began, and elimination was known for its undifferentiated appeal in the gaming circle. Even if there are other tempting elements in the work, it is difficult to stop the joy brought by elimination.
You should know which game I'm talking about
The audience of elimination games in China may exceed the cognition of many people. For example, a single "Happy And Happy", the registered users reached 870 million in 2018. Excluding some multi-numbered parties, this data is very exaggerated.
As one of people's entertainment choices, eliminating a considerable number of users in the game is not the same as the "player" in the mainstream understanding.
Compared with players with moderate to heavy games such as MOBA, FPS, RPG, etc., this part of the gamer seems to be more "marginalized". Many of them are inseparable from the identity of the "player", and some may have only been exposed to elimination games.
You could argue that they are not players in the traditional sense. But it is impossible to deny that they also have their own passion for games.
01
As early as 2016, there were data showing that domestic mobile game players spent one-third of the time in eliminating games (hereinafter referred to as "elimination"). If there is a pie chart, you'll see that there are more portions of the game than the other types combined.
People are playing tirelessly, looking for ways to break the game on the seemingly chaotic game interface, like an instinct-driven one. But no one cares when you're immersed in it, so why doesn't it stop you?
In fact, there is also a "routine" behind the elimination of fun.
I talked to the staff who developed Happy And Happy. The planner told me that the sensory feedback is more timely and efficient than other types of games, and each level and each operation will bring about a change in mood, and the experience is coherent and discrete.
At the same time, randomness is at work. The initial layout of the interface may be the same every time the game, but the rules, the elimination of drops brought about by each swipe of the player, will eventually lead to a completely different result. Just like even the consumption has the expected happiness, there is also the unexpected surprise.
The planner introduced to me, "Fun, flow-inducing levels, generally the difficulty of the level and your skills just match, stuck between too much and not, almost can pass or almost did not pass", it sounds very reasonable.
The planner lamented that in recent years, in the change of consumer fun products, the core level design has been very "volume", and everyone wants to make something new.
The industry divides consumer music into several generations. The first generation, like "Happy Match" and "Candy Crush Legend", is based on pure level elimination gameplay. A few years ago, the second generation of entertainment, typical of "Dream Garden/Home", rose up, which has a rich peripheral gameplay system, obtaining resources through elimination, and then building houses and gardens. Their popularity is so high that when you surf, you may have seen the relevant scenes or terriers.
The uncle in "Dream Home"
At this time, the first generation continued to progress, and the feel and picture were much more exquisite. Later, the third generation appeared, often combining SLG and RPG elements, the depth of gameplay was improved, and the sense of achievement was also more. With the low threshold of entertainment, players can enjoy more complex game mechanics,
As you can see, The Elimination Fun has been creating new cool spots for players while keeping the core elimination fun unchanged. On the interface, which the designer calls the "chessboard", the colorful "chess pieces" form countless permutations and combinations, and as long as the finger is moved, it will trigger a series of chain reactions.
It is this simple and pure happiness that makes the pleasure of consumption eventually conquer countless people.
02
"My mom has been playing, as soon as there is an update, she will break through the level, and then sit and wait for the next update"
Some netizens shared their daily observations on social platforms, saying that their mothers are usually "not people who love to play games", but they have a special love for consumption and consumption, and every update will explode the machine, and there is no doubt that loyal users.
With a little search, you'll realize that the phenomenon is widespread. Boldly speaking, every netizen looks out one or two layers from his social circle and has the opportunity to find similar people. It doesn't have to be "mom", it can be someone else including an elderly peer.
This more or less summarizes the characteristics of many consumer fun players - they have little interest in video games in the broad sense, but they maintain a lot of play intensity in the game, krypton gold? Although it is relatively rare, of course there are.
The current level of consumer entertainment products is less than a few hundred, and the big brother "Happy Consumption" has been out of more than 5,000 levels some time ago. In the words of planning, achieving such a level magnitude is "a great test of design skills and precipitation over the years", and there are more than a dozen level modes that can be evaluated as fun and feasible.
To nibble on such a tome, it is conceivable that the player will also spend enough time and energy.
An elder who has been circulating in "Destroy the Stars", "Happy and Happy", and "Candy Crush Legend" for many years and years told me that the nature of her work gives her leisure time to play games, "As you often say, touch the fish."
Although her usual contact with video games is limited to board games except for entertainment, it is no different from that of ordinary players. The card level will be upset, so it will "play many times" for the pass; will check whether there are small tricks and strategies, and want to "consume faster"; obsessed with the perfect evaluation of three stars and four stars, because "the star is dissatisfied and looks uncomfortable".
Many netizens feel the same way. They found that their parents and grandparents and other elders were playing with fun, not vain and young, "getting up to a plate, eating a plate, a plate in the afternoon, a plate before going to sleep", "it is estimated that dreams are sliding mobile phones".
A bit of an exaggeration, but very real.
Welcomed by older players, once many young netizens had the experience of being asked to play by their elders, once their parents could not turn their brains, the game progress was not willing to be stuck there. At this time, the children who once thought that "how old they still play games" have become the best helpers.
However, many times, children do not play better than the elders. The technical point of playing puzzles is to sink your mind and find the rules, and young players who are distracted by too much information will not always be able to pass the level faster.
It is difficult to ignore the reality that although 24-40 years old is the main age group of players, there are still 20% of players over 40 years old in consumer entertainment, and if placed in the horror base of more than 500 million, there are also more than 100 million registered users.
There is a saying in the second half of the paragraph, "Middle-aged and elderly people have money and time, no energy", I think it should be, they have not found something they really like. In a way, the fun provides a pathway to stimulate the enthusiasm of silence, helping them to regain their focus on something.
When talking about what players are good at entertainment, the staff of the music element generally feels that "it seems to be a woman at present". The larger number of female players in the entertainment industry than other game types has become a consensus inside and outside the industry. Older female players are an important part of the consumer fun player group.
Female players, older age, these core player circles in the daily cognition of the "insulation" degree of group labels, in the consumer fun shows the "unexpected" hardcore level, and many people on the Internet have personally experienced such "counter-common sense" scenarios.
For example, some netizens found in a company's activity to organize the experience of consumer fun products, and the male players who killed in MOBA and FPS on weekdays were easier to pass in the game, dizzy, as if lost in the colorful chessboard, and finally had to rely on props to assist in passing the level. Some male players complained, "I can't see where the laws of color and shape are."
Female players generally pass the level easily, and the efficiency is extremely high, and the 100 levels are quickly passed. A Weibo netizen agreed that his mother had an extra insistence on playing with entertainment, "deliberately not using props and relying on hard power to break through", obviously very confident in technology.
In other words, the entertainment is more worthy of the publicity of playing anytime and anywhere. One-handed operation, each step is paused, simple and easy to understand interface, so that it can adapt to a variety of situations, float out at any time; if you sink in, you can get a coherent experience in a short time, especially suitable for killing time.
This gives it a unique appearance rate in commuting scenes that are often captured by others.
To ask what is the most popular game on public transportation facilities during commuting hours, the entertainment must have a name and a lot of noise. The well-known name of "subway game overlord" and "good commuter partner" is nothing but entertainment.
Just like Shanghai, where BB Ji is located, the frequency of the consumption music in the subway is so high that it has caused some doubts.
So that when taking the subway, watching others play with entertainment can also be used as a way to decompress.
"On the very crowded subway, sometimes I can watch the people next to me playing with fun for half a day, let alone play by myself, and the result is that I have sat on the station", some Douban netizens described the encounter, and the tone was like his own habits are very peculiar.
I didn't expect to get a lot of approval.
It is not difficult to find that in the relatively closed space of the subway, especially during the morning and evening rush hours, whether it is watching or playing in person, the "incomparably comfortable" experience of consumption and entertainment can make people feel comfortable.
This may only be possible with a very low "burden" on both the player and the viewer.
Why use the word burden? Indeed, games should not be a burden. However, some games will have invisible pressures such as cooperation, pvpour, and operation volume, which are diluted in the "average stay time of only 2 minutes per level", and sometimes there is no such thing.
So the play was chosen by a large number of "edge players". He can be an office worker yawning on the subway, a student in a school uniform, or a grandparent carrying a vegetable basket and reading glasses. It's not surprising to appear on anyone's phone.
Like most people, I have some elders around me who uphold the classic "game uselessness theory". Later, I inadvertently discovered that some of them were old drivers who had been immersed in the altar of consumption for many years behind their backs.
In the early years, elimination games such as "Happy Elimination" had a PC version, even if the update was stopped later, becoming a "discarded stand-alone machine", but the music element found that there are still a large number of users who are used to playing on the computer, many of whom are older.
"Not being good at using smartphones may be the reason," says Community Operations of Le Elements. "Older people are not used to playing mobile games", in recent years they have found that mobile game players are much younger than expected, "and dealing with us mainly in their twenties and thirties is a bit shocking." ”
"But", as soon as the conversation turned, she still stressed to me: "There are many mother groups in the consumer fun." This means that this group, contrary to the so-called definition of core players, is still a unique force in the entertainment circle.
They are not fundamentally different from the average player, and the game also paints their lives with different colors.
03
As you may have noticed, the players mentioned earlier are mostly presented through the mouths of others, and the narrator will be a child, colleague, or friend.
Compared with the huge player volume, the voice of the consumer players on the Internet is much more low-key, at least it gives people the intuitive feeling.
Source watermark
After actually understanding, you will find that they are just a little special. The community operation of Le Element tells me that one of the favorite things that consumers do in the community is "to share and show off".
Sending pictures, coupled with simple and fragmented copywriting, "Like a child, a small thing will tell you how powerful I am."
"Pass the level to share to show off, Samsung to share to show off, participate in the weekly competition to play a high score, the event to get the gift box props, can show off."
This slowly makes the game's community become the "happy, Peace & love" look in the eyes of the developers, and there will be no conflict or contradiction to feedback the problem.
In addition to showing off, peaceful communication also accounts for a considerable weight, "the big god player and the ordinary player formed a mutual support relationship, such as some special levels can not be beaten step by step, need some skills, the big god will do the strategy to help others, they get a sense of achievement, ordinary players finally pass the level, can also get their own sense of achievement", community operation said.
Successful works in the elimination category tend to have good long-term player retention and not so high payment rates. In addition to the game characteristics, it is not unrelated to how players view the game.
"There are a lot of aunts in the community, right, you want them to share more game content, they don't understand much, so they talk about daily life with entertainment", the community operation is very interesting, "they will combine life and entertainment, what did they do today, buy vegetables with the little sisters, eat, drink afternoon tea, and then play with the entertainment in the middle, so that it melts in." ”
"Like a documentary of life."
Happy Elements shared photos of players at my offline event
It can be seen that these players express their feelings very simple and straightforward. They will say how hard they played, "20 levels in a day", they will express the slots and good feelings in the play process in one or two sentences, and they will be "happy" after the difficulties, because a certain mechanism did not take the first place or Samsung, they will feel that the official is not secretly changing anything, designing obstacles to block TA. Officially, this is because "players have their own judgments".
Previously, the Tanabata event was held in "Happy And Happy", which had cPs of foxes (Mo Mo Foxes) and bears (Chestnut Bears), and the official found that older players would also "bump cp" like fashionable young people, praising the good design. When the planner asked them "where is it?" in person, they said, "It's good to be with a fox and a bear," and would wear a wedding dress for the fox character representing the woman because "the wedding dress looks good."
They may not be very expressive, but they can feel that the game makes these "marginal players" like everyone else, absorb the emotional resonance of the game.
There was once a player's self-report that impressed the community operation sister. The player wrote, "People say that it's a very ordinary game, but I feel extraordinary here" because there are important memories of him and his deceased mother. It was the only game his mother had ever played, and they played a number together, played by his mother when he went to work, and he played when his mother was resting, and finally broke through the very late level together. Until his mother died, he continued to play in the game.
There are also several grandparents who are in touch with the authorities. One of the grandmothers is obsessed with breaking through the level every day, and is very persistent about the raider level, and often runs to ask them questions when playing, saying that she does not understand it and let the younger generations of the family relay it, and the degree of attention is no less than that of young players.
Another grandfather loves to socialize, actively participates in online and offline activities, and if there is an offline activity that happens to be in his city, he will call and say that he also wants to go, because "in addition to games, meet and chat with young friends who play and have fun together, and feel that they are also young."
And sweet operations like getting to know each other through offline activities and finally entering the palace of marriage happen from time to time. The internal music element also jokingly calls the elimination of music as a "blind date and dating platform".
Perhaps, we should put away our vague prejudices, even if we look at "simple" games, it will allow more people to connect with the outside world and with other people. And the more people on this stage, the wider the stage itself, the more it can show the positive side of human nature.
In fact, from the perspective of running offline activities, the path taken by Big Brother like "Happy And Happy" is also very special. In the era of movies, animation, and tide cards, the most gimmicky was chosen: public welfare activities.
Sounds a bit boring, right? In October last year, Le Elements held a public welfare activity on the protection of wild horses at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, inviting 15 families to participate in the scene, and all the families present included the elderly in their 70s and 80s to children under the age of several.
The atmosphere is not particularly warm, but there is no cold scene like an old acquaintance meeting.
The little sister in charge of the activity told me that regardless of online and offline activities, the participating players are very supportive. "The key is that you can see and feel the enthusiasm of everyone, they will shake hands with you and hug you, and they are especially grateful to you, as if your game has provided a lot of help." 」 The tone of the little sister's emotion has a sense of presence at first sight.
The planner feels that "the biggest thing about the game is interactivity, you can understand the ecology of wild horses and golden monkeys in the process of playing, and the content of popular science will be presented in the form of a simple and straightforward game, and then conveyed to you with interaction, which is better than passive acceptance."
"Just like a lot of games have something to dig into, you can learn a lot by playing with the game. Back to the fun, for example, why is the chessboard made like this, why are the 'pieces' these small animals, or these kinds of candy? What different shapes do they represent? Why is it cool after elimination? These unknowns are worth mining. ”
Pro bono activities may not be the most interesting, but they are best suited for consumer fun players.
Those who do not know much about video games will subtly understand, actively or passively, how games enter people's lives and thus affect life.
What exactly is funmaking? Although it is already a national game, there are still many people who can't answer it. They didn't understand games, they hadn't touched any games, and naturally they wouldn't really look at it objectively.
Contemporary games rarely consider the characteristics of players up to the age of 40, many people are over forty or fifty years old, physiological function is reduced, the way of thinking becomes conservative and solidified, and it is difficult to perceive the happiness of video games.
The planner seriously told me, "There needs to be a friendly enough game design, so that people can enjoy the combination of art and technology with a low threshold of gameplay, and it is naturally better to have some resonance, after all, everyone has the right to enjoy the joys and sorrows in the game." ”
In fact, social media can often see that in the chat records shared by young people, parents and mothers are short of physical strength because of the elimination of happiness, and send messages to children to send some physical strength. As a result, there is a topic between relatives and friends, and a connection is generated.
In this way, the entertainment is like a harmless platform for humans and animals, which will lead people who have misunderstandings and prejudices about the game, or have always been indifferent, into the wonderful world of the game, allowing them to get a glimpse of the charm of the game.
At the same time, perhaps the most important thing is to become a player together.
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