This article is a systematic discussion of quadratic elements and cards (Gacha).
"Draw cards" appear more and more frequently in the game industry, especially mobile games, especially two-dimensional games in mobile games.
If the card drawing system in "Glory of Kings" is just the icing on the cake, then the card drawing system in "Original God" is the core and key to its survival to explosion.
We can observe a phenomenon: the more the game style is dumped on the second dimension, the more the "draw card" profit model is the core of its revenue, and vice versa.
Someone once demonstrated the addictiveness of the card drawing system with the famous experiment of "Skinner Box", and continuous positive feedback will cause animals to have sustained behavior, even after the reward consequences actually disappear, the "card drawing" behavior will continue for a while.
In the past, when the laws on probability formulas were unclear, this mechanism was indeed exploited — companies increased hit rates early on and lowered this probability later in the game, and players wouldn't have a clear perception of it.
Of course, the player is not a guinea pig, and instead of just scratching his head in the cage wondering why the food hasn't fallen yet, he will angrily smash everything that should be smashed.
In addition to the "Skinner box", the risk appetite that humans seem to have innately is also a reason. To put it bluntly, some of us get pleasure from the act of "gambling" itself.
At a particular time in human history, having a spirit of loyalty to adventure may be aspirational. But in modern times, when the economy is booming and personal safety is largely guaranteed, a crazy gambler is obviously less likable.
Except for Yumeko
But if the draw pattern had really taken full advantage of human nature's weaknesses, it wouldn't have come so late— at the end of the day, the combination of randomness and great risk isn't special. In DNF, the huge risks and benefits are reflected in equipment enhancements, and a single failure from +12 to +13 may mean more than tens of yuan in real losses, while its success rate is only single digits.
Not to mention the once-popular "horse betting" campaign, which became the official harvesting weapon of DNF when gold coins and fiat currency can be exchanged in fact. Later, this model was explicitly prohibited.
But this model of randomness did not completely replace the priced in-app purchases, and DNF is still using various holiday packages as the main selling point for profits.
This at least shows that the card draw system is not some kind of "superior existence" of the internal purchase system. While emphasizing randomness, the draw mode also has greater limitations, making it difficult for him to apply to most paid scenarios of online games.
Let's go back to the second dimension first.
丨 Quadratic element and draw card
The combination of two-dimensional games and card drawing systems has a long history, and there have been some attempts to integrate in-app purchases rather than cards into the game, and Mihayou's "Crash Academy" is a good example.
They initially chose to sell their weapons and equipment at a price tag in the mall, but the benefits were minimal. Later, the similar quality of "Crash Academy 2" chose to use the card drawing system and immediately achieved unimaginable success. In the next few years, there were almost no two-dimensional games that dared to choose a pure in-app purchase system.
But this does not mean the disappearance of the "clear price" peddling model, but for the core of the "character" two-dimensional game, manufacturers without exception choose to draw cards.
For example, the resin (physical strength) in "Original God" and a small number of gift bags exist in the form of some kind of "in-purchase". Players may not like the setting of spending 30 rough stones to randomly gain 40 to 80 stamina, but it seems that they are happy to randomly get a character within 1 to 180 draws.
This seems to illustrate a certain fact: a certain characteristic of the draw card and a certain characteristic of the two-dimensional game seem to be a match made in heaven, and together they will burst into great potential.
Whether it is a two-dimensional game or a card draw, it all vaguely points to one thing:
role.
丨 Role
What kind of existence is a character in a two-dimensional game?
There is no doubt that characters are at the heart of all two-dimensional games. To determine whether a game is a two-dimensional game, it is necessary to see whether its game mode is running around the character, whether it is using story, details, and sounds to make a character more flesh and blood.
Protos wrote the plot and story for its characters, creating an open world where they could move freely, and finally drawing cards to complete the closing link.
And some games, although the use of two-dimensional painting style is not false, but on closer inspection, it is full of "value" and "competition" sores. They serve, at least not the most core batch of secondary users.
The two-dimensional game provides services that are first of all "feelings" and secondly "gameplay". Vivid characters are the best way to evoke the player's "feelings".
The sea of hearts is complex, and this emotion is transmitted to my heart
Big Viagra, one of the founders of Miha Tour, said in his fledgling: "These otaku have a strong need to interact with the opposite sex in their hearts... It is precisely for them to meet this need. ", can not be described as incisive.
As mentioned in the book, there seems to be a certain natural and combined tendency between the two-dimensional and the drawing of cards, so is the role as the core of the two-dimensional game more consistent with the "draw card system" peddling model to some extent?
Before elaborating on this problem, we will first disassemble the process of "card drawing" in detail, and observe every detail of a natural person in the card drawing process.
丨 Draw card
The card drawing behavior can be simply divided into three steps:
【Before the card draw - during the draw - after the card draw】
Pre-draw: Includes the accumulation of card drawing resources (rough) and the effort required to unlock the card drawing function.
Draw card: with an expected value of 15,000 rough, the contract 94 draw is used as a dividing line, and the up character obtained before the 94 draw is "Oh", and the up character obtained after the 94 draw is called "non".
After Drawing: A series of actions performed by a player after learning the result of the draw.
Now, we replace "Draw" with "In-App Purchase" and "Draw Resource" with "Character Fragment", and players can get character shards for free or choose to buy them. Let's look at the consequences of these missing links after replacement.
In the case that the expectations are exactly the same and the game mode is similar, it seems that only the player's desire to consume can be affected by the draw.
What behaviors are players doing to stimulate consumption?
【After card draw】
If it is an in-app purchase with a clear price, there is naturally no difference in "luck". In the absence of the occasional factor of "luck", the differential consequences, the player's simple reliance on money to obtain the character seems less worthy of publicity.
Or, precisely because "probability" is objectively fair to everyone, if your draw is "Ou", you will have some pleasure by sharing this result by emphasizing your own "particularity".
Conversely, even if the draw is "non", the player also has a reason to share the result of the draw - this may stimulate sympathy around them, perhaps to vent the bitterness in the heart, or to emphasize the "particularity" of their own draw results from another perspective.
We will find that in addition to providing the goods themselves, the "draw card system" will also provide players with a "social" impulse.
This "social" itself will increase the "popularity" of the game, and will also make other players have the urge to "draw cards", which is why many games will encourage you to share the results of the card draw.
However, the number of times a player draws a card must be rare – the lower the probability of a favorable consequence, the more likely the player is to share that consequence.
According to the conclusion of the B station UP master "a balance tree": the probability of the original god winning the UP five stars will slowly decrease from a high point, and then the probability of starting at the 74th draw will increase suddenly, which is why the vast majority of the five stars will be born in the 74th to 80th draw.
Looking at this graph, you will find an interesting detail: the probability of the 1st draw is higher than the 73rd draw.
Why is it designed that way?
Because for the player, the thrill of the 40th draw, the 50th draw or the 60th draw is not as good as the 1st draw.
This "either Euro, or non, reduce the middle value of non-Euro" design does not change expectations, does not affect the company's income level, but will significantly increase the player's desire to share the results of the draw.
In the Internet era, traffic is everything, and communication is everything.
However, this conclusion also seems to indicate that the goods peddled by the "card draw system" need to be the most valuable kind of goods in the game. If you just smoke some useless rags, even if the probability is low, not many people will be interested.
【Drawing card】
As for whether the "draw card" itself can stimulate consumption, there are question marks.
The peculiarity of the "draw card" comes from its randomness, but we know that in the face of a large enough sample, any randomness will be erased. The higher your draws, the more inclined the final average expectation will be to 94 draws – which makes randomness meaningless.
Therefore, the player's "draw" can not be too frequent, and frequent "draw" will lead to the result tending to stabilize, for the player, the pleasure of a single draw will gradually decline.
The sheer randomness of the indications doesn't seem to be enough to stimulate player spending, but here we use another method to explain.
As we said earlier, according to the 94th draw line, the player's draw results can be divided into "Eur" and "No". The so-called Europe and Africa are de facto "favorable consequences" and "adverse consequences".
Since the number of times the player draws the card is gradual, as long as the player draws the character before the 94th draw, it can be considered a gain. This part of the proceeds can be used to prepare for the next "draw".
So, before the 94th draw, the player has enough reason to draw the card.
But what if it's "no"? What if the player still doesn't get the character in the 94th draw? What is the worst adverse consequence a player has to bear?
It is to use the money of the maximum value of 86 draw card resources to bear the maximum risk, calculated in RMB, which is a figure that ordinary people cannot accept.
However, in my article on "price discrimination", I said that in free-to-play games, the actual price of a single item for different players is different.
This will lead to an interesting conclusion: if the adverse consequences, that is, "non" really occur, the cost to the player may be 600 yuan of real money and silver, or it may be just a string of data worthless, and what kind of adverse consequences to bear, the player is free to choose.
In other words, you can choose to marry your wife home with krypton 648, or you can choose to wait patiently for the next iteration of your favorite character.
This "risk reduction" option led to the result that the risks and rewards of drawing cards did not seem to be equal.
Of course, this is not possible, and the key in between is:
Players chase the best benefits and try the least amount of risk.
Before chasing profits, i.e. the 94th draw, you will sensoryally maximize the beneficial consequences and the benefits gained.
After rejecting risk, i.e. the 94th draw, you will sensory minimize the adverse consequences and risks you take.
Coming and going, "drawing cards" really gives players the illusion of "saving blood, not losing money".
This further motivates players to draw cards.
丨The "particularity" of the role
The core and most distinctive service of the two-dimensional game is to sell "emotions" and provide emotional links between characters and players.
However, as long as the "character" is sold as a commodity, it is inevitable that the well-designed wives will be labeled with price tags.
Of course, two-dimensional players do not like this feeling, two-dimensional characters are not the skin of MOBA games, can not be like a piece of clothing, you have me and everyone has.
Since it is "emotion", it is bound to require some kind of special link between the player and the character, so that the player really likes the character.
Yes, the draw provides this feature, and the randomness of the draw makes the character more special.
This particularity is reflected in two aspects:
丨 Random character drawn
丨 The number of random draw cards drawn to a specific character
The difficulty of the Protoss God Big World gameplay is obvious to all, which also helps any traveler to easily swim in Tivat with the few characters sent at the beginning and the random characters drawn in the early stage.
However, if "random" is removed, the player can choose from any character, and a better solution is bound to emerge. Characters are certainly strong and weak, but if the player is given the opportunity to choose characters based on strength, it destroys the possibility of "emotion" between them.
I still remember that the role I used to open the wasteland was Reiser + Barbara, and it was because he accompanied me through almost the entire continent of Tivat that I always remember him deeply. If there is a top big world combination like Wendy + Gan Yu at the beginning, will I still have such mixed feelings for them? The answer, of course, is no.
For the latter, the different number of cards also gives the character the meaning of not using it.
Even if it is only a little different, this character has left a unique "special" for the player.
For each of us, either lucky or unlucky draws will give different meanings to the "characters" we draw.
This meaning will prompt us to have more complex feelings about "characters" than simple commodity trading, and also hide the character's commodity attributes.
丨 Conclusion
The randomness of the draw gives each "character" a unique meaning that coincides with the core needs of two-dimensional players. This is the main reason why two-dimensional games are almost always drawn cards.
In addition, the card drawing mode encourages players to communicate and interact with the community, and also hides the risks and benefits in the card drawing process, and motivates players to draw cards from multiple angles.
However, high-frequency card draws will lead to player fatigue and boredom, and adverse consequences may also make players retreat, which is the drawback of the "draw card system".