Source: Operation Research Agency (ID: U_quan) Author: Chen Qi Deng Yuxia Editor: Yang Peiwen Design: Yan Tan Mengjie
Behind the explosion: there is no clearance skill, it is all a human routine
Yesterday, an inconspicuous four-word sheep went viral on Weibo!
The game mini program of the sheep is also in the WeChat circle of friends and various communities, as well as Zhihu, B station, vibrato, Xiaohongshu are discussing this game, looking around, the entire Internet is "sheep wilt patient".
According to the WeChat Mini Program, more than 1 million people have played this game. The Baidu index also rose from 0 times in a day to 58604 times on September 13. The hot search for a sheep on Weibo has experienced three drops and three rises, and the topic of it is often hung on the hot search list, and the topic of a sheep on other platforms is also high.
What kind of game is this that makes people wonder so fascinated? Who is "manipulating" its popularity? What do these games rely on to make money? Below, the operating agency will take you to find out.
01 "Sheep a sheep", how hot is it?
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, the game began to appear on Weibo's hot search.
According to the official introduction, @Sheep a Sheep is essentially a small game of level elimination, with a pass rate of less than 0.01%, which is known as the most difficult game in history. Its rules are simple. At the top of the page are overlapping blocks of various types, below are 7 empty bars, the player needs to complete the elimination in the overlapping blocks above (3 kind of elimination), take all the blocks to win, and 7 empty slots are filled to lose.
Looking at the rules of the game, I thought it was very simple, but when I played it, I knew that the first closed eyes, the second level was not passed, which can be called a "new type of drug".
Of course, there are also some 0.01% chosen sons who have passed the level. Some netizens do not believe in evil, have to try, the result is also into the game.
There have been more people, and the direction of discussion among netizens has also changed. Everyone's mood is more or less experienced from disdain - pride - unwillingness - head -anger - spitting process, which shows that this game makes people love and hate.
Such a high difficulty made netizens feel competitive, and the whole people discussed how to pass the second level of difficulty of 0.01%, and reached a peak at noon on September 14.
Some netizens have intimately sent a customs clearance strategy.
Some netizens began to scratch their ears and scratch their cheeks because of repeated defeats, or fell into contemplation.
The official side is not idle, the server collapsed 3 times in 2 days, and because there were too many people entering the game, it had to recruit programmers on the spot.
Just when most netizens are still immersed in the game, the official side is caught in the plagiarism storm.
Some netizens questioned that the sheep was suspected of copying another matching game 3 tiles, believing that they played exactly the same way.
In response to this, the official quick response believes that the sheep game uses the most basic gameplay, and if the "three in a row" gameplay is plagiarized, then there are too many such games.
At this point, the #sheep of the second level of ##羊了个羊通关率不到0.1% #羊了个羊 #等词条此起彼伏, and the hot search lists of major platforms can also see its figure, which shows how hot it is.
02 1 million people rushed into the game, 2 days the server crashed 3 times, why did it explode?
What exactly is the fire of a sheep? Some people call the sheep "Pinduoduo in the game world", and in the eyes of the operating agency, it is more capable of manipulating human nature than Pinduoduo.
After a day of hard work, the operating agency finally discovered its routine of "pinching human nature":
1) Cliff-like game experience to stimulate users' desire to win or lose
The first step in grasping human nature is that this game is a good entry.
The first time the user clicked into the link, his mind had not yet figured out what this was, and the "DNA" of the player who had been consuming fun for many years moved, and he only clicked two or three times on his hand to directly pass the customs. Feeling a quick aha moment creates a general illusion for the player – and that's no more than that, so easy.
When you have this "naïve" idea, congratulations, you have successfully jumped into the "psychological trap" it has designed.
In the second step of grasping human nature, the sheep directly upgraded the difficulty of the game to the "hell level". From the first level that can be passed with closed eyes to the second level that increases the difficulty of geometric multiples, the player's mentality begins to collapse: "This is only the second level, why can't you pass it?" How hard is the third level? ”
Compared with the same type of games, such as 3 tiles, and entertainment, the difficulty of each level is gradual, and it becomes a passing game after playing, and finally it becomes a pity that it is tasteless and abandoned. However, the sheep is a sheep, but the simple match-3 gameplay is collided with the difficulty beyond psychological expectations, and in a very short speed, it stimulates the players' desire to win or lose.
After many players are familiar with the rules, they think that they can definitely find a way to crack, but soon they are pulled back to reality by failure, and repeated defeats have made players have a rebellious psychology, reopen and continue to break through, and some netizens challenged 4650 times in one day.
If you think this is the end of it? That would be naïve again.
The third step to grasping human nature comes, which first makes you think it is difficult to play this game, and then tells you that you can't do it by others.
The official introduction of the game clearance rate is less than 0.1% is not 0, proving that someone is still successful, plus the home page has a regional ranking, most people still believe that this game can be completed.
Driven by strong curiosity and competitiveness, players continue to go back to the level after scolding, after all, if they can pass by chance, they can become 0.1% "winners" and have social capital to show off.
2) "Pinduoduo-style" social fission, crazy pulling new
The Mid-Autumn Festival holiday was officially launched, and the number of game users reached 1 million in just a few days. The operating agency found that the sheep pinched the user, relying not only on the alternative game mechanism, but also on the "social fission" routine of the mini program "Pinduoduo".
First of all, users can only get customs clearance props if they share the link to the WeChat group, which in turn triggers a "viral" forward fission.
Because the second level is too difficult, almost most players need to use auxiliary props to break through the level, such as removing items, withdrawing items, and shuffling items. In order to rush through the second level, users spontaneously forwarded wildly, so that the game quickly spread on WeChat.
And these mini program link copywriting forwarded to the community is also full of routine, playing with human nature, with a "3 points of ridicule, 5 points of provocation" tone, so that you can't help but click in. For example:
It is said that only 0.01% of people can pass the level! Glass hearts do not enter!
If you don't have enough intelligence, don't challenge this game!
Users who receive the link feel provocative just by looking at these titles, and since it is a challenge from a "sand sculpture friend", they have to try this game.
The most poisonous thing is that this copywriter does not even let go of the high-frequency mobile phone scene of the hit worker "going to the toilet and before going to bed", and the ghost is summoning you:
What do you play when you go to the bathroom with a paycheck?
Dare to play this game before going to bed?
Pinduoduo pull people cut a knife and can also cut off a few cents, but this game forwarding link pull people to change props or can not pass, so players have been repeated to send links, change props, and then a few actions, toss a day, the second level is still not over, people are more.
Secondly, city rankings, team play, to a certain extent, also use the "geographical ties" to let the surrounding relatives, friends, colleagues and classmates join the team, further inducing fission.
In addition, sheep and sheep also introduced a "regional confrontation" game mode, which stimulates users to constantly challenge by awakening the sense of collective honor. Enter the home page to see the player leaderboard, players are divided into various sheep camps according to different regions, and individual scores are merged into the total score of the province to participate in the ranking.
Since the major social platforms opened up their IP territories, netizens have paid more and more attention to personal words and deeds, and are particularly active in "adding points" to their cities. On the basis of such a social environment, players are more willing to pull partners in the same city to fight for the "Beijing sheep" and "Shandong sheep" than to fight individually.
Playing a game alone, pulling a group of people to fight, the fission speed can not be unfast.
As for how this sheep is a sheep to do user retention, this problem, I believe that users who have played the game are deeply poisoned, because the difficulty setting of the game itself is enough to make the player crazy in order to pass the level.
3) It's no accident that the overnight explosion is not accidental, and the company behind the scenes has something
For the game industry, spending money to "buy and acquire customers" and doing "content acquisition" on social platforms are routine operations. Often the explosion of a game is inseparable from the company's operation of the game.
Sheep a sheep within a day Weibo hot search appeared 7 related topics, read more than 2 billion, can not help but make people have a question, in addition to tap water, behind the explosion of the whole network is there a trace of buying or active content marketing? What exactly did the promoters behind it do?
According to the first financial report, the game industry insider Roski and the sheep team had an exchange, and the other party mentioned that "the fire was sudden, and I did not buy hot searches."
Although these speculations are still unclear and unconfirmed, the operating company still followed the vine and wanted to study further, so it found its development company, Beijing Jianyou Technology Co., Ltd.
Screenshot from Sky Eye Check
Jianyou Technology is a new company founded in 2021, focusing on the development of casual and social mini-games. According to @Game Daily, before the sheep was a sheep, the company had a successful case, and the WeChat mini-game "Pirates Are Coming" produced in 2018 exceeded 100 million yuan per month, with a daily active life of up to 25 million. According to the information of Tianyancha, more than 10 game copyrights of Jianyou Technology have been registered and approved.
According to the analysis of the operation company, the sheep is hot out of the circle, and the founder of the company behind it is originally a mature game producer, good at social product development and operation, which has laid the foundation for the "viral spread" of the sheep.
In addition, the time node of game development is relatively special. In June this year, the sheep game was first published, and in the same month, Gigabit acquired 10% of the company's shares through its holding subsidiary, Xiamen Thunder Network Technology Co., Ltd., becoming the second shareholder of Jianyou Technology.
Thunder Network Technology once operated a mobile game
Digging deeper, the operating agency found that Thunder Network Technology was once the operating company of Moore Manor and Obe Island Games, and the operation of these two games was obvious to all in the industry. There are shareholders of companies that operate professional online games as the driving force behind them, so it seems that it is not impossible for a sheep to burst into flames on the whole network.
03 Plagiarism? New bottle of old wine? But this time it still won the hemp...
The game has just been on fire for two days, and the related topic of #sheep plagiarism has triggered heated discussion among netizens.
Some netizens broke the news that a sheep was suspected of copying another game called 3 tiles. The operating agency found that the two games are the same in terms of card superposition, match-3 gameplay, and functional props, and the only difference is the card pattern.
Soon, Zhongxin Finance asked the game official to verify this matter, and the relevant person in charge of the company denied plagiarism, and said that the game used the most basic gameplay, and users naturally had their own judgment.
Compared with plagiarism, the operating company believes that a sheep is more like "new bottles of old wine".
The game sequence is: Sheep a Sheep, 3tiles, 4399
Many netizens reported that as early as more than a decade ago, when they went to the 4399 and 7k7k mini games, they had played this type of game, and this game was also mentioned in the @Jingcore article, and even traced back to Mah-Jongg made by Stanford University students in 1981, which actually used a "multi-layer continuous look" gameplay.
Despite the criticism of the fire, the undeniable fact is that this little game has won in just a few days...
One is that the company makes a lot of money through advertising monetization, the second is that from the perspective of communication, the game is out of the circle and famous, and the third is that users have also been entertained and entertained.
According to the classification of game business models, there are mainly casual games with IAA traffic monetization as the main body in the market, and there are also heavy participation games based on IAP service monetization (in-app purchase).
Obviously, the sheep as a small program as a carrier of lightweight casual games, its commercial monetization logic is advertising monetization, its setting is also very simple, through the "rewarded video advertising" style, let users by watching ads in exchange for game resurrection qualifications.
Sheep watched the advertisement to get a chance to be resurrected
After accessing advertising resources, the game can be charged according to a variety of pricing models (CPM/CPC, etc.), but no matter which pricing model, more than 1 million people flock to the game in a short period of time to see ads, which is a lot of income.
Taking the WeChat platform as an example, @ New Q Technology Sorts out the WeChat Mini Game revenue calculation rules, after the platform charges advertising fees (hereinafter referred to as the flow) according to each advertising click of the user, it will share dividends with the developer in accordance with a certain proportion, and the current provisional rules are as follows:
A single-day advertising expenditure flow of less than 100,000 yuan (inclusive), developers can get 50% of it;
A single-day advertising expenditure flow exceeds 100,000 yuan, and developers can get 30% of it;
If the daily advertising expenditure of mini games is 150,000 yuan, then the developer can obtain 50% of the 100,000 yuan, that is, 50,000 yuan.
If you just use advertising to monetize money, the same is true for many casual games on the market. But why are users willing to watch ads?
A casual game player told the operation agency that in the second level of the "sheep a sheep" game, the time frequency of resurrection by watching ads is about 10-20 minutes, compared with other casual games playing 2-3 minutes to watch an advertisement, which is more acceptable.
In this way, the sheep has achieved an effective balance between revenue and user experience to some extent.
As of press time, 255 media outlets have published reports on #Sheep
Not only that, in just a few days, a sheep has become the center of discussion. Frequently on Weibo hot search, from douyin to zhihu, little red book, B station and other major social platforms, more than 200 media published articles focused on the report, the speed of dissemination, the scope of dissemination is large, it is not too much to say that the whole network is on fire.
Overnight, the sheep made a big name and became famous, and the technology behind the simple tour has also attracted attention from all walks of life, becoming a "new star of the game company".
The fame and fortune of the game company are not without benefits for users, at least this "magic" small game has brought happiness to everyone.
Workers play two games when they go to work, and they feel that they have "earned" again when they touch fish with pay; When bored at home, pull up family and friends to take the "flock" to the list, inexplicably hot and fun; Spit on the game, take the name to make a stem, netizens play hi.
04 Conclusion
The person in charge of the sheep revealed that the independent APP of the sheep is in the Apple Store review stage, the specific launch date is not clear, and there will be a large wave of content updates in the next step of the game content, including the content around the game will be added to it.
Half of the sheep is a victory for the attention economy, and half is a storm such as plagiarism, which really makes people sigh.
This kind of explosive WeChat Mini Program game has also appeared before, such as synthesizing large watermelons, playing a bullet, etc., but in the end they are short-lived. It can be seen that the key to whether this kind of WeChat Mini Program game is long-term profitability depends on the follow-up operation and real ability.
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