Game Development Giant

At the end of the day, the essence of the game is still fun.

A game will fail. No matter how many reasons are found, one reason is always unavoidable, and that is that it is not fun for players.

The players mentioned here are naturally the target players. Many people will say that in some online games, for example, agents do not act and do not deal with cheats, which ruins the game. The game itself is not fun - the quality of the game environment is inherently bad. It should be considered that in a game, the game environment becomes bad, and the agent's inaction is itself reducing the playability of the game.

And for a game to be successful, no matter how good it is in terms of publicity, it must have merit in gameplay. COD's sales can explode every year, not just because this game has a group of NC fans - of course. It is undeniable that it has a lot to do with the fact that there is a group of NC fans who are willing to buy it, but we cannot just think that they can sell so much sales just relying on NC fans.

Can LOL crush DOTA2 in terms of the number of gamers and profits just because it was released early?

EQ was released many years before WOW. What was the result?

Of course, I don’t mean to compare LOL with WOW. These are two completely different games. The success of each game is definitely not just a coincidence. There must be merits in the game itself, and a game The failure of the game is definitely not just because the marketing is not strong enough. There must be something about the game itself that players dislike.

Even CF, which is criticized by domestic players, is not just because of Tencent’s platform effect. You must know that there are many games that have died in the hands of Tencent. For a game to be successful, the first thing to consider is its merits. , not just what platform it is on, because no matter how well you promote it and no matter how many people try it, if others find it not fun and are unwilling to stay and play, your game will still face failure.

Tencent owns or distributes many high-quality games. They all die like this. People are here to play, but if your game is not fun, why should others continue to play?

It is difficult to understand the psychological state of all types of players.

For example, CF. Jester really doesn't know why players who like this game are attracted to it. Although he knows that there must be a reason, he can only make some speculations of his own, which may not be accurate.

In the afternoon, Jester went to a discussion meeting in the FPS development department.

The content of the meeting was to make the game Counter-Strike into an independent game. Now this is just a MOD that can run on Quake 3. However, this MOD is extremely popular. The FPS development team of Mars Entertainment believes that it is more appropriate to develop it into a separate game, because many of the designs of Quake 3 are difficult to produce in the MOD of Counter-Strike. processed.

Therefore, the development team believes that this MOD is not good enough. If it is made into a separate game, it can be repaired or improved. It is a problem that there is no way to solve now.

However, when discussing how to make it, there is a most basic problem. They encountered a problem, that is, how to sell such a game - it is just a battle game, that is to say, it will not have any single-player content. There is no precedent for such a game in the industry. .

Jester listened to their discussion for a long time, and the general meaning was that they could make concessions on the sales price. The general price of a game is sixty dollars. This battle game does not have single-player content, but only battle content, so then Can be priced at forty dollars. This price is also quite suitable.

Jester also somewhat agrees with the price.

In the future, games like this will generally be priced at this price. For example, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will be sold for $40.

Of course, in the second generation the game became sixty dollars. Because the first generation was so popular, this is a general approach of game companies, and players can understand it.

However, Jester has completely different ideas about the operation of Counter-Strike.

So, when members of the development team discussed that forty dollars was a good price. Jester expressed his different opinions.

I have a very special idea.

What Jester was thinking about was CS:GO, which later brought Valve back to the glory of the CS series. When everyone else's eyes turned to him, Jester cleared his throat and continued: Why are you doing this? For a game like this, you still have to worry about how much we should spend to sell it? This is a battle game, and more players can make this game more viable.

Everyone still didn't understand what Jester meant. After all, there had never been a game company in this world that made games for free for others to play.

The MOD of Counter-Strike is indeed free, but to run this MOD you need to purchase Quake 3. Facts have also proved that because of the launch of the MOD Counter-Strike, the sales of Quake 3 are sufficient A substantial increase of hundreds of thousands of copies.

Why do we launch it to players for free or even at a cheaper price? This way we will have more players to participate in this game. Jester did not delay. After a slight pause, he said He directly stated his suggestion, but his suggestion shocked the people present. They looked at Jester in disbelief.

Launch a game for free?

How can this be?

How does the company make money?

There is also the most critical issue, that is, for FPS games, the biggest enemy is plug-ins. If it is a released game, players will still be wary of using plug-ins, but in free games, then There will be no scruples. If I use a plug-in, you can just block it. It is free anyway. I will change my account and continue to use it.

Free is not very appropriate. I mean, we can sell the qualification to play at a very low price. My idea for the game Counter-Strike is that players can play without paying, but he only He can play AI battles for free, which means that his opponent can only be a computer. If he wants to play against other players on our Mars Entertainment Battle Network platform, he will have to pay an online fee - our Mars Entertainment Battle.net members can automatically qualify for this online battle. If you don’t want to spend ten dollars a month to get the Mars Entertainment Battle Network qualification, you can also purchase a separate online battle qualification for Counter-Strike.

There is no need to set the price too high. I think twenty dollars is a better price. It can even be discounted during holidays. The purpose is to attract more players to participate.

When Jester said this, many designers present had doubts.

They didn't hear any fundamental benefits of this charging model for the game. There are many players, but for a company, the most important thing for a game is to make money. This kind of charging method that Jester talks about, compared with their one-time charge of forty dollars, does it show what is good enough? place, just when they were doubting.

Jester spoke again.

Of course it's not that simple. We can do this. In the game, every time the game is played, players can get a treasure box. After opening this treasure box, they can randomly obtain some items in the game. It could be a firearm, it could be a knife, it could be spray paint... Anyway, it’s just something that can be added.”

Among these things, such as firearms, knives and other items used by players in the game, their attributes are not the same as the original ones. But their skin, that is, their appearance, has a big difference. Differently, we can drag the Berserker cool made with some skins. But the probability of dropping them is very low, making them very, very, very rare among the player base.

We will not sell these skins or appearances, nor will we sell boxes. But we allow players who get them to trade them freely. What we have to do is sell the keys that can open this treasure box.

Jester spoke his thoughts at a not too fast pace.

This is also the business model of CS:GO, and the reason why later CS:GO was also called Box GO.

There is one thing that Jester remembers very clearly. It was a roommate of his in college. He was a huge fan of V and the CS series. He was extremely addicted to CS:GO and spent at least $100 on unpacking boxes in one semester. A thousand yuan, a key only costs two and a half dollars, and there is no equipment that can make the money back, but I still enjoy it.

Finally one day.

It was late at night. Jester remembered clearly that he suddenly heard a scream from his roommate while he was sleeping.

Jester was so frightened that he jumped out of bed, thinking that something big had happened, an earthquake or an explosion. However, he only saw his roommate looking at the computer screen and mumbling like crazy. What are you wearing?

After Jester walked over and took a look, he realized that his roommate had opened a Dragon Sniper from the CS:GO box!

In fact, there is no essential difference between this thing and the ordinary AWP. The attributes are exactly the same, that is, its extremely rare drop rate and extremely shabby appearance. Of course, it also has an extremely expensive price.

Jester just knew that this thing was expensive, but he didn't know how much it cost.

After a while, the roommate who had launched Dragon Sniper invited everyone in their dormitory to have a big meal together. During the meal, he found out that a wealthy domestic player had bought his Dragon Sniper. , almost 20,000 yuan.

Moreover, from many subsequent statistical data, we can also know that CS: GO is a very profitable way to make money by opening boxes. In terms of online game revenue in 2014, Tencent ranked among the top three. Those three axes are followed by World of Warcraft, followed closely by CS:GO, which shows how profitable this game is.

And players of this game are so crazy and obsessed with opening boxes.

And, most importantly, it will not affect the fairness of the game at all, because whether you are holding a dragon sniper or Asimov II, apart from the appearance, it is different from the ordinary AWP, that is, There is no difference between each one. The official only sells keys, not boxes. Obtaining boxes is only related to your participation in the game. Of course, even if players do not open boxes, they can still be opened on the trading floor. trade.

It can be said that this is simply a perfect game method for both players and game companies.

The most important thing is that this game is not expensive. CS:GO is on discount all year round, and the price is less than fifty yuan.

This is also the biggest difference from Tencent’s CF. Tencent sells powerful RMB guns that have stronger firepower and smaller recoil than your free guns. This way of winning the game by paying for it has never been used by those Used by real gaming companies.

After Jester explained his thoughts in detail, although everyone present understood what Jester meant, they were still wondering, that is, can this kind of game really be successful? Just the difference in appearance can make players enthusiastically buy keys to open boxes? No matter how you think, it’s impossible!

After all, in terms of attributes, there is no difference.

Seeing the confused looks on many people's faces, Jester also sighed a little. His business idea was indeed a bit ahead of his time.

But this is really a perfect way to run a battle game.

even……

Jester thought of another thing and continued: We can even let players participate in our design. We can add a creative workshop to our game, which allows players to design their own designs. We will let the players rate the things that we think are terrible, and we can put the ones with the highest scores into the game - like this, we can sell them directly, and then take a part of the commission and use it as the producer's award.

This is the creativity of DOTA2 accessories created by Fameng in the DOTA2 creative workshop. It can be called a classic trick of the white wolf with no hands. Even the design cost is left, so it is purely a waste of money.

But the players really bought into it. (~^~)