Products will develop in the direction of increasing people's happiness

The game meets our 4 great desires: more satisfying jobs, more chances of success, stronger community connections, and bigger careers. Let us know what can make us truly happy, let ourselves become better. But how to apply the knowledge of the virtual world to the real life? How to make our products game to change the real life? This leads to the author's third point:

Three: Game of the operating mechanism (how to play the product)

1: Full devotion to the present (gaming participation mechanism)

The author mentions that the "parallel reality game" will become an important link in the development of the game as the game practitioners push the game to the positive influence of the real life.

The "Parallel reality game" is to help us achieve better in the form of games that are difficult to satisfy our 4 great desires in our daily life.

For example, the "housework War" is to play the housework, so that we voluntarily participate in, and gain pride; Also, for example, "The expedition of learning" is the only public school in the world that uses game teaching, which makes children feel that learning is full of fun and finds their advantages And in the activities to reflect their own advantages to make contributions to achieve a sense of achievement.

Some of China's products are also showing signs of gaming, such as "Slimming War", which is a very good parallel reality game that will be slimming.

The game will be based on your weight every day set a certain amount of exercise as the goal of slimming, you can also choose the United States chest, abdominal, hip, thin legs. When you choose a weight loss project, the corresponding project has a lot of sports that can achieve slimming effect, you can choose any of the 1-2 ways suitable for you, as long as you can consume the day's calories.

Each follow a virtual instructor to complete an action, it has a clear sound reminder, after the complete group exercise, the system will tell you how many calories consumed, clear feedback, make you more fulfilling, and more interested in daily exercise. You can also challenge other people online and challenge your friends to lose weight.

Game of the design, so that every day it is difficult to adhere to the thin body movement has become more interesting, but also more willing to stick to it.

The author believes that the excellent parallel reality game contains 2 major factors:

1: Voluntary participation, there is always room for choice. For example, "slimming war" through the game design, make you feel that it is no longer painful to stick to thin body every day, but an interesting thing.

2: Compelling goals, interesting obstacles and well-designed feedback are also needed.

2: Real-time feedback (game incentive mechanism)

In World of Warcraft, each kill a strange, to add a bit of experience value; Each pill is taken to add an empirical value of the drug; constant "+1", let us see we do everything has accumulated, we do everything is valuable. Not in real life.

Jane McGonigal said that if we do one thing in real life, we can continuously "+1", Let our life upgrade, we will be more motivated. For example, each read a page of books, intelligence points +1, each write an article, intelligence points +5, it does make me more positive to read more books, write more articles.

Take "slimming war", in reality, if not to take extreme measures to lose weight, weight loss is a long and slow process. "Slimming War" reminds you to exercise every day, and after a day of exercise, tell you that you've consumed 20 calories. This obvious and effective feedback makes you more confident of losing weight because you can see the results of your daily efforts.

Parallel reality games represent a fundamental trend in game development: the development of games associated with everyday life. They help us reduce pain and enjoy the real world more.

Things that are too hard for us to hold in real life can be made easier by providing challenging goals, such as tracking points, checkpoints, and achievements, by providing virtual rewards. "Let those things that are difficult for us become as inherently rewarding as possible." (4 great Longing) "

3: Alliances with strangers to create a more powerful community (gaming team mechanism)

The community gives people a sense of belonging, integration, and a positive interest in something. The community emerges when a group of people with common interests begin to interact to promote this interest. To turn a group of strangers into a community, you must follow 2 steps:

1: Cultivate the common interests among strangers;

2): Give them opportunities and ways to communicate and interact around this interest

To add, the community has a very important thing to do: every member of the community should feel that in the process of accomplishing a common goal, TA's presence is meaningful and has the opportunity to contribute to the community.

With the community, you can feel the "community spirit" that anthropologists say. Community spirit is a strong sense of unity, cohesion and social ties, can prevent loneliness and alienation.

The community has a short and long-term community.

Long-term Games Guild, for example, the game Guild generally has a unified goal, the Guild's manifesto mentions, the game Guild management will make many contributions for the common interest, the management is generally very united, the cohesion is also strong. Just the current guild products, there is no guild system to do very well, can fully play the enthusiasm of each member. (There will be a special article to analyze and summarize my previous responsibility for the Online Games Guild system and some conceptual design).

A short term community, such as a copy of World of Warcraft. In a 5-person copy, someone plays the role of T, someone acts as a therapeutic role, someone outputs and performs their duties. The output of each release of an action, can see the strange blood volume reduced a little; treatment each release of an action, you can see the team mate's blood volume increased a bit; Effective feedback makes you feel that in this case, every effort you make is contributing to the whole goal.

4: Let happiness Become a habit (the persistence of gameplay)

"It's not enough to know what makes us feel happy." We must act accordingly and act regularly. ”

"Self-Help is generally not social, but many happiness activities are social." "Positive psychologists have shown that any activity that feels truly meaningful needs to be linked to an ambitious project or community."

The happiness Hacker is the experimental design practice which transforms the active psychology research life into the game mechanism.

For example, positive psychology mentions:

Practice friendly Behavior 2 weeks a week. "Even if we don't know the people we're thankful for, the people we treat, we can experience the positive emotions that arise." "Cruel goodwill" designed through this source of psychological inspiration.

"Cruel kindness" is a good assassination game. On several streets, people who play games kill other players by "flattering" and "smiling". In the street, not everyone is playing the game, the player does not know with him to play the game of others, so must pass "compliment", "Smile" to test. Participate in the game, you can assassinate; For those who are not involved in the game, players can also establish a brief social relationship with strangers. Through the game design, increased the possibility that the stranger socialize, also enables the player to practice the friendly behavior, enhances the happiness feeling.

Therefore, the design to bring happiness to the human product, is the product manager's important mission; to design products that bring happiness to human beings, product managers should first love life and know happiness.