Wow Big Data Trap designer Ghost Crab blame

There are fewer people playing "World of Warcraft". This is not the author's subjective assumption. Its earnings in the first quarter of 2013, which still retain 8.3 million of the world's most-paid players, have plummeted by 1.3 million compared with the previous quarter.

World of Warcraft has a glorious history and is not far away. The game, which was born in 2004, was a stunning record for 13 million of paid players in October 2010. Not only that, Asian players and European and American players are almost half the same. As a cultural product, "Warcraft" has successfully crossed the high wall between East and west, creating a network entertainment community that the young people of the world can enjoy.

I was also a fanatic Warcraft player, wrote the network long Wen "internet addiction War: a meaningless pseudo battle." But in fact, as a former game Machine magazine editor, I do not like the computer online, and even do not like to play games with the mouse. "World of Warcraft" is the only thing that's going to keep me going, and it's been 6 years. But, from the end of last year, I hardly ever landed on the virtual planet called Azeroth, even though it often appeared in my memory for half a year.

Obviously, the author is one of the 1.3 million reduction, and the game's earnings also show that the loss of players mainly from the Asian region. In this respect, "World of Warcraft" lead designer Greg Street (nicknamed "Ghost Crab") explained: "There is a very different team culture." "and" China's online games market is developing very quickly, they will release a lot of new games every year. ”

World of Warcraft Designer Ghost Crab

But I think it's a total cop-out. Because, "World of Warcraft" is a very sticky network of the community, because a large number of players even if nothing to play will bubble in the inside, the yo-yo chat, and even was dubbed "large 3D group chat software." To know, every online hour, the player will spend 0.45 yuan, only the Real "Warcraft" as a part of life, to Azeroth as their spiritual home, people will not care about the money. In the author's opinion, this habit, and some uncle aunt every 7 o'clock in the evening must turn on TV to listen to the "news broadcast" is the same, once the formation of difficult to change.

But many of them left. The specific reasons are different, but I think in general, this result from the chief designer "ghost Crab" a series of major decision-making errors, and the main reason is that he was "big data" error analysis caused. With the recent "Big Data" being deified, similar mistakes have been repeated in countless companies.

"The biggest shift in the big data age is to give up the thirst for causation and focus on the relationship," Schoenberg, author of the Big Data age, has excitedly said. That means just knowing what ' is ' and not needing to know ' why '. But I think the "ghost crab" is precisely because of the large number of millions of players to create the data itself, but not to think "why", only to commit so many fundamental mistakes.

During the operation of the wrath of the Lich King in the 2010 World of Warcraft 2nd film, some of the players ' complaints will be very focused in the aftermath of the massive player behavior statistics and forum keyword statistics. These complaints include: career balance issues, team difficulties, guild management issues, equipment promotion slow, and so on.

The "Ghost crab", the new chief designer of "the newly appointed three Fires", was based on the data and was addressed in the next 3rd piece, "Holocaust and Rebirth". These solutions, it turns out, have led to bigger and more fundamental problems. For example, to solve the "team difficulty" of "random team" mode, so that players no longer need to coordinate with the guild, automatically can join a group. But this directly results in a sharp decrease in communication between players, which seriously undermines the social nature of the game. and "The Ghost crab" most rigidly "adjusts the occupation balance", it turns out that nothing but "pour gourd up", not only the professional balance problem is not solved, excessive adjustment caused the professional characteristics of homogenization, a paladin playing with a rogue, which directly affect the player's "role playing" experience.

Tim Leberecht, chief marketing Officer of Frog Design Inc., wrote in Fortune magazine that "Big data is not social". "We often confuse feelings of people with their behavior, and in fact human judgment is far more complex than binary numbers," he warns. "Ghost crab" clearly made this mistake, he only wanted to solve the consumer complaints, but did not consider whether these emotional complaints will determine the consumer's rational decision.

As a "large multiplayer online role-playing game", the key words of World of Warcraft virtual experience include "Western fantasy Worldview", "Network community" and "role-playing". If these 3 points are destroyed, the "Warcraft" product core will be gone. Unfortunately, along with the 4th information film "Panda Mystery" a large number of Chinese elements appear, now the paradoxical World of Warcraft, the Oriental worldview, interesting and cordial than the localization of the "Swordsman Love" or "Dream West Tour", and the lack of community attributes of role-playing games, Compared to casual games and stand-alone video games. The loss of a large number of players naturally inevitable.

In recent years, the "Big Data" upsurge, and "World of Warcraft" failure to use large data to remind us, the more seemingly complete data, the more likely to hide the information gap, and resulting in a huge analysis of the error, the operator may not understand the real needs of consumers. Large data is merely a supplement to traditional analytical methods and must not be a substitute.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)