Game Product Planning: Understand the life cycle of internet gaming products

Article Description: Game Product Planning: Understand the life cycle of internet gaming products.

For an activity, changed the boss or changed the user, may not affect too much, but changed the product, the previous activities can not play.
Therefore, the product understanding of how much directly affect the activities of the planning of all the work.

Operation is a more embarrassing job, especially when I was working, I often lost myself:
Sometimes think of themselves as a player, a lot of boss do things do not get through;
Sometimes as an official staff, the user's feelings to disregard.

My personal understanding of the product is mainly divided into 2 dimensions: (Don't take it seriously, just for reference)

Research and development is to create products, so we must through research and development to understand all the details of the product, a comprehensive understanding of the product;
Users are playing products, but also the source of income, so we often stand in the player's perspective to feel the game, but also need to listen to the feedback of the product.
Combining the above 2 dimensions is the product that operations need to know. (To be honest, this piece is very difficult, especially in the eyes of the user product, until now, I will often in this piece of confusion, confused mind)

Develop the product in the brain:
Research and development is the product of parents!
Sadly, as in real life, no matter what kind of vision parents have, the children born will not be as perfect as they think.
Fortunately, in real life, no matter how hard parents try, can not know what the future children look like, and research and development through continuous efforts to make products as close as possible to the original idea.
The final product is often a number of harmonization, after the compromise, after the modified product, so certainly will and planning the idea of discrepancies.
So I didn't say the product in the eye of research and development, but the product in the brain.

In fact, I want to say is very simple, can be summed up to 5 words: Look at the planning document
What are you looking at?
1. Watch the player grow
How fast players grow, what new content they open at different stages, what they pursue at different stages ...
2. Look at the system
What is free, what is paid, what is the single participant, what is team involvement, what is for all players, which are for high-end players, what are the detailed rules for each system ...
3. See values
This is the key, this is part of the player do not know! The growth curve of the player, how difficult the game is, the depth of each pay point is how much, the input and output ratio of each pay point is how, each pay point to the player to improve the curve is how

After reading the planning document, you can get a general idea of the following key issues without playing the game:
1. What is the characteristics of the product system, players to what stage to contact (before the XX level to avoid loss)
2. What are the payment points for the products, which are the main sources of income, which pay points are more value, which is not value (how to use these pay points when running products)
3. What thresholds players may encounter (how can we help players through these thresholds)

Product in the eyes of the user:
As an operator, must play their own products, even if he is not fun, but also to stick to it.
Play is not silly play, to experience and record the key points in the process of the game:
1. How is the upgrade progressing? Do you feel slow?
2. Which places are too difficult to understand and why are you and other players stuck there?
3. Which games are important systems or functions that you and other players ignore?
4. The game in the process of getting the drop, reward good?
5. What is the demand for different props during the game?
6. What are the players talking about? What did you complain about?
7. What you see, what you hear, what you feel, you can't represent all of us, don't trust the feedback and feelings, it's only for reference!

Not only is the game product, all Internet practitioners have a common topic--not to install users.
All products have a variety of users, you can not understand the mentality of all types of users, different levels of users encounter problems are not the same. Normally, I would do a big R player because this part of the people contributed to the main income.

The discussion this afternoon is a question: do the operations more by virtue of experience or more reference data.
My point of view on this issue is that I will refer to more data when I do not have the same beef as Steve Jobs. The data is a relatively rational and objective thing, personal experience too perceptual, too one-sided.
I feel that even with personal will, not experience, but creativity and destructive power. Like Steve Jobs, the phone will be simple enough to have just one button! Don't Say no! Do it for me!

Finally, a little bit of recent experience:
Operations are often more perceptual, because many ideas have no precedent, no data support, and not even a theoretical support. We all rely on our perceptual understanding, anticipation, and even imagination. When 2 operations are divided, it is often difficult to convince each other. My style is to stick to their own point of view, there are some things you can convince me, but some things you will never convince me, unless I practice to prove that I was wrong!

Originally wanted to product life cycle to name, but carefully think about the product life cycle I have no experience of their own, not qualified to write this topic.
But when it comes to the stage of the product, it's impossible not to mention the life cycle of this thing.

Product life cycle (cycle), referred to as PLC.
A professional note can see Baidu Encyclopedia entry-Product life cycle
The following figure is the product life cycle curve, derived from: potato that where

Finally, a little bit of my own superficial understanding:
For game products, the demand for product satisfaction is entertainment, entertainment, the benefits of this demand is never saturated, the disadvantage is that the user's preferences change quickly, the product quality difference is not very large market impact.
So I think that the web game in the constant acceleration of death, a big factor is the market competition and new products listed, causing the operators to speed up the money, their own shortened life cycle.

—————————————————— above are all clouds, the following is the dry goods

Stage One: Product online
Product on-line after roughly divided into 3 stages: seal test--The inside--the public test
Seal test
Test the pressure, test the game function, fix bugs, improve the basic function of the game, find out the defects of the product through data and player feedback.
This phase often does not open the recharge, but gives each user free gold coins, collect and analyze the player's consumer data, through these data to improve the product's paid design.
Do what:
This stage does not need to carry out a lot of activities, only need to do some activities to improve the seal test users into the activities of the user.

Beta
Open the recharge and officially start the external operation. The general will open a few groups of clothing, observation data, good data to speed up the opening of the suit.

Products in the beginning of the beta, there are several points to pay special attention to:
1. The main role of the operation is the teacher, education players how to play the game, do not be a salesman, so that people are crazy to buy things
2. Improvement and complement of official information, especially for novice-led
3. Pay attention to the player's experience and feedback, make timely response and revise as soon as possible
4. The product open in the initial period do not do a strong lead consumption activities (such as the sale of some props), this activity will affect the natural consumption structure of the player, the user's initial natural consumption data on the future operation of the work has a great guiding significance. This process is irreversible, there is no chance of regret.
5. Do more game-related activities (such as doubling the rewards of the gang battlefield, expanding the scope of the Arena award, etc.)
6. Daily summary of the user feedback and suggestions

Public test
Large-scale promotion, increase market publicity. The speed of the service is also speeding up, starting a large-scale profit. And the real work, the limit of the beta and the public test is relatively vague, sometimes the public test became a gimmick, and no actual but do not.

Stage two: mature, stable period
This stage of the player has been released to the game all the functions and play.
Data has also weathered a period of high growth, generating fluctuations in a relatively stable range.

This stage can carry out a variety of types of activities, increase pay, rich play. Under the pressure of the KPI, the activity frequency and the intensity also will increase correspondingly.
Product online early play related activities may be larger, the purpose is to promote the game playing method, so that more players participate in these systems.
But in the product maturity period, the paid activities will occupy the main part, play related activities will be different, more is the competition, competition, ranking and other forms, to motivate players to compete and interact with each other in order to reduce the loss.

What is important to the product at regular intervals is the version update

Some versions are designed to reduce loss, spread out some new gameplay, and new pay points. For these editions, our role is teacher, teach everyone to play, let more people play.
Some editions are designed to boost revenue, with a vertical expansion of deeper payments with pay points. Earn money from high-end players. For these releases, we need to control the launch process of new content to maximize the benefits of these new content.

Phase III: The period of recession
This stage, the user's loss intensifies, the income also has the obvious decline. Perhaps there are more tragic things, technical support is reduced, technical personnel into the development of new products.
At this stage, the role of operations will be more important and obvious.
According to a predecessor's saying is: this phase of free users and small users of the loss is inevitable, in the context of not challenging the user's psychological bottom line, increase the intensity of activities, frequency, depth, as far as possible to collect money.