Mobile game operation: activity operation

The following content rarely involves specific activities, such:

What kind of activity is the game just launched?

How many folds is the item suitable?

Are you sure you want to send items during the activity or do you want to send them to Yuanbao?

......

The more content below is about the underlying nature and principles. After understanding the nature, the form of the surface can be flexibly adapted as needed.

Activity nature

There are many different kinds of activities, but all activities share the same nature: reward is used to motivate users to perform certain behaviors.

There are two core activities: Rewards and user behavior.

You can find these two points in any activity:

Forward this microblog and @ 3 friends, you will have the opportunity to get a local gold

Behavior: forward and @ 3 friends rewards: tuhaojin

If you recharge your account to exceed 2000 RMB, you will receive an additional 200 RMB.

Behavior: recharge RMB 2000; reward: RMB 200

Players logging on to the game during the Spring Festival receive a red packet every day.

Behavior: login rewards: red packets

During Valentine's Day, players can send flowers to each other. The top 10 players who get the most flowers can get a set of Valentine's Day limited fashion.

Behavior: flowers, rewards: limited fashion

Therefore, activities are ultimately an incentive! It is an incentive based on the existing game design.

Since it is an incentive, the activity is not a "necessity". Do not expect the activity to save the product, so that the product can fly over with quality.

The most typical example is coc, which has very few activities, but this does not affect it as one of the world's most profitable games. Many games in China have a large number of activities, which cannot help games become the most profitable games in the world.

Activity is a double-edged sword

Let's start with a little story:

An old man lives alone. One day, several children next door are playing at the door of his house. The old man looked very happy, so he gave the children some candy. In the next few days, children will come to the door of the old man to play, and the old man will give them some candy. One day, the old man's candy had been sent out. When the child arrived, he found that there was no candy, so he left with a call and no longer went to play here.

KPI is an example that can most resonate with everyone.

KPIs are like "behaviors" in activities. Performance bonuses are "rewards" for dynamic activities ".

Most game practitioners have a dream: to work with the team to make the most awesome products that are recognized by users and their peers.

However, as soon as KPIs are built, our goal has changed to recharge, consumption, active users, and new users ......

There are policies and countermeasures. In the face of these KPIs, you can always find some methods, including some "short-term effects, long-term but harmful" methods.

Activity is a double-edged sword. It has an incentive effect, but improper use may cause many sequelae:

L The Game target has been changed

L activity pricing and outputs break the game design, leading to unhealthy or even collapsed economic systems in the game

L The team depends on the short-term effect of activities rather than pursuing higher game quality

L overdraft game lifecycle, accelerating game death

Therefore, we must be rational in dealing with activities, rather than simply looking at his bright side.

A game has made an activity and its revenue has increased several times;

A game rushed to the top of the rankings through a holiday activity;

A game earned more than 10 million RMB in a single day because of a large activity.

These are all one-sided words. Let's look at the player's feedback on these activities (if possible) and then look at the real data in their background. You will find some wounds hidden under those gorgeous coats.

Activity from the operational perspective

 

Activity 6 elements

For operation, each activity requires six dimensions: Target, audience, time, location, process, and personnel.

Purpose

 

Activity purpose

Each activity should have a purpose, and those with no purpose are blind. I personally classify the purpose of the activity into four categories:

Product supplement

Almost all products now have a lot of built-in Activities. The essential purpose is to enrich the game and add more fun and gameplay. Rather than directly stimulating players to log on or recharge.

For example:

Big turntable, holiday BOSS, chicken eating activity (after "dazhangmen", many games have chicken eating activity, and even their names are not changed), time-limited tasks, active values, cross-server arena ......

When we remove all these systems, they do not actually affect normal games, but they can increase the fun of the game and encourage more players to participate in the game. There are many standard templates for such activities, which are difficult to differentiate.

Motivate users

The most common activity is this type of activity. The rule is simple and directly stimulates players to perform certain behaviors:

Login

Sign-in activities, fairy sisters in "dazhangmen", and some short-term login and provisioning activities

Recharge

Currently, most of the mainstream built-in activities are the first rush double times and first rush gift packs. In addition, you can often see some short-term recharge activities, and different rewards will be given to different levels of recharge.

Interaction

The Valentine's Day flower sending activity mentioned above aims to inspire interaction between players. Sending flowers and helping friends catch insects on the farm is a positive interaction.

There are also some negative interactions, such as resource snatching in COC and legendary PK killing.

Share

Sharing is to use existing players to spread and attract potential players outside the game to enter the game.

For example, you can seek help from crazy guesses (although this is not an activity, he is a very successful sharing case), Weibo, and other activities.

PS: Some people may think that sign-in activities are built into the game and should be classified into product supplements. However, it is classified by activity purpose, rather than by activity location or form. The most direct purpose of the sign-in activity is to encourage users to log on, rather than adding product fun.

Thankfulness Channel

Currently, mobile games have a large number of products and categories, and there are no blank or competitive games. The channel has transitioned from product searching to product selection.

Only products with the most beautiful data can enjoy the favor of channels. For most products with close data, the role of the relationship is shown.

Therefore, in the above context, it is very necessary for us to establish a good relationship with the channel, and activities are one of the ways to establish a relationship.

For example:

On the Channel forum, you can send some physical rewards such as mobile phone tablets, or perform custom online activities for some channels, such as sending custom activation codes and custom gift packs.

Superior handling

The superiors here refer to "unreliable" superiors. Instead of helping you get lazy.

Ideally, we should not aim at dealing with superiors. But the ideal is full, and the reality is cruel. Some unreliable superiors are inevitable. Today, I think of an unreliable idea to let you do it. Tomorrow I will see a soft article saying that an activity helps a game enter the top 10 of the rankings, so I will let you copy it ......

If there is no way to change your work environment, you can only adapt to this environment skillfully.

Unreliable superiors have two features: Presence and forgetful.

Therefore, when you encounter unreliable superiors to propose unreliable points. Do not refute it to satisfy his sense of superiority. Then, we can use a slow strategy to reduce the time. In a few days, he will forget everything.

Audience

Each activity should know who the target audience is and design targeted activity content based on the characteristics of different user groups!

For free players, do not expect them to spend eight thousand yuan;

For large R players, the activity process should not be too complex. If you don't spend money, you still need to go through a maze or complete the puzzle to get rewards;

For gang activities, you need to add some PVP or ranking elements. You don't want to turn them into members of the gang;

For potential external users, do not limit the activities to your own posts. They can only spread on Weibo or on Weibo.

Time

First, the platform features: the online peak hours of mobile devices are during work hours, lunch breaks, and before going to bed. Games are at peak hours at noon and evening.

Second, users' usage features: mobile phone users use part time to play games, while pad devices use large part time to play games at night.

Therefore, in the activity design, some personal suggestions are as follows:

L The activity time should be as flexible as possible. Do not engage in activities that can only be started in the first five minutes.

L The time range should not be too short. For example, the answer activity can be performed all day (or several hours), so it should not be limited to 30 minutes.

L The participation process should not be too long. It is best to control an activity within 20 minutes. Otherwise, the participants will be tired.

Location

A sign-in activity can be performed in many scenarios: in-game, post, and Weibo.

Different locations have different functions:

In-Game: for existing users, activity information is more easily understood by users, more convenient participation, and more flexible technical means.

Post: promote the relationship between existing players outside the game and facilitate communication between players.

: The existing user's strong relationship chain has a small dissemination scope, but the effect is good, and the activity method is very limited. It may require secondary development.

Weibo: it uses the weak relationships of existing users to spread widely and quickly, and some existing activities can be used directly.

Therefore, you must select a proper location based on the purpose and needs of the activity.

Process

The process part involves two parts, one is the workflow and the other is the user's participation in the process.

The workflow is at the execution level: whether the technical cooperation part can be put in place at the specified time, whether the functional test and configuration test are complete, and whether the art work can be completed within the specified time ......

User participation is at the design level: what the user needs to do first, what to do later, whether the process is process, whether the process is reasonable, and whether the threshold is moderate ......

It is impossible to say that the process is not practical. You only need to think from these two perspectives, execute more, try more, and summarize more. The process is easy to learn.

Personnel

Some activities may require the cooperation of art, technology, and even channels. Collaboration and communication are inevitable. Therefore, if you want to do well in this area, you need to understand what their features are:

Art

It is difficult to express the artistic requirements accurately. In addition to precise information such as dimensions and texts, the art performance layer needs to describe your needs from a perceptual aspect,

If you want to write only: be a knight. I believe what you get is a young man holding a sword in his hand.

If you need an advertisement material used on the portal, the size is 800 × 600. The text is xxxxxx. The artistic conception of the screen is to describe a top-level expert. His beloved woman is killed by enemies. So his heart is filled with hatred and hesitation.

What you get at this time may be that a man who looks vicissitudes of life depends on a big tree and looks at the moon on the horizon with deep eyes, along with the autumn wind and fallen leaves.

Technology

Compared with art, the technical needs should not be given any space to play, and the needs should be very clear and meticulous. They hate vague demands. The more specific they are, the more they like them.

Channels

They don't accept your salary, so they can not cooperate with you or even ignore you. However, their KPIs can affect their income, so you need to figure out what their KPIs are, and then bind your needs with their KPIs, in this way, everyone can work together to be efficient.

Players View activities

 

The activity itself is actually a product, not only the product itself, but also the user experience. It is like making a useful tool, but no one knows, and no one knows how to use it, so useful things will be greatly compromised.

Therefore, we need to focus on every step of the user contact activity, and constantly optimize to achieve the highest conversion rate, just like the funnel below.

Player participation process

Found

Do not think that the player will know that I have performed monitoring in the fantasy Genie product. Only 30% of gamers open the activity announcement panel. The remaining 70% users do not know what activities we have.

Discovering activities is the first step. I think there are two main ideas for players: pushing and pulling.

Pull

Pull is mainly a traditional method, attracting players' attention through announcements and activity portals.

The better way is to add an activity portal to the game homepage. When there is a new activity, the portal will flash or beat, attracting players to click to enter.

I don't think it is a good way to log on to announcements. The most urgent thing for a player to open a game is to start playing a game, rather than reading announcements, especially text announcements.

Push

Pushing means that the game actively pushes activity information to the player. The advantage of this method is that there are many arrival rates, which can effectively expand the scope of users who discover activities. But the drawbacks are also obvious: it will harass users.

The first is the push method:

L push. Not only can active users be reached, but also some sleeping users can be activated (installed but not played ). However, you must pay attention to the content and frequency. The content should be of great interest to players and the frequency should not be too high.

L mail (in-game or out-of-game ). This method is common. However, due to the word limit and expressive limitation of emails, you need to carefully design the email content so that players can quickly grasp the key points and avoid writing a lot of useless words.

The second is the content pushed:

Careful consideration is required. Daily recharge and consumption activities for gamers will certainly constitute harassment. If a frequent regular activity is sent each time, the players will be bored. Therefore, it is best to select important holiday events so that players are fresh. The pursuit of small and refined content in specific text is not big but complete.

Finally, the scope of the push is as follows:

Do not push a 5000 RMB event to a non-spending player, clarify the audience of the event, make targeted promotions, and push the event accurately as much as possible.

Understanding

When the first step is completed, the next step is to allow players to quickly learn about your activities.

This part focuses on two points: good text and good expressiveness

Text

Copywriting is concise. Do not look at the poetry, but watch the cloud. "Recharge and send Guan Yu" is more intuitive than "Qinglong is surging.

Be sure to be accurate on the basis of simplicity! Whether the recharge is a cumulative recharge or a single recharge, everyone can participate or participate in more than 30 levels. These details must be accurate to avoid misunderstandings and disputes.

Expressiveness

Proper use of images: images are more eye-catching than texts, so use some images to stimulate players' eyes. For example, if you recharge your account to send Guan Yu, write the word "Guan Yu" in the reward section and paste a picture of Guan Yu directly. The effect will be much worse! However, images occupy more capacity (or traffic), so do not abuse them. Find the key areas for proper use.

Highlight Key words: for example, npc, entry to participate in the activity, and rewards. The key information can be distinguished by color. However, it cannot be full of colorful content, but it is dazzled and cannot highlight the key points. Once the color rules are set, do not change it easily. For example, if the npc uses blue, it always uses blue. Do not change the color at will.

Participate

The biggest optimization that can be done in this part is to add a shortcut jump, add a recharge button next to the recharge activity, and add a turntable jump to the turntable activity. Do not ask players to find them by themselves, and try to lower the barrier for players' participation.

Evaluation and dissemination

The only thing we can do with these two parts is to provide gamers with sharing channels (weibo,), so that gamers can easily share them.

As for what they say, it depends on whether your activity design is interesting and whether it has aroused the desire of players to share.

If you are thinking about money-consuming activities, do not add these sharing channels, so that you do not have to worry.

Activities in concert with products and company strategies

The activity itself does not have an absolute good or bad, and it cannot be evaluated by the increase in revenue during the activity period.

Different products cannot use the same set of activities. Different companies cannot use the same activity idea at different stages.

Cooperate with company strategy

If the company does not pursue short-term profits, but quality and reputation. In the activity strategy meeting, more interesting activities will be made, more activities will be made to increase retention and interaction, and a large amount of recharge and consumption activities will be reduced.

For example, we will adopt this strategy in the upcoming "Three Kingdoms X.

If a company wants to sell or go public, short-term data is required. You can consider retaining and recharging consumption activities to achieve beautiful data reports.

Therefore, do not blindly engage in activities based on your own subjective will. First, communicate with the boss. What strategy is the company? How does the activity work with the company's strategy? We need to reach an agreement with the boss.

Work with product policies

If the product is an innovative product, it must be constantly polished and explored. It is necessary to focus on "product supplements" activities to help the development team improve product quality.

If the product is a "fast copy" product, it also involves copyright issues. The goal is to earn one vote in the short term. In this case, the activity focuses on top-up consumption, how much money can be earned, and how fast it can be received.

In terms of products, you need to have in-depth communication with the producer so that development and operation can reach a strategic agreement. During the product production process, our operation team began to communicate with the development team of "Three Kingdoms X.

In addition to companies and products, the market environment also affects the overall strategy of activities. These are actually a core idea:

Perform different activities for different environments!

The current mobile game operations are all transferred from client games and page games. Do not simply use the past experience.

Changes in the mobile game industry are changing rapidly. If you do not adapt to the environment, you will be eliminated by the industry!

I hope that the content above will give you some inspiration, but do not think that you can make good activities by reading these ideas!

If you want to understand and use these ideas, you still need to continue to practice, constantly sum up experience and lessons, and continue to learn. Understand your own activity ideas and ideas through your own practices.

Mobile game operation: activity operation