Psychology in Game Development (I): a prerequisite for cognitive disorder

Zookeeper

The first article is psychology in the game (I): cognitive disorder

The game industry belongs to the service industry, and we serve players. We want to make a good game, in addition to the necessary professional knowledge, the degree of understanding of the service object is also very important.

I recently learned a little about psychology. Here I try to use psychology knowledge to analyze players' psychology and behaviors. Today I will talk about the Theory of Cognitive disorder ".

Cognitive disorder will allow gamers to make "fun" Comments on games with poor experience

"Cognitive disorder Theory" is the most surprising theory. The theory of fersinger is like this: "When people fall into a ridiculous situation, they will come up with a reason to make the situation reasonable." This seemingly nonsense theory has been proven by countless experiments. For example, the most famous demonstration experiment is as follows:

Give two groups a boring task. One gets $20 for the group, and the other gets $1 for the group, which is surprisingly low. Then he asked the two groups, "Do you like this task ?"

The answer was unexpectedly. The group with $1 liked this task much higher than the group with $20. They answered this question:

$20 group: "It's boring. I did it for $20 ."

$1 group "(subconscious activity: I am not a thankless guy, of course, not for this $1 .) In fact, this job is not so boring and interesting. I have learned a lot ."

More common cognitive disorders often appear in our work, such:

Aren't you surprised? If you do this job without a start, your talents are twice higher than your superiors, your work is long, your salary is low, and no one respects your contribution, but you also choose to work here. That's ridiculous! No, it must be because I like the job. (Most of the above content is introduced to the Open Course on psychology at Yale University)

The above two examples will give you a preliminary understanding of the Cognitive Imbalance theory, I think it is a good explanation of why the two products are still popular when the user experience is poor. These two products are the king of cards last year, "My name is Mt", and the masterpiece of arpg in Europe and America, "Eternal WARRIOR 3".

These two products, from gameplay to category, were discussed at the same time because they share a common feature-at the beginning of product launch operations, various types of Logon failures, network connection failures, and frequent downtime maintenance. Playing a game at that time was simply a kind of torture, and it was a process of struggle between the pad and the pad. In particular, "Eternal WARRIOR 3", whenever you fail to challenge the copy, it will be dropped. You must turn off the app to reconnect seven or eight times before you can continue playing the game after "lucky.

However, from the data point of view, the retention rates of these two games during this period are abnormally high. (Of course, the stored data in the early stages of the game will be higher than the data in daily operations in the future.) Why?

In the above two examples of cognitive disorder, I tried to guess my subconscious activity: "Why am I spending time on this broken game? This broken network wastes me half an hour to create a copy. Why should I play it? Hmm ...... I think it must be because it is really good !"

In this way, I subconsciously made a funny comment on it and spent almost all my spare time on it in three months, until I saw the highest boss I wanted to vomit.

To be fair, "Eternal warrior" is a game with a strong sense of attack and excellent skill performance. "My name is Mt" is a well-made product. However, if it is not a "fun" error caused by cognitive disorder theory, if it is not a "self-following phenomenon" (see "weird behavior") this "fun" impression is constantly reinforced by the players themselves, and the two games may not reach their current height.

So when the game is launched, the servers will always go down. Don't despair. make rational use of the Cognitive Imbalance theory, and your game will be saved.

Reference: www.yxkfw.com Game Development Network.

Cognitive disorders also have prerequisites

The last few notes must be shared with you to prevent anyone from trying this trick and getting angry with me.

1. The first impression of your product on players must be excellent. If the first impression is poor, the "smart and tasteful" player will think, "This bad game publicity is true and false. Fortunately, I found it early and deleted it !" It's like when chasing a beautiful girl, she refuses to torture you. Instead, you fall in love with her and cannot extricate yourself. If you find that you are an ugly girl, I'm afraid you will be tortured or gentle, you have been away for a long time (MT and the eternal warrior show they belong to beautiful women ).

"This rotten game publicity is well written. Fortunately, I found it very intelligently early and deleted it decisively !"

"Why am I spending time on this broken game? This broken network wastes me half an hour to create a copy. Why should I play it? Hmm ...... I think it must be because it is so fun !"

The difference between the two, you know!

2. There is a limit to everything. If it is too much, it is estimated that the best theory will fail. Where is the critical point of failure? Here, I will not take a head-I think it should be the critical point at which the classical conditional launch (that is, the rattle drool) works, when a player sees the anxiety and pain of waiting on the game icon, it is estimated that nothing can save you.

3. My experience in Mt. I have to admit that Yan shanhu is also a master of psychology. He created a compensation model for maintenance (there were other games, but they were not more powerful than him) attempts to establish a conditioned reflection between network problems and game rewards have successfully weakened the connection between network problems and anxiety.

As a beginner in psychology, I am here to make everyone laugh. You are welcome to criticize and correct your ideas. You are also welcome to discuss and exchange ideas and learn from each other.

Psychology in Game Development (I): a prerequisite for cognitive disorder