From twisted eggs to fragments, the great "innovation" of mobile games

"Gather six pieces of equipment advanced level, set full x debris after the equipment can ascend star", see this passage, there will be a sense of inexplicable familiarity, is right now the most popular "debris" design, especially in the card game is widely used. From a player's collection of heroes to a variety of equipment, you need to be able to redeem them by gathering pieces. The more advanced the hero or the outfit, the more debris is needed, and as the game progresses, the more difficult it is to collect the pieces.

"Debris" design is specifically which game first, now it is difficult to textual research, but this is certainly a mobile game in the field of a rather "great" invention, "debris" now has become a mainstream mobile game design, which largely rewritten the mobile game market.

From twisted eggs to fragments, the great "innovation" of mobile games

Most of the games used to establish a game cycle-> manufacturing Restrictions-> set the way of charging points. Theoretically, a game can be set up a lot of charges: expansion of friends, increase the size of the backpack, restore physical strength, twist eggs, the resurrection has set a charge point, but no matter how many points in the game, the most profitable must be "twisted eggs."

Twist eggs in the industry is a magic word, the importance of even higher than ARPU, in China has a more popular saying "Open treasure box", or we can more directly say, this is actually gambling. "Twist the egg" because the contribution to the profit is too big, then produced many variants. One variant is the most frightening, and the most money to defraud the player is the コンプガチャ form, which is strictly regulated in Japan. Chinese players are also very familiar with, that is, several times to open a treasure box to obtain cards, can be synthesized again rare cards.

The gambling-like twist has brought considerable profits to the game makers, knowing that in the Japanese gaming market, only コンプガチャ this form of gambling contributes 1/4 of the company's profits. But too close to the form of gambling, but also to the game company has brought huge risks. In the case of China, at last year's MGs 2013 mobile gaming Conference, Chen Tong, deputy director of the Ministry of Culture marketing, stressed that "the game should not be used" to randomly draw players to pay (that is, players familiar with the eggs, draw cards), or suspected to promote gambling and other acts. ”

It is very important for game companies to find an easy way to make money, and it is in this context that "fragmentation" is creatively invented. In the game, players need to repeatedly brush certain points to get specific equipment or heroes. And these equipment or heroes in the level of the drop is extremely low, even if the player repeatedly brush many times, usually can not get the required. In the previous design, through the "twist the egg" mechanism extraction has become the most convenient shortcut, but has said that this is a policy risk.

"Fragmentation" is a good solution to this dilemma, players in the game each brush can be a fragment, so even if the bad luck of the players will one day can collect enough fragments to synthesize. In order to get enough debris, players need to repeat the game, and in the process of collecting the number of fragments is also increasing, which will give players a "sense of progress."

This design has undoubtedly improved the stickiness of mobile gamers, and on the other hand, through "fragmented" design, the game maker has no need to induce players to make random charges. When you don't have enough debris and you can't collect it in a short period of time, you will naturally pull out your wallet. It's not good to know that it's a little bit worse.

The physical limits of the collection of fragments, the rule of madness to make money

In a number of games, will be a day to land the reward fragmentation mechanism to motivate players to participate in the game every day, which is actually more attractive than giving a landing reward, because you only have a period of time to access the corresponding scarce items. "Debris" design to a certain extent greatly extend the player's game time, solve the mobile game compared to large clients online game on the content of the lack of.

Taiwan's famous game Bo Silver Fox was in a story about the legend of the sword in the article in this analysis:

In "Legend of the Sword" This game, the focus of profit from the luxury of the transfer of eggs to the daily consumption of the card, a big chunk of this daily consumption comes from the energy that the player needs to buy the challenge level (in the legend of the tower is a sign of a drumstick). The hero fragment in the legend of the tower has a lot of weight in the level of energy that needs to be brushed. Through this design, the game company succeeded in directing the revenue of the game to the purchase of physical strength and the number of checkpoints that the players could buy every day.

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As I have said before, the specific props and heroes in the game can only be acquired by collecting enough fragments in a particular level, and sometimes you can't even spend money on them. These checkpoints every day the number of brushes will be limited, each time need to spend a certain amount of physical strength. The physical cost of getting the Shard is much more than the physical energy you can get on a daily basis, and the limit of the number of specific hurdles is a gateway to the fragmentation.

As the game becomes more difficult, the need for more and more heroes and pieces of equipment, players need to spend more physical energy will be more and more, thus forming a cycle. If a player does not pay for physical strength, then the game will probably not go on, your game progress will be far behind your small partner. As long as paying players are willing to pay for physical strength and levels, they can get more heroic pieces than free players and greatly shorten the time needed to get a hero.

These specific fragments are often a necessary item for the hero to upgrade, "debris collection" combined with "physical limitations", mobile games finally found a new way to make money. 2014, China Mobile gaming users have reached 358 million people, but compared to 2013 in fact only increased by 15.1%, and the mobile game market size has increased by 144.6% year-on-year. In my opinion, this is undoubtedly a great link to the "debris" design. If you don't believe it, take a look at the top ten games on the bestseller list and see if you can find a game that doesn't have a "shard" design.

Distorted innovation, the game market is ultimately a profit-driven

The "Shard" design does open a new door to the profit model of mobile gaming, where free and paid players are two distinct groups, and although there is inequality, it is often difficult to really form a conflict. Free players do not have the same experience as a paid player because they do not pay, and a game can go on even if it pits money.

But the design of "fragmentation", which is designed to circle money, obviously creates extreme inequalities in the game, and paying players get more than just the difference between the outfit and the hero, and they get a sense of the game in a physical context.

The game manufacturer's evil is far from stopping, they on one hand, the hypocrisy propaganda how the player in the game "does not charge the money to play the very cool skill", but on the other hand, but in the game creates various obstacles to the free player's game experience to bring the difficulty, the recharge payment as if has become

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Fragmentation design should have been an important link for the game to keep players in place, giving players enough incentive to continue playing, but with high interest, this innovative design has become the criminal law of gaming companies making money. This is a domestic game of sadness, and this may be the domestic hand tour why the life cycle is so short of important reasons.