Happy farm: the game into the public life

In an interview, Founder and CEO of Five Minutes said that " every time a product goes online, it is a growth for all." Before we spent a lot of effort to think: Why do players like it? After the game can pass the data Verify that the original idea is high or low? When you find more and more accurate positioning, the shot can be more accurate, otherwise it is prone to lack of preparation. "

Chatting about the classic, 郜 韶飞 frankly: "Had not thought of" Happy Farm "will be so cattle, but later on the" Happy Farm 2 "expectations are too high, the middle of the psychological gap widened; and then on the" small War "is expected to be more accurate psychological expectations." Although "Happy Farm" income indicators fell earlier, but the user base is still quite large, especially in the Tencent platform, the life cycle has reached two years, this is beyond expectations.

Although "Little War" and "Little Captain" are mature in terms of business operation maturity, income scale, sound effect, art, play persistence and other aspects, in terms of social effects, Happy Farm is hard to beat. "If you speak in all directions, this product will once again create a social hot spot known to all, while also commercially great success. Simply put 'beyond' the word a bit inappropriate, because the amount of users, you It may be hard to beat it. "

"The first thing you receive is always different from the second thing you come in." Shao-fei Fei further explained with the movie "Avatar": "How much chance can the following 3D movie outgrow Avatar? Because The movie has become iconic, and certainly a group of people who never watch a movie go to Avatar because of social effects, because he feels he has fallen behind without looking.

After the Happy Farm fire, the team released "Happy Farm 2" in a five-minute period. At that time, a large number of social games with similar themes appeared on the market. What they called "farm-like products" plunged the entire industry into a red sea. Many developments Business is involved.郜 Shaofei's point of view is: good themes and social effects can sometimes meet the demands.

"Happy Farm" has been associated with the success of social games that were not good at the time. "Little wars" succeeded, much in the same way as homogenized social games at the time. You launched the right game at the right time You have to meet very good market opportunities, you have to choose a very good theme.You can create a story, make the story more vivid, but you can not create a theme In itself, farms are not created by people and are inherent in society, "said Shao Fei.

Unsuccessful R & D experience

In the five minutes before the "Happy Farm" has done three social games, have failed. June 2008, five minutes to develop the first game called "Mad Queen", is based on the chess adaptations, although in everyone's opinion this game is "very interesting and very exciting", can be landed on social networking platform only once a day Hundreds of people to play. Why do so few people? 郜 Shao Fei concluded: "people are not familiar with the rules of chess, the game is not popular enough."

After summing up the lessons of the first game, they quickly developed a jigsaw puzzle called "love spell will win". This game is simple and easy to use. There are thousands of people playing every day. But the problem reappeared: "We found it was not long and no more people got involved in it." The reason why Shao Fei-Fei analyzed it was: "Although popular, the game has a very high requirement on the online time of the player and must be Syncing online with friends, or playing for half an hour, or an hour, is limited by the amount of time spent playing games, and the shortening of the time required to play social games, which is the second lesson of losing money "

Followed by Shao Shaofei led the team has developed a third game "Racing Story", this product has new developments, the daily volume of users rose to tens of thousands of people, the effect is still not satisfactory. The conclusion is: playing with strangers tends to form a closed circle, the focus of attention is that you lose me win, but ignored the emotional exchanges with friends.

This time, Shao Fei slowed down, some games have been developed to half or choose to give up. About two months, they no longer develop new games, but rather pondering the social game in the end how to do. One popular saying at the time was "Nine Days on the Line, One Game," that is, three days of planning, three days of development, three days of testing, and then on the line.

"We are not quite standard, slightly longer than they use, but in fact it is very short." The first three games did not make any money, is still purely input stage. According to Shao Shaofu memories, there was no virtual props, a total of tens of thousands of dollars earned earn advertising costs.

Many times after the failure, I feel told Shao fly "Happy Farm" game seems to have something special. "It's popular enough that people have not eaten at least ate the vegetables; the social feel of the gameplay is stronger; I grow vegetables and you grow the vegetables, the droughts, the worms help each other, the interaction between friends is natural, Do not have to design. "" Happy Farm "into the market after a lot of hot than imagined, reached the highest in Renren landing 4 million users, the installation of users reached tens of millions.

Completely abandon the interaction with strangers, "Happy Farm" only interact with friends. With this game, people's interaction becomes strong. "Class reunion, we will chat about vegetables; some children with little talk about their parents, playing this game, everyone's common topic up ..."

郜 Shao Fei concluded that happy farm perfect interpretation of the product concept five minutes ago. First, enough popular, players have not played the game can play; second, to reach the true interaction between friends; third, fragmented fragmented playing time games. "The five-minute term is very interesting. It represents a short and long term goal to achieve the first two of the game concepts," which is why the company named it "five minutes."

At the beginning of 2010, the improved version of Happy Farm 2 became more complicated, with 45,000 daily active users released at Happynet, and the player experience was good. However, Shaofei later decided to give up the game's update . "Happy Farm 2", similar to stealing food, raising ranches, fish farming social games flooding the market, this kind of "farm" flooding the scene, the user has long been tedious. Shao Fei Fei have to admit that the product itself is quite good. "At that time, some new functions were added because the system is more complex, numerical design, system design is not sophisticated enough, some advanced players quickly tell the game to play, then go play and feel so effortless, so the player is easy to drain. Feeling is caused by lack of experience, the pace is still big step. "郜 Shao Fei is still not satisfied with this product.

The essence of social games

"Keeping the game plummeted while staying simple, spending less time with your players, and keeping your friends engaged." This is what the five-minute team has always insisted on. In the last two or three years, Shao Shaofei has gradually realized that most social networks simulate real life, and of course, the social interaction itself contains elements of interaction with strangers. From this basis, Shao Fei makes more complicated game designs .

"The game is definitely going to be more plump, giving players a richer experience, but at the same time ensuring that the player consumes less time, is less difficult to manage, is comfortable to accept, does not need to learn for a long time to learn "This is a summary of Shao Shao fly experience. "When we started playing games, we did unsuccessful exchanges between strangers and later only interacted with friends, but now I think the more mature products can more fully reflect the social factors, the interaction between friends and Strangers interact with each other in different ways, and they need to be dealt with separately so that they can interact well with each other, and the experience of the player will be enhanced. "Under the principle of real friend interaction, Shao Shaofei started to expand the communication space for strangers so that Online social networks tend to be more realistic.

Shao Shaofei began a bold attempt, he hopes to choose a more fresh theme, more exciting interactive gameplay. So they found a primitive theme, based on the occupation of interactive play based on the user can develop their own tribe, training soldiers, learn from friends, this game is the "little war." The game has reached more than 700,000 people on the Internet every day landing is the number one. "We think it's still quite successful, and although the size of the users can not keep up with the Happy Farm, at least it will expand the wider thinking of social games."

On this basis, five minutes later posted on Renren a similar role playing social game "Little Captain." Players play captain, open a boat sailing, there are a variety of tasks and stories on the way. "Happy Farm" and "Little War" are relatively close to running, but "Captain Little" is for you to play the role of the game every day a new story to move forward, there are suspense inside.

According to Shao Fei introduction, compared with other games, "Captain Little" game production more beautiful, fine art, sound effect, is a very complete game, the player experience more abundant. The game is no longer simply a weak confrontation with friends, but also brought in with the strong confrontation between strangers, here is more like a more complete world, a circle of friends, often encounter strangers.

Profit is not difficult, the difficulty is large-scale profit

Although Happy Farm users are large, they are lacking in profitability. Prior to this, three games had failed to bring revenue to the company, and even the company was facing financial difficulties, this farm game allows five minutes to support the company to the scale of more than 50 people. Get financing, 郜 Shao-fei led the team to start a "little war", access to users at the same time and began to profit.

While initially developing "Happy Farm," Shao Shaofei also considered the profitability of the game, but in the end, it was "playing the game first and then reaping revenue." After the game is done, think about the design of fertilizer and other props to make money, "The earliest farm income is very simple method of charging the expansion of space is not large. The overall earning is not much, in fact, its effect is far greater than its Earning power ".

To the "little war", five minutes ago will be consciously to design a rich props auxiliary game, has made great efforts in charging. "If you want to develop faster you have to spend a little money to buy props," they basically are using this idea to design a way to make money. These attempts made a five-minute apparently profitable.

Not long ago on the line of the "Little Captain" in addition to product manufacturing capability in the rapid progress, the profit level, the player can transform the ship, the purchase of decorative objects, you can install guns against strangers, you can pass The way to spend money makes your boat stronger. "Captain Little" is probably an order of magnitude more profitable than the "little war."

"We are actually concerned about profitability, but less energy is devoted." In Shao-fei's opinion, social games have not yet reached the stage of large-scale and profitable, he hopes to see the game foundation can carry more than a year When billion profit go try more game form.

"Now these games are still very beginner, even if desperately make this game to earn money, how much it can earn? A few hundred million a year to earn the most. Now have to grasp the user, grasping the product, so that the product can be more mature, and then Go try more game modes and open up a bigger space for yourself. Earning is not hard, it's hard to achieve large-scale profits. "

"We are adhering to the principle of" knowing what we know and why we know it ", and it is possible that a product may not be able to earn money when it is put on. In most cases, we will do more research in advance and Verify that, to figure out why this was done, the game was developed and I think we'll be able to create bigger businesses once we find ways to make our products more profitable and more viable. "

In Shao Shaofei view, social games take longer to accumulate to expand more space, like the "journey" games do billions a year of revenue, like "World of Warcraft" to do more than 100 billion dollars.

With the complexity of the game, access threshold for social game development is getting higher and higher. According to Shao Shaofei introduction, before more than 10 individuals to do "happy farm" only takes three weeks, now 20 to 30 team to develop a game at least six months, on-line operation may need four or five people. "Next, social games are not much different from large-scale online games because they are social and millions are online at the same time, so it will be even higher than the threshold of Webgame."

The more complicated things are, the more it is not easy to be cottage. According to Shao Shaofei, this is a manifestation of comprehensive capabilities of developers, including operational capabilities, ability to serve users, ability to design charging props, ability to write stories, and how to make The life cycle of the game as much as possible. Shao Fei Fei would like to stop and develop a game in a year, "but now the market environment is not allowed because of the different needs of players at different stages, you have to follow the needs of players go, if blindly follow the ideal model is very It is possible to lose the market. "But his judgment is that the future trend is to develop a game a year.郜 Shao Fei more and more less worried about the cottage plagiarism problem.

There are two things companies do now: one thing is to look at products and research user needs. The other is to focus on the company's direction and goals. "For example, what are we doing this year, making money or scratching the user? Is it better to play games or do more games?"

For five-minute team, has also insisted on doing two things: First, insist on doing social games, the game into the popular life; second, insist on original. In Shao Shaofei view, five minutes to make "happy farm", by chance is inevitable. "Occasionally, when we say that we have made it, it is inevitable that the Chinese people will certainly be able to make good original games. We do not differ so much from others. Since we can make the first paragraph, we should stick to it and believe Can make more money. "