How do you understand the game community?

In recent years, there has been a concept of fire for a while, then there is the feeling of silencing the ruins. That's the game community. So what exactly is a "gaming community"?

Literally, "gaming community" can have three kinds of understanding:

1. Games + Community

2. The Community of games

3. A community of people who play games

This is also the current living "game community" of several forms, below I will say a little bit of the characteristics of these forms and the status quo.

Games + Community

Games + community, this form of the game and the community is actually relatively independent business, both in the user also only maintain a certain degree of overlap. The domestic more well-known social platform, Renren, 51.com, Qzone and so on are all belong to this mode.

Its benefits are not to affect the needs of the Community users, but also to the users who want to play the game of the community to provide a platform, of course, more importantly, the game is a very good tool of the circle money.

However, the "gaming community" in this form cannot be called the "game community" in the real sense. Social users and game users are often distinct, with low overlap and poor mobility between the two businesses. Greatly limited the development of the game business space, and subject to the overall style of the site, it is not possible to become a game-oriented vertical social domain. It's just that social networking sites are mixed up with gaming business.

Games made up of communities

Let's talk about the community of games. This form of "cell" is a game. It can be said that it is a game platform, mainly by developers, agents, operators, etc. to drive, by their and user interaction. Recent 37wan,51wan such as Web game platform can be classified as this category.

This form is convenient for operation and promotion, but it has less interaction with users and is more unitary. A feature of the web game is that a game will be connected to n platforms. Most users focus on the game itself, not on the platform for the game. Once asked a few friends playing web games, "you will choose which platform to play the Web game?", the answer, the general requirement is two points: first, more people; second, the game is fun. So user loyalty to the platform is very low, and easy to lose.

By the way, there are three types of platforms in this form:

1. Own flow (360,QQ, etc.)

2. Money to buy traffic (37wan, etc.)

3. Cock Silk Platform (many, many ...)

Who will live better in this way?

A community of people who play games

The community of people who play games, I think this is the most suitable "game community" concept of a form, unlike the previous two, more or less far-fetched. At present, this form of "game community" is less, only the game Life (Tencent), 11 gaming community (11 vs platform) a few.

Of course, this is also the most difficult to do a form. Social networking sites focus on the chain of relationships, and the strong chain of relationships between game users is in the game. So the formation of a very embarrassing situation, "gaming community" built up the chain of relationships, in the user's view worthless. Perhaps you will say, you can use micro-blog one-way attention, biased media nature of the model, users pay attention to some of Daniel's account, and then look at their hair dota video what. So I'm going to ask, why don't you just pay attention to Twitter? This creates a second problem, what is the reason for users to use the "gaming community"? That is, it is not convenient for me and a friend in the game to protect contact, and can not get any differentiated services.

Having said all this, do you think this form of "gaming community" is over? I'm going to say "no!." Actually think clearly, still have bright prospects.

The future of the gaming community

Now tell me something about my future "gaming community".

1. Structure

Take the relationship chain as the core, the game-oriented platform.

The business architecture can be divided into three big chunks:

1, platform: Find games, play games, activities, gift bags, etc.

2, Information: Watch video, news, Raiders, announcements, evaluation, etc.

3, community: Find a base friend, chat games, sister paper, achievements, etc.

2. Relationship Chain

The relationship chain of "game community" should be the extension and complement of game, play the role of mutual promotion.

Ideally, I'd add a couple of friends to Lol, and my friends in the game community would be able to have them under the LOL group. Of course, if I delete friends in the game, then the "game community" chain of relationships is broken.

This allows users to keep in touch with the game's friends when they are not playing the game, and to start a series of actions around the game.

The chain of relationships is just a fuse. If the general situation described above can be achieved, then there is a broader picture of the future. For example, do I have a game of gangs that can also be extended to the gaming community? Do I get the honor and personal rewards of gangs in the gaming community?

Just follow the four features of the game: rules, goals, feedback, voluntary participation. The game community is a promising way to extend the game.

The extension of the relationship chain will bring games and "game community" integration, slowly you will find that "game community" is a game, but also a "variety of games."

3. The content is king

Then the above said, if only the chain of relationships, there is no fresh rich content. Then the chain of relationships will break up sooner or later. So the content provided by the gaming community is also important.

As we talked about extension and fusion, here are the complementary. What are some of the things that are tightly connected to the game, but are not convenient to do directly in the game? For example, new games release publicity, some operations, news, video games and so on.

Games and "gaming communities" can be explained by the biological "symbiosis", as long as the common promotion, only the future.

4. Business model

Finally talk about business model, in fact, the above points to make money is a piece of cake. Because of the strong relationship chain and the precise user segmentation, you can accurately and highly transform the user into a new game. Because of the symbiotic relationship between the game and the gaming community, you can ignore the fact that there is no running activity to stimulate consumption. Because of the large number of users, you can represent the game of others, you can play ads, can sell props, you can ...

Conclusion

Write this kind of article for the first time, write some superficial and not comprehensive, forget forgive. In short, if the "gaming community" is properly positioned, there will be a big world in the future. Think about multiple terminals and think about what cloud computing can bring to the "gaming community", and you'll find that this probability has so much room for imagination.

Author: singrain