At the end of the day, the essence of gaming is still fun.

A game will fail, no matter how many reasons are found, there is one reason that is always unavoidable, and that is that it is not fun for the player.

There are many people who will say, for example, in some online games, that the agent does not act, does not deal with the plug-in, destroys the game, and the game itself is not fun - the quality of the game environment should be counted in a game, the game environment becomes bad, and the agent's inaction itself is to reduce the playability of the game.

And for a game to be successful, no matter how good he is at publicity, he must have something to offer in terms of gameplay, and COD's sales can explode every year, not just because the game has a group of NC fans - of course, it is undeniable that it has a lot to do with a group of NC fans who are willing to buy it, but you can't just think that they can sell so many sales just by relying on NC fans.

LOL was able to crush Dota 2 in terms of the number of gamers and profitability just because he released early?

EQ came out many years earlier than WOW, so what was the result?

Of course,I don't mean to compare LOL with WOW.,These are two completely different games.,The success of each game,It's definitely not just a coincidence.,There must be merit in the game itself.,And the failure of a game.,It's definitely not just because the marketing is not strong enough.,In the game itself,There must be something about it that players hate.。

Even if it is sprayed as a dog by domestic playersCF is not only because of Tencent's platform effect, you know, there are not a few games that die in the hands of Tencent, and the first thing to consider for a game to succeed is its merits, not just what platform he is on, because no matter how good you promote. No matter how many people try it, others don't think it's fun and don't want to stay and play, you still face failure in this game.

Many of Tencent's own or agency games with good quality have died like this, and people are here to play. But if you don't have fun playing the game, why should others continue to play.

It's hard to figure out the mental state of all types of players.

For example, CF, Jester really doesn't know why players who like this game are attracted to it, although he knows that there must be a reason for this, he can only make some guesses of his own, which may not be accurate.

In the afternoon, Jester went to a discussion meeting in the FPS development department.

The content of the meeting was the meeting of making the game "Counter-Strike" into a standalone game, and now this is just a mod that can be run on "Quake 3", but this mod is extremely popular, and the FPS development team of Mars Entertainment thinks it is more appropriate to develop it into a separate game. Because many of the designs of "Quake 3" are more difficult to deal with in the production of the mod "Counter-Strike".

Therefore, the development team thinks that this mod is not good enough, and if it is made into a game alone, then it can be fixed or improved, and there is no way to deal with the problem at all.

However, when discussing how to make it, there is a basic dilemma. They had a problem with how to sell such a game - it was just a battle game. In other words, he will not have any stand-alone content, and there is no precedent for such a game in the industry.

Jester listened to them discuss for a long time, and the general meaning is that you can make concessions on the sale price, the general price of the game is sixty dollars, and this battle game has no stand-alone content. And if there is only battle content, then it can be priced at forty dollars, which is also a relatively appropriate price.

Jester also has some agreement with this price.

In the future, games like this will be sold for more or less this price, such as Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Wars, which will be sold for $40.

Of course. In the second generation, the game became sixty dollars, because the first generation became popular, which is the general practice of game companies, and players can understand it.

However, Jester has a completely different idea about the operation of "Counter-Strike".

So, while the members of the development team discussed that forty dollars was a good price, Jester disagreed.

"I have a very special idea."

Jester had in mind CS:GO, about Valve's revival of the CS series, and when everyone else's eyes shifted to him, Jester cleared his throat and continued, "Why do you have to worry about how much we should pay for him in a game like this? This is a versus game, and the more players participate, the more the game can be brought to life. ”

Everyone still didn't understand what Jester meant, after all, there has never been a game company in this world that makes games for others to play for free.

The mod of "Counter-Strike" is indeed free, but to run this mod, you need to buy "Quake 3", and it has been proved that because of the launch of the mod "Counter-Strike", the sales of "Quake 3" have increased by hundreds of thousands of copies.

"Why are we offering it to players for free, or even cheaper? This way we will have more players to participate in the game. Jester didn't procrastinate, he paused for a moment, and then directly said his suggestion, but his suggestion shocked the people present, and they looked at Jester in disbelief.

Launching a game for free?

How is this possible?

So how does the company make money?

There is also one of the most critical problems,That is, for FPS games,The biggest enemy is the plug-in,If it's a released game,,Then players will be afraid of the use of plug-ins.,But in free games,Then there will be no fear.,I used a plug-in.,You just block it.,Anyway, it's free.,I'll change my account and continue to use it.。

"It's not a good idea to be free, I mean, we can sell the tournament for a very low price. My vision for Counter-Strike is that the player can play it without spending money, but he can only play AI battles for free, which means that his opponent can only be a computer, and if he wants to play against other players on our Mars Entertainment Battle.net platform, then he will have to pay an online fee - our Mars Entertainment Battle.net members can automatically qualify for this online battle. If you don't want to spend $10 a month to qualify for Mars Entertainment Battle.net, you can also purchase a separate Counter-Strike online qualification. ”

"There is no need to set the price too high, I think 20 dollars is a good price, and it can even be discounted during the holidays, the purpose is to attract more players to participate."

When Jester said this, many of the designers present had a kind of doubt.

They didn't hear that this charging model had any fundamental benefits for the game, the number of players was large, but it was a game for a company. The most important thing is to make a profit, and this way of charging in Jester's mouth, compared to their forty dollars one-time fee, shows what is good enough, just when they are wondering.

Jester spoke again.

"Of course it's not that simple, we can do that, in the game, every game. Players can each get a treasure chest at the end of the game. After opening this treasure chest, you can randomly obtain some items in the game, which can be guns, knives, or spray paint...... Anyway, it's something that can be added. ”

"These things, like guns. Knives and other items used in the player's game are not the slightest different from the most primitive in terms of attributes, but they are very different in terms of skin, that is, in appearance. We can pull some skin-made Berserker Cool, but the drop rate is very low, making them very, very, very rare in the player community. ”

"We don't sell these skins or skins, we don't sell chests, but we allow players who get them to trade freely, and what we have to do is sell the key that can open this chest."

Jester spoke his thoughts at a not-so-fast pace.

This is also the reason why CS:GO is the business model, and later CS:GO is also known as Box GO.

There is one thing Jester remembers very clearly, it was a roommate of his college days, a brain-dead fan of the V club, and a brain-dead fan of the CS series, extremely addicted to CS:GO, and it cost at least thousands of yuan to open the box for a semester, you must know that a key is only two dollars and five dollars, and there is no equipment that can return to the cost at all, but he is still happy to do it.

Finally one day.

It was late at night, and Jester remembered it more clearly, when he was asleep when he suddenly heard a scream from his roommate.

Jester jumped out of bed~ in fright, thinking something big had happened, an earthquake or an explosion or something, but he just saw his roommate looking at the computer screen like crazy and muttering something.

When Jester walked over and took a look, he realized that his roommate had opened a dragon sniper out of a CS:GO crate!

In fact, this thing is not fundamentally different from ordinary AWP, and the attributes are exactly the same, that is, his extremely rare drop rate and extremely scumbag appearance, and of course, the extremely expensive price.

Jester only knew it was expensive, but he didn't know exactly how much it was.

After a while, the roommate who opened the dragon sniper invited everyone in their dormitory to have a big meal together, and only when he was eating did he know that a local tyrant player in China bought his dragon sniper, almost 20,000 yuan.

Moreover, it can also be known from many later statistics that CS:GO is really profitable in this way of making money by opening the box, and in 2014, the top three online game revenue are naturally Tencent's three board axes, followed by World of Warcraft, followed by CS:GO, which shows that this game is more profitable.

And how crazy and obsessive players are about opening chests in this game.

And, most importantly, he will not affect the fairness of the game at all, because whether you are holding a dragon sniper or Asimov II, in addition to the difference in appearance, there is no difference from ordinary AWP, that is, one for everyone, the official only sells keys, not chests, and the acquisition of chests is only related to your participation in the game, of course, even if the player does not open the chest, you can also trade on the trading floor.

It can be said that this is simply a perfect way of playing for both players and game companies.

On top of that, the game isn't expensive, CS:GO is discounted all year round, probably less than fifty dollars.

This is also the biggest difference with Tencent's CF, Tencent sells a strong RMB gun that is stronger than your free gun, and the recoil is small, this way of winning the game by paying has never been adopted by those real game companies.

After Jester explained his thoughts in detail, although everyone present understood Jester's meaning, they were still wondering, that is, can this kind of game really be successful? Just the difference in appearance can make players enthusiastically buy keys to open boxes? How can you think about it, how impossible!

After all, in terms of attributes, this is no different.

Seeing the puzzled looks on many people's faces, Jester also sighed a little, his business idea was indeed a little ahead.

But it's really a flawless way to run a battle game.

Even......

Jester thought of one more thing, and continued: "We can even involve players in our design, we can add a creative workshop to our game, he can let players design what they think is scumbag, and then let players rate it, and the highest rating, we can make it into the game - like this, we can sell it directly, and then draw ~ a part of it as a reward for the maker." ”

This is the creativity of the Dota 2 accessories on the Dota 2 creative workshop of the method, which can be called the classic trick of the empty glove white wolf, and even the cost of the design is left, which is purely for nothing.

But players are really buying it. (To be continued......)