Many people like playing games. The game attracts users to spend more time in it through interesting and effective marketing mechanism, thus retaining users. So, can the marketing mechanism in the game be used for reference in other products? The author of this paper analyzes this and shares it with you. If there is a marketing mechanism that can make your users very addicted to your products, use your products as frequently as eating and drinking water every day, and even keep burning money (burning money) and dying for your products, and will actively drive his friends to join in using your products, will you take this mechanism as a Bible? Does this sound like an extract of poppy? Or is it an art that does not spread in novels? Don't get me wrong, the difference between the two is that the former is a "mechanism" and the latter is a product. What I want to tell you today is this mechanism. Although intangible, it really affects our daily life, and it is also a heavy weapon that many enterprises and marketers are crazy about. Maybe that's not clear. Let me give you an example, and you will understand what it is. Please think about a question: "Have you ever played a game"? Or: "Do you have any friends who like playing games very much?" I think at this time, you should understand what I want to say. Yes, it is the marketing mechanism behind the game! Why did I just say that this set of marketing mechanism is wildly sought after by many enterprises and marketers? Let's recall these two scenes. You must have experienced it: Scene 1: If you play games, you will definitely have this experience. For by going up one flight of stairs, you will play black with friends and stay up late to play games; In the promotion, even if your boss calls you to work overtime, you will ignore it and call him back after the game; Scene 2: If you watch the news, you will occasionally see this kind of information: "A student plays games and charges more than 200 thousand for three days!" " In fact, if you look closely, you will find that those children who are still in school, even the elderly in their fifties and sixties, will also like to play games. They will often discuss with their friends how to improve their game skills, recharge their games, and bring friends around them to play. This is a continuous cycle process, and then the users and operations of the game will roll bigger and bigger like snowballs rolling down the mountain. You see, is this the positive business cycle system that all enterprises and marketers are pursuing: "Let users fall in love with products-users continue to consume-old users bring new users-new users continue to consume-new users become old users and bring new users"? In contrast, when many new products enter the market, the ways to attract new users are free and burning money, but once free or subsidies are stopped, users will stop growing or the number of users will drop. Why is the game so irresistible? Before we understand the principle behind the game operation, it is necessary for us to have an insight into one thing: what is the essence of the game? This is a screenshot of my game selection interface in Apple. On the screenshot, we can find some major game categories. If these games are further divided into some main categories, there are two main categories: survival category: strategy, action, sports, racing, adventure and other time-killing categories: children, leisure, puzzle, music and so on. From some classic and popular games, we can find that games meet people's first kind of needs and are survival instinct. For example, classic games such as Super Mario, Contra and Tetris, as well as the popular League of Legends and Survival of the Jedi, the ultimate goal of these games is how to overcome various levels in the game, destroy the enemy and live as long as possible. Only the person who lives to the end is the winner and the king of the virtual world! In the early struggle between human beings and the natural environment and animals of other races, human genes made us try our best to adapt to the environment and find a way to survive in the competition. If we can't survive, it's extinction. It can be seen that survival instinct is the result of natural selection of human species for thousands or billions of years. Therefore, we have an innate desire to survive. Let's see that most games in the game world are inseparable from the pursuit of survival instinct. The satisfaction of this primitive demand can indirectly stimulate the player's sense of dependence on this game. For example, the classic game of Internet cafes 20 years ago, CS, was a group of policemen fighting with a group of gangsters to destroy the other side and win. Twenty years later, the classic and popular game "Survival of the Jedi" is to destroy everyone and win the final survival. Is there any difference between these two games? The difference is that the picture is exquisite and the guns, games and costumes are rich, but in the final analysis, they are all shooting games, all of which survive through confrontation, and there is no change in essence. In real life, there is another phenomenon: some young people are unwilling to work, have a negative attitude towards life, and cannot extricate themselves from the world of games every day. Why are they like this? I have no interest in life, but I am as excited as playing chicken blood in the face of games. If you watch carefully, you will find that most of these people actually do well in the game. In reality, they can be counted as people above the middle class. They have great records and great equipment. It is also possible that he is a master in the game world, the head of a family or the chairman of a trade union, and often organizes some team activities. In the virtual world, there may be a group of younger brothers calling him big brother. But these big brothers are younger brothers in reality, because compared with reality, the virtual world can better satisfy their original desire for survival and get a good living environment. Compared with the reality of being beaten, it is not surprising that they choose to escape and sink into the virtual world. So you see, in the virtual game world, is it like the course of human development? Is it exactly the same from the earliest slash-and-burn struggle against various dangers (confrontation with the enemy) to today's human civilization ruling the whole earth (finally surviving)? As a gregarious animal, human beings will realize how to gain an advantage in the same family and get everyone's approval after the most basic survival needs are met, so they have changed from alien competition to intra-family competition. In many cases in ancient times, we can find that after pacifying the outside, the changes within the royal family began to fight, and several princes often played in TV dramas fought with each other in order to finally reach the top as emperors. The struggle between ordinary people is who can have more things, for example, more servants, more land, more houses and even more concubines. In the game, it is from fighting to fighting, from fighting power to fighting skills and IQ, which is what another game meets: meeting social needs. Social needs are a general term, which can take many forms: killing time, getting high-distribution friends to show off, getting recognition from others, and so on. This is also the biggest reason why those small games that look simple and rough and have no beautiful pictures can still be popular in the circle of friends. For example, the game "Sheep Got Sheep", which was popular on WeChat some time ago, is to meet the social needs of people to pass the time and then show off their achievements in the circle of friends; For example, the first popular small game "Jump" on WeChat is also to meet the social needs of killing time and showing off in the circle of friends; For example, playing the glory of the king as MVP, promoting to by going up one flight of stairs and making friends actively are just to meet the social needs of showing off. So we can find that the essence of the game is to meet people's survival needs and social needs. If your product meets these two needs, it can make users addicted and make users feel: you are electricity, you are light, you are the only myth and can only love you? Not enough. Next, I want to talk to you about the operating mechanism behind addictive games! Specifically, * * * has three parts: setting goals, strengthening behavior and random mechanism. 0 1 What is the target person most motivated to do? The answer is that when he has a clear goal or direction, he is most motivated, because after he knows where he is going, all he has to do is how to get there. And once people have no goal and direction, they will become vacillating, like a rootless duckweed. Maybe you will think, "Set a goal?" That's too easy. I'll just set a goal for the user. "How do most people set goals? For example, the sales team and leaders may wave their hands and say, "Our task this year is 1 100 million! "Then we hold regular meetings every day, shout slogans, formulate detailed rules for rewards and punishments, and finally wait until the end of the year to see the sales volume. I think the most ineffective part is the part of shouting slogans. Others' eyes are like watching juggling, and the participants' embarrassed soles dig through the soles. How does the planning in the game set goals? The first point of setting a goal: give a clear goal. If you have played games, you will know that every game has an ultimate goal, and your task is to constantly overcome difficulties to achieve this goal. Like League of Legends. At the beginning, you will see that there is a crystal in both your home and the enemy's home. Your task is to protect your own crystal. As long as you remove the enemy's crystal before the other party removes its own crystal, you win. Like CS. If you are a policeman, you will be prompted when you open the screen. The goal is to eliminate all gangsters or save the hostages to win. If you are a gangster, your goal is to resist the police's rescue operation, or to destroy everyone on the other side, you win. But setting goals is not just telling users, or telling your team members, you just do it, because the goals are too big and often end before they start. Sometimes children don't like learning, and parents often have a great responsibility. If he is only a junior one, you can tell him: "Son, you are a junior one, and your task is to beat the millions of candidates in the province, get 10 before the provincial college entrance examination, and be admitted to Tsinghua Peking University. "Then your child must think that he is not his own. You must unplug your oxygen tube in advance when you are lying in a hospital bed. Why? How many students ask famous teachers for counseling and training at home at a high price, and buy various nutrients to supplement his body? After studying hard for more than ten years, I may not even get an exam in the end. Now that he is in the first grade, you can let a child beat millions of opponents and get into the best prestigious school in China, and he may be ruined. The reason is very simple, the goal is too big, and the personal ability can't match completely. Just give up the struggle. What should I do in this situation? Next, I will mention the second key point of setting goals: creating traffic! The second point of setting goals: creating traffic. When setting goals, there are three situations: 1. The goal is too big, and the ability doesn't match: If your goal is too big, players can't catch up with 98 # gasoline, then the situation is that no one can play games. There is a simple reason. No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you struggle, you see the ending, and there is no drama at all! As mentioned above, tell your children to take the Tsinghua Peking University exam for me. 2. The goal is too small, and the ability doesn't match: the goal you designed is too small, and the player can be superb with one breath, so no one will play, because it is too boring and uninterested. In order to attract new players, some games shouted the slogan of ultra-low threshold: critical strike with one knife 10000000+! But it's still not attractive 3. Matching goals and abilities: This is the direction that planners should strive to design. Only in this way can we attract players to the maximum extent and give players the motivation to continue playing games. We can call it creating flow! What is traffic? Simple understanding means that when you are doing something, it can just match your ability, or you need to stand on tiptoe to finish it. The state you are doing at this time is called flow. What the game needs to do is to design this link that can match the player's ability with the game plot, so that the player has hope. So in the game, when you are a novice, your activity scope is in the novice village, doing some tasks that you can complete at this time. NPC will guide you to make some copies that you can finish with your efforts, and play some small BOSS that you can beat with your efforts, so that you won't face the super BOSS as soon as you come up. For example, when you are at 1 level, the game will guide you to fight monsters at the same level or level 2. When you upgrade, it will guide you to continue fighting monsters of the same level or higher than you. You can be sure that after entering this cycle, you will unconsciously continue to train from 1 to 100. Build up your confidence by constantly matching your own traffic. With the rise of your level, although the difficulty you face increases accordingly, you can still complete it within your own ability. Speaking of which, you can recall why you always play games for a long time or stay up late carelessly. One of the reasons is that you have been immersed in the flow that you can continue to achieve your goals. You won't just give up because it's too difficult or boring, but keep going and finally forget the time. This is what we call addiction! Therefore, when designing products, we should think about: how to set goals for users, how to design traffic suitable for users, and help users design a road map to the end step by step. Is it enough to know how to set goals? That's not enough. There is still a crucial step to make users addicted. 02 reinforcement behavior have you ever found such a phenomenon? When you were young, your parents forced you to study, to attend training classes and to do your homework, but you had no interest in learning at all, and your test scores were always not at the forefront of your class. But you are very interested in playing, playing games and playing games with your classmates. You will become a master of the game yourself without being taught skills. Those who became parents after 8090 will find it difficult to teach their children well and urge them to learn math and Chinese well and get good grades, but children can learn by themselves by playing games and making videos with Tik Tok. And why do some people usually spend tens of dollars, but they are willing to spend tens of thousands to reward the anchor in the live broadcast room? From a biological point of view, it is because a neurotransmitter called dopamine is deeply affecting us. As long as we play games and brush videos, the brain will secrete dopamine once. Dopamine will make us happy physically and mentally, and we will continue to hope that this feeling will last, so the brain will stimulate us to continue this behavior and continue to secrete dopamine. But why can the brain secrete dopamine only by brushing videos and playing games, but not by learning or doing something beyond our ability? Here, we have to mention a famous American psychologist Skinner and his Skinner's box experiment. China box is a simple mechanical box. At first, he put a hungry mouse in a box with buttons. Every time the mouse presses the button, the food will fall down. By binding the food to the behavior of pressing the button, the mouse learned to press the button many times, which is the first step of the Xina box experiment. The mouse in the box gets food every time it pulls the rocker, which is a positive stimulus. Then when this behavior link is formed, the mouse realizes that once he pulls the joystick, he can get a food, and when he gets the food, his brain will stimulate him to continue this behavior. Every time you dial the joystick, there is a food reward. This behavior is called establishing positive connections. Every time you get a reward, you enhance the enthusiasm of this behavior. And continuing this behavior is called reinforcement behavior in psychology! Then Skina did a reverse experiment. After some time, the mouse made this behavior and refused to give him food. Then he peeled off the mouse several times and found that there was no response, so he didn't repeat these behaviors. Psychologically, this is called behavioral regression. These two experiments illustrate a phenomenon, that is, rewards are conducive to the establishment of long-term behavior, so when the behavior controller wants the other party not to do something, eliminating rewards can be immediate. Having said that, you will understand why you only brushed a short video of 10 minutes in bed, but it is already 2 o'clock in the middle of the night, because every time you slide on the screen, you can watch a new video content, and your brain constantly secretes dopamine, which makes you feel happy, so that you linger, forget the time, and even feel that time passes too fast. You will also understand why you spend years at work, because you have to work 8 hours a day and it will take a long 30 days to get paid. (It is equivalent to the mouse pressing the rocker for 30 consecutive days to get a food reward); So, seeing this, you will understand why children don't like studying and playing games (including adults also love games), because it takes a semester to get the possible high score, and games can be rewarded immediately. Psychologically speaking, you can get a sense of accomplishment immediately, which will give people the motivation to move on. Therefore, you will spontaneously want to continue to do this without being urged by others! Sometimes a game gives too little reward, and the positive feedback will be weak, which will make players feel that the game is unattractive and has no motivation to stick to it. Of course, different players have different needs, and planning will not place a single reward when driving players' behavior. It is often multiple rewards and multiple stimuli. Players who want to become stronger are driven by equipment, players who want to see the plot are driven by the plot, and players who want to see the scenery are driven by art. For example, in Mario Odyssey, gold coin reward is a core driving force, which can drive players to explore the world by placing gold coins in different places. In this kind of thing, if you put it on the game, others will say that you are addicted to the game and put it on your work. Others will say that you have worked hard when they see it! Through this experimental analysis, we can find that there are two ways to stimulate users to use your product for a long time: if you want him to do something, he will be rewarded immediately after doing it, and the reward will bring him positive feedback to control his behavior, so that he can repeat a certain game and strengthen positive behavior; You don't want him to do something, find the reward for it, remove the reward to stop the wrong behavior and let him stop doing it gradually. After understanding this truth, it is not surprising that many short video platforms are on fire: a fitness coach with 15 years' experience may make a half-year fitness plan, but those non-professionals can praise "burning fat for 3 minutes" and "practicing abdominal muscles for 7 days" to hundreds of thousands. Is it because the fitness instructor is not professional enough? No, it's human nature to always seek even feedback and satisfy it immediately! Compared with half a year's efforts, I only need to work hard for 7 days to develop my abdominal muscles. Why don't I click in and have a look Professor Chen, who has 10 years of marketing experience, tells you how to become a copywriter and marketing genius in five years. The reading volume may be only 200, but those titles are "Just master this trick and help you turn 200 times!" Is it because Professor Chen is not professional enough that the title party article can become an explosive article that spreads wildly everywhere? No, it's because compared with studying hard for five years, you can get 200 times the profit immediately with one move. Why work so hard to get rich? Go in and have a look. What if it's true? In fact, behind the explosion of this simple and quick video article is a well-prepared psychological grasp of the ultimate pursuit of "instant feedback" in human nature. In fact, as long as normal people will understand, it is impossible to really get a good figure, a good brain or achieve some achievements in a certain field just by 3 minutes, 7 days or one move. When we understand this important principle, we can't burn fat in three minutes, but we can apply this principle to market work: when your users are lost, we should think about how to stimulate them to use your products again. For example, when users consume, they can immediately get the same points as the consumption amount, and when the points reach a certain amount, they can redeem or receive the corresponding high-value gifts; When your child doesn't like learning, think about how to stimulate his enthusiasm for learning. For example, if you go to school five days a week and finish your homework on time every night, you can get 1 doll immediately and collect five dolls. You can go to eat junk food KFC on weekends, or go to an amusement park for two laps, or you can ask for a favorite toy. When your team's morale is low, think about how to motivate them to make a deal. For example, set up a clinch a deal prize, regardless of the clinch a deal amount, hold a regular meeting on the day of signing the bill, distribute cash in front of team members, encourage salesmen to continue their efforts, and then encourage other members who have not clinched a deal to open a bill tomorrow and get a cash prize! If you play League of Legends, you can experience how the game applies this strategy to the extreme and makes players high. If you kill a hero, there will be a background sound and a copywriting prompt: "First drop of blood!" " ; If you kill five people in a row, there will be a background sound and a copy prompt: "Five kills! " ; If you kill more than six people in a row, there will be a background sound and a copy of the prompt: "Super God! "If you want to make your target users addicted to something, the first strategy of strengthening behavior is: instant satisfaction, instant reward and continuous stimulation! Will users become addicted just by making instant rewards? Not enough, because you will find that if persistence is only a material reward, there will be a threshold. In other words, the threshold is diminishing marginal effect. Although the mouse likes food very much, when the food keeps increasing and exceeds the demand of the mouse, its sense of demand will gradually decline. Although Father Ma has a lot of money, when there is more money than he can count, he says he is not interested in money. Faced with this situation, how to solve it? Let's see how the game is done: the game is often divided into different segments according to the players. Take LOL (League of Legends) as an example, including bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamonds and so on. This paragraph represents the player's skills, record and other comprehensive information. If your rank is higher, it means that you can enter a higher circle, get more and more comprehensive information and enjoy a better identity experience. If you want to pick up girls through games, for example, share them on paper. Then, sister paper will definitely ask you: "What position are you in? "If you answer,