Things have to go back to a few hours ago and start talking.

That afternoon, in the face of the game shortage, I turned on steam as always, and planned to find a casual and lightweight indie game to pass the boring afternoon.

After several rounds of screening on the steam search interface, a game with the words "Peak Knight" written in Chinese characters attracted me. But what really attracted me was not this seemingly featureless title, but a line of fine print on it: "nostalgic GBA game style".

As a person who grew up playing GBA games, I suddenly saw this retro and nostalgic game on 9 102. I used to be caught playing games under the covers without telling my parents, and then I was dragged out to stew pork with rattan. Touched my ass, and I feel deeply so far. Out of goodwill, I clicked on the store interface to look at the specific information of the game.

After clicking, the first thing I saw was the promotional video of the game and some screenshots in the game. Well, it's really a game style of GBA era. Let me see the favorable rate again-wait, the favorable rate of this game is as high as 96%?

On the steam platform, at least 95% praise is needed to achieve the title of rave reviews. The more comments, the more convincing the favorable rate. And more than 500 comments are a very good result for an independent lightweight game. What's more, the game was officially released just over a month ago.

I followed the store's comments one by one. Almost everyone spared no effort to praise the game, and even many players wrote a short composition to express their inner excitement at the moment:

Seeing the full screen of praise and the remaining balance of 100 in steam wallet, I gritted my teeth and bought this game.

2

The game is not big, only 600MB. Two minutes later, the icon of Peak Knight lit up, prompting me to start the game.

I touched the butt of a tomato that was smashed to pieces, and I entered the game. However, just one hour later, I quit the game inexplicably.

This game is a bit too difficult.

The difficulty is slightly unreasonable.

How difficult is it? That is, you just left the novice village to shoot two bees. Bad luck, if you don't dodge the attack, you may die suddenly at any time.

What really puzzles me is not the difficulty of the game itself. But because this is just the beginning of the game.

Novice guidance has always been one of the most important parts of the game, which can directly determine whether the player will be willing to play the game for a long time. Now many games are trying to guide novices to become interesting and easy to use, so as to attract users to maintain patience and motivation for a long time. Even the soul series games, which have always been famous for their high difficulty, will provide you with a few mobs and bosses who will die at the touch of a button in the early stage, so that you can practice your hands, get familiar with the skill mechanism, and then let you suffer happily.

And like the Knights of the Peak, I have never seen a few games that are too crazy to stop from the beginning.

Fortunately, I am also a veteran of rpg games, and many places narrowly beat each other with years of experience. If you change to pure Meng Xin, you will definitely die suddenly in the novice village for half an hour and then uninstall the game in a rage.

From the experience of one hour alone, although the quality of the game itself is not bad, it is certain that it will not reach the point of "rave reviews" in any case.

Is my present aesthetic deviated from the public? Or do I expect too much from this game, resulting in an imbalance of perception? I asked myself doubtfully.

three

After dinner, I reopened the game and decided to play for a while. Maybe this is a slow game.

I thought the same thing.

After playing for a while, when I read the file for the third time, a message suddenly popped up in my dialog box:

VIP benefits? What is that?

I vaguely feel that something is wrong. So I followed this group number and joined the Q group.

As soon as I entered the Q group, the assistant in the group automatically reminded me to read the group files and group announcements first. So I clicked on a set of files and found this picture:

Sponsorship?

Wait, isn't this an in-house purchase?

I was a little confused for a while, so I found the administrator in the Q group and asked about the specific situation. But he told me that there is another way to get these "benefits" besides sponsorship. That is to say, you can get these benefits for free by posting an evaluation on steam store.

Seeing these lines, I suddenly found that things began to get interesting.

So I tried to give the game a good evaluation, and then sent the screenshot to the administrator:

I received the welfare code of the game this time. After a few minutes, the system will show that I have activated the activation code and can play.

four

Looking at the extra 2w gold coins, skills and various props and equipment in my backpack, I returned to the shop page of the Peak Knights. The difference this time is that I chose "bad review" as "evaluation result". Then select "Display" as "Most Valuable".

This time, the style of painting in the evaluation area is somewhat different from that before:

And the reason why this game has so much praise, I think the answer is clear to everyone.

It is not uncommon for steam to praise this matter. It will happen at home and abroad. It's not once or twice that game developers/publishers hire a large number of people to praise and profit in the STEAM store. For example, this 20 14 game "Motorama" is like this:

"Motorama" is a racing game, but the comment area is full of content that plagiarizes the evaluation of other games. Assassin's Creed, gta5, this is my war, and all the games of civilization have been killed. These comments have only been played for 0. 1 hour, and they have not even brushed the list. You can imagine how poor the quality of the game itself is.

But compared with them, this production team called "Bear Nest" is much smarter. There is an essential difference between Peak Knight and this kind of game: all its comments are voluntarily "brushed" by players. So there is no direct interest relationship between the production team and the players. All the choices he gives you are optional:

Don't want to give sponsorship? It doesn't matter, just give a comment. With these comments, it will naturally attract more players to buy games. For the game production team, selling one more game is definitely more cost-effective than sponsoring thirty or fifty games.

Don't want to give an evaluation? Nothing, then endure the extremely high difficulty and slowly remove the liver. Anyway, the game has been sold, the game experience is poor and the difficulty is too high, which is just the reason why you are so poor. Even if the player gets a refund in anger, he will never lose money.

From all aspects, this logic is impeccable.

And this is also the most despicable place for the production team.

The production team deliberately increased the difficulty of the initial stage of the game, and each key scene was added with the game group number. As long as the game progresses normally, you will definitely see the group number. The game lasts for a long time, and players will naturally join the Q group for convenience, get benefits and help them brush their bills.

Moreover, in order to avoid leaving a handle, people say that it is maliciously defrauding praise. They don't even ask you to be a good comment, but only ask you to give it. However, it is impossible for a normal player who wants to continue playing this game to give a bad review to the production team. In fact, no one will give a bad review and lick a B face to ask the production team for benefits. After all, how can you rake when you ask people to do things?

Players who benefit from this will naturally shed tears of gratitude for these small favors, and the production team will get more praise to attract more users to into the pit, thus forming a virtuous circle.

But is this really right?

five

In fact, the matter of brushing the bill has existed since ancient times.

For example, in ancient times, when a family opened a store, they usually invited friends and relatives to join the new store to create a very popular appearance, so as to attract more passers-by to spend.

In modern times, the reason why we are so familiar with the term brush list is more because of the rise of e-commerce. Online shop merchants look for suitable candidates in various channels and pay a certain fee to help online shops fill in false praise, so as to improve sales and credit.

Although this violates the industry code, there is no way to find food in the highly competitive online market environment. The method of brushing bills has gradually become the unspoken rule of the e-commerce industry. In fact, everyone knows whether there is a list. Breaking someone's money is tantamount to killing their parents. Generally speaking, no one will report their peers maliciously.

Then why should I talk about it today?

Because what Xiong Wo has done has gone far beyond the scope of brushing.

Games are essentially a commodity. Commodities need publicity and word of mouth to attract more players, into the pit. This is a normal way of selling. But propaganda and praise are completely different. Propaganda is a formal means, and praise is an informal means. Brush praise this matter has always been a shame in the industry, because it will affect the overall atmosphere of the game industry, resulting in adverse effects. Imagine that if this behavior continues, it will be difficult for players to get objective and true evaluation through game search engines, which will lead to those really high-quality games being buried in a pile of games with rave reviews and no one cares.

But even so, today's game market environment is still too chaotic. Too many small and medium-sized enterprises died on the beach early. They want to make money but lack the cost of publicity, so they are forced to brush a little. As long as the quality of the game itself is hard enough, everyone will turn a blind eye.

But if you use this to fool players, the nature of the problem is different.

What is Xiong Wo doing now?

Give a simple example:

Now there is such a Taobao shop. He sells T-shirts to customers, who think this T-shirt is not bad, and there are some things. Then I bought it. Two days later, the package arrived. The customer opened it, huh? Why does this dress have holes in some places? Put it on again. That's it. The feeling of wearing a good T-shirt into ripped jeans. At this time, the customer found such a note on the package:

I believe that since the author has the ability to develop a game by himself (according to the introduction on the steam Store page, this game was made by one person, but I think the fact is doubtful, which is more like a team's handwriting), it is impossible to go online directly without testing the game, not to mention that this game has been online for a long time on the mobile phone platform.

First of all, we must solve the problem of difficulty, especially rpg games, the difficulty is the first. Anyone who has learned a little about game design can see that the numerical value of "Peak Knight" is too exaggerated and the difficulty curve is too high, which can't make the player reach the flow state, which leads to the frustration of the game experience. This kind of mistake will not be a problem that "independent producers" cannot see.

Sell the game well, as long as the quality of the game is excellent, someone will naturally give you praise. No one cares about making a good game, and it is understandable to attract players in order to tide over the difficulties.

But you have to use this despicable means to trick players into brushing praise-

Then I'm sorry, I don't accept it.

I just want to say one thing about this behavior:

six

The article is written here, in fact, it is almost enough to say.

The original intention of this article is not to criticize how rubbish this game is or how despicable the author's behavior is. But I hope everyone here can maintain the ability of independent thinking.

We are too easily misled by people with ulterior motives.

Everyone will have herd mentality. Why are there so many celebrity tea shops online now? Why do so many people like Heikun now? Why do people rush to snap up some popular products that are not used at all?

Man is a gregarious animal. The herd mentality is deeply rooted. Choosing conformity will reduce our ability to think independently. No one wants to be excluded, so the brain will let us choose the simplest way to face uncertain situations.

However, this inertia is likely to be used by others, which will lead us to make wrong choices. In the end, it will only become a lamb to be slaughtered, and it will be happy to count money for others when it is sold.

Before listening to other people's voices, please listen to your inner voice.

Choose what you want, not what others want you to choose.

I'm Kiyosuke.

See you next time.