Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

"did you pass the second hurdle today?"

This is probably the most "greeting" that many players have received in the last two days. Just yesterday, a Mini Game called "A Sheep makes a Sheep" climbed rapidly on the list of popular searches on Weibo and topped the list for two days in a row, even with the words "hot" after the entry.

After some exploration, the author learned that the Wechat Mini Game was developed by Beijing Jianyou Technology Co., Ltd., and Thunder bought a stake in the company in June with a 10 per cent stake.

From "Jump" to "synthetic Watermelon" to "Sheep is a Sheep", it seems that every once in a while there will be a Mini Game moments for everyone to browse the screen. What is the magic of "a sheep is a sheep"? What are the similarities and differences between its popularity and "jump" and "synthetic watermelon"? The reason behind it is worth digging.

Multi-layer Xiaoyue reappearance, "eliminate" pressure is the selling point into the game, the magic Jodel singing "Auf Und Auf Voll Lebenslust" began to ring, accompanied by the screen of two fashionable sheep, immediately make people feel relaxed, funny and unreasonable.

When the level starts, the grass as the background will shake with the rhythm of "normal disco". Players can easily shake or shake their legs according to the music, and quickly enter a relaxed state and immerse themselves in the game.

The game of "the sheep is a sheep" is actually not complicated, and the simple summary is multi-layer lianliankan. Players need to choose three cards to eliminate it, the lower cards will be obscured by the upper cards, only the upper cards can be removed before you can choose the lower ones. Once the following 7 slots are filled with cards and cannot be eliminated, then the game is considered a failure.

After the game became popular, it naturally attracted a lot of attention. Some people point out that it is played in the same way as "3tiles", while others say that they played similar games on websites such as 4399 and 7k7k when they were young.

In fact, the earliest multi-layer lianliankan can be traced back to the mahjong game "Mah-Jongg", which was made by Stanford student Brodie Lockard on the PLATO terminal in 1981. In 1986, Activision commercially packaged and promoted the game, and renamed it "Shanghai", which was all the rage.

In other words, this kind of play has existed for more than 40 years. Over the past 40 years, the multi-layer lianliankan game has been enduring and popular again, which shows that no matter what era the players are, they will be stimulated and attracted by the sense of relief that is eliminated. And the positive feedback of this elimination is immediate, the player can feel release and pleasure every time it is eliminated, and it is not necessary for the player to get through the checkpoint.

Compared with single-layer Sanxiao or Lianliankan games, multi-layer Lianliankan pays more attention to some strategies. If you do not plan the order of choosing cards reasonably, it is easy to cause a situation that no cards can be eliminated.

But it is this kind of game with both strategy and luck, which is highly random and highly playable in a short period of time. Because of this, after the simple teaching of the first level, the difficulty of the second level has been greatly increased. On the one hand, it reduces the amount of engineering required to design multiple levels, on the other hand, it can also stimulate the players'"competitive spirit" and repeatedly challenge the same level.

At the same time, the extremely high difficulty is also an important means for the rapid realization and spread of "a sheep is a sheep".

What does not depend on buying generally speaking, the rise of casual games is often supported by buying factors, but "A Sheep is a Sheep" does not seem to take the path of buying at all, but has become popular by virtue of social communication and the fermentation of social media public opinion.

As the second level is too difficult, the vast majority of players need to obtain props to help pass, and there are only two ways to obtain props, one is to share the game link with friends or groups, and the other is to watch video commercials. The former is used to achieve the rapid spread and fission of the game, while the latter can help manufacturers to cash quickly.

Get props by sharing with friends

In order to achieve the rapid spread of the game, "Sheep A Sheep" chose to go online during the Mid-Autumn holiday, players' leisure and entertainment time increased, offline social scenes increased significantly, and acquaintances became the mainstream during the holiday. Therefore, Wechat forwarding is more efficient than buying, and the cost is also lower.

When the interest and difficulty of the game reached a consensus among certain groups, the game-related topics were gradually fermented by social media dissemination through social media list and KOL.

On the other hand, the Wechat Mini Game platform and the officials of "Yang Liaoyang" have also begun to boost the popularity of games by promoting video numbers, and finally completed the communication mode of dual-channel, acquaintance and group socialization. detonate the popularity of the game. In other words, it is not that there is no purchase, but it just adopts different forms of purchase.

However, with the popularity of the game gradually increasing, some negative public opinions began to appear, such as some players said that they could not get through customs at all, and that all the designs were just for people to see advertisements; others said that the "sheep is a sheep" game copied "3tiles" and so on.

We do not know whether the inability to clear customs is intentional or a mistake in the design of the level, but from the situation reflected by some players, there is indeed a situation that is unable to clear customs, which will have a negative impact on the reputation and popularity of the game to a large extent.

However, in a sense, for this type of leisure Mini Game, both positive and negative comments are helpful to the short-term communication effect of the game, and "black and red" is now a marketing strategy adopted by many products.

And from the popular strategies of Mini Game, such as "Jump", "synthetic Big Watermelon" and "Sheep makes a Sheep", we also seem to be able to figure out some ways to create popular casual games.

Popular Mini Game formula surfaced if we take a little longer, in the early days of smartphone development, casual games such as "Fruit Ninja", "Temple Run" and "flappy bird" occupied players' free time, and these games took full advantage of the operational features of the new terminals and quickly became popular.

From the point of view of the type of games, most of these games are one of the infinite stream or elimination games. Infinite flow can use similar level design and simple operation to improve the repetitive playability of the game, while eliminating play can give people the most original sense of release, which has been proved since Tetris.

The two have the following in common: simple mode of operation, difficulty in level design, strong randomness and, most importantly, strong immediate feedback.

For example, "Temple Run", players can gain positive feedback every time they cross an obstacle and turn. The same is true of "synthetic watermelon" and "sheep is a sheep". Each time it is synthesized or eliminated, it can bring a sense of achievement.

And put them in the context of the times, the previous batch of games caught up with the start of the mobile game era of dividends, while the latter batch of games mostly rely on WeChat Mini Programs. What they have in common is that it is easier to obtain and touch than the original form of the game.

For example, to play Temple Run, you only need to turn on your phone, enter the app store and download, which saves longer startup time, screening download channels, limited usage scenarios and other restrictions than computers and mainframe games.

The same is true for Wechat and Mini Game, it even saves the time to download, players play and go, and do not need to sign up for an account, which is more convenient and faster.

"Jump" is a good example. As the first batch of Wechat and Mini Game, Jump is undoubtedly an epoch-making product. Infinite flow of play design, simple mode of operation, Wechat friend score competition, simple and natural way of advertising placement, quickly made "Jump" popular, and realized the realization of advertising in a way not to be disgusted by players. it is precisely because of this product that Wechat has stood firmly in the C position in the era of casual games.

It is worth mentioning that the above-mentioned three Wechat Mini Game, their launch time is very ingenious.

"Jump" was launched on December 28, 2017, and New Year's Day's holiday is three days away. "synthetic Watermelon" was launched on January 22, 2021, when there was a storm in the entertainment industry and people were happy to "eat melons". And many students have entered the winter vacation; "Sheep has a Sheep" is chosen to launch in this Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.

It is not difficult to see that these Mini Game models all choose to go online before the holiday, taking a fancy to the period when players' leisure time increases and offline acquaintances communicate frequently, thus rapidly expanding their influence and avoiding the cost pressure brought by buying volume.

Therefore, we can roughly come up with a formula for building a popular Mini Game: infinite flow / elimination gameplay (strong instant feedback) + simple operation + randomness (repetitive playability) + holiday launch + community communication.

Special nodes like the rise of mobile games and the launch of Wechat and Mini Game are not common to all games, so we don't include them as a must-have factor.

However, with the rise of new terminal devices such as AR / VR, we may usher in a new interactive mode of casual games in the near future.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:Coreesports, author: Qian Hongyan

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.