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

Eliminating behavior can stimulate positive emotions and make people feel happy.

01 elimination games, commonly known as Matching Tile Games, are translated into Chinese, that is, matching bricks.

The originator of this kind of game is the famous Tetris.

The game, designed and written by Soviet engineer Alexei Pajitnov, was released on June 6, 1984.

At the beginning of this year, IGN, a well-known game media, released a list of best-selling games in history. Tetris ranked first with sales of more than 500 million copies, almost the sum of 2345.

In addition to Tetris, there is another ancestor of elimination games, called Chain shot!, which is a Japanese game that was later renamed SameGame, which should be translated as the same color game.

The rule of the game is very simple: a square of 20x10 made up of four-color bricks. As long as there are more than two boxes of the same color linked together, you can click on them to eliminate them. But individual bricks cannot be removed. After elimination, the bricks above will fall down, and the purpose of the game is to bring the bricks of the same color together as much as possible.

These two games lay the foundation for eliminating the game:

When the elements (bricks, color balls, etc.) meet certain common conditions, batch elimination is carried out.

However, there are also a large number of differences in the design of game rules between the two games, probably in these four dimensions.

1. Time pressure: Tetris gives players similar countdown pressure by constantly falling, but Chain shot! in many versions, players have unlimited time to find a match.

2. Operation object: in Tetris, players operate newly emerging bricks, and players need existing bricks in the operation panel of "Chain shot!"

3. Elimination: "Tetris" is peer elimination, and "Chain shot!" is homochromatic elimination.

4. Freedom of operation: Tetris allows players to operate freely and does not require the elimination of each operation. But every operation of "Chain shot!" must lead to elimination.

These four dimensions have great guiding significance for later games, and since then, there have been a large number of elimination games.

For example, Doctor Mario, released by Nintendo in 1990, combines peer elimination and homochromatic elimination of the above two games to create a classic.

For example, a game called "Plotting" in 1989 adopted the method of introducing shooting elements into the game. The shooting category was eliminated, and later there were aggregators, that is, "Bobble" and "Zuma".

Also in 1989, the Japanese-developed game "Sichuan Province: women's Laos" was launched, which introduced the method of eliminating the connection, which is what we later called "Lianliankan".

There is also a game called "Shariki" in 1994, which added the method of transposition elimination to create the classic Match 3, which was later carried forward by the "gem maze" and became one of the most classic games.

But no matter how the game changes, you can see that these elimination games have not escaped the "merge similar" mode established by Tetris and Chain shot!, and the rule design is a continuation of these two games.

02 so, why are elimination games so popular?

First of all, eliminating behavior can indeed stimulate positive emotions and make people feel happy.

A noun is mentioned here called "processing fluency" ("Processing Fluency") of information.

The word refers to the individual's experience of how difficult it is to process information. For the same information, the easier it is to identify the expression, the more concise the expression, the higher the fluency.

For example, in the same sentence, you can say "I love you" or "the moon is beautiful tonight". The former is simpler and easier to get than the latter, and the processing fluency is higher.

Psychologists have found that when fluency is at a relatively high level, it will lead to a weak, short-term positive emotion, which is called fluency-emotional connection model.

On the other hand, things that are neat and regular always seem to be very "simple" and fluent.

So we always find that when people see things that are clean and neat and arranged in an orderly manner, it is really easy to feel at ease and get a sense of pleasure.

The mechanism to eliminate the game is to allow players to constantly put the elements of the game neatly according to certain rules.

So, when we complete an elimination, that is, we complete a sorting process from disorder to order, from complex to simple, the fluency-emotional connection model will give us a little weak, short-term positive emotion.

In essence, the pleasure of playing elimination games is the same as the pleasure we feel when we watch video animations of "cure obsessive-compulsive disorder".

On the other hand, obsessive-compulsive psychology does exist in the elimination of games, and even in the design of all games.

In the game, obsessive-compulsive psychology is mainly presented in these ways:

The concept of compulsion is mainly reflected in the players' pursuit of perfectionism in the details of the game. It can also be subdivided into modification compulsion, appearance compulsion, and finishing compulsion. For example, backpacks must be equipped neatly, and the formation of "plants vs. zombies" must be symmetrical.

Obsessive-compulsive emotion is mainly reflected in the fact that players will be afraid of failure, have a high demand for security, and everything is based on the principle of winning in stability. Obsessive-compulsive emotions can lead to high-score compulsion, cheating compulsion, preemptive compulsion and other manifestations, such as high-score star achievement in the game, daily card points to get online tasks to get resources, and even the use of plug-ins to win.

Compulsive intention, mainly reflected in the players are full of curiosity about everything, dissatisfaction drives them to explore and collect. Compulsive intentions include adventure compulsion, collection compulsion, download compulsion, and players will be keen to clean up all the monsters on the map, collect all the achievements, and explore all the corners and branches of the map.

Finally, there is forced action, which is mainly reflected in the fact that players constantly repeat some actions in the game, and even form unchangeable habits. Compulsive action can be divided into destruction compulsion, archiving compulsion, continuous attack compulsion and so on. Subconscious continuous archiving, bullets in the magazine must be empty, and destroy all the destructible objects in the picture, all belong to forced movements.

Most of these obsessive-compulsive psychology exist in the player's body in a compound state, either light or heavy.

The point here is that there is a difference between obsessive-compulsive psychology and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In medicine, obsessive-compulsive disorder is a disease that makes people anxious and painful and affects the daily life of patients. The obsessive-compulsive psychology mentioned here exists in the vast majority of people, not only far from affecting normal life, but also because of compulsion to be satisfied, resulting in a certain sense of pleasure.

The game design will be optimized for obsessive-compulsive psychology, providing players with a lot of pleasure.

03 back to the elimination game.

Eliminating behavior is interesting in itself, you can say it is a kind of arrangement, you can also say that it is a kind of destruction. And most elimination games have scoring mechanisms and level mechanisms, which can always attract high scores to force players and collect to force players to challenge again and again.

It can be said that to eliminate the game is to make the forced mental play clear.

Interestingly, although both the originators of elimination games, Tetris is actually much more influential than Chain shot!

This also affected the development path of eliminating games later. For a long time, elimination games have adopted the same countdown mode as Tetris.

The so-called countdown has different performances according to different games. Some rely on increasing bricks to speed up the falling speed to give pressure, such as "Tetris", some constantly raise the threshold to give pressure within a limited time, and some are a real countdown.

For a long time, this countdown mode was mainstream, while the infinite time mode brought by "Chain shot!" was neglected.

The advantages of the countdown mode are very obvious, it is challenging and more exciting.

It is based on the flow theory "immersion theory" proposed by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, also known as "flow theory". The main factors that affect the sense of immersion are challenge and skill. Too high a challenge will make people anxious, and too low a challenge will make people feel boring.

And the sense of immersion, the so-called flow, occurs in a state of balance between the two.

Later, Chen Xinghan, the producer of the Traveler of the Wind, brought this theory to the game field in his master's thesis "Flow in Games in the Game", suggesting that the best experience of the game often occurs when challenges and skills are balanced.

But in 2000, the situation changed, and Baokai launched the classic Sanxiao game "Jewelry Maze".

"Jewel Maze" is not only a classic in the history of puzzle games, perhaps second only to "Tetris". Another big impact is that it has an unlimited time game mode built into it.

At that time, this was considered to be a decision against our ancestors, and our peers also despised it very much, and they thought that this unchallenged game mode was too boring.

But after the game was released, the unlimited model became very popular. After that, a large number of elimination games began to re-examine: do we have to add a countdown? Does it have to put so much pressure on the players?

Since then, more and more elimination games have begun to introduce games that have no time pressure, as well as a milder pace system.

To some extent, this change represents the development direction of casual games.

My idea is that game designers in the past tend to give players a higher challenge, so that players can enter the "flow".

However, with the popularity of game terminals, more and more people become gamers, this group has become less "hard core", especially educational games as the most popular game category, in the balance of "challenge" and "skill", the challenge must be reduced to match the decline in the average "skill" level of the player group.

And modern people's time is showing a trend of fragmentation, and puzzle games, which take "killing time" as an important selling point, must be adjusted accordingly.

Compared with the countdown mode, the unlimited time mode is more suitable for play and go, so it is more popular.

Since then, the elimination game has introduced the network game, entered the mobile phone platform, and added many elements such as RPG, card, chess and so on.

In recent years, Mini Game "2048" and "synthetic watermelon", which have successively set off an upsurge in China, also eliminate variants of the game, jump out of the restriction of brick gem elements in creativity, and play the attribute of "merging similar items" to the extreme.

And rely on viral transmission, let people see that the elimination of games in social, in fact, there is still great potential.

It can be seen that although the elimination game is simple, it has been self-evolving for many years.

This is the most terrible, but also the most players can not stop.

Eric Zimmerman, author of Rules of Play, a classic of game research, defines games as follows:

A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.

The game is a system that allows players to interact with a man-made conflict, solve problems and get quantitative results under the constraints of rules.

This set of definitions contains four elements: rules, problems (conflicts), solving problems, and getting results.

The rules in the game are definite, the problem is obvious, the way to solve the problem is inevitable, and the result is quantifiable.

But real life is much more complicated than games.

In real life, we have to face unclear rules, and many people can not find the most important problem in their lives, let alone solve it. The process of solving the problem is long and complicated, but the result may not be what we want.

Compared with the game, reality is like a huge black box, full of uncertainty everywhere.

Therefore, the happiness of the game lies in the happiness of certainty, and we know what kind of problem solving will bring what kind of harvest.

Eliminate the game and minimize the path of "solving the problem until you get the result".

If you solve the problem repeatedly, you can get the happiness of elimination again and again.

Such a high-density sense of achievement is the scarcest in the real world.

Especially when we enter such a post-modern society, we work online, participate in labor with mobile phones and computers, and harvest the fruits of our labor with bank card accounts, Alipay and Wechat.

The tiredness of hard work is real, but there is no real sense of achievement and reward.

The sense of achievement has become the scarcest part of contemporary people.

To some extent, we like to watch fishing, driving to the sea, agriculture, rural areas and farmers and craftsmanship on the short video App, which is essentially to make up for the sense of achievement that our daily life cannot give us.

The same is true of playing the elimination game, when the bricks are connected together, the visual and sound effects of the explosion are also scarce.

But the real question is, when we turn off our phones, close our computers, and walk out of the house, how can we make up for our missing sense of achievement? This is what we need to spend more time thinking about.

Instead of, like me, telling you that the joy of eliminating the game is unreal, while bringing the game liver to more than 700 levels.

Control the game and save the curator!

Reference:

"Research on the Application of incentive Mechanism in eliminating Game Design"-- Yan Lili

"the influence of fluency on Aesthetic appreciation-from processing fluency Model to Aesthetic pleasure and interest Model"-he Xianyou, Chen Yajue, Yang Danni, he Dexian

The influence of Perceptual fluency on individual Cognition and emotion-- Zhao Qian

"Research on Mobile Game Design based on obsessive-compulsive Psychology"-- Lei Ting

"Why does a neat thing look so cool? "--simple psychology

After playing Tetris for so many years, do you know the Tetris effect? "- Miles_KLONOA_Kye

Game Psychology: the Psychological effect of Tetris-- one Psychology

"talking about my thoughts on the nature of games"-- Lea Liu

"Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three:A History of Matching Tile Games"-Juul, Jesper

"What Are Match3 Games"-The N3TWORK

"A Brief History of Match-Three Games"-Consumer Acquisition

Immersion in the Game (Flow in Games)-- Chen Xinghan

Chen Xinghan: the Application of flow Theory in Games-Flow in Games-Lu Jiaqi

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: IC Lab (ID:InsightPlusClub)

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.