Control systems in free-to-play
Control systems have been the entire existence of civilization. You could even say that control systems define civilization. Ancient control systems tended to encourage a huge difference in wealth, with the king and close nobles controlling the vast majority of the country's wealth. Maintaining such a difference in wealth is very expensive, as the military force necessary to maintain it grows exponentially with increasing inequality.
Therefore, advanced societies tried to go in one of two ways to maintain control. One way is to reduce the difference in welfare and demobilize the army. This increases per capita productivity, because the military itself does not make profit in other ways than looting. But if you are threatened by a warlike neighbor, then this option is not suitable.
Another way to keep control is to make control less obvious, more subtle. When a person comes to the casino, they offer him the opportunity to play and win the jackpot. Of course, the fact that in the end a casino is always positive, and that winning one person means losing a lot of other people is silent, these details are often hidden under several layers that need to be sorted out before realizing what is really going on.
When a person says that he “owns” his house, but at the same time has a 30-year mortgage, the situation is far from property. The bank owns the house, and the bank allows tenants to remain there for 30 years, provided that they agree to fully pay approximately five times the amount of the loan during the term. If the debt is not fully paid, then the real owner (bank) will evict the tenants and all money contributed will be confiscated, even if they exceed the original loan amount.
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It is not surprising that the true state of affairs is never explained in this way when you “buy a house” or visit a casino, because these are control systems that benefit from the ignorance of the victim. The more difficult the control conditions, the easier it is to hide them. Technologies constantly simplify this task. If the debt collector had to come to your house every month to get a rent, then the system would look and feel like feudalism. Modern technology allows you to automatically and painlessly extract money from a bank account every month without the need for any human interaction.
This allows citizens of modern society to feel "free." And although they can really get more freedoms (possibly at the expense of others), this depends on the region and caste, and a comprehensive discussion is not necessary for the purposes of this article.
People tend to enjoy a certain measure of control. They greet him. Without him, they feel uncomfortable, bewildered. In other words, they will tolerate control until a certain point, but will rebel if the control becomes "excessive." To better understand what is happening, I am going to introduce two terms:
Control Visibility (VC) : This is how obvious the control system is to the participant. If A leads to G directly, then VK is high. You can lower the VC by adding intermediate steps that cloud their attitude. Thus, having the scheme A leading to B leading to C leading to G , it is possible to make the control mechanism between A and G more subtle and effective.
Tolerance to control (TKK) : How much control a participant can tolerate or even desire is reflected in his TKK. Some people are more tolerant of certain types of control than others, and their TKK may change over time, especially when they learn better complex forms of control that they might not understand right the first time. Like for example in the scheme above with A and G. Some people notice the relationship between A and G very quickly, even with several intermediate layers of disguise. Others may never understand their connection.
This is what I am leading to:
If VK <TKK, then the transaction will take place
If VK> TKK, then the transaction is rejected
In the old days, the buyer of the game could spend $ 60 to get from A to D, and get a game with which he could do anything. Well, you know, during the early middle ages of the gaming industry, ten years ago. Now, instead, we have something like:
A ---> B (free)
B ---> C (1 dollar)
C ---> Y (500 dollars)
Due to the fact that we include a “free” step from A to B, we call this model “Free to Play”. The second step, from B to C, can be described as “Bait”, because we know that as soon as a consumer spends any money, no matter how small, he is more likely to continue to pay. I will call the third step “Hook”, because as soon as we find a buyer who cannot recognize the relationship between C and D, and therefore between A and D, it can be milked mercilessly. These players for some reason have a high TKK, at least at first. Then we try to make our VC as low as possible by masking our monetization. Thus, if we keep the VC below TKK for a sufficient number of customers, and milk them faster than they realize what is happening, we can make a lot of money.
In the "real world" there is a system that reflects this well. This is our battle against disease, in which we use antibiotics as a weapon. By hitting diseases with new antibiotics, we can destroy them before they can adapt. If you could destroy all diseases in this way, it would have worked in the long run. The problem is that some diseases survive and gradually become more resistant to our antibiotics. Over time, the only new antibiotics available to us will be able to kill us too, and at this point we will lose this war despite winning many battles. Another alternative is to eliminate the source of the disease, not receiving serious attention in the United States. That is why in the field of medical care for our money we get less than in any other country.
Trying to deceive our consumers so that they pay much more than the cost of the product they receive, we make our customers angry. Over time, their TCC decreases, and they begin to notice the ABVG mechanism much faster. Our industry very quickly chose a strategy where we reduce the quality of the product (and the cost of production), but we are trying to increase our profits by introducing the “ABVG” version of F2P. Although I could call this scheme "multilayer F2P", I think I will just call it Forced F2P .
So, by my analogy, we feed Forced F2P (antibiotics) to our consumers (the disease) in order to make money as quickly and easily as possible. This led to some early victories against the consumer. Here I will take almost all developers of social games, with rare exceptions. Mobile developers quickly follow the same battle plan.
Notice that the current Forced F2P models we use now have been developed and developed in Asia since 2001. There they were successful (and still remain) because their average consumer has a much higher TKK. In the west, the average TKK is much lower, and thanks to the way we treat our consumers, their TKK becomes even lower .
Since consumers have the opportunity not to buy products that they perceive as coercive, and considering their TCC (which is falling), the end result of such a business strategy will be the extinction of Forced F2P . This trend will take much more time in Asia due to the higher initial TKK. The only option according to which this may not happen in the east would be outlawing the state of all other business models, which seems unlikely.
Please note that the F2P model itself is not forced. F2P can potentially give incredible opportunities to our consumers. It is quite possible to explain to consumers in advance how you are going to sell them. I also believe that consumers with low TKK, as a rule, richer than consumers with high TKK. The problem is not only that the number of convertible consumers using Forced F2P approaches 0%, but also that with a decrease in the percentage, we intercept the least secure tail of the consumer market. This group may and will give the last money in the east for a couple of years, but this whole approach is doomed to extinction.
Therefore, advanced societies tried to go in one of two ways to maintain control. One way is to reduce the difference in welfare and demobilize the army. This increases per capita productivity, because the military itself does not make profit in other ways than looting. But if you are threatened by a warlike neighbor, then this option is not suitable.
Another way to keep control is to make control less obvious, more subtle. When a person comes to the casino, they offer him the opportunity to play and win the jackpot. Of course, the fact that in the end a casino is always positive, and that winning one person means losing a lot of other people is silent, these details are often hidden under several layers that need to be sorted out before realizing what is really going on.
When a person says that he “owns” his house, but at the same time has a 30-year mortgage, the situation is far from property. The bank owns the house, and the bank allows tenants to remain there for 30 years, provided that they agree to fully pay approximately five times the amount of the loan during the term. If the debt is not fully paid, then the real owner (bank) will evict the tenants and all money contributed will be confiscated, even if they exceed the original loan amount.
')
It is not surprising that the true state of affairs is never explained in this way when you “buy a house” or visit a casino, because these are control systems that benefit from the ignorance of the victim. The more difficult the control conditions, the easier it is to hide them. Technologies constantly simplify this task. If the debt collector had to come to your house every month to get a rent, then the system would look and feel like feudalism. Modern technology allows you to automatically and painlessly extract money from a bank account every month without the need for any human interaction.
This allows citizens of modern society to feel "free." And although they can really get more freedoms (possibly at the expense of others), this depends on the region and caste, and a comprehensive discussion is not necessary for the purposes of this article.
Dynamics of control
People tend to enjoy a certain measure of control. They greet him. Without him, they feel uncomfortable, bewildered. In other words, they will tolerate control until a certain point, but will rebel if the control becomes "excessive." To better understand what is happening, I am going to introduce two terms:
Control Visibility (VC) : This is how obvious the control system is to the participant. If A leads to G directly, then VK is high. You can lower the VC by adding intermediate steps that cloud their attitude. Thus, having the scheme A leading to B leading to C leading to G , it is possible to make the control mechanism between A and G more subtle and effective.
Tolerance to control (TKK) : How much control a participant can tolerate or even desire is reflected in his TKK. Some people are more tolerant of certain types of control than others, and their TKK may change over time, especially when they learn better complex forms of control that they might not understand right the first time. Like for example in the scheme above with A and G. Some people notice the relationship between A and G very quickly, even with several intermediate layers of disguise. Others may never understand their connection.
This is what I am leading to:
If VK <TKK, then the transaction will take place
If VK> TKK, then the transaction is rejected
Treating consumers like a disease
In the old days, the buyer of the game could spend $ 60 to get from A to D, and get a game with which he could do anything. Well, you know, during the early middle ages of the gaming industry, ten years ago. Now, instead, we have something like:
A ---> B (free)
B ---> C (1 dollar)
C ---> Y (500 dollars)
Due to the fact that we include a “free” step from A to B, we call this model “Free to Play”. The second step, from B to C, can be described as “Bait”, because we know that as soon as a consumer spends any money, no matter how small, he is more likely to continue to pay. I will call the third step “Hook”, because as soon as we find a buyer who cannot recognize the relationship between C and D, and therefore between A and D, it can be milked mercilessly. These players for some reason have a high TKK, at least at first. Then we try to make our VC as low as possible by masking our monetization. Thus, if we keep the VC below TKK for a sufficient number of customers, and milk them faster than they realize what is happening, we can make a lot of money.
In the "real world" there is a system that reflects this well. This is our battle against disease, in which we use antibiotics as a weapon. By hitting diseases with new antibiotics, we can destroy them before they can adapt. If you could destroy all diseases in this way, it would have worked in the long run. The problem is that some diseases survive and gradually become more resistant to our antibiotics. Over time, the only new antibiotics available to us will be able to kill us too, and at this point we will lose this war despite winning many battles. Another alternative is to eliminate the source of the disease, not receiving serious attention in the United States. That is why in the field of medical care for our money we get less than in any other country.
Trying to deceive our consumers so that they pay much more than the cost of the product they receive, we make our customers angry. Over time, their TCC decreases, and they begin to notice the ABVG mechanism much faster. Our industry very quickly chose a strategy where we reduce the quality of the product (and the cost of production), but we are trying to increase our profits by introducing the “ABVG” version of F2P. Although I could call this scheme "multilayer F2P", I think I will just call it Forced F2P .
So, by my analogy, we feed Forced F2P (antibiotics) to our consumers (the disease) in order to make money as quickly and easily as possible. This led to some early victories against the consumer. Here I will take almost all developers of social games, with rare exceptions. Mobile developers quickly follow the same battle plan.
Notice that the current Forced F2P models we use now have been developed and developed in Asia since 2001. There they were successful (and still remain) because their average consumer has a much higher TKK. In the west, the average TKK is much lower, and thanks to the way we treat our consumers, their TKK becomes even lower .
Since consumers have the opportunity not to buy products that they perceive as coercive, and considering their TCC (which is falling), the end result of such a business strategy will be the extinction of Forced F2P . This trend will take much more time in Asia due to the higher initial TKK. The only option according to which this may not happen in the east would be outlawing the state of all other business models, which seems unlikely.
Please note that the F2P model itself is not forced. F2P can potentially give incredible opportunities to our consumers. It is quite possible to explain to consumers in advance how you are going to sell them. I also believe that consumers with low TKK, as a rule, richer than consumers with high TKK. The problem is not only that the number of convertible consumers using Forced F2P approaches 0%, but also that with a decrease in the percentage, we intercept the least secure tail of the consumer market. This group may and will give the last money in the east for a couple of years, but this whole approach is doomed to extinction.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/190722/
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