He put order in his head, thinking about the organization of the game process, monetization, botovodstvo and some other things, and came to an interesting concept. Surely she was already voiced somewhere, but I will share it anyway.

The bottom line is that any entertaining game can be represented as a machine that converts a player's time to a fan. The fan is an excellent general concept and we will not somehow clarify it. Someone gets a fan from the research of the game world, someone from bending their neighbors - for our reasoning is not important.

As a result, game design is built around controlling the time-to-fan conversion factor. If the coefficient is too low - the player starts to get bored and quits to play. If it is too high, the players get fed up and throw away the game.

Monetization

So far, in our model there is no monetary component. In an ideal world, it would not exist: the ideal developers would be fed by air and made games for purely altruistic reasons. Unfortunately, this is not the case: we need the money of our players :-D
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Money, as well as time, is one of the resources that a player can change for a fan. As a result, our scheme is a little more complicated.


By managing the share of money in the fan and what we take for it, we get different models of monetization:

• Free - the game recycles player time in 100% of the required fun.
• Pay-to-Play - the game recycles the player's time in 100% of the required fan, but we take the money for the opportunity to transfer the time itself to the game.
• Free-to-Play - the game recycles the player's time in an insufficient amount of fun (<100%), the lack of fun is bought (and now I understand why I don’t like this model so much).

In Free-to-Play models, we can flexibly configure monetization, choosing which particular fan to give for money and what for in time, for example:

• Pay-to-win - for the money given fan for nagibatorov.
• Pay-for-content - for the money given fan for conditional consumers of content.
• Pay-for-speed - for money, the time-to-fan conversion rate increases.

Fraud

In an ideal world, the scheme described should work well. But there is a nuance. Players are not interested in giving their resources for fan. An ideal case for them is a fan here, now, without spending money and time. Therefore, if there is an opportunity to spend less resources, they will take advantage of it.

At this point, there are various schemes of fraud: from cheating to the use of bots and trading game entities to bypass the developers. Struggling with him in different ways, but mostly symptomatic. In my opinion, in view of the natural evolutionary causes of its occurrence, there is no sense in dealing with the consequences of this phenomenon, it is necessary to suppress its causes.

Consider options for fraud:

• The complete elimination of resource waste is cheating. Players break the game to get a fan on their terms.
• Spending less money is a black market for gaming entities and services. Players find a way to spend money with a higher conversion rate into fan than the game suggests. For example, buying cheap time from other players.
• Less time wasted - automation. Players find a way to reduce the time spent on the game, leaving unchanged the amount of fun they receive. For example, automate routine operations to do only "interesting" things.

Mechanisms to combat cheating are long known and depend mainly on the will and capabilities of developers.

Eliminate the sale of game entities, in general, it is impossible. What can not be stopped, you need to lead. With varying success, many are trying to do this, in my opinion, best of all for EVE.

But there is no general approach to combat automation. Why and how to live with her will discuss further.

Automation

The beauty of automation is that from the point of view of the mechanics of the game, it is absolutely legal. Some external entity in relation to the game spends its time in exchange for progress in the game. It is impossible to determine 100% who is on the other side of the game: a person or a bot.

Statistical analysis

Theoretically, in this case, a statistical analysis would have performed well, but I have not heard about its significant successes in this area. And there are several reasons for this:

1. Such decisions are not transferred between games.
2. Analysis requires more development skills.
3. Analysis requires more company resources.
4. A non-stop race between developers and fraudsters begins, in which fraudsters are always one step ahead.
5. On some mechanics, this approach does not fall, for example, on ZPG.

In addition, there is another AI development boom now and there is a non-zero probability that it will be impossible to distinguish the behavior of a bot from a person. The game world is not such a complicated thing.

Gameplay enclosure

Another way to deal with automation is the limitations in game design, which make boating not useful.

Limit the speed of accumulation of game resources. The introduction of the limit of experience, money and items per unit of time Limiting the number of interactions with other players. And so on. To become "physically" it is impossible to get off the path planned by the developers.

A great example is Clash Royal - no matter how many players play, it will not be able to gain an advantage over other players (without spending money), since it receives new cards at a strictly fixed speed.

The disadvantage of this approach comes from the same restrictions: they greatly reduce the scope for the game designer’s maneuver, as well as put insurmountable barriers for players falling out of the concept of “average player”.

In addition, it provides a separation of players depending on the time of the start of the game - it becomes very difficult to catch up with the development (if it is provided) of the older player, spending only time. The difference in time spent has to be compensated with money.

Break the fun connection with the time spent

If getting a fan does not depend on the time spent on the game, then there is really nothing to automate.

An example is some moba (Dota, HotS), in which the result of the games depends only on the skill of the players and does not depend on the experience / belongings of the previous sessions.

The approach is good, but not applicable to all mechanics and complicates monetization (although it makes it ethical).

Handheld gameplay

You can create a gameplay that requires non-automated human abilities. The problem is that for most players this game will be too difficult.

An example would be chess (about 20 years ago) or go (now).

A more vital example is the complex rts and tbs - StarCraft, HoMM3 (and no other versions except the 3rd). As far as I know, an honest AI is implemented in StarCraft 2, but it's one thing to implement it to the developers of the old man, and another thing to external people.

As with statistical analysis, with the development of technology, this method can die off completely.

Eventually

I hope the described concept will be useful in designing game mechanics, monetization and technical decision-making.

There is a possibility that I have missed any approaches or nuances - write in the comments - I will gladly add to the article.