Economy interaction and mental needs beside game

Games are played often these days, no matter how often you play games, you must at least know or hear about some of the very popular games. All of these indicates that game played an important rule in our human society. Humans are social animals, most of the time we play with friends, or sometimes play alone. Although based on Huizinga’s opinion, play is more than a physiological phenomenon or psychological reflex, and it can’t be simple defined by scientific way, we can still analyze game through some of the theories.

 

Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people start to pursue spiritual needs when the physiological and safety one is satisfied. We want to feel belonging, feel esteem and self-actualization. There are many ways to achieve these, game is definitely one of them. When playing board game or video game with a group of friends, there is a clear sense that you and the people who are playing together belongs to a same community. You have same value, share same emotion, and having time together. Some single player game, like RPG also helps people to think about who are they, what they should value as important, games definitely more or less encourage and motivate players to think about something, either themselves, the society, or even the world.

 

As there are so many benefits which we can get from playing games, but who actually provides us those fantastic games? Yes, the business. The game industry is made up with those who are also keen to play. They know what other players like, and provides us their hard work product. But for a game, from the start of a idea to finally commercialization, it spends money. We can’t require those producers pay the cost for us, instead, cover the cost is player’s task, we pay for those games we like, and encourage the business to make better game. So, we can easily find out the industry chain, it can be simplified as: business make game, they then put the game on market, player play the game and pay for it, business get money, use the money to make new games.

 

After analyze the positive feedback loop under the perfect situation, here comes to the new question, how we actually pay the business money? By looking at the games in the market, we can see there are basically two main types of games. One is the console game, which are played on computer, or console like Play Station or Nintendo Switch, and the other more often played on mobile devices, like mobile phone. The differences can be explained by Huizinga’s theory, which is players have different attitude towards play, it can be either “serious” or not.

 

When I’m saying “serious” it’s more like whether player would like to spend a long continuous period of time on playing games. If so, console games are for those players. Console games often require players to pay before they can actually know what’s in the game, and it’s a one-time payment. Players how are interested in console games are those who expect to put themselves into the game and get a full sense of immerse feeling, they relatively have a higher requirement on the game, from the mechanic to the story, the music, etc. Based on this situation, they can be easily satisfied, or they can be very demanding. What they want is very clear, just games that are interesting enough, if it is, they are very willing to pay for the price, even it might be a little bit expensive. But remember, console games require players to pay before play, it can be dangerous if the business provides a bad quality product but charge a high price. These players are quite sensitive to the production team of the game, if a team make players disappointed once, it might influence the future sales. In order to solve this, business always provides free demo for play, in order to let player, know whether the game meets their expectation, or if there are bugs need to be fixed. This also act as a channel for producer and players to communicate, exchange ideas etc. By the way, board game acts similar as console games.

 

On the contrary, mobile games are for those who play games with fragmented time. In most situation, they don’t require a continuous play experience, instead, what they want is a game which is able to play and quit at any time, with a huge flexible play time. These players relatively care less about the producer, so there is relatively higher competition for the business. As a result, mobile games are always free to download, but provides top-up options in game (not mandatory). It’s true that you can play most of the mobile game without paying any money, but there is no doubt that the business will give those players who spend money better game experience, this can be higher power, stronger characters, beautiful outlooking etc. Players who play mobile games pay for what they like, just as simple as it sounds, if they want to get a character they like, they pay.

 

A very good example for analyzing the difference of the mental needs and the payment is Zelda and Genshin impact. They have very similar mechanics, like open world, role playing, exploring, battling. But Genshin impact have a huge variety of characters available, comparing to Zelda, here comes to the point where players pay for. The more you pay, the faster you can get those gorgeous characters. Who can say Link is handsome? The Immersive experience, mechanics of Zelda is actually better than Genshin impact, but Genshin players actually don’t really care about these, or they did, but not that much, they are more interested in the adventure with their animate wife.

 

As a player of both console game and mobile game, there isn’t a answer about which one is better. Both of them are important as they satisfy needs at different situation. We can’t play computers or Play Station when we are on the subway or bus, but we have our smart phone with us anytime, anyplace. Game producers are also players, they come from the players, but when they act as the role of a producer, they keep learning how to get along with players and how to keep the relationship. The payment method/model for games is now well established, we can keep expecting that the producers will provides us more treasure experience.