Tencent conducts user research by researching thousands of projects a year and communicating with over 5,000 users face to face.

Tencent Interactive Entertainment 's User Research Center plays an extremely important supporting role in each of its products. This team, which currently has 80 people, has been providing data support on user behavior and market for Tencent's various products since the PC gaming era in 2010, so that product teams can better establish communication and promotion plans that suit their own product attributes. They are behind almost all of Tencent’s successful game promotion cases , including “Dungeon & Fighter”, “ Love Elimination ”, and “ Honor of Kings ”.

At this year's Tencent TGDC market session, Zheng Yu, director of Tencent Interactive Entertainment User Research Center, gave a comprehensive introduction to the composition and daily work content of the User Research Center, bringing this team, which has always been behind the scenes, to the forefront.

Zheng Yu said that professional research is not just about sending questionnaires and asking users questions. There are a lot of methods involved behind it, and different methods will solve different problems.

In his sharing, Zheng Yu used cases such as " Contra ", "Dungeon & Fighter", and "Love Elimination" as examples to introduce in detail the work of MUR (Market and User Research Center) throughout the entire life cycle of a single product, and its work characteristics of supporting its multi-dimensional and panoramic achievement of market goals, and providing data support from users in product construction and promotion strategies .

In addition, she also demonstrated the User Research Center's analysis of the ACG market and used it to explain MUR's market analysis work in addition to being responsible for a single product.

The following is a summary of the shared content:

Good afternoon, everyone. I am very happy to take this opportunity today to help you better understand the role of user research.

I am Zheng Yu from Tencent Interactive Entertainment Market and User Research Center. I joined Tencent Games in 2007 and have been doing user research ever since. You may have heard in some cases of Tencent’s game products’ external communication that behind the game products there is a professional user research team supporting them.

What is our team like? MUR is the abbreviation of our Market and User Research Center. We have a team of 80 people under the marketing department. Most research managers work with different business departments to conduct research on single products. The professional backgrounds of all researchers are in various disciplines related to research.

Taking a brief look back at the team’s development history, we can say that the User Research Center is a team that has continued to mature and develop along with Tencent’s gaming business. It can be generally divided into three periods. From 2010 to 2012, during the PC gaming era, we established a methodology and system for gaming research; from 2013 to 2014, our team faced the transformation of how to keep up with the mobile gaming market and users more quickly, and how to get closer to the business; from 2015 to now, everyone knows that our interactive entertainment landscape and pan-entertainment business layout have become more complete, so our research perspectives and research fields are constantly expanding, and the team size has reached 80 people.

Within Interactive Entertainment, we support all pan-entertainment businesses, mainly games, as well as e-sports, animation and film. We research thousands of projects a year and support more than 150 products. Various research projects have reached millions of users, and we have conducted in-depth face-to-face exchanges and interviews with more than 5,000 users.

These are the different scenarios in which we contact users. We invite them to be interviewed, visit their homes, and go to some overseas countries to learn about the situation of overseas users.

We have received very good support from the company. We have our own comprehensive questionnaire system and our own official account user platform. We currently have millions of followers. Through such a platform, all research projects can invite players to conduct various research more quickly. They can also express their views on the products in the official account, and we can collect information quickly. In addition, the company has several experience rooms with different functions to meet users' on-site experience and research needs.

We focus on diversification and standardization of applied research tools and methods. Previously, you may have understood user research as sending questionnaires and asking users questions. In fact, professional research is not just about doing these two things. There are a large number of methods involved, and these methods solve different problems. Therefore, in a research project, it is necessary to select appropriate methods based on the characteristics of the problem, or even to apply a combination of different methods.

At the same time, after we collect the information, we still need various analysis techniques and methods to turn large amounts of data into useful information.

In addition, we need to use many studies to solve the same problem, so the questions and indicators need to be consistent, so that we can compare and accumulate the data results of different products horizontally.

Next, we will introduce some actual cases to see how user research can help business and products.

The first feature of Tencent Game User Research is that it runs through the entire life cycle of a single product, focusing on solving the core problems at each stage. This is a user research system based on the entire process of mobile games . For example, in the early stages we will make some market judgments, study the situation of segmented markets, and conduct a survey. The research focus will change in each stage: concept demo stage, initial version stage, iterative optimization stage, and promotion and operation stage.

What are the characteristics of our support at different stages of the product? During the concept stage, when the product does not yet have a definite version, we support the product with basic research information on some industries, categories, and competitive products. If there is a clear gameplay concept, concept testing will also be conducted to help the product screen the concept direction. During the initial version phase, we will help you determine the art style and core gameplay. During the iterative optimization phase, since there are already users doing the test, the target users will be verified and the reasons for the loss will be found based on the retention data performance. During the promotion and operation period, key modules will be disassembled and detailed research support will be provided.

The work of product user research of the agent is involved after the contract is signed and the project is established. Before getting involved, we will give some category research to the distribution team to help them screen the direction and quality of the products. The research support obtained after testing will be consistent with that of self-developed products.

Tencent has many successful products and partners as agents. In this regard, the User Research Center also has a lot of good experience, through which we can establish more direct communication and interaction mechanisms with the R&D team. We will also provide all daily outputs to R&D, and everyone will share content in a timely manner and discover problems. All our research processes are open. We will invite R&D developers to participate in every process of contact with users, so that they can see for themselves how users give feedback on the product. They will report to the operations project team, quickly discuss and implement how to follow up on the optimization of the issues.

We provide support for the entire life cycle of a product, and we will encounter problems in all aspects during the entire life cycle. Therefore, our research is not only to solve product development problems, but also to help achieve single product market goals through multi-dimensional and panoramic support. This is the second feature of Tencent Game User Research.

In terms of product content, we must follow up on user needs and experience issues in core gameplay, experience design, and peripheral systems. In terms of marketing promotion , all aspects of the ASPCC marketing methodology surrounding Tencent's marketing promotion, such as market analysis, market positioning, marketing strategy, marketing creativity, and marketing channels, will also be involved. The operating version content, operating activities, commercialization, and non-game operations such as competitions also require research support.

Core gameplay: User research plays a role in user verification and helps screen and optimize gameplay directions

To determine what kind of product to develop and what the core gameplay is, one must first be clear about one question: who is it being developed for? So in this case, research must help them find the target users of this product, and more importantly, who are the core target users? Secondly, we need to know whether the target users will buy what you make and whether there will be any problems in it. This requires us to analyze user demands and experience evaluations.

Core gameplay research case: How to choose the gameplay of the classic old IP of "Contra"?

Everyone knows that "Contra" is a classic IP. Faced with such an old IP and its original core gameplay, if it is made into a mobile game, it does not have a very successful counterpart product. As for the future, after this product is converted into a mobile game, there are some unclear points about the target users and core gameplay direction.

Here, our first step was to evaluate the original IP and analyze the IP users, study the influence of the IP and the situation of IP users, and also conduct art style and gameplay concept tests. Some problems were found, including the aging of IP users, too much experience in mobile games, too high a threshold for getting started with the current Contra gameplay, and outdated art style. Therefore, based on the research findings, adjustments were made based on the characteristics of IP gameplay and targeting users with relatively matching demands, such as gunfights, flight shooting, parkour, and action fighting.

The category users we are targeting are all different, and their demands for products are also different. How can we meet these differentiated demands and make trade-offs among them? The next step in the research is to test its performance on different users and analyze their acceptance of the game. Through multiple and multi-dimensional research and demonstration, we found that it is difficult to convert parkour users, so we need to reduce their importance as target users, and at the same time propose modification suggestions on issues such as the game's weapon design.

For the next version of the product, we are still continuing to verify the core target users and find problems with the product. The research method and angle are similar to the previous round. The results of the research show that action fighting users are the most receptive group. To meet their needs, the product needs to adjust the character's appearance and PVP gameplay.

The above is an example of how we help product iterations verify core target users and polish products.

Experience design: Discovering usability issues and understanding user behavior patterns are the research focus

Compared with core gameplay design, experience design may often not be taken seriously, and our early mobile game research did not conduct special research on experience design. But later we found that many mobile game products have prominent problems in this regard. Experience design is very important for mobile games. For example, players churn out after entering the game, often because we don’t do a good job of guiding new players.

We have a product. After they optimized some experience details, all aspects of the data showed very obvious improvements. Experience design issues also exist in various stages of the product, and the key issues to be solved in each stage are different: in the product concept or Demo stage, it helps to determine the style of art and UI vision; in the early stage of the version, it is necessary to optimize and improve the single-game experience; in the deletion test period, it is necessary to optimize novice guidance, UI issues, and clear obstacles that affect retention experience; if there are major revisions during the operation period, it is also necessary to consider revising the UI and guidance issues.

We usually let players experience freely and give them some tasks. During the user testing process, we will observe the player's behavior, record and describe the details of the experience process and the entire path, so the research methods include task testing, participatory design, mobile eye movement testing, etc.

1. The focus of single product experience design research is to form a closed loop

When we get a version to see if there are any problems, we first conduct an expert evaluation internally. If the expert evaluation needs to supplement and verify the issues and analyze the causes of the problems, user testing will be carried out to collect problems, determine the severity of the problems and provide optimization suggestions. The product must also quickly give implementation feedback on the problems, and follow up on the implementation status and results in the subsequent process.

2. Understand user behavior patterns, solve common problems in experience design, and turn evaluation problems into avoidance problems

In addition to the research on single product experience design, there is another very important thing: in the past we did a lot of single product research, during which we found many common problems, so we will do some common design principle research, such as how the novice guide for heavy mobile games should be designed, and how prompts and feedback should be given to users for mobile game UI.

In addition, we will also study the changes in user behavior brought about by some new experiences, which may have some impact on certain operations of internal products.

For example, everyone knows about the revision of Apple’s App Store . What impact will this have on users’ search and download of games? This requires us to conduct basic research on the cognitive decision chain, operational behavior and experience of users entering the app store before and after the revision.

"Love Elimination Everyday" design revamp

"Love Elimination Daily" underwent a major revision last year. The content of the revision was to highlight the level-breaking gameplay, level map display, and weaken the classic mode.

We thought about this when we were doing this research, because this revision is a big adjustment, and the structural adjustment may affect almost all players. Although the planning is very clear, we still need to study the opinions and needs of different players, so we will divide them into classic players, level-breaking players, and new players for testing; the result of the research is that classic limited-time players are unwilling to accept the revised version of our game. The superficial reason for their unwillingness is that classic users cannot find the entrance and rankings they often go to after entering, and players will have problems getting used to it.

Another interesting discovery is that classic players feel that they are the technical and veteran players in this game, while some players who are trying to pass the levels have no skills and are just relying on luck. The chain of contempt among players makes classic players feel that they are not valued, and thus they have a strong sense of aversion to the new version.

We will also see other problems. The level map has no sense of extension, making it difficult for players to form a sense of goal of continuously advancing through the levels, and players can easily confuse decorative elements and functional elements. After we shared these findings with the product, we redesigned the interface. Players of different types have a high acceptance of the new version, and the retention data after the revision has also improved to a certain extent.

Marketing: The research focuses on target user analysis and strategy pre-testing

Tencent Games’ promotion in the entire market is very systematic, professional and scientific, and the user research behind it also supports the market strategy. How do we help with marketing? The most important starting point is the insight into the target users. For market operations, our research on target users, in addition to knowing their situations in the product, also requires us to understand their life patterns and media behaviors and habits related to market operations.

In addition, our brand needs to convey the fun aspects of the product to users. So how do you find the selling point? These all require research and demonstration on how to produce some creative ideas. More of the previous research input is given to the brand. With this information, the brand, including some strategy companies and project teams, discuss the creative direction.

As you all know, the cost of launching products into the market is very high. We need to avoid risks, so we will do a lot of pre-tests on some very important materials and use standardized research and methods. For example, we will test slogans and evaluate spokespersons. There will be unified and specific evaluation test indicators and requirements, as well as the accumulation of data from many different test results to facilitate horizontal comparison.

After some large marketing cycles are completed, we will also review and study the results in order to facilitate subsequent optimization.

User insights help Dungeon Fighter brand refresh and creativity

A few years ago, we did a case study for Dungeon Fighter (DNF). After DNF was launched, its brand positioning was a super popular online fighting game . There is a lack of brand connotation shaping, so we hope to reinterpret the brand connotation through a brand refresh and gain emotional resonance from users.

Based on the characteristics of the product, "strong" is the main brand spirit to be conveyed. At first, the brand directly released some creative materials, but after testing, we found that players were not very receptive to them. Some young groups felt that this was an official slogan, that it lacked the characteristics of "Dungeon & Fighter" and that it did not resonate with them. At this time, the brand manager felt that they did not know the target users and the younger groups very well. How could they convey the emotional appeals that players got from the game? We hope that our research can help them gain more creative support.

How do we gain user insights? To meet this requirement, we first need to deeply understand the user's demands inside and outside the game. Therefore, we used a research method that approaches the players, collecting a large amount of user notes and accompanying in-depth interviews. What questions should you ask users? We need to analyze issues related to the research purpose, such as how players face setbacks and make themselves stronger when they encounter setbacks, as well as the players' values ​​and life conditions reflected in them. We need to understand the underlying principles to know their choices and attitudes when facing these situations.

This is a player's story, including why he wants to play such a game, how he overcomes setbacks, and how he behaves in the face of setbacks. We extract different things through many such players' stories, because every individual is different, but there must be something in common.

For example, young people expect recognition for their achievements and need to be accepted by the community but must express themselves. After we gave more players' stories to the brand, everyone could better refine the creative direction. Even the prototype of one of the characters in the later advertisement was a real player. We tested and screened the slogans with the highest acceptance. Finally, the brand refreshed the entire marketing material and the effect and response were very good.

Product operations : support long-term goals, assist in refinement, diagnose problems and explore opportunities

Our support for operations falls into several areas:

First, how to focus on achieving long-term operational goals. Therefore, for mature and important products, long-term and continuous satisfaction monitoring is very important to help product managers discover changes in satisfaction and issue early warnings.

Second, for refined operations, how to meet the needs of different users, so understanding the differentiated user needs is also critical.

Third, various problems often arise in operations, such as unsatisfactory commercial activities and lack of new customers, so it is necessary to study and diagnose the causes of various problems.

Fourth, exploring opportunities and combining new market/user trends can help business development understand new markets and new operating methods, find opportunities to form implementation strategies, and conduct pre-tests on new content and gameplay to understand their acceptance.

"Dungeon & Fighter" series research helps long-term operations

"Dungeon & Fighter" faced the problem of declining data in the first half of 2013. There are two reasons for this: one is internal troubles and the other is external threats. "Dungeon & Fighter" is a Korean game. Previously, the domestic version of our game has always been later than that of the Korean version. However, after releasing two new versions in 2013, the number of users has declined. We first diagnosed and located the major issues. Through preliminary churn research, we found that the main reason for user churn was product issues, rather than objective reasons related to competitors or the users themselves. Later, through our satisfaction tracking in each period, we can see that the satisfaction with version 80 has dropped significantly; therefore, there are indeed major experience issues with locking the internal version.

Based on the characteristics of the game, we started with a level-by-level research approach, including the portraits, goals, and experience feedback of players at different levels, including the connection from one level to the next. It can be found that the players of "Dungeon & Fighter" at that time had obvious "growth" problems in the middle and late stages, so the key issue that the product focuses on solving is how to smooth the difficulty.

In addition, based on the user composition of "Dungeon & Fighter", we have seen some new discoveries: the higher the level of the user, the higher the proportion of workers, and the high-level users of "Dungeon & Fighter" are increasing, so we suggest that the product should pay more attention to the impact of changes in user structure in the future.

The implementation and adjustment of products are continuous. From the second half of 2013 to 2015, we have been continuously tracking the effects of each version, including user satisfaction. We can see that some have improved, while others have deteriorated. Through this, we can discover the problems caused by the previous implementation changes, whether the changes are in place, and whether users can feel them. Secondly, we will discover some new problems.

Everyone knows that the commercial data of "Dungeon & Fighter" is relatively good, and its reputation continues to improve, but we also see some new things in operations, such as the players are more core and older, so what will the new plan be ten years later? At this time, we conducted a comprehensive and systematic user research to help the product have a more thorough understanding of current users. So for operations, this is a very long-term thing. The unchanging rule that can keep the product evergreen is to constantly understand users and grasp their feedback on the product.

What we have discussed before is the solution to a single product problem. However, when we do research, we cannot just look at ourselves, because a product in the entire market is like a tree standing in a forest. We must master the entire ecological environment of the forest. Other external things will also affect you. We need to pay attention to and study the product's competitors, analyze some market segments, study the development trends of the industry, and even the time and distribution of players' investment in entertainment. This may affect his investment in games, so we will also study players' entertainment trends and cultural signals.

How do we do these studies? We need to go beyond the external research of a single product and focus on breadth and foresight. Specific projects include research on post-00s and female mobile game players from a population perspective, as well as research focusing on a certain gameplay, category or business model to provide information reference for business layout and innovative strategies.

Crowd research: Deeply understand and gain insights into key groups and grasp user needs under business focus.

Breaking the Dimension Wall: A Case Study of the Player Group of 2D Mobile Games

The two-dimensional world has developed to this day, and although it is no longer a niche group of people, it is still very special. Regarding the two-dimensional language, if you are not a two-dimensional user, you may be confused when you see this sentence on the PPT ("I am just a non-fan, I got into the pit after watching LL"), so we should study how to break through the "dimensional wall".

First of all, our user research manager has been using 2D apps for a long time, following 2D KOLs , keeping up with hot topics, changing his identity, turning himself into a 2D user, and being able to really communicate with 2D users. Taking into account the fact that 2D users are particularly active online, we have a more three-dimensional and detailed understanding of the interviewed users, collect information about their online behaviors, and communicate fully with them offline. Through these two major methods, we can fully understand the two-dimensional users.

What will be the likely results of our research?

Although 2D mobile game users are a group, there are also four sub-groups, two of which are more important. From the two dimensions of gameplay and 2D content appeal, we need to deeply portray what kind of games they like.

For example, for game geeks , they have rich gaming experience, a relatively deep understanding of games, a preference for strong strategic games, and mature game payment behavior. The fun of the game is the first priority, and if there is favorite two-dimensional content, that will be a bonus. Now that we understand who our players are, let's take a look at what specific requirements they have for the game. For example, regarding the picture, we found that people in the second dimension don’t care as much about whether the picture is 2D or 3D as we imagined. What they pursue more is the ultimate detail display of the content.

For example, the characters in this game are personifications of battleships from World War II, and in this game, the locations where the characters were shot are exactly the same as the locations recorded in the naval archives. This pursuit of detail by the textual researchers will make two-dimensional players very satisfied and feel that the game is very sincere.

Industry understanding: Continuous research is needed on the overall market to understand development trends and changes

Tencent Games Research continuously studies industry dynamics to understand trends and development changes. How do we do it? We will conduct tracking research on users' basic behaviors, such as mobile game decisions, cognition and choices, including other behaviors and influencing factors. We will conduct offline surveys of thousands of samples every year.

In addition, every six months we will refresh the overall industry user scale, market segment scale, and Tencent Games' share based on tens of thousands of samples collected from netizens. Secondly, for big data , we will also cooperate with some terminal monitoring companies to see the current game usage of the entire game user base.

What will we output through such continuous monitoring?

First of all, we can predict the trend of the entire industry. We can see the proportion and development trend of heavy games and light games in the overall mobile games. Secondly, we can look at Tencent’s share in each segmented population and give us an assessment of the competition. There is also data on the development of different categories.

These outputs have important value within us, mainly in three aspects:

Strategic decision-making level, by understanding the industry user scale trends? How big is the future market development space? Where are the new blue ocean market opportunities?

Category layout layer, understand the development trend of the game category? How is the competitive situation in each category? Where are the user segments between categories?

At the product strategy level, understand the target population and the scale and population of competing products.

The above is some sharing on what Tencent does and how it does game market and user research. Since everyone here is a colleague in the industry, you also want to know how to establish user research and correctly apply user research in your respective companies. Here I may share some more understanding and ideas about research.

First of all, a good user researcher is the prerequisite for providing accurate user insights. He or she needs to have professional research capabilities, business analysis judgment, familiarity with the product, and other relevant abilities. If you are doing part-time research in operations and planning, you need to appropriately supplement the first two abilities. Secondly, we also need to have a correct understanding of the research positioning.

Secondly, research is not a panacea. Not all problems can be solved through research. Good research can help with decision-making, but the actual decision-making, judgment and implementation still depends on the product personnel. Tencent is very mature in making games, but user research also faces frustrating things. For example, when we raise a research question, we usually have to give an answer next week. However, research is a professional process, and it takes time to get a reliable answer. Therefore, we need to discover the problem earlier and give research a certain amount of time.

When it comes to research, I hope product personnel can have a more open attitude and participate more in the research process. If the conclusions of the research are different from what they expected, they should objectively analyze whether the information is true and why it is inconsistent with their analysis, rather than blindly denying and rejecting the research results.

Finally, I would like to end my sharing today with the research case of "Honor of Kings". Our early research support for King of Glory was not much different from that for other projects. We carried out more than 30 iterative user research projects for King of Glory from the R&D stage to the testing stage.

However, following the entire process of Wangzhe's research and development and launch, we also had deep feelings from the product team, because the development team of this product is in Chengdu , and we will go to Chengdu for testing every project. In this process, the development team will almost always listen. If there are any problems after talking with users, they will immediately discuss with us which issues should be optimized and adjusted, and which issues cannot be changed this time. The feedback is very in-depth. The key to their huge market success is to join the research process and get close to users in person; when a problem is really proven, they respect the users and have the determination and courage to make corrections.

This ends my sharing, thank you everyone.

1. Among your research methods, which ones are more effective and important? The second question is, how to conduct overseas research?

Zheng Yu : For the first question, there are many research methods, and different questions may be used for different problems. Many times, different research methods need to be combined to solve a problem, so there is no such thing as absolute importance. But I think that for game products, especially in the early stages, it is indeed necessary to communicate more with users face to face, let them experience the game, listen to what problems they have, what obstacles they encounter, and what needs they have during the experience. It may be more important for us to conduct more interviews and exchanges with users.

The second question is that when doing overseas research, we usually collect data and do desktop research because the information we can collect is limited. Therefore, our overseas research will also be done in the field to conduct more first-hand research, including the user research required for product launch. We will do the domestic research mentioned earlier and ask local mobile game players to test the gameplay concepts. If our product is launched overseas, we will conduct some interviews and questionnaires with users who have already played the game. Of course, we will also combine it with industry data to see what the situation is like for some products that have already "gone overseas" and are similar to our games.

2. How do small and medium-sized teams conduct user research? How to conduct research when the number of users of small and medium-sized products is not large?

Zheng Yu : The biggest challenge for small and medium-sized teams is whether there are professional researchers. More often than not, it is the product personnel who do the research. We actually encourage product managers to do user research themselves, so there is not much problem in this.

What is important is to learn how to communicate with your users, put aside subjective judgments and guide questions, and hear more feedback from users within limited resources. If your product has already been launched on the market, you will actually have no shortage of channels to reach users. Who are the users of your product? How to find them? There are ways to do this, such as distributing some questionnaires through the client.