From the Hooked user incentive model, a comprehensive analysis of why "Honor of Kings" makes you addicted?

Why is " Honor of Kings " so popular? What is its user growth system like? How do users become addicted? As a product manager , what can I learn from it?

In this article, Lingzi will use the Hooked addiction model to comprehensively analyze how "Honor of Kings" makes users addicted step by step.

King of Glory and Hooked Model

Honor of Kings

Some people say that people can be divided into three categories based on how well they play King of Glory :

1. People who don’t play King of Glory;
2. People who play King of Glory but it does not seriously affect their study and work;
3. People who play Honor of Kings but cannot extricate themselves, with serious consequences.

Let’s take a look at some data sets:

• According to the data released by Tencent Interactive Entertainment , the number of registered users of "Honor of Kings" has exceeded 200 million , with more than 80 million daily active users. One in every seven people is playing it. The mobile game "Honor of Kings" has become the king of Chinese games .
• According to Aurora Big Data : You have 200 million comrades-in-arms and 200 million enemies! Today, the penetration rate of Honor of Kings has reached 22.3% , of which 54.1% are female and 52% are under 24 years old;
• According to statistics from domestic and foreign data agencies, Honor of Kings has currently become the most downloaded game in the world, with revenue of 6 billion yuan in the first quarter, making it the game with the highest revenue in the world. The number of registered game users exceeded 200 million , and one skin sold for 150 million yuan a day. Tencent's first quarter report for 2017 showed that its smartphone game revenue was 12.9 billion yuan , a year-on-year increase of 57% .

If you happen to be playing Honor of Kings, you may find that this game is really addictive. I used to watch TV series, read books and exercise after get off work, but now I start playing games as soon as I get home. I originally wanted to relax after a day of work, but the result is...

Inner thought: Go to sleep after winning a game. The result... ... I feel so good when I win, let's play another round. I feel so unwilling to lose, let's play another round! As a result, I accidentally played until 2 or 3 in the morning...

Although it is fun to play games, it seems to have begun to affect your normal life.

King of Glory has become the King of Pesticides~

Hooked Model

The above picture is the gamification design framework Octalysis: Complete Gamification Framework The author is Yu-Kai Chou , who recently published a book called Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. , ( "Human Behavior × Game Mechanics, Creating Product Attraction" )

There are 8 keywords in the middle of the Hooked model picture, representing 8 different core driving forces. Regarding user incentives, to put it simply, it means getting users to "voluntarily" do what the product or service wants them to do. The "voluntary" here comes from the game.

The user growth system is a manifestation of the gamification of a product. The motivation (M) corresponds to our exit, and the trigger (T) corresponds to our entrance. Gamification is actually Human-Focused Design, which maximizes consideration of human psychological factors such as emotions and motivations during the design process. No matter what product it is, no matter how powerful its functions are, if users don’t want to use it at all, then it is a failure. Medals, red flowers, certificates, trophies, belts and other things are actually "symbols of achievement". They themselves have no meaning, but they represent the sense of accomplishment people have after going through untold hardships and overcoming numerous challenges! So games have no real functions (the so-called "waste of time"), but they have the magic power to make people invest a lot of time and energy.

The HOOKED model includes another model, namely BJ Fogg's Behavior Model: B= MAT——Behavior=Motivational Ability Inducement (or Trigger) . The occurrence of any behavior depends on the three variables in the above formula.

The core of this theory lies in "A" (Ability) and "T" (Trigger) , which allows users to smoothly perform desired actions by simplifying the process of completing a certain behavior and reminding users at the right time. Eventually, this behavior will be solidified into a "habit", which means that users will naturally use your product or service without much thought (expected behavior).

The Hooked model is an indispensable part of the entire product system in the user growth system. It is an operation and product mechanism to improve user stickiness.

The addiction of Honor of Kings reflects the perfect and successful application of the Hooked model!

Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling

Do things that can influence the times or benefit others!

1. Team fun

Playing Honor of Kings involves team battles. Have you ever encountered a very united team battle where the entire team wiped out the entire opponent? Have you ever encountered a situation where a team battle had already started but there were still stupid teammates playing in the jungle? Have you ever been a meat shield, taking the damage for your teammates, saving their lives? What you do is beneficial to others and to the team. This is an emotional mission. This is a team competition game where teamwork is more important than individual cooperation.

2. Psychological control

There is a term in psychology called flow zone . Honor of Kings keeps the gaming experience in the flow zone to the greatest extent possible. Flow is a feeling that occurs when a person focuses completely on an activity. Once in the flow zone, it is easy to experience a sense of mental anesthesia and become unaware of the passage of time.

Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment

Development and achievements after completing goals

1. Satisfaction of achievement

What’s the feeling every time you tower dive and kill someone, what’s the feeling every time you get the MVP, what’s the feeling every time you become a super god, what’s the feeling of finally getting a pentakill? That is a full sense of accomplishment. And this sense of accomplishment is not easy to come by. It requires continuous completion of goals to achieve development and achievements. It is challenging and requires hard work and efforts to gain this sense of accomplishment.

What users like is the understanding, thinking and awareness of the game, which makes them feel extremely satisfied and it is a pleasure of having an IQ superior to others. In the same game, I relied on my nimble hands, my fast-working brain, and my strength to defeat my opponents.

2. Game Balance

There are many factors that determine victory or defeat in "Honor of Kings": strong individual skills, tacit teamwork, the counter-attack between heroes in singles, and various unexpected factors. Compared with these conditions, even if paying players spend money to purchase inscriptions and special heroes, they cannot break the balance of the game , and most non-paying players can also play well. This is the essence of PVP (interactive competitive) games.

3. Daily tasks

Daily tasks are also an indispensable part of Honor of Kings, such as "daily login", for example: "defeat 10 opponent's heroes and win". Completing tasks will give experience, activity, or a certain hero experience, and setting activity to open treasure chests in daily tasks. These are all very good user growth systems, which can guide users to do what the product wants them to do , and are worth learning from.

Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback

DIY, reconfigurable and timely feedback

1. Time Fragments

League of Legends shortened the playing time of a game of Dota from 60 minutes to 40 minutes, and Honor of Kings shortened the playing time further to 10-20 minutes . Players can directly utilize fragmented time to complete the game in a short period of time, and even play a game for ten minutes during lunch break while waiting for the food to be served.

2. Everyone is easy

Honor of Kings is easy to operate. While League of Legends requires two hands to operate the mouse and keyboard at the same time, Honor of Kings only requires two thumbs. The complexity of strategy is reduced, and the overall difficulty of playing the game is reduced. It not only takes care of traditional male gamers, but also attracts the interest of many women.

ps: I just want to ask, when you see this picture, do you have a conditioned reflex to click the plus sign, right? Is there? This is the "inertia loop" we will discuss below.

Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession

Possession, control over an object, possessiveness

1. Rank Title

Every user who plays "Honor of Kings" has a heart of a king. Some have already become kings, while others are still on the way to becoming kings. It is a long and arduous process to fight your way up from bronze to king step by step. The product makes rational use of levels to attract users to play ranked games and enhance user stickiness.

Different rankings and levels represent your game level, and your game level determines your matching and skill level, which is a great incentive to improve your ranking.

Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness

Status in society, relationships and connections with others!

1. Mobile Games

As a mobile game, it has a more convenient access platform than web games and lower participation requirements. Today, almost everyone has a mobile phone. Honor of Kings does not require high configuration of the mobile phone, and almost every mobile phone can play it. When you see someone holding the phone sideways, he is most likely playing Honor of Kings.

2. Social kidnapping

After all, Honor of Kings is a game under Tencent, and it has the advantages of the two major social channels of Tencent and WeChat . It also realizes the same-server competition of Apple and Android systems. As long as the other party has an account and logs in to the game, he can see all the QQ and WeChat friends who play the game. Players can import their WeChat or QQ friends to form teams, show intimacy, become apprentices, and join teams. The number of players has skyrocketed, creating a herd effect . The social outbreak is the main channel for the success of Honor of Kings.

This is Tencent’s core value: social networking connects everything and owns everything.

Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience

The rarer something is, the more people cherish it!

1. Game time limit

Currently, "Honor of Kings" has added game time reminders to prevent players from becoming too addicted to the game. In addition, if you do not click "Enter" in a team, you will be restricted for 1 minute and cannot match or be matched. Every time Lingzi is restricted, it will arouse my "anger" towards "Honor of Kings". I am unwilling to accept it and I must wait and play it.

2. Rare Hero Skills

Not all heroes are available to all players. Users need to earn coins or recharge to buy them. Users have to pay to get them. The rarer the heroes and the rarer the skills, the more willing users are to cherish them and work hard to obtain them.

Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity

Curiosity and the unknown future will drive humans to continue exploring!

1. Curiosity Exploration

The whole world is playing Honor of Kings, and friends around you are all talking about playing Honor of Kings. Would you also be curious to download Honor of Kings and explore it? In addition, knowing how to play Honor of Kings also requires exploration and thinking. There are countless heroes, and there are different types of heroes, mages, dashers, shooters, tanks... Every hero needs to be explored, and every skill needs to be learned.

Anyone who only knows how to charge forward using Xiang Yu will only die under the tower. Only by sneaking around the enemy and pushing them under your tower can you kill them. Lingzi plays "Angela" more often. She sends a circle to hit minions, sends a fireball to freeze the opponent, and sends a big move to bombard the opponent. But after figuring it out, how can these three skills be used to be effective? First, use a fireball to freeze the opponent, then use a big move to bombard the enemy and kill him instantly~

This is the fun of exploring out of curiosity. In the process of continuous exploration, users dig into their understanding, thinking and awareness of the game, which makes them feel great pleasure.

2. Inertia loop

At the deepest and lowest level of the human brain there is a place called the "basal ganglia" , which is related to the stabilization of voluntary movements, the control of muscle tension, and the processing of proprioceptive impulse information. There is also a term called "habit loop" , which is commonly known as "habit". When you are playing Honor of Kings, you think you are playing a game, but in fact you have been controlled by the game. In your familiar environment, when you open your mobile phone and see the screen or hear the sound of Honor of Kings, you will feel an inexplicable excitement and you can no longer control yourself.

ps: I play 2 games of Honor of Kings before going to bed every day, which results in me often seeing the opponent’s blood running out in a daze before going to bed, so I chase after him and “beat” him.

Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance

Fear, fear, all negative emotions

1. No sense of failure

Have you encountered any pitfalls? Are you very upset and want to curse? If you lose a battle, do you immediately summarize the reasons and then fight again? The team confrontation mode and the optimization of game designers eliminate the "frustration prevention and addiction". In multiplayer projects, you can pass the blame to your teammates, and the product has a very humane "report" mechanism, which reasonably allows users to minimize the impact on their self-esteem.

2. Fear of losing a rank

When you lose in a ranked match, you will increase your star rating by one, and decrease it by one when you win. When you accumulate three stars, you will move up one rank. When playing ranked matches, the product stimulates users to be afraid of losing stars or ranks, thereby psychologically stimulating them to fight back if they are dropped in rank.

Summarize

The success of any product cannot be explained in a few words, nor can the secret of its success be described in one article. This article can only be regarded as Lingzi’s recent small and partial overview and analysis of the addiction road of King of Glory from the perspective of a novice player.

As an excellent and successful product, Honor of Kings has a lot to learn from. We must learn to explore the advantages of successful products and apply them to our own products.

All of the above, welcome to add, welcome to complain, welcome to exchange and learn, welcome to play the King of Pesticides together~