I put things in my head, thinking about the organization of the gameplay, 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 thought of as a machine that converts a player’s time into fan. Fan is an excellent general concept and we won’t clarify it somehow. Someone gets a fan from exploration of the game world, someone from bending their neighbors - for our reasoning, this is not important.

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

Monetization

So far, there is no monetary component in our model. In an ideal world, it would not exist: ideal developers would feed on air and make games purely from altruistic considerations. Unfortunately, this is not so: we need the money of our players :-D

Money, like time, is one of the resources that a player can exchange for fan. As a result, our scheme is a little complicated.


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

• Free - the game recycles the player’s time into 100% of the necessary fan.
• Pay-to-Play - the game processes the player’s time into 100% of the necessary fan, but we take money for the opportunity to transfer the time to the game itself.
• Free-to-Play - the game processes the player’s time into an insufficient amount of fan (<100%), the lack of fan is bought up (and now I understand why I do not like this model).

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

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

Fraud

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

At this point, various schemes of fraud appear: from cheating to using bots and trading game entities, bypassing developers. They struggle with it in different ways, but mostly symptomatically. In my opinion, in view of the natural evolutionary causes of its occurrence, there is no sense in combating the consequences of this phenomenon, it is necessary to suppress its causes.

Consider fraud options:

• The complete exclusion of waste of resources is cheating. Players break the game so that they receive fan on their own terms.
• Spending less money is a black market for gaming entities and services. Players find a way to spend money with a higher coefficient of converting them to fan than the game offers. For example, buying cheap time from other players.
• Spending less time is automation. Players find a way to reduce the time spent on the game, leaving the amount of fan received unchanged. For example, they automate routine operations in order to do only “interesting” things.

The mechanisms for combating cheating have long been known and depend mainly on the will and capabilities of developers.

Eliminating the trading of game entities is generally impossible. That which cannot be stopped must be led. With varying degrees of success, many, in my opinion, are trying to do this, in my opinion, so far the best at EVE.

But there is no general approach to combat automation. Why and how to live with her we 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 entity external to the game spends its time in exchange for progress in the game. To determine 100% who is on the other side of the game: a person or a bot - is impossible in principle.

Statistical analysis

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

1. Such decisions do not carry over between games.
2. Analysis requires more skill from developers.
3. Analysis requires more company resources.
4. The ongoing race between developers and scammers begins, in which scammers are always one step ahead.
5. For some mechanics, this approach does not fall at all, for example, on ZPG.

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

Gameplay fencing

Another way to deal with automation is the limitations in game design, which make botting less useful.

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

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

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

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

Break the connection of the fan with the time spent

If getting a fan does not depend on the time spent on the game, then there is nothing special 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 / gear made in previous sessions.

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

Non-automated gameplay

You can create gameplay that requires human skills so far. The problem is that for most players, such a game would be too complicated.

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

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

Like statistical analysis, with the development of technology, this method can completely die out.

Eventually

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

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