Lowly as I am, I'm the most important person for the game company today | In - Depth Analysis
Text by | Wang Yuchan
Edited by | Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan
"We defended Shanghai! This is a victory for players around the world!"
A player left an impassioned message in the Steam review section of Jedi Mercenaries 2.
However, this victory also dramatically led to an "epic operational accident."
According to the game's setting, on May 20th, the Light Tribe invaded the Super Earth. There are a total of seven Cyber Metropolises on the Super Earth, corresponding to seven real - world cities such as New York, Shanghai, and Sweden.
Two days after the war began, several cities fell one after another. Only Shanghai held on with the efforts of Chinese players and awaited the reinforcements from American players who "abandoned New York and switched to Shanghai," ushering in the "great unity between China and the United States."
However, after winning the "Battle of Shanghai," Jedi Mercenaries 2 received a large number of negative reviews because players found that the liberation progress bar of Shanghai was stuck at 99.9783%. They suspected that "the game operation was designed in such a way that players were supposed to achieve the final victory in Sweden, the location of the game company," and the victory in Shanghai was not part of the operation's plan, so they deliberately locked the progress bar and fooled everyone.
This "accident" finally ended when the game operation belatedly sent the good news of Shanghai's victory. Not long ago, Jedi Mercenaries 2 won the Best Continuous Operation Award at TGA 2024 because it used the power of operation to bring the number of players back from the bottom.
In May this year, this war renowned on both sides of the Pacific once again proved with its passionate beginning and lackluster ending why a game "succeeds or fails because of its operation."
Screenshot from Twitter
Screenshot from Steam
Operation is becoming more important than ever for a game.
At Tencent's Q1 2024 earnings conference, Chief Strategy Officer James Michelle said, "If a game that should be an evergreen stalls, the problem usually lies not in the game itself but in the team operating the game. We need to change the team, sometimes the mindset, and sometimes the people."
"With the right people operating the game, you can get the right results," Michelle said.
There are many types of operations in game companies. The one closest to players (especially mobile game players) is "player operation."
"Player operation," or customer service, is not a new profession. Since around 2000 in the era of web games, game companies have had player hotline centers. However, at that time, they couldn't be so meticulous, nor was there a need for it - until the entire game market completely entered the era of stock competition.
In 2024, the scale of Chinese game users only increased by 0.94%. At the same time, the number of new game pipelines of each game company decreased, and new games with poor performance were quickly eliminated.
The era of extensive growth in the game industry has passed, just like the current Internet industry in China. In the era of stock competition, there are new survival rules.
At this time, retaining old users with old games has become more important than ever - and this means an unprecedented test for the player operation position.
To hold back someone who wants to leave, start serving them from the day they appear
At 2 a.m., the alarm went off. Liang Fei immediately got out of bed. He had a battle to fight.
After washing his face and opening the game, Liang Fei saw that most of his allies had already arrived. He reiterated tonight's tactics in the ally chat channel and then ordered the army to attack. The allies sent messages like "Charge!" and "Kill!" in the chat and engaged in close - combat with the oncoming enemy. Liang Fei's screen was instantly filled with dense dots and lines representing people.
As the leader of the top alliance in a certain district of an SLG game, Liang Fei plays the game as if he were on military service. In addition to collecting resources, strengthening the team, defending the city, and attacking the enemy, he also needs to strengthen team building. Every month, he pays his deputy leader, a college student, 4,000 yuan to be responsible for scouting the enemy situation and army deployment.
Although Liang Fei has done his best, recently, his alliance has been unlucky and has lost battles repeatedly. Several important main forces have been poached by the enemy. They thought they would surely win this surprise attack tonight, but unexpectedly, they lost again. In the WeChat group, several allies burst out with negative emotions and said some complaining and discouraging words.
In a real military camp, this might be called "undermining the morale of the army." However, Leader Liang Fei couldn't blame them because everyone plays SLG games to experience the thrill of victory. Frequent defeats will inevitably lead players to quit the game.
Just as Liang Fei was worried, the official game operator in the WeChat group suddenly sent a form.
The form listed the level, combat power, and average online time of the enemy accounts. The operator said to Liang Fei's allies, "Most of the enemy players log in around 1 a.m. They are probably busy with work during the day, so two to three o'clock in the afternoon is the best time for a surprise attack." Also, the enemy's defense is weak at a certain gap on the map, and the operator suggested they invade from there.
This was very important information. "With our own strength, we can only send a few spies into the enemy's group to get some scraps of information, but he can get the average data," Liang Fei was very surprised that the official operator actually took the initiative to disclose other players' private information to him.
He knew the operator was deliberately favoring him, so he didn't ask too many questions. Liang Fei immediately adjusted his strategy and followed the operator's advice. Sure enough, they won a great victory.
Although the battle was won, Liang Fei couldn't forget this incident. Even after several years, he still occasionally thought about it and guessed the reason behind it.
In his conjecture, the operator's "biased" behavior was definitely not supported by the game company. However, there might be some kind of internal competition mechanism in the company, and this operator was afraid that their frequent losses would lead to players quitting the game, which would affect his performance, so he privately gave them a break.
Game companies may be the companies that understand their users best among all economies. Player operators understand players better than players understand themselves. When Liang Fei was still not sure whether he wanted to quit the game, the operator had already listed him as a "key target for preventing player loss."
"In today's SLG games, this game is not the strongest in terms of either design or art style. The reason I've played it for so many years is that their player operation is well - done," Liang Fei said.
Based on the monitoring of data such as "decreased login frequency," "lower participation rate in dungeons," and "frequent defeats in battles," game companies can sense whether a player wants to quit the game earlier than the player themselves, and then let the operators and customer service intervene in advance.
Chen Shixuan gave an example. According to the strategy of the operation plan, if a player is wiped out three times in a row in a BOSS battle, it will trigger a customer service task to send a pre - prepared message to the player. Moreover, in this process, it can also be "personalized" - based on different player tags, the content of the messages sent is also different.
"In the case of failing to pass the same dungeon, different levels of users may receive six different results," Chen Shixuan said.
Of course, these messages are not just about verbal encouragement. A card game will push a "one - click task completion coupon" to players who have not completed their "daily tasks" for three consecutive days. Some games will automatically trigger tasks for potential players at risk of leaving to stimulate them to become active again because they found that if they don't do this, the probability of players leaving will be as high as 70%. Also, mobile games usually have a major version update every two months or so to keep players fresh.
Holding back someone who wants to leave is not that simple. The operator's intervention in the player experience doesn't only happen when they detect the risk of a player quitting.
In Chen Shixuan's words, "What operators need to do is 'full - cycle service for all users.'" They should start operating from the moment users become interested in a game.
As an operator, the most common player problems to deal with are account ban appeals. But besides these straightforward problems, there are also a large number of customer complaints mixed with emotions:
Players quarrel and are scolded by others in the game; players think the in - game character's fashion is too expensive/ugly/suspected of being inappropriate; players think the character's setting is OOC (the character behaves out of character); players can't defeat the BOSS; players can't draw the cards they want and think the official is targeting them; players think the official favors some game characters and neglects their favorite characters... and so on. The trivial problems are endless.
Most of the time, customer service can't really solve the problems. Because players hope that customer service can completely stand on their side, but for a game, it's almost a capital offense for the official to "favor one side" or "open backdoors" for some players. Unless it's a major mistake, the project team is unlikely to immediately modify the game because of players' diverse opinions.
Facing players' anger, what operators can usually do is to defuse the situation. They address players as "Lord," "Warrior," "Traveler," "Commander," "Baby," "Brother," and then keep repeating, "I've understood the problem you reported. I'll give feedback."
When players' demands can't be supported by the project team, the value of operators begins to stand out, which is to eliminate anger by listening.
An employee working on the front - line of operation said that sometimes players don't really need you to solve their problems. They just need their voices to be heard. "Most of the time, after they've said what they want to say, they're not angry anymore. But if no one listens to them, players may really be so angry that they quit the game."
Ultra - high - pressure work and beyond - expectation service
Daimeng, an operator at Shengqu Games, works from 9:00 to 18:00 every day. But even after work, she still responds to users. Before 9:30 every morning, she finishes dealing with the problems sent by players the previous night. She is responsible for about 2,000 VIP users with the highest payment levels at Shengqu Games. On average, about 40 - 50 users interact with her every day.
Daimeng only deals with the highest - paying VIP users at Shengqu Games. Her colleagues who are responsible for ordinary players each have three or four enterprise WeChat accounts, and their messages are always in the "999+ unread" state. These colleagues sit at their desks typing on the keyboard all day long and hardly have time to stand up.
Huohuo, a customer service staff at Diezhi Games, has to reply to 120 - 150 users on average every day. During peak periods such as game version updates and event launches, the number of users waiting for her to serve will increase to about 200 - 240. Before getting off work every day, she also needs to collect data and summarize players' opinions.
There are many problems waiting for customer service to handle, but their authority is limited. "The game has its own operation standards. What we can do is to balance the relationship between users and game operation as much as possible. We can't break the game balance, and we need to positively guide and comfort users to give them a better gaming experience and emotional value," Daimeng said.
Like a sponge between players and the project team, the operation team must be as gentle as possible when players express dissatisfaction.
Huohuo is always worried that players will get angry and afraid that they will question her efficiency in solving problems. "In fact, we can deeply empathize with players' feelings and will try our best to guide and solve players' problems." For Huohuo, who has been a customer service staff for four years, she must be emotionally stable and good at listening to stay in this position.
Operation sounds like a high - pressure job. Huawu, a player of NetEase Games, has heard that someone from a rival gang called and made a customer service staff cry, which she thought was very excessive. But even she has lost control and got angry at customer service sometimes.
Game companies also have ways to protect the mental health of operators. Chen Shixuan said that NetEase's public opinion monitoring system can detect that certain keywords suddenly surge and then make pre - plans in advance.
"When customer service finds that some players are in a very intense emotional state, we will immediately start a new internal project, make a response plan, and monitor the situation in real - time. We won't wait until the customer service is badly scolded to react," Chen Shixuan said. "But in fact, customer service staff are always very nervous because they are more likely to feel users' intense emotions."
Game companies also realize the necessity of relieving the pressure on operators. In the operation offices of many game companies, including NetEase and Shengqu, there is a "honor wall." They print out players' words of gratitude to customer service, compile them into books, and paste them on the wall to provide positive emotional support and the power of examples for customer service staff.
The wall at Shengqu is already full of pennants and there is no more space. Now, the newly - sent pennants can only be photographed, printed into palm - sized cards, and hung on a string for display.
Photo by 36Kr
Looking through the "excellent cases" displayed on the magazine rack in the operation office, you will find that the service that can make players voluntarily send pennants is not just about being responsive. As Chen Shixuan said, they encourage operators to provide "beyond - expectation service."
The so - called "beyond - expectation service" means that operators should create surprises for players - including but not limited to "recording players' preferences," "writing hand - written blessing cards for players who are having a hard time recently," "making game character emojis for players," "recording blessing videos for players who get married in the game," and even inviting players to dinner offline, organizing players' gatherings, and participating in players' weddings.
Daimeng, an operator at Shengqu Games, recalled that last year, Shengqu held an offline event for its game Legend and invited players to visit the headquarters. They paid for the air tickets and hotels of the top ten players in the whole server. In addition to online service, they also provided one - stop offline full - process reception. The entire operation department was mobilized to pick up players at the high - speed railway station and airport by special car, accompany them throughout the visit and dinner, and listen to users' voices.
Huawu's friend fell in love with an online friend while playing A Dream of Jianghu and finally got married in real life. At their wedding, twenty people including customer service staff and Cosplayers from A Dream of Jianghu came to celebrate.
