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After Pokemon Go was released in the US,
手游《口袋妖怪Go》在美国发行
it took less than a day before it was making more money than all the other apps in both Apple’s and Google’s app stores.
不到一天，收入就超过了苹果和谷歌应用市场的所有软件。
“It’s already earned $14 million in revenue since launching last Wednesday — not even a full week.”
“从上周三到现在，不到一周时间，这款游戏收入就已达到1400万美元。”
But users didn’t have to pay a cent for the game.
然而，用户不需要为该游戏支付任何费用。
All that money was coming from optional purchases people were making as they played.
所有这些收入都来源于用户在玩游戏时购买的道具费用。
This is the world of Freemium Apps — a business model that, in the past few years, has largely wiped out the market for paid games.
如今是一个免费增值应用的世界——短短几年时间，这一商业模式就挤掉了付费游戏的市场。
Now game designers have to monetize the gameplay and one way to do that is by applying some fundamental lessons of behavioral psychology.
现在，游戏开发师们需要靠游戏设定赚钱，方法之一就是应用一些行为心理学的基本知识。
The first thing these games do is set up a virtual currency so that it doesn’t feel like you’re spending real currency, even though you are.
首先，这些游戏会设置一种虚拟货币，这样玩家就不会感觉到自己是在花真的钱，虽然你就是在花真钱。
This is a variation on something we’ve known for decades,
这种做法不过是另外一种现象变了个花样——
which is that people find it harder to spend money when they’re paying in cash than if they’re using a card.
消费者用卡比用现金花的钱多。
“So when you pay cash for something, you see it leave your hands
“当你用现金支付时，你可以看见钱从你手里花出去了，
and you get a very immediate sense of how much your cash reserves have dropped, how much your wealth has dropped.”
你可以清楚地看到你的现金少了多少，你的财富少了多少。”
Games add yet another layer.
游戏把这一心理学现象发挥到了另一个高度。
You pay for lollipop boosters with gold bars and you pay for gold bars with your credit card, which is already distanced from actual payment.
棒棒糖优化工具要用金条买，金条要用信用卡买，而信用卡本身就已经不同于现金支付了。
And then on top of that, they don’t make the exchange rate simple.
在此基础上，游戏开发商还会玩弄兑换比例。
It’s not 50 gems for 50 cents.
不是说50宝石就是50美分。
“They’re always something weird like 1 dollar will get you 12 purple diamonds,
“兑换比例总是很诡异，比如一美元兑换12个紫钻，
and that sort of off kilter exchange rate is the same thing you see with people spending —
这种有失和谐的兑换比例和大家看到的某些消费现象毫无二致，
tourists spending money that they’re not familiar with in foreign countries.”
游客在他们不熟悉的国家花钱的情况就是一例。
If incense costs 80 pokecoins and a batch of 550 pokecoins costs $4.99,
如果熏香的价格是80游戏币，550个游戏币是4.99美元，
how much real money does incense cost? Yeah i don’t know either.
那熏香等于多少钱呢？嗯，我也不知道。
So you’re spending money that doesn’t seem real and it only takes a second because the app store already has your credit card.
所以，使用虚拟货币时，花钱只是分分钟的事情，因为应用市场已经有你的信用卡账号了。
The whole payment process is designed to be painless.
整个消费过程变得没有一丝痛苦。
Other parts of the game, however, are designed to be painful.
然而，玩游戏的其他过程则充满痛苦。
A key finding of behavioral research is that people tend to experience unexpected losses more intensely than comparable gains.
行为学研究一个重大的发现就是人们对意外损失的印象比同等程度的收获更深刻。
That can inform the timing of purchase prompts.
这一点对购买提示的时长也有关。
In Puzzle & Dragons, players progress through a dungeon before facing a boss,
玩《智龙迷城》时，玩家在面对大boss之前要经过一个地下城，
and if they die, they stand to lose all the rewards they just earned.
要是他们死了，之前得到的奖励就会全部消失。
That’s when they’re presented with the option to save their coins and their points by spending magic stones, which you can by in the store with real money.
这时，他们也可以选择用魔法石挽救自己的金币和积分，魔法石则需要用真钱购买。
Other developers actively embed inconvenience into the games, so that you can purchase convenience.
其他游戏开发商也纷纷往游戏里埋通关障碍，促使用户购买通关道具。
In Clash of Clans and Game of War, everything you try to build has wait times that get progressively longer but are skippable, for a price.
在《部落冲突》和《战争游戏》中，随便建造点儿什么都要等一段时间，这一时间还会越来越长，但用户也可以选择跳过，只是需要付费。
“So they build incentives to remove pain points into the games and then if they want that, then they have the incentives to insert pain points into the game.”
“也就是说，开发商在游戏里植入了减轻消费痛苦的机制，要做到这一点，他们又在游戏的其他环节植入了制造痛苦的环节。”
Ultimately though, only a tiny percentage of players actually become payers.
尽管最终，只有一小部分玩家真正成为付费玩家，
And a small percentage of payers are those so-called “whales” —
也只有一小部分玩家成为所谓的“大鲸”——
people who will pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars in the app.
也就是会在该应用投入成百甚至上千美元的玩家。
The marketing firm Swrve estimates that about half of the revenue for mobile games is coming from less than a half of a percent of all players.
据营销公司Swrve估计，移动终端游戏软件半数收入都来源于不到半数的玩家。
which means that for some of these games, non-paying users,
这也就意味着，对这类游戏而言，免费玩家，
which is most people, are essentially pouring time into a game designed to hit the pain points of a small, susceptible group of players.
也即大多数玩家，基本上都把时间耗费在了一个旨在减轻一小部分容易受影响的玩家支付痛苦的游戏上。
If you’re really having fun, that’s fine.
如果你真的玩得很开心，那还好。
But it might be worth rewarding games that find another way.
然而，游戏另辟蹊径也可能是有利可图的。
As of now, the monetization in Pokemon Go is unobtrusive, it’s kind of tucked away.
就现在而言，《口袋妖怪Go》的赚钱模式还很低调，也还算隐蔽，
And that lack of manipulation is a pretty good reason to buy some lure modules and some incense.
而缺乏游戏经验又是一个很好的购买诱人的模组和熏香的理由
One argument in favor of free-to-play games and in-app purchases is that they give developers a reason to keep updating the games.
免费游戏和内置消费的一个很有说服力的理由就是这种模式让开发商有了更新应用的理由，
And they’re collecting tons of data in order to inform those updates —
为了宣传这些更新，他们收集了无数资料——
things like where you get stuck, where you close the game, which features are most popular.
比如玩家被卡的环节、选择退出游戏的位置以及哪些元素最受欢迎。
All that data can help them keep making a game that you want to keep playing.
所有这些资料都能够帮助开发商开发出玩家愿意继续玩的游戏。
But it also means that they can tweak the prices based on individual profiles and behavior.
然而，这也意味着，他们可以根据个人资料和个人行为定制费用水平。
If it seems like you’re about to quit, hey here’s a discount.
准备不玩了？嘿，打折来了。
Or if you’re the type of person who will spend a lot of money, maybe they bump up the prices a bit.
你要是那种会花很多钱玩游戏的人，他们也可能把费用抬高一点点。
They can even look at how fancy your phone is and what country you live in and set the prices accordingly.
开发商还能根据你手机有多炫，你居住的国家等信息来制定你的费用。
According to one survey, 40% of game developers said they were setting different prices for different players.
根据某项调查，40%的游戏开发商都说他们给不同玩家制定了不同的价格。
But the survey was anonymous and it’s pretty hard to tell which games those are.
然而，该调查是匿名调查，所以很难说到底是哪些游戏。
