After this idea emerged, Qiao Liang was initially startled by his own thinking, feeling he might be overthinking. But the more he analyzed it, the more he felt this possibility really existed.
Everything Mr. Pei did had deep meaning!
For the game “Fitness Battle,” how the lucky draw system was specifically implemented might not have much impact on the game’s profitability itself.
Even with a conventional lucky draw system, players who wanted to draw would still draw.
Since Mr. Pei had so aggressively designed the lucky draw system into its current state, there must have been a certain intention behind it.
This intention wasn’t apparent yet, but it was likely that Mr. Pei had anticipated how players might respond.
So, to truly analyze Mr. Pei’s intention, he needed to look at player reactions.
Qiao Liang immediately searched online for posts about “Fitness Battle’s” lucky draw and analyzed the profiles of different user groups.
He quickly found many examples.
Because “Fitness Battle” players seemed to have a much stronger desire to show off their draws than players of other games.
Whether they had particularly good luck or particularly bad luck, they were all eager to share their draw results online.
If analyzing according to traditional pay-to-win games, players who spend money are generally divided into micro-spenders, medium-spenders, and heavy-spenders. The boundaries between these categories are somewhat blurry and can transform into each other, but generally, the division is based on how much money is spent.
But in “Fitness Battle,” this categorization method didn’t seem to work well.
For example, if someone spent 100,000 yuan, made a series of draws, kept the few items they liked the most, and refunded everything else, ultimately spending just over 1,000 yuan—would they be considered a medium-spender or a heavy-spender?
While such cases were relatively rare, they definitely existed.
Qiao Liang looked at many examples online and found them truly diverse and unique.
For instance, someone drew five ten-draws in a row, resulting in mostly blue and white items with just one purple item, which wasn’t even what they wanted.
So this person wryly refunded everything.
In other games, they might have contacted customer service to complain, but since “Fitness Battle” allowed refunds freely, they could just try again after three days.
There was also someone who drew three ten-draws in a row, all with orange items. Originally they had planned to keep only the best ten-draw result and refund the other two, but now they kept all of them, excitedly showing off online.
The most bizarre case was someone who actually drew over fifty ten-draws, kept just one ten-draw that had two orange items, refunded all the others, and very proudly posted claiming to be the “King of Free Riders,” suggesting everyone should learn from them and fleece Tenda bald.
Some even treated the lucky draw system as a testing ground—since everything could be refunded, drawing and then refunding was equivalent to not spending money, allowing them to satisfy their drawing addiction.
These bizarre situations were never seen in other games’ lucky draw systems.
Players of other games, even when showing off, probably only had two results: “lucky” or “unlucky.” Of course, the lucky ones might be very lucky, but the unlucky ones weren’t necessarily too unlucky.
“Tenda’s lucky draw mechanism… seems to be true probability?”
Qiao Liang suddenly had an insight and listed the differences between traditional lucky draw models and “Fitness Battle’s” draw model in a document.
“True probability” was relative to “false probability.”
It would be a big mistake to think that traditional lucky draw models were purely based on probability.
Qiao Liang had deliberately studied much knowledge about game design and clearly understood that lucky draws in games were never true probability but false probability.
Of course, false probability wasn’t entirely about merchants making money; sometimes it was also to ensure players’ experience.
This point required basic probability knowledge to understand.
For instance, if a merchant set the drop rate of a certain item at 20%, which was already quite high.
Then, with a sufficiently large number of players and a large enough sample, about 20% of players would draw this item on their first try—this was easy to understand.
But the probability of not getting it after five consecutive draws would be five 80% probabilities multiplied together, or 0.32768, meaning about 30% of players wouldn’t get it after five draws.
And the probability of not getting it after ten consecutive draws would be ten 80% probabilities multiplied together, about 0.1, or 10%.
For an item with a 20% drop rate, if calculated according to probability, 10% of players wouldn’t get it even after ten draws.
And if we continue, the probability of not getting it after twenty consecutive draws would be 1%.
Assuming 100,000 people participated in this lucky draw, 1% would be 1,000 people.
Could 1,000 people accept not getting an item with a 20% drop rate even after twenty draws?
This obviously contradicted their intuition: shouldn’t an item with a 20% drop rate definitely appear within five draws?
But probability is inherently variable for different individuals; a 20% drop rate doesn’t guarantee an item will appear after five tries, or even ten.
Probability cannot be precisely applied to any individual; only when the data sample is large enough will the actual probability infinitely approach the theoretical data.
In other words, with one draw, anything could happen; but with 100 million draws, the occurrence rate would infinitely approach 20 million times.
But people without basic knowledge of probability don’t understand this point.
It’s easy to imagine that these 1,000 people who couldn’t draw an item with a 20% drop rate even after twenty tries would definitely go to forums to cause trouble. How much public opinion pressure would that create?
Moreover, most of these people were medium or heavy spenders. After such a draw experience, would they participate in future activities? Not uninstalling the game would already show good temper.
So, many game manufacturers set up false probability to avoid this situation.
That is, for an item with a 20% drop rate, if a player doesn’t get it on the first try, the drop rate increases for the second try, and by the fifth try, it becomes a 100% guaranteed drop.
This ensures that no matter how bad a player’s luck is, there’s always a guaranteed minimum.
From this perspective, false probability does have some protective effect for players.
But the problem is, since game companies have already implemented false probability, they certainly won’t just protect players’ interests; they naturally want to protect their own interests as well.
For example, with an extremely valuable item worth thousands or tens of thousands of yuan, even if the drop rate is 0.1%, if 100,000 players participate in the draw, there would be 100 lucky players who get it on their first try, and about 90 lucky players who get it on their second try…
If there were unlimited quantities of these valuable items, that wouldn’t be an issue.
But what if, to maintain the item’s value, the official wants to limit it to 500 or 1,000 copies?
With this drawing method, the ones who actually get the items might not be those who spent the most money, but those who are truly lucky.
A wealthy player might spend thousands without getting it, while someone else might get it on their first try.
If these lucky players take them all, the wealthy players would feel psychologically imbalanced whether they got the item or not, because even if they did get it, they definitely spent far more than the lucky ones.
Luck and financial power would be imbalanced.
So, game companies often set a prerequisite condition: only after spending a certain amount of money is it possible to draw this item, and the more money spent, the higher the chance of getting it.
This approach also aligns with most players’ psychological expectations: it’s normal not to get it after just one draw; it’s reasonable for a wealthy player to get it after dozens of tries.
But in reality, this has all been arranged by game manufacturers through false probability.
Through this method, game companies ensure the consumption experience of wealthy players, thereby maintaining their desire to spend, and naturally also protecting their own revenue and reputation.
The interests of a small group of truly lucky players are sacrificed, but this doesn’t matter because they don’t know they’re truly lucky, don’t know they could have drawn this valuable item on their first try, and think it’s normal that they didn’t get it.
Moreover, players have no way to verify the authenticity of the data, because both the detailed rules of the lucky draw and the data after drawing are in the hands of the game company—players have no channel to access them.
Mr. Pei’s drawing model was clearly true probability, meaning 20% was truly 20%. It didn’t matter if 1,000 people couldn’t draw it even after twenty tries—they’d just get a full refund and that would be that.
After deeply comparing these two different lucky draw models, Qiao Liang suddenly had an idea.
“Could it be that Mr. Pei wants to deconstruct the traditional lucky draw model through this new type of drawing mechanism? To make some players realize that what they think of as lucky draws are merely operating within a framework drawn by game companies?”
“And Tenda’s lucky draw actually actively breaks this framework, giving players an absolutely fair but somewhat uncomfortable true probability?”
“But… that’s an almost impossible task!”
Qiao Liang couldn’t help but feel deep respect for Mr. Pei.
False probability had long accompanied lucky draw systems, and even before many games included drawing features, some websites and apps had already implemented it.
But after so many years, very few people had questioned this practice.
Instead, more and more players began to get used to and become enthusiastic about lucky draws, while more and more merchants researched various types of draws that ostensibly cared about player experience but actually made it easier for them to make money.
For game companies, the lucky draw system was equivalent to a stable money tree, to the extent that whether it was PC games, mobile games, or even just random activities by merchants, they all frequently included lucky draws.
If some profit, others must lose.
Game companies love lucky draw activities so much because they definitely don’t lose.
So who loses? Isn’t that obvious?
Mr. Pei’s lucky draw system was clearly meant to pierce this veil, to tell players the cruel truth and change the status quo!
Of course, the current situation wasn’t optimistic.
Because the vast majority of players don’t possess relevant knowledge about game design, and human nature is to enjoy taking chances and getting advantages.
Many people like lucky draws. If you talk to them seriously about probability, expected value, and how draws are a rip-off, they simply won’t listen. They’ll always believe they’re the lucky ones, and even after being ripped off and spending a large sum of money to draw a pile of garbage, they’ll still stubbornly say it was just bad luck this time, and next time they’ll definitely draw what they want.
Ordinary merchants will obviously do everything possible to tell consumers that lucky draws are a promotional activity where players and merchants mutually benefit, and that participating in a lucky draw is cost-effective.
At most, they might include a tiny line of text in the lucky draw activity saying: “Draws involve risks, please charge responsibly.”
But such warnings are definitely minuscule, and most people won’t pay attention to them anyway.
After all this analysis, Qiao Liang reached a rather shocking conclusion.
“Isn’t Mr. Pei’s behavior cutting off the revenue stream for all lucky draws?”
“Although it might not necessarily succeed, Mr. Pei is indeed trying to use ‘Fitness Battle’s’ lucky draw system to contrast with other draws, helping everyone see more clearly the reality of so-called lucky draws.”
“Even if ultimately not many people will appreciate it, even if it will attract crazy attacks from other companies hoping to profit from lucky draws, he doesn’t care at all.”
“What painstaking effort!”
Qiao Liang couldn’t help but sigh that only Mr. Pei would do this, be willing to do this, and dare to do this!
It’s just that most people’s reactions were too slow; they completely failed to perceive Mr. Pei’s good intentions.
A video must be made to properly explain the key points—Mr. Pei’s efforts shouldn’t be in vain!
Finger Company and Longyu Group’s lucky draw activities seemed very generous, but that was only in comparison to other extremely exploitative draws, making them appear generous.
In reality, it was the same old trick. Even with a 70% discount, they were still finding ways to make money from players!
Compared to Tenda’s approach, how could that be called generous?