作者简介：伊恩·马斯特（Ian Masters）自1998年开始创作电子游戏，是手机游戏开发公司AirPlay和Yum Games的创始人，曾与世嘉（Sega）、索尼、南梦宫（Mamco）进行游戏开发合作，目前还创立了一家名为Plant Pot的游戏公司。

新兴产业总能让幻想成为下一个洛克菲勒的人睁大眼睛高度关注，而时有耳闻的那些一夜发迹的案例也总是让人心生痒痒，“那家伙只利用清闲的功夫就开发出了一款应用，然后日进斗金，现在已经不用给人打工了。”谁还没听说过《愤怒鸟》（Angry Birds）呢？芬兰开发商Rovio光靠这款游戏就实现了iPhone付费版本的1500万次下载量，它的跨平台下载量已经超过3500万次。关于这一行的另一个消息是，在苹果App Store的应用营收中，游戏应用占了75%。这年头不论是大牌游戏公司、独立开发者还是乳臭未干的毛头小子似乎都正一窝蜂地涌向应用开发领域。

Super-Yum-Yum

成功吸金者只是一小撮人

但事情远非听起来的这么简单。媒体总是不厌其烦地替那些叫好叫座的游戏和成功的淘金者背书（想想看，谁不喜欢皆大欢喜的故事结局呢？），事实上，靠手机游戏赚钱并不容易。在去年3月，独立游戏节（Independent Games Festival）名誉主席Simon Carlesss曾在一个会议上公布了一组数据：90%的iPhone应用颗粒无收，仅7%的应用幸运地实现收支平衡，只有更少的3%开发商实现了盈利。如果你也和我一样是个独立开发者，那就要掂量清楚了，这个消息可是一剂清醒药哪。

iOS产品（iPhone、iPod touch和iPad）应用安装数量仅用了18个月时间就增长了四倍多，从原来的3000万次飙升到1.2亿次，而且这一数据还在不断攀高。难道这就能说明开发商的游戏销量也同样在呈四倍增长吗？当然不是。因为新款手机应用虽然也在四倍增长，每月都会出炉2万款左右产品，但却没有足够的促销空间，毕竟应用100强榜单的排名位置有限。

那3%盈利的iPhone游戏的营收果然因此增长了吗？我表示怀疑，但相信其中顶尖的0.1%游戏确实在发财。

要有信心和挑战意识

关于手机游戏的创收已经不是什么新鲜话题。早在2002年诺基亚和摩托罗拉推出了一些可无线下载游戏的手机时，手机游戏就已经成为人们关注的热点。当时那些游戏是由Java语言编写，早期的诺基亚7210机型就能运行这些游戏。这类手机的屏幕色彩像素仅128*128，所以要求手机游戏图片、声音等内容的大小要控制在64KB以内。

一些老牌手机游戏仍然面临不少有待解决的问题。讽刺的是，大部分原因都是运营商自己造成的，比如说营收分成低、发行费用高，以及运营商坚持脚踏多条船，向过多平台投放游戏的三心二意等等，这些问题不但让运营商受到重创，而且也束缚了他们的跨平台发展。

回想2002年，当时我已经有多年的PC和掌机游戏制作经验，但觉得具有多重局限的手机游戏更有挑战性。当时我正在设计一款游戏，它对色彩要求比较高（只适用于最新款手机），但不需要很快的加载速度，数字按钮虽然笨拙，但并不影响游戏玩法，很适合非游戏玩家。这款游戏就是《Super Yum Yum》，在一些朋友的帮助下，这款游戏总算是顺利完工。

摩托罗拉游戏开发大赛的现金奖励，刺激了我们的参赛欲望，所以我们满怀期待地将这款游戏提交给组委会，但显然没能打动摩托罗拉的评委。但我们并不气馁，又参加了英国电视电影艺术学院的电子游戏大赛（ BAFTA Video Game Awards），结果在2003年12月传来好消息，我们的游戏入围了。《Super Yum Yum》与《FIFA》、《Hello Kitty》、《Tony Hawk》被共同提名为“最佳手机游戏”，虽然我们最终并没有胜出，但这个经历至少为我打开了又一扇大门，从那以后，我开始有幸与世嘉、索尼和南梦宫等世界大牌游戏公司合作。一句话，如果你都不相信自己能行，其他人更不可能相信你。

运气因素仍然必不可少

回到现在的话题，智能手机和手机游戏的市场都在快速发展，iPhone/iPad、Android、诺基亚、Windows Phone 7、RIM等平台都已经争先涌入市场。游戏（或竞争）目标还是照旧，如果你开发了一款好游戏，最终都得争取更高的曝光率。光是苹果App Store现在就已经有30多万款应用，足见手机应用竞争形势的严峻，在这种情况下，市场上每天都会催生出不少新的发行业务、搜索网站和促销手段。

我能为开发商提供的建议就是，千万不要抱有侥幸心理。手机游戏行业并非一条轻松通往名利的康庄大道，成功者必须具有高度的竞争意识，密切关注苹果平台、游戏评论博客的动向，常与业内人士保持联系，还得要有一个强悍的市场营销方案。即使满足了以上所有条件，你也还是需要一点小小的运气才有可能胜人一筹。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Midweek feature – The Truth about Mobile Games

The emergence of new industries is often accompanied by wide eyed excitement over a fresh opportunity to be the next Rockefeller. Particularly when there are clear success stories being told.  Who hasn’t heard the one about, ‘the guy who developed an app in his spare time, started making £1K per day and quit his job’?  Who hasn’t heard of Angry Birds?  The prodigal game created by Finnish development house Rovio has clocked a stunning 15 million downloads – at 59p a pop, you do the maths – on iPhone alone, with a total of 35 million downloads cross platform.  Add to that that 75% of all Apple App Store revenues are games, is it any wonder brands, developers and pimply teens alike are rushing into app development?

A licence to print money

The problem with success stories is: they make it sound so easy. The press love to report new hits and heroes (hey, who doesn’t love a happy ending?), but in reality, it’s tough. In March last year Simon Carless of the Independent Games Festival presented a conference talk called Indie Game Sales 101.  In it he broadly claimed that 90% of all iPhone apps fail to make any significant money, 7% are lucky to break even and only 3% are profitable. If you’re an independent developer like me this is sobering news.

Over 18 months later and the iOS (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) installed base has more than quadrupled from a confident 30 million to an astonishing 120 million and climbing. Does this mean developers are now selling four times as many games? Sadly not. Mainly because the number of new apps has similarly quadrupled to around 20,000 per month, but also because there simply isn’t enough space to promote them. After all, the Top 100 just can’t get any bigger.

Has that 3% of iPhone games making money actually improved? I seriously doubt it. Although there’s no question the top 0.1% are raking it in.

Making mobile

Making money from mobile games is not a new problem either. Mobile games have been ‘the next big thing’ since back in 2002 when Nokia and Motorola began releasing devices that could download games over-the-air. These games were written in Java when early devices like the Nokia 7210 were the bee’s knees. The screen resolution was a low but useable 128×128 colour pixels and your game, including all graphics and sound, had to fit inside a miniscule 64KB.

Mobile games of old struggled with their own set of problems. Ironically, most caused by the operators themselves, including poor revenue shares, high data charges and operators insisting on porting to hundreds if not thousands of handsets – something that not only crippled most developers but prevented them from pushing the boundaries of the hardware.

Back in 2002, I’d been making PC and console games for years, but the challenge of making a game for mobile phones within such limitations was something I relished. More than that though, I had been working on a game design that with some modifications could be a perfect match. It relied on colour, something only the very latest handsets had and it didn’t rely on fast processing. The clunky number buttons would not harm the gameplay and it was casual enough to be enjoyed by non-gamers. The game was called Super Yum Yum and thanks to the help of a few friends it quickly became a reality.

Motivation was provided courtesy of a Motorola development competition with cash prizes for the winners. We expectantly entered the game and Motorola proceeded to completely ignore it. Not to be deterred, we had the crazy idea of entering it into the BAFTA Video Game Awards. Months passed and in December 2003 the nominations were finally announced. Wow!  The game had been nominated for Best Mobile Game against the likes of FIFA, Hello Kitty and Tony Hawk. We didn’t win of course but it opened doors and I shall be forever grateful. Some of the opportunities that followed including working with Sega, Sony and Namco on some of the biggest gaming brands in the world.  In short, if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else is going to.

Mobile today

Back to the present, both smartphones and games are rapidly growing in presence. Apart from the iPhone/iPad, new Android, Nokia, Windows 7, and RIM devices are pouring into the market. The aim of the game (excuse the pun) hasn’t changed, if you can make a good game then in the end it all comes down to one thing: discoverability. With over 300,000 apps in the App Store alone this has become so important in achieving mobile success that there are new publishing businesses, websites and promotional schemes springing up daily to help crack this problem.

My advice to developers? Make sure you do everything to eliminate the luck factor. The reality of the mobile gaming industry today is that it’s still not an easy ticket to fame or success. It takes deep knowledge of your competition; strong connections with Apple (to get your game featured), games review blogs and industry people; and a killer marketing plan to get traction. Even with all of that in place, you’re going to need more than a little bit of luck.（source:metro.co.uk）