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今日话题:实时视频聊天能够提高用户社交游戏体验吗?

发布时间:2010-11-30 10:02:35 Tags:,

目前来讲社交游戏是facebook平台用户粘性最好的应用程序,但是事实上这些游戏中的大部分看起来并不怎么互动,甚至有人称之为粗燥的单机版加上了一些机械的相互间操作。

myyearbok-omgpop

myyearbok-omgpop

而游戏中的社交互动性可能一直是游戏开发者着重施加的核心,Digital Chocolate社交游戏主设计师 Aki Jarvinen就专门针对这个话题进行了一番探讨。另外一个相对小型专门针对年轻用户的社交网站MyYearbook则向用户提供了游戏时的视频聊天服务,用以改善社交游戏中的用户互动体验。

和其他社交网站一样,社交游戏也是MyYearbook用户粘性最强的功能之一,每天登录用户都会有超过三分之一的时间在玩社交游戏。为了加强游戏玩家之间的互动,他们和OMGPOP、Heyzap和Viximo等开发者协作,推出带有视频功能组件的社交游戏。

wrong-social-graph

wrong-social-graph

像facebook游戏之类的社交游戏看起来用户之间的互动都不是同步的,而带有视频组件社交游戏则能够从好友群中发现在线用户,并进行即时互动。

现在我们的问题在游戏本身的社交互动不是从游戏本身挖掘而是寄望于外在的辅助性工具,这样的社交互动真的能够有效改善用户的社交体验吗?

毕竟如果只是单纯通过辅助性工具让玩家看起来互动了即时的游戏交互,而不是从游戏本身的交互性入手,好像他们偷换了玩家的互动概念,因为视频可能取代了游戏本身的价值。

Playdom公司David Rohrl曾表示,游戏的交互性需要做到让玩家感觉在同朋友们一起玩(甚至在他们实际上没有在的时候也是)。但是现在视频看起来更像是绑架了游戏交互,而不是增进了用户游戏体验。

之前以色列新兴公司Rounds也试图推出类似的社交游戏视频服务,满足玩家一边游戏一边聊天的需求。让玩家之间的游戏互动更加同步,但是可能因为它对玩家的同时在线率要求更高,到现在为止也没看到有更多的开发者采纳了他们的新功能。

myyearbook-games

myyearbook-games

MyYearbook年营收在2200万美元左右,月活跃用户在470万,每月有将近10亿的页面访问。(本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com 编译 转载请注明:游戏邦)

In general, the key driver of social networking so far is games on Facebook. But most of those games aren’t social in the way that playing Monopoly or cards with your friends and family over the holidays is social. MyYearbook, which is a small but profitable social network focussing on younger teenage users, is going to try to make online games more social by getting its members to play together at the same time. The site has 4.7 million active visitors a month generating nearly 1 billion pageviews. It has about 1 million active users every day who spend a third of their time playing games and using other apps. The company makes its money from virtual currency and in-game offers, and is on track to make about $22 million in revenues this year, according to CEO Geoff Cook。

In mid-December, myYearbook will launch a new set of a dozen live games which will combine casual games with live video chat. These are basic games like Warship, Gin Rummy, Chess, Checkers, line of Four, and Tic Tac Toe. MyYearbook is also partnering OMGPOP (which specializes in live online games), Heyzap, and Viximo to bring some of their games into myYearbook with a live video component.

These aren’t amazing games. That is not what they are about. They are designed to get people to interact with one another, to make new friends or to flirt. They are games everybody knows and everybody can play.

“Our take on social games is to help you meet new people,” says Cook. He is betting big on synchronous games that can be played live with everyone present at the same time. Most games on Facebook are asynchronous—players take turns whenever they happen to be online and games can drag on for days. Only five of the top 100 games are synchronous. Facebook has the “wrong social graph” for realtime games because the chances that one of your friends is online right now and wants to play a game with you aren’t that great (see slide at right).

MyYearbook takes a different approach, using games as a social lubricant to get you to play with people you don’t know. There are a lot more of those people online at any given time. Gamers will be able to specify what types of people they want to play with using filters to sort by gender, age, and location. In order to avoid the Chatroulette problem of guys exposing themselves over live video, an extensive flagging and moderation system will be in place. Since every member has to be logged in, violators can be blocked from the system. But myYearbook also employs 20 moderators, which will increase to 50 moderators just to police the system.

Another Chatroulette problem Cook hopes to avoid is people constantly hitting the next button to find other players. Players will gain or lose karma points depending on how long they play, and if they get to zero karma points, they will be blocked from playing for a certain amount of time.

For realtime gaming to takes off on myYearbook, however, it will need better games. Partnering with gaming companies like OMGPOP and other developers is the way to make these games more compelling. If myYearbook can become the place where teenagers go online to hang out and play games, plenty of developers will want to create games for the platform. (source:techrcunch)


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