日前，在2011年的手机游戏论坛上，蒂姆·哈里森（Tim Harrison）主持开展了首场座谈会，第一个话题就是Android和Android Market。

来自谷歌的安迪·史密斯（Andy Smith）认为，“Android Market正在不断发展，我们不讨论它未来的功能如何，但你现在已经可以发现Android Market已经有所改观，虽然变化不大，但总算是一种进步。”

当然，开发商对于Android的很多方面都不是很满意，尤其是手机操作系统的分散性。Scott-Slade表示，“虽然谷歌说Android并不存在手机平台分散性的问题，实际上这种情况还是有的，这一点降低了我针对Android平台开发游戏的热情”。

MGF 2011-website

关于应用商店及下载量

哈里森把话题转向了像亚马逊这样的Android第三方应用商店，并向Lima Sky公司代表Igor Pusenjak了解《涂鸦跳跃》（Doodle Jump）等游戏在这一市场上的发展潜力。

Pusenjak表示，“想通过Android平台创收，就得开发免费游戏，如果Android能像iOS一样提供更多选择就更好了”。

接下来是Ten Billionth App Man的代表Oli Christie，他讲述了《Paper Glider》在App Store的下载情况，“我估计它有1%的机会成为创造十亿分之一下载量的应用，我们上周在英国App Store的免费iPhone应用榜单上排行第一，在美国也进入了前五名”。

Mobile Pie公司的Will Luton则讨论了媒体广告和市场营销等方面的话题。

他认为，进入消费者媒体的视线很困难，为了更好地运营，他们更多关注贸易媒体。

来自ustwo公司的Mills则开玩笑表示，他们一般只说自己表现得很差，但这一点其实也让他们的形象更加特立独行。其他开发商绝不会谈失败教训，或者开发应用如何耗财，希望他们很快也能进入晒晒成功经验的开发商行列。

Matthew Wiggens则表示，树立形象并不能为开发商带来更多玩家，“你得有高质量的内容，然后才能通过好口碑获得发展”。

Will认为，“各个手机平台的曝光率非常关键，你的游戏图标和名称极为重要”。

但Mills却另有看法，“光有好图标没有用，得有大量的用户规模才行。”

曾在AdMob任职的安迪·史密斯表示，投放大量广告的效果可以持续好几天，因为一旦你的游戏在App Store榜单名列前茅，自然就会推动游戏下载量。

据游戏邦了解，该座谈会上有人认为5000美元的广告投入太多了，但史密斯的建议是，“可以先在小市场上投放广告试试效果”。

媒体推广的力量

Ten Billionth Man的代表认为，“手机与手机平台之间的交叉推广，有助于增加游戏曝光率。现在市场上有700万款手机应用，所以交叉促销对我们来说应该很可行”。

接着又引发了有关TouchArcade论坛评论效果的讨论。Simon Oliver表示它对《Rolando》帮助很大，但Ten Billionth App Man却表示积极的评论对Neon Play的影响并不大。

Wiggens表示，“TouchArcade论坛对我们很反感，因为《Wonderland》是个免费游戏”。

Igor Pusenjak也略有所思，“我们的广告有成功也有失败的，苹果App Store的推荐功能让我们在排名上占优，但这种优势持续不了多久。如果要保持前25强的排名优势，通过用户与好友之间的大量传播形成口碑效应”。为了保持这种优势，《涂鸦跳跃》在版本更新、绑定Twitter功能上做了大量的工作。因为没有足够的广告空间和划算的每点击下载成本，所以他们认为交叉推广，尤其是与《口袋上帝》（Pocket God）团队的合作效果更明显，但即使是这种方法也只是在一定时间内管用。

免费促销策略

据游戏邦了解，这次座谈会还讨论了OpenFeint或FreeAppADay的应用推荐效果。

Scott-Slade表示，他们开发过Flash游戏，他们的一些游戏已经被玩过上亿次了。向Flash玩家推广iOS游戏很可行，他们开发Flash游戏主要是为了支持iOS游戏的发行。

Will Luton谈到了免费促销策略。

他表示，“我们曾通过OpenFeint开展为期一天的免费促销活动，当时新增下载量就达10万次，但当我们把价格调回来时，付费下载量就只有少得可怜的7次。可见是我们自己让游戏贬值了。可以考虑使用这些促销工具，但要有可靠的运营模式。”

Wiggins则认为，游戏运营只有免费和付费两条路可走。

安迪·史密斯对于游戏促销有自己的看法，他认为仅打造一款成功的游戏是远远不够的，“Backflip和Rovio为它们的公司树立了长期品牌，开发商得明白权衡长期的利益”。

未来发展目标

Pusenjak表示，他们的故事就是俩兄弟一起通过开发游戏过上快乐的日子。新闻媒体总是追踪那些创造数百万销量的应用，但也有许多独立开发商不求百万销量，只图自己开心就好。

Matthew Wiggens的自我评价是，“我们把《Wonderland》打造成了一个很成功，很有创意的项目……开发商存在两种极端：一是作为游戏开发爱好者；二是成为只追求利润的公司。我希望介于两者之间，将来既能开发更好的游戏，又能够施加文化影响力”。

Simon Oliver的游戏《Rolando》卖了成千上万份，但他却笑称，“我曾经想开放一款游戏，能卖到3000份就好”。

最后为问答环节：

问：觉得Mac App Store怎么样？

Ten Billionth App Man：Neon Play会向这个应用商店移植一些游戏。

Lima Sky表示会面向它开发一些游戏，但目前用户要玩游戏得先下载安装这个应用商店，所以它的用户数量还很少。

Mills：除非你已经树立了自己的品牌，否则就得准备打一场硬仗。

Maxwell Scott-Slade：我们肯定会向它投放游戏，也许会是《Plunderland》这款新游戏。

问：除了iOS外，还有其他100个销售渠道。你们对它们的看法是？

Igor Pusenjak：如果你在iOS上很成功，你就会开始考虑其他平台，但要怎么出击这些市场呢？要么独自作战，要以和其他的发行商联手，就像我们与Realnetworks合作一样。

Ten Billionth App Man：今年我们开始考虑Android平台，因为它的用户群体很庞大。可能还会考虑WP7, Ovi和黑莓。

问：EA圣诞节前的99美分促销价格战对你们可有影响？

Matthew Wiggens：我们是免费游戏，所以没什么影响，但我的不少朋友就麻烦了。我想Gameloft应该最郁闷。

Igor Pusenjak：EA在万圣节前也是这么做的，我认为这对销量并没有什么影响。只是很想知道，如果EA这些游戏的价格一直是99美分会怎么样，不过我想出于成本考虑，EA也不会这么做。（本文为游戏邦编译/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

MGF 2011: The future for indie developers with Lima Sky, HandCircus, Wonderland, ustwo… and Google?

Developers are the new King Makers says panel chair Tim Harrison, introducing the first panel talk of MGF 2011 entitled ‘Fresh blood and indie developer panel: game discovery’.

And it’s certainly an impressive line up, with Igor Pusenjak from Lima Sky (Doodle Jump, Andy Smith, Google’s industry head, mills from ustwo (MouthOff, Oli Christie, or the Ten Billionth App Man from Neon Play (Paper Glider), Matthew Wiggens of Wonderland (GodFinger, Maxwell Scott-Slade of JohnnyTwoShoes (Plunderland, Will Luton of Mobile Pie (MyStar, and Simon Oliver of HandCircus (Rolando).

The first discussion is about Android and the Android Market.

“It’s an evolving marketplace,” says Andy Smith of Google. “We don’t talk about future features, but as you can see even today we have changed the graphics you can show in the Android Market. It’s a small change but it’s a change.”

Of course, the developers aren’t keen on many aspects of Android, especially fragmentation.

“Google tells me fragmentation doesn’t exist. But it does and it makes me less inclined to develop for Android,” said Scott-Slade.

Lots of stores, lots of downloads

Harrison switches tack to third party app stores such as Amazon, asking Igor Pusenjak about the potential to sell a game such as Doodle Jump.

“The only way to monetise on Android is with free games. It would be nice to have other options as in iOS,” says Pusenjak.

Next up it’s the Ten Billionth App Man, Oli Christie, who tells the story about how his game Paper Glider was the ten billionth app to be downloaded from the App Store.

“We reckon we had a 1 percent chance of being the ten billionth app because we were #1 in the UK free iPhone chart and top 5 in the US that weekend,” he says modestly.

Then Harrison asks Will Luton about press and marketing.

“It’s difficult to get into consumer press and get that sort of access. We do work for hire and so trade press has been more of a focus,” he says.

“We talk about how badly we’re doing,” says mills, ever the joker. “It’s given us a profile to build on. No one else was talking about failure and how it’s expensive to build apps. Hopefully we’ll be able to talk about our successes soon.”

Matthew Wiggens says building status as a developer doesn’t gain you players. “You have to make something of quality and it will organically grow with word of mouth,” he argues.

“Discoverability on-device is key,” replies Will. “Your icon and your app name are key.”

“But you still need people to see the icon,” says mills.

Andy Smith, who used to work at AdMob says burst advertising can work over a couple of days, because once you have high chart placement in an app store, the game will sell itself.

“You can use small markets and do test advertising,” Smith says, when the other panelists complain that even $5,000 spent on advertising is too much.

Power of the press?

“Mobile to mobile is the key for discoverability in terms of cross promotion. We have seven million apps out there and cross promotion works really for us,” says the Ten Billionth Man.

There’s then a discussion of whether TouchArcade works. Simon Oliver said it worked for Rolando, while the Ten Billionth App Man said a good review didn’t have any effect for Neon Play.

“The TouchArcade forums hate us because Wonderland is a free game,” says Matthew Wiggens.

“We’re done successful adverts and unsuccessful adverts, Apple features have pushed us to the top but didn’t keep us there. You need the momentum of friend recommendations to remain in the top 25,” ponders Igor Pusenjak.

“It took time for features such as doing a lot of updates for Doodle Jump and additions like twitter integration to build momentum.”

“And no one can give you enough volume or a low enough cost per download of say around $3 per download – which we would use – for such advertising to make sense for us.

“Cross promotion has worked very well for us, especially working with the Pocket God guys, but even those things stop being effective after a while, ” Pusenjak says.

The free push

What about things like OpenFeint or FreeAppADay? asks Tim Harrison.

“We come from the Flash community and some of our games have been played over hundreds of millions of times,” says Maxwell Scott-Slade.

“I think there’s a lot of potential to cross promote our iOS games to Flash gamers. We’ve developed Flash games specifically to support our iOS releases.”

Will Luton talks about going free.

“We did around 100,000 downloads via OpenFeint’s Free game of the Day promotion but when we put the price back we only got about 7 paid sales. You’ve devalued your game. These tools can work but your model has to be build around,” he says

Wiggins: “You have either to do a free game or a paid game.”

Andy Smith has another angle on promotion – it doesn’t have to be about the success of a single game.

“Backflip and Rovio are building a longterm brand for their companies,” he says. “Studios need to know what it is will bring them long term value.”

What’s your goal?

“Our story is that two brothers are making a good living making apps. The press love the million sales stories, but there are lots of indies who are happy to be making a good living and not selling millions of games,” says Pusenjak.

“We set up Wonderland to be a very successful, creative business,” argues Matthew Wiggens.

“There are two extremes of being a hobbyist developer or being a company that’s just about profit. I want to be inbetween the two, making successful games so can I make even better games in future and have a cultural effect.”

“I wanted to make a game, maybe sell 3,000 copies of Rolando,” laughs Simon Oliver, who sold over a hundred thousand copies of the game.

Now we move onto questions.

Q: What about the Mac App Store?

Ten Billionth App Man: Neon Play will port some games.
Lima Sky will release games for it, but the store currently has to been downloaded so the numbers are low at the moment.
mills: If you have a brand, yes. But otherwise you have to pick your battles.
Maxwell Scott-Slade: We will definitely release for it, maybe a version of Plunderland, certainly new IP

Q: There are 100 sales channels apart from iOS. What do you think about them?

Igor Pusenjak: If you’re successful on iOS, you look at all other platforms, but how do you attack them? You either grow your company or partner with the publisher who can attack them all at once as we did with our Realnetworks deal.
Ten Billionth App Man: We’re looking to Android this year. The numbers mean it would be crazy not to do it. Potentially WP7, Ovi and BlackBerry too.

Q: What was the impact of EA’s Xmas 99c price war?

Matthew Wiggens: We’re free so didn’t affect us, but annoyed a lot of my friends. And I think it cheesed off Gameloft.
Igor Pusenjak: EA did the same thing for Halloween. I don’t think it had a impact in terms of sales. I would be curious what happened if EA kept all its games at 99c, but I don’t think it can afford to do that.（Source：pocketgamer）