作者：Mike Sego

5月24日是Facebook平台开放4周年纪念日。2007年5月24日，在挤满计算机迷和梦想家的大厅中，Mark Zuckerberg在舞台上发表声明：“今天，我们将一起开始一场运动。”他将社交网络的效能（游戏邦注：人们联系和分享信息）展现出来，吸引世界各地开发商的注意。

有些独立开发商勇当先驱者，开始制作我们现在所谓的“社交游戏”。最初获得很大的成功，这些游戏利用用户的好友开展病毒式营销，使得免费增值业务模式迅速带来效益。Zynga就是这样崛起的，这家公司证明了社交游戏可以发展至此前其他游戏从未达到的高度。投资者渐渐开始对这片领域感兴趣，业界对社交游戏感到好奇和轻蔑者也不乏其众，这一行业的克隆和模仿习气同样令人印象深刻。大量追随者向平台投放了许多类似的黑帮、农场、水族、餐厅和城市游戏，许多人获得成功并从中看到巨大的商机。

4年来，社交游戏领域发生了许多事件，但我仍然有个问题：真正的社交游戏在哪里？

我不是说Facebook上没有游戏，据统计其数量至少超过20万。我也不是说Facebook上没有真正很棒的游戏。我想说的是，作为各种用户都可以使用的游戏平台，Facebook上可为人人所体验的游戏确实非常有限。

像模拟游戏之类的某些题材确实很多，但许多类型的游戏较少甚至完全不存在。那些过去数十年为其他游戏平台所掌控的题材在哪里呢？对那些喜欢Nintendo DS和Xbox的玩家来说，他们喜欢的Facebook游戏在哪里呢？许多人辩解说社交游戏主要面对的是45岁的妇女。确实，“休闲玩家”和“非游戏玩家”是为目前流行社交游戏创收的生力军。但如果你退一步看看总值400亿美元的游戏行业，大部分贡献并非出自“非游戏玩家”。这种想法听起来像很不可思议，但游戏盈利的确基本上由钟爱游戏的人来带动。许多社交游戏开发商和行业分析人士还未明白，持续专注于面对相同用户的雷同题材是个错误的选择。

但是，这种错误是可以理解的。由于社交游戏领域缺乏相关规范，开发商急于复制他人作品的现象也因此循环不断。这些游戏却似乎很有市场，能够带来大量的收益。但同时，这种循环使得游戏的发展停滞不前，也使得平台完全失去其可能含有的优势。

已经过去4年时间，但只有少数开发商意识到这种状况。无论玩家们怎么想，我认为公众对Facebook游戏的诉求还未彻底得到满足。社交平台可以让玩家马上与朋友一起玩最喜欢的游戏，而且用户每天都在免费使用这种服务，这对用户来说有极大的吸引力，尤其对那些喜欢玩游戏的人。现在还有大量玩家没有在Facebook上玩游戏，但是如果该平台上游戏种类更多，他们可以玩到的题材更为丰富，可能这些人就会转向社交平台。

monster-galaxy(from cheatspulse.com)

对Gaia Online来说，这就是我们的指导性原则，我们正逐步让更多玩家投入Facebook游戏中。我们最近发布的游戏《Monster Galaxy》玩家数已超过1000万，而原因很简单：我们观察了过去二十年来最受欢迎的控制器游戏，很快发现宠物收集角色扮演这个题材还未出现在Facebook上。我们组建起小团队，花四个月的时间专注于美工、角色和游戏可玩性，这些都是导致这个题材成功的必要成分。随后我们将传统游戏机制和该平台上独特的社交协作元素结合起来。发布之后玩家的反响异常强烈，我们屡次听到玩家表示是《Monster Galaxy》将他们带入社交游戏世界中。这些人喜欢控制器游戏，他们是玩着这些游戏长大的，但此前从未青睐Facebook上的任何游戏。不久之后事情就变得清晰起来，我们的行为不仅是成功的，而且是可以复制的。

许多大型公司采用类似的方法，深化Facebook游戏的题材，将传统题材融入社交元素，随后获得巨大的成功。《Backyard Monsters》是我最喜欢的游戏之一，这款获得巨大成功的战略游戏由Kixeye开发。塔防游戏长久以来是flash游戏网站上最受欢迎的游戏题材，而在Facebook平台问世头三年，这种题材完全没有出现。

另一个较为著名的游戏是《Gardens of Time》，这款用户迅速增长的新游戏出自Playdom之手。如果你访问大型网游门户网站（游戏邦注：如Big Fish和Yahoo等），你会看到最受欢迎的游戏中有隐藏图案游戏。然而，开发商花了将近4年的时间才在Facebook平台上开发出高质量的隐藏图案游戏。此类游戏获得空前的欢迎，《Gardens of Time》在不到两个月的时间里玩家数增加至1000万，而且还在不断攀升。

尽管这一行业走到今天已有4年时间，但我觉得社交游戏运动现在才真正开始。许多公司已渐渐明白如何利用Facebook平台带来的机遇获得发展。此前遗失的游戏题材会慢慢出现，“社交游戏”最终将突破目前的限制性，满足所有玩家的诉求，社交网络最终将成长为最大的游戏平台。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The movement is (still) just beginning for games on Facebook

Mike Sego

May 24th marks the four year anniversary of the launch of the Facebook platform. On that day in 2007, in a hall crowded with hackers and dreamers, I watched Mark Zuckerberg announce on stage that “today, together, we’re going to start a movement.” In one fell swoop, he opened up the power of social networks – the ability for people to connect and share – to developers everywhere.

What has happened since has been a wild ride. There was the rush of independent developers, the early pioneers who began creating what we know now as “social games.” There were the initial success stories, games that stumbled upon the winning formula of leveraging the friend graph for viral growth combined with a freemium business model to achieve rapid profitability. There was the stratospheric rise of Zynga, the company that proved that social games could grow to a scale where no games have gone before. There was increasing interest from investors, decreasing faith from independents, and everything from curiosity to contempt from the rest of the gaming industry. And throughout it all, there were clones. Numerous fast-followers of all shapes and sizes delivering as many near-identical mafia/farm/aquarium/restaurant/city games as the platform could support, with several finding success and discovering just how huge the opportunity is.

So with everything that has happened in social gaming for the past four years, I still am left wondering: where are all the games?

I’m not saying there are no games on Facebook– at last count there are over 200,000. I’m also not saying there aren’t some truly great games on Facebook. What I am saying is that, as a gaming platform, and one that provides access to reach approximately every internet user of all ages and interests, the available game offerings are very limited.

There are some genres, like simulation games, that are very well covered, but so many more that range from lacking to entirely absent. Where are the tried and true genres that have dominated other gaming platforms for the last several decades? Where are the Facebook games for my teenage cousin who loves playing her Nintendo DS, or my brother who loves to play Xbox? Many have argued that social games mainly just appeal to 45-year-old women. While it’s true that “casual gamers” and “non-gamers” provide the majority of revenues generated in the currently popular social games, if you take a step back and consider the entire $40 billion gaming industry, it is not generated by “non-gamers.” It sounds like an absurd tautology, but most of the gaming industry is fueled by people who love games. The fact that many social gaming developers and industry analysts haven’t caught up yet and continue to focus on the same genres for the same audience is a mistake.

But, it’s an understandable mistake. The history of social gaming, with its relative lack of regulation, led developers rushing to clone whatever seemed to work, following each other in circles, and ultimately arriving at a small handful of hyper-optimized local maxima. These games indeed work incredibly well, and have been very profitable. At the same time, this running in circles has halted the forward movement, and left the platform completely missing the seemingly obvious, and in some cases, significantly larger opportunities possible when game developers operate from first principles.

It has taken four years but a few developers are starting to realize this. And whether or not gamers themselves actively recognize, I believe the demand for games on Facebook isn’t being met by the current supply. The value proposition of being able to instantly play your favorite games, with your friends, through a service you’re already using every day, all for free — that’s compelling to any audience, especially those who love playing games. This leaves us with an enormous population of gamers who currently don’t play games on Facebook but will once a wider variety of games and genres become available.

Here at Gaia Online, these beliefs are our guiding principles and we’re part of the movement towards expanding Facebook’s gaming offerings to reach more gamers. Our most recent game, Monster Galaxy, has grown to over 10 million players and all stemmed from a simple exercise: we looked at the most popular console games from the past two decades for inspiration and quickly found that one of the most beloved genres, the pet-collection RPG, was almost completely absent on Facebook. We assembled a small team to spend about four months focusing on the artwork, characters, and gameplay — the necessary components that drive the success of this genre. We then combined the classic game mechanics with unique social collaboration elements only made possible by the platform. Upon launch, the feedback was very encouraging — we’d hear time and time again from our most highly engaged players that Monster Galaxy was what finally got them playing social games. These were people who loved console games and played games growing up but hadn’t yet grown attached to any of the games on Facebook. What soon became clear was that our simple exercise was not only successful, but repeatable.

Several leading companies are taking a similar approach, expanding Facebook games into more genres, bringing in social elements powered by the friend graph, and finding great success. One of my favorite games, Backyard Monsters, is a majorly successful strategy game developed by Kixeye. Tower-defense games have long been among the most popular genres on flash gaming sites but for the first three years of the Facebook platform, this genre was entirely absent.

Another notable example is Gardens of Time, the rapidly growing new game from Playdom. If you visit any large online gaming portal, from Big Fish to Yahoo, you’ll find hidden object games to be among the most popular games. And yet, it has taken nearly four years for a developer to invest into creating a high quality hidden object game you can play with your friends on Facebook. When this game finally arrived, the response was profound: Gardens of Time has grown to 10 million players in under two months and continues to rise up the charts.

It has taken four years but I feel as though the social gaming movement is finally gaining momentum; companies that understand what’s happening and tap into the true potential of the Facebook platform stand to gain an enormous advantage. The missing genres will continue to get filled in and as developers rise to the challenge to meet the demand, “social gaming” will break out of its current limitations, appeal to all players and grow to become larger than any other gaming platform ever. (Source: Game Zebo)