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简述社交游戏的玩家类型、要素及发展方向

发布时间:2011-06-11 15:15:37 Tags:,,

作者:Abhishek Buchvani

过去数年间,我们发现游戏正逐渐从传统硬核题材淡出,而转向休闲和社交游戏。这并非巧合,改变归因于Facebook和智能手机的崛起,这些平台向全新的用户群体敞开游戏大门。现在,随着开发商们争先通过这些新市场来盈利,问题也就产生了。谁是新游戏玩家?他们想要什么游戏?

玩家类型

审视社交游戏玩家后,我们会看到许多令人惊奇的统计数据。据Flurry调查,社交游戏玩家主要为女性,大部分玩家年龄介于18至49岁之间。可能有些人会说这些数据表明所有玩《Farmville》的人都是无聊的家庭主妇,但事实并非如此。社交游戏玩家男女性别比例相当(游戏邦注:社交游戏玩家中男性占47%),多数玩家的年龄在18至25岁间。而且,大多用户受过良好教育,61%的玩家至少获得过学士学位。因而,社交游戏并非母亲等待孩子归来的消遣之物,许多年轻人会在工作之余或休闲时间玩此类游戏。

farmville(from solutions.wolterskluwer.com)

farmville(from solutions.wolterskluwer.com)

了解玩家类型,将相应游戏设计技术运用于在线应用设计中,这样应用就可以获得公众的青睐。然而,社交游戏所需的设计方法与传统控制器游戏完全不同。首先,我们必须重新考虑某些核心玩法机制,比如收集、共享和交易等玩家的动作。

合作

在传统控制器游戏中,单人游戏和多人游戏体验通常有很大差异,两种游戏模式完全不同。尽管这种情况在MMO游戏中不多见,但多数控制器游戏包含的是单人游戏和必须在主菜单中单独选择的多人游戏选项。有些游戏开始为玩家提供新形式的多人游戏和合作模式,但仍然只是上述规则的例外而已。但是,社交网络上的游戏是玩家尝试完成各种目标的反馈循环,这些反馈通过网络来提供,途径包括系统本身、玩家个人或整体社群等。在这个世界中,没有单人或多人模式,只有游戏,我们都是游戏的一部分。社交游戏就是你与现实或虚拟好友的社交合作,在此期间产生社交财富并共享和交换经验。

异步玩法

社交游戏具有异步性,也正是人们觉得随时可以回到游戏中的想法让它们如此流行。与MMO游戏(游戏邦注:属于同步游戏)不同,没有开发商会设计让用户每天花上数个小时来玩的游戏,其体验时间被压缩到每天10到20分钟。

留存率

吸引用户只成功了一半,新社交游戏需要利用其中富含技巧性的内容让用户回到游戏中。我们发现保持用户参与度的最佳方法是不断更新,不仅更新内容,还包括游戏功能。社交网络上的流行游戏(游戏邦注:如《Farmville》和《Cityville》等)都保持对内容和功能进行更新,这也是为何用户留在游戏中的原因之一。

玩家社群

玩家社群方面的服务也很重要。你关心用户意见吗?你会接受用户的批评意见吗?你是否会对此做出回应?这些事情都与“留存率”存在关联。所以,你需要恰当处理所有的事情。

平台扩张性

Facebook总用户数超过5亿,有2亿用户通过手机使用Facebook,而且这个数量还在急剧增加。从开发商的角度来看,手机对社交游戏的重要性也是显而易见的。该领域已浮现出许多巨头,如ngmoco(游戏邦注:已被DeNA收购)、Capcom Mobile和Pocket Games等。

其次,游戏内置付费功能产生的收益会超过传统付费下载游戏的盈利。苹果iOS设备上的应用计费系统推动了游戏内置付费功能的交易增长。iOS社交游戏和社交网络新研究表明,应用内销售虚拟商品产生的盈利已显著高于应用内置广告盈利。在免费iOS社交应用中,80%的盈利来自于虚拟商品销售。

有说法称社交游戏会转移至手机平台,尽管现在手机社交平台用户数还不及Facebook,但随着越来越多的人购买智能手机,其用户数量很有可能超过前者。随着苹果App Store和Android Market等应用商店的崛起,游戏开发商也有可靠的方式来销售游戏并通过其盈利。而且这种转变还可能使游戏更具场景化和地域化,让游戏更有趣,收益也可能有所增加。

社交游戏世界的空间比许多人想象的还要大,我们现在只发掘其表面而已。尽管有些开发商匆忙拼凑游戏只为在最短的时间内获得盈利,但他们知道精明的社交游戏玩家很挑剔,这些人只想要最好的产品。虽然游戏世界中已不再完全是我们所熟悉的控制器和PC游戏,但我们正期待看到它的发展方向,希望社交游戏能够成为数年后娱乐方向的巨大推动力。

我们能预测到并为之感到兴奋的是,2011年将会看到手机社交游戏焕发出耀眼的光芒。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Social Games: Inside – Out

Abhishek Buchvani

Over the past few years we’ve seen a tectonic shift in gaming away from traditional, hardcore titles in favor of more casual, social games. It’s no coincidence that this change has occurred alongside the rise of Facebook and smartphones, as these platforms have thrown open the gates of gaming to entirely new demographics. Now as developers scramble to capitalize on these new markets the question becomes who are these new gamers, and what do they want to see?

Demography

When we look at the demographics of social gamers we find a lot of surprising statistics. According to a survey by Flurry social gamers are predominately women, and the majority of players fall in the age range of 18-49. While some would say that this confirms the stereotype that all the people who play Farmville are bored housewives that isn’t the case, as the gender split is almost 50/50 (men make up 47% of social gamers), and the majority of players are actually age 18-25. Furthermore, the audience is educated, with 61% of players holding at least a bachelor’s degree. So instead of moms looking for something to do while waiting for the kids to come home from soccer practice, the average social gamer is probably a young professional playing after work or on breaks.

With these demographics in mind the notion of applying game design techniques to the design of online applications is gaining huge popularity, but it requires a totally different approach to design a games on social network then traditional console games. I For one thing, we have to really reconsider certain core gameplay mechanics; i.e. player actions, such as collecting, sharing and exchange.

Collaboration

In traditional console games the single-player and multiplayer experiences are often walled-off from one another, and game modes are typically very different. While this model is sometimes broken for MMO games, the majority of console fare is comprised of a single-player game and a separate multiplayer component which must be accessed individually on the main menu. Some titles have begun offering drop-in, drop-out multiplayer and co-op, but they’re still the exception rather than the rule. Gameplay in social networks, on the other hand is a feedback loop of player actions that try to accomplish goals, and are given feedback through the network, either through the system itself, or individual players, or community as a whole. In this world there is no single-player or multiplayer, there is only the game, and we’re all a part of it. Social games are all about social collaboration with your real/virtual friends, creating social property, and share/exchange your experience.

Asynchronous Gameplay

However, social games are asynchronous, and it’s precisely that people feel “I can come back to the game anytime,” that make them so popular. Unlike MMOs (a synchronous game) no one would expect/require, or design a game for users to play hours a day. Instead, the experience is distilled down to a 10 -20 minute exercise that players can jump to quickly as they go about their day.

Retention

Hooking players is only half the battle though, as once they’ve found a new social game the tricky part is keeping them coming back for more. We’ve found that the best way to keep players engaged is to constantly update things — not only content, but also feature updates. Very popular games on social networks (i.e. Farmville, Cityville, etc) keep updating their content and features – That ’s one of the reasons why you see the retention there.

Community

Also important is servicing on the community side. Are you listening to users? When a user complains, are you receptive to their critiques? Are you responding to them? It’s a lot of those things combined that eventually result in this thing called “retention”. So, you need to do all these things right.

Platform Explosion

Out of 500 million total users on Facebook, there are 200mn user uses Facebook on mobile, and this number is rapidly increasing. From a developers perspective, mobile’s significance to social gaming is also apparent. There are couple of big players already in this space i.e. ngmoco (acquired by DeNA), capcom mobile, pocketgames etc..

Second, revenues from in-game purchases will overtake revenues from traditional pay-per-download games. Driving that growth for in-game purchases will be the in-app purchasing system on Apple iOS devices. A new study of iOS social games and networks shows in-app sales of virtual goods bringing in significantly more revenue than in-app advertising. The shift means that virtual good sales now represent roughly 80 percent of the revenue generated by free-to-use iOS social apps.

The bet is that social gaming is moving to mobile phones, which, while small compared to Facebook, potentially has a larger audience as more people buy smartphones. With the rise of app stores like Apple’s App Store and Android Market, game makers also have a reliable way to distribute their games and monetize them. As games follow the rest of the web to mobile devices, the opportunities to make them more context- and location-aware will also make them more interesting and perhaps, more profitable.

The world of social gaming is deeper than a lot of people know, and we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface here. While some games that pop up may be hastily thrown together by developers looking to make a quick buck, and understand that social gamers are smart and selective people, and they demand nothing but the best. While this world is completely different than the one we are used to with console and PC gaming, we’re very excited to see where it goes and expect social games to be a huge driving force in entertainment for years to come.

What we can predict and excited about is – 2011 will see the extraordinary shine of mobile social games such as iOS (Apple), Android Market, HTML5 based, and Social Networks. (Source: Gamasutra)


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