作者：Will Luton

1977年，Mattel公司发行了掌机游戏Auto Race。作为世界上第一款掌上电子游戏，Auto Race的地位堪称“无人能及”，而且它的出现也开始让玩家能够获得随时随地的游戏体验。

但是30年后，随着越来越多手机设备的出现和各种各样游戏的普及，掌机游戏体验已不再是一种特殊的存在了。但是，一种新型的功能设计却常为人们所忽略，那就是移动设备的地理定位功能。如果使用得当，这种功能可为用户创造出一种极具吸引力，多变和个性化的游戏体验。直到最近，人们才开始思考如何有效利用这种功能。

地理定位服务（LBS）的人气正不断上升，据统计，仅2010年使用这项服务的美国人就达到3320万，而2009年的同类用户还仅为1230万。虽然多数定位服务与导航系统相关，但Foursquare，SCVNGR和Gowalla等要求用户进行地理签到活动的应用，却创造 了一种基于游戏机制的新型社交服务。

事实证明，这种签到功能具有极大的优势，而且为游戏开发商创造了一些潜在发展机遇，Booyah的《My Town》，Chillingo发行的《Merchant Kingdom》以及Mobile Pie旗下的《My Star》等游戏就是这种成功典型。

本文将详细描述提高用户留存率的几大因素，包括《超级马里奥》和《Farmville》的强制循环游戏机制，以及这种循环机制在社交游戏中的重要性，和如何使用地理定位功能让新玩家成为回头客。同时我也将在文中具体说明《My Star》的地理定位功能以及我的游戏体验，并阐述地理定位功能的一些较不明显，但却很有益处的作用。

强制循环机制

强制循环并不是什么新的机制，可以说它是所有媒介为了提高用户粘性而采用的一种模式。理解并有效使用这种模式，有助于开发者设计出一款有趣的游戏。

强制循环是一种为了推动玩家完成游戏任务而为他们提供一些奖励，并不断重复这个过程的机制。这个过程有助于游戏留住用户，除非他们感觉自己的付出并没有得到相应的回报，或者已经完成所有任务，这个机制才会失效。

这种机制在书籍或者电视等媒介中也同样适用，即通过设置循序渐进的故事情节，让用户为了获知结局或下一个情节点而持续关注其中内容。如果他们对故事情节失去兴趣，那就说明这种强制循环机制已经失灵，他们认为其结局已不值得自己继续关注。

视频游戏中也出现了这种强制性循环机制。就像在《超级马里奥》中，玩家只有完成当前关卡的任务才能获得相应的奖励，即才能进入下一个游戏关卡。但是如果玩家未能完成本关任务，他们将会感到沮丧并认为完成游戏目标的代价太高，而产生退缩感，并最终输掉游戏。相反，如果玩家能够很轻松地达到游戏目标，那么这种目标的价值也将大打折扣，最终也会因此导致玩家对游戏失去兴趣。

那些成功的社交游戏便是合理运用了强制性循环机制，通过有效的时间设置确定了一些较短且有规律的游戏过程，从而长期地留住了许多游戏玩家。举个例子来说，在《Farmville》中，当玩家在自己的农场里种植了一棵庄稼后，这棵庄稼需要经过两个小时才能成熟。玩家便可以利用这两个小时的时间去收集游戏奖励——虚拟货币，并通过所收集的虚拟货币购买更多的游戏道具或者虚拟农产品。

在这里，游戏会根据玩家的付出奖励给一些特制的虚拟商品，包括一些装饰物，以及虚拟货币，让他们购买虚拟衣服、家居或者装饰品。同时休闲玩家与硬核玩家喜欢的奖励类型也不同，前者更喜欢那些能够帮助他们完成任务的奖励，而后作则更青睐于一些技巧性或者级别性的奖励，以帮助他们更好地应对游戏中的挑战。

对于那些免费游戏来说，稳定的用户粘性尤为重要。首先，如果一款游戏拥有较多的回头客，那便说明这款游戏很有广告植入及品牌营销价值。其次，玩家在游戏中投入大量时间后，将会发现自己在游戏中的价值所在，促使游戏完成更多微交易活动。

以此看来，以时间驱动为基础的强制性循环机制极为重要和强大。但是这种游戏机制本身也存在着一些弊端，即当用户根据自身时间安排设置了游戏任务，将导致玩家在某一个时间段的游戏活动停滞发展，并且延长用户开始游戏和完成游戏的整个过程。

地理定位功能案例

2006年，一些英国学者撰写了一篇名为《手机游戏与日常生活联系》论文。在文中，他们将地理定位功能融入自己所创造的游戏《Feeding Yoshi》，并认为这种功能能够刺激玩家主动放弃现实生活的一些计划，而回到游戏世界中继续进行游戏。

“这种模式将改变用户每日生活习惯，有意让他们留出一些时间，例如在晚上或者周末时延长玩游戏的时间。”

《Feeding Yoshi》与其它地理定位游戏一样，设置了某些特殊时间点并要求玩家前往游戏中的某个特定位置继续进行游戏，并提供一些奖励刺激玩家重新回到游戏。玩家在非游戏世界中的多种活动都有可能赢得奖励：

固定日常生活：即上班，下班，回家的途中

非计划的外出：突然要去商店购物

游戏旅程：玩家会因为一些游戏优势或奖励而外出

基于地理定位的游戏优势有助于免费游戏保证理想的用户留存率，它让玩家感受到自己的游戏行为、未来行动以及游戏可带来的潜在利益之间的相互联系。用户想起一款游戏时，就很有可能再次体验游戏，甚至邀请朋友一起玩游戏，或者在游戏中进行消费了。

但是不论地理定位功能可为游戏带来多大利益，它都必须具有趣味性。虽然地理定位功能还只是一个新生事物，但随着Foursquare、Facebook Places等API的出现，基于地名的环境将推动这种功能的创新性和趣味性的进一步发展。

《My Star》的地理定位功能

《My Star》是英国开发商Mobie Pie与欧洲网络运营商Orange共同推出的一款免费社交游戏。在这款游戏中，玩家通过操纵一个幻想成为“歌星”的游戏角色，让它从无名小徒成长为歌界天王或天后。玩家可以用摇滚、Pop或rap等不同风格来装扮这个小“歌星”，利用虚拟家具、其它装饰物布置“歌星”的屋子，在游戏中与朋友一起演奏乐器或创作歌曲，并在游戏世界对应现实生活的地理位置中张贴自己“歌星”的“海报”。

游戏中的“海报”包含了地理定位功能的所有特点，通过使用这个功能，玩家可以在游戏中所处的社区附近张贴“歌星”的虚拟海报。张贴“海报”可以让玩家获得游戏虚拟货币，而且因为是公开张贴，所以其他玩家也能够看到你的“海报”内容，并且能够帮助玩家委婉地告知好友自己缺少什么游戏道具。

《My Star》和《Blossom Bristol》（以种植虚拟农产品为主题的游戏）是最早使用Facebook Places的游戏。可以说，这款游戏根据现有数据库和玩家社群创建了丰富的地名资源，为Facebook玩家提供了一个与其自身相关的游戏情境。

当玩家点击了“张贴海报”标记后，Facebook将会对玩家的资料进行检索，以查处他所在的区域。并通过URL将相关资料传输给Facebook Places，从而得到位于该地区的前五个ID（按照地理位置远近排列）。而该游戏将会利用这些ID查找该地区服务器上所张贴出的“海报”。而如果某些地区的服务器并未出现任何相关记录，那么这些地区将会被列入游戏，让更多玩家进行选择。

通过Facebook Places所收集到的地理位置以及“海报”将被刊登在游戏中的“海报栏”上，供用户浏览查看。同时用户也可以自行选择海报的设计风格，以及可对应公开的好友人数，他们最后所张贴的“海报”也将被保存到服器上。游戏会按照玩家所张贴的“海报”在当地的受欢迎程度而颁发相应的虚拟货币奖励。

推出Facebook Places这一功能其实并未包含在我们的项目计划中。刚开始我们所设置的反向地理编码（即通过地理坐标获得相应的地理位置信息）带有很大的局限性，且覆盖面积也远远不足。

但是Facebook Places也存在一些弊端，即因为玩家得使用Facebook账户登陆，有很多地名可能是玩家自己杜撰的，所以按照这些信息所作出的地理位置分析常常会出错。以下是一些值得参考的解决方法：

谷歌地图API

GeoNames

Foursquare API

地理定位功能的其他作用

《My Star》中的“海报”机制是根据游戏主题而设置的，而并非出于其它商业目的。通过这个机制，用户能够在游戏世界对应现实生活的地理位置中宣传其虚拟形象，真正过把明星瘾。其商业价值是到后来才更趋于明朗。

不管怎样，在游戏中添加地理定位功能不仅能够提高用户粘性，而且还能为游戏提供更有益的价值诉求，使玩家更快速找到好友，并为游戏创造新的营收渠道。

为了吸引玩家下载游戏，你就必须根据目标用户推出相应的价值定位，即使是免费游戏也不例外。“海报”功能可以说是赋予用户体验该游戏的新理由，地理定位功能是《My Star》的一个创新亮点及卖点。

地理定位功能的另一大作用便帮助用户在手机平台更快捷地找到好友，而这也是社交游戏必须具备的关键因素。如果不具备地理定位功能，手机上的任何应用都将只是独立于社交网络的存在，而如果用户想要与好友进行交流，就必须与他们处于同一个社交网络，使用可相互兼容的移动设备，安装同一款应用，并且在该应用绑定社交网张帐号。虽然这种现象很普遍，但对用户来说却很麻烦，而地理定位功能则可帮助解决这个问题。

很多地理定位社交应用都支持玩家根据地理区位找到好友，Foursquare用户可发现担任某地“市长”的玩家，了解最近有哪些用户在该地“签到”或者留言，用户可以由此向其他玩家发出好友邀请。而在《My Star》中，任何张贴了“海报”的玩家都能够自行决定是否接受其他玩家的好友邀请。

游戏过程中的人际互动将为游戏带来很多益处，尤其是提高免费游戏的用户留存率和收益。这些人际互动包括：

社会认同。玩家可以影响好友，让他们加入自己的行动，从而在自己的好友圈中确立一种“标准化”游戏行为。

竞争。玩家常会为了获得比别人更好的成绩，而更加专注于游戏活动，这在无形中便形成了一种竞争模式。

赠送礼物。玩家会在游戏中赠送礼物给其他玩家。虽然赠送的礼物会让玩家支出费用，但他们也收到别人回赠的礼物，或产生继续体验游戏的动力。

相互承诺。如果一个玩家真心信任另一个玩家，那么他便会主动为对方提供便利，例如玩家在《We Rule 》中替好友的商店下订单。

除此之外，地理定位功能的另一大优势便是《Feeding Yoshi》中所体现的“干扰性模式”（游戏邦注：即让玩家改变日常生活计划而投入游戏世界），玩家会因为一些奖励而主动前往系统指定的某一特定区域继续体验游戏。而这一功能对于一些品牌公司极具吸引力，例如Gap（游戏邦注：世界知名服饰品牌公司）向光临其美国零售店并通过Facebook Places“签到”的用户赠送牛仔裤。

我预言这种功能将为游戏创造巨大经济效益，因为它具有强制性特征（其它社交应用不具备该特征），而且能够为那些“签到”的用户提供虚拟和真实奖励。

例如一名《My Star》玩家在游戏中的沃尔玛超市张贴了“海报”，那么他不仅有可能获得沃尔玛在游戏中的虚拟家具，同时也能够凭借电脑屏幕上弹出的条形码（经过沃尔玛超市的验证），并以25%的折扣价去真实的沃尔玛超市购买CD。

这真是一箭三雕的功能，品牌商店可借此提升人气，游戏玩家既能获得虚拟道具也能享受实体商店的折扣，而且游戏开发商也能通过向这些品牌公司收取一定费用而盈利。

然而却有许多中小工作室无法承担庞大的运营费用，他们如果要开展大规模的品牌营销活动，就不得不采用Tapjoy刺激下载手段等第三方解决方案。

总结

早前的地理定位功能和软件主要是通过搜索地理坐标去掌握用户所在地理位置，而现在很多应用也开始采用这种功能，为玩家提供一种全新的服务体验。

这种地理定位功能已被用于提高用户留存率，助用户找到好友，鼓励他们前往现实世界的地点完成相关任务。但由于游戏产业的飞速发展及不可预期的变革，所以我们只能保守地说这种功能的应用现在还只是一个开端。

在接下来的30年中，我们也有可能看到一些全新的地理定位机制，成为与加速计和触摸屏一样普遍的输入方式，而Zynga和EA等游戏巨头将有可能将此功能引进旗下的社交游戏或者硬核游戏中，并与一些品牌公司合作推出签到服务。

Mobile Pie今后的工作便是推动地理定位功能发展，并将利用更多先进的技术不断完善游戏设置，重新定义手机平台的社交游戏，而不只是照搬社交网络的成功经验。

总之，地理定位功能是当前游戏领域的一大发展机遇，如果擅用这一功能，必定能使游戏项目从中受益。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Location Awareness in Mobile Games: Uses & Advantages

by Will Luton

In 1977 Mattel released the crude handheld Auto Racer. It was peerless due only to being the first mobile electronic game, allowing experiences the player normally found in the living room or the arcade wherever they were.

Over 30 years later mobile devices and their games are ubiquitous and delivering a console-like experience on them no longer exceptional. However a new design forefront has opened up which utilizes an often ignored advantage of mobile. Location awareness. Using it well can create an experience which is compelling, changing and personal, but how to do so is only just emerging.

Location-based services are rising in popularity, with an estimated 33.2 million Americans using them in 2010 alone, up from 12.3 million the previous year. Although

most location usage is navigational, apps such as Foursquare, SCVNGR and Gowalla use checkins, which register a user’s presence at a location, to create new social services incentivized with trendy gamification mechanics.

Checkins have proven advantages and offer game makers great new potential which have being realized in tiles such as Booyah’s My Town, Chillingo’s Merchant Kingdom and Mobile Pie’s very own My Star.

This article will describe player retention basics, from compulsion loops in Super Mario Bros. and FarmVille, to their importance in social gaming and how location can be applied as a new player return trigger. I will also explain my experience and the application of location to My Star, whilst looking at the additional, less obvious, benefits location brings.

Compulsion Loops

Compulsion loops are nothing new and are recognized as the model for almost all continued human engagement with media. Understanding and applying them makes for great design and fun games.

A compulsion loop is a mechanic in which something provides someone with a reward for accomplishing a goal, then sets them a new goal, creating a loop of process and reward. This process keeps the audience or user engaged until such time that they feel the process of accomplishment outweighs the reward or the goals simply run out.

In linear narrative, such as books or TV, the compulsion to stay engaged is the revelation of plot; keep paying attention to a story and plot points will be resolved, offering a satisfying sense of closure. When an audience is disinterested in a narrative, it is often because the compulsion loop has failed; the urge to discover resolution is not strong enough in the audience’s mind to outlay the mental energy of paying attention.

Compulsion loops are also found in all video games. In Super Mario Bros., for example, the reward is reaching the next level, and the method of reaching it is completing the current level. When a player’s skill in the game is below the threshold required to complete the level, they become frustrated and feel the outlay to achieve the goal is too high, and are lost. Conversely when the outlay is very low the goal is devalued, which can also lead to disengagement.

What many successful social games do well is keep a player regularly engaged over long periods of time, months or years, by having short, regular play sessions spaced out by compulsion loops which use time as a return trigger. In FarmVille a player plants a crop, which will take two hours to grow. They know they can return between two hours and, say, a day, to collect their reward: currency which can be spent on other items or more crops.

Here the player is rewarded for their commitment with options for customization and embellishment; virtual currency that can be spent on clothing, furniture or ornaments. It is offering achievable, appealing rewards to casual gamers deterred by core titles which reward skill and dexterity with more challenge, creating a hugely mass-appeal proposition.

Having constant regular engagement is very important for a free-to-play title. Firstly a repeat user can be served lots of adverts or product placement, but secondly they are more likely to see worth in their activity, because of the time investment, and thus complete a microtransaction.

To this end time-triggered compulsion loops are very powerful and important. Yet they have a weakness in that they commonly augment a user’s daily routine; that is to say that the player sets tasks that are available to collect when they are available to play, which can lead to stagnant play patterns and quick churn (time between first and last play).

A Case for Location

In 2006 a group of British academics wrote a paper called Interweaving Mobile Games with Everyday Life [pdf link]. In it they identified that a location mechanic in game they had created called Feeding Yoshi had the power to disrupt a player’s routine and draw them back to play:

“The [disruptive] mode was to change one’s patterns of everyday life by deliberately setting aside time for special, often relatively prolonged, game sessions, for example during the evening or weekends.”

In Feeding Yoshi, as with most location games, being in a new or different place offered a return trigger alternative to time. This means there could be multiple rewards offering points of return because of a player’s non-game real world activities:

Fixed routine. Commute from home to work and back

Unplanned travel. Popping to the shops

Game travel. Travel for advantage and reward

Offering game advantage based on location has great application in retention for free-to-play mobile beyond the immediate return. It encourages a cognitive link between a player’s movement or future activity and the potential in-game benefit that could offer them. A user thinking about a game is more likely to play it again, tell a friend about it, or make an in-game purchase.

However, no matter how much advantage location mechanics can add to a game in terms of profitability they must be fun. The implementation of location is very much in its infancy, but with emerging APIs such as Foursquare or Facebook Places, context from place names opens up innovative and fun possibilities.

My Star & Applying Location

My Star is a free-to-play social game we at Mobile Pie have created in partnership with the European network operator Orange. In it, players pilot a tiny square-headed wannabe music star from absolute zero to musical hero. They can dress the star in rock, pop and rap-like attire, personalize their star’s home with furniture and other decor, practice instruments, jam and record songs with friends and post virtual posters at real world locations.

All the location functionality is self-contained within the Poster feature; the player promotes their star at nearby landmarks or businesses by virtual flyposting.

Posting at spot gives the player an in-game reward of virtual currency, but also notoriety as other players can view their posters, poster over them and send friend requests through them.

My Star, along with our virtual crop growing stealthucation title Blossom Bristol, is amongst the first games to use Facebook Places. It acts as a great resource of place names created both from existing databases and the community, which can give context to a Facebook connected player’s surrounding.

When a player taps the Poster icon in a My Star session Facebook checks for a user, before the game queries the device for a location. This is then passed to Facebook Places via a URL, which return five places with IDs, ordered by increasing distance. The game then uses these IDs to find any current posters at the location stored on the server. If any location hasn’t before been discovered the server creates a new entry.

The collated data of locations and posters are returned and displayed as walls for the user to browse through. The user can select a poster design, opt in or out of friending and post a poster, which is then passed back to the server. The player is rewarded with virtual currency based on the spot’s popularity and returned back to the wall.

The launch of Facebook Places was serendipitous to our release schedule. At the beginning of the project it did not exist and reverse geocoding (the process of getting location details from coordinates) solutions were clunky, restrictive and had poor coverage.

However, Facebook Places has drawbacks in that it requires the player to be logged-in with a Facebook account and, because places can be user generated, the system is open to incorrect or abusive entries. There are a number of other solutions worth considering, including:

Google Maps API

GeoNames

Foursquare API

Beyond Retention: Other Benefits

My Star’s Poster mechanic was designed from a thematic, rather than business, view. The aim is for the user to feel like they are promoting their avatar in the real world, as they might a real star. The business benefits of this became clear later.

However adding location is about more than stickiness; it brings with it the ability to make a game a better proposition, allowing for friend discovery and, perhaps most importantly, creating new revenue streams.

In convincing a player to download your game to their device you must make a good value proposition to them, even for free-to-play. The poster feature was about giving users a new reason to play our game over a comparable one. The new use of location is a clear innovation and one on which My Star is sold.

Another benefit is that location can ease problems in discovering friends on the platform, a key component for any social game: an app on a mobile device is an additional layer away from a social network, for people to communicate through it meaningfully they must be on the same social network, both own a compatible device, have the app installed and tie their social network account to the app. This is common, but high-friction use case.

In many social location apps, users can discover others based on geographical means. Foursquare users can discover Mayors of a location or those that have recently checked-in or left tips. From their they can request a friendship. In My Star any player posting a poster can opt-in to allow other players to send them friendship requests.

Human interaction through a game offers lots of benefits which in free-to-play increases retainment and revenue. This includes:

Social proof. Encouraging through actions other to do as you do, normalizing in-game behavior.

Competition. The will to obtain more than others, leading to greater play.

Gifting. To offer another user a virtual item. This may cost the sender or simply encourage the recipient to return the gesture or continue playing.

Commitment contracts. The reliance one user has on another to do something to help them gain in-game benefit, such as in We Rule when fulfilling a friend’s order at your shop.

Another advantage of location, as observed in the disruptive mode of Feeding Yoshi play, is that it can encourage players to go to places for game advantage. This is incredibly appealing for brands, as has been seen with Gap offering a free pair of jeans to users who checkin to a store via Facebook Places.

It is this, I predict, which will become a sizable revenue stream for games, because they are able create a compelling argument, much more than other social apps, with in-game and real world rewards for a checkin.

For example: A My Star player posts a poster at Walmart; this unlocks an exclusive Walmart furniture set for their star’s home, but also pops-up an on-screen barcode, which when scanned at a Walmart checkout gives the player a 25 percent discount on all chart CD purchases.

The brand gets an engaged user in their store and the player gets game reward and shop discount, meanwhile the game developers charges the brand for the checkin.

However, for this to happen on a large scale a good third-party solution, similar to Tapjoy for incentivized downloads, needs to emerge, as overheads for small-to-medium studios to facilitate anything more than a handful of deals is too big.

Conclusion

With location aware devices and software able to change coordinates in to meaning in the hands of millions of people, now is time for location to emerge as mechanic creating new experiences.

It has already been put to use as a tool of retention, finding friends and a way of attracting people to a physical space, yet considering the rapid and the constantly unexpected evolution of games, it is safe to say this is only the beginning.

In the next 30 years new location mechanics will be born and reinvented, becoming an input method as ubiquitous as the accelerometer and touch screen, with big players such as Zynga and EA offering location in known and new franchises in social and core games, whilst a big provider offers brand checkins.

Mobile Pie’s future will push the boundaries of location, as well as defining what social gaming means on mobile, with new gameplay and technology that does more than imitate social network successes.

But today location is an advantage for your game. Make use of it.（source:gamasutra）