作者：costik

没有游戏专业人士会忽略营收。这里的“专业人士”是指以盈利为目的的业内人员。我偶尔也会制作非商业作品，或出于消遣，或应朋友要求，但我多数作品都以盈利为目的。但毫无疑问，若我从事游戏设计师外的职业定能够获得更多收入。其他游戏设计师亦是如此。换而言之：追求创收是我们的目标之一，但绝非唯一目的。

arpu from instantcom.net

美工追求的是视觉效果。要成为专业美工，你就得平衡两个方面内容。首先是迎合市场，不论是画廊老板、投资者、社交网络玩家，还是其他营收来源。但你还是要把作品美学特点放在首位，有时需适时做出决策，改善作品销路，确保其能够生存。从某种程度看，这存在矛盾，当其实两个目标（游戏邦注：美学效果和营收）并不冲突，它们相互交错。作为专业美工，你需让两个目标都达到最高水平：不仅具有美学效果，还能带来可观营收。

社交游戏的问题（问题之一）是其把市场放在首位。有设计构思否？不妨大胆尝试！若反馈参数显示其能够提高ARPU（每用户平均收入），就太棒啦！项目就继续进行。若相反，就取消项目。

换而言之：

1. 社交游戏能够带来可追踪反馈参数。

2. 开发者可以先让部分用户体验新功能，判断该功能是否能够增加营收。

3. 但这些反馈参数无法用于决定玩家是否从中获得乐趣，是否获得情感共鸣，或追踪任何美学标准。

4. 因此社交游戏设计完全依靠商业目的推动，而非美学标准。

从野心勃勃的互联网企业家角度看，这就是佳境。无需迎合恼人游戏设计者，或者他们深奥的理论。若作品能够运作，就继续发展。

然而从游戏爱好者角度看，这不尽理想，这意味着设计完全不考虑“优秀游戏标准”，而是由“提高ARPU”决定，二者完全不是一回事。

我曾推出过一款社交游戏，算是第二款作品的铺垫，不是所有作品都能大获成功。其实我目前正在制作第3款作品，游戏同样生死未卜。这并不表示社交游戏具有不确定性，因为我已经对此类型完全失去信心。的确所有商业模式都有其不足和局限。但此类型实在问题颇多。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Social Network Games: ARPU over Design

by costik

This started as a comment on this post on Farmville, but I realized I needed to expand it and expose it more.

No professional ever ignores money. The very definition of “professional” is that you do it for money. I have at time done non-commercial work, either for my own amusement or at the request of friends, but the vast bulk of my design work is indeed aimed at earning me some money. There’s no question, however, that I would have earned a great deal more money over my lifetime by choosing a career path other than “game designer.” This is also true of every other game designer I know. In other words: the pursuit of money is certainly part of what we do, but it is not everything that we do.

To be an artist is to pursue an aesthetic vision. To be a professional artist, you must balance the two; that is, you must work for a market, whether that be gallery owners, patrons, social network users, or some other source of income; yet you must always keep the aesthetic characteristics of the work uppermost in your mind, and at times you may feel it necessary to make decisions that ameliorate the marketability of your work for the sake of the work itself. This is a contradiction to some degree, but the two objectives — aesthetics and money — are not opposites; they are orthogonal to each other. As a professional artist, you seek to do work that occupies the upper quadrant: both aesthetically pleasing and monetarily rewarding.

The problem with social network games — rather, one of the problems with social network games — is that they give the suits, if you will, the whip hand. Have a design idea? Try it out! If the metrics say it increases our ARPU, then it’s good! Keep it! If not, kill it. (ARPU is “average revenue per user”, a telephone-industry term that’s been creeping into the discussion of online games recently.)

In other words:

1. Social network games produce easily trackable metrics.

2. It is thus possible to expose a portion of your audience to a new feature and determine, with no possibility of argument, whether or not that new feature increases your revenues or not.

3. It is, however, impossible to use the same metrics to determine whether or not, say, your players now feel they are having more or less fun, or whether they feel they are having a more or less emotionally impactful experience, or, indeed, to track any aesthetically meaningful criteria.

4. Consequently, the design of social network games is driven entirely by business rather than aesthetic criteria.

From the perspective of, say, an aggressive Internet entrepreneur, this is heaven; you don’t have to cater to those annoying game design dweebs and their abstruse theories, you just try shit out and if it works you keep it.

From the perspective of those of us who love games, however, this is far from ideal; it means that development is not driven by “what makes for a good game” but “what makes for increased ARPU”, which are not by any means the same thing.

I will mention that I have designed one released social network game, provided a preliminary design for a second that may or may not every see the light of day, and am in fact working on a third at present, which again may or may not see the light of day. I am not arguing that the nature of social network games is problematic because I utterly despair of the form; indeed every form of business has its problems and constraints. But there are aspects of the business I find troubling.（Source：playthisthing）