作者：Keith Andrew

错误可供学习，从中我们能够获得经验教训。

Hiive联合创始人Andrew Rolling承认公司将首款作品《Creatures & Castles》投放App Store是个错误决定。他目前正计划将游戏推向谷歌基于HTML5的应用商店Chrome Web Store。

Creatures & Castles from gao7.com

Andrew Rolling日前接受采访，分享其在App Store开发过程中获得的经验，同时表示将在浏览器版本中吸取教训。以下是游戏邦编译的访谈内容：

《Creatures & Castles》入驻iOS平台已有6个月。现在表现如何？

目前销量是2000份，再卖1000份，才刚好不赚不赔。表现没我预期的好，也没担心的那么糟。

App Store成功模式很有趣，商店目前主要依靠积极反馈循环，从本质看，这只能支撑少数幸运作品。高曝光度会带来高销量，反过来又会形成更多曝光度。不幸的是，顶端位置非常有限，而很多人都虎视眈眈。

只有少数App Store应用能在发行初期获得充足势头达到“逃逸”速度，取得成功。

不妨参考我们的下载量图（如下），你会发现其中有3大高峰期。首先是最左边的小高峰，是在作品获得2010 Best App Ever awards“最佳益智游戏”第二名后（游戏邦注：但随后又减至每日销量1-2份）。

Chart from pocketgamer.biz

第二个高峰归功于我们开展的试验活动。我把游戏价格从1.99美元降至99美分数日。似乎很多用户都在等着游戏降价，但显然我们从中并未获得任何实际发展势头。

有趣的是，最右边的小高峰是因为我们再次开展促销活动。这次我获得的反馈少很多。在7月4日这周，《Creatures & Castles》是免费应用促销日的应用之一。有关结果且让我们拭目以待。

游戏发行后，你曾表示曝光度是App Store的关键点。你在将《Creatures & Castles》推向该平台过程中学到了哪些经验？

我发现我的“快速创收”方案行不通。坦白讲，我发现自己的营销知识非常欠缺，若我未来再瞄准App Store（游戏邦注：或其他任何平台）发行作品，我就要学习如何获取用户。营销不是门简单学问。

至于App Store，情况就如大家看到的。曝光度是最核心要素。我希望苹果能够采取措施平衡平台运作。平台目前处在生态系统控制下，是进行调整的最佳时期。

我从中学到另一要点是“采用免费模式，然后促使用户进行小额消费”是个不错商业模式。查看热门免费游戏榜单和综合应用游戏榜单，你会发现很多名单都重复了。

我觉得自己有点老派，因为我潜意识里是排斥“花钱获得不公平优势”的游戏玩法，但我们还是需要满足大众需求。

我觉得自己最好还是多多研究此方面，但这令我非常反感。我比较能接受的是‘内置付费’概念。未来我会在《Creatures & Castles》中添加新等级（游戏邦注：其中包括新挑战和新怪兽）。

在这过程中，我或许会尝试采用免费模式，对额外等级进行收费。事后想想，其实游戏最初发行就该采用该模式，虽然这样我就不得不花更多时间完善游戏内容。

原始作品并不如我预期的那般精致。完善工作在随后的内容更新阶段展开，但有点为时过晚。

其实从中我学到的最重要的经验是我妈妈告诉我的一条古老忠告：‘第一印象只有一次机会’，这完全符合App Store情况。关于这点我将重新核查，做出调整。我将确保所有完善工作在发行前完成。我不会再重复犯错。

什么促使你将游戏推向Chrome？

我听闻很多关于HTML5日渐成熟，非常适合游戏的消息，很期待看到《Creatures & Castles》化身网页游戏。经过几天工作，新等级已问世，我想继续发展游戏将会是个不错选择。整个过程花费1个多月。

而且Chrome的潜在用户远超过iOS。若游戏能够覆盖充足用户，那么首先会提高iPhone版销量，其次我能够通过谷歌内置付费系统出售等级包。

相比苹果，谷歌基础设施的优势在于我能够轻松做出调整。我所受到的限制也少很多。我可以选择使用不同内置付费系统。而这在苹果商店是无法实现的。

所以除谷歌给予的灵活性外，Chrome版本也是我快速试验新构思、新想法的绝佳场所。我能够落实新想法，推向用户，及时获得回馈和分析数据。

正因为如此，Chrome Web Store版本会比iOS版本略胜一筹。我将把新功能移植至iOS版本，但至少要等到Chrome版本成为热门之作。

开发Chrome Web Store游戏难度如何？

非常简单。我熟悉Javascript，所以选择ImpactJS文库，这和我最先设计的游戏内容十分匹配。

转换游戏从很大程度上来说就是个简单的翻译过程。其编码唯一不同之处在于控制系统（游戏邦注：这已经切换成浏览器模式）。

这是适合iOS开发商的发展之路？

通常我听到发展模式的都是相反的，例如《屋顶狂奔》，游戏最初是款网页游戏，后来才入驻iOS。我想此类的例子还有很多。

至于建议方面，我想现在有些为时过早。至少要等到几个月后，我能够就两个平台的虚拟交易量进行比较。

Creatures & Castles from mzstatic.com

《Creatures & Castles》未来还会入驻新平台吗？

应该不会。我们有想过进军Android和Windows Phone 7平台，但除非有人慷慨解囊，否则应该无法在短期内实现。

如果《Creatures & Castles》再次获得成功，获得丰厚营收，我或许会考虑移植新平台。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Hiive’s Andrew Rollings on why Google’s Chrome Web Store is the perfect place for mobile devs to experiment

by Keith Andrew

Mistakes are learning experiences, that’s the lesson to be gained.

In this context, Hiive co-creator Andrew Rolling’s admission his approach to marketing his debut release on the App Store – Creatures & Castles – was flawed is an opportunity; something he’s embraced bringing the game to  Google’s HTML5-powered Chrome Web Store.

We caught up with him to see what he’s learned from his App Store experience, and how he plans to bring that knowledge to browser-based play.

PocketGamer: It’s around six months since Creatures & Castles launched on iOS. How has it performed so far?

Andrew Rollings: Based on what I’ve read, it actually has done better than a lot of games that are released on the platform.

So far it’s sold about 2,000 copies, so it is about two-thirds of the way to breaking even. Not as good as I hoped, and not as bad as I feared.

App Store success is an interesting phenomenon as currently it relies on a positive feedback loop that by its very nature can only support a few lucky products. More visibility creates more success which in turn creates more visibility. Unfortunately there is only limited space at the top, and a lot of people vying for that space.

Only very few of the App Store products gain sufficient early momentum to achieve the ‘escape velocity’ needed to propel them to success.

If you look at our downloads graph (see below), you can see three distinct features. The first feature on the left, was just after winning the 2nd place ‘best puzzle game’ award in the 2010 Best App Ever awards, but soon trailed off back to one or two sales a day.

The next spike was caused by an experiment. I dropped the price from $1.99 to 99c for a few days. It seemed like a lot of people had been holding out for the game to come down in price, but clearly not enough to give me any real momentum.

Interestingly, the third spike on the right was caused by me repeating the experiment. This time I got much less response. For this week (July 4), Creatures & Castles is free as part of a Free App A Day promotion. It will be very interesting to see what comes of that.

At launch, you told us you thought visibility was the biggest issue with the App Store. What have you learned from your experience pushing Creatures & Castles on the platform?

I’ve learned that my ‘get rich quick’ schemes don’t work. No, seriously, I’ve realised that I really know very little about marketing and that if I’m going to get serious about releasing any more products on the App Store – or any other platform – I’m going to have to learn how to reach people. Marketing is hard.

As for the App Store, it is what it is. Visibility is a very tough issue. I would still like to see Apple take some steps to level the playing field a little. It’s  in control of the ecosystem, and it’s in the best position to make changes.

The other big thing I’ve learned in that ‘free to play, then nickle-and-dime you to death’ as a business model seems to work really well. If you look at the free games chart and then take a look at the highest grossing game chart, you will see a large amount of overlap.

I guess I must be a little old school because I have an inherent distaste for what is effectively a ‘pay to gain an unfair advantage’ gameplay model, but there is something to be said for giving the public what they want.

I may well look into doing something in this area, but I’ll probably feel icky for doing so. Slightly less troublesome to me is the concept of the ‘in-app purchase’. I’ll be adding a new level set to Creatures & Castles containing new challenges and monsters.

When I do this, I’ll probably try and experiment along the lines of making the base game free and charging for the additional levels. With hindsight, I probably should have done this with the original release, although I would have had to have spent much more time polishing it.

The original release wasn’t that polished as I had just wanted to get it out of the door. Polish was added in subsequent updates, but by then it was too late.

In fact, I’d say the biggest thing I’ve learned is that the rather cliched advice that my mother always told me, ‘you only get one chance to make a first impression’, is absolutely true when it comes to the App Store. That is the one thing I would absolutely go back and change; I would have made sure all the polish was in place prior to release. That is not a mistake I intend to repeat.

What motivated you to take the game to Chrome?

I had been hearing a lot about how HTML5 was really starting to mature and be suitable for games, and wondered how well Creatures & Castles would work as an in-browser game. After a couple of days of hacking around I had a level up-and-running, so I decided that it would be an interesting experiment to continue the project. It ended up taking me a little over a month.

Additionally, the potential audience for a Chrome game is much larger than that of iOS. I had thought that if I could somehow get the game in front of enough people, then, firstly, it might have a knock-on effect on sales of the iPhone version, and secondly, I might be able to sell the level packs via Google’s in-app payment system.

The advantage of Google’s infrastructure over Apple’s is that it’s a lot easier for me to make tweaks and changes. There are also significantly less restrictions on what I can do. If I choose to use a different in-app payment system I can. That’s not possible with Apple.

So, with the additional flexibility provided by Google, it turns out that the Chrome version is a perfect place for me to experiment with concepts and ideas with a very short turnaround time. I can implement an idea, publish it, and get feedback and analytics almost immediately.

Currently, the Chrome Web Store version is more advanced than the iOS version because of this. I will be back-porting the new features into the iOS version, but at least for the time-being the Chrome version will take the lead.

How easy was it to develop for the platform?

Very easy. I’m familiar with Javascript, and I picked a library – ImpactJS – that fit naturally with how I’d designed the game in the first place.

For the most part converting the game was a simple translation. The only area where the code significantly diverges is in the control system, which has been revamped for browser-based playing.

Is this a route you can see taking off for iOS developers?

Typically I hear of people going the other way round; Canabalt, for example, started as a browser-based game and came to iOS. I’m sure there are plenty of others too.

As for whether I could advise others, well that’s a bit too soon to answer that question. Ask me in a couple of months when I’ll be able to compare and contrast the in-app sales for both platforms.

Any other platforms on the horizon for Creatures & Castles?

Currently no. The idea of conversions to Android and Windows Phone 7 have been bandied about, but unless someone magically drops some funding in my lap, I don’t see it happening any time soon.

If Creatures & Castles ends up getting a second wind and making any significant money then I most likely will do the conversion.

Thanks to Andrew for his time.（Source：pocketgamer）