作者：AJ Glasser

Facebook游戏生态系统如今已发展成当前态势：开发商着手计划游戏生命末期而非初始阶段。Facebook Sean Ryan日前接受采访，谈论开发商应如何应对游戏发展末期。

Ryan表示，“我们目前步入的是游戏2、3、4岁阶段，所以关于如何应对我们有众多选择。完整续集是否算是不同游戏？还是增加扩充内容诸如Zynga的Pioneer Trail（游戏邦注：其原本是《FrontierVille》的扩充内容，如今已是款独立游戏），或《Army Attack》中的Desert Area？抑或者是放任自由，随其衰败？”

何时放手

虽然游戏持续推出新内容和每月更新，我们过去4个月来还是看到若干长期运作的作品在入驻Facebook 2年多后步入其生命暮年。若游戏无法维持盈利，或开发商维持此作品需承受机会成本，这些资源原本能够用来开发新内容，此时作品就步入寿命末期。财政表现水平因开发商而异，但我们从开发商那最常听到的是“价值等式”是LTV（终身价值）> CPI（安装成本）。也就是说，当游戏用户终身价值大于用户安装成本时，游戏保持健康发展。若运作下滑至LTV < CPI，游戏就开始消亡。

这是PopCap收购前，ZipZapPlay几款游戏的运作情况。ZipZapPlay前首席执行官，现PopCap总经理Curt Bererton在上月西雅图Casual Connect大会上阐述用户的整个等式演变过程。在讲话“Finding the Minimum Viable Game and When to Kill Your Baby”中，他谈及开发商如何在发行第一天、第七天以及最后的1个月后检验LTV > CPI等式。他表示，通常来说，若LTV > CPI维持1个月以上，那么作品就正常运作。

等式发生急剧变化是在3、4个月后，此时我们会发现社交游戏丧失大量早期流量。Ryan表示，此时游戏的LTV非常高，因为只有忠诚付费玩家尚留在游戏中，非付费玩家早已离开。由于开发商管理CPI的方式不同，游戏或凭借忠诚玩家持续发展，或在随后的6-12个月里逐步消亡。

案例研究：ZipZapPlay的《Happy Habitat》

Chart 1 from insidesocialgames.com

上图呈现《Happy Habitat》整个生命周期的流量情况。其高峰出现在2010年3月，用户数量创历新高，MAU达50.1918万，DAU达7.9921万。2011年4月工作室被PopCap收购，此时《Happy Habitat》的MAU和DAU有小幅提高，源于新公司宣布将逐步卸下这款游戏。游戏于2011年6月30日正式终结生命，“享年”2.5岁。

何时坚持运作

当留存率低于10%及每活跃用户平均收益非常低时（游戏邦注：例如低于1美分），游戏就会出现LTV < CPI情况。但这并不一定会导致作品步入末期，因为我们常发现有些开发商只是通过简单调整机制或添加新内容就扭转游戏命运。

游戏引入新扩充内容会出现两种情况：由于新用户加入游戏MAU和DAU再创高峰，而留存率（DAU/MAU）下滑。这创造第二个游戏生命周期曲线，同作品投放市场前3个月的情况类似。就像头6个月，非付费玩家会逐步退出游戏，忠诚付费玩家继续留存，此次忠诚用户数量有望高于扩充内容推出前的水平。

案例研究：RockYou Playdemic的《Gourmet Ranch》

Chart 2 from insidesocialgames.com

发行商RockYou于2011年初收购《Gourmet Ranch》开发商 Playdemic。不久后，开发商就宣布推出融入新游戏机制的扩充内容——钓鱼，这成为游戏核心玩法。从过去8个月的数据信息图我们可以发现，在4、5月推出扩充内容期间，MAU和DAU提高而留存率几乎都呈下滑趋势。在6月份期间，MAU和DAU下滑，而留存率上升，3个月后（7月），游戏总体留存率比推出扩充内容前的水平期高出5%。注意：留存率过去1个月出现下滑是因为RockYou在《Gourmet Ranch》植入新广告平台；这带来新MAU和DAU。

开发商举措

Facebook社交游戏开发商刚刚找到通过添加扩充内容和续集能够延长游戏体验的途径。早期续集案例，如Playdom的《Mobsters 2》表现并不好，因为用户似乎不愿意从既有应用转移至新应用。RockYou的《动物世界 2》长期问鼎榜单，因此开发商能够选择通过相同应用ID制作续集，绕过复杂过程。其他游戏，如6 Waves Lolapps的《Ravenwood Fair》旨在通过扩充游戏续集内容而非直接制作续集寻找成功之路。此外，Zynga依然继续在其问世14个月的《FrontierVille》中添加即将问世Pioneer Trail扩充内容。

除引入新内容外，开发商也可通过降低总体CPI改变价值等式。这体现在仅将用户获取方案瞄准目标群体。这似乎是个显而易见的结论：资金投入应瞄准潜在付费群体；但我们仍旧能够发现某些游戏在发行前2个月瞄准大量普通用户。虽然此“竞争临界规模”策略适用诸如迪士尼 Playdom《时光花园》之类的游戏，但多数中小型开发商无法实现此目标，除非携手具有临界规模的发行商。

Facebook举措

Facebook去年开始减少社交游戏中的病毒式传播渠道，旨在抵制垃圾邮件问题。某些病毒式传播渠道如今开始回归平台，因为Facebook觉得公司已能够有效控制垃圾邮件。除此之外，平台如今开始逐步提高游戏社交曝光，创造更优质的用户体验（游戏邦注：所有这些举措都能够帮助开发商瞄准高LTV的用户）。

Ryan表示，“我们旨在提高自身挖掘低成本用户的能力。这不仅是个步入末期问题，末期在创新领域就是生命。开发商能够继续发展。Facebook旨在探索更优质渠道，帮助开发商不断发展，获得病毒式传播，获取新用户。不论作品处在末期，还是扩展阶段，这都颇为有益。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

When to Sunset and When to Stay With Social Games on Facebook

By AJ Glasser

The Facebook games ecosystem has evolved to the point where most social game developers put effort into planning the end of a game’s life cycle instead of just its beginning. Facebook’s Sean Ryan shares some insight with ISG on what developers are doing when a game reaches the end of the line.

“We’re hitting a phase right now where games are two, three, and four years old,” Ryan tells ISG. “So we’re seeing different philosophies on what you do. A full sequel that is a different game? An expansion pack like we’ve seen with Zynga and Pioneer Trail, or Army Attack with the Desert Area? Or just let it go and watch it decline?”

When to Let Go

Even with games consistently releasing new content and monthly updates, we’ve seen several long-running games reach the point of sunset in the last four months after 2+ years on the Facebook platform. This point comes when the game drops below a financial performance point or when the developer hits an opportunity cost of resources spent maintaining the game that could instead be spent on developing a new game. The financial performance point varies by developer, but the most common “evaluation equation” we’ve heard from developers is LTV > CPI. That is, when a game’s lifetime value of users is greater than the cost per install of a user, the game is healthy. If its performance drops to a point where LTV < CPI, the game is dying.

This was the case for several games developed by ZipZapPlay prior to its PopCap acquisition. Curt Bererton, former CEO of ZipZapPlay and now General Manager under PopCap, walked an audience through the equation during a session at Casual Connect in Seattle last month. In his talk, titled “Finding the Minimum Viable Game and When to Kill Your Baby,” he explained how the developer checked the LTV > CPI equation on the first day of launch, the seventh day post-launch, and then a final time a month after the game’s launch. In general, he says, if LTV > CPI after 30 days, you’re doing it right.

The point at which the equation seems to change dramatically for most developers is after the three- and four-month mark, where we see social games lose a lot of their early traffic. At this point, says Ryan, the game’s LTV is usually very high because only the dedicated paying users remain in the game while non-paying users have left. Depending on how a developer manages the CPI, the game will either thrive on its loyal users, or gradually decline over a period that ranges from six months to a year.

Case Study: ZipZapPlay’s Happy Habitat

The graph above shows the entire traffic life cycle of Happy Habitat as recorded by our traffic tracking service, AppData. At its peak in March 2010, the game had an all-time high of 501,918 monthly active users and 79,921 daily active users. At the point of the PopCap acquisition in April 2011, Happy Habitat got a slight lift in MAU and DAU as the new owner announced plans to sunset the title. The game officially ended June 30, 2011 at the age of 2.5 years.

When to Hang On

A game might have a LTV < CPI situation on its hands when retention drops below 10% and average revenue per daily active user is already low (say, less than 1 cent). That doesn’t always result in sunsetting, however, as we’ve seen developers turn a game around by simply changing the gameplay or adding new content.

When a game introduces a new expansion, two things happen: MAU and DAU spike as new users come into the game, and retention (DAU as a percentage of MAU) falls. This creates a second curve in the game’s overall life cycle similar to its first three months on the market. Like those first six months, the non-paying users will drop out and the dedicated paying users will stay — and hopefully there will be more of those dedicated users than prior to the expansion.

Case Study: RockYou Playdemic’s Gourmet Ranch

At the beginning of 2011, publisher RockYou acquired Gourmet Ranch developer Playdemic. Not too long afterward, the developer released an expansion pack that added a new game mechanic — fishing — the core gameplay experience. As we can see from an AppData chart covering the last eight months, MAU and DAU rose while retention mostly fell during the April and May months when the expansion launched. Throughout June, MAU and DAU fell while retention rose and after three months — in July — the game’s overall retention came out almost 5% higher than the pre-expansion figure. *Note that we see retention falling in the last 30 days on account of RockYou pushing its new ad platform in Gourmet Ranch; this is creating a new influx of MAU and DAU.

What Developers Can Do: Keep it Awesome, Reduce CPI

Social games on Facebook are only just now finding ways to prolong the gameplay experience through expansions and sequels. Early examples of sequels like Playdom’s Mobsters 2 didn’t perform very well, as users seemed reluctant to migrate from an old app to a new one. As RockYou’s Zoo World 2 proves week after week in our rankings, however, developers can get around this complication by running the sequel in the same app ID as the original. Other games, like 6 Waves Lolapps’ Ravenwood Fair, are hoping to find success through franchise extension in new games rather than with direct sequels. Zynga, meanwhile, continues to explore expansions like the upcoming Pioneer Trail add-on for the 14-month-old FrontierVille.

Aside from introducing new content, developers can also change the evaluation equation by reducing overall CPI. This comes from targeting user acquisition toward only the users they want to have in their game. It may seem like an obvious conclusion that you should only spend money on the users most likely to spend money on you; but we still see some games going after a large, general audiences in their first two months on the market. While this “race to critical mass” approach seems to be working for some games like Disney Playdom’s Gardens of Time, most mid-market and small developers struggle to reach this point unless they go through a publisher with a preexisting critical mass.

What Facebook Can Do: Make it Easier to Acquire Users

Facebook scaled back viral channels available to social games last year in an attempt to clamp down on a spam problem. Some of this virality is beginning to return on the platform, now that Facebook feels it has spam under control. Beyond that, though, the platform is working to improve social discovery for games and introduce a better new-user experience. All of this will help developers connect with the kind of users that can support high LTV.

“We focus on greater ability to find the right types of users for a lower cost for your game,” Ryan says. “It’s not just a sunsetting issue — sunsetting in creative fields is life. You move on. [Facebook] focuses on better ways for you to expand, for you to go viral, for you to acquire customers. That should help, whether it’s sunsetting or expansion.”（Source：insidesocialgames）