作者：Bret

这篇博文主要针对那些已经进入社交领域一段时间却在Facebook上发展并不顺利的传统游戏开发者。Gravity Bear确实开发过某些精致的游戏，虽然拿工作室当反面教材可能并不合适，但是他们确实犯下了以下列举的错误。

虽然我刚刚才开始玩《Battle Punks》，但是我从Gravity Bear发布相关信息时就开始关注这款游戏。

facebook-games-battle-punks(from pc.ign.com)

1、过早发布消息。如果工作室在游戏发布前数月就对外公布他们的社交游戏，那么我会把这种做法当成是种失败的开端。这是传统游戏行业中的做法，虽然这可能有利于项目融资，但对后期游戏的销售不会产生积极的影响。

2、使用插件。每个人都希望提升他们所制游戏的视觉效果，但这不能以影响用户体验为代价。插件会对游戏产生很大的影响。Instant Action确实很不错，但我现在用的是最新版本的火狐浏览器而且是以管理员的身份登录。并非所有的FB用户都会像我这样做。

3、过长的下载时间。我需要等待多个内容加载动作条才能接触核心游戏。有些用户可能在这段时间内感到厌烦并离开游戏。而且大型且未优化过的flash文件很可能无法与老版本浏览器兼容（游戏邦注：多数用户使用的很可能恰恰是老版本的浏览器）。

第二和第三点都是传统游戏的弊病，即在游戏开发时未曾考虑到用户的设备。精美的图像需要更高成本的设备，而多数开发者并没有考虑到这一点，因为设置精美图像确实可以让游戏在的高端设备上显示更加绚丽的视觉效果。相信我，优化flash是个很困难的问题，需要开发者有更丰富的经验，而且只有少数人有过这方面的经验。

4、关注视觉效果而不是游戏可玩性。《Battle Punks》中大部分是你无法控制和跳过的重复性战斗动画。这是游戏的核心，但并不是很有趣。这也是为什么《Mafia Wars》中没有动画的原因所在。这也是为何《Gangster City》失败的原因，因为玩家并不会将动画视为奖励，经验值才是。iPhone游戏《Civ: Revolution》中也有战斗动画，但是时间很短而且可以跳过。而当我准备点击跳过的时候，动画也差不多结束了。

5、类似MMO所采用的过于复杂的游戏系统。不要让玩家去管理他们的仓库，这并不是什么很有趣的事情。这可能会影响到游戏的核心趣味性。只有硬核玩家才会欣赏这样的设置。不要将MMO游戏中的做法移植到社交游戏中。两类游戏的玩家不同，他们有着不同的需求。MMO应该从社交游戏中吸取扩大用户群体的经验。不要尝试学习《魔兽世界》等MMO游戏的设计。

我希望Gravity Bear能够找到他们的目标用户，并通过自己的游戏获得可观的盈利。有个观点近来很流行，那就是有着高ARPU并贴合受众的游戏才会成为下一波的主流社交游戏。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2010年3月12日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Gravity Bear Gets It All Wrong: 5 Common Mistakes of Traditional Game Developers Entering the Social Space

Bret

I must be in a critical mood, I apologize in advance to Gravity Bear who did make a well-polished game and doesn’t deserve to be my whipping boy. This post is more directed at the wave of traditional game devs who have been entering the social space for a while and having their boats smashed against the rocky shores of Facebook. Gravity Bear simply makes the same mistakes, which are numbered below.

I just played Battle Punks (http://apps.facebook.com/battlepunks/) for the first time, I had been watching Gravity Bear since they announced their formation.

1. Early Press release. I always consider it a sign of impending fail if a studio announces their social game via the press months in advance. It’s traditional game industry thinking and has zero impact on adoption of their game. Though it is useful to raise money.

2. Using a Plugin. Everybody wants to make their game to look pretty, I get that. But not at the expense of massive user drop-off. Plugins hurt your funnel badly. Instant Action was actually pretty painless, but I am using the latest version of Firefox on a computer where I’m logged in as an admin. Neither is a likely use case for most of the FB audience.

3. Long download times. I had to wait through multiple content downloading message to get to the core game. Typical user would have gotten bored and left. Also indicative of a big, unoptimized flash file which will likely crash older browsers (which is what most people use).

Both 2 and 3 are classic traditional mistakes, not taking into consideration technology lag and technology adverse users when creating games. Pretty rich graphics have a high cost which most developers don’t see because the games run fine on their high-end machines. This technology lag is going to be the biggest impediment to adoption in the forecasted “better graphics = better games” race that everyone is buying into. Believe me, optimizing flash is a hard problem for richer experiences and there are only a handful of guys in the world who have any real (real= years+) experience at this.

4. Focusing on graphics versus gameplay. Most of Battle Punks is watching a repetitive, animated battle that you can’t control and can’t skip. That’s the core of the game. Not fun. There’s a reason Mafia Wars doesn’t have animations. There’s also a reason why Gangster City is a FAIL: because the animations are not the reward, the experience points are. People seem to be confused about that. Civ: Revolution on the iPhone does animated battles well: quick and skippable. They are practically over before I can hit skip.

5. Overly-complicated Game Systems adapted from MMOs. Don’t make people have to active manage their inventory. It’s not fun. It’s a barrier to the core fun of the game. Only hard-core players can appreciate the nuances. Please stop taking game design lessons from MMOs. It’s a different audience (casual) with different requirements. If anything MMOs should take lessons from social games if they want to widen their audiences. Do not pull the World of Warcraft card to try and justify using MMO game design. WoW is unique, the other 100 MMO failures should have taught us something.

I’m stopping at five because I’m starting to rant. My hope for Gravity Bear is that they find their niche audience and monetize well and have a profitable business. There is a popular thesis that niche games with high ARPU is the next social games wave. I hope it is, but I have some opinions on that which I will share another time. (Source: Bret on Social Games)