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Mentez首席执行官Juan Franco谈怎么样将游戏本土化

发布时间:2010-08-13 10:35:36 Tags:,,,

本周一,我们报导过一家社交游戏的出版商Mentez,一家精通将游戏在巴西市场和Orkut(在巴西最受欢迎的社交网络)上本土化的游戏公司。Mentez以约2.2千万的游戏用户作为基础,与Playdom建立了新的合作伙伴的关系,并且仅从有洞察能力和冒险精神的合伙人那集资。

为了了解更多有关Mentez在巴西和一些拉丁美洲的国家帮助其他游戏开发商将游戏本土化的策略,我们采访了Mentez的CEO–Juan Franco。这次的采访是我们报导在全世界范围内将游戏本土化系列的一部分。

mentez

mentez

Inside Social Games:能告诉我们一些有关巴西市场的消息吗?

Juan Franco: 巴西经济正在蓬勃发展,而且不仅是技术部分,所以部门都在急速的发展。人们相信巴西将很快成为世界经济排名第五的国家。

目前该国有超过7千万的人在使用网络,并且这一数据在以每年10%的速度增长,因此我们预计在几年之内网络用户将超过1亿。手机用户目前有差不多2亿,所以手机市场也很强劲。至于社交网络,排名第一的是Orkut, Facebook在巴西用户虽然在增长但规模不大。

在 Mentez,我们拥有一个由在线的和离线网络组成的强大的货币化平台。在巴西,大约40%的人没有信用卡,所以有一个支付方法来处理信用卡的问题,即在街上设立了多达12万个销售点,这样用户就可以销售点那购买信用。此外,有大约35%的用户通过网吧上网。

ISG:开发商需要知道哪些方面的文化差异?

JF:当你在准备巴西发布一款游戏时,它不仅仅是将语言翻译过来这么简单,它需要的是定位。因此,我们和第三方开发商合作并在本土化——包括翻译、更改游戏名字、加入巴西特色的内容上花费大量的时间。

本土化包含语言、游戏内容和人们玩游戏的方式的所有相关信息。我相信我们成功的最关键因素之一是我们已经确实的为巴西的用户本土化自己,下一步游戏想要取得成功将是为巴西的用户制作好的故事情节,比如一个有关亚马逊河或狂欢节的游戏。

你应该在狂欢节的时候到巴西,在世界上的任何一个地方你都不能理解巴西人真正喜欢什么,巴西除外。你需要在你的游戏中出现一些特殊的东西,但是这对一个待在美国加州或英国的开发商来说并不容易。

另外一个例子是在巴西的农场游戏里,玩家可以从其他的玩家那偷窃。对美国或欧洲的玩家来说,这是行不通的,但对巴西的玩家来说,这却是该游戏最重要的功能,而这正是我们农场游戏在巴西占据第一的原因之一。

ISG:你们没有为自己开发任何游戏,那么你们和其他的开发商合作的过程是怎么样的?

JF:现阶段我们主要将注意力集中在游戏的质量上。下一步是实现更高的游戏质量,所以我们为此正做很多相关的调查。大体来说,我们和我们的合伙人签订合作协议书,我们不仅负责翻译,而且我们还有自己的研发团队,研究在游戏需要加入的本土化内容。我们提供本土化的内容,由他们负责整合,之后我们再把游戏发布到相应的市场。我们现在正努力实现每三个月发布三款游戏。

ISG:与Facebook相比,在Orkut上发布和销售游戏怎么样?

JF:现在一个开发商要发布一个新游戏,比六个月前要困难十倍,在Facebook的情况也一样。但是我们仍能很容易的发布扩增我们的游戏。因为公司已经定位到大的玩家。

ISG: 你认为Orkut将在巴西进一步发展吗?你准备怎么利用Facebook的机会?

JF:现在Orkut的是很大的,我相信它是巴西最大的网站。我估计它有5千万用户,所以Orkut要持续发展会有些困难。我不相信它的用户会增长是因为它已经拥有全部网络用户(巴西)的80%,并且如我所知谷歌为了保持它们的领导地位,也在不断的向Orkut投资。

不过Facebook同样也在投资。Facebook想要在巴西站稳脚跟就必须抓住高收入的用户、会说英语或者在美国有朋友的用户。它们自身拥有很强大的高收入用户群。然而,巴西的市场是一个巨大的市场,所以如果你想成为巴西市场里的一个竞争者,你必须有一定的基础,比如Orkut就是基于它的领导地位。

ISG:如何才能很好的赚钱巴西用户的钱?

JF:好消息是巴西用户花费的行为方式和美国用户很像。4%-6%的用户以做交易为主,而在美国该数据是6%-8%。

对于我们在市场上存在了超过一年的唯一一款游戏,我们发现用户每年在其上花费10美元。据我们的观察,我们游戏的生命周期大约是8-12个月,但是像其他市场上的游戏一样,它们终究会变得萧条并开始衰退。(唐统权)

How to Localize Games: An Interview with Orkut-Focused Brazilian Publisher Mentez

On Monday, we wrote about social game publisher Mentez, which specializes in localizing games for the Brazilian market and Orkut, the most popular social network in that country. Mentez claims some 22 million users across its games, has a new partnership with Playdom, and just raised money from Insight Venture Partners.

We caught back up with CEO Juan Franco to hear more about his company’s strategy of localizing other developer’s games for Brazil and other Latin American countries. This interview is part of our ongoing series about localization worldwide.

Inside Social Games: Tell us about the Brazilian market.

Juan Franco: The Brazilian economy is booming, not only the technology sector but every other sector. People believe that it’s going to become the number five economy in the world soon.

There are more than 70 million people with internet today, and that’s growing over 10 percent a year, so we expect that in a couple years we’ll have more than 100 million internet users.

There are almost 200 million mobile phones, so the mobile market is strong as well. As far as social networks, there’s Orkut, then Facebook, which is growing but still not as large.

[At Mentez] we have a strong monetization platform that’s a combination of online and offline. In Brazil, about 40 percent of people don’t have a credit card, so there’s a payment gateway to process cards, and 120,000 points of sale on the street, so users can go and buy the credits. Also, 35 percent of the population accesses the internet through cafes.

ISG: What cultural differences do developers need to know about?

JF: When you launch a game in Brazil, it’s not just about translation, it’s localization. So we work with third party developers and spend a lot of time on localizing — which means translation, changing names, adding specific content for Brazil.

It’s all about the language, the content, the way people play the game. I believe that one of the key factors of our success has been to really localize for Brazilian users, and the next generation successful of games will be those that really create stories for the Brazilian users, [like] a game about the Amazon, or Carnaval.

You should go during Carnaval. There’s no other place in the world to see what it’s really like for a Brazilian. The country stops. You need that sort of thing in the game, but that’s not easily understood by a developer in California or the UK.

Another example is that in farming games in Brazil, users could steal from other users. That wouldn’t work in the US or Europe, but for Brazilian users it was a key functionality, and it’s a reason our farming game is number one in Brazil.

ISG: You don’t make any games of your own. What’s your process for working with outside developers?

JF: At this time we’re focused on the quality of games. The next generation is high quality, so we’re doing research on that. Basically we sign our partnership to work together, we do translation, we have our own developers who develop local content for the game. We provide the local content, they integrate it, and we launch the game in the market. We’re now trying to release three games every three months.

ISG: How does publishing and marketing games on Orkut compare to Facebook?

JF: For a new developer that’s launching a new game today, it’s ten times more difficult to grow the game than six months before, the same as on Facebook. But for us, it’s still easy to grow our games. The industry has gone to the big players.

ISG: Will Orkut grow any further in Brazil? And what’s your take on Facebook’s chances?

JF: Right now Orkut is huge, I believe the number one site in Brazil. My estimation is that it has over 50 million users. So for Orkut to keep growing is difficult. I don’t believe they’re growing because they have 80 percent penetration of internet users, and from what I’ve seen Google is investing in Orkut and they want to keep their leadership.

But Facebook is investing as well. The way that Facebook is growing in Brazil is with high-income users, people that speak English or have friends in the US. They’re very strong with the high-income users. However, the Brazilian market is a massive market, so if you want to be a player in Brazil, you need the rest, where Orkut has its leadership.

ISG: How well do Brazilian users monetize?

JF: The good news is that the Brazilian user’s monetization behavior is similar to the United States. Four to six percent of the user base does transactions, versus what I hear is about six to eight percent in the US.

For our only game that has been on the market for more than a year, we’ve seen users spend $10 per year. The life-cycle of our games, from what we’ve seen, is 8-12 months, but like in any other market they eventually get flat and start to decline.


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