作者：Owen

几个月前，我发行了一款游戏，现在我要好好分析其成功和失败地方。这是分析游戏成败，学习经验教训的好机会。《Monkeys in Space》推出后我按照《游戏开发者杂志》的模式写了篇事后分析，现在我也以相同格式分析《LandFormer》。

landformer from macworld.com

游戏介绍

也许你没玩过这款游戏，《LandFormer》是搭载iPhone/iPod touch的益智游戏。每个关卡都呈现5X5格的各高度地貌（游戏邦注：从海洋逐步上升至山峰）。每个关卡的目标是通过地形塑造工具修饰地貌拼图，平整地形。这是个富有挑战性的游戏，开始非常简单，但越变越难。这是款集技能、耐心和直觉为一体的游戏。

玩家可免费下载和试验游戏（免费版本目前有12个关卡），然后通过内置付费升级至“完整”版，享受额外画面主题和关卡。我觉得游戏像个演示内容，玩家可以先行体验，然后再决定是否花钱获得更多关卡。免费版包含广告，若玩家在游戏商店购买任何内容，广告就会立即关闭。

游戏2010年6月29日发行，截至2010年8月27日免费版已有14.7万次下载量。

作品杰出表现

1. 游戏玩法

我很满意游戏的表现。《LandFormer》最初的模型叫做“上下按钮”，我花6小时建成。《Monkeys in Space》发行后，我又重新回到模型，尝试通过各种方式体验，目的是让游戏变得更富趣味，最终我把主题确定在土地改造，确保玩家能够轻松理解游戏活动及其原理。

游戏最令我欣赏的一点是它在业内独一无二。其体验风格和滑块益智游戏类似（游戏邦注：这类游戏也需要类似空间推理和直觉），但上下移动拼图却非常新颖，要求全新思维方式。游戏非常容易上手，但要达到精通，驾驭更有难度的拼图需则需要一定时间。最后，我觉得游戏玩法非常稳固，我很满意游戏的整体运作情况。

2. 有力发行

这是我的第三款游戏，因此是我第三次发行游戏。但到了《LandFormer》，我觉得是时候采用新发行策略。早前两款游戏，苹果批准后我就立即发行。这在获得新闻报道和源源不断评论方面存在许多问题。到了《LandFormer》，我决定设定一个具体发行日期。苹果审核通过后，我决定在一周半后推出作品。于是我立即向各大网站发送含有优惠券的新闻稿（这个策略非常适合作品通过审核，但尚未入驻商店情况），以便媒体能够试验游戏。我服务器上的内容都需内置付费，但我也可以在试发行评论期间向媒体免费提供。非常方便。

此次新发行策略带来的结果是各大评论网站纷纷在游戏发行1-2天后发表评论。这有效推动游戏发展，在游戏发行后的第一个星期四，苹果就于Hot New Game专栏介绍游戏。星期五Gizmodo就发表游戏相关评论，这大大推高了游戏后来一周的下载量。

此次发行我非常满意。若说还有什么会让发行更完美，那就是获得商店首页推荐或App of the Week推荐。或许我的下款游戏会有机会。

3. 免费+内置付费

和所有开发商一样，我在游戏定价模式方面挣扎许久。我的其他两款游戏都是付费模式，但《Dapple》有另外的精简版本，供玩家“先试后买”。我不满精简版的地方在于若玩家决定购买游戏，就需下载两个独立应用。我觉得这有点像组合杂牌。最后，我决定参考PC或小游戏演示内容模式设置内容：游戏免费下载，若喜欢游戏，可选择在游戏中购买完整升级版。这是苹果内置付费渠道带来的有趣营收模式。

我在游戏中安装内置商店，这促使我得以设计游戏主题机制，销售主题。这同时也意味着我可以继续发行新关卡包，无需更新游戏本身。

我觉得这个模式在应用商店存在很大潜力。免费模式让你能够在商店获得较大曝光度（游戏邦注：用户愿意下载免费内容），然后你就可以通过虚拟交易获得些许收入。但此方面并非尽表现杰出：参考运作糟糕版块的对应内容。

4. 关卡编辑器

当我开始创建这款游戏时，我把关卡塑造成系列数据，将其载入游戏，然后进行测试。这有点荒谬。我很早就发现，创建关卡就是逆向解析关卡。我可以通过变更规则迅速在关卡编辑器创建首个关卡：开始呈现平面，然后通过工具进行改造。这有两大优势：1）这让关卡创建变得更简单；2）这意味着任何在关卡编辑器创建的的关卡都有解决方案。

在我自己操作成功后，我决定让所有玩家都自己创建。关卡编辑器简单易用，我需确保大家都会使用。我庆幸自己有花时间完善UI，这是延伸关卡编辑器，覆盖大量用户的必要条件。

编辑器让玩家得以创造自己的关卡，但除此之外，我还基于URL安装分享机制，这样玩家就能够向好友电邮关卡。好友只要点击邮件链接，关卡就会在其游戏副本中呈现，供其体验。这个机制很简单，但表现非常突出。

5. 亲力亲为

打从《Monkeys in Space》开始，我就自己制作音乐之外的所有游戏内容。在《Monkeys》和《LandFormer》中，我包揽所有游戏设计、编程、美工、UI设计、音效设计、PR和营销任务。我不制作音乐部分，这方面我不擅长。但包揽所有工作让我能够自由制作希望的游戏内容。也许最重要的是，这让我能够省下大把资金。我当然希望有足够资金聘请全职美工，但这目前对我来说还不切实际。我之前做过美工，但通过独自承担这两款游戏的所有美工任务，我的水平有了很大提高。我希望自己能够继续完善。但这其中也存在失误，所以下面我们就来谈谈失误方面。

运作不佳方面

1. 免费+内置付费

我已谈到《LandFormer》免费+内置付费模式的优点，但其也存在失误。我没想到的是玩家对这个定价模式颇为反感。我以为玩家会希望能够先试后买。但相反，很多玩家的反应是，“游戏说是免费， 但却要掏钱购买内容！”我上当了，简直就是个骗子。

我的第一反应是，应用描述明确说明玩家可免费体验新手关卡，但需掏钱购买其他内容。商店应用页面也在顶部显示内置付费渠道。但我发现没有人会阅读这些内容。我想游戏下载量（游戏邦注：这多半是在获得媒体宣传之后）大部分是来自那些只看见游戏名称、图标和“免费”字样就下载的玩家。

问题是我的定价模式与少数怀有不满情绪的高调应用商店用户存在分歧。在我看来：“《LandFormer》让你能够免费试验游戏，若喜欢内容，再选择购买。”用户看来：“哇！免费游戏！”然后发现不能免费享受所有关卡，就心生不满。

最后，我不确定《LandFormer》采取的定价模式是否正确。我不确定我能否通过推广精简版和独立付费版获得更多营收。这些都是App Store用户习惯的模式。一大问题是内置付费模式不是一开始就存在。用户需要1年时间才能适应新商业模式，我们目前正在处在转变用户阶段。这将是个非常艰难的过渡。

我觉得免费+内置付费模式非常适合那些免费提供完整游戏，然后通过内置付费渠道出售额外内容的开发商。我未来若有制作免费游戏，还会继续采用这个模式。

2. iOS 4+多任务处理

苹果于2010年6月21日发行iOS 4，早我发行《LandFormer》8天，但游戏在iOS 4发行前2天就通过审核。我完全有时间处理测试版SDK，确保游戏不会出现崩溃，在发行前默默修复内容。但我把大量时间都花在3个更新修复问题上（游戏邦注：这由于iOS 4的多任务处理而突然出现）。多任务处理导致我的关卡分享系统和保存系统出现各种问题。由于触控方式的变化，游戏在iOS 4出现崩溃（单此系统）。我并不是怪苹果，不过是我运气不好，游戏发行刚好撞到iOS 4问世，我无法为了处理这些小问题而再延迟游戏发行。

3. 广告网络

我在文章开头提到我决定在免费版中植入广告。这有几条原因。《LandFormer》鼎盛时期的下载量高达每天1.2万次。这能够带来每天5万次的广告印象。但游戏的广告点击率很糟。按我植入广告的方式来看，很多用户并未像我希望的那样浏览广告。最佳的情况是每天5美元广告营收。我第一次更新游戏时发行了一个修复内容，确保广告能够合理呈现给玩家。但待到内容获得批准，这款免费游戏的日下载量下降到几百次。虽然我的广告点击率因调整显著提高，但我的日平均营收只有0.3-0.4美元。

此外，我使用的广告网络存在编码漏洞。在我接连几周协助广告商探究问题后，他们表示将不再追踪此问题。我一周内收到玩家若干漏洞支持请求，所以最终决定把他们的广告网络移除游戏，自己编写定制系统。

目前游戏已从我的服务器撤销广告。这有几大优点。现在我可以自己决定在游戏中呈现何种广告，这意味着我能够在游戏中交叉推广我的其他作品，推广我购买和体验的游戏内容。我使用LinkShare服务，旨在希望玩家通过此系统购买内容时能够带来许忠诚度，但结果几乎为零。但我依然更愿意支持作品优秀，不会出现崩溃现象的开发者，而不是遭遇每天赚取0.3美元收入，令10%用户每次启动游戏都遭遇崩溃现象。

4. 主题内容

创建内置付费机制时，我高兴能够出售各种游戏主题（游戏邦注：也就是皮肤）。我创建图像引擎的方式意味着我可以轻松加载各种纹理，改变游戏外观。我以为玩家也会希望有更多机会自定义体验，但我完全错了。我发现主题内容的转换率只有0.1%（相当于1000个玩家中只有1个玩家下载主题内容）。

目前我只出售两个主题。所以或许玩家只是不喜欢此主题。或者玩家更喜欢默认画面。又或者玩家只是不在乎游戏主题更换。但若你换种角度思考，若100人中有1人购买付费内容，购买主题内容的玩家就在这1%中。这意味着这些人中有1/10会购买主题内容，那么这或许就够了。目前主题内容创造的营收约100美元，创建此内容花费一周左右（不包括放置主题系统所耗时间）。就此角度来看，这似乎并未获得突出投资回报。

我目前正在制作另一主题。若其销量依然不佳，我大概就不会再推出任何主题内容。我觉得主题内容在玩家能够免费体验完整内容的游戏中销量会更好。我觉得在这种情况下，用户会愿意购买主题内容。

5. 亲力亲为

我已陈述亲力亲为的优点，但这也存在许多弊端。最明显的是时间。《LandFormer》从头到尾耗时5个月（发行后又耗费1个月）。我估计我至少在在美工和UI设计部分花费2个月。若我有足够资金聘请专业美工，这也许只要一半时间，我编程的时候，他就能着手美工内容。

另一弊端就是无人提出反对意见。和美工共事让你能够开展集体讨论，尝试新元素，尝试艺术思维的游戏构思。当你所有事情都亲力亲为时，你很容易陷入这样的误区：先着手最先想到的内容。你很难逼迫自己尝试不同元素，找到问题的最佳艺术效果解决方案。

结论

最后，我很满意《LandFormer》所取得的成绩。这是我至今最成功的作品。这款游戏让我得以尝试全新内容：内置付费功能、免费游戏、广告支撑游戏及用户创造内容和分享。我很满意游戏所获得免费下载成绩。我很惊讶有15万人下载我的游戏！此外，说我满意游戏免费-付费转换率那绝对是谎话。

游戏依然持续保持每日数百次的下载量，几乎呈稳定态势。我希望它能够继续维持这种水平。游戏的免费模式似乎是其得以继续存活的主要原因。

每款游戏都富含不可思议的学习经验。在制作和发行《LandFormer》过程中，我收获良多。我会继续支持游戏，添加新内容，我也非常期待游戏未来发展态势。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2010年8月27日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

LandFormer Postmortem

By Owen

A couple of months after I launch a game, I like to sit down and take a hard and honest look at the things that went right and the things that went wrong: a postmortem. It’s a great exercise to go through after a game is launched to learn from your successes and, more importantly, your mistakes. I wrote up a postmortem after launching Monkeys in Space that was based on the structure that Game Developer Magazine uses. I’m going to use that same format for this LandFormer postmortem.

Introduction

If you haven’t played the game, LandFormer is a puzzle game for iPhone/iPod touch. Each level is made up of a 5×5 grid of terrain at different heights (oceans, up to mountains). The goal on each level is to use land forming tools to modify the heights of the terrain tiles to flatten things out. It’s a challenging game that starts off very easy, but get quite difficult in the harder levels. It’s a game that requires skill, patience, but most of all, intuition.

The game is free to download and try (there are 12 levels currently in the free version of the game), with In-App Purchase (IAP) available to upgrade to the “full” version of the game, as well as IAP for additional visual themes and additional levels. I think of it like a demo, where the user gets to try it and then decide if they want to spend money on more levels. The free version also contains ads, which are disabled if the player buys any content from the in-game shop.

The game launched on June 29, 2010 and has had 147,000 downloads of the free version of the game so far.

What Went Right?

1) Gameplay

I’m really happy with how the game itself turned out. LandFormer started as a prototype called “UpDown” that I did in 6 hours at the all-night GameJam for 360iDev Denver in September, 2009 (I participated via Skype). After I launched Monkeys in Space, I returned to the prototype in early 2010 and started playing around with ways to make it more fun, and settled on the terraforming theme, which helps players understand what they’re supposed to do, and why.

What I like most about the game is that I haven’t really seen other puzzle games like it. It’s similar in play-style to sliding block puzzle games (it requires a similar combination of spatial reasoning and intuition), but the up/down movement of the pieces makes it feel very new and requires new ways of thinking. It’s also very easy to learn how to play, but takes time to really master it and get good at the more difficult puzzles. In the end, I think the gameplay stands as being strong, and I’m very pleased with how the game turned out.

2) Strong Launch

This is my 3rd game, and thus my 3rd game launch. However, with LandFormer I decided it was time to try a new launch strategy. With my previous games, I launched the games as soon as Apple approved them. This caused all sorts of problems in terms of getting press materials out, and reviews trickling out gradually. With LandFormer, I decided to set a proper release date. When Apple approved the game, I set the release date for a week and a half into the future. I immediately sent out press releases to sites along with promo codes (yes, they work once the game has been approved, but before it’s available in the store) for press to try the game. Because my content is all IAP on my server, I could also make it available to the press for free during the pre-launch review period. Very handy.

The result of this new launch strategy was that several large review sites had reviews out within one or two days of launch. This helped pick up momentum for the game, then the first Thursday after launch Apple featured it as a Hot New Game. The Friday immediately after the feature, Gizmodo ran a review of the game, which boosted downloads tremendously for the following weekend.

I really couldn’t have asked for much better a launch. The only way it could have been better was by getting a front-page feature, or App of the Week feature from Apple. They’re probably just saving that for my next game (har har).

3) Free + IAP

As all developers do, I struggled a lot with the pricing model for the game. My other games are both paid games, but Dapple has a separate Lite version for players to “try before they buy”. The thing I don’t like about the Lite model is that it requires players to download two separate apps if they then want to buy the game. It always felt kludgy to me. Ultimately I decided to set things up like a PC or XBLA demo: free to download it, but if you like it, buy the full upgrade from within the game. This is the really exciting monetization path that IAP opened up when Apple introduced it.

Because I was implementing the in-game store for this anyway, it also allowed me to developing a theming system for the game and sell themes. It also means I can continue to release new level packs for users without having to update the game itself.

I think the model has a lot of potential on the app store. The free download gets you maximum visibility on the store (people are willing to download something just because it’s free), but then you have a way to earn some money within the app. However, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns: see the corresponding section in What Went Wrong.

4) Level Editor

When I started building the game, I was building levels as string of data then loading them into the game and testing them. This was ridiculous. I realized early on that building a level could be seen as solving a level in reverse. I was able to very quickly build a first pass at a level editor just by reversing the rules: start with a flat plane, and use the tools to deform it. This had two advantages: 1) it made building levels much easier, and 2) it meant that any level created in the level editor was guaranteed to have a solution.

Once I had it working for my own purposes I decided that it needed to be available to players in the game. The level editor is so easy and intuitive to use, I need people to be able to play with it. I’m happy I took the time to do the UI work required to build the level editor out into something that everyone could use.

The editor allows players to create their own levels, but beyond that, I implemented a sharing system based on URLs, where players could email a level to a friend. The friend clicks a link in the email and the level opens inside their copy of the game for them to play. It’s a simple system, that I think works quite nicely.

5) Doing Everything (Almost)

Since Monkeys in Space, I’ve been doing everything except the music in my games by myself. For both Monkeys and LandFormer I did all of the game design, programmer, artwork, UI design, sound design, PR, and marketing. I don’t do music, because that’s just something I’m not capable of doing myself. However, doing everything myself has given me a lot of freedom to make the game exactly how I want to make it. It also allows me to think about how a change will impact all the various aspects of the game. And, perhaps most importantly, it allows me to save a huge amount of out-of-pocket expense. I would love to have the funds to pay a full-time artist to work on the game, but that’s just not in the cards for me yet. I do have some art background, but doing all my own art for these games has helped me get a lot better than I was. I hope I’ll continue to improve. However, this is also another one of those things that also appears on the What Went Wrong section. So let’s get to that now.

What Went Wrong?

1) Free + IAP

I listed the reasons why I thought Free + IAP was great for LandFormer, but it’s also something that didn’t work great. One thing I was not at all prepared for was a backlash from users over the pricing model. I thought that players would be happy that they were given an opportunity to try the game before spending any money on it. However, the reaction from a lot of players instead was “The game says it’s free, but you have to buy stuff!” I got called a cheat, a liar, and a con artist.

My immediate reaction was that my app description clearly states that you only get the Beginner levels for free and have to buy the others. The app page in the store also lists the top IAP. But what I learned is that no one reads that stuff. I think I got a lot of downloads (especially after some of the big press stories ran) from people who saw the name, the icon, and “free” and downloaded it.

The problem is that there’s a disconnect between my view of the pricing model, and that of the minority of angry, vocal, app store consumers. I saw: “LandFormer offers you a way to try the game for free, and if you like it, buy it.” That customer sees: “Hey, a free game!” And then is angry when they discover they can’t play all the levels for free.

In the end, I’m not sure if the pricing model I chose for LandFormer was the right call or not. I’m not convinced that I wouldn’t have made more money by distributing a Lite version and a separate paid version (or only a paid version). App Store customers have gotten used to that model. I think it’s a problem with the fact that IAP didn’t exist from the start. Users had a year to get used to a certain business model, now we’re trying to change that. It’s going to be a difficult transition.

Not to go on about this for too long, but I think the Free + IAP model works best for games where you’re giving away a complete game for free, and then selling IAP for additional content that’s not required. If I ever do another free game, I’ll be looking toward that model.

2) iOS 4 + Multitasking

Apple launched iOS 4 on June 21, 2010, 8 days before I launched LandFormer, but 2 days after Apple had approved it. I had time with the beta SDK to make sure the game didn’t crash and that the game could be put into the background and restored properly before shipping it. However, I spent a great deal of time over the next 3 updates fixing weird little issues that cropped up because of iOS 4 multitasking. Multitasking caused all kinds of problems with my level sharing system, as well as my save system. I believe there was also one crash that only showed up in iOS 4 because of a change in the way some touch events fired. I’m not blaming Apple, it was just bad luck on my part that I launched so close to iOS 4, and I couldn’t afford to delay the launch of the game any more to deal with all the little issues that cropped up.

3) Ad Network

I mentioned in the introduction that I decided to include ads in the free version of the game. This is in this section for several reasons. At the peak of LandFormer’s popularity, it was being downloaded about 12,000 times per day. This translated into about 50,000 ad impressions a day. However, my click-through rate (CTR) was abysmal. It turned out that the way I was loading ads meant that a lot of people never saw the ads I requested. On my best day, I made about $5 off of ads. In the first update to the game (v1.1) I released a fix that made sure that ads were displayed properly to users. However, by the time it was approved I was down to a few hundred downloads a day of the free game. Even though my CTR increased dramatically with the change, my earnings averaged out around $0.30-0.40/day.

On top of that, the ad network I used had a crash bug in its code. After a couple of weeks trying to help them track the problem down, they told me they weren’t going to look into it any further. I was getting several support requests a week from players about this crash, so ultimately I pulled their ad network out of my game and I wrote my own custom system.

The game now (in v1.1.2) pulls ads of my own server. This is cool for several reasons. Now I get to decide what ads get shown in the game, it means I can cross promote my other games, and it means that I can promote games that I actually buy and play. I use LinkShare to get a small royalty any time someone actually buys through this system, but that’s been next to nothing so far. Still, I’d rather help support developers whose work I respect and have no crashes, than get the $0.30/day but with 10% of users experiencing a crash every time they launch the game.

4) Themes

When I built the IAP system I was very excited to be able to sell themes (skins) for the game. The way I had set up the graphics engine meant that it would be easy for me to load different textures to change the look of the game. I thought players would like the chance to be able to customize their experience a bit more too, but I was wrong. I’m seeing about a 0.1% conversion rate on themes (i.e. about 1 in 1000 people download a theme).

At this point, I only have one theme for sale. So it could be that people just don’t like that theme. It could also be that people just like the default art more. Or it could just be that people really don’t care about theming this kind of game. Though, if you think about it another way, if 1 in 100 people buy the premium content, the users who would buy a theme are probably a subset of that 1 in 100. So that means about 1 in 10 of those people have bought the theme, so maybe that’s ok. Still, when you do the math, that’s about $100 made off the theme so far, and it took almost a week of art work to build it (not even counting the time it took to put the theming system in place). When you look at it like that, it’s not as worth it.

I’m currently working on another theme. If it doesn’t sell, I probably won’t be releasing more themes. I think themes would sell better in a game where you could play the whole game for free. I think people might be willing to buy a theme in that case.

5) Doing Everything (Almost)

I’ve already outlined why I thought this worked for the project, but doing everything by oneself also comes with some big downsides. The biggest is time. LandFormer took 5 months from start to launch (then another month of work after launch). I’d guess that at least 2 months of that was doing the artwork and UI design for the game. If I could have afforded to pay a professional artist to do that for me, they probably would have taken half the time, and they could have been doing it while I programmed.

The other big downside is not having someone to bounce ideas off of. Working with an artist allows you to brainstorm, to try new things, and play with the concepts in the artistic direction of the game. When you’re doing it all yourself, it’s easy to get caught in the trap of just doing the first thing that comes to mind. It’s hard to force yourself to try multiple things and to find the best artistic solution to a problem.

Conclusion

In the end, I’m extremely pleased with the way that LandFormer turned out. I think it’s my strongest game to date. The game was also an opportunity for me to experiment with several new things I’d never tried before: IAP, free games, ad-supported games, and user-created content and sharing. I’m very happy with the number of free downloads the game has had. I find it absolutely amazing to think that almost 150,000 people have downloaded my game! At the same time, I’d be lying if I said I was happy with the conversion rate I’ve seen from free to paid.

The game continues to get a couple hundred downloads a day, and it seems to have stabilized there. I hope that it will maintain this level (or higher) for quite some time. The fact that it’s free seems to help keep the downloads alive.

Every game is an incredible learning experience, and I’ve learned a lot in making and launching LandFormer. I’ll be continuing to support it and add new content, but I’m also looking ahead to what’s next. Onward!（Source：streamingcolour）