作者：Christian Nutt

谈到Facebook开发商，Wooga尾随Zynga和EA排名第三。在PopCap数据并入EA前，Wooga排名第二。作为一家鲜为美国人所知的德国开发公司，Wooga如何在短短几年便取得如此成就？

在本访谈中，Wooga工作室主管Henric Suuronen将陈述社交游戏设计法则。你定听过Facebook游戏的设计方式和掌机游戏截然不同，但就有多大不同？据Suuronen表示，二者存在本质差别——其差异之大令来自掌机领域的设计师全然无法在Wooga找到合适位置。

Suuronen是个游戏玩家。他从小就钟情于NES的《超级马里奥兄弟》、世嘉Mega Drive的《NHL ’95》等古典游戏，年纪大些开始转投PC《Dune II》。从这些作品中，Suuronen积累了对其当前工作不可或缺的游戏知识——这些知识不断累积，直至其上大学后停止玩游戏。

但他毕业后选择加入诺基亚，在负责该公司的N-Gage重启工作，随后跳巢至Digital Chocolate，投身首创游戏作品《高楼建造》和《大富豪世界》。

他早前全心致力社交游戏变革事业，如今他将这些美好回忆同当前行业高度竞争、充满挑战的的残酷实况结合起来。他将于访谈中详细描述具体情况。

我很少采访社交游戏设计方面的内容。我通常会直接同决策者沟通。这里我想要探讨的是游戏设计哲学。在你看来，社交游戏设计的重要性何在，以致于让此内容能够独立成型？

我投身设计领域多年，从未做过“游戏设计师”——我担任过产品经、高级产品经理，或主管级别职位。也许是由于从小接触，我在游戏机制方面积累丰富知识，知道应该做什么，什么行得通，什么行不通。所以我涉足很多游戏设计方面的工作。

谈到社交游戏设计，我觉得最重要的部分是游戏循环机制。那么你反复进行的任务是什么？拿《大富豪世界》来说，你购买田地、领土和房子，安置房子，等待一定时间，然后从中收集金钱。你反复进行这样的内容，等到你获得足够资金，你就能购买另一座房子。然后对其进行安置，植入道路等元素。

游戏循环机制就是游戏内容。这是最重要的部分。

有关社交游戏设计的思考内容，我觉得开发者应该抛弃原本的掌机知识，或硬核理念，这些内容会让你步入错误轨道。

社交游戏不仅具有社交性，还采用免费模式。我觉得，免费模式带来的变化比社交性更甚。免费模式是很多掌机领域人士所缺乏的概念。他们通常先收取60美元，然后提供糟糕菜单，但玩家已投入60美元，所以他还是会浏览菜单，尝试学习游戏，否则他会觉得自己白花冤枉钱。

社交游戏是免费模式游戏；其截然不同。所以你会想，“咳！那家伙没在游戏中投入半分钱！”我要怎么尽快让他浏览菜单，（游戏邦注：假设其中存在菜单），我要怎么让他阅读指南？我觉得这是游戏设计最困难的部分。

显然游戏具有社交性，所以你需思考融入好友如何表现更佳，简称BWF（better with friends）。游戏的BWF是什么？仅是访问，或者你能否更新内容，帮助或索要零件，是否能够雇佣人员，是否能够异步体验，或同步体验？类似这类的不同内容。

你就当前社交游戏机制的落实情况有什么看法？它们是否足够稳健？你觉得它们是否存在较大发展潜力？

是的，显然如此。且拭目以待。我已从事社交游戏4年。《 高楼建造》之前的作品是《Jetman》，这款游戏并不突出，也许设计师1天内就完成所有游戏编码，主要内容是某人穿越洞穴。但内容非常有趣，是款高度依赖积分的游戏。

4年后，玩家开始接触Zynga《CityVille》和《Pioneer Trail》、Kabam游戏、Digital Chocolate游戏和《Zombie Lane》，以及现在的《梦幻国度》（Magic Land)。行业的确处在不断发展之中。其发展步伐是否会止于此？我觉得这片市场会继续发展，就像4年前我们从《Jetman》、《Scrabulous》和《Tower Bloxx》一路发展而来，行业未来几年将继续发展步伐。

我觉得未来会涌现更精致、采用异步和合作玩法的内容。所以关于《梦幻国度》，我脑中有新想法，我们会仔细研究如何实现这个目标作——也许很快就会发行此类内容。目前业内还有更多更好的合作和社交互动机制。我不觉得游戏将止于此，“你好！我丢失某零件，能否送个给我？”

我也觉得当前游戏机制不会局限于此……

大家最终会对这样的“社交性”产生厌倦情绪。

我觉得行业开始面临各种不同竞争。就像你说的，几年前，业内只有少数保守设计爱好者；大家只是抱着尝试态度。现在我们发现连EA也推出Facebook游戏《模拟人生社交版》，游戏投资巨大，耗时近1年（游戏邦注：和以往的较短开发周期不同）。

是的，若你查看Wooga游戏，你会发现《梦幻国度 》的制作耗费最多人工时。翻一倍的团队规模，延迟数个月的开发周期，作品融入更多游戏功能。最低可行性作品的时代已一去不复返。如今你需呈现能够吸引投资者要求的内容。

2年前，行业由于存在病毒式传播功能发展顺利。Facebook病毒式传播功能成本低，开发者无需但心游戏是否因内容糟糕，一开始就流失玩家，因为你能够免费获得新玩家。

现在若你因游戏尚不够完善而在最初就流失重要玩家，你将无法挽回他们，你无法再轻松获得病毒式传播。

这极大改变行业当前处境——开发商们不再推出最低可行性产品。若你依然制作此类内容，也许作为小型初创公司，凭借杰出构思这行得通，且能够获得些许成就（游戏邦注：例如在游戏发布两个月后取得100万的DAU），但这无法转变成巨大成功。

你是否觉得Facebook如今开始积极地引入游戏内容？这个平台是否有任何调整令你觉得颇为受益？

有。过去1年，大家都哀叹连连。很多开发者抱怨称Facebook令人生厌，缺乏可行性，丧失病毒式传播功能后，我们错过很多生意。

Wooga没有大声哭诉。我们同Facebook沟通，提供明确反馈信息，而非通过博客之类的渠道进行抱怨。此时我们的用户数量在没有打广告的情况下翻了三倍。

我们没有一味抱怨，而是着眼制作更优质的内容。有趣的是我们从未融入虚拟交易，但最近开始有所涉猎，但总是凭借“更优质的内容获得更多用户”。

是的，Facebook开发领域如今更加艰难，但最近几个月Facebook也公布系列颇具吸引力的信息。他们表示目前有40%的Facebook用户体验游戏；游戏是平台的重要内容。他们基于游戏创收，分成30%利润。

我们同Facebook的关系非常融洽，他们倾听我们的意见，他们目前正在开发许多优质功能。目前我们对Facebook持满意态度。此外，我们也开始瞄准Google+开发内容，情况如何只有拭目以待。

一方面你们从其他工作室聘请许多具有开发背景的人员，另一方面他们需要抛弃许多已掌握的内容。

我所指的是掌机领域的设计理念。来自大型掌机游戏工作室的人员鲜少会保持谦虚态度。他们进来就说“我曾同100人合作制作这款那款AAA游戏，我将加入你们团队，让你们看看怎么制作游戏”。这不是制作社交游戏所应有的态度。

你需承认这是个新平台，存在新规则。是的，你所知晓的内容非常有价值，这也是他们对你感兴趣的原因所在，但你需要持开放学习态度，因为这是个截然不同的领域。EA就是个例子。在他们收购Playfish前，他们曾制作《Pogo Puppies》，游戏斥资200万，却只获得1万名用户，他们因此决定放弃，游戏最终以失败告终。

如此成功的掌机游戏公司，投入大量资金，具备杰出人才，为何最终在Facebook以失败收场？这是因为他们无法融入平台，所以他们最终选择收购Playfish。

你无需丢弃所学知识，但得将其暂抛脑后；你需放宽视野，积极学习，当你把握什么是社交设计后，你就能运用原有知识。

这种情况并不少见。我们有位杰出产品经理来自EA DICE Studio，他目前参与《怪兽世界》（Monster World)项目；表现非常突出。

这是指要暂时忽略原有游戏设计理念，还是指要集中关注产品运作方式？

我觉得二者兼有。就像我之前说的，这是个免费模式设计。我觉得这是只是其中之一，这还是社交设计，存在虚拟交易内容。也许你的游戏设计师刚正不阿，不希望通过玩家创收。他希望制作最优质作品，然后过着粗茶淡饭的日子。我们需要找到二者的平衡点。

你需了解如何创建社交游戏循环机制，如何让此机制运作，如何创建持久世界的游戏——社交元素。曾制作过基于关卡的第一人称设计游戏并不意味着你就知晓如何创建持久世界游戏。我们常会面临许多类似情况。

谈到游戏设计师，他们通常无法抛弃这些不着边际的知识。他们有些登陆Facebook，看过这些游戏后表示：“平台存在些许游戏，但它们毫无价值”。所以我觉得仔细研究《CityVille》，把握其杰出之处非常重要。《CityVille》存在许多独创元素。

有时我们会遇到深谙此道的硬核领域人士。我甚至还设计一个游戏设计师/产品经理测试。其中一个问题是让测试者体验3款城建游戏，其中一个是《大富豪世界》，然后分析游戏设计，为什么会觉得《大富豪世界》比其他两款游戏杰出。

这个任务能够显示他是否理解游戏设计。《大富豪世界》的某些设计元素之前尚未出现于在其他Facebook游戏中。有些设计师发现这点，这很好！我们聘请他们，而其他则没有，我们就不感兴趣。

另外一个不同之处是掌机游戏提供完整内容。但社交游戏逐步发展和变化，你需关注能够意留住用户的元素，保持提供新内容。你无法事前规划如此多内容——开发者需保持灵活性。

这是个好问题。以《 梦幻国度 》为例，其功能完整，不要单看完整这个词——因为内容并不完整。游戏功能永远不可能是完整的。但它已投放市场，以Facebook游戏角度来看，其功能已非常齐全。游戏需花家投入6个月才能全部玩透，其内容已相当完整。

我们还计算完整体验游戏所要耗费的时间；硬核玩家在不付费情况下3个月能够完成，普通用户需6个月时间。就此来看，游戏内容已非常完整。

但在Wooga，游戏发行后才是任务真正的开始，所以我们没有提前规划过多内容。我知道我们未来2个星期将进行的工作；之后的任务就有待商讨。今年秋天我要完成3-4个大型功能，但我不确定其中顺序。也许还会出现其他需要优先处理的内容。我还不确定。但我知道这是未来2星期的工作内容。

所以我们按周安排任务。通常我们会计划下周任务，发行内容，然后再计划下下个周的工作（游戏邦注：基于参数或反馈信息）。所以我们能够在1周内完成开发周期。我们通常清楚把握下周内容，以及些许下下周的工作。但第三周的工作就完全无从知晓。

你们是否每周更新内容？

是的。

你们所有的功能是否都能1周完成？或者你们是否曾花过更长时间？

不是的，有时我们会花更长时间。我制作过的最久的功能是3星期，但每周我们都会推出少量内容。例如，进行内容更新，用户期待这些内容。富有生气的作品会不断呈现新内容。

例如，我有时会这么做：即便完成某些内容，也不立即发布；我将他们储存起来。若我们哪周无法推出新功能，我们至少还有内容可以更新。这是你可以参考的策略。

但你需每周进行更新。有些公司2周更新一次——我们有时也2周更新一次。这是个可行方案。否则用户会觉得，“这是款缺乏生气的游戏。内容缺乏趣味；他们完全不参考我们的反馈信息；游戏缺乏充足内容”。用户总是疯狂消耗内容。就像刚引入一座新房子，明天就会有15座。

就免费玩法功能的设计而言，有关游戏设计师如何看待虚拟交易的话题很多。这是我们能够确定的内容，但很多免费功能的设计都非常基本。仅仅是体验所要消耗的方便性、能量或其他元素。你怎么看待免费功能设计的发展？

1年前的Facebook还存在许多吸引眼球的地方，我把它称作“合约机制”，或者有人会将其称作“约定游戏”。你能够拥有农场，在里面种植作物，这会在4分钟，或4小时，或8小时，或12小时内成熟。这行得通——《大富豪世界》是款纯合约机制游戏，或者约定游戏。游戏没有融入能量机制。

我不知道哪款游戏最先融入能量元素，但《FrontierVille》在此表现很不错。我们开始听到：“能量元素的创收情况非常好！”这有点像，“哎呀！我遇到障碍，我需采取措施”。我免费体验20分钟，现在我希望体验更多内容，但我或需等待1个小时，或向好友求助，或支付1美元。有部分人缺乏足够耐心。

我们见证行业发生的系列变化，首先是《Jetman》（游戏邦注：基于广告，免费模式），游戏融入广告，大家点击广告，内容就会跳转至其他游戏，因安装而获得10美分、50美分奖励。所以，用户无需支付任何东西；这是广告商业模式。

下个有所发展的内容是能量元素，能量限制玩家体验活动。二者能够结合起来，若游戏有些内容也植入合约机制，如《CityVille》种植元素，其他内容则可以基于能量设置；这似乎进展得不错。刚发行的《梦幻国度》就是这种情况——其兼容这两个元素。

最近趋势是游戏开始融入大量会消耗尽的资源。所以1年前，内容这仅涉及金钱，随后开始出现食物资源，或者丢失的道具。你会发现这类资源越来越多——这是你所缺少的元素。这显然让虚拟交易得以融入其中，玩家或通过辛勤劳作获得道具，或花钱购买。

我觉得未来游戏将融入更多会消耗尽的道具；《Magic Land》就存在众多此类元素。再来是令我颇激动的内容，那就是角色发展。这是《梦幻国度》融入一个角色的原因所在。我希望在角色中融入能力或力量。

一个角色？

一个角色。这有点像在《魔兽世界》中完善你的角色；我希望以随意方式进行。你显然需要设定技能积分或其他内容。这能够给虚拟交易创造新机会。

你所谈到的营收选择似乎更像在消除游戏局限，是吧？

是的。

游戏机制呢？《战地英雄》向玩家出售他们无法免费获得的优化枪支。免费玩家无法访问某些等级的内容。你是否反对这种理念？

不全然。我觉得这方面的先驱是Nexon。早在Facebook问世前，Nexon就涉足许多免费内容。我听说他们通过提供丰富军队选择获得丰厚营收。所以若选择免费体验，你能够逐一移动你的队员。若你支付些许费用，你就能享有所有内容。我听说他们因此获利颇多。

这是在韩国，还是西方国家？

韩国。

我有这样的感觉，亚洲市场的内容更着眼于营收目的。

也许如此。

我们刚才谈到角色能力或力量。现在我感兴趣的是是否存在某些不具限制性，但能给予玩家更多能量的内容。

在《梦幻国度》中玩家需击败巨人。所以若你拥有更优质的宝剑，你将能够将它们一次击败，而非猛击4次。这些是我研究的内容，我们也许会尝试这种模式。

这已在其他游戏中得到落实，为什么不试着也在社交游戏中这么做？我不确定玩家愿意支付什么等级的内容；我们需深入研究。这是我自己本身也非常感兴趣的内容，因为我也在寻找新途径。我不会满足于我们当前所处的状态——我们会更近一步。

那么关于产品方面呢，如发行众多产品？你是否需达成一定目标？是否由你决定产品发行进度？

不是的，这不是服务模式思维方式；我觉得这是基于产品的公司。我之前任职的公司主要替电信运营商制作手机游戏。所以我们1年固定推出16款作品，1款也不会少，需在规定日期发行内容，不论质量如何。

在Wooga，我们通常逐一制作内容，待到内容足够完善才发行。若我们觉得作品已足够完善，但团队主管觉得“还有不足”，我们将不会发行内容。我们无需面对任何硬性期限。

就《梦幻国度》而言，我觉得我们可以早点发行这款游戏。然后宣布公司获得新一轮风投资本。那么新投资者就会这样：“让我们制作款从头至尾都非常优秀的内容，这样就能打败Zynga游戏。”这有点像：我们不妨都投入2个月，3个月，发行款更完善的作品。

我不是在发表营销演讲。我们不存在硬性期限——我们待到作品足够完善才发行内容。我觉得这是个非常愉快的工作环境。

所以我们很少面临危机时刻，也不存在“工作周末”——我从未在周末加班。我知道游戏发行后公司有些服务人员周末需要加班，但我团队的成员从来没在周末加班。我觉得这样很好。这是工作和休闲的健康平衡。

我觉得Wooga之所以如此成功的一点在于我们合理把握这种平衡；我们已连续6个月未面临危急时刻。我们讨厌出现这种情况。我们开发有趣作品。在6个月未出现危机时刻的情况下，你能够制作出优质而有趣的内容。所以我觉得我们在此维持良好平衡，这就是原因所在。我去年6月份加入公司。至今只有一个员工离职，原因是他女友去别的地方了。

你们是否放弃过任何产品？有没有取消过任何项目？

没有。我才来公司1年，我不清楚之前的情况。但据我所知，之前也没有出现过这种情况，我们发行所有投入制作，初次试验后存在可玩性的内容。我们有对某些游戏进行发行前的调整。通常是发现内容在初次试验时无法顺利运作；缺乏趣味。

所以我们同团队主管进行商议，商量“该怎么办？”，彻底调整游戏。但其依然是同款作品，我们就游戏机制进行调整。例如，我们调整某些循环机制（游戏邦注：由某些机制转移至其他机制）。但从来没有取消任何游戏，这点很好。这会伤及士气。大家都把游戏视作自己的孩子，所以我们希望尽自己所能避免出现这种情况。

你们的循环机制哲学倡导设定核心机制，你们是否曾通过内容更新进行大幅修改？

没有。这是我的一个重要经验。我发现这有许多典型例子：Zynga的《Roller Coaster Kingdom》；他们在游戏发行后修改循环机制——结果失败。他们选择放弃游戏。Booyah将《夜店城市》的循环机制变成能量机制——结果失败。他们最后又调整回来。

还有就是Wooga的《Happy Hospital》，我曾在游戏发行后调整其循环机制，最终没有成功，虽然这影响不大，但我们却因此白白付出许多劳动。

我们投入2个月时间调整内容；其效果不大。算是失败尝试。所以大家要在发行前发现问题，这有很多途径。

一个是开展棋盘游戏。一个是进行用户测试。一个是进行早期构思检验，将结果呈现给公司以外的人士——他们是否能够通过静态画面理解循环机制？或表现杰出，或需进行某种调整。

在公司内部提早开展游戏测试。投入2个月的时间，仅瞄准核心循环机制，忽略奇特画面，还有包装。内容是否有趣？大家是否开始较量财富或其他内容？你能够通过核心循环机制获悉这些内容。

然后提早进行玩法测试，我们进行二次测试，alpha版测试，beta版测试，然后是用户测试，最后步入终极决定时刻——进行封闭测试。我们在英语国家进行《梦幻国度》的封闭测试，瞄准3000-4000位玩家，查看他们是否喜欢游戏，明天是否还会回访，是否完成游戏循环机制？通过这种方式进行封闭测试能够避免惹恼重要玩家，因为主要玩家通常都会最先发现游戏。

所以当你邀请好友时你会想：“谁对《CityVille》感兴趣？我是否能够邀请最佳城建者？”若你的作品非常糟糕，你将无法挽回他们。所以封闭测试是最终的重要活动，此时你需发现游戏存在的问题。

作品发行后，调整内容（游戏邦注：仅是细微内容）将改变计时器的时间，游戏UI，或者《CityVille》生意所要提供的食物数量，诸如此类内容。但你可以进行调整——计时器之类的内容。

《怪兽世界》中的典型例子：在游戏早期，玩家需种植柠檬汽水树。首先这是5分钟的合约，所以它们在5分钟内就会成熟。我们将时间调整成3分钟，头天的留存率发生很大变化，因为新玩家觉得能够提前2分钟收获庄稼很好，从而不会选择离开游戏。你可以选择完成此类内容。这不会改变游戏核心循环机制——只是改变统计数值。开发者不应改变游戏循环机制。

这应该要多简单？假设你陈述的是能够向玩家呈现，方便他们理解内容的静态画面内容，能否谈谈你的标准。

例如，《梦幻国度》的核心循环机制——这是款城建游戏。这是创造财富的核心主题之一。能够创造财富的主题通常就是核心循环机制。是指游戏货币。我将它称作“软货币”。硬货币就是真实金钱。

举个例子，在《梦幻国度》的首次玩性测试中，玩家拥有4座房子，中间有座无法进行任何操作的城堡。玩家能够随意在城堡周围放置房子，设计道路，点击房子，收集你希望生成金钱的合约4次或3次。这就是游戏。

通常玩家会在完成任务时点击守财奴，然后获得“分红！”，开怀大笑。大家开始进行系列点击——“哦！我获得的财富比你多！”（游戏邦注：这已经是种游戏。游戏能够类似的简单形式呈现）。

游戏设计或者游戏开发的一个误区在于有人觉得“游戏不够有趣，让我们进一步完善画面”。这不是正确操作方式。这会使游戏核心循环机制出现问题。这是我限制首次游戏测试内容的原因所在。不应设置20座房子，这是个错误举措；你应设置4座。若游戏仅融入4座房子就非常有趣，那么20座房子将更加有趣。但若4座房子就已经毫无趣味可言，那20座房子也无法创造乐趣。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Interview: The Secrets Of Wooga’s Social Game Success

by Christian Nutt

When looking at Facebook developers, Wooga is third behind Zynga and EA. Before PopCap’s stats were merged with EA’s, Wooga was number two. How does a German company few in the U.S. have heard of reach such heights of success in just a few years?

In this interview, Wooga’s head of studio Henric Suuronen lays down the social game design law. You’ve often heard that designing for Facebook takes a radically different approach to console game design, but how different is it, truly? According to Suuronen, it’s fundamentally different — so much so that designers who come over from the console space often do not have a place at his company.

That said, Suuronen is a gamer. He devoured classic games like Super Mario Bros. on the NES as a child, and NHL ’95 on the Sega Mega Drive and Dune II on the PC as a teenager. From these, Suuronen built up knowledge of games he considers indispensable to his current work — knowledge he continued to amass until he stopped playing in college.

What he did after college, however, was join Nokia and work on the N-Gage reboot before moving over to Digital Chocolate and work on the pioneering Tower Bloxx, as well as Millionaire City.

He was there for the social gaming revolution and now blends his fond memories with the hard facts of the extremely competitive and challenging social space. In this interview, he describes exactly how.

I’ve done very few design-oriented interviews about social gaming. I usually end up talking to execs. What I like to get to the heart of is the philosophy of design. What is important about social game design, in your view, that sets it apart?

HS: I have a pretty strong design background. I’ve never worked with the title “game designer” — I’ve been the product manager, or a senior product manager, or director-level guy. But I don’t know, just because my background as a kid — I played so much — I kind of have like a library of game mechanics, and what you should do, and what works, and what does not. So I end up working quite a lot with game design.

When it comes to game design, for social games specifically, I think the most important part is the game loop. So, what do you do over and over again? So Millionaire City, for example, you buy a plot, a piece of terrain, you buy a house, place the house, you wait a little certain amount of time, and then you collect money from it. And you do this over and over again, and when you get enough money, you buy another house. And you place it, and maybe connect it with road, and all this stuff.

The game loop is the game. That’s the most important thing.

When it comes to what to think about when designing for social games, I think you have to almost throw everything from your console brain, or your hardcore things, into the garbage. That will get you on the wrong track.

Not only is it social, but it’s free-to-play. And free-to-play, I think, changes the game design even more than [the fact that] it’s social. The free-to-play is a mindset that a lot of console guys don’t get. They’re used to getting 60 bucks first, then they kind of have a lousy menu, but the guy has already invested 60 bucks, so he will browse through the menu and try to learn the game, because otherwise he would feel stupid.

Social games are free-to-play games; it’s totally different. So you have to think about, “Whoa, the guy has not invested anything over the game — not a single dime!” So how do I get him through the menu — if there’s a menu — how do I get him through the tutorial, and how do I get him hooked to the game — as quickly as possible? And this is the game design [element] which is, I think, the most difficult part.

Obviously it’s social, so you have to think about how is it better with friends. So we have this abbreviation: BWF. Better With Friends. What is the BWF of your game? So is it just visits, or can you upgrade something, can you help, can you ask for parts, can you staff something, can you play together asynchronously, can you play synchronously? Different stuff like that.

How do you feel about the current implementations of social mechanics in games? Are they robust enough? Do you see a lot of potential for growth there?

HS: Yeah. Obviously. Take a look at it. I’ve done social games now four years, when I did Tower Bloxx there was Jetman. It was this lousy game, probably coded in one day, a guy was flying through a cave. But it was pretty fun, it was a high score-driven game.

Now moving four years forward, you have games like CityVille, Pioneer Trail from Zynga, Kabam games, Digital Chocolate games, and Zombie Lane — great game — and now Magic Land. So it has really evolved. So why would the progression stop here? So I think it will evolve, as it has done from four years ago with Jetman and Scrabulous and Tower Bloxx. So it will evolve again in the next years.

So what I think will happen is that there will be some kind of more elaborated, asynchronous, co-op play. So I’m thinking I have ideas on how to do it well in Magic Land, and we will investigate how to do it — maybe launching something like that pretty soon. And there’s a lot of in co-op and social interaction that is better. I don’t think it will remain at the level that, “Hey, I’m missing a part, can you give it to me?”

I don’t think it can…

HS: People will get eventually tired of it.

And I think that there’s just tremendous amounts of competition that are going to be pushing in different directions. Like you said, look a few years ago, and there was like very low-spec hobbyist, almost, games being launched; people just trying stuff. Now you see EA launching Sims Social onto Facebook, that’s a tremendous level of investment that game had. It had production for almost a year, compared to previous games with very short production cycles.

HS: Yeah, if you look at Wooga games, Magic Land has had the most, until launch, most man months work done. So you know, double size of team, longer schedule to a couple more months, pushing, at launch, even more features. The whole myth of the minimum viable product — it’s gone. It’s something that you say to investors to sound cool.

Two years ago it was good, because it was virality. So cheap, virality on Facebook, that you didn’t mind if you lost a couple of users in the beginning because your game was sucky, because you got new ones for free.

Now if you lose the good ones in the beginning because your game was too early, you don’t ever get them back, and you don’t get virality so easily anymore.

So this has changed the ballgame — it’s not anymore minimum viable product. If you do that, maybe as a small startup you have a great idea you can do that, and have some medium success, but not in a big scale anymore — building a 1 million [DAU] video game doing stuff like that, that launched after two months.

Do you think that Facebook is becoming more and more aggressive about embracing games than it had been in the past? Have you seen any moves from that side that, as a platform, look good to you?

HS: Yeah. I think that the last past year there’s been a lot of crying. So a lot of developers crying that Facebook is terrible, this doesn’t work, there’s no virality, we are losing our business.

And Wooga hasn’t been crying. We’ve been talking with Facebook, obviously giving our feedback, but not crying on blogs and stuff. At in the same time we tripled the amount of users, with not spending on advertising.

So instead of crying, we have focused on making better games. So it’s pretty funny actually that we have never — well, recently, a little bit more — pushed the monetization, but it has always been about “better games get more users.”

So yes, Facebook is more difficult right now, but in the recent months there’s a lot of traction from Facebook’s side as well. They recognize that 40 percent of people, or even more, play games; they’re important on the platform. And they are making money on it, so a 30 percent cut on their revenue.

So we have a great relationship with Facebook, and they listen to us and they have a lot of good features in the pipeline. So currently we are very happy with Facebook. Having said that, we have also launched now on Google+ to see how it does. And… let’s see how it goes forward.

On one hand you recruit a lot from studios, people with game development backgrounds; on the other hand, people have to throw away a lot of what they know.

HS: Yeah, with that comment I meant from console games. If you recruit from big console game studios, very seldom I meet people from console game background who are humble enough. They come in, they say “I have worked on this and this triple-A game with 100 people, and I will come here and show you how to make games.” This is not the attitude to make social games.

You have to recognize it as a new platform, new rules. Yes, what you know is valuable, that’s why we’re interested in you, but you must be very open to learning all of this stuff because it’s a totally different ballgame. You saw it with EA. Before they bought Playfish, they did Pogo Puppies. It looked like a game with a budget of 2 million. It got like 10,000 users, and then they scrapped it. So they failed.

So how come one of the most successful console game companies, if they put a lot of money and good talent, how come they failed so much on Facebook? Because they didn’t get the platform, and this led them to buy Playfish.

So you don’t have to throw everything in the garbage, but you have to put it aside; you have to be open minded to learn, and then when you learn what is social game design, then you can use the stuff you know.

We’ve seen a lot of this happening. One of our best product managers is from EA DICE Studio, and he’s currently involved in Monster World; amazing stuff he’s been doing.

Is it so much leaving aside the tenants of design in game design, or is it more just the mentality of looking at the way products function in the market?

HS: I think it’s a little bit both. So like I said before, it’s the free-to-play design. I think that’s one part. It’s the social design. It’s the monetization connection. Because you know, if you have an ethical game designer, he doesn’t want to bother the user to monetize ever. He wants to make the best game ever and leave him bread and water. So there’s a balance between these two.

You have to understand how you build a game loop on social games, how do you create this loop to work, how do you make a persistent world game — social things. You know, if you’ve done a level-based first person shooter, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you know how to do a persistent world game. So there’s a lot of this kind of stuff.

Then when it comes to game designers, usually, not always, they also can not have this distanced intelligence part. Some of them go on Facebook and take a look at these games and then, “Okay, there’s some games, but they’re crappy.” So I think what is important is to take a look at CityVille and understand what makes it work, what makes it tick. There’s a lot of ingenious stuff in CityVille.

Occasionally, we meet people with really hardcore background, and they get it. I even have a game designer/product manager test I shoot over. And one of the questions I have there is to get the candidate to play three city builders, one of them being Millionaire City, and analyze game design, why he thinks that Millionaire City was so much more successful than the other two games.

And this task is there because it will reveal if he understands game design. Because there’s some game design elements in Millionaire City, which I did before, that were not existent in games on Facebook before then. And some designers get it. Great! We hire them. Others don’t. We’re not interested.

One other thing I would see as a difference is, essentially people are shipping complete experiences. Whereas social games evolve and change over time, and you have to be responsive to what’s driving the users to stick around, and give them new things. You can’t plan so much in advance — you have to be more reactive.

HS: And that’s a good question. Take a look at Magic Land, for example. It’s very feature complete. And don’t take this word badly — because it’s not complete. It will never be complete. But it’s coming to market, considering what Facebook games have been, it’s very feature complete. So it’s a solid experience with six months of play, for example.

We have calculated how long it should take to play through; a hardcore player should play through in three months without paying, and the usual user is six months or something. So it’s very complete in that sense.

But at Wooga, real work starts on the launch, so we don’t plan too much ahead. So I would say that… I know things we will do in the next two weeks; after that is up for grabs. I have three or four big features I want to do in the fall, but I don’t know in which order. And something might arise that precedes these ones. I don’t know yet. I will know in two weeks.

So we do it by week by week. Usually what we do is plan next week, we release, then we — based on metrics or feedback — we plan the next week. So we do development cycles in one week. And yeah, usually we know next week, and a little bit of what is the week after that. But the third week is just best guess.

Do you update weekly?

HS: Yeah.

Are all your features only things that can be implemented in a week? Or do you ever take longer?

HS: No, sometimes we take a longer time. I think the longest one I’ve ever done has been a three week feature. But then each week we have had something smaller. So for example, a content update, because customers, they expect it. And if it feels the game is alive, new content is coming…

For example, what I sometimes do is that even though I had done some assets, I don’t launch them; I keep them in storage. So if there comes a week that we can’t launch a feature, we can at least launch something. So that’s something you can do.

But yeah, you have to have weekly updates. Some companies do it twice a week — we do it sometimes twice a week. So, it’s the way to go. Otherwise users know that, “Okay, this is a dead game. They’re not interested; they’re not listening to our feedback; there’s not enough content.” You know, people consume content like crazy. It’s like, put in the new house, they’re going to have 15 of them tomorrow.

The design of free-to-play gameplay features, there’s a lot of discussion of how the game designers have to think about monetization. That’s something we can take as true, but a lot of the design of free-to-play features are very basic. Just convenience or energy, or something that you need to spend to play. What are your thoughts on the evolution of the design of the actual free-to-play features?

HS: Well, if you go back one year on Facebook, there was a lot of traction in this, I call it “contract mechanic”, or some people call it “appointment gaming”. So you have a farm and you plant something, and it will be ready in four minutes, or four hours, or eight hours, or 12 hours. Then, this works — Millionaire City was a pure contract mechanics game, or appointment gaming game. It didn’t have an energy mechanic.

Then, somebody — I don’t know which game was the first to have energy done, but FrontierVille had energy done really well. And we started hearing rumors that “this energy — it’s monetizing like crazy!” So because it’s so kind of like, “Oh, I have a hurdle, I would like to do something.” I play maybe 20 minutes for free and now I’d like to play more, but I have to either wait one hour, ask friends, or pay 1 U.S. dollar. And then there’s a percentage that are not impatient enough.

So we have seen evolution from, first, Jetman — advertising based, free-to-play — so you know, they have ads, people clicked on ads, they went to another game, they got 10 cents, 50 cents for the install. So there, the customer didn’t have to pay anything; it was an advertising business model.

Then we went to this “appointment gaming”, where either you paid for time accelerators that, you know, you don’t want to wait four hours; you want to have the benefit right now. For example, sometimes called instant build; we have it also as well in Monster World. You pay for that, so each click 10 cents, and some people pay for that.

And then the next evolution was the energy, so that the energy limits the play. There can be fusion. If you have some parts with contract mechanics, like the farming part in CityVille, and then you have all the rest with energy; that seems to work really well. Basically with like, in Magic Land, now launched, has the same — it has a little bit of both.

Then, there’s a recent trend that there’s more resources you can run out of. So a year ago, it was just money. Then came food resources, or items you’re missing. And you see that gradually coming more and more — stuff you are short of. And this gives, obviously, the monetization place that either you grind the game and try to get the item, or pay a little bit.

Going forward in the future, I see this will increase more items you can run out of; Magic Land has a lot of things you can run out of. And then something I’m pretty excited about is; I’m very excited about character development. That’s why Magic Land has a character. So, I would like to have abilities or powers to the character.

A player character?

HS: A player character. It’s a little bit like improving your character in World of Warcraft; I would like to do it in a casual manner. And this obviously, you set skill points or something else. This can also open up new doors for monetization.

But it seems like all the monetization options you’re discussion are more a way of removing limitations from the game, right?

HS: Yep.

What about gameplay mechanics? Like, say, Battlefield Heroes sells people improved guns that you can’t access for free. There are tiers of things that you can’t access in the game if you’re a free player. Are you against that idea?

HS: Not necessarily. I think the pioneer in this field is Nexon. So Nexon was with a lot of free-to-play stuff before Facebook. And I heard that they made quite a lot of money just with the ability to select a lot of troops. So if you’re free-to-play, you could move your guys one-by-one. If you paid a little bit, you could have this box. And I heard that they made a lot of money on that.

In Korea, or in the West as well?

HS: Korea.

Because I get the impression that things are more mercenary in the Asian markets.

HS: It can be.

Some things… I was talking about the abilities or powers for the character. Something which I’m pretty interested right now is that there can be some things that are not restricting, but they’re going to give you a greater power.

So there’s trolls you can whack in Magic Land. So what if you would have a better sword, you can whack them in one, instead of four. These are things I’m investigating, and we might do something like that.

And you know, you’ve seen it working in other games, so why not in social games? I don’t know what is the level the user wants to pay for that; let’s see. But it’s something I’m pretty interested in myself, because I’m also looking for new ways. I don’t accept where we are at right now — I want to get even higher.

What about things like product, like a number of products launched? Do you have targets that you have to hit? And is that your responsibility to determine the number of games that are coming out, the calendar?

HS: No, that’s really not service model thinking; I think that’s a product-driven company. I was in such an organization doing mobile games for telecom operators. So there was a one year schedule, 16 games out, not a single one less, has to come out this date, no matter the quality, it just comes out.

So at Wooga we do a game one-by-one, and we launch it when it’s good enough. And when we think it is good enough, if the team lead thinks it’s “no,” we don’t launch it. So if the team thinks it’s not good enough, we don’t launch it. So we don’t have really any hard deadlines.

For Magic Land we thought we would launch it a little bit earlier. Then we announced that we got a new VC round. The new investors were like, “Hey, let’s make a game that is so good at the start that you could beat a Zynga game.” So it was like hey, the game was pretty good, already, three months ago, and like hey, let’s develop two months more, three months more, and launch an even better game.

I’m not giving this just as a marketing speech. So we don’t have hard deadlines — we’re launching games when they’re good enough. And I think that’s a very nice environment to work at.

So we have very little crunch time, none of this “work weekends” — I haven’t worked on a weekend. I know some of our server guys have done it when a game has gone down, but no one in my teams has worked weekends. So I think it’s very good. It’s a healthy balance of working and free time.

And I think one of the reasons why Wooga is so successful is that we have this balance; it’s not crunching for six months. We hate anybody to do that. So we do games that are fun, period. And you can do good, fun games without six months of crunch time. So I think we have a really good balance in that, and that’s why. I joined the company September last year. One guy has left. And that was because his girlfriend moved away.

Have you abandoned any products? Cancelled products?

HS: Nope. So obviously I’ve been in the company just one year, so I don’t know what happened before I joined. But to my knowledge, no, everything that has been put into production and gotten a first playable, we launched. We have done changes in some games, before they launched. We discovered in the first playable they didn’t work; it wasn’t fun.

So we sat down together with the team lead, said “What do we do?”, drastically changed the game. But it has been the same game after, but the mechanic we have changed. So for example we change the game loop — going from some mechanic to another mechanic. But no games have been cancelled, which is good. It’s very bad for morale. People see these games as their babies, so we want to do everything we possibly can to avoid the situation happening.

With your philosophy of the game loop, coming up with a self-contained important core mechanic, do you ever significantly modify it with content updates later?

HS: No. This is one of my key takeaways. What I discovered is that there’s numerous examples. There’s Roller Coaster Kingdom by Zynga; they changed the game loop after launch — failed. They killed the game. Nightclub City by Booyah changed the game loop to an energy mechanic — failed. They changed back.

Even Happy Hospital by Wooga, we changed the game loop of a game we already launched. It wasn’t a success, it wasn’t a failure — it didn’t move the needle, but it wasn’t worth the effort.

We put two months of development in changing the game; it didn’t move the needle. So even that was kind of a failure. So you should detect problems in the game loop before launch, and there’s numerous ways to do that.

One is do a board game. One is obviously user testing. One is to do an early concept shot. Show the concept shot to people who are not working in the company — do they understand the game loop just from a static picture? Then you’re good, or have one level of assurance.

Do a very early first playable inside the company. So develop for two months, just the core game loop, no fancy graphics, even boxes do. Is it fun? Do people start competing in money or something? That, you should get from a core game loop.

Then you have an early first playable. We check second playable, alpha, beta, do user test again, and then kind of like a final decisive moment — do a closed beta. So we have done a closed beta with Magic Land in an English speaking country, taking 3,000, 4,000 users, see do they like the game, do they come back tomorrow, do they finish the game loop? And by doing a closed beta in this manner, you won’t burn the best customers, because the best customers always find the game first.

So when you invite your friends you think about, “Hmm, who’s interested in CityVille? Can I invite the best city building guys?” If you have a crappy game, you’ll never get them back in. So closed beta is the last milestone when you should detect problems in your game loop.

After launching if you just do modifications — small things — you can change the time of a timer, or the UI, or amount of food you need to supply for a business in CityVille, anything like this. But you can do modifications — timers or something.

A good example in Monster World, in the game early on, you plant lemonade trees. First, they were five minute contracts, so they would be ready in five minutes. We changed it to three minutes, huge change on one-day retention, because new users got the good feeling of harvesting them two minutes earlier, before they abandoned the game. So these kinds of things you can do. It doesn’t change the core game loop — you just change the statistical value, like a static number. But you shouldn’t change the game loop.

How simple should it be? If you’re talking about something that you can show people as a static image so they understand it, to use one of your criteria.

HS: For example, Magic Land, the core game loop of the game — it’s a city building game, It really is. It’s one of the core themes that generates money. Anything that generates money usually is the core game loop. In-game money. I call it “soft currency”. Hard currency is real money.

So, for example, in Magic Land, the first playable, you had four houses, you had a castle in the middle that you cannot do anything. You could place the houses around the castle wherever you wanted and connect them with a road, and click on the houses and select the contract that you want to produce money four minutes, or three minutes. This was the game.

What happened is that people clicked on the moneybags when they were ready and they went “cha-ching!”, and they laughed. And people started clicking a little bit — “Oh, I got more money than you!” And this was already a game. And it can be really simple like that.

One of the pitfalls of game design, or game development, has always been, somebody says that “This game is not yet fun, let’s improve the graphics.” That’s not the way to do it at all. Then you have a problem in the core game loop. So that’s why I always limit amount of content for first playable. You shouldn’t have 20 houses there, then you have focused on the wrong things; you should have four. And if it’s fun with four, it will be super fun with 20. But if it’s not fun with four it won’t be fun with 20.（Source：gamasutra）