作者：Tricia Duryee

在5个月未曾发布过新游戏之后，Playdom在下个财政年度中计划发布十多个游戏，其中数个可能会使用迪斯尼的品牌。

在硅谷的采访中，Playdom社交游戏部门首席运营官Brad Serwin表示，公司在被迪士尼收购一年多之后，现已决定开始施展拳脚。

据Serwin所述，他们沉寂如此长时间的原因之一是：将小型公司整合到大集团中可能遇上的一些普遍问题。

自从公司被收购之后，Playdom的工作地点迁往加州帕罗奥图，与Disney Mobile共享同一个办公场所（游戏邦注：Disney Mobile是迪斯尼收购另一硅谷初创公司Tapulous后成立的部门）。

这两个公司都要学习同相隔350英里外的母公司配合工作。

Serwin说道：“收购1年之后，我们成功地过渡成为迪斯尼内的部门。我们将以100%的精力投入到工作中。”

自从Facebook于2007年5月起开放第三方应用平台起，该行业也已经发生了巨大的改变。

自那时起，游戏就已经成为了该平台上最受人欢迎的应用，从简单且廉价的时间杀手转变成图像丰富、设计精巧的应用。

Facebook的平台政策也有所改变。

这对该领域的所有人都产生影响，而不仅仅是成立3年之久的Playdom。当Facebook关闭其病毒性渠道时，两个最大的挑战显现：通过在用户页面发布信息来获得新用户变得更为困难；Facebook推出了Credits，这种虚拟货币需要求开发商向Facebook出让30%的收益。

Playdom高管相信公司已经做好了准备，计划在这个许多人担心或将成为死亡之地的领域大展拳脚。

明年该公司将发布十几款新游戏，有2款游戏将在本月内推出，有3款游戏（游戏邦注：分别将在1月、3月和8月发布）将整合迪斯尼旗下的品牌。

Playdom下款发布游戏的名称为《Secret Agent X》。现在，玩家只能在某些国际市场上体验到这款游戏的测试版，游戏将在秋天登录美国市场。在游戏中，玩家扮演着一个有着双重身份的普通市民，晚上的身份便是密探，在高科技器具的帮助下探索新地点和完成各种任务。

Secret Agent X(from thegametech.net)

在这款游戏的预告片中，我们可以看到某个家住郊区的家庭主妇就可以拯救世界，同时还能够不泄露自己的身份，每天准时在桌上摆满丰盛的晚餐。

据AppData所述，Playdom目前是排名第7的Facebook应用开发商，位于Zynga、Electronic Arts甚至包括德国的Wooga等行业新手之下。

Playdom近期发布的《Gardens of Time》被认为是个有突破性进展的作品，使用了很少在Facebook上见到的游戏机制。该款社交游戏属于“隐藏物品”类别，玩家尝试在房间中寻找各种道具，类似于《Where’s Waldo?》。

gardens-of-time(from facebook-games-list.com)

隐藏物品概念对游戏行业来说并不新颖，但是在Facebook上是个新奇之物，近期被认为是种非常有价值的机制。现在，Playdom游戏已经拥有了将近300万的日活跃用户，略少于Zynga新游戏《Adventure World》。

Playdom希望公司能够凭借在社交游戏中融入新概念来获得成功，也能够通过利用迪斯尼的大品牌来吸引玩家的注意力。

在近期的测试中，Playdom将游戏《GnomeTown》重命名为《Disney’s GnomeTown》。Serwin表示，重命名后的游戏比新游戏表现得要好得多。

Playdom最大竞争者Playfish也利用了母公司Electronic Arts的知识产权。该公司新游戏《模拟人生社交版》已跃居排行榜上第二热门的游戏。

另一方面，最大的社交游戏开发商Zynga从《FarmVille》到最新游戏《Adventure World》一路走来，已经巩固了自己的大量资产。近期，该公司在游戏中使用明星品牌营销来吸引用户的注意力，比如《FarmVille》中的Lady Gaga和《CityVille》中的猫王Enrique Iglesias。

Serwin说道：“竞争者们有着大量的IP，但是我们也有许多可供选择的东西。”他补充表示，不仅Playdom需要知识产权，每个游戏开发商都需要IP。

Serwin表示，Playdom部门的计划是与迪士尼紧密配合，公司雇佣了一名联络人，他在伯班克的工作就是确保Playdom的计划与迪士尼的想法保持一致。

但是，Serwin没有否认在游戏制作方面的停歇对迪士尼互动娱乐所产生的影响。据迪士尼财报所称，仅与Playdom相关的账务调整，第三季度为2100万美元，第二季度为3400万美元，而且亏损有可能持续下去。

在第二季度的财报电话会议中，其总裁兼首席执行官Bob Iger努力向分析师解释公司数百万美元的费用：

“我们认为提升即将发布的游戏质量是个睿智的决定。所以，我们停歇了5个月时间，之前并没有这样的计划，目的在于构建高质量游戏，也要重新调整技术上的能力，使我们能够足以应付游戏成功后可能带来的容量和范围等问题。”

Iger声称，公司未来会实现收支平衡，但是这种情况可能到2013年才会出现。

Iger以《Gardens of Time》为例来阐述游戏盈利良好的状况。他说道：“我们认同Playdom设计的方向，尤其是在新游戏成为轰动市场巨作之后。”他还补充称，酝酿中的新游戏将使用迪士尼、ESPN和Marvel品牌。

尽管花了1年多时间，但是Serwin相信Playdom做好了准备。

他说道：“我们将与迪士尼方面的人合作推广游戏。无论实现预期目标还需要多长时间，但是我们的合作确实正在进行，而且进展颇为顺利。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

After a Too-Long Wait, Playdom Readies a Dozen Games a Year After Disney Acquisition

Tricia Duryee

After taking five months off from launching new games, Playdom has a dozen releases planned for the upcoming fiscal year, several of which will finally leverage Disney’s big brand names.

In an interview in Silicon Valley, Brad Serwin, the COO of Playdom’s social games unit, said the company has finally started to come out of hiding after being acquired for $563.2 million, plus a $200 million earn-out, more than a year ago.

One reason it took so long, according to Serwin: The general pains of integrating a small company into a larger organization.

Since the acquisition, Playdom has moved to new offices in Palo Alto, Calif., which it shares with Disney Mobile (which was formed through the acquisition of another Silicon Valley start-up, Tapulous).

Both have been learning to work with a parent company that is headquartered 350 miles away.

“A year after the acquisition, we are successfully transitioning into an operating division within Disney,” Serwin said. “We are 100 percent back to work.”

It took long enough, especially given the radical change the industry has undergone since Facebook launched its third-party application platform in May 2007. [More on how the industry has changed in an interview today with Rick Thompson, a founder of Playdom.]

Since then, games have become the most popular applications on the platform, and have evolved from simple and inexpensive time killers to graphically rich applications.

Facebook has changed the rules, too.

This has impacted everyone in the space, not just three-year-old Playdom. Two of the biggest challenges emerged when the social network shut down its viral channels: When it became difficult to acquire new users by posting messages on users’ pages, and when Facebook implemented Credits, a virtual currency that requires developers to cut Facebook 30 percent of all revenues.

Playdom execs believe the company has finally reorganized, and are planning on making a big splash in what many worried was a dead pool.

Of the dozen titles slated for the next year, two games will come as soon as this month, and up to three games — coming in January, March and August — will leverage Disney brands.

Playdom’s next game is called Secret Agent X. For now, it is only available in beta in some international markets, but it is coming to the U.S. in the fall. In the game, a player leads a dual life as an average citizen who at night becomes a secret agent, exploring new locations and completing missions with the help of high-tech gadgets.

In the trailer for the game, seen below, a suburban housewife manages to save the world, all the while keeping her cover by making sure dinner is on the table on time.

As the seventh-largest app maker, according to AppData, Playdom falls below Zynga, Electronic Arts and even such new entrants as Germany’s Wooga.

That said, Playdom’s recent launch of Gardens of Time was considered a breakthrough hit that used game mechanics rarely seen on Facebook. The social game falls into the category of “hidden objects,” where players try to find a list of items in a room, similar to “Where’s Waldo?”

The concept behind hidden objects is not new to gaming, but it is new to Facebook, and was recently identified as a niche worth pursuing. Today, Playdom’s game is garnering nearly three million daily active users, which registers slightly below Zynga’s new Adventure World.

Playdom hopes it will prosper by bringing new concepts to social gaming and also by leveraging Disney’s big brands to catch players’ attention.

As a recent test, Playdom renamed its game GnomeTown as Disney’s GnomeTown. Serwin said the game performed much better with the new name.

Playdom’s close competitor Playfish is also relying on the intellectual property of its parent company, Electronic Arts. It has seen its Sims Social title climb the charts to become the second-most-popular game.

On the other hand, Zynga, which is the largest social games maker, has made up all of its own properties, ranging from FarmVille to its newest property, Adventure World. More recently, it has used name-brand promotions within its games to garner attention, such as Lady Gaga in FarmVille, and more recently, Enrique Iglesias in CityVille.

“Competitors have chunks of IP, but we have a lot to choose from,” said Serwin, adding that it’s not as if Playdom alone needs intellectual property: “Everyone needs IP.”

Serwin said the Playdom division’s plan is to work closely with Disney; it has hired a liaison who works in Burbank every day to make sure Playdom’s plans are on course with what Disney has in mind.

Still, Serwin can’t deny that the lull in game making has dragged down the results of Disney’s Interactive Group. Disney reported $21 million in accounting adjustment in the third quarter and $34 million in the second quarter tied to Playdom alone, and the losses are expected to continue.

In the second-quarter earnings call, President and CEO Bob Iger tried to explain its multimillion dollar charges to analysts:

“We thought it would be wise to improve the quality of the games that we’re going to release. So, we took a five-month hiatus, which had not been planned, from releasing games, to build a higher-quality game, and then also to re-stack our technical capabilities to deal with volume or to deal with scale, which we are hoping to achieve.”

Iger declined to say when the group would hit break-even, but that it was expected to get into the black by 2013.

Iger gave Gardens of Time as an example of a game that is monetizing well. “We feel good about the direction of Playdom, particularly with this new hit game in the marketplace,” he said, adding that new games in the pipeline will be based on Disney, ESPN and Marvel brands.

It has taken more than a year, but Serwin believes Playdom is ready.

“We’ve made a connection with people at Disney to get it done,” he said. “Whether it should have happened faster or slower, I don’t know, but it’s happening and it’s great.” (Source: All Thingsd)