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每日观察:关注Zynga针对“偶然型玩家”的开发理念(10.26)

发布时间:2011-10-26 15:14:50 Tags:,,,,

1)Facebook高管Ethan Beard日前在伦敦的F8大会上宣称,Facebook游戏玩家已经超过任天堂、索尼和微软三者的总和。

ethan-beard-of-facebook(from businessinsider.com)

ethan-beard-of-facebook(from businessinsider.com)

(游戏邦注:Facebook目前有2亿社交游戏用户;截止6月30日,任天堂已售出8700多万部Wii以及1.47亿份任天堂DS系统;截止9月30日,微软已售出5700万部Xbox 360掌机设备;截止7月31日,索尼已售出近5200万份PlayStaion 3设备)。

2)俄罗斯手机社交游戏发行商Pixonic最近向北美扩展业务,成立旧金山总部。据称该公司被称为俄罗斯的“小Zynga”,其发行团队有50名成员,自2009年以来已发布40多款游戏。

Pixonic(from ewdn)

Pixonic(from ewdn)

该公司最近融资500万美元,除了为第三方发布手机社交游戏,该公司还自主开发游戏,并推出一个社交游戏分析平台PixAPI。

3)Zynga工作室副总裁Lou Castle日前表示,出于工作/生活平衡的考虑,他将离开Zynga团队,并加入拉斯维加斯博彩产品公司Shuffle Master,担任后者的首席战略官。

louis_castle(from radiofreegamers.com)

louis_castle(from radiofreegamers.com)

Castle之前在Zynga任职时间不足6个月,但在Shuffle Master董事会的时间长达6年。他曾参与开发Westwood Studios即时战略游戏《命令与征服》,曾担任之前的EA网页游戏公司InstantAction首席执行官。

他表示自己膝下有一对双胞胎正在上高中,在Shuffle Master又有一份工作,Zynga职位的工作压力影响了自己其他方面的生活,所以不得不辞去在Zynga的工作。

4)日本最大的实名制社交平台Mixi日前宣布将于下个月成立美国子公司,这个新公司将命名为Mixi America,注册于美国特拉华州,注册资金是500万美元,其所有权归Mixi日本公司。

Mixi-logo(from southernwebgroup.com)

Mixi-logo(from southernwebgroup.com)

Tak Miyata将任新工作室主管,Mixi America的目标是与活跃于社交媒介的美国公司展开投资以及业务合作,换句话说,Mixi追求的是“对内的国际化战略”而非对外的全球化战略。

5)Valve联合创始人Gabe Newell在最近的西雅图North to Innovation大会上表示,盗版现象会给游戏带来便利而不只是威胁。

他称尽管俄罗斯是一个盗版率极高的国家,但该地区却是Steam收益最高的国家之一,其地位仅次于德国,是Steam第二大欧洲市场。他认为阻止盗版的最有效方法并非在游戏中添加反盗版技术,而是为用户提供更优质的服务。

军团要塞2(from osxdaily.com)

军团要塞2(from osxdaily.com)

Valve今年初推出了采用免费增值模式的《军团要塞2》,此举使该游戏的在线用户增加了5倍。尽管多数采用免费增值模式的游戏公司声称付费用户转化率一般仅有1%至3%,但《军团要塞2》的玩家付费转化率却高达20%至30%。

6)据gamasutra报道,传统游戏元老Garriott曾在2009年起诉前雇主NCSoft,要求后者赔偿他在2008年离开公司时应得的3200万美元,他申诉已得到了第五巡回联邦上诉法院的支持。

garriott(from kaeldean.blogspot.com)

garriott(from kaeldean.blogspot.com)

Carriott声称他是因NCSoft所迫而在2008年的航空飞行之后离开团队,并非NCSoft宣称的自愿离职。这两种原因之间的区别,会对Garriott在公司持有的股票产生影响,假如他是自愿离职,其持有的股票就只有90天的有效期,而如果是其他情况,股票有效期就会延续到今年6月NCSoft与其合同到期为止。

法官已在去年7月判定NCSoft应向Garriott支付2800万美元的经济损失,如果再加上利息和审判过程中的律师费用,这笔钱就是3200万美元。

NCSoft在2001年收购了Garriott的Destination Games,并在2007年发布了后者的MMO游戏《Tabula Rasa》,但由于游戏运营表现不济,该公司在2009年初关闭了这个项目。Garriott自己成立的社交游戏公司Portalarium最近融资360万美元,其首款游戏是《Port Casino Blackjack》。

7)据IndustryGamers报道,Zynga工作室副总裁Bill Mooney最近在加州大学的演讲中指出,Zynga是在为“偶然型玩家”制作游戏。

Bill Mooney(from games)

Bill Mooney(from games)

他的这番言论暗示,Zynga并不锁定硬核或传统游戏玩家,这些“偶然型的玩家”对游戏有不同的理解和期待,他们一般是受好友影响才玩游戏,Zynga擅长迎合他们的需求。他称Zynga游戏并不像是在“销售一款产品,而是运营一个游乐园”,游戏不能像是工作,不可以对玩家要求太多,而应该具有社交性,让大家彼此沟通和交流。(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

1)Facebook has more gamers than Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo combined?

by Joe Osborne

Facebook games are big, but they might not be that huge just yet. At the company’s London edition of the F8 conference, Facebook director of partnerships Ethan Beard said that it has more gamers than Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft combined, TechRadar reports. We’re not exactly certain what measure Beard was referring to, because our math adds up a bit differently.

“Social design inside social gaming has driven fantastic growth,” Beard told F8 conference-goers. “It’s revolutionising gaming. We have over 200 million social gamers on Facebook every month; that’s more Facebook gamers than the Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo combined.”

But after looking at the number of units sold by each company, compared to Facebook’s reported 200 million monthly players, we’re not 100 percent on board with that call. Nintendo has shipped over 87 million Wii units and over 147 million Nintendo DS systems to date, as of June 30. And Microsoft has sold over 57 million Xbox 360 consoles as of Sept. 30, while Sony sold nearly 52 million PlayStation 3 rigs as of July 31.

Social games have no doubt garnered more players in such a short amount of time than any gaming platform to date. But, if you look at the amount of consoles shipped and sold by all three major manufacturers, Beard’s claim appears to fall a bit short. That is, unless Beard is talking online gamers. Then Facebook just might have the big three beat, to which Beard said, “These aren’t games with friends sprinkled on top; it’s more about social interactions with gaming on top.”(source:games

2)Russian Social Game Publisher Pixonic Opens U.S. Office

by Frank Cifaldi

Major Russian social mobile game publisher Pixonic (Little Helper) has expanded to North America with a new San Francisco headquarters, the company said Tuesday.

Referring to itself as Russia’s “little Zynga,” Pixonic says its 50-person publishing team has launched over 40 games since the company’s founding in 2009.

The company recently raised $5M in venture capital. Its main export is porting third-party social games to mobile platforms, though it also develops its own games, publishes third-party titles, and offers a social game analytics platform called PixAPI.

“We look forward to working with the best U.S. social gaming developers to help them more successfully bring their games to market,” said Pixonic CEO Elena Masolova.

“We offer selected developers the opportunity to port their social games to iOS and Android totally at our expense. The porting is performed by our in-house mobile team to help developers enter the booming mobile market without distracting their social team.” (source:gamasutra

3)Zynga VP Castle Leaves For Casino Product Company

by Kyle Orland

Zynga vice president of studios Lou Castle says he is leaving the company less than six months after his arrival, citing work/life balance issues as the driving factor for his departure.

Las Vegas-based casino product company Shuffle Master has announced that Castle will serve the company in a newly created chief strategy officer position, after serving on the company’s board of directors for six years.

The Zynga VP told IndustryGamers that the ceaseless responsibilities he faced in his latest position were interfering with other parts of his life too much.

“The Zynga gig was clearly a 5 day a week, 24/7 requirement,” he said. “[I have] twins in senior year of high school and [Shuffle Master's] a local job. Life’s too short, so I couldn’t resist.”

Well known as the creator of Westwood Studios’ Command & Conquer real-time strategy series, Castle worked for years as an executive at EA before serving as CEO at defunct web-gaming company InstantAction. He joined Zynga in March after InstantAction wound down operations late last year. (source:gamasutra

4)Mixi America: Mixi To Set Up Unit In The US [Social Networks]

by Dr. Serkan Toto

Years after setting up a base in China, Japan’s biggest real-identity social network Mixi has announced it will open a subsidiary in the US as early as next month.

Aptly named mixi America, the new unit is registered in Delaware, capitalized at US$5 million and wholly owned by Mixi in Japan.

The US office will be lead by Tak Miyata who is currently “Executive Officer, Alliance and Global” at Mixi (and speaks English very well, which is not a given in many Japanese companies).

Mixi says the goal of Mixi America will be to identify US companies active in social media and other areas for investment and cooperation. In other words, Mixi is pursuing an “inward internationalization strategy” here instead of going global itself – smart move.(source:serkantoto

5)Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

by Frank Cifaldi

From the perspective of Valve, software piracy is caused more by convenience than it is by the cost of games.

That’s according to co-founder Gabe Newell, who recently spoke at the North to Innovation conference in Seattle, giving a very frank and open outline of the modern economics of video games.

According to Newell, Russia — which is often ignored as a market due to its high level of piracy — is one of Steam’s highest grossing countries.

“Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market,” said Newell, adding that “the people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russian.”

“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates,” he said.

Valve’s Surprising Free-To-Play Numbers

Earlier this year, Valve officially went “free-to-play” by offering its popular Team Fortress 2 as a microtransaction-supported game.

According to Newell, the move increased the game’s online userbase by a factor of five. Surprisingly, where most companies are claiming free-to-play conversion rates — that is, the percentage of players who end up spending money on in-game transactions — are between 1 and 3 percent, Newell said Team Fortress 2 players convert far more frequently.

“We see about a 20 to 30 percent conversion rate of people who are playing those games who buy something,” he revealed.

“We don’t understand what’s going on,” he admitted. “All we know is we’re going to keep running these experiments to try and understand better what it is that our customers are telling us.” (source:gamasutra

6)Appeals Court Upholds Garriott’s $32 Million Case Against NCSoft

by Kyle Orland

A three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a $32 million judgement against NCSoft in a contract dispute with Ultima creator Richard Garriott that dates back to his departure from the company in 2008.

Garriott filed suit against NCSoft in 2009, saying he had been forced out of the company following a 2008 space flight, contrary to NCSoft’s earlier public statements that he had left voluntarily.

The distinction had significant implications for the flexibility of Garriott’s stock options in the company, which were only valid for 90 days if he left of his own accord, but would last until June 2011 if NCSoft terminated him.

A federal jury awarded Garriott $28 million in lost profits last July after a three-and-a-half day trial followed by three hours of deliberation. The $32 million appellate court ruling adds interest and attorney’s fees accrued during the trial period.

“NCSoft schemed to avoid its obligations to [Garriott] at the trial court and on appeal, and neither the jury nor the 5th Circuit bought any of it,” said Stephen E. Fox, Garriott’s lead counsel in the suit. “Contracts have consequences, and as the Court of Appeals explained, the trial court is not a trial run.”

NCSoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter from Gamasutra.

NCSoft acquired Garriott’s Destination Games in 2001 and released his much-hyped MMO Tabula Rasa in 2007. That game shut down in early 2009 after disappointing performance that failed to meet NCSoft’s financial targets.

The designer’s newest venture, social gaming outfit Portalarium, recently secured $3.6 million in funding ahead of the launch of its first game, Port Casino Blackjack. (source:gamasutra

7)’Zynga is making games for accidental gamers,’ studio VP says

by Joe Osborne

Look, nobody gets hooked on FarmVille by accident–there’s always that friend. Zynga studio VP Bill Mooney (pictured) recently spoke to students at The University of California at Santa Cruz during its Research Review Day about the company’s design philosophy. During his talk, titled “Social Games: An Overview and Exploration,” Mooney said, “Zynga is making games for accidental gamers,” according to IndustryGamers.

The studio head was implying that Zynga doesn’t create video games for hardcore or traditional gamers. Sure, that’s stating the obvious, but it’s vitally important to remember when looking at Zynga’s games. They’re not exactly technological marvels, accessible to those who just don’t get the complexity of controllers and traversing 3D space. But as players progress, they become well-versed in increasingly complex interfaces, thus becoming, well, gamers.

Regardless, social gamers still aren’t the same as traditional game fans, and probably never will be. (At least until another friend introduces them to something new.) And because of these “accidental gamers” have a different understanding of what a game should be, Zynga says it caters to that understanding. “You’re not shipping a product, you’re running an amusement park,” Mooney told the students.

And traditional game companies are trying to keep up with that philosophy, wary that even hardcore gamers might yearn for that experience. (Just look at Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty Elite.) “Don’t be like work, don’t ask too much, be social, help me connect,” Mooney said. That, ironically enough, might be the burgeoning industry’s greatest challenge, if you ask the right folks.(source:games


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