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波士顿环球报:社交游戏越来越成为引领趋势的行业

发布时间:2010-08-30 13:15:26 Tags:,,

去年感恩节前夕,Blue Fang公司的执行官们做出了一个决定。当时,Waltham公司出产的视频游戏系列Zoo Tycoon已风行十余年,并已移植到PC,MAC,iPhone和任天堂wii等多种平台。

social game

social game

Blue Fang公司的董事长Hank Howie说“我们公司一向以制作全民共享(孩子和家人)的游戏而感到自豪,但随着社交游戏越来越流行,我们也感到彷徨‘那玩意会超越我们吗?’”

Blue Fang公司策略的变化意味着他们将采用一种全新的商业模式。在对待职工方面,他们将注重员工网页设计经验的培养。Howie认为这是一个必然的选择。该公司决定停止开发任何传统视频游戏,而把大部分经历投入到Facebook游戏的制作开发中。今年二月,该公司发售了Facebook游戏Zoo Kindom。直到上个月,该游戏一共有150万活跃用户。

如果您曾用鼠标管理过动物园、种植过农产品,或者邀请Facebook朋友加入你的Mafia Clan,那么您正置身于“社交游戏”的潮流之中。那是一种用于Facebook网站或手机平台的在线小游戏,只需几分钟,玩家可以随时随地进行游戏(而传统的视频游戏则需要熟练的操作和大量时间)。

此外,社交游戏鼓励玩家邀请朋友一起游戏。如此一来,好玩的游戏就可以用最少的宣传成本吸引到大量的游戏玩家。虽然这一类游戏都是免费的,但游戏公司会设计销售各种虚拟道具。从这些虚拟商品交易中,游戏公司便可以获得数百万的盈利。

Zynga Game Network Inc是一家位于旧金山的社交游戏开发公司,其作品包括FarmVille和Mafia Wars。据预计,该公司今年的收入可以达到4亿5000万美元。(这家公司已成立3年,据称每月拥有游戏玩家2亿1500万。)而今年7月,迪士尼公司并购了排名第二的社交游戏开发公司——位于硅谷的Playdom公司。

社交游戏的盛行引起了波士顿的游戏开发界的兴趣。新兴的游戏公司纷纷成立并开始制作Fcebook游戏,同时有更多的游戏公司还在考虑是否要发展这种被“认真的”游戏开发者认为是幼稚简单的社交游戏。

本月,社交游戏界的领头羊Zynga公司收购了一家剑桥的新公司Conduit Labs。这家公司曾为Facebook和自己的网站制作游戏。尽管我们并不清楚本次收购的价格,但这此收购成立了Zynga Boston,这是一家由17人组成的刚刚起步的开发工作室。(目前,这一剑桥团队正在旧金山总部协助某些项目,并同时加深对合作公司的了解)。这家新兴公司目前已经筹集资金850万美元:Conduit的创建者和投资商在本次融资中均获得了Zynga公司的股份。

Disruptor Beam LLC公司的夫妻档Jon Radoff和Angela Bull自从90年代以来就开始从事游戏的开发。现在他们正致力于Facebook游戏Gods of Rock的开发。该游戏将于今年秋天首次亮相。在游戏中,玩家将扮演一位有抱负的摇滚歌星,每天都要忙于创作歌曲,购买乐器和获得名气等。

“在这个游戏中,没有毒品,没有性,有的只是摇滚音乐。这是一个PG-13(普通级,13岁一下的儿童需父母陪伴)级的游戏。”

由于大部分的社交游戏内容较为轻佻,DPI Health Games Inc的创办者认为“游戏必须令玩家觉得有趣,否则它将不可能吸引玩家。”英特尔投资的前风险资本家Laila Partridge说道,他也是DPI公司的创立人之一。“我们所建立的是一个朋友之间的亲密网络,他们将帮助你达成各种目标,比如减肥、锻炼和测血糖等。”

去年,Hangout Industries公司(这是一家位于波士顿的社交游戏开发公司)在发售其游戏Fashion City时提出了一个有趣的想法:与顶级的成衣品牌合作在游戏中销售虚拟商品,然后与成衣品牌公司平分虚拟商品的收入。

但该公司的首席执行官Pano Anthos则认为利用广告来吸引游戏玩家的这种方法越来越昂贵了。今年,这家公司挂牌要出售,但目前仍没有潜在的买家。

Anthos说他正在为Hangout公司寻找新的发展战略,早在2007年该公司就计划在网络上创造一个3D的“hangout空间”,或者说虚拟环境。目前,该计划已筹集1200万美元资金。

此外,许多开发Facebook游戏的企业也承认开发Facebook游戏越来越具有挑战性。

Facebook公司可以(并且已经)改变游戏开发公司与游戏玩家的交流方法,这并不利于新游戏有效地吸引游戏玩家。而且,Facebook要求游戏开发商在游戏中使用其公司的支付系统Fecebook Credits进行虚拟交易。而Facebook将从这些交易中获得30%的收入。

现在,一些大型的游戏开发公司,如 Harmonix Music Systems, Tencent Boston和Rockstar New England并没有开发Facebook领域的游戏(尽管在Harmonix的新款音乐游戏Rock Band3中,玩家可以将其最高得分上传到Facebook和Twitter上)。

“我们知道很多制作团队对这类游戏嗤之以鼻,并称其为“滚动轮”或认为这些游戏并不能令人印象深刻。”Quick Hit的首席执行官Jeff Anderson说,“所有的游戏公司都面临着选择。”

Anderson还告诉我们,他们公司也正为开发一款足球游戏的Facebook版本筹集资金。

而在Blue Fang公司,其员工已经从去年的22人上升为35人。“我们经常接到电话,询问我们是否能够协助他们开发一些游戏。”Howie说。在Zoo Kingdom发布的六个月后,我们公司就开始从游戏中获得收益。

Disruptor Beam公司的Radoff曾说过:“上个世纪是电视电影等视听媒介的天下。而在21世纪,游戏将成为主流的媒体和艺术形势。它们能令你融入其中,与朋友们一起分享经验。”

It was the week before Thanksgiving last year, and the executives at Blue Fang Games had a decision to make. The Waltham company had been producing the popular Zoo Tycoon series of video games for more than a decade, to be played on personal computers, Macintoshes, the iPhone, and the Nintendo Wii.

Tweet diggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis “We’d always prided ourselves on making games for everybody: kids and the whole family,’’ says Blue Fang president Hank Howie. “We saw how many people were suddenly playing games on Facebook. It felt a little bit like watching a forest fire in the distance, and wondering, ‘Is that gonna get us?’ ’’

The strategic shift would mean adopting an entirely new business model, and also making changes to the staff, to bring on people with Web design experience. But Howie felt the company had no other choice. Blue Fang decided to stop developing games for traditional video game consoles, and dedicated most of its employees to creating a game to be played on Facebook. Zoo Kingdom launched in February, and by last month, 1.5 million people were playing it regularly.

If you’ve ever clicked your mouse to man age a virtual zoo, cultivate a farm, or invite Facebook friends to join your mafia clan, you’ve been part of what is the hottest trend in video games.

Called “social gaming,’’ these online games tend to be played within Facebook’s site or on a mobile phone, in just a few stolen moments here and there (as opposed to the hours of dedicated play required to master a typical video game). You’re encouraged to invite your friends to play with you, which helps the best games reach vast numbers of people with little money spent on marketing.

And while the games are free to play, companies are generating millions of dollars in revenue by charging a few bucks here and there to purchase a virtual tractor that will help you tend your crops, or add a shaggy Himalayan yak to your online menagerie.

Zynga Game Network Inc., a San Francisco company that makes social games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, could bring in as much as $450 million this year, according to estimates. (The company is three years old, and claims that 215 million people play its games each month.) In July, Walt Disney Co. bought the second-biggest maker of social games, Silicon Valley-based Playdom Inc., in a deal that could be worth as much as $763 million.

The social gaming trend has begun to ripple through Boston’s small pond of game developers. New start-ups are being formed to develop Facebook-based games, and more established gaming companies are considering whether they should create their own social games, typically regarded as cartoonish and simplistic by “serious’’ game makers.

This month, Zynga, the industry’s top dog, acquired Conduit Labs Inc., a Cambridge start-up that had been developing games for Facebook and its own website. While the purchase price wasn’t revealed, the deal will create Zynga Boston, a 17-person development studio that is likely to grow over time. (The entire Cambridge team is now in San Francisco for several weeks helping out with some projects there, and getting to know the new parent company.) The start-up had raised $8.5 million in venture capital funding; Conduit’s founders and investors accepted Zynga stock in the transaction. Since Zynga isn’t yet publicly traded, Conduit’s employees and their backers will be rooting for a spectacular Zynga initial public offering.

Tweet diggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis Jon Radoff and Angela Bull, a husband-and-wife team behind Disruptor Beam LLC, have been developing games since the early 1990s, and are now working on Gods of Rock, a Facebook game that will debut this fall. You’ll take on the role of an aspiring rock star who needs to write songs, procure instruments, and achieve fame.

“There are no drugs in the game, and not really much sex, but there is rock and roll,’’ says Radoff. “I’d say it’s a PG-13-type game.’’

While many of today’s social games are fairly frivolous, the founders of DPL Health Games Inc. are hoping to create a hybrid of an online game and support group. “You’ve got to have fun with the game, otherwise you’re never going to come back,’’ says Laila Partridge, a former venture capitalist at Intel Capital who is one of the company’s founders. “But we’re trying to add an intimate network of close friends who will support you in a goal you’re trying to achieve, like losing 30 pounds, training for a triathlon, or measuring your blood sugar level consistently.’’

One developer of social games, Boston-based Hangout Industries Inc., had an interesting idea when it launched the game Fashion City last year: working with top apparel brands to sell virtual goods in the game, and dividing the profits. (The game involves dressing models at a fashion show before their stroll down the runway.) But chief executive Pano Anthos says attracting new game players on Facebook, often with ads on the service, has become much more costly. The company was on the block this year, but didn’t find an interested buyer. Anthos says he is now developing a new strategy for Hangout, which was initially founded in 2007 to create 3-D “hangout spaces,’’ or virtual environments, on the Web, and has raised $12 million in venture capital funding.

Other entrepreneurs working on Facebook games acknowledge that there are challenges. Facebook can (and has) changed the rules about how game developers can communicate with a player (and a player’s Facebook friends). That can make it tough for new games to recruit new players efficiently. And Facebook is increasingly insistent that game developers use its own in-house payment system, Facebook Credits, to buy virtual goods within games. Facebook takes 30 percent of those transactions.

Some of the bigger game developers in town, like Harmonix Music Systems Inc., Tencent Boston, and Rockstar New England, aren’t yet working on games that can be played inside the Facebook universe.

(With Harmonix’s new Rock Band 3 music game, though, players will be able to automatically transmit their top scores to Facebook or Twitter.)

“You’ve got a lot of teams that have turned their nose up at these kind of games, and called them ‘hamster wheels,’ or said they’re not immersive enough,’’ says Jeff Anderson, chief executive of Quick Hit Inc., a Foxborough company. “Every established game company is at a bit of a crossroads.’’

Anderson says Quick Hit, which makes a Web-based football game, is trying to raise money now to build a version that could be played within Facebook.

At Blue Fang, employment has grown from about 22 people late last year to 35 today. “We’re also getting a lot of phone calls asking us if we can work with other people to develop games around a property that they own,’’ Howie says. About six months after the launch of Zoo Kingdom, he says, the company has almost begun turning a profit on the game, which cost about a half-million dollars in employee time to develop.

The last century, says Radoff at Disruptor Beam, “was largely about passively consumed visual media, like television and film. In this century, games will be the definitive media and art form.

They’re something you get involved with, along with your friends, and you share experiences.’’

“If you compare it to the 20th century,’’ Radoff continues, “I think we’re still coming into the talkies era. We’re still figuring out a lot, but I think games will be bigger than TV and film ever were.’’(source:boston glabe)


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