作者：Nicholas Lovell

游戏领域目前选择忽略席卷音乐领域且即将波及图书世界的数字海啸。大量盒装产品及专门的实体DRM系统（游戏邦注：换而言之，就是指掌机）意味着文件共享给游戏领域构成的威胁不会像在音乐领域那样剧烈。

行业的数字创新集中在传统硬核游戏领域边缘，如社交、免费模式和手机领域。它们大多非常具有沉浸性，虽然盒装内容的营收2008年创历史新高，但如今情况已大不相同。

所有这些都将结束。虽然我依然相信AAA游戏有其未来，但配合网络运作的新商业模式的威胁性正逐步加剧。所以想要从中生存下来需满足什么条件？

接受互联网

互联网给数字内容带来两大影响：它极大降低互联网的推广成本，低至几近免费；各公司能够同忠实粉丝沟通，向用户提供他们期望的内容，从中收取相应费用作为回馈。

让我惊讶的是，传统公司时常强调前者的威胁性，却无视后者所创造的有趣商业模式。

免费模式

有个基本经济学规律叫做伯特兰竞争。总的来说，它指的是在竞争市场中，消费者预备支付的费用将降至制作的边际成本。

这对数字内容来说是个坏消息，因为其边际成本根本来看几乎就是零。

tiny tower 2 from slidetoplay.com

举个例子，《Tiny Tower》的制作成本很高。游戏由两位开发者耗费4个月时间完成。他们通过App Store发行。由于苹果承担免费游戏的下载费用，开发者推广游戏的费用几乎是零。《Tiny Tower》发行头4天就获得100万次的下载量（注意这里排除营销成本；营销成本是多数游戏的成败关键，但不是我们理解伯特兰竞争的重点）。

《现代战争 2》耗资5000万美元开发成本。实体发行需要投入大笔制作、推广和零售费用，更别提掌机制造商的版权费。而就数字领域来看，假设内容是个大型文件，其推广成本将比《Tiny Tower》这样的iOS游戏高出许多，但由于多数内容都涉及技术元素，在摩尔定律中，推广AAA游戏的成本将逐步趋于零。

所以当内容推广成本基本免费时，用户支付的费用也将趋于零（游戏邦注：姑且不论制作的最初成本）。不论是盗版者在对等网络中分享内容，还是游戏公司免费提供《地下魔宫》之类的高质量促销内容，或者是采用以免费提供为前提的新商业模式，数字时代的降价压力无疑非常艰巨。

直接接触用户

免费模式问题令许多公司无视互联网的真正趣味。这转变开发者同用户的关系，让他们能够更好服务用户。

从历史角度看，游戏发行商和开发者都是企业对企业的公司。开发公司有业务拓展主管，通常是CEO，他的职责是说服发行商投资游戏制作。而发行公司有自己的业务代表，他们得说服大型连锁商店的买家下大批量订单。

发行公司的销售部也许觉得自己是直接面对客户，但他们其实甚至连一句话也没同用户讲过，除偶然在讨论小组中外。他们购买专业报纸、电视或广告牌的广告位置，但鲜少获得直接反馈。

整个游戏行业价值链中唯一真正同用户沟通的是零售商店的初级销售人员。

互联网极大扭转这个局面。长久以来的企业对企业模式如今转变成企业对客户。发行商或开发商的目标不再是说服某零售采购员购买大批量作品，而是变成说服众多玩家购买单个游戏作品。

更重要的是，玩家无需再掏那么多钱购买游戏。有些玩家可以永久免费体验某款游戏。用户能够亲自查看内容，通过几分钟体验，或发现游戏不适合自己，或持续体验数年，成为游戏的忠诚粉丝。

在我的咨询实践中，我秉承0-1-100规则：

* 永久免费提供有趣游戏

* 让普通玩家自然在游戏进行首次消费

* 让玩家每月能够在游戏中掏出100美元

显然，这就是市场的实况。据Flurry报道，智能手机的平均交易价格是14美元，其中有超过50%的收益来自价值超过20美元的交易。但多数公司在谈到转换率时均表示，只有不到5%的玩家在游戏中掏钱。

数字海啸为何如此惊人？

传统媒体公司都关心成交量。每个用户支付的费用都相同，那么真正重要的变量就是用户数量。

在互联网世界中，每个用户各不相同。他们支付的资金从0到上万美元不等。游戏开发者的任务转变成寻找途径判断用户需求及其愿意支付的内容，然后向他们提供这些内容。

这和传统游戏开发或发行技能截然不同。这一改变也令此细分市场得以繁荣发展，而这在前数字世界则完全无法实现。

这是也为什么许多大型公司非常担心此数字海啸的到来，而我对此却如此兴奋。（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）

Opinion: Who Will Survive The Digital Tsunami?

by Nicholas Lovell

[For as much as digital channels have changed the games industry, the biggest changes are yet to come. Gamasutra contributor Nicholas Lovell asks whether the industry is ready for the "impending tsunami."]

Games have, so far, ignored the digital tsunami that has engulfed music and is about to engulf the book world. The enormous file sizes of our boxed products together with the proprietary physical DRM systems (or, in other words, a console) has meant that filesharing has not been a major threat to the industry in the way it decimated music.

Digital innovation in our sector has happened around the edges of the core traditional games industry, such as in social, free-to-play, and mobile. It has largely been additive, although with boxed product revenues peaking in 2008, that is no longer the case.

All this is about to come to an end. While I still believe that AAA games have a future, the threat from new business models, enabled by and optimized for the internet, is growing. So what does it take to succeed?

Embrace The Internet

There are two things that that the internet does to digital content: it makes distributing it so cheap as to be almost free, and it makes it possible for companies to talk to their biggest fans and find ways to charge them lots of money in return for giving them things that they value.

It amazes me how often traditional companies focus on the fear of the former without getting excited about the prospects for a vastly more exciting business based on the latter.

It’s Going Free

There is a basic rule of economics called Bertrand Competition. Broadly speaking, it says that in a competitive market, the price that consumers will be prepared to pay will fall to the marginal cost of production.

This is bad news for digital content because the marginal (i.e. per unit) cost is essentially zero.

To take one example, Tiny Tower cost meaningful money to create. It took two developers four months. They then gave it away through the App Store. Since Apple swallows the costs of the downloads of free games, it cost the developers literally nothing to distribute the content. Tiny Tower achieved 1 million downloads in the first four days. (Note this argument excludes the costs of marketing; marketing costs are important to the success of most games, but not key for an understanding of Bertrand competition).

Modern Warfare 2 cost $50 million to develop. When distributed physically, it costs a lot of money to manufacture, distribute, and retail, not to mention the royalty due to the console manufacturers. Digitally, given that it is a big file, it will cost a lot more to distribute than an iOS game like Tiny Tower, but like with so many things technological, the cost of distributing AAA games is likely to fall towards zero over time, in a Moore’s-Law way.

So when the cost of distributing content is essentially free, the price people will pay for content will fall towards zero, irrespective of the initial cost of creating it. Whether it’s pirates sharing content on peer-to-peer networks, games companies making high-quality promotional content like Undercroft available for free or new business models that start with the premise that you have to give the game away for free, the downwards pressure on prices will be relentless in a digital age.

It’s Going Personal

The free issue blinds so many companies to the real joy of the internet. It transforms the relationship with your customers, and enables you to serve them better. Much better.

Games publishers and developers were, historically, business-to-business companies. Developers had business development executives, often the CEO, whose job was to persuade one of a handful of publishers to give them money to make a game. Publishers had account executives in shiny suits who persuaded buyers from large retail chains to place orders for thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of units.

The marketing departments of publishers may have thought they were consumer-facing, but even they never actually spoke to customers, except at the occasional focus group. They bought ads in the specialist press, on TV, or on billboards, but rarely got direct feedback.

The only person in the entire games industry value chain who regularly spoke to honest-to-goodness customers was the lowly sales assistant in a retail store.

The internet turns this on its head. Companies who were historically business-to-business players are becoming business-to-consumer. Instead of persuading one retail buyer to buy a hundred thousand units, publishers or developers now have to persuade hundreds of thousands of gamers to buy one copy.

More importantly, gamers no longer pay the same amount for a game. Some people might play a game for free forever. They might check it out and decide within the space of a few minutes that it’s not for them, or they might end up staying for years and become one of the game’s biggest fans.

In my consulting practice, I focus on the rule of 0-1-100:

* Make the game fun to play for free forever

* Offer a no-brainer reason for regular players to spend their first dollar

* Make it possible to spend $100 per month

Clearly, this is what is happening in the market. Flurry reports that for smartphone games, the average transaction value is $14. Over 50 percent of revenues come from transactions valued at over $20. Yet most companies that talk about conversion rates suggest that fewer than 5 percent of players spend money.

Why Is It So Scary?

Traditional media businesses are all about volume. Every customer pays the same amount, so the only variable that matters is how many customers you have.

In the online world, every customer is different. They can pay anything from zero to tens of thousands of dollars. The game developer’s job becomes finding ways of determining what their customers want and will pay for, and then offering it to them.

It’s a totally different skill to the traditional skills of game development or publishing. It is also a change that will allow the niche to flourish in a way that was impossible in the pre-digital world.

It’s why so many big companies are fearful of the impending tsunami, and why I am so excited by it.（Source：gamasutra）