作者：Scott Steinberg

Cowen and Company最新的一份报告显示，Zynga这家巨头公司在持续高涨的社交游戏风潮中将会慢慢遇到一些麻烦。Zynga老游戏的用户增长速度明显放缓了，甚至呈现出了下降趋势，而新游戏（游戏邦注：例如《Pioneer Trail》、《Adventure World》的用户数看起来也已经达到了最高峰。那些批评者也开始借此唱衰社交游戏。虽然社交游戏并不会在近期立马毁灭，但是对于过去和现在的所有社交游戏开发者来说，都必须提高警惕：如果连Zynga都衰败了，这对于整个社交游戏行业来说将会产生巨大的消极影响。

如果开发者和发行商希望这种游戏能够蒸蒸日上，那么他们就必须注意社交游戏所面临的5个普遍问题：

adventure-world(from facebook-gaming-update.blogspot.com)

缺乏创造性——模仿和雷同现象是多数社交游戏面临的一大问题。正如《FarmVille》与Natsume的《Harvest Moon》系列游戏颇为相似，而我们也能够从当前很多社交游戏中找到《FarmVille》的影子。

幸运的是，社交游戏类型也是多种多样，这一部分要归功于那些创造了许多传统游戏的资深开发者对于这一新兴市场的贡献。但是社交游戏还是存在着许多问题，如直接将一些受欢迎的单人游戏理念安插在新游戏上，对整体社交游戏市场的发展带来了消极影响。更糟糕的是，有些游戏社交游戏甚至不舍得仿制他人作品，而是直接大量剽窃那些受欢迎游戏的代码。

缺乏创造性及创意剽窃并非社交游戏独有的现象，但在免费游戏市场中，派生游戏确实更容易存活。而人们似乎也已经习惯了这种派生法，他们会说：“嘿，游戏X的理念与游戏Y类似”，但是这不仅损害了社交游戏的创造性，而且会抹灭玩家对于游戏的积极性。更糟糕的是，如今市场上充斥着越来越多受欢迎的免费游戏，玩家拥有更多免费游戏选择，所以如果开发者不能够为玩家提供新颖的游戏理念，将会严重影响游戏的盈利能力。

肤浅的游戏玩法——大多数社交游戏都采用了基于“反复点击鼠标”的机制。通过点击栽培庄稼。通过点击收割庄稼。通过点击在城市中与别人交换产品。这是一种非常简单的游戏机制，但是很容易在第一时间吸引玩家的注意，因为似乎我们隐隐地喜欢着那种点击按钮并从屏幕中接收到回应的感觉。

问题在于要求玩家邀请好友加入游戏的机制，比起让玩家想法以有趣方式与好友互动的游戏，那些依赖于刺激反应机制的社交游戏也即将过时了。考虑进入这个领域的开发者，首先就必须明确自己怎么做才能够更好地改变这种游戏类型，并帮助它获得更好的发展。Kabam旗下的《Kingdoms of Camelot》以及俄罗斯网游公司Nival旗下的《Prime World》都属于较为复杂和具有深意的社交游戏，而且更接近于传统意义上的视频游戏。

好消息是，越来越多开发者开始偏离早前肤浅的游戏体验，开始为玩家提供更加丰富且更具有表现力的社交游戏。让我们期待，社交游戏在不久的将来能够成为评论与用户同时认可的好游戏。

好友骚扰-—–除了缺少创意，很多批评家还认为社交游戏中要求向好友发送垃圾邮件的设置很烦人。Zynga通过张贴用户信息或者在添鸦墙上更新用户相关游戏内容而形成了一种免费的游戏推广方法。但是这种方法却惹恼了那些对Zynga游戏毫不关心的Facebook用户，甚至有些Facebook用户会因为不满Zynga的“垃圾邮件”机制而完全退出Facebook。

公平地说，Zynga的这一做法的确为他们争取到了现在如此庞大的用户基础。但是说实在的，这种广告轰炸手段以及信息分享方式的确给社交游戏抹上了难以洗清的污点。当然了，既然我们玩的是社交游戏，必然需要好友一起游戏，但是如果Zynga的玩家数量开始下滑，他们就应该开始琢磨另外一种比较不烦人的吸引玩家手段了。

无度索取的微交易——很多社交游戏都采用了免费游戏模式，这意味着玩家必须花点小钱才能够维持游戏的持续进行。虽然追求利益是可取的，毕竟要提供完整的游戏体验并非易事，更别说是在无人付费的情况下维持游戏运营了，但社交游戏却应该想办法消除单纯谋利的坏印象。开发者和发行商不可过于频繁地索取利益，如此才能避免玩家离开自己的“家园”而去寻找其他游戏乐趣。

市场过于饱和——Zynga的《Adventure World》很大程度上改变了原有的社交游戏类型，但它的用户数量为什么这么快就达到了顶峰？问题可能是，如今的市场上存在着太多社交游戏，甚至是Zynga新发行的一款社交游戏也会很快地埋没在游戏堆里。对于Zynga来说，即使发行了新游戏，他们也仍然会维持老游戏的运行（仍有很多玩家花钱玩《FarmVille》）。但是，不论是Zynga还是其他发行商，如今的游戏发行节奏越来越快了。也许问题并不是在于玩家对社交游戏失去了兴趣，而是因为这个市场中存在太多游戏，玩家无法从中作出选择。

不管怎样，社交游戏行业早就该“清理门户”了，但也有人声称这个领域已经在重新洗牌。但是从好处来看，这种游戏类型当然还会存活下来，但只有其中的精英才能获得成功，接下来的几年里，我们也许能够见证一些更有创造性且更加有趣的新游戏诞生。（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）

Social Games: 5 Growing Threats to Watch

by Scott Steinberg

A recently-published report from Cowen and Company indicates that Zynga the Big Red Dog might be having some trouble with the enduring popularity of its social games. User growth for Zynga’s old games has apparently stalled or is falling, and the player numbers for its new titles (Pioneer Trail, Adventure World) are already showing signs of having peaked. Social gaming’s critics are already circling and attempting to get a good view of what they hope will be the genre’s destruction. And while social games won’t die off in the near future, developers past and present should take warning: If Zynga sickens, it won’t be good for the social games business as a whole.

That’s why, if the genre is to keep thriving, developers and publishers alike should take note of the five most common problems and issues facing social games:

Lack of Creativity — The derivative nature of the average social game is jeered with regularity, and justifiably so. FarmVille plays quite closely to Natsume’s Harvest Moon series, and for a while, every social game that came down the river played very closely to FarmVille.

Fortunately, the social game genre is diversifying quickly, thanks in part to more veteran developers of traditional games making their way into the newborn social market. But there are still a lot of problems with social games lifting ideas directly from popular single-player games and slapping on a new name (or carbon copying their own brethren) which fouls up the social genre as a whole and gives it a plastic, counterfeit feel. Worse, some social offerings seemingly don’t even bother with pretense, and allegedly lift chunks of code from more popular games.

Lack of creativity and idea theft are hardly problems that are unique to social games, but derivative games are far more likely to be sampled in a free-to-play market. People are catching on and saying, “Hey, Game X is pretty much the same idea as Game Y,” which frustrates players and dilutes the credibility of social gaming. Worse, with loyalty levels on free-to-play games perilous, cloning also undermines profitability, as any number of free options exist that can cater to players’ needs, even if a developer’s first to market with an original idea.

Shallow Gameplay — The vast majority of social games are “played” through millions of mouse-clicks. Click to grow your crops. Click to harvest them. Click to interact with every object in your city or your cafe. It’s a simple mechanic, but highly effective at getting people hooked in the first place, as it appeals to the little chimpanzee living in our brain who loves to push buttons and watch the board light up in response.

The problem is, social games that rely on the stimulus-response gameplay mechanic are beginning to look antiquated next to titles that actually ask players to think and interact with friends in smart, meaningful ways (social games based on puzzles come to mind). A developer who’s considering breaking into the field should first think of how he or she can change the genre for the better, and help it grow. Thankfully, as companies like Kabam and Nival are showing with titles like Kingdoms of Camelot and Prime World, there’s a growing space for deeper, more complex games that closely resemble traditional video game titles.

Happily, going forward, we should start to see developers growingly move away from yesteryear’s shallow gaming experiences and increasingly start to offer richer, more graphically advanced and connected play outings. Let’s hope so: It’s about time we moved away from the old clichés which threaten to hold the field back from achieving further greatness in critics’ and consumers’ minds alike.

Friend Harassment — Aside from a lack of creativity, most criticism lobbed at social games has to do with titles that spam friends. Zynga’s method of recruiting players primarily involves

extensive advertising dollars and, in several cases, posting a user’s achievements and updates on the Facebook walls of his or her friends. These updates are a source of annoyance for Facebook users who simply Do Not Care, and “Zynga spam” has prompted more than one user to abandon Facebook entirely.

To be fair, Zynga’s methods have done a brilliant job at building up social gaming’s current user base. However, this wash of ads and info-sharing is also reviled to the point that it’s become a black splotch on the face of social gaming in general. Sure, we need to get friends to play these games–they’re social games, after all–but if even Zynga’s numbers are stalling and falling, it’s time for someone to come up with another (preferably less annoying) method of player recruitment.

Begging for Microtransactions — Most social games follow the free-to-play model, which means it’s necessary to entice players into spending a little money to keep the machine going.

Soliciting for cash is understandable – it’s hard to provide a full-fledged gaming experience, let alone keep the lights on if no one’s paying – but it’s important for a game to avoid becoming obnoxious about it. Developers and publishers should also avoid locking off huge portions of a title until the player makes with the green, as this will simply encourage the player to abandon the homestead and seek entertainment elsewhere.

Market Oversaturation — Zynga’s Adventure World makes significant changes to the social game genre, so why are its numbers supposedly peaking so soon? The problem could be that there are simply too many social games out there already, and that even Zynga’s best offerings are simply getting lost in the mire. The company continues to support its old games even as it brings out new ones, which makes good financial sense. (People are still playing FarmVille and spending money on it.) But the rate at which it and other publishers release new social games is quickly turning into a frantic tempo. Maybe the problem isn’t that people are losing interest in social games, but that there are too many to divide one’s time between.

Either way, the social games industry is long overdue for a weeding, which, as some assert, may already be underway. On the bright side, the genre will certainly survive, but the herd will thin, and – even better still – the coming year will provide an opportune time for enterprising, innovation-minded outfits to build new empires on the ashes of the failed pioneers which have come before.（source:industrygamers）