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成功获取用户是Zynga主要竞争优势

发布时间:2012-01-09 15:47:34 Tags:,,

作者:Brian Guenther

Zynga总是处于各种争议的风口浪尖上。他们总是因为各种游戏设计模仿,利用心理元素吸引玩家沉迷于游戏等原因而受到指责。但不论这种指控是否属实或者有根有据,这对此时的Zynga来说都不再重要了,因为他们在社交游戏领域已经占据主导地位,并掌握着争取更多用户的强大优势。

Zynga的成功并不是因为他们能够设计出引人注目的社交游戏,或者他们能够不断优化新功能而带来更多利益。当我在玩《CityVille》并到达第65个关卡时,我便确定Zynga知道如何创造出优秀且有利可图的游戏机制。他们总是会定时更新游戏内容和游戏机制。因为Zynga游戏的大规模与较低的复杂度,它们总能够吸引到更多目标用户,甚至是美国中西部40多岁的家庭主妇也成为了这些游戏的忠实粉丝。但这些都不是他们称雄社交游戏领域的主要原因,其成功之处在于他们能够在最佳时机获取最多用户。

cityville(from cityvilleguidesrevealed.com)

cityville(from cityvilleguidesrevealed.com)

在Facebook关闭病毒式传播渠道之前,Zynga可以说是该营销方式的最大受益者。这是一种免费的病毒式传播渠道,而Zynga最大规模地使用了这种优势。除此之外,他们在Facebook台上利用广告模式获益。通过病毒式营销与广告营销双重方法,Zynga主导了Facebook休闲游戏市场,并获得了大量的用户群体。而当Facebook开始关闭一些社交游戏病毒式传播渠道后,社交游戏的用户获取成本开始攀升。除此之外,一批竞争者相继进入这个领域也进一步增加了开发商的投入成本。但Zynga之前就已经获得了难以超越了用户基础,甚至远远超过排名第二的竞争对手。

Zyng许多优势都是来自于其庞大的用户群体以及各种类型的游戏。比起极力争取新的高价值玩家,他们选择将新游戏推向原来的玩家,或者“复兴”原来的游戏。RewardVille便是属于这种策略的产物。并且,比起借款或者募资去获取用户,他们仅靠自己的盈利渠道就已足够支付广告及营销成本。因为Zynga是一家具有影响力的游戏开发公司,所以他们可以利用与电影工作室,歌手以及其他名人之间的合作关系突出游戏的特点,增加品牌效应并维持良好的公共关系。如此优势使得Zynga在获取新用户时的所需成本大大低于其它公司。从而他们能够将更多资源投入于产品开发,产品维护以及公司收购等活动中。这些活动也成为了Zynga可以利用的优势,并且帮助它进一步拉开与其它竞争者的差距。这便是典型的自我加强商业模式。Zynga是继Southwest,因特尔之后成功实践这一方法的公司。

但是Zynga现在面临的风险是玩家开始厌倦他们的核心游戏机制,或者开始追求更有创造性的新游戏机制。在以前的游戏行业中也出现过这种情形,以推出轰动之作为目标的公司常遇到不同游戏类型风靡一时的周期性循环。几年前,某些音乐类型影响力相对较大,并且也获得了许多投资,导致后来的作品成了无人问津的产品,而大众对这类音乐的兴趣后来也逐渐消失。此时的Zynga正在与这种市场过渡相抗衡,他们不断推出一些新游戏或者在现有游戏资产基础上引入更多新机制。他们还获得了许多有才能的开发者以及一些大有前景的新游戏,如此为他们进一步摆平了眼前的竞争势力。

为避开Zynga的优势领域,其它社交游戏开发商(如Kabam)开始转战一些特定的细分市场或者更加侧重于手机平台。而他们的这些策略也取得了相对的成功,因为这种模式与Zynga并不相同,不需要面临Zynga的直接竞争。但是这些公司也仍会面临用户获取问题,这要求他们提供更有吸引力的游戏或者投入更多成本于市场营销。而那些获得大量资金的竞争者们(游戏邦注:例如拥有强大的发行商后盾),也能够在社交游戏领域取得较大的影响力。而初创公司如果希望取得巨大的成功,便需要选择挑战细分市场,开发具有新机制的游戏或者募集足够的资金。

不管怎样,Zynga是第一代社交游戏发展的领头军。这种领军者的身份为其创造了一系列竞争优势,并因此也强化了其它优势。竞争者要与Zynga相抗衡需具备三个条件:1)更具有创造性,2)获得更多资金,3)足够的运气。(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

Competitive Advantage in Social Gaming

by Brian Guenther

Zynga has often been the target of criticism. They’ve been accused of copy-cat game design, using Pavlovian psychological tricks to addict people to their games, and facilitating scams through their offer walls. Whether or not these accusations are true or not, well-founded or not, is frankly irrelevant at this point. That’s because they’ve built a sustainable competitive advantage in the social games space, and they’re using this advantage to create genre-dominating properties that fund their growth and acquisition of new talent.

The secret to Zynga’s success isn’t necessarily their ability to design compelling social games or their ability to optimize new features for monetization, though these skills certainly help. Having played CityVille to level 65, I can attest that Zynga knows how to create a game with masterful game mechanics. They also regularly refresh their games with new content and new mechanics that keep it fresh. Their target audience, casual gamers that average out to 40-year old Midwestern housewives, is also a good audience to have because of its vast size and low level of gaming sophistication. But Zynga’s capabilities and their focus aren’t the reason that they dominate the space right now. No, the reason for Zynga’s great success is that they were the most aggressive in customer acquisition when it was easy to do.

Before Facebook shut off the viral marketing spigot for applications, Zynga was one of the most aggressive companies in the utilization of this marketing channel. This viral marketing channel was essentially free and they designed their games to exploit it mercilessly. They were also big spenders in Facebook advertising, which primed the viral marketing pump further. This dual focus on viral marketing and advertising, coupled with their push into every major casual gaming genre on Facebook, led to massive customer acquisition. When Facebook took steps to minimize the ability of social games to market through viral channels, customer acquisition costs for social games rose dramatically. This coincided with a wave of me-too companies entering the space with similar offerings, which raised the competition for new users and further drove up costs. Zynga, however, had already won a vast audience that was much larger than that of the next largest competitor.

With this large audience and a comprehensive portfolio of games, Zynga gained several advantages. Instead of acquiring new, expensive customers for games, they can simply recycle old customers to new games or revitalized games. RewardVille, a meta-game for their entire portfolio of games, does an excellent job at this. Instead of borrowing money or raising funding to fuel customer acquisition, they can simply tap their revenue streams for advertising dollars and promotions. Because they are the largest player, they have access to partnerships with movie studios, music stars, and other celebrities that augment their games with new features, positive brand associations, and healthy amounts of PR. Because of these advantages, Zynga’s cost to acquire new customers is dramatically lower than anyone else’s. This allows them to funnel relatively higher amounts of resources into product development, product maintenance, and corporate acquisitions. These activities, in turn, become advantages for Zynga that make it even more difficult for competitors to win market share. This is an example of a self-reinforcing business model. Self-reinforcing business models such as those created by Southwest, Intel, and now Zynga, are very powerful and difficult to assail.

The danger for Zynga at this point is that their audience will tire of the core game mechanics or will be entranced by innovative new game mechanics. We’ve seen this before in gaming, which is a hits-based business that can be very cyclical in terms of what genre dominates. A couple of years ago, the music genre was huge but received too much investment, causing later products to flop. Interest in the genre has since waned. Zynga is battling this kind of market transition by continuing to develop new games and working to keep their existing portfolio fresh by introducing new mechanics. They’re also acquiring talented developers and promising new properties, squelching future competition early.

Other players in the social gaming space are circumventing Zynga’s advantages by aggressively attacking specific market niches (e.g., Kabam) or by focusing on mobile platforms. These strategies can be successful because the business model is very different and Zynga isn’t a direct competitor (yet). The companies that operate in the fringes still face the customer acquisition problem though, and that requires either a very compelling offering that grows organically or lots of money to pump into marketing. The conclusion I draw from this is that well-funded competitors such as those owned by large publishers will remain relevant in the social gaming space. Start-ups that hope to make it big have to innovate in terms of market niches, develop compelling new forms of gameplay, or get sufficient funding to out-market competitors.

At the end of the day, Zynga is the clear winner in the first generation of social gaming. This win has created a sustainable competitive advantage that, in turn, reinforces a set of other advantages. However, competitors can still emerge and challenge Zynga. They will simply need to be: a) very innovative b) very well-funded or c) very lucky.(source:digitalerudite


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