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论述游戏化概念在其他领域的重要意义

作者:Tim Chang

作为社交游戏的早期投资者,我经常在座谈会同游戏玩家、投资者及游戏公司管理人员交流。在某次会议上——斯坦福大学商学院举办的Future of Media会议,开场问题就是为什么游戏同非玩家群体存在关联性。座谈会成员——来自IGN、动视、GaiKai及Riot Games的相关人员,还有我,就此给出自己的有趣答案:

游戏变成主流:很多两岁以下的儿童都开始接触触屏设备,而游戏是25岁以下族群的娱乐首选。

Words with Friends from technologytell.com

Words with Friends from technologytell.com

曝光度依然模糊:至少有一款游戏同我们存在联系,无论是《使命召唤》、《英雄联盟》、《Words with Friends》,还是其他游戏作品。很多社交、网页及手机平台的游戏仍然缺少曝光度。

游戏变成对话渠道:随着云端游戏的出现,游戏体验从独立的沉浸性体验变成玩家间及玩家和游戏开发者/发行商间的对话(游戏邦注:开发者持续推出更新内容及补充道具,作为每周“扩充包裹”,还有就是游戏运营商持续研究突发用户行为,快速生成出乎意料的内容)。免费增值模式的出现令开发者不得不从统一定价的盒装形式转移至免费商业模式,如靠服务器推动的Gaikai、Riot Games及Kixeye等公司纷纷将新格式(浏览器、Facebook及可下载数字模式)及新商业模式植入既有题材中。

手机平台是新的创造性领域:掌机、电视及机顶盒给开发者带来新的开发平台及网络API,且逐步同云端建立联系,再来就是手机设备如今变得触手可及,因此相比好莱坞模式,游戏领域依然存在创造出独立热门作品的可能性——不妨以《愤怒的小鸟》作为着眼点。平板电脑已做好搭载丰富游戏体验的准备,包括RTS和RPG题材的“中度硬核”游戏。

游戏打破技术界限,激发创造性:游戏行业首先尝试IM、手感控制及3D画面之类的创新技术,这些都被主流用户采用。Couchbase最近刚提供的noSQL数据库平台推进了OMGPOP热门游戏《Draw Something》的快速发展。

游戏化——在非玩家群体中应用游戏机制,革新许多行业:游戏化工具(如徽章、排行榜、关卡、“任务”及积分)时代的到来将加快各个领域(从医疗保健到金融服务、人力资源及客户支持工作)的终端用户获取、用户数量、用户黏性、留存率及转换率。游戏化带给游戏设计师新的工作机会,让他们能够在游戏之外的领域创造性地应用自己的专业知识,扩大自己的影响。作为投资者,我建议开发者借鉴游戏领域,设计虚拟交易及免费增值转换模式,这能够帮助我们在电影和音乐之类的媒介中创造收益。这也是我投资Badgeville之类的游戏化公司的原因所在,这令Badgeville不再只是单纯的SaaS(软件即服务)公司(这就是像是Salesforce.com推广CRM机制,Omniture提供基本网页分析方法,及Mayfield SaaS投资组合公司Gigya和Marketo各自在社交基础设施及营销自动化上采取的举措一样)。(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

Non-gamers, here’s why you should care about games

By Tim Chang

As an early investor in social gaming, I’m often speaking on panels to audiences of gamers, investors, and game company execs. At one such event —  the Future of Media conference hosted by Stanford’s Graduate School of Business — the opening question was why gaming is relevant to people who are not gamers. The panelists — folks from IGN, Activision, GaiKai, and Riot Games as well as myself — gave some interesting reasons for why non-gamers should care about the game market:

Gaming has gone mainstream: Many sub-two-year-olds have played with a touch screen, and games are the No. 1 form of entertainment for the under-25 crowd.

Discoverability is still elusive: There is at least one game that is relevant to each of us, whether Call of Duty, League of Legends, Words with Friends, or whatever your taste might be. And many of the hidden gems on platforms like social, browser, and mobile are still hard to find.

Gaming has become a conversation: With the onset of cloud gaming, the activity has gone beyond an isolated, immersive experience to a dialogue between players themselves, as well as between the player and the game developer/publisher (with ongoing content and item additions as iterative weekly “expansion packs,” as well as games operators studying emergent player behavior and quickly productizing around unexpected use cases). The freemium business model accelerates the need to shift from a priced, pre-packaged offering to a free2play service that’s server-driven, and terrific companies like Gaikai, Riot Games, and Kixeye have taken established genres and evolved them with new formats (in-browser, on Facebook, digital download) and new business models.

Mobile is the new creative playground: With consoles, TVs and set-top boxes opening up platform and network APIs and becoming increasingly cloud-connected, and with the ubiquity of mobile devices, gaming can still create “indie” sleeper hits vs. the Hollywood model of four dominant studios with a handful of tentpole blockbuster franchises – look at the success of Angry Birds as a starting point. Tablets are especially ripe for richer game experiences, including “midcore” gaming with RTS and RPG genres.

Gaming pushes the boundaries of technology and spurs innovation: The gaming industry has piloted tech innovations like IM, gesture control, and 3D graphics, which are being used by mainstream consumers. One of our companies, Couchbase, recently provided the noSQL database platform that supported the rapid growth of OMGPOP’s Draw Something from zero-25 million users in six weeks.

Gamification – leveraging game mechanics for non-game purposes — will disrupt many industries: The era of gamification tools, such as badges, leaderboards, levels, “missions,” and scores, is going to turbocharge end-user acquisition, onboarding, engagement, retention, and conversion in fields ranging from health, wellness, fitness, and nutrition to financial services, HR, and customer support work. And gamification will provide game designers with new professional opportunities and creative outlets to make a big impact by applying their gaming chops outside of the games industry. As an investor, I’m excited about the potential of learning from gaming to design microtransactions and freemium conversion models (leveraging behavioral economics, social psychology, and the 7 Deadly Sins as a design framework) that help us monetize other media like movies and music. This is what led me to invest in enterprise gamification companies like Badgeville, which is killing it as a SaaS company (much like Salesforce.com did for CRM systems, Omniture for basic web analytics, and Mayfield SaaS portfolio companies Gigya and Marketo are doing for social infrastructure and marketing automation, respectively).(Source:venturebeat


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