作者：Steve Peterson

日本手机社交游戏巨头Gree规模相当惊人，该公司本财年预期销售额是22亿美元左右，利润有望突破10亿美元。公司上周以2.1亿美元收购手机社交游戏公司Funzio，其轰动程度不亚于Zynga收购OMGPOP。

GamesIndustry International日前采访Funzio总裁兼COO Anil Dharni及Gree International业务&公司发展高级副总裁Shanti Bergel，主要谈论收购事宜、市场环境及Gree在高度竞争的手机社交游戏领域的未来发展。

Anil Dharni(from gamesindustry)

以Funzio视角来看，你们为何会达成这笔交易？

Anil Dharni:我们是着眼于手机领域、致力于开发高质量游戏作品的独立社交游戏公司，我们给自己开拓出中度硬核市场。在投身这一领域的过程中，我们逐步接触到若干Gree管理人员。我们和Gree CEO及美国Gree CEO在饭桌上碰面很多次。多次对话的最终结论是，日本的手机游戏表现异常突出。就他们制作的游戏风格，他们创建的游戏机制及游戏创收特点来看，他们充分证实自己比其他游戏开发者更胜一筹。

第二点是，我们觉得Gree团队非常杰出，他们想要成为全球一流手机游戏公司的目标和我们一致，这能够加快我们实现这一目标的步伐。我们觉得双方在各方面的认识都非常一致，因此决定进行这笔交易。

什么因素促使Gree决定进行这一收购交易？

Shanti Bergel:Gree在日本成立，最近打算在日本之外进行全球化扩张，发挥公司在日本积累的经验和资产；这里的重点就是找到配合这一策略的游戏作品。就投身手机社交游戏的人士来看，Funzio团队非常完整及优秀。他们的独特之处在于，拥有100%的成功率；他们推出三款游戏，每款都颇受追捧。他们的背景都非常显赫，对社交及手机领域有深刻理解，在这个年轻的行业，他们是世界级的团队。在沟通过程中，我们逐步发现，他们的视角和我们非常相似。沟通越深入，我们之间的结合就越发显得具有可行性。

“他们的独特之处在于拥有100%的成功率”——Shanti Bergel

这对Funzio来说是个重要机会，也是Gree美国工作室的重要扩张战略。Funzio在Gree是否依然维持独立工作室状态？

Anil Dharni:基于员工视角，我们向管理人员提出一个建议是，我们想要完全融入Gree当中。这里我们需要进行广泛的知识交流，若真的要执行这一目标，我们就需要互动帮助。这更多像是个混合模式，其中Funzio工作室的某些管理人员，诸如我会依然维持在同个阶层。所以我们不属于任何工作室，只是意图积极促进Gree International取得成功。我觉得，人才和文化是胜负关键，而他们也这么认为。

你谈到Gree游戏在日本的突出表现，但很多日本热门游戏都是换式卡牌游戏或约会模拟游戏。这一类型的游戏在其他国家是否也具有可行性？

Anil Dharni:这是个很好的问题，这也是我们内部经常讨论的话题。这里我们的主要关注点不是游戏类型；我们更多注重游戏的机制。最终你将能够把所有游戏分解成具体的游戏机制，判断这些机制是否适用于我们制作的游戏类型。这里我不进行详细说明，但我们的确有采用若干我们在访问日本时学到的游戏机制，这些机制在北美和欧洲表现突出。我们清楚某些游戏机制具有可转移性，所以我们逐渐不再着眼于游戏类型。这不是围绕纸牌游戏；这主要围绕他们在纸牌游戏中的具体设计方式（游戏邦注：如何促使游戏趣味横生，吸引玩家眼球，进而在其中投入众多资金）。这是我们看好这一协议的原因所在，我们觉得他们有很多值得学习的地方。

若查看日本历来的热门游戏题材，你会发现，很多都不是出自其他国际工作室，这有一定的原因。也就是说，很多杰作都通过日本而在全球名声大噪，例如掌机平台的《生化危机》和《马里奥》等众多出自日本大型掌机游戏公司的作品。而大获成功的非日本作品则相对较少；《侠盗猎车手》是个例外。我们在日本的若干平台伙伴都是诸如Sega和Konami之类的公司，他们的作品历来都是跨市场的杰作，我们希望自己同这些公司进行合作，实践自己的目标，但就如你说的，有些题材并不是什么地区都适合。

Funzio以同时基于手机和社交平台发行游戏而闻名。Gree游戏未来是否有望入驻非手机平台？

Anil Dharni:我们目前的着眼点是移动平台第一，网页第二。我觉得这将不会发生改变，因为最终的角逐将围绕谁主导移动市场。过去几年来我们形成的第二个认识是，跨平台战略相当重要，因为这些平台随时都会发生变化；它们会改变规则，改变政策。最终胜者将是那些具有高度灵活性，清楚各平台优劣的公司。

我们具备这一整体观念，且会始终保持不变。就如前面说到的，当前的主要焦点在于移动平台。我们最看好的移动平台是iPad和平台电脑。就收益来看，Funzio是排名前三或前五的iPad游戏公司，公司三款游戏在iPad的表现都非常突出。

你们的主要用户族群是？你提到“中度硬核”玩家，所以你的族群规模是否比典型的Zynga游戏更小？

Anil Dharni:这是个好问题。有些手机游戏公司主要锁定休闲游戏市场。我们的游戏吸引更多男性玩家。我们的《Kingdom Age》游戏男女比例相对均衡，但前两款游戏《罪恶都市》和《现代战争》的主题则更男性化，这和多数业内公司更多瞄准休闲女性用户及家庭主妇截然不同。我们开拓出自己的细分市场，这一直都是我们的原始战略。

kingdom age from gamesindustry.biz

“智能手机用户将超过Facebook用户”

这类用户带来的收益似乎更可观，是否如此？

Anil Dharni:不仅创收更丰厚，相比其他游戏，用户的留存率也更高。我们很多竞争对手发行的游戏没多久就掉出榜单。我们想要创造的是，用户会在2-4年内持续在自己的手机或平板电脑进行体验的游戏作品。这从一开始就是我们的宗旨，同时也是我们成功的原因所在。

移动领域竞争激烈，其中DeNA和ngmoco的目标和Gree类似。Zynga想要争取达到10亿用户规模，正朝移动领域迈进。大家的一致看法是，社交领域发展缓慢，移动领域是真正的发展所在。你们将如何应对这些？你们将此看作一个难题，还是一个机会？

Shanti Bergel(from gamesindustry)

Shanti Bergel:这既是难题，也是机会。就机会来说，杰出人士已明确表示，其中机会巨大。我觉得我们的成功就足以说明这点，还有就是我们的竞争对手。就难题来说，我们应该担心的唯一问题是，这将如何影响玩家的游戏访问情况及开发者对于内容的创建。我们采取的方式是，创建有利于各种组成要素的生态系统。

Anil Dharni:作为独立游戏开发者，这也许会有些令人望而却步，虽然我们已推出三款热门作品。如今我们变成Gree的一份子，我们清楚自己享有丰富的资源（游戏邦注：不仅仅是资金方面）；这包括人才，包括他们对市场的深刻把握，他们已投身游戏制作很多年。我们随后制作的游戏都将让我们更上一层楼——质量、动画及游戏设计都将变得越来越好，这体现在我们的有关数据中。我们的创收模式和留存率模式都将随着新作品而得到持续完善。我觉得通过两家公司的结合，我们将处于有利位置，能够更快实现这一目标。

你提到后续作品的提升，这是否意味着价格也会出现相应的提升？

Anil Dharni:是的，没错，但我们在游戏制作方面非常注重引擎。我们创建了一个通用引擎，然后基于题材调节引擎。所以虽然最初创建引擎的成本颇高，但完成引擎后，游戏的发行工作就会快很多。我们在Funzio的常规制作周期是3-4个月；投身一款游戏3个月后，我们就会开始着手另一游戏。我们的一个优点是，这点也倍受Gree青睐，能够快速提高作品的质量，步伐丝毫不亚于其他竞争对手。这也是部分制胜策略所在。

要取得预期的发展速度，你们的核心战略目标是什么？是顺利发行新平台，还会汇聚更多IP，吸引更多开发者，进军更多国家？

Shanti Bergel:这是个避重就轻的答案，但你已罗列出所有关键点。就高层次来说，我们的目标是替玩家和开发者创建庞大的生态系统；要实现这一目标，我们必须做到你列举的所有事项。这些是促成更大目标的构建模块，对于玩家，我们希望创建供他们探索有趣内容和游戏的首要平台，对于开发者，我们希望向他们提供系列工具和用户，方便他们创建自己的业务及发展自己的用户规模。

Anil Dharni:这是个很棒的问题。新IP总是具有可行性。另一有待完善的是我们的游戏作品目前都只采用英文形式。每天查看数据，我都会感慨，“真希望我们有推出法语、德语和意大利语版本，我希望我们在Android平台兼容所有语言。”在我看来，由于没有进行本土化及针对这些庞大的国家和用户群体进行定制化设计，我们不仅丧失众多用户，也流失大笔收入。

这和我们的下步目标密切相关；就如Gree CEO Tanaka所述，我们的目标是在全球移动平台获取10亿用户。若推出新IP，将游戏进行本土化，成立更多工作室，我们将能够加速这一目标的实现。现在我们主要着眼于mid-core群体，这是个首要战略。我们目前有考虑创建瞄准不同游戏领域的新工作室。我觉得要结合所有举措的挑战性很高，但这正是实现这一目标的有趣之处。

所以你们计划创建瞄准不同游戏题材的工作室（游戏邦注：如休闲游戏、角色扮演游戏或策略游戏等题材）？

Anil Dharni:这是个不错的着眼点。

“我觉得大家对于公司品牌的认知度和行业的成熟存在关联性”

就整个行业来说，你是否觉得发展将主要集中在移动和社交领域的游戏公司？

Anil Dharni:移动领域至少在未来几年里将持续保持发展势头。智能手机用户将超过Facebook用户。这将不会出现什么变化。第二个主要趋势是，平板电脑会越来越受关注。Android系统未来有望更多和平板电脑挂钩，这样iPad将不再是主要的流量来源。我们将看到有众多公司只锁定平板电脑市场，目前已有些许公司采取这一战略。

至于社交网络，就Facebook和Google+来看，发展势头无疑有所减缓。这些平台需要探索如何加快发展步伐，赶上移动平台的发展速度。目前这一领域的发展速度无疑有所减缓。

你觉得手机风格的游戏通过苹果TV或谷歌TV出现在起居室的可能性多大？

Anil Dharni:这个问题问得好。你现在交谈的对象是个电脑极客。我不知道Gree的立场是什么，但作为电脑极客，我非常期待这一切变成现实。我觉得这有可能变成现实，苹果在此应该是首先试水的公司，未来游戏将变成电视体验的核心组成要素。无论你基于iPad或电视，还是手机体验游戏，苹果最有可能一一满足你的需求。就如前面说到的，不是所有游戏都适合搭载电视平台。开发者会判断什么题材或类型的游戏在此具有可行性，但我觉得这将会是个倍受欢迎的游戏平台。

虽然手机领域发展迅猛，但我觉得玩家似乎对各公司的品牌没有什么意识，无法就它们进行区分。在你看来，创建公司品牌在短期内是否意义重大，或者这更多是个长期目标？

Shanti Bergel:我觉得对于公司品牌的认知度和行业的成熟度存在关系。随着行业的日益成熟，用户会越来越了解各个公司，因为他们会体验众多出自特定公司的游戏作品，他们会开始意识到：“XYZ游戏就是出自这一公司之手”。我觉得这更多是对当前市场状态的评论，而不是市场成熟后我们所处的位置。Gree的目标是，随着用户日益将我们视作他们探索和体验预期游戏的平台，他们将继续保持对品牌的认识度，未来我们有望树立起自己的品牌知名度。

最后总结？

Shanti Bergel:我们非常期待和Funzio团队共事。我们相当尊重这个团队，迫不及待地想要和他们携手迈入下个商业阶段。（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）

Gree and Funzio: Inside The $210m Acquisition

By Steve Peterson

Gree, Japan’s mobile social gaming giant is impressive in its size and scale, with projected sales in the range of $2.2 billion for this fiscal year and profits of over $1 billion. The company’s acquisition of mobile social game company Funzio earlier this week for $210 million is an event on the level of Zynga’s acquisition of OMGPOP.

GamesIndustry International talked with Anil Dharni, President and COO of Funzio, and Shanti Bergel, SVP, Business & Corporate Development, of Gree International (Gree’s US subsidiary) about the acquisition, the market, and what lies ahead for Gree in the highly competitive mobile social arena.

Q: What led to this deal from Funzio’s perspective?

Anil Dharni: We’ve been an independent social game company primarily focused on mobile, building really high-quality games, and we were creating this mid-core market for ourselves. Over the course of working on the business, we had an opportunity to start interacting with some of Gree’s executives. We had multiple dinners with the CEO of Gree and the CEO of US Gree. What came out of those conversations was that mobile gaming in Japan is going gangbusters. The style of games they make, the game mechanics that they have, the monetization characteristics of the games… they have really proven that they can out-execute any game developer here.

The second thing is we felt that the Gree team is just fantastic, their vision to become the #1 mobile gaming company in the world was something that we were totally aligned with, and that this would just accelerate that growth and our ability to hit that vision. So we felt we were aligned in every single way, and decided to do the deal.

Q: What were the factors that motivated Gree to make this acquisition?

Shanti Bergel: Gree started life in Japan, and most recently has been pursuing a strategy outside of Japan of global expansion and application of lessons learned and assets created in Japan; a big piece of that is finding the right games for that strategy. As you look across the landscape of folks who make games for the mobile social experience, the Funzio team is a complete and total standout. They’re unique in that they have a 100 percent hit rate; they’ve made three games and all of them have been hits. They come from very interesting places from an employee pedigree standpoint, they have a deep understanding of social, they have a deep understanding of mobile, and they’re a world-class team in an area that’s very young. As we talked to them it really became clear that they saw the world the way we did. The longer we talked about it, the more combining forces made a whole lot of sense.

“They’re unique in that they have a 100 percent hit rate”

Q: It’s a big change for Funzio and a big expansion for Gree’s US Offices. Is Funzio going to remain a separate studio within Gree?

Anil Dharni: From a people and employee perspective, one of the proposals that we actually brought up to the management was we wanted to go full out and integrate with Gree. There’s going to be a lot of knowledge exchange that’s needed, and if you really want to execute on that vision, we need their help and they need our help. It’s going to be more of a hybrid, where Funzio studio – I hate to call it Funzio, I would call it a mid-core studio or just another studio that exists within Gree US – with some of the execs, folks like me going completely horizontal. So we are not part of any studio, but we are just going to help the Gree International business succeed. I think in the end it’s the talent that wins, it’s the culture that wins, and they see it exactly the same way.

Q: You talk about the success of Gree’s games in Japan, but many of the most popular games in Japan are trading card games or dating simulations. Is the style of those games really going to work in other countries?

Anil Dharni: That’s an excellent question, and something that we always talk about here internally. What we tend to focus on here is less on the style of games; we tend to focus more on the game mechanics. We try to figure out if those are successful game mechanics. At the end of the day you can break each game into those game mechanics, and figure out if those game mechanics can apply to the style of games that we do here. I can’t get into more details, but we did implement a few of the game mechanics that we ended up learning while visiting Japan, and we have seen really good success in North America and Europe. We already know that the particular game mechanics are transferable, so we tend to obsess less about the style. It’s not about a card game; it’s about what are they doing within the card game that makes it so fun and addicting where people are actually paying a lot of money. That’s why we are extremely bullish about this deal and we think we have so much more to learn from them.

Shanti Bergel: If you look at the types of content that historically have been hits in Japan, a lot of that product never makes it out to the global market and there are good reasons for that. That said, there are franchises that cut through from Japan, like Resident Evil on the console side for example, Mario… all of these classics from the big Japanese console companies. There are comparatively few examples of non-Japanese content to succeed over there; Grand Theft Auto is a surprising standout. Some of our platform partners in Japan are companies like Sega and Konami, and they have franchises that historically have been successful cross-market, and we’re hopeful we’ll be able to partner with folks like that to try out these ideas, but to your point, yes, there are certain categories of games that don’t apply everywhere.

Q: Funzio has been known for putting its games on both mobile platforms and social platforms. Do you see potential for Gree’s games to go to non-mobile platforms?

Anil Dharni: Our focus today is mobile first and web second. I don’t think that’s going to change, because we feel that the race is really on for who’s going to dominate mobile. The second realization we’ve had over the last couple of years is that cross-platform strategy is pretty important because these platforms can change at any time; they can change their rules, they can change their policies. The winners are going to be the ones that are flexible and understand each of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual specific platform. We’ve had that holistic view and I don’t think we’re going to change. Having said that, the real focus right now is on mobile. What we are most bullish about within mobile are iPads and tablets. Funzio is probably in the top three or top five iPad gaming companies today in terms of revenue, with all three of our games doing really well on the iPad.

Q: What are the demographics of your users? You said “mid-core” gamers, so is your demographic narrower than a typical Zynga game, for instance?

Anil Dharni: That’s a good question. We do think that some of those other mobile game companies are focused on the casual market. Our games tend to attract more males. Our Kingdom Age game seems to attract a nice healthy mix of male and female, but our previous two games, Crime City and Modern War, you can imagine just based on those themes are much more male-centric games, which is unlike most of the players in this industry that tend to focus very much on the casual female, stay-at-home mom. We’ve kind of created our own market and our own niche, which was always our initial strategy.

Q: It seems like the monetization is better for that kind of demographic. Is it?

“There’s going to be more smartphones than Facebook users”

Anil Dharni: We believe that not only is the monetization better, but we can keep the user far longer than these other games. You see a lot of our competitors launch games that quickly fall off the charts. What we want to do is build franchises that people are playing on their phones, on their tablets for two years to four years. That’s been our charter from day one and that’s how we guarantee success.

Q: There’s a lot of competition in the mobile space, with DeNA and ngmoco having a very similar goal to Gree, and Zynga’s going for a billion players and heading towards the mobile space. The consensus seems to be that social is slowing and mobile is where the growth is. How are you going to deal with all of that? Do you see this as a problem or an opportunity?

Shanti Bergel: It’s a bit of a problem and an opportunity. On the opportunity side clearly there’s a validation from a lot of smart people that the opportunity is huge. I think our own success speaks to that, as do some of our competitors. In terms of a problem, the only problem we should all be concerned about in the space is how this affects the ability of players to get access to games that they’ll be rewarded by, and for developers to create them. Our approach is to try and create that ecosystem that will be rewarding for all different parts of the ecosystem.

Anil Dharni: As an independent game developer that might have looked a bit scary, even though we’ve had three games, three hits. Now that we’re a part of Gree we know we have the resources, which means more than just money; it means talent, it means their deep understanding of this market, and they’ve been building games for years and years. Every subsequent game we’ve been able to raise the bar of our games – the quality, the animation, the game design just keeps getting better and better, and it actually shows in our metrics. Our monetization patterns, our retention patterns, they just keep improving with every subsequent launch. I think we are very uniquely placed with the combination of these two entities to be able to achieve this faster than anyone else can.

Q: You mentioned raising the bar with each successive title, but doesn’t that also mean it gets more expensive?

Anil Dharni: Yes, that is true, but the way we build our games is very engine-specific. We build a common engine, and then on top of it we tend to tweak the engine based on the genre. So while the initial cost of building the engine might be more, once you have the engine then releasing these games becomes much faster. What we’ve tended to do at Funzio is have a three to four month cadence; within three months of each game we launch the next one. What we’ve been able to prove is, and this is another thing Gree loved, we’ve been able to raise the bar at a speed which matches any of our competitors. That’s part of the winning strategy here.

Q: What are the key strategic objectives for you to get the kind of growth you’re looking for? Is it successful launch of the new platform, getting more IP together, attracting more developers, going into more countries?

Shanti Bergel: It’s kind of a copout answer, but you just named them all. At a very high level, what we’re trying to do is create the largest ecosystem for players and developers; in order to do that we have to do all those things you just mentioned. Those are building blocks on the way to that larger goal, which is for players we want to create the premier destination for them to find content and games that they enjoy, and for developers we’re trying to provide them the premier set of tools and audience for them to build their business and grow their audience base.

Anil Dharni: That’s an excellent question. New IP always works. Another thing we’ve not done is that all our games are only in English right now. Every day I look at my numbers and I say “I wish we were in French, German, Italian, I wish we were in all the Asian languages for Android.” I think there’s a lot of money, not just users, that we’re leaving on the table by not having these games localized and customized for these large countries and these large populations.

That ties into our next goals; as Gree CEO Tanaka-san said, our goal is to reach a billion gamers across the world just on mobile. We can accelerate that and get to that vision once we release new IP, localize our games, and build up more studios. Right now we are focused on mid-core, which was always a beachhead strategy. We are thinking of starting new studios focused on different verticals in the gaming space. I think a combination of all of those is challenging, but that’s what makes it so fun to be involved in trying to achieve that vision.

Q: So you’re planning to have different studios focused on different things like casual games, roleplaying, or strategy?

Anil Dharni: Yes, that’s a good way of looking at it.

“I think people’s awareness of corporate brands is a function of the maturity of the space”

Q: For the industry overall do you think the growth rate will continue for game companies in the mobile and social space?

Anil Dharni: In the mobile space things will just keep going at least for the next couple of years. There’s going to be more smartphones than Facebook users. We don’t see that changing at all. The second big thing we see is a lot more focus on tablets. We are hoping that Android figures out tablet at some point, so it’s not just the iPad that we have substantial traffic from. You’ll start seeing a lot of game companies only focus on the tablet market. I’m starting to see some right now.

I do feel with regards to social web, if you take Facebook and Google+ as an example, definitely the growth there is slowing down. Those platforms need to figure out what they need to do in order to accelerate that growth to match the mobile growth. It definitely seems to be slowing down right now.

Q: Do you see the possibility of the mobile-style games coming to the living room through the Apple TV or Google TV?

Anil Dharni: That’s a great question. You’re talking to the geek in me now. I don’t know where Gree stands on it, but the geek in me can’t wait for that to happen. I would say yes it’s going to happen, and I think Apple might be the first one to figure that out, where gaming becomes actually a pretty key part of the TV experience. Whether you’re playing it on the iPad or your TV or your phone, I think Apple has the best chance to enable that. Having said that, not all games are going to make sense to play on TV. It’s really the developers who can figure out what genres, what style of games will work, but I think it’s going to be a booming platform.

Q: While the mobile market has grown tremendously, I don’t think consumers recognize any of the company brands or can tell them apart. Do you think establishing a corporate brand is going to be important in the near term, or is that more of a long-term goal?

Shanti Bergel: I think people’s awareness of corporate brands is a function of the maturity of the space. As the space matures, people will become more and more aware of companies because they’ll play multiple games by that company, and they’ll start to realize ‘Oh, that’s the company that makes XYZ game’. I think that’s more a commentary on the state of the market today, and not necessarily where we’ll be as the market matures. Gree’s intent is that as consumers become more and more aware of us as a place to find and play the games that they like, they will continue to recognize the brand and hopefully they’ll look for it in the future.

Q: Final thoughts?

Shanti Bergel: We’re exceptionally excited to be working with the Funzio team. We have an immense amount of respect for them
and we can’t wait for the next phase of the business with them.（Source：gamesindustry）