作者：Nicolas Godement-Berline

此前，我们曾谈到《Ski Champion》的下载数量（详见此处），下面就来看看这款游戏的创收情况、我们对此的看法及从中收获的经验。

ski champion from idroidplay.com

在以IAP免费模式发行的2个月里，《Ski Champion》给Majaka带来450欧元的收入，这相当于566美元。这对耗资2.2万美元的项目来说不是最佳ROI水平？

周销量、安装数量及平均DAU from gamasutra.com

我们最初制作《Ski Champion》时是基于如下目标：

* 关键目标1：快速发行游戏，试水iOS领域

* 关键目标2：获得尽可能多的下载量

* 次级目标：也许能够创造些许收益

从此视角来看，《Ski Champion》完全超出我们的核心预期（游戏邦注：发行2个月，下载量23万），但没有达到次级目标。

公司的商业计划并没有涉及任何《Ski Champion》创收目标，虽然我们显然期望项目能够取得好结果。我们清楚自己在首次尝试中肯定会犯错误，因此我们将功能组合数量降至最低，旨在快速发行作品，放弃许多潜在创收渠道，节省开发时间。

现在就来看看我们的创收策略，仔细查看收益的分布情况。

我们出售游戏时间和关卡

《Ski Champion》通过In-App Purchases of Coins包裹进行创收。这些Coin随后可以被玩家运用至两个地方：

* 购买额外Ski Pass：1场比赛花费1个Ski Pass，就和《Diamond Dash》中的Heart一样。我们还免费分发Ski Pass。

* 解锁Slope：解锁slope有两种方式，获得勋章或以12个coin进行购买。

Coin包 & Ski Pass from gamasutra.com

此Ski Pass机制的核心理念是，出售易于落实的消耗品道具。我的意思是给予游戏粉丝消费大笔资金的机会（如果他们有此想法的话）。固定价格模式设置2个障碍，而免费模式则是将这些障碍排除：将价格设定成最低门槛，同时还给玩家的消费金额设定较高上限。

我们添加付费解锁slope选项。我们无从知晓少数购买Coin的玩家是将其运用至Ski Passe，还是slope中。虽然我们有在Flurry分析中将此纳入，但实际支付金额同源自越狱设备的虚假付费相互掺杂。我们觉得盗版将不成问题，因为盗版者不会变成付费者！

免费增值模式不是什么高招

虽然我们不介意《Ski Champion》没有带来什么显著收益，但可以说这是因为我们的创收策略没有生效。

23万次下载，售出258个Coin包，《Ski Champion》的付费玩家转换率是0.1%。

所以下面是给游戏开发同伴的一个警告。不要陷入这样的行业迷思——在免费增值游戏中，有1-5%的玩家会最终在游戏中掏钱。这些数据你经常会在会议或新闻发布会，甚至是在软件中看到。

dau conversion arppu from gamasutra.com

当然我们一直很清楚《Ski Champion》的收益结果会不尽人意。我们以为游戏的创收水平会接近1-5%区间的低端水平。真是天真。

我们现在发现这是个危险的误解。这是否源自于很多免费模式开发者都没有真正购买虚拟道具？我们是否无法真正把握玩家的真实想法，我们只是假设平均有1-5%的的玩家会疯狂消费，无论他们玩的是什么游戏？

回过头看，情况显然并非如此。这并非在否定免费模式，或新闻媒体。我很高兴大家公开这一数据。但要达到1-5%的转换率，游戏需要非常优秀，它需要能够在长时间内吸引玩家眼球，留住他们，虚拟道具需要带来惊人的额外价值。我们着手制作《Ski Champion》时就非常清楚这一情况，我怀疑很多有抱负的免费模式开发者尚未领悟到这点。

免费增值模式非常不错，但你需要把握得当

下面是我们对于《Ski Champion》为何表现得如此糟糕的看法：

* 我们的主要创收渠道Ski Pass没有给游戏增添任何价值。相反，我们通过人为限制游戏时间，让玩家以掏钱进行弥补，移除游戏价值。

* 留存率很低。发行时的难度曲线极度缺乏平衡性。虽然基础玩法相当富有成瘾性，但由于不够完善及缺乏丰富功能，内容很快变得陈旧。

* 我们选择慷慨提供免费Ski Pass，也许到了过分地步：玩家最初有100 Pass（我们很快会对50进行测试），能够轻松获得额外40 Pass（游戏邦注：评价应用，订阅邮件列表），当你的Pass数量降至0时，每隔1小时就会得到15个补充Pass（我们很快将就每隔3小时频率进行测试），多数玩家都不需要运用他们最初的100 Ski Pass。

所以总而言之，这主要归咎于机制存在缺陷及执行方式不当。我们无疑会将这些经验运用至我们的下款游戏中。

可行之处：收益遵循功率曲线

IAP价格起初在€1,59-- €79,99间，价格减半后收益变化不大

就如之前所述，玩家进行258次虚拟交易，给Majaka带来总计450欧元的净收入（在苹果分成之后）。虽然这些数据太少，无法充当统计论据，但有趣的是，我们发现，有20%左右的交易创造了60%的总收益。

因此我觉得让玩家能够随心所欲地消费非常重要。

情况是否能够变更好？

和下载数据一样，我们忽略许多基于《Ski Champion》进行创收的机会：

* 更新内容：出售更快速的ski，优秀装备等。这些不是消耗品，会让游戏平衡工作变得更复杂。

* 奖励道具：诸如“错过大门1次”或“涡轮增压”之类的消耗性道具能够将《Ski Champion》变得更具街机风格，融入超出我们在特定时间内驾驭范围之外的功能数量。

* 将Slope当做额外内容出售，这些内容无法通过玩法解锁：我们认为最好免费提供slope，充当玩家的游乐场，供他们运用，进而购买Ski Passe（消耗品）。下面是个我常进行的类比：如果石油的价格持续上涨，那么Shell或Exxon-Mobil等公司免费赠送汽车（应用），创建遍布各地的高速路（关卡）将是有利可图的举措，这样用户就会购买更多汽油（消耗品）。

* 替其他应用做广告：也许我们应该尝试这一举措。现在我们打算着手尝试。之前，我们认为相比虚拟交易收益，广告收入只是个边际收益。我们的计划是，将《Ski Champion》变成只融入交叉推广广告。

最终论断

我们投入2.2万欧元制作《Ski Champion》。资金大多花费在编程和美工内容上，这些内容我，或者我们的创意总监Gaël都无法完成。但我们看到的是，项目带给我们超过450欧元的收益：

* 凭此，我们可以美美吃上一顿，或是买台iPad3

* Majaka有所发展，开始树立一定的名气

* 我们获得20多万的用户

* 我们犯下错误，在过程中学到很多

从一开始，这就是我们的计划。

（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）

Freemium is no silver bullet

by Nicolas Godement-Berline

This is the second in a series of 2 blog posts where we analyze how Ski Champion performed on the Apple App Store. In part 1, we took a look at download numbers. In this post, we will focus on monetization.

Hi again ! Thanks everyone for the kind words. Let’s now look at Ski Champion’s financial performance (or lack thereof), how we explain it, and the lessons we learnt for our next titles.

In the course of over 2 months since its release as an IAP-supported free app, Ski Champion has netted Majaka a grand total of (drum drum drum) …  450 € ! Yup, not missing any K there, that’s 566 US dollars for our American friends. Not the best ROI for a €22,000 project? Well, read on.

We set out to make Ski Champion with the following goals in mind :

* Key goal 1 : release a game quickly to test the iOS waters

* Key goal 2 : get as many installs as possible

* Secondary objective : maybe make some money if we could

From that perspective, Ski Champion exceeded our key expectations (shipped in 2 months, 230K downloads), but didn’t meet the secondary objective.

Our company business plan never accounted for any revenue from Ski Champion,though we certainly did hope for better in our wildest dreams. Because we knew we would make mistakes with this first game, we kept the feature set to a minimum in order to ship quickly, and elected out many possible revenue streams to save on development time.

Let’s now look at our monetization strategy, and have a closer look at how revenue was spread.

We sold playtime and levels

Ski Champion monetizes through In-App Purchases of Coins packs. These Coins can then be used by players for 2 things :

* Purchase extra Ski Passes : every race costs a Ski Pass, much like Hearts in Diamond Dash. We also give out Ski Pass for free (more on this later)

* Unlock a Slope : there are 2 ways to unlock a slope, by getting medals or by purchasing it for 12 coins

The key idea with the Ski Pass system was to sell items that were both simple to implement, and consumable. We meant to give fans of the game the opportunity to spend large amounts of money if they ever fancied it. A fixed price-point sets 2 barriers, and the power of free-to-play is (in theory) to lift them both: price as a minimum barrier to entry, but also the high cap to how much a player can spend.

We added the option to pay to unlock a slope, because why not, but never expected much from it. As it happens, we have no reliable way of knowing whether the few players that purchased Coins actually used them for Ski Passes or Coins (though we suspect the former). We did set that up in our Flurry analytics, but actual payments were flooded into a sea of fake payments from jailbroken devices. Here we were, thinking piracy would not be a concern since pirates would have never turned into payers anyway!

Freemium is no silver bullet

Now, although we’re okay with Ski Champion not bringing in any significant revenue, it’s fair to say that our monetization strategy didn’t work at all.

With 258 Coins packs sold for 230 000 downloads, Ski Champion has a payer conversion rate of 0.1%.

So there you have it, a warning to our gaming peers. Beware the industry myth according to which, in a freemium game, 1-5% of players will end up spending money. Those are the numbers you typically hear at conferences or in the press here, here, there too, andhey look even in software too.

Of course, we always knew that Ski Champion would monetize poorly. We just thought that meant edging closer to the lower end of the 1-5% interval. How naive.

We realize now that it can be a dangerous misconception. Does it stem from the fact that many f2p developers never actually purchase virtual items ? Do we have such a hard time understanding what goes into the mind of a payer, that we just assume an average 1 to 5% of people are crazy enough to spend money pretty much regardless of the game they’re playing?

In retrospect, of course not. This is far from a rant against free-to-play, or against the press. I am glad those numbers are shared. But to reach that 1-5% conversion rate, the game has to be awesome, it has to engage & retain players over a long time, and virtual items have to bring amazing extra value. I hear you : “duh, obviously!”. Well, it was far from obvious to us when we set out to make Ski Champion, and I strongly suspect it still isn’t to many aspiring free-to-play developers.

Freemium is nice but you have to do it properly

Here is our explanation of why Ski Champion monetized so poorly :

* Our main monetization channel, the Ski Pass, does not add any value to the game. Rather, we removed value by artificially limiting playtime, so spending money simply makes up for it.

* Retention is low . The difficulty curve was rather poorly balanced at launch. While the base gameplay is rather addictive (we think), it gets old quickly due to lack of polish and features

* We chose to be very generous with our free Ski Passes, perhaps to a fault : the player starts with 100 (we’ll test 50 soon), can easily get an extra 40 (rate App and subscribe to mailing list), and 15 refill every hour once you get down to zero (we’ll test every 3 hours soon too). Most players never even use their initial 100 Ski Pass.

So all in all, it was down to a mix of a flawed system and poor implementation. We will definitely apply those bits of learning to our next game.

One thing that *did* work : revenue followed a power curve

As said earlier, 258 In-App Purchases were made by players, for a total of 450€ in net revenue for Majaka (after Apple’s cut). While these numbers are certainly too small to carry statistical evidence, it’s interesting to note that ~20% of payments accounted for 60% of the revenue.

We take this as proof that it’s important to give players the opportunity to spend as much as they feel.

Could it have gone better?

As with download numbers, there are many ways of monetizing Ski Champion that we intentionnally left out:

* Upgrades : sell faster skis, cool outfits, etc. Those are not consumable and would have made balancing the game more complicated

* Bonus items : consumable items such a “miss gate once” or “turbo boost” would have turned Ski Champion into a more arcadey game, and with more features to develop than we could handle within the timeframe.

* Slopes sold as extra content that cannot be unlocked through gameplay : we thought we’d rather give slopes for free (non-consumable) as a playground for players to happily use and hence purchase lots of Ski Passes (consumable). Here’s an analogy I  often use (jokingly) :  if the price of oil keeps going up, it may become profitable for the likes of Shell or Exxon-Mobil to give cars away for free (the App) and build lots of highways everywhere (the levels) so people buy more gas (consumables).

* Display ads for other apps : perhaps we should have tried. We’re about to experiment now. Back then, we thought ad revenue would be marginal compared to revenue stemming from in-app purchases. Our plan was to update Ski Champion with cross-promotional ads only.

Final verdict

We spent 22K€ making Ski Champion. Most of that money was spent on programming and art, things neither myself nor our Creative Director Ga?l could do ourselves. The way we see it though, the project brought us much more than €450 :

* What do you know, we can treat ourselves with a nice meal or buy an iPad3

* We got Majaka off the ground and began to make a name for ourselves

* We reached 200K+ players

* We made mistakes and learnt a lot in the process

Such was our plan, from the beginning.

What are we on to now? Why, of course, make more games. Our next title will have a much more serious focus on generating revenue, and will introduce a cool, innovative monetization channel that we can’t wait to try out live. So stay tuned and be sure to follow me on Twitter (@NicolasG_B) or Majaka on Facebook to be kept posted!（Source：gamasutra）