游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

浅析免费增值游戏终将“灭亡”的3个原因

发布时间:2012-06-29 14:10:10 Tags:,,

作者:Benjamin Quintero

看到公众对于电子游戏的未来预测,我便决定了在此阐述我自己的看法。我认为在今后10年内,免费增值游戏(F2P)仍将保持目前的水平。

但不要误解我的意思,我认为在不远的将来高质量的F2P游戏泡沫将席卷全球市场。并且我也觉得游戏市场很难在这次泡沫危机中存活下来。让我们基于一个较高层面去分析F2P模式,并研究这类游戏获得巨大利润的原因。

bubble-burst(from hdwallpapersfix.com)

bubble-burst(from hdwallpapersfix.com)

1.今天的F2P游戏主要是因较低的开发风险以及潜在的病毒式盈利性而发展起来。这类游戏的预算不同于高投入的视频游戏(即高达3千万至1亿美元),其开发预算一般都压缩在1千万元以下。但是较少的预算最终也将影响着玩家的游戏体验。

2.今天市场上的F2P游戏还不多,或许我们在今后5年中将能看到更多这类游戏。因淘金热而令市场中趋近饱和的情况并不鲜见。再加上高风险率以及开发成本,我们将在些看到许多开发者选择重新回到30年前的固定价格销售模式。

3.F2P的收益高度依赖于“鲸鱼玩家”,因为休闲玩家的购买能力并不足以维持这类游戏的发展。鲸鱼玩家每年愿意在“免费”游戏上花费1千美元,但是他们的数量却远远不及那些不愿意花钱的玩家。如果市场上的FP2游戏达到饱和状态时会是怎样的情况?鲸鱼玩家们将适当地分配他们的消费投入,还是选择只专注于同一款游戏,从而让其它F2P游戏因无法创收而消声匿迹。尽管40%的F2P玩家愿意为游戏花个几美元,但是最终还得靠鲸鱼玩家去维持这类游戏与服务器的有效运转。而剩下的60%玩家则是那些根本不愿意在游戏中花钱,或者宁愿支付一个固定的价格去享受完整游戏体验的用户。虽然这个市场存在着巨大的潜力,但是这里也不乏风险,并且很容易将我们反复带进与现在的主机游戏领域相同的处境中。

F2P商业模式并不适合于《旅程》或《Last of Us》等游戏。没有人愿意花费3.99美元只是为了在《旺达与巨像》中撑久一点;也没有人想要在《Last of Us》中支付0.99美元去购买Ellie所扔下的一个砖块;不会有人愿意在《旅程》中为了飞行更长时间而支付1.99美元。这种盈利策略将会破坏游戏故事,并导致玩家只会想着通过消费而更轻松地获取胜利。这种策略只会反复提醒玩家他们只是在玩游戏,而不能真正融入游戏故事中。

花钱换胜利可以说是许多人反对F2P的重要原因,而当这类型游戏不再支持这种策略便意味着鲸鱼玩家将会消失,这种商业模式也将彻底崩溃。如果玩家在6-10个小时中都可以免费体验游戏,他们当然就不会花钱消费;另一方面,如果游戏出现了要求玩家付费换取更棒游戏体验的门槛,他们便也会退出游戏而选择其它免费游戏。

我想我对于F2P“死亡”的定义与Ben Cousins(游戏邦注:Ngmoco瑞典工作室总经理)关于主机游戏的死亡的定义是一样的——即主机游戏市场虽然仍将继续存在,但是它们将走到一个不可逆转的临界点。在今后10年内F2P市场将在我们即将遭遇的泡沫中缩水,在经历了这场“浩劫”后将只剩下一些拥有强大发行商支持的开发者。而其余的开发者虽然投入了大把金钱但均遭遇惨痛的失败,只能自求多福了。我并不认为F2P将在10年内完全消失,而是它的发展并不会像我们所想象的那样强势。这个市场将与我们今天看到的相差无几,即大多数人选择免费玩游戏,只有少部分鲸鱼玩家愿意在其中投入200至1万美元。当免费游戏变成一种全球趋势时,其用户基础也将不断扩展,但是却仍旧难以维持不断涌入并希望从中获利的游戏公司的发展。(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

The Death of Free-To-Play

by Benjamin Quintero

In the spirit of the many public predictions for the future of video games, I’ve decided to make a prediction of my own.  In 10 years, free-to-play (F2P) games will be about where they are today.

Don’t get me wrong, there is going to be a massive bubble of insanely high quality F2P games to breach the global market in the near future.  My argument is that the market will not survive it.  Let’s break down the F2P model at a high level and see exactly where and why large profits are being made from them.

1.F2P games today are mostly games built around lower development risks with the potential for a viral level of monitization.  Budgets for these games are not generally the $30M – $100M that we see every day in the high production consoles games.  Most of these games are close to or less than $10M at best.  These kinds of budgets will have an impact on the amount of content that can be released as well as the kind of experience that can be had.

2.There are not many F2P games on the market today, not compared to the numbers that we will see in the next 5 years.  It’s easy to see where a gold rush could saturate the market.  Coupled with high risk, high production development, we could stand to see major players losing big and falling back to the fixed price sales that have worked for the past 30 years.

3.F2P relies heavily on “whales” because the casual purchase is not enough to sustain the game.  Whales spend over $1k a year on some “free” games but they are in short supply compared to the population of people who refuse to pay.  What happens when the market is saturated with F2P games?  The whales may distribute their funds or choose to focus on a single game, allowing other F2P games to die on the vine.  Though 40% of F2P gamers are willing to shell out a couple dollars, it’s the whales that keep the doors open and the servers running.  The other 60% of gamers are a market of people who might choose not to play games at all, or prefer to pay a fix price for the complete experience.

How many high profile face plants will it take before investors are pulling their portfolios?  There is large potential in that market, but the risk may be too high and may fall into the same sequel tropes we are already starting to see with publishers like Activision in the console space.  F2P might be the gold rush that iOS was a few years ago, but I hardly consider it a threat to completely obliterate the dedicating game experience.

The F2P business model would not fit the mold of games like Journey or The Last of Us.  No one wants to pay $3.99 for a consumable that gives longer stamina in Shadow of the Colossus.  No one wants to pay $0.99 for each brick that Ellie throws in Last of Us or $1.99 for longer flight in Journey.  These kinds of monitization strategies destroy narrative and put the focus on the use of consumables to achieve an easier win.  They remind us that we are playing a game and evade any hope of drawing us into the fiction.

Pay-to-Win will always be an argument against F2P, and the day that these games are no longer pay-to-win is the day that we will see the whales disappearing and the business model collapsing.  If players can invest a typical amount of time into a free game; 6-10 hours, and experience it without paying, they wont pay.  On the flip side, as long as the friction exists to ask people to pay for the better experience, there will always be people who close that game and move on to the next free game.

I’d define “death” in the same manor that perhaps Ben Cousins defined the death of consoles; this idea that the market still exists but has been reduced to a point of no return.  F2P games will retract in 10 years from the bubble that we are about to experience.  From the ashes, there will be a small collection of victorious developers who likely had strong backing from major publishers.  The rest will have spent a lot of money and failed hard, closing doors for potentially some well known names in the business who thought they could be one of those winners.  I don’t think that F2P will be forever gone in 10 years, but it won’t be what some imagine it to be; the end all solution that prints money.  That market will be more of what we see today, lots of people playing for free with a handful of whales dropping between $200 – $10k on a free game.  Overall the user base will grow as the awareness of free games becomes a global event, but it won’t be enough to sustain the influx of businesses trying to capitalize on them.(source:GAMASUTRA)


上一篇:

下一篇: