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

每日观察:关注Zynga新游戏《The Ville》开发成本(7.11)

发布时间:2012-07-11 12:43:12 Tags:,,

1)据路透社报道,Zynga首席执行官Mark Pincus在最近采访中表示, 公司最新游戏《The Ville》投入成本超过1000万美元(远超过Zynga手机游戏),参与开发人员超过100人;另一款即将发布的餐厅模拟游戏《ChefVille》开发时间超过一年半。

the-ville(from games)

the-ville(from games)

许多主机游戏开发者转向Facebook游戏领域的一大原因在于,后者开发时间更短,成本更低,但从Zynga这些游戏投入成本以及《模拟城市社交版》将近两年的开发周期来看,短暂而低成本的Facebook游戏开发时代似乎已宣告结束。

2)据AppStats监测数据显示,在本周MAU流失最严重的前10款社交游戏中,Zynga作品占据8个席位。流失最严重者当属《Zynga Bingo》,该游戏上周流失MAU将近230万(相当于该游戏总体MAU的25%);紧随其后的分别是《CityVille》、《Hidden Chronicles》和《Draw Somehting》,它们流失的MAU都超过100万。

top-10-losers-mau(from AppStats)

top-10-losers-mau(from AppStats)

《Zynga Bingo》于2012年5月底发布,最高峰时MAU达1070万,但之后流量开始迅速下滑。其他上榜的Zynga游戏包括《Zynga Slingo》、《CastleVille》、《Empires & Allies》和《FarmVille》。这些游戏基本上是通过广告和交叉推广渠道获取新用户。

zynga-bingo(from AppStats)

zynga-bingo(from AppStats)

在前10名的另外两款游戏是《愤怒的小鸟》和《Tetris Battle》,前者自4月份达到高峰后就呈现流量逐渐下滑状态。

3)East Side Games开发的Facebook农场模拟游戏《Pot Farm》上线已两年时间,但却能够在没有展开营销活动的情况下持续发展。该公司首席执行官\联合创始人Jason Bailey表示,Facebook不允许East Side Games推广《Pot Farm》,因为它是一款种植大麻题材的农场游戏。

除了Facebook之外,其他广告营销公司也不愿为该游戏做推广,因此《Pot Farm》只能完全依靠用户在涂鸦墙上的分享内容以及口头传播获取新用户。据Bailey所称,《Pot Farm》目前营销投入仅800美元左右。

Pot Farm(from AppData)

Pot Farm(from AppData)

但这款游戏却出人意料地实现了繁荣发展,据AppData数据显示,该游戏目前仍有91万MAU以及12万DAU。该游戏在Facebook上收获了超过100万的“赞”。

但公司另一款独家发布于Google+平台的游戏《Zombinis》发展却不甚理想,Bailey认为Google+最大的挑战在于它并不了解社交游戏以及第三方应用体验。这是包括Facebook在内的任何大公司都会遇到的瓶颈,即缺乏创新性。早期的Facebook为开发者提供了多种选择,但现在的Facebook已日渐臃肿而老态,谷歌亦是如此,大型团队往往难以用创业者的眼光把握产品发展方向。

4)5th Planet Games日前宣布将旗下卡牌游戏《Legacy of Heroes》引进Kongergate.com平台,支持玩家在该游戏中使用策略和一点运气与对手过招,并装饰自己的牌组,完成特殊任务并购买提升能量的内容包。

5PG_LoH_Artwork(from insidesocialgames)

5PG_LoH_Artwork(from insidesocialgames)

该公司于2011年12月曾向Kongregate发布《Clash of Dragons》之后,仅在30天内就收获30万次安装量。

5)据Venturebeat报道,Facebook最近引进Malware Checkpoint安全功能,支持用户在登录Facebook平台之前清除恶意软件威胁。

malware(from venturebeat)

malware(from venturebeat)

如果Facebook用户发现自己的电脑被安装了恶意软件,他就可以进入Malware Checkpoint,然后Facebook就会锁定其帐号,待用户运行其他杀毒系统排除威胁之后再准许其登录帐号。

这是Facebook最近几个月推出的反恶意软件举措之一,该平台曾于4月份推出Anti-Virus Marketplace门户网站,为用户提供来自微软、Sophos等公司的杀毒产品。(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

1)The Ville took $10 million, 100 developers and over a year to make

by Joe Osborne

That’s a lot of resources for a Facebook game, wouldn’t you say? Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus revealed some interesting stats and figures regarding what exactly went into the social game giant’s latest release, The Ville. According to Reuters, the Sims-like Facebook game not only cost Zynga a pretty penny, but an immense amount of resources.

“We invest north of $10 million in a potential franchise game like the Ville,” Pincus said during the annual GamesBeat conference in San Francisco, Reuters reports. The Zynga chief made the remark as a point of comparison for what the developer invests in mobile games, which is, Pincus implies, much less.

Later in his talk, Pincus revealed a few other factoids about The Ville’s production costs. According to Reuters, Pincus noted that Zynga threw over 100 developers at The Ville and upcoming restaurant simulator ChefVille that worked “well over a year and a half” to launch them.

Many console game creators-gone-Facebook game makers used to peg quick turnaround times and low costs as an advantage that social games held over traditional games. Between this and SimCity Social having been in the cooker for nearly two years, it seems as if that’s no longer the case.(source:games

2)Last Week’s Top 10 Losers by MAU: Zynga with Heavy Losses

By Sebastian Sujka

Zynga is heavily losing users. In our last week’s AppStats Top 10 losers by monthly active users (MAU) Zynga is represented with eight titles. The biggest loser is Zynga Bingo. The title lost almost 2,300,000 MAU last week – about 25% of their entire monthly active user base. The three next biggest losers in the ranking are also Zynga titles, namely CityVille, Hidden Chronicles and Draw Something, each losing over one million MAU.

The remaining Zynga titles in the Top 10 are Zynga Slingo, CastleVille, Empires & Allies and FarmVille. Zynga Bingo reached its peak 10,700,000 MAU after launching end of May 2012. We saw this peak last week and see the numbers declining rapidly since. Typically, those are the users acquired by ads and cross promotion from other titles that do not stick with the game.

Most of the titles mentioned did not just lose users last week.  Zynga Slingo, CityVille, Draw Something and Empires & Allies all show a very constant negative traffic trend over the last month. FarmVille and CastleVille are stable in terms of MAU looking at the last month’s figures.

The other titles in the Top 10 are Angry Birds and Tetris Battle. While Tetris Battle just seems to be struggling last week, Rovio’s Angry Birds is on a gradual decline after its hyped launch in April.(source:socialgamesobserver

3)East Side Games grew a massive Facebook hit with $800 worth of marketing

Mike Thompson

Developer East Side Games’s Facebook farm sim Pot Farm is still thriving even though it launched two years ago, an impressive feat since the developer wasn’t allowed to market the game on the social network. Now, the studio’s founders tell us how they grew Pot Farm into a successful title, talk about what their experience with Google+ has been like and share some details about the studio’s next couple of games.

Struggling to market marijuana on Facebook

Pot Farm is proof a Facebook game can succeed on the social network without any actual promotion. According to Creative Director Galan Akin, this was no easy task. “Facebook has made it really hard to survive and grow without advertising,” he says.

That was problematic for the developer when it came to Pot Farm because, according to CEO and founder Jason Bailey,  Facebook won’t let East Side Games advertise the game: “Because of the marijuana-themed content, Facebook’s made it very clear: ‘Go away. We don’t want your money.’”

Likewise, online advertising groups are unwilling to run a Pot Farm campaign. As a result, the game’s growth has been due to viral sharing from things like wall posts providing in-game rewards and word-of-mouth recommendations from players.  According to Bailey, the lifetime marketing spend for Pot Farm has been about $800.

However, the game’s not only survived, it’s thrived. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the game still retains 910,000 monthly active users and 120,000 daily active users.

Keeping the game’s players around for several years is no easy task, but East Side Games claims it’s possible by regularly engaging fans. Part of the success comes from listening to fans and providing updates they want. The company also does three to five Timeline updates a day, and Bailey says the game’s community posts get more Likes than FarmVille’s do. Indeed, although Pot Farm only has 120,000 daily active users, the game now has over a million Likes on Facebook.

However, Bailey also wryly notes, “you have to be careful about encouraging the fans because we’re up to at least ten people who have Pot Farm tattoos. Some of them look pretty jailhouse.”

“Google’s old and fat.”

While East Side Games has found success on Facebook, Google+ is another story. Recently, the company made headlines when its monster-battling game Zombinis was launched as a 30-day exclusive for Google’s social network. Although East Side Games was happy with the coverage and the ensuing attention, Zombinis hasn’t proven as successful on G+ as it is on Facebook, but the developer’s able to simultaneously maintain both versions of the game.

“It’s more work to take Zombinis off [G+] than it is to leave it on,” Bailey explains. “It’s a minimal amount of effort to keep it going; if it wasn’t doing as well on Facebook and the only source of income was coming from Google+, we’d have to think about turning it off.”

According to Bailey, the biggest challenge for G+ is that it doesn’t understand social games and the third party app experience. “It’s the challenge with any big company. It’s the same challenge Facebook has. If Facebook were to launch a third party game platform tomorrow, they’d fuck it up royally. They’re big and fat and bloated and it’s so hard to innovate in a multi-thousand person company. When Facebook launched their game platform originally … they were a scrappy young upstart. So they made a bunch of ballsy choices in the early days that allowed them to be successful.

“Now — I’ve seen it so many times — when you’re a big corporation, it’s hard to be innovative. It’s hard to  move fast. It’s hard to get a team of people who take ownership of the product and drive it with an entrepreneurial view. Google can’t do that. Google’s old and fat.”(source:insidesocialgames

4)5th Planet Games launches Legacy of Heroes exclusively on Kongergate

Emanuel Maiberg

5th Planet Games announced today that their super hero-themed collectible card game (CCG) Legacy of Heroes is now free to play exclusively on Kongergate.com, a games portal purchased by brick-and-mortar video game retailer GameStop in 2010.

In Legacy of Heroes players start as freshmen in the Phaeton Project, a school for young super beings known as Emergents. Using strategic thinking and a little luck, players compete in head-to-head card battles to build up their decks. Players can also customize their decks, participate in league play, complete special missions and purchase booster packs

As Inside Social Games previously reported, 5th Planet Games found great success in expanding from Facebook to other platforms and games networks. After launching Clash of Dragons on Kongregate in December 2011, 5th Planet Games reported 300,000 installs in just 30 days, a company record they in large part credit to Kongregate’s handling the promotions.

Legacy of Heroes was written and illustrated by Brian David-Marshall, who’s written for Marvel and DC comics in the past. David-Marshall was Principal and Co-Founder of New York-based game design consulting company To Be Continued LLC when it was acquired by 5th Planet Games earlier this year.

CEO of Kongregate Jim Greer said that he’s excited to support the launch of Legacy of Heroes exclusively on Kongregate, noting 5th Planet Games has published some of the most successful games on the platform, with titles receiving more than 20 million gameplayes.(source:insidesocialgames

5)Facebook gives users more security controls with Malware Checkpoint

Ricardo Bilton

With more than 900 million monthly active users, Facebook has become a significant attraction for app developers. But that considerable user base has also attracted another, less desirable group: malware and virus writers.

Facebook has caught onto this, which is why it’s introducing Malware Checkpoint, a new security feature that’s meant to make it easier for users to remove malware threats before they spread on the social network.

Here’s how the feature works: Once a Facebook user suspects his computer has been infected with malware, he can opt into Malware Checkpoint, and Facebook will lock his account. Users can then run either McAfee’s Scan and Repair or Microsoft’s Security Essentials. Facebook will then allow them to once again access their accounts.

During the process, Facebook prompts users with a fairly informative bit of text: “Often, users who are infected with malware are tricked into running a malicious program, which infects their machine with malware. Remember, you should never run programs from sources that you don’t trust.”

Malware Checkpoint is the latest in a series of anti-malware measures Facebook has taken in recent months. In April, Facebook introduced the Anti-Virus Marketplace, a portal that offers users anti-virus products from Microsoft, Sophos, and others.

Facebook’s goal is clear: Make the platform more secure by making it easier for users to protect their systems. The big question is, of course, whether putting the tools directly in the hands of users will make them more or likely or less likely to take control over their own security. That’s a concern for any major platform (just ask Microsoft), and it’s a sign of maturity that Facebook is now moving to answer it itself.(source:venturebeat


上一篇:

下一篇: