作者：Tadhg Kelly

服务型游戏和零售型游戏存在的最大区别在于一种具有长久性，而另外一种则具有实体性。零售游戏会衍生各种游戏续集，如《光晕4》或《超级马里奥银河》——因为每款游戏都代表一种新的互动体验并延续了原来游戏的乐趣。而《星战前夜》（EVE Online）或《魔兽世界》这类服务型游戏则更像是Twitter或Facebook。

应该没有人希望看到Twitter 2或Facebook 2，因为从一处转移到另一处总需要耗费一定的成本。在服务型游戏中亦是如此，但是Zynga却背其道而行，在Zynga Unleashed大会中他们宣布即将发布《FarmVille 2》。

farmville 2(from tech2.in.com)

《黑帮战争》

当你很难获取新用户时你就必须想办法去留住原来的用户（特别是在服务型游戏中）。随着时间的发展用户会慢慢忠于游戏，在游戏中做出投资，创建社区，并且社区成员也将在此获得一定的社会地位。用户会认为从一款游戏转换到其它游戏中太耗时间了，如此开发者便需要想办法维持现有服务并不断完善它。

这也是为何不会出现《魔兽世界2》，《星战前夜2》以及《电子共和国2》的原因。在最新发行的游戏上附加“2”可能意味着全新的开始，也就是市场营销部门将重新开始忙活。而对于那些忠于原版游戏的玩家来说这无异于一种被抛弃。并且问题在于，Zynga已经在之前的《黑帮战争》中犯过同样的错误了。

《黑帮战争》是Facebook排行榜单前列的游戏以及Zynga许多新病毒传播理念的试验场，它也是最低可行性游戏的代表。Zynga一直在不遗余力地推广这款游戏，其营销策略最终也得到了回报。从发行早期开始它就呈现出病毒式的快速增长，并且在之后也继续发展。

我猜Zynga应该是自觉受到《罪恶都市》（Crime City，其竞争者Funzio所开发的游戏，并且与《黑帮战争》具有类似的索取–杀戮–升级结构）的威胁—–从图像风格来看尤其如此。《黑帮战争》只能说是由一组表格以及低质量的gif格式图片组合起来，而《罪恶都市》则拥有动画，音效等等内容。比较起来后者显得更加有趣且生动。所以Zynga会创造《黑帮战争2》与之相抗衡便不是什么新奇之事了。虽然《黑帮战争2》也像《罪恶都市》那样拥有出色的图像，音效和动画，但是尽管游戏变得更为有趣，但它最终还是遭遇了失败。

《黑帮战争2》背后的逻辑是Zynga意图转化原有的《黑帮战争》用户，即重置他们的帐号让所有玩家能够重新升级（并购买虚拟商品）并离开《罪恶都市》。但是最终不仅导致《黑帮战争》失去了大多数用户（MAU从2000万跌至130万），《黑帮战争2》也未如愿获得成功（即只吸引了67万用户）。如果换成在足球界这种做法便是所谓的“乌龙球”。

农场游戏

所以《FarmVille 2》又会面临怎样的结果？历史将会重演。

Zynga表示这款新的《FarmVille》将以3D模式呈现，它不仅具有更加丰富的内容，且玩家创建农场的成本也变得更高。也就是用户必须重头开始创建他们的农场。投资者希望他们能够凭借这款游戏再次掀起热潮。但是我却认为结果可能无法如其所愿。就像《黑帮战争2》那样，这款新游戏也将导致原先《FarmVille》用户流失并影响其今后的发展。

《FarmVille》把握了足够的运气与时机，因为它是在Facebook关闭病毒式传播渠道之前诞生的，并且那时候免费的虚拟农场游戏理念对于众多玩家来说还很新奇。尽管听起来有点邪恶，但是正是因为Zynga意识到能够复制《FarmTown》并结合自己所创造的增长引擎才最终实现出如此惊人的成功。

但是《FarmVille 2》所面对的境况却完全不同。一方面，虽然《FarmVille》现在还拥有2100万MAU，但是这些用户已在游戏中投入大量时间，他们最不希望听到的便是Zynga抛弃他们并要求他们重新开始游戏。

其次，病毒式传播渠道已经大不如前，所以我们才会看到Zynga新发布的游戏都不再那般出色了。《CastleVille》，《Bubble Safari》以及《Zynga Slingo》虽然都取得不错的成绩，但是对于我来说它们只是不断地在利用现有用户而非争取新用户。尽管Zynga也采取了像收购《Draw Something》这样的行动，但是Appdata数据却表明Zynga已经沉寂了相当长的一段时间了，而与此同时Facebook的用户却是有增无减。

第三，游戏的新鲜感已不复存在。过去主流新闻中所说的种植虚拟庄稼并在凌晨4点起床收割虚拟胡萝卜的做法已经过时了。不管是在Zynga游戏还是其它开发者的游戏中玩家都尝试过类似的玩法，而这类玩家也已经变得更加成熟了。所以《FarmVille 2》将无法给玩家带来新鲜感，对于那些并非真正关心图像和3D模式的玩家来说更是如此。

第四，因为一些技术原因，当前的3D网页游戏一直很糟糕。而如果是基于Flash技术的3D游戏，那么《FarmVille》当前用户的PC硬件配置可能无法支持他们享受真正的游戏乐趣。这样的游戏将存在一些小故障，并且帧速也较低等问题。而如果是基于Unity开发的游戏，那么就会影响游戏的安装基础（并且仍然存在一些运行性能问题）。

老实说，现在对Zynga来说最明智的做法应该是专注于对现有《FarmVille》的运营并努力满足当前用户的需求。就像《星战前夜》，《电子共和国》，《魔兽世界》以及《哈宝旅馆》等游戏那样。如今《FarmVille》已经非常成熟且稳定，其稚气感已经消失了，而续集也不可能再次点燃玩家的好奇心。

成为“港湾”

作为一个平台，Zynga已经通过合作项目和API合作等方式帮助许多开发者获得了成功。其实早在1年前该公司就应该这么做了，但是不管怎么样迟做总比不做好。创造能够促进彼此间交流的技术非常管用，同时这也将帮助Zynga更好地利用市场营销引擎而实现发展。

比起知识产权或其它技术，市场营销引擎才是Zynga的最棒资产。就像Stringer Bell（游戏邦注：美国电视剧《火线》中的角色）想要摆脱日常纷争而找到依靠的“港湾”那样。如果做得好的话将会有更多游戏（更具有创造性）出现在Zynga平台上（比他们自己创造的游戏还多）。

为了抗击竞争者而尝试着推出更多自有品牌内容，并通过发行续集去唤醒沉寂已久的市场则是传统发行商才会有的想法。这是一种零售式，昂贵，低利润且高成本的开发方式。这种方法不可能有效，只会让Zynga承受更多它不愿看到的高额成本以及游戏内容，但却未能吸引更多用户。Mark Pincus及其前主机行业高管到底还需要多长时间才会意识到这类游戏已不再是主流这一现实？（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）

Nobody Needs FarmVille 2 [Zynga]

One of the big differences between games-as-a-service and games-as-retail is that one is persistent while the other is instanced. In retail the franchise is powered by sequels, from Halo 4 to Mario Galaxy, because each represents a pulse of new interaction and fun to be had in a familiar world. However a service game like EVE Online or World of Warcraft is more like a Twitter or a Facebook.

Nobody needs or wants a Twitter 2 or a Facebook 2 because of the taxes involved in moving from one to the other. The same is especially true in service games, but this is a mistake that Zynga is on the verge of making for the second time in announcing FarmVille 2 at Zynga Unleashed.

Mafia Wars

When you’re making anything obtaining a new audience is always difficult and so (especially in services) it is important to retain them. That audience builds loyalty and investment over time, develops a community and some of its members acquire social status within that community. It gets to the point where the cost of switchover to another game feels like a waste of time, and the very best you can do is keep the existing service alive and improve it.

That’s why there is no World of Warcraft 2, no EVE Online 2 and no eRepublik 2. Appending ’2′ to the latest release of any of those games would probably imply fresh starts and reboots to the marketing division that thought it up. However to many of the audience who have given their loyalty to the first version it sounds like abandonment. The thing is: Zynga has made this mistake before, with Mafia Wars.

Mafia Wars used to sit on top of the Facebook charts and functioned both as a testing ground for many of Zynga’s new ideas for virality, but also was the posterboy for minimum viable products in games. While the game was always being pushed very hard through the Zynga marketing channels, that strategy did seem to pay off. It had grown virally from the early days (remember when your Facebook notifications were slathered in Mafia Wars reminders?) but held on in there.

My guess is that Zynga got spooked by Crime City, a game from rival studio Funzio which had much the same sort of fetch-kill-level-up structure as Mafia Wars, but with graphics. Where Mafia Wars was essentially a set of sheets and tables and low-quality gifs, Crime City had animation, sound effects and so on. It looked moderately fun to play and seemed lively. So it was no great suprise when Zynga turned around and created a Mafia Wars 2 to compete. It too had graphics and sounds and animations, just as Crime City had. It was more fun. It also failed.

I’m guessing that the logic behind MW2 was probably that Zynga would transition the existing Mafia Wars audience, reset everyone’s accounts so that they could level up all over again (and buy virtual goods too) and also see off Crime City. The actual result was that Mafia Wars dropped almost all of its users (from 20m-ish MAU down to 1.3m) while Mafia Wars 2 failed to take off (670k). In soccer this is called scoring an own-goal.

Farms

So FarmVille 2? History repeating itself.

In its announcement, Zynga showed that the new FarmVille will be in 3D. It will be rich in content and has probably been expensive to build. Users will start all over again and build their farms anew. Investors are hopeful that it will take off and be a big success. I think it will do exactly the opposite. Just like Mafia Wars 2 did, it will tank the existing FarmVille audience and effectively kill the franchise.

FarmVille was a massive stroke of luck and timing. It came about during the period before Facebook got shirty with their viral channels, and at a time when the very idea of having a virtual farm for free in a game was very new to most people. It was perhaps a bit evil, but whomever at Zynga that realised that cloning FarmTown and putting into the growth engine that they had built could lead to spectacular success got it very right.

Those are not the conditions that FarmVille 2 is facing, however. For one thing the FarmVille audience now exists, all 21m MAU of them, and that audience has already invested considerable time into their game. The very last thing that they want to hear is that Zynga has abandoned them and wants them to start all over.

Secondly: those viral levers are long gone and that’s why most of Zynga’s new releases are relative duds. CastleVille, Bubble Safari and Slingo are all doing respectable business, but it seems to me that they are recycling existing users more than finding new ones. Even despite moves like the Draw Something purchase, Appdata shows that Zynga has been pretty flat for a very long time, all while Facebook’s users continue to grow.

Third, the novelty has just worn off. All those wide-eyed amazing stories that used to appear in the mainstream news about planting virtual crops and getting up at 4am to harvest virtual carrots are now old hat. Everyone’s tried them, either through Zynga or someone else, and the audiences around the genre have matured. So a FarmVille 2 is simply not going to be as remarkable, especially for a market that doesn’t really care about graphics and 3D.

Fourth, 3D web games generally suck because of technical issues. If done through Flash then likely many of the existing FarmVille audience just won’t have the PC specs needed to really enjoy the game. It will be glitchy, low in framerate and so on. If done through Unity then the issue becomes one of install base (and still some performance issues too).

The smarter thing to be doing, frankly, is working on the existing FarmVille franchise and serving the audience that is already there. Just like EVE, eRepublik, World of Warcraft, Habbo Hotel and so on do. FarmVille is mature and stable. Its fresh-faced days are over and a sequel is not going reignite it all over again.

Becoming “The Bank”

Zynga as the platform that helps many other developers succeed through partnership programmes and APIs is forward-looking. Arguably the company should have been doing this a year ago, but better late than never. Building technology that facilitates communication is also probably useful (although I’m not really sold on that, nor the Zynga branding attached to it), but mainly it’s about access to the marketing engine.

That marketing engine is by far and away Zynga’s best asset, not its intellectual property or its technology. And this kind of thinking is analogous to Stringer Bell (of The Wire) making moves to try and become ‘the bank’ and get away from the day-to-day fray of corners and territory. If done right then many more games (and much more innovation) will appear on the Zynga platform than they can ever hope to produce by themselves.

However trying to push a lot of own-branded content (The Ville? Really?) in response to competitors, and trying to reawaken the lucky halcyon days with sequels? That’s old school publisher thinking. That’s retail, that’s expensive, that’s low-margin/high-cost development. That’s not going to work, and all it looks likely to do is saddle Zynga with more cost centres that it doesn’t need, more content that it won’t want to support and less overall users. Just how long can Mark Pincus and his ex-console industry executives continue to make these content plays before they realise that the game isn’t just about corners any more?(source:What Games Are)