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《Hit Tennis 3》开发者谈游戏推广策略

发布时间:2012-07-16 17:57:19 Tags:,,

作者:Mark Johnson

我们刚把我们的新作《Hit Tennis 3》发布至iOS免费列表当中,10天后,我们取得的成果如下:

* 成为美国地区排名第2的免费应用(游戏邦注:《Angry Birds Seasons》是苹果当周的免费应用,排名第1)。

* 在45个国家中是排名前100的免费游戏。

* 有超过100万次的下载量。

《Hit Tennis 3》尚未获得苹果的推荐,我们没有在广告上投入任何资金,我们没有获得任何的媒体曝光。我们是个二人组合的自筹资金独立公司。那么我们是如何做到的?

Hit Tennis 3 from itunes.apple.com

Hit Tennis 3 from itunes.apple.com

交叉推广

我们通过《Hit Tennis 2》大力进行交叉推广,我们安排5位好友在他们的游戏中推广《Hit Tennis 3》。《Hit Tennis 2》有约100万的月活跃用户,显然这对推广新版游戏来说是个绝佳的用户基础。我们拥有两个不同版本《HT2》的用户基础,我们通过Chartboost在新版作品中植入广告。之前的版本包含针对内部广告的定制机制,此外,两个版本都有消息功能。替我们推广内容的5位好友都有用户规模各异的应用&游戏,他们采用各式各样的广告解决方案。下面是广告活动细节。黑色数据是测量数据,蓝色是相似测量值的预估数据,红色是推测数值。

chart 1 from gamasutra.com

chart 1 from gamasutra.com

活动分两个阶段,总共持续10天时间,从6月28日开始。6月28日,我们在全球范围内发行《Hit Tennis 3》,我们运行《Hit Tennis 2》中的广告内容,还有应用B、C、D和F。6天之后,这就让我们顺利挤进若干大型市场的前25名榜单,但在美国,我们只挤进免费运动游戏类型的排行榜。因此在头1个星期里,广告印象就达到6万次,基于广告的日均下载量近2000次,令7月3日总应用下载量增至7.4万次。第2阶段在7月4日全面展开,通过携手某大型合作伙伴(App E),使广告印象增至20多万次,基于广告的日下载量达到4000次。这令我们得以挤进美国排名前25的免费应用榜单中,最终达到每日30万次下载量的水平。

chart 2 from gamasutra.com

chart 2 from gamasutra.com

成本

我们基于易货方式就这些广告活动达成一致协议。我们的作品获得n次点击率和下载量,我们就要带给他们的游戏(游戏邦注:或是新发行的作品,或是既有游戏)相同的点击率和下载量作为回报。这对双人组独立工作室而言是个相当划算的协议,因为他们没有预先向我们收取费用(但这随后会降低我们的广告发行商收益)。若是通过现金,而非商誉&信任,这将耗费多少成本?Fiksu推崇采用“每忠实用户成本”指标,用于衡量要提高应用下载量,开发者需要花费多少成本。他们最近的指标是1.26美元,这比之前的水平略有降低。很多应用广告网络都采用按安装量计费的竞价机制,要获得庞大数量,你需要提高较高竞价的安装成本。我不清楚要获得我们的印象数量需出价多少。据我所知,有些拥有丰厚资金的游戏公司会出价更高,例如2.50美元CPI,行业的总体感觉是,CPI成本由于供求关系持续上涨。下面就以1.5美元CPI为例:

* 我们自身的交叉推广带来2万次安装量,2万X1.5美元=3万美元,即通过广告网络获得此安装数量的成本是3万美元。

* 合作伙伴的2.7万次下载量耗费4.1万美元。

* 总成本约是7万美元。

自然&付费安装量

那么在所有游戏中投入7万美元是否会得到相同结果?显然不是。就如MachineZone Gabe Leydon日前在Games Beat所说的,“在降低用户获取成本方面,没有什么能够匹敌杰出游戏作品。”在《Hit Tennis 3》中,促销活动的运作方式如下:

1. 广告促使游戏入驻榜单

2. 挤进榜单后就将有更多用户看到游戏

3. 因此获得更多有机下载量、

4. 促使游戏在榜单中处于更靠前的位置

5. 现在有更多用户会看到游戏,游戏获得更多自然下载量

6. 用户喜欢游戏,开始告诉好友进行尝试

7. 游戏的榜单位置进一步获得提高

8. 回到第5点,开始重复

在10天的发行活动里,我们总共获得约100万次的下载量,但其中只有4.7万次靠广告推动。所以就是95%的有机下载量。这在之前的应用中从未出现过。为何《Hit Tennis 3》能够表现突出?

* 我们在Wimbledon 2012(游戏邦注:全球重要的网球盛事)期间发行《Hit Tennis 3》。这绝非偶然!网球颇受欢迎,深入人心。

* 网球非常受欢迎,大家非常熟悉,在尚未目睹内容之前他们就能够想象其体验过程。

* 我们的图标非常杰出。在应用商店列表中,你定不会错过它,它体现了“网球”和“质量”这两大特点。杰出图标非常重要。商店中有数以百计的网球游戏和应用,但只有小部分拥有杰出图标。

hit tennis 3-icon(from itunes.apple.com)

hit tennis 3-icon(from itunes.apple.com)

* 《Hit Tennis 3》包含自然的控制装置。多数玩家能够在头20秒里在无需借助指南的情况下体验游戏。眼前没有讨人厌的虚拟方向键。

* 开始体验游戏后你就会发现,击中小球的韵律非常有趣!你其实是亲自进行点击,而非控制角色。

* 榜单排名远比X下载量复杂得多。排名靠前的游戏是玩家真正体验而非只是下载完成的游戏。你需要具备广泛吸引力的优质应用,方能实现这一目标。

背景

我和Rob自2008年应用商店出现以来就专职投身于应用领域。《Hit Tennis 3》是我们的第17款应用,第5款手机游戏。我们于2008年开始制作应用&游戏,09-10年间,我们主要外包其他公司的应用项目。在此期间,我们努力学习游戏、营销和应用业务知识。我们积极参加360 iDev、WWDC、GDC、Unite、iOS Dev Camp、SViOSD和SVIGDA之类的会议&活动。这就是我们创建自身好友和同事网络的方式,旨在从中获得帮助。我们没有和这些人一起上学,我们只是碰到他们,然后寻求援助。也可以称作社交网络和商业拓展。

hit tennis 2(from itunes.apple.com)

hit tennis 2(from itunes.apple.com)

《Hit Tennis 3》是《Hit Tennis 2》的续集,但我们有意将续作的控制装置设计得和《Hit Tennis 2》截然不同。虽然我们很喜欢《Hit Tennis 2》,游戏拥有忠实粉丝,但《Hit Tennis 2》的控制装置很难把握。多数进行尝试的玩家都因控制装置而放弃游戏,我们最终未能留住他们。《Hit Tennis 3》的3个核心目标之一就是,“修复”这一问题。我们觉得我们有做到这点,但这将《Hit Tennis 2》的忠实粉丝置于不利地位,因为他们需要忘记《Hit Tennis 2》的控制装置。所以我们因此遭遇若干逆反作用。

我们设计这款游戏的最大影响因素是恰逢Wimbledon。若不是因为Wimbledon一年只有1次,我们也许会采取截然不同的策略。也许会在游戏发行前在制作上投入更多时间。Wimbledon是个全球盛事,所以我们配合全球活动。否则我们就不会在各个国家刊登广告。我们就只会挑选几个地方打广告。我们尚未进行本土化,所以我们只需在英语国家中打广告;我们若要着手于更小的广告活动,多半也会将美国排除在外。我们曾于2010年和2011年就《Hit Tennis 2》开展付费广告活动。结果好坏参半,时而显著提高榜单排名,时而无法发挥显著效果。这次情况截然不同,我们觉得突发广告活动无法向过去那样显著提高游戏榜单排名。市场无疑变得更加庞大,但榜单排名的运行方式将发生变化,只是需要更多时间。头1天的突发广告活动将不再适用。(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

Launching Hit Tennis 3 into the iOS Charts

by Mark Johnson

We just launched our new game Hit Tennis 3 into the iOS free charts, and  after just 10 days we achieved:

* #2 Top free app in the USA (Angry Birds Seasons as Apple’s free game of the week was #1).

* Top 100 free game in 45 countries

* Over 1 million downloads.

Hit Tennis 3 has not (yet) been featured by Apple, we didn’t spend any money on ads, and we didn’t get any press. We are a 2 person self funded indie company. So how did we do it?

Cross Promotion

We cross promoted heavily from our game Hit Tennis 2, and we arranged for five friends to advertise Hit Tennis 3 in their games. Hit Tennis 2 has about 1 million monthly active users, obviously a really good audience to promote the new version of the game to. We have users on two different versions of HT2, our newest version has ads implemented with Chartboost (we love you Chartboost!). The previous version has a home grown system for house ads, and both version also have a news feature. Our five friends who advertised for us have apps & games ranging in audience size and they use a range of different ad solutions. (Thanks everyone for your amazing help… we owe you!) Below are details of the ad campaign. Data in black is measured data, blue are estimates from similar measurements, and red are guesstimates.

The campaign ran in 2 phases for a total of 10 days starting 6/28.  On 6/28 we released Hit Tennis 3 worldwide, and we turned on ads in Hit Tennis 2, and apps B, C, D, F. This was enough to get us into the top 25 in several big markets after 6 days, but in USA we had only charted in the free sports games category. So for that first week we were showing about 60,000 daily impressions for nearly 2000 ad based downloads a day, which grew total app downloads up to 74,000 on 7/3. By comparison our category charting Hit Tennis 2 has been getting around 10,000 downloads a day. The second phase kicked in fully on 7/4 by adding one of our larger partners (App E) bumping our ad impressions up to over 200,000 per day for 4000 ad based downloads a day. That made enough difference to kick us up into the top25  free in the USA, and ultimately up to 300,000 downloads per day in total.

Costs

We agreed these ad campaigns on a barter basis… we get n clicks and installs now for our launch, and we will repay this debt for similar clicks and install of their games, either for new launches or for existing games. This is an amazingly good deal for a two person self funded indie company because it didn’t cost us cash up front (but it will cost us reduced ad-publisher earnings later). How much would it cost to do this with cash instead of goodwill & trust? Fiksu maintains an index of ‘cost per loyal user’ which is a measure of measure of how much one has to pay in order to drive an app install. Their most recent index is $1.26, which is a bit lower than its been. A lot of the app ad networks are Cost Per Install bidding systems, and to get a lot of volume you have to make higher bids spending more per install. I don’t know the bid needed to get the impression volume we had. I know that some games companies with deep pockets will bid more like $2.50 CPI and the feeling in the industry is that CPI cost is on the rise due to supply and demand.  Lets use a CPI of $1.50:

* 20k installs from our own cross promotion,   20k * $1.50  would cost $30,000 purchased from ad networks

* 27k installs from partners, would cost $41,000

* Total equivalent cost about $70,000

Organic & Paid Installs

So would spending $70,000 on any game get the same results? Heck no. As MachineZone’s Gabe Leydon said at Games Beat yesterday “nothing helps reduce the cost of user acquisition like a great game”. For what we did with the Hit Tennis 3 launch, the promotion works like this:

1. Ads get the game somewhere into the charts

2. Now its in the charts, more people see it

3. So gets more organic downloads,

4. Makes it go a bit higher up the charts.

5. Now even more people see it and it gets even more organic downloads.

6. People like it and start telling their friends to get it too

7. It goes up higher in the charts.

8. Repeat from 5.

Over the 10 days launch campaign period, we had about 1 million downloads in total, but only 47k of those were ad driven downloads. So thats 95% organic downloads. That doesn’t happen for any old app. Why did Hit Tennis 3 perform well?

* We launched Hit Tennis 3 during Wimbledon 2012 (biggest Tennis event in the world). This was not by accident! Tennis was in the air and on people’s minds.

* Tennis is popular, everyone knows what it is, they can imagine playing it before even seeing it.

* Our icon is stunningly good. You can’t fail to notice it in an app store listing, it screams ‘tennis’ and ‘quality’. I can’t emphasize enough how important a good icon is. There are hundreds of tennis games and apps in the store but only a small fraction have good icons.

* Hit Tennis 3 has natural controls. The majority of people can play it in the first 20s without a tutorial. (You have no idea how hard we worked on the controls.) Ain’t no stinking virtual D-pad in sight.

* Once you start playing, the rythm of hitting that ball is fun! You are actually hitting it yourself, not controlling an avatar.

* Chart ranking is more complex than just # of downloads. The best ranking games are the games people are actually playing, not just downloading. You need a good app with broad appeal to make this work.

Background

Rob and I been working full time in the apps business since the app store opened in 2008. Hit Tennis 3 is our 17th app I think, and our 5th mobile game. We started making apps & games in 2008, and we spent 09-10 making apps under contract for other companies.  We’ve been studying games, marketing, and the apps business very hard the whole time. We made the effort to attend conferences & events like 360 iDev, WWDC, GDC, Unite, iOS Dev Camp, SViOSD, SVIGDA, et al. Thats how we’ve built our network of friends and colleagues to ask for help. We didn’t go to school with these people or something, we showed up and met them, and then we reached out asking for help. Aka networking and biz dev

Hit Tennis 3 is the sequel to Hit Tennis 2, but we deliberately designed the controls to be very different from Hit Tennis 2. As much as we love Hit Tennis 2 and we have loyal fans, the controls to Hit Tennis 2 are hard to learn. The majority of people who try it are put off by the controls and we don’t retain them as players. (Ie the trier to player conversion is poor.) One of the 3 main goals of Hit Tennis 3 is to ‘fix’ this problem. I think we did, but it puts our core Hit Tennis 2 fans at a disadvantage because they have to ‘unlearn’ the controls from Hit Tennis 2. So we’ve gotten some blowback for this… sorry Hit Tennis 2 fans!

The biggest factor for how we designed this launch was the timing during Wimbledon. If it wasn’t for Wimbledon coming around just once a year we would have done things differently. Probably would have worked more on the game before releasing it. (Updates coming soon!) Wimbledon is a worldwide thing, so we went with a worldwide campaign. Otherwise we wouldn’t have advertised in every country. We would have picked just a few places to advertise. We didn’t localize yet so we would only have advertised in english speaking countries, and we would probably have left out USA too in order to start with smaller campaigns. We’ve done paid ad campaigns before with Hit Tennis 2 in 2010 and 2011. We’ve had mixed results, sometimes driving really well up the charts, and sometimes failing to. This time it looked different, I think that burst ad campaigns can’t push up chart rankings as fast as they used to be able to. The market is bigger of course, but my guess is that there are real changes to how the chart rankings work, and it just takes longer now. 1 day bursts won’t work any more.(Source:gamasutra


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