作者：AJ Glasser

Ngmoco创始人& 首席执行官 Neil Young称，Mobage平台将结合日本可靠数据的新游戏重新定义位居营收榜单之首的意义。

Young表示，日本通过玩家在社交移动游戏领域创收45亿美元，而该国的人口只有1.2亿。基于这些数据推断发达西方国家的具体情况，Young预估全球社交移动游戏领域的产值有望高达300亿美元，其中有50亿美元来自日本。

neil-young(from binzaman.com)

为充分挖掘这一领域，ngmoco及其母公司DeNA计划将系列新游戏带到公司4个地区（游戏邦注：美国、日本、韩国和中国）的Mobage平台。这些游戏主要基于4种风格：DeNA旗下工作室的第一方游戏，针对新用户进行本土化的热门日本游戏，转移至其他地区的第三方原创作品，结合西方IP的可行游戏机制。Ngmoco本周末或下周将宣布这4种类型的具体条目，但移植至西方平台的热门日本游戏范例要数《Rage of Bahamut》，该游戏由第三方工作室Cygames开发。

在演讲结束后，我们和Young展开交流，旨在了解《Rage of Bahamut》在连续16周于iOS和Android榜单位居第一后表现如何，以及日本市场的经验如何运用至西方社交移动领域。

我们知道你们不愿透露具体的日活跃用户的平均收益(ARPDAU)数据，但7美元听起来是不是有点太高了？

如果ARPDAU能够达到7美元那就太棒了。我们鲜少谈及这些数据。我们之前说过的是，《Rage of Bahamut》及手中若干游戏的ARPDAU要高于行业标准。目前手机游戏领域分3个层次。大范围的休闲公司——其ARPDAU在1-3美分之间。然后是成熟社交/移动游戏公司——其ARPDAU在15-20美分之间。还有少部分公司（游戏邦注：DeNA无疑是其中一员），其ARPDAU要高出3-6倍。

Rage of Bahamut from androidauthority.com

我们不会谈论《Rage of Bahamut》的细节内容，但其比例颇令人满意。我们有考虑终身价值。这是我们进行所有运算的基础。这些游戏的用户终身价值远高于获取成本，因此如今创收技能对于要在市场中胜出来说必不可少。开展有意义的营销活动对开发者来说将越发艰难，尤其是在移动休闲领域。他们的营销活动将变成携手平台所有者的促销活动，或是通过他们自己创建的病毒式传播渠道，抑或是口碑传播。在我看来，即便是对处于15美分范围内的成熟社交移动游戏公司而言，这都相当复杂，因为用户获取成本将日益提高。你需要着眼于创收，这样你才能够获得大规模用户，这样营销方程式方能运作。

那么各游戏类型的转换率呢？《Rage of Bahamut》迎合“硬核”群体，据其他开发者表示，相比休闲玩家，这些用户更容易转化成付费用户。

我们的这一数据有所提高。当ngmoco首次切换至免费模式时，我们有0.8%的付费用户，我们首批免费模式游戏《Eliminate》和《Touch Pets》的平均交易额是2.79美元。两款游戏都介于此范围内。

所以题材不是关键？

当时不是关键。决定因素有几点。一个是市场成熟度——《Eliminate》是首款嵌入虚拟交易的游戏。在我们做出转变时，整个行业都瞄准付费下载内容，用户形成的意识是，应在付费下载内容而非虚拟商品中掏钱。在《We Rule》高峰时期，其ARPDAU范围是15-20美分，付费用户的平均收益约是10美元，约有2-2.5%的用户付费。我们目前已超越这一水平。

我的看法是，1.用户对此已非常熟悉；2.我们的执行能力日益提高；3.由于我们日益懂得如何应对进行虚拟交易的核心用户群体，我们某种意义上拓宽了用户群体，然后是有价值的游戏设计和题材。不妨查看如今的市场及迎合特定群体的高创收游戏类型。有些游戏设计更易于带来收益。大家可以参考系列游戏作品及其创收情况&创收方式。我们的职责是，确保高创收游戏作品入驻Mobage平台，或由我们的工作室制作。对于那些表现不错但不突出的人士而言，携手这些开发者合作能够促使他们表现更突出，帮助他们提高ARPDAU。

下面就来谈谈平台分成。入驻iOS或Android平台的《Rage of Bahamut》是否带来更高创收？

iOS版本的推出要稍晚一些（游戏邦注：相比Android版本而言）。如今的收益分成标准是五五分成。目前，Android平台有更多用户，但二者其实不相上下。我觉得这会让有些人感到惊讶。

我们在看待收益榜单时存在的一个误区是，我们将其看作是静态模式——第一名是个静态位置。但其实并非如此。现在Android版《Rage of Bahamut》的日收益是其16周前挤进第一位置时的2倍。我们认为这里的机会不仅在于成为第一，还在于能够重新定义第一的含义。作为一个行业，我们呈现日益强劲的发展势头，我们及其他公司越来越善于挖掘业务的发展潜力，因此我们将改变这一位置的含义。1年之后，高营收榜单的第一位置将变得和当前大不相同。我认为这将变成非线性模式。“它如何从这里跳到那里？”这将变成游戏规模和创收的一个功能。

目前你们的竞争对手处在什么位置？GREE竭尽全力开展行业活动及大规模促销；EA正从减缓其移动平台步伐的大规模重组中恢复；随着Facebook发展势头的减弱，Zynga逐步尝试过渡至手机游戏发行领域。就你们看来，行业发展态势如何？

这些都是非常强大的竞争对手。我们喜欢同他们进行较量，但我们尽量避免在他们身上花费过多思考时间。如果我们过度关注竞争对手——例如，GREE在E3上称，“我们将采取大动作！”，那么我们多半会参加这一展会。但由于身处行业很多年，因此我们知道，参加这种由传统主机游戏领域主场的活动，展开浩大宣传声势，这不会引起太大关注，要知道这种活动现场的大屏幕，展示的是小型手持设备所无法呈现的高质量游戏。所以我们希望量力而行。

今年初我们曾和第一方工作室副总裁Doug Scott谈及ngmoco结合东西方风格的游戏设计理念。公平来说，我们也在其他国家听闻东西方结合的例子。什么促使移动社交电子游戏领域的这一结合模式呈现新颖及不同之处？

我不确定其中是否存在新颖及不同之处。在我看来，DeNA非常独特，他们的文化和之前我们接触过的日本公司截然不同，主要由5位成员负责，我是其中之一，我们年龄相仿，不是烟瘾很大的80岁日本纨绔子弟。我们都着眼于制作出优质内容，我们对于游戏、平台及DeNA怀有较高期望。我不知道我们是否会接受DeNA之外的收购邀约。

另一因素是，我们很容易就会将日本看作是另一加拉巴哥群小岛，而对其嗤之以鼻，“他们跟我们非常不同，我是西方人，我不懂他们的语言，不清楚他们的思维方式，以及他们如何制作娱乐内容。”但在我们的行业，有很多内容依靠数据推动。当你去除文化差异，只是查看数据时（游戏邦注：日回合数，回合分钟数，什么促使玩家留存，留存率情况），这些都旨在衡量人类行为，我们会发现，它们其实大同小异。唯一区别在于，在日本，团队和公司有机会暂时生活于这片市场，获得众多学习机会及知识。

但日本玩家和游戏的互动空间与西方玩家截然不同，是吧？他们通常在火车通勤中花更多时间，拥有更优质、更稳固的网络连接服务。

我觉得这是一个因素，但我们经常在走路时低头看手机。若查看西方用户在2010和2011年与日本用户2006年玩手机的情况你就会发现，其水平非常相似。空间因素很重要，但人为因素更加重要。我们喜欢这些设备，喜欢这些游戏，没有什么能够阻止我们玩游戏。（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）

Ngmoco’s Neil Young on Rage of Bahamut ARPDAU, redefining No. 1 on top grossing charts

By AJ Glasser

Ngmoco founder and CEO Neil Young says that the Mobage platform will redefine what No. 1 on the top grossing charts means with a range of new games married to proven data from Japan.

A a Mobage Media Day event in San Francisco, DeNA’s U.S. developer and Mobage platform operator walked an audience of reporters from business and video games media outlets through a presentation outlining the as-yet-untapped potential of the mobile-social games market outside of Japan. Young stated that Japan sees $4.5 billion in social-mobile game revenues coming from gamers in a population of just 120 million. Extrapolating those numbers against those of the developed Western world, Young estimates that the global social-mobile game market could be as high as $30 billion — with just $5 billion of that coming from Japan.

To tap that market, ngmoco and its parent company, DeNA, are aiming to bring a range of new games to the Mobage platform in its four regions (the U.S., Japan, South Korea and China). These games come in four flavors: first-party games out of DeNA’s owned and operated studios, hit Japanese games localized for new audiences, third-party originals ported to new audiences in other regions and proven game systems married to Western IP. Ngmoco will be announcing entries in that fourth category later this week and next, but already we know the most prominent example of a Japanese hit ported to Western audiences to be Rage of Bahamut, developed by third-party studio Cygames.

After the presentation, we spoke with Young to get more detail on just how well Rage of Bahamut is performing after 16 straight weeks in the No. 1 spot on iOS and Android charts — and for some more context on how Japan’s knowledge can feed social-mobile growth in the West.

Inside Mobile Apps: We know you won’t give us a specific number for the average revenue per daily active user, but does $7 sound too high…?

Neil Young: It would be awesome if ARPDAU was $7. We don’t actually talk about those numbers. What we’ve said before is that ARPDAU — for us, that’s average revenue per daily active unique — on Rage of Bahamut and a few of the games on our service are much higher than industry norms. There are three tiers in the mobile games industry right now. There’s scaled casual — that’s sort of in the 1-, 2-, 3-cent ARPDAU range. Then there’s mature social/mobile game companies — somewhere between 15- to 20-cent ARPDAU. And then there’s a very, very small group of companies of which DeNA are certainly one of that are able to drive ARPDAU that’s significantly higher than that, by like 3 to 6x.

We don’t talk specifics about Rage of Bahamut, but the range is very good. We really think about lifetime value. That’s the basis for all our calculations. The LTV on these games are well above the cost of acquisition, so that sort of monetization expertise is essential to succeeding in the market today. It’s just going to be increasingly difficult for developers, especially in mobile casual, to do any meaningful marketing. Their marketing is going to be partnership promotions with one of the platform holders, or with a viral channel they establish themselves, or word of mouth. I think it’s going to be more complicated for even mature social mobile game companies in the 15-cent range because the cost of acquiring customers is going up. You do have to focus on monetization so that you can get the scale of audience so that the marketing equation works.

IMA: What about conversion rates by game genre? Rage of Bahamut appeals a “hardcore” audience that we’ve heard other developers claim is more likely to convert to paying users than casual gamers.

Young: It’s grown for us. When we first switched to free-to-play as ngmoco, we were doing 0.8 percent paying, the average transaction was $2.79 for our first free to play games Eliminate or Touch Pets. Both games were in those range.

IMA: So genre didn’t matter?

Young: Not at that time. There were a couple of things that were going on. One is market maturity — Eliminate was the first game that had in-app purchasing. At the time we made the shift, the whole business was oriented around paid downloads and customers were trained [to spend] on paid downloads and not on virtual goods. At the peak of We Rule, it was doing 15- to 20-cent ARPDAU and the average revenue per paying user was around $10 and we would see on average 2 to 2.5 percent of the audience paying. Where we’re at today is significantly beyond that.

My sense is that a combination of one, the customer getting comfortable with it; two, us getting better at implementation; and [three], as we get better at implementation with the core audience of people that are [using in-app purchasing], you sort of broaden that audience and then game designs and genres actually matter. You can look at the market today and see that certain game types appeal to certain audiences that have a propensity to monetize. Certain game designs have a propensity to monetize. You can look across a range of games and see a variety of what they generate and how they generate that money. Our job is to make sure that the games that have the best monetization come to Mobage or are made by our studios. Then, for folks that are good but not great, work closely with those developers to help them get to great, help them improve ARPDAU.

IMA: Let’s talk about platform splits, then. Do you see better monetization for Rage of Bahamut on iOS or Android?

Young: The iOS version shipped a little bit after [the Android version]. In terms of revenue split today, it’s about fifty-fifty. Right now, there’s a few more [users] on Android, but they’re pretty comparable. I think that’s been a big surprise for people.

One of the errors in how we all think about grossing charts is that we think of them as static — that number one is a static position. But it’s really not. The daily revenue that Rage of Bahamut delivers on Android today is two times what it delivered when it first became number one 16 weeks ago. What we think the opportunity is to not just to get to number one, but to redefine what number one is. As we start to build more and more momentum as an industry and our company and other companies become more adept at delivering on the full potential of the business, we’re just going to change what it means. A year from now, number one on top grossing is going to be very different from what it is today. I think it’s going to look almost non-linear. [Like], “how could it jump from there to there?” And it’s going to be a function of games’ scale and games’ monetization.

IMA: What about where your competitors are at right now? GREE is going all-out on industry events and big promotions; EA is still recovering from a dramatic reorganization that slowed down its mobile business; and Zynga is trying to transition to mobile game publishing as its Facebook growth flags. What does that landscape look like from your perspective?

Young: Those are all formidable competitors. We enjoy sparring with them in the market, but we try not to spend too much time thinking about them. If we look at our competitors — like GREE going to E3 and saying “We’re going to make a big splash!” then we might’ve [gone to the show] too. But we know, because we’ve been in the business a long time, that going to a traditional console game venue and having a big giant footprint to tell the world that you’re here… One, you’re talking to an echo chamber. And two, right next to you there’s really, really big screens showing really, really great graphics that’s hard to compete with on a little tiny handheld. So we just want to march to our own drum.

IMA: Earlier this year talked with first-party studio VP Doug Scott about the marriage of East and West in ngmoco’s game design philosophy. To be fair, we’ve heard the East-meets-West story in other industries. What is it about the mobile-social video games industry that makes the marriage somehow new and different?

Young: I don’t know if it is necessarily new and different. I think that DeNA is unique. The culture of the company is very different from other Japanese companies I’ve interacted with before. It’s run essentially by five us — I’m one of them — and we’re all about the same age, not chain-smoking 80-year-old Japanese dudes. We’re all really focused on making something great and we have high hopes and aspirations for our games, our platform and for DeNA. I’m not sure that we would’ve agreed to be acquired by a Japanese company other than DeNA.

I think another factor is it’s so easy to dismiss Japan as a Galapagos Island. “Oh, they’re just different. I’m a Westerner and I can’t understand the language. I don’t know how they think or how they process entertainment…” But in our industry, there’s a huge component driven by data. When you strip away the cultural difference and you just look at the data — sessions per day, minutes per session, what motivates people to stick around, what the retention rates are — things that are measures of human behavior… they are basically the same. What’s different is that in Japan, the teams and companies have had an opportunity to live in this market for a while and get a whole bunch of learning and knowledge.

IMA: But the environment in which a Japanese gamer interacts with their game is different from what a Western gamer experiences, right? They tend to spend more time on trains commuting and have better, more reliable internet connections…

Young: I think that’s a factor, but we walk around with our heads in our phones. If you look at the minutes per user of customers in the West in 2010, 2011 and customers in Japan 2006, they’re pretty analogous. Environmental factors can matter, but human factors override those things. We enjoy these devices, we enjoy these games. Nothing’s going to stop us from playing them.（Source：insidemobileapps）