作者：Keith Andrew

苹果应用商店中的竞争越来越激烈。

尽管如此，App Store仍是能够让游戏以极少的广告预算跻身排行榜前25名的少数市场之一。

无可否认的是，借助社交媒体和口口相传大获成功的游戏会越来越少，但是，抓住良机再加上正确的盈利策略，这种成功仍然可能出现。

Chromativity开发的《Fluid Football》，由AppyNation在iOS平台发布。该游戏在第一周内积累了近23.5万次下载量，而该工作室却称这款游戏的市场营销成本“基本上是0”。

社区经理Andrew Smith在最近采访中，揭开了导致《Fluid Football》成功的秘密。

发布一周后，《Fluid Football》在App Store的表现如何？

表现太棒了。

考虑到所有方面，我们确实在排行榜上名列前茅——我想我们在英国免费游戏榜上排第二名，在英国免费应用榜单上也是第二。这种情况确实可遇而不可求。

我们确实也从长远的角度看待游戏的表现。它的排名有所下滑后，我们努力把它的排名维持在一般水平，但我们会不断发布更新和调整的内容。

我们想围绕《Fluid Football》建立一个真正的玩家社区，我们有一个不错的开头。

适逢足球赛季开始，你认为游戏发行搭上这趟顺风车有多重要？

如果我说足球赛季对游戏发行没有积极影响，那我肯定是胡说。

我们最初打算提前一周发行，但发现了几个漏洞——我们真的希望在发行以前把那几个讨厌的漏洞补上。结果足球赛季开始了，事情来得就这么凑巧。

fluid football（from pocketgamer)

足球这种东西太普遍了，有大量粉丝，以至于任何与之相关的事都会有不同凡响的表现。这不只是一款游戏，还是一款足球游戏，利用这一点意义重大。

你们是否推广过这款游戏？你们投入的营销成本是多少？

事实上，我们几乎没有投入——自从游戏发行，营销成本为0，除了请Richard Keys和Andy Gray（游戏邦注：二者分别是足球主持人和足球评论员）参演我们做的视频花了一点点钱。

我甚至不能肯定做视频有多大作用，除了告诉人们那是一件真实的产品——就把人们引向苹果应用商店方面，这几乎不是一个被证实有效的方法。

除了在Twitter、AppyNation的博客和Facebook上发发帖子，营销成本基本为0，我们却冲到排行榜前列，这事真让我们感到骄傲。这证明了，如果你能在合适的时间做出相当品质的游戏，不用多少努力，你也可以收获成功。

足球和所有流行运动一样，就像是通向普及型游戏主题的免费入口。数百万人熬夜关注，只因为他们对这项运动很熟悉。

这种现象不只发生在英国。葡萄牙、意大利、巴拉圭、哥伦比亚、阿根廷——特别是在拉丁美洲，游戏更是大获成功。

我们重视游戏的本土化工作，使尽可能多的地区接受游戏，我们的付出卓有成效。

在你的博客上，你提到了这款游戏，这是自然而然的事。但在美国，游戏似乎没有那么成功。你是否有什么计划帮助这些“陌生的”的观众领略《Fluid Football》的魅力呢？

是的，除了翻译，我们还正在努力全面地本土化游戏。

所以，我们希望让《Fluid Football》的品牌传遍美国。从标志到菜单、文字参考等等，我们希望这些工作为游戏的推广打下坚实的基础。

fluid football （from pocketgamer)

英式足球的受众在美国比较有限，这是一个问题，但应该把之前吸引的受众当作推广游戏的机遇，而不是阻碍。

就像对待英国受众，我们将采取持久战略，如果你想快速成功，那会很令人沮丧，但终最会得到好结果。

这款游戏不是昙花一现，我们旗下的其他游戏也并不属于这种情况。

最终的日下载量是多少？

4万次！实际上如果能达到几千，我们就非常高兴了，这是我们根据其他类似的游戏的下载量所作的推测，再结合我们自己的期待——因为我们确实觉得它不会拖后腿。

你看，踢足球确实要有一腿吧。

最关键的是，确保我们从乐意花钱玩优质游戏的玩家手中得到不错的收益。

这是我们最大的成就，我们非常有信心；在我们放出初版时，我们就已经在开发粉丝们呼吁已久的新设定了。

这是非常激励团队、让团队安下心的事。

从市场营销的角度，你从《Fluid Football》的发行中学到什么？有没有比较不同的经验？

从中我们学到的最重要的一课是，时机的力量。

并不是所有开发者都能趁新赛季开始就发行足球游戏的，但总是有办法让你的游戏得到最佳时机。

这不是肯定的事，但你可以积累概率。

fluid football （from pocketgamer)

如果我们能以另一种方式处理某事，那么那件事应该是尽早制作一些非常走红的足球运动员的形象，看看他们能不能在Twitter上提到这款游戏——但还是那句话，你不应该太依赖一些你无法控制的事物。

总之，就是做一些能达到你期望的游戏，和你信任的人合作，努力创造机遇。（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）

How Twitter and Facebook is powering Fluid Football to 40,000+ downloads a day

by Keith Andrew

With every day that passes, the App Store becomes a more competitive market to operate in.

Nonetheless, Apple’s marketplace remains one of the few where it’s perfectly possible to score a top 25 placing without having devote a large chunk of the game’s budget to advertising.

Admittedly, the number of games becoming runaway successes on the power of social media and word of mouth alone would appear to be shrinking, but – combined with good timing and the right monetisation strategy, for instance – it can still happen.

Indeed, AppyNation’s free release Fluid Football – developed by Chromativity – has amassed almost 235,000 downloads in its first week on iOS despite the firm claiming it’s spent “essentially zero” cash on marketing the game’s launch.

We caught up with comms manager Andrew Smith for the inside line on what’s behind Fluid Football’s success so far.

Pocket Gamer: A week after launch, how is Fluid Football performing on the App Store?

Andrew Smith: It’s going brilliantly.

Considering everything, we rode really high into the charts – I think we hit the number 2 spot in the UK free games chart, and number 2 for UK free overall – and you can’t really ask for much more than that.

We’re definitely taking a long-term view of the game’s performance too. It’s slipped down a touch, so we’re trying to keep it from slipping in general, but the content plan we’ve got for updates and tweaks will last months and months.

We want to build a real community around Fluid Football, and we’re off to a great start.

How important would you say coinciding the launch with the opening flourishes of the football season was?

It’d be daft of me to suggest it didn’t have a positive effect.

We were originally going to launch the week before, but the stars aligned with the bugs – we spotted a couple of cheeky ones we really wanted to fix just before submitting the build – and things worked out probably as well as they could’ve.

Something like football is so universal, and has such a huge following, that anything related performs in a totally different way. This isn’t just a videogame, it’s a football game, and there’s a lot of fun to be had taking advantage of that.

How have you marketed the game? What’s been your overall spend?

We’ve actually spent very little indeed – zero on marketing since launch, and a small fee for the video we did with [football presenters and pundits] Richard Keys and Andy Gray.

I’m not even sure how much difference a video makes, beyond reassuring people that it is a real product – in terms of pointing people to the App Store it’s hardly a proven method.

We’re really proud of that fact that with essentially zero marketing outside of Twitter, the AppyNation blog and Facebook, we smashed the top of the charts. It proves that if you make the right game to the right level of quality, you can see a lot of success with very little effort.

Football – and any popular sport – is like having free access to a well-known IP. People sit up and take notice in their millions, just because they’re familiar with the subject matter.

This isn’t just in the UK either. Portugal, Italy, Paraguay, Colombia, Argentina – in particular the success we’ve seen in Latin America has been really great to see.

We’ve made a point of localising to support as many territories as we can, and it’s paid off.

On your blog you mention the game, naturally, is enjoying less success in the US. What plans do you have to communicate Fluid Football’s appeal to this supposedly ‘alien’ audience?

Well, we’re making effort to localise for every territory, beyond just translations.

So we’re looking at keeping the Fluid Soccer branding throughout the game in the USA – down to logo and menus, text references, the lot – and hoping that’s a solid foundation.

Soccer does have a limited audience in the USA, which poses a problem, but having any pre-built audience has to be taken as an opportunity rather than a hurdle.

Just like with the UK we’ll be playing a long term game – which can be frustrating when you want to pivot quickly – but ultimately gets the best results.

This game isn’t a flash in the pan, and we don’t look at any of the games in our portfolio as such.

What rate do you see daily downloads settling at eventually?

Millions! Well, okay, no, but we’d be really happy if we settled down to thousands, which is based on us simply making an educated guess based on what other similar games achieve, and seasoning it with what we’d like to see for Fluid Football because we really think it’s got legs.

You need legs in a football game, see.

The real key is making sure we are making a decent amount of money from people willing to pay to play a quality product.

That’s the biggest effort moving forward, and we’re very confident; we’d started developing features that the fans have been clamouring for before we’d even submitted the original version.

It’s things like that which really reassure and motivate a team.

From a marketing perspective, what have you learned from Fluid Football’s launch? Is there anything you’d do differently?

The biggest thing we’ve taken away from this is the power of timing.

Not everyone can release a football game at the start of the new season, but the fact remains that there are always ways with which to give your game the best chance.

It’s never a guarantee, but you can stack the odds.

If we could do one thing differently then maybe it’d be get an early build to some hugely popular footballer and see if they can’t tweet about it too – but then again you shouldn’t rely too heavily on things outside of your control.

Work with what you know you can achieve, with people you trust, and try to create opportunities. A bit like football, then.(source:pocketgamer)