作者：Zoya Street

问题：

Harry Holmwood曾写道：“我和一个同事上周在机场下载了《足球新星》，并在从德国返回的途中玩这款游戏，我们深深陷入其中，但玩兴正酣的时候却撞上了‘付费门槛’，我们只有掏钱才能继续玩下去。

但当时我们是在飞机上，无法连网购买IAP，因此不得不做罢。在整个周末我都想付费玩游戏，但却没有诉诸行动——因为已经没这个兴致了，我怀疑自己根本不会为它花钱了。”

那么这些游戏中的付费门槛算不算个好主意呢，还是说应该让玩家一直无障碍地体验游戏？

回答：

Mark Sorrel（游戏主管）

用付费门槛锁定游戏是共享软件或免费样品的做法，并非免费增值模式的理念。

免费增值模式应该为用户提供定制的体验，其中涉及许多行为经济学原理。

它不是一个单纯的商业模式，它也是一个设计问题，因此在我看来，“真正的”免费增值游戏是不可以或者不应该植入硬性付费门槛。

Philip Reisberger（Bigpoint总经理）

一般来说，我闪都认为让玩家玩游戏才是重中之重。盈利性通常是游戏体验产生的结果。也确实有一些硬核风格的游戏存在硬性付费门槛，但我认为这只是特例而非常见情况。

Andrew Smith（Spilt Milk Studios主管）

我偏爱那些几乎100%的内容都可以免费体验的游戏。

无论是采用“刷任务”机制，还是慷慨地提供大量内容，这一小部分我们想转化为付费用户的玩家，都不太可能因为可以免费得到许多内容而转变为非付费用户。

我还发现如果开发者慷慨提供大量免费内容，更易于免受玩家的指责和攻击。另外，这种方法还省去了找到最佳盈利点这个令人头痛的问题。

通过钱币来盈利要比其他方法简单得多，因为它区分了收费与免费的界限，其支持系统也相对更简单。

Harry Holmwood（Heldhand顾问）

我现在还是没有付费！

我曾想《足球新星》的硬性付费门槛是有道理的。假如它的付费转化率是39%（游戏邦注：Harry Holmwood也不清楚这一情况是否属实），那真是一个相当不错的数据。

我认为很少有游戏能够像它一样这么快就收获这种转化率。

Charles Chapman（First Touch Games Ltd.主管及所有者）

我认为这要视不同游戏的情况而定。有些游戏确实是只能采用/或不采用付费门槛，但大多数游戏可以做到在不免费放送所有内容的前提下，让玩家仍能够持续体验游戏。

很显然，只要人们持续玩游戏，他们就还是有可能付费。但非付费玩家主要通过广告或刺激奖励广告而为游戏创收。我们最成功的一款游戏在过去两个月中有40%以上的收益来自视频和条幅广告。多数收益来自非付费玩家。

所以，最好让玩家无障碍地体验游戏。但有些游戏，例如《足球新星》的硬性付费门槛也许仍是可行做法。

Tadhg Kelly（What Games Are顾问）

这个问题比原先更棘手。

我认为任何一种模拟/农场/刷任务/RPG游戏都应该时时考虑，究竟是将玩家视为一个临时客户还是永远客户，并制作长远销售计划。而“付费或者死亡”这种非此即彼的二元选择却打断了玩家游戏进程，很可能撵走而非引进更多玩家，因为这种选择不具有吸引力。

那么动作游戏又如何呢？

某些游戏（如《Temple Run》、《宝石迷阵闪电战》）是一样的。它们基本上是在销售加速道具，以便玩家获得更高分数，由于这类游戏中的核心动作极具吸引力，所以玩家更有可能随着时间发展而在其中付费。所以在游戏动态中突然弹出“现在付费”的窗口并不合适，这个道理也适用于刷任务类型的游戏。

但这种销售加速道具的策略并不适用于所有游戏。《愤怒的小鸟》在关卡设计和小鸟选择上具有限制性，如果提供加速道具或小鸟选择就会破坏整个游戏动态。这会让游戏中益智解谜的趣味性消失殆尽（其中的“通关神鹰”IAP更像是一个自成一体的嵌入模式）。在这种情况下，让玩家付费才是游戏的盈利之道（除非你想涉足广告业务）。

如果是这类游戏，它们就需采用立即收费的方法。虽然游戏是想象力的产物，它也还是值得向其下注。但你玩了数个演示关卡后就要付费时要怎么办？我们总是难以说服玩家为剩余的游戏内容付费，休闲游戏尤其如此。

Patrick O’Luanaigh（nDreams首席执行官）

我从不轻易定论某个特定模式是“正确的”或者你绝对不能做某事。每款游戏都是不同的，每个平台也同样如此。我们在PlayStation Home平台发布了大多数游戏，从该平台用户规模、消费意愿和认知度来看，“付费模式”可能最具盈利性，但在iOS这个全新的平台，对我们来说，免费增值模式才是正解。

我并不认为只有那些采用连续循环、返回机制和日常奖励的游戏才能在这个领域中幸存，我认为拥有开始、结局和强大线性故事的游戏仍然会有市场，但这类游戏可能并不适合采用免费增值模式。

Oscar Clark（木瓜移动倡导者）

我看过许多采用不同商业模式的游戏的相关数据（但我不能在此透露详情），因此我可以很确定的告诉你，付费门槛是行不通的策略，而使用这一模式的游戏开发商也并不清楚自己究竟能否成功。当然，也有一些例外情况，但我可不仅仅是根据人人皆知的信息而作此论断。

Mark Sorrell（游戏主管）

《天际》这款游戏中的乐趣和吸引力就在于，它让玩家在巨大游戏世界中获得完全的自由感。你在游戏中可以自由漫步，随心所欲。而这种情感似乎就是免费增值模式所无法提供的东西。有时候，预先付费才能为玩家创造一种其他方式所无法提供的情感体验。

就这一点来看，哪一种模式更赚钱似乎已经不重要了。如果你想最大化收益，就不要制作一款无限自由的游戏，但也不要误以为这类游戏就无法盈利，因为它们实际上获利颇丰。

我们制造的游戏是美丽的机器对吗？当然，这种机器必须能够高效运转，但它也必须养眼并且充满乐趣。

Teut Weidemann（育碧在线专家）

《天际》是一个能够完美地运行免费增值模式的典型。当然你可以免费探索其中的世界，游戏中也没有付费门槛。RPG也是免费增值模式的理想候选人，但其市场似乎过于饱和了。

Oscar Clark

这一领域已经有不少关于如何创新免费增值模式的技巧。从根本上来说，其中要点就在于理解你销售的内容，以及驱使玩家重复游戏的因素是什么。

在游戏关卡或章节发布时突出显示付费链接真的有那么重要吗？如果是这样，能不能随着时间发展逐渐发布内容，好让玩家满足一定条件后再解锁内容？例如，《Cogs》就要求玩家积累一定数量的“黄金星”之后才能解琐之后的关卡——这有助于鼓励玩家重复体验特定关卡，或者付费跳过这种刷任务机制。或者也可以参照《Cause Of Death》做法，在玩家完成一个故事后延迟访问新内容，但支持他们付费早点获取内容。

我个人认为随时间发展而推出章节内容能够驱使老玩家重访游戏，尤其是当开发商有明确的发布时间表的时候，这可以保证用户留存率。我比较重视通过虚拟商品（游戏邦注：例如健康药水、特殊装备或提升经验的水晶）来盈利。《无尽之剑》使用的是基于经验的武器，这意味着你熟练掌握一款武器后就无法获得经验加成——这就会促使你更换武器。

这表明故事情节有赖于具有重玩性的机制，即使是简单的分支迷你游戏（例如清洁武器或更换坐骑）也不例外。如果你的游戏故事无法顺时而变，我想它将难以采用免费模式，那就很难实现盈利。

Will Luton（Mobile Pie主管）

故事本身并非与免费增值模式无法兼容，你可以围绕故事而设计盈利方式。问题就在于，具有吸引力的故事只在特定时期奏效，而免费增值模式却可以循环数月甚至数年。

极少游戏故事能够维持这么长久的生命力。

Oscar Clark

很好的观点——但我们还可以想得长远一些，即在同样的世界/情境中推出一系列自成体系的故事。这可以让我们重新部署原来的游戏资产，同时又能随时间发展而创建更多内容。这种方法也意味着我们可以从不同角度讲述故事。对我来说，创意是无止境的。

Patrick O’Luanaigh

那么Nicholas下一期的问题可能就是：

“如果免费增值模式变成了长时间体验游戏的平台（例如主机或PC）的主流商业模式，那么内容丰富并且长达8小时的单人模式叙事游戏（例如《半条命2》、《Tomb Raider》或其他高质量线性游戏）又该如何盈利？”（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）

Should you ever have a hard paywall? – The Gamesbriefers

Zoya Street

Question:

Harry Holmwood writes: “A colleague and I downloaded New Star Soccer at the airport and were playing it on a flight back from Germany last week, got hooked, but then hit the ‘hard payment’ point where we had to pay to continue the career.  As we were on a plane at that point we couldn’t do the IAP and had to stop playing.  Over the weekend I was tempted to pay and play but didn’t bother – the moment was lost, and I suspect now I won’t do it at all.”

Are hard paywalls a good idea, or should you always make it possible for players to keep playing?

Answers:

Mark Sorrell Game Director

Locking the game behind a paywall is shareware or free-demo, not freemium.

Freemium is about a bespoke experience for the consumer, tempered with lots of behaviour economics.

It’s not a business model alone, it’s also a game design issue and so, to my mind, it would be impossible or nonsensical to make a ‘true’ fremium game with a hard paywall.

Philip Reisberger Managing Director at Bigpoint

In general, we’ve seen that it’s most important to have the users playing. Monetization is always to be regarded as consequence of gameplay. There are some really core-style titles where a hard paywall is possible, but I’d regard this rather as an exception than the norm.

Andrew Smith Director at Spilt Milk Studios

My preference is to have a game that is free to play with as close to 100% of the main content as possible.

Be that through (fun to play) ‘grind’, or just being really generous, the tiny percentage of players we expect to turn into paying customers on a free game are not likely to be the kind of people NOT to pay, just because they get more of the game for free.

I find it also avoids accusations and backlash if you are generous with content by default. Also, it removes the headache of trying to find the sweet spot!

It’s just all round simpler to monetise through the currency than any other method, simply because it keeps a clear line between the two, and the systems behind it are simpler as well.

Harry Holmwood Consultant at Heldhand

I still haven’t paid!

I’m tempted to think, though, that with NSS the hard paywall is right.  If, as was suggested last week I think, the conversion is 39% (correct me if wrong) it’s such a good rate it’s worth it I think.

I imagine it’s a very rare game that can get that kind of conversion that quickly though.

Charles Chapman Director and Owner at First Touch Games Ltd.

It depends on the game. Some games are really an either/or thing, but most can be structured so that you can allow players to keep playing, without feeling like you’re giving the game away.

Obviously so long as people are playing, there’s a chance that they might spend. But I’d say the bigger reason is for the revenue that non-paying players can generate through advertising, or incentivised advertising. Our most successful game has been making over 40% of its revenue over the past couple of months from video clips and banner ads.  Most of this comes from players who haven’t spent any money.

So, yes let them keep playing if you can. But for the right game, as NSS shows, a hard paywall can still work.

Tadhg Kelly Consultant at What Games Are

This is trickier than it initially sounds.

The easy answer is to say “Always”, agreeing with Harry. In many cases this is also the right answer. Any kind of sim/farm/grind/rpg game should always be thinking of the player as either a current or eventual customer, and so be making the long sell. The binary choice of pay-or-die interrupts that process, most likely turning more away customers than it brings in because it makes the choice unattractive.

But what about an action game?

In some cases (Temple Run, Bejewelled Blitz) it’s the same. They basically sell boosters and cheats to make better score runs, and since the core action of the game is so compelling it’s more likely over time that you will buy. Bringing a money-now question into that dynamic is inappropriate for the same reasons as the grind game.

Yet boost-selling doesn’t work in all cases. Angry Birds is very constrained by level design and bird choice, and offering boosts or birds would wreck the main dynamic of the game. It would remove all fun from the puzzle-solving aspect which is essential to its fun. (The Mighty Eagle IAP is more a nested mode all of its own). In those cases making players pay is the only way for the game to make money (unless you’re really keen to try your hand at advertising).

If so, though, they should charge immediately. While a game is an imagined desire it is worth a punt. Once you’ve actually played a few demo levels and reality has set in? It’s usually harder to convince the players that the rest of the game is worth it (the paradox of demos), particularly for casual games.

Patrick O’Luanaigh CEO at nDreams

I’d be very wary about ever saying that a particular model/route is ‘the correct one’ or that you should ‘never’ do something. Every game is different and every platform is different.

In PlayStation Home, where we publish most of our games, it’s beginning to appear that ‘paymium’ may be the most commercial route given the size of the audience, their propensity to pay and the ease of generating awareness. But on iOS, being new to the platform, freemium is the only model that makes sense to us currently.

FYI, I don’t believe the gaming world will end up existing purely of games that you can play forever with continuous loops, return mechanics and daily bonuses. I believe there will always be games that have a beginning and an end and a strong linear storyline. For these kind of games, I’m not convinced that freemium is necessarily the correct approach.

Oscar Clark Evangelist at Papaya

I get to look at the data for lots of different games which use lots of different models – most of which I can’t talk about publicly.  That’s why I’m confident to say that Paywalls don’t work and that those that have them don’t know how successful they could be.  Of course there may be exceptions, but I’m not judging this on just publicly available information.

Mark Sorrell Game Director

The game that always leaps out as a ‘you can’t do that fremium’ is Skyrim. The joy of Skyrim, the hook, is that sense of complete freedom in a huge, huge world. The fact that you can go anywhere and do anything. That emotion seems to be the exact opposite of what fremium is capable of. Sometimes, paying up-front will allow the player to experience emotions they just wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

At that point, the question of what makes more money is a bit irrelevant. If you want to make the maximum amount of money, don’t make a game about (the illusion of) unlimited freedom. But don’t think that you can’t make good money from offering that, you patently can.

We make beautiful machines, eh? Sure, the machine must function with efficiency and power. But it must also be beautiful and full of joy.

*single tear rolls down cheek*

Teut Weidemann Online Specialist at Ubisoft

Bleh. Skyrim is the one example which can work freemium beautifully. Of course you can explore the whole world for free. No paywalls there. RPGs are ideal candidates for freemium but slightly overcrowded .

Oscar Clark Evangelist at Papaya

There are lots of different techniques and that’s where Freemium creativity has just started. Basically it comes down to understanding what you are selling and what is driving repeat play.

Is it really important to focus on payments linked to the release of those levels or episodes?  If so could you release them over time, allowing users to only unlock them by fulfilling certain conditions, e.g. Games like Cogs used a great technique where you had to have a certain number of ‘Gold’ stars to unlock later levels – creating reasons to replay specific levels or to pay to skip the grind. Or with Cause Of Death there was a delay to accessing the new content after completing a story; but you could pay to get this early.

Personally I think the release of episodic content over time is a driver for old players to return especially if there is a published schedule which the developer keeps – and this momentum is worth more as a retention feature.  I’d focus on monetisation through virtual goods which support the play such as health potions or special equipment or experience boosting crystals.

Infinity Blade used weapon based experience which meant that once you mastered a weapon you stopped getting bonus experience – giving you reasons to change your equipment. Of course I’m using a fantasy example but we could be talking weapons, engine upgrades, et.

But all this does imply that the narrative is supported with repeatable play mechanisms; even if these are simple side-line minigames like cleaning weapons or tuning your vehicles.  If your story can’t be adjusted to support that then I guess it will be difficult to make Freemium – but the I’d argue that’s quite difficult to make commercial anyway.

Will Luton Director at Mobile Pie

Narrative per se isn’t incompatible with making money in a freemium manner, you can monetise around it. The problem is that, for a narrative to be compelling, it has to conclude in a reasonable period, whereas most free-to-play models allow for continuous play in the months, if not years.

Very few stories can sustain that long.

Oscar Clark Evangelist at Papaya

Good point – but if we think bigger then we can deliver a series of self-contained narratives in the same world/context.  This has the advantage of allowing us to re-purposing the original game assets whilst building more as we go along. This approach also means we can tell stories from different perspectives. To my mind the creative opportunity is tremendous.

Patrick O’Luanaigh CEO at nDreams

So maybe Nicholas’s next question should be something like:

“If free-to-play becomes the main business model for platforms that are encourage longer play times and less ‘snacking’ (such as consoles or PC), how can rich, 8-hour long single-player narrative games (think Half Life 2, Tomb Raider or any other high quality linear game) be monetised?”（source:gamesbrief）