作者：Tomas Rawlings

以前的游戏产业非常单纯，即开发者创造出一款游戏并由发行商将其陈列在商店中销售，如此任务便完成了。尽管技术支撑着整个游戏产业的发展，它同时也推动着游戏日趋复杂化。如今我们所面对的游戏产业已经演变成一个包含了开发者，发行商，平台，商店等元素的生态系统。这便意味着整个产业不仅规模扩大了，复杂性也大大增加了。并且开发者不再是面向GAME或Virgin Megastore等商店争夺货架空间，而是转向拥有无限空间的数字“货架”。但是讽刺的是，虽然这些数字商店的成功为我们创造了更加光明的前景，但同时也在我们面前设定了各种新的挑战。作为游戏开发者，我认为我们有必要理解周围所爆发的“商店大战”，并预测我们自己的未来。

首先我们需要注意的是，数字发行是现今一大重要业务。也许你知道这点，但是你肯定猜不到它的重要性已经达到了何种程度。仅一个季度苹果的App Store便在销售上赚取了19亿美元的利润，并且单是从开发者手上的抽成（30%）便有5亿7千万美元。这就意味着整个2012年苹果在App Store共能获得将近80亿美元的收益，而单是分红便有将近20亿美元。如果是置于EA背景下来看，他们今年在所有平台上的总收益大概为40或50亿美元，也就意味着苹果仅App Store抽成就可以达到EA收益的一半左右。

自然也有其他人想要获取这种成功。在各大技术公司的董事会上，业务高管们总是被反复灌输着苹果的成功故事，并不断被追问着获取这种成功的方法。我们发现许多数字分销网站相继涌现了出来，包括英特尔的AppUp，Facebook的App Centre，谷歌的Google Play以及Sony Entertainment Network等。除了这些巨头们，还有许多专业的游戏公司正在积极开展各种活动；如Steam继续发展着他们1亿多的注册用户——其中有4千万用户愿意为游戏投入大量的资金。除了现有的公司外，像Blitz Game的IndieCity便是在最近刚刚进军这一领域。还有微软，也正在琢磨着如何发展自己的Windows 8。可以说我们正在一个有趣的时代购买并销售游戏。

商店策略

赚钱只是这些商店的能力之一。许多强大的商店同时也能够提供给拥有者更广泛的策略分销选择——当你的平台上拥有许多用户所喜欢的优秀内容时，这便能够有效地吸引用户安装你的客户端或购买你的设备。强大的商店同样也能够推动着你去影响其他用户的购买行为。例如，商店的拥有者可以选择（或通过收费）去推广某些合适的特定应用，服务或产品。就像当你打开亚马逊的网页时便能看到Kindle的推广信息，也就是该零售商利用自己的头版能够有效地吸引亚马逊用户去使用Kindle，随后用户便会使用Kindle的内置商店链接去购买电子书，从而紧密维系起商店与用户之间的关系。

除了拥有商店，拥有者还必须想办法让他们的商店引人注目。每个商店博彩的方式各不相同；一些平台特定商店，如索尼，苹果和微软更是拥有主场优势。而对于那些设立在其它开放平台的商店来说，它们便需要寻找其它方法；就像AppUp面向PC制作购买软件的风险远远低于英特尔一开始所采取的测试应用的方法（加之他们还允许合作人，如PC World能够创造并发展自己的AppUp商店版本）。GOG.com限制了每周在该平台上所发行的游戏数量，从而进一步推动了该系统上的游戏的发展。IndieCity便突出了大量的独立游戏从而避免了对小型工作室造成伤害。Gamersgate并不强求用户去安装他们的游戏，并且同时也提供了“Blue Coins”忠诚系统。Steam拥有一个活跃的社区，并让用户能够在此享受到安装，保存，下载等以玩家为中心的无缝体验。

受社区驱动的数字发行服务Desura(from gamesindustry)

这一关键策略主要受益于商店的运行。就像有很多人在担心微软的Windows 8和Surface；而如果微软能够像苹果对待iOS设备那样将其系统锁定于某些特定设备上，它便能够更好地创造自己想要看到的内容——但同时它也不得不冒着来自现有的内容供应商的反弹的风险。这也是Steam为何会支持Linux或其它开放性平台/主机的主要原因。当你过分依赖于某一系统时，如果一切进展顺利，那么较少的技术支持便能够帮助你更轻松地进行开发；但是如果“风向逆转”，那么你的业务模式便会遭到巨大的破坏。还记得乔布斯是如何对待那些复制Mac业务的公司吗，对于苹果来说将UMAX以及Power Computing等公司的计划扼杀在摇篮里便是最明智的决策。

可发现性所带来的威胁

对于苹果来说持续的应用热潮是件好事；每天会出现300多款新应用，并且每一款应用都能推动相关硬件设备的进一步发展。因为硬件销售占苹果总收益的50%以上，所以这种热潮有益于推动苹果的进一步发展。独立发行门槛的降低也是促成这一过程的关键，并有力地打破了发行商的垄断局面。对于苹果来说这种快速的选择扩张并不是问题所在，因为尽管个体应用的关注度越来越低，整体的用户数量却会随着应用下载总量的提高而提高，而他们所获得的总体收益也是如此。

应用数量的增加意味着用户将能够面对更多选择，但是这种好处却是片面的。我们都非常清楚，人类总是会因为过多的选择而手足无措，并因为害怕选错对象而放弃购买。所以各大商店便开始想办法解决这一问题，例如Gamersgate就非常重视这一问题，其首席执行官CEO Theo Bergquist解释道：“可发现性是面向合适的用户销售合适的游戏的关键。一直以来Gamersgate都拥有着极高的转化率，而这也是我们一直在努力解决的问题之一。对于我们来说这是一大商业机密，但是不管怎么样这都需要我们创造出合适的内容，优秀的网站导航以及适当的推荐功能。”

当陈列出各种选择时，商店的一大突显武器便是有效的内容引导，即通过引导用户浏览各种内容而赢得他们的信任。一般来说朋友总是最佳向导，但是如果商店能够遵循着用户的思维做出引导（即通过人为调节或机制智能等方法）便能够赢得他们的信任。大多数商店都具有某种形式的引导功能。如果你的游戏得到商店的推荐，那么销量自然也会随之提高，但是通常却只有几款游戏能够获得这种推荐。所以商店拥有者的决定很大程度地影响着开发者的成功。例如，获得苹果的推荐也就意味着开发者的销量能提高10000%。但是在60多万款应用中却只有及其少量的应用能够获得推荐，而在某种程度上这也取决于商店的设计。如果获得推荐是你的一大市场营销策略，你便需要积极联系苹果或者认真思考99%的应用未能获得推荐的原因。

但是IndieCity却采取了完全不同的做法，他们认为每个人都有能力判断自己最喜欢的是什么，其负责人Chris Swann说道：“与音乐一样，每个人的游戏品味也是独特的，所以我们认为在头版突出一款特定的游戏没有任何意义。所以在IndieCity，我们根据每个玩家的喜好以及评级等元素为他们定制了属于自己的头版页面。”

GamersGate为活跃用户奖励Blue Coins(from gamesindustry)

理论上来看，对于商店拥有者和用户来说这是一种优化策略，但是这种方法并不是随时都有成效。如果应用推荐更倾向于商店的业务利益，那么玩家便不可能在此看到自己真正感兴趣的内容，并最终对商店失去了信心。

在今后几年时间里各大商店将开始着眼解决这一问题。如今Steam是这一领域的佼佼者。其商店设计特别突出，功能也非常完善，传闻最近苹果访问了Valve的总部时，这一新闻就像新主机的问世一样引起众人的争议。我非常好奇苹果是否对商店的设计和运行感兴趣，但是不管怎么说Steam已经从事数字分销业务一段时间，并且也取得了不错的成绩。

在处理可发现性问题的同时，各大商店同样也致力于研究适用于未来游戏的内容以及未来游戏的发展趋势。免费模式将会是PlayStation和Xbox所迎来的下一股浪潮，并且这一趋势也不会轻易终止。新平台和新模式也就意味着新机遇的到来，Gamersgate的Theo Bergquist解释道：“接下来我们便要开始发展‘玩游戏但不花钱’服务，即玩家可以免费地玩付费游戏，并发展我们的独创性平台（捆包式）Indiefort，同时我们也计划着面向智能电视进行拓展，但是现在提这个还过早。”顺着这一趋势，今后的游戏将与免费模式（多样性），捆绑式以及智能电视等维系在一起，而后者也将成为商店大战的另一个前线阵地。我相信在今后的几年时间里我们将能够看到更多商店在设计和操作方面获得新进展，而对于广大开发者来说这种改变也将给他们带来更多机遇与挑战。

开发者所面临的困境

在进一步讨论了商店的设计与操作后，我们会发现一个问题还是未能得到解决，即你最终该选择哪个商店去销售游戏？基于游戏理论，所有的商店都有可能是你的最佳选择，但是在开发资源和市场营销资源都相对匮乏的现实世界中，做出选择却不一定能够给你带来好结果。根据我作为独立开发者的经验以及多年的研究，我发现不同的商店存在着各自的利与弊。

亚马逊Appstore——长久以来亚马逊一直致力于提供客户端服务，并且也取得了非常出色的成绩。不管是Kindle还是运行于Android平台上的Kindle Fire都做得很好。但是最近，亚马逊Appstore以及Kindle Fire却不能再出现于欧洲市场（现在是前者被禁了，不过我想后者很快也会面临相同的局面）。有些开发者已经在此平台上遇到了各种问题，并且国际游戏开发者协会也已经向公众阐述了一些存在问题，如将持续限制开发者的设备选择。而我们也发现虽然能够很轻松地将内容推向该平台，但是我们所获得的回报也将被局限于特定范围内。该平台目前所侧重的仍是美国市场，也就是交易所使用货币仍是美元，这便让其它地区的开发者会在此遭遇支票兑换的损失。而因为该商店不像Google Play那般杂乱，所以从某种程度上能够帮助用户更快速地找到自己想要的应用。

苹果的App Store——从用户消费倾向来看这应该是当前最有价值的手机市场。苹果的审批过程总是难以预料，并且需要花费7天左右的时间（长得让开发者感觉好似在修补漏洞似得）。商店的布局是采取经典的前馈模式，即当你出现在最高排行榜单上时，你便能够停留在最前端。这点对于少数人来说是有利的，但是对于大多数人来说却是弊大于利。缺少运气，强大的市场营销能力以及获得推荐的机会，你便只能是90%默默无闻的应用中的一份子。同时苹果也只允许每个版本只拥有50个评审代码，但是每个新版本却也都能够重新设置这些代码。

Indievania承诺开发者可获得100%的收益(from gamesindustry)

Blitz Game的IndieCity——这是面向于所有游戏的一大开放式PC商店，但是一开始你的应用只能待在最“基本的”层面上，并需要等待社区对游戏进行尝试与评级后才能最终进入主体商店。现在该商店所提供的服务是面向所有新游戏和最高评级的游戏提供引导和推荐服务，但是与大多数商店一样它也会向开发者收取30%的抽成。如今该商店的用户基础还不是很多，所以该平台上的游戏还未能取得较高的销量；但是它的开放性以及以玩家为中心的方法意味着它存在着巨大的潜力，的确在Steam的Greenlight（游戏邦注：一个新的交互反馈系统，让社区群体自己决定独立游戏的开发）出现之前，“玩家认可”方法已经广泛用于该主体商店中。预计本月该商店中将会出现更多新功能。

Desura——面向独立社区和模组的商店，同时也经营着分销业务，也就是独立包业务。Desura一直以社区和独立业务为傲，也就意味着他们非常欢迎小型开发者的加入。已经有许多开发者在这一网站上取得了很好的销售成绩。尽管其规模远不如Steam，但是Desura却能面向PC，Mac和Linux提供大量的游戏和模组。

Facebook的App Center——Facebook迟早会意识到为其平台上大量应用创建一个核心商店的重要性，也就是用户将能够通过它所提供的社交方法和广告去寻找应用。所以今年Facebook便发布了App Center，让开发者能够在此发行他们的Facebook应用。与其它商店不同的是，这里陈列的是面向于Facebook平台的应用，所以这些应用都必须具有一些突出特征，同时Facebook还会提供给开发者大量参数，帮助他们明确谁在玩自己的游戏。同时该商店还计划使用一次性收费模式，这是当前Facebook未曾使用过新模式。

Steam(from gamesindustry)

（最近发布的Steam平台上的Greenlight系统饱受争议，即对每个项目收取100美元去削减其不必要的内容。）

Gamersgate——PC商店，并且不像其它商店那样要求安装分销系统。包含了大量的独立和主流游戏，并且设有推荐页面。这一商店的突出之处便在于其Blue Coins忠诚系统，让用户能够因为进行某些社区行为而获得奖励——这的确是一个很棒的主意。你需要适应这一系统，并且可以自行决定是否为游戏添加DRM。该商店中的开发者储存界面也非常出色，让你能够轻松地为竞争者和评论者创建自由的密钥。我们便非常满意该市场的规模及其销售水平。

GOG.com——另外一个以玩家为核心的商店。但是作为一个封闭式引导空间，并且只提供有限的发行槽，这并不是开发者的最佳选择平台——尽管它拥有强大的玩家支持。GOG一直都在突显自己以玩家为中心的非DRM内容和分销系统。

Google Play（Android Market）——市场上的大量Android设备意味着该商店必须突出售后退款功能。出色的开发者界面让开发者能够即时了解自己的游戏销量（但同时也包含了许多用户信息，如地址）。现在他们也不再免费提供给评论者付费游戏样本了，因为很多人对此表示很无语。与App Store一样，这里也是基于前馈回路模式，即存在着大量的运气元素。谷歌采取了各种措施去完善该商店并取得了巨大的进展，但是却仍需要继续努力。尽管因为Android系统能够支持多种设备而导致该商店遇到了各种问题和困境，但是极快的增长速度和更新时间也向开发者证明了这是一个非常重要的平台。

Indievania——独立运行且侧重推行独立内容的商店，主要销售来自独立开发者Alien Trap所开发的免费DRM内容。与其它商店不同的是，该网站将把全部收益都交给开发者，而自己则是通过开发者的投资赚钱。其商店布局非常明朗，基于设计为用户清楚地呈现出独立游戏的标题和排名，并主要面向PC，Mac和Linux推广游戏。

英特尔的AppUp——能够帮助开发者轻松地进行推广的PC商店，支持综合内容。开发者能够很轻松地进入这一商店，并同时能够轻松地进入PC领域。尽管该商店的安装用户还不多，但是英特尔表示他们将始终致力于该平台的发展，在将其推向PC市场后最近他们又进入了手机领域，并获得了巨大的成功。这是与游戏商店不同的应用商店，也就是我们不只能够在这一商店中看到各种游戏；并且它也支持者免费游戏和可下载游戏内容。在此我们的游戏取得了比预期更好的销售，但是当我们的《克苏鲁的召唤-失落之地》进入了该系统的“最佳应用”前馈部分时，我们发现游戏的最初发行受到了英特尔市场营销的大力支持。

微软的XBLA——这是Xbox 360的数字商店，即用户可以使用Microsoft Points在此购买大量的游戏，并且有许多忠实用户只会在此或到实体店购买新游戏。该商店同时突出了主流游戏和独立游戏，如《超级食肉男孩》，《Limbo》和《Fez》（后者通过游戏更新而删除了一些漏洞并进入一个有利的宣传队列）。Team Meat在《Indie Game: The Movie》便特别强调了新发行游戏的商店可见性有多重要，以此明确了小型开发者的定位价值。

XboxLive(from gamesindustry)

Xbox Live Arcade平台上的一些热门游戏，如《Limbo》，《时空幻境》，《特技摩托HD》以及《Deadlight》。

Sony Entertainment Network（PSN）——与Xbox一起作为唯一的PS3数字分销渠道，也就意味着它拥有大批忠实的用户。准入障碍越高也就意味着开发者越难进入该商店，但同时也意味着他们在此所面临的竞争也较少。考虑到索尼所设定的条条框框，游戏在这里的移植总是比其它商店来得复杂。与XBLA一样这主要体现在更新过程中，即受到同样的审查和（潜在）成本的影响。该商店设计本身便经历了较长的发展过程，即在最初的版本中用户只能够看到游戏的销售文本，并不能做出任何评价，导致玩家不能遵循有效的指引进行购买，但是现在该商店甚至已经添加了普遍的5颗星评价系统了。该商店是以A–Z字母顺序，游戏类型等方法进行排列，并且未设置任何排行榜单，不过它也拥有索尼自己的推荐系统。与PS3一样，这一商店也适用于PS Vita（游戏邦注：索尼发布的新一代次时代掌机）上，并且索尼已经向许多独立开发者推广了这一系统，如此他们便有可能迎来更多不同类型且具有实验性的内容。

Valve的Steam——很长一段时间以来它都被誉为最大的PC游戏商店，为许多独立和主流游戏开发者提供了广大的空间，并在商店设计和功能上具有自己的独特风格。基于以玩家为核心的方法，Steam获得了广大开发者和玩家的好评。这是一个非常优秀的系统，通过提供相关服务而诱导用户安装分销客户端，这些服务包括版本更新，用户生成内容与模组的整合，可下载内容以及大量用户支持信息。直到最近该商店的唯一缺陷才真正暴露出来，即黑盒式应用申请过程——-开发者申请进入该系统的唯一方法；在你提交申请后即使获得了否定的答案，你也不可能清楚原因。Steam则通过群众分包其选择过程，即基于最近刚发布的Greenlight系统，而巧妙地解决了这一问题。我们也是投入于Greenlight测试版中的开发者之一，并发现基于该系统我们可以很容易地跳到游戏页面（只需要文本，图像和视频），但是现该系统评判游戏并将其显示于主页的标准仍处于早期发展阶段。

（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）

Store Wars: Which is the right app store for you?

By Tomas Rawlings

The business side of our industry used to be a fairly simple, if a little insular, affair. Developers made games for publishers who sold them in shops. Job done. However just as technology enabled our industry to exist, it also inevitably grows to complicate it. The business side of our industry has blossomed into a complex ecosystem of developers, publishers, platforms, stores and much more. This means that while overall the industry is growing in size, it also means it is growing in complexity too. The struggle for shelf space in shops like GAME or Virgin Megastore has been replaced by an infinite digital shelf of bewildering choice. Ironically it is the very success of these digital stores that powers our future which is also creating a new set of challenges. As a developer I feel it’s key to understand the store wars that are raging around us and how we will either be players or pawns in its future.

First thing to note is that digital distribution is now very big business. You probably knew this, but just how big can be surprising. In a single quarter alone, Apple’s App Store raked in $1.9 billion in sales, making Apple’s 30per cent cut around $570 million. That means in total during 2012 Apple will probably take in around $8 billion from the App Store with its slice of this pie being around $2 billion. To put that figure in context EA is expected to earn around $4 or 5 billion in total this year over all platforms which means that Apple will be making half of what EA makes, just from its cut of the App Store alone.

It is little surprise that others want to get into the act. In the boardrooms of technology companies across the land executives have been pouring over Apple’s success and wondering how they too can grab a slice of the pie. We’ve seen a blooming of digital distribution sites; Intel’s AppUp, Facebook’s App Centre, Google’s re-branded Google Play and Sony’s rebranding of PSN into Sony Entertainment Network to name but a few. As well as the big players, there has also been lots of activity within more specialist gaming enterprises; Steam continues to grow with over 100 million registered users, of whom 40 million have spent hard cash on games. It’s not just the established players either, with Blitz Game’s IndieCity being one of the most recent entrants into the space. Then there is Microsoft and the growing unease over what it will (or won’t) do with Windows 8; we buy and sell games in interesting times.

Store Strategy

The money is only part of the power of such stores. A strong store also gives its owner lots of options for wider strategic distribution – when your platform has lots of great stuff that people want, it makes it attractive so users will install your client and/or buy your devices. A powerful store also gives you control of a space from where you can lever its audience to do other profitable things. For example, a store owner can choose to (or be paid to) promote certain apps, services or products that suit it. Go to Amazon’s webpage and you’ll see the Kindle promoted, the retailer using its store front to heavily promote its own hardware. From a biz-dev point of view this sort of horizontal integration makes total sense as once Amazon locks people in to the Kindle, the chances are they’ll then use the Kindle’s inbuilt store link to buy ebooks so cementing the relationship between the store and customer.

Its one thing to have a store, but store owners need to find ways to make their store stand out from the others. Each store seems to be trying to do this in different ways; platform specific stores such as Sony, Apple and Microsoft’s have the home advantage. For others on more open platforms they need to find other ways; AppUp makes buying software on the PC less risky as Intel test apps first (plus they allow partners such as PC World to both create and curate their own version of the AppUp store). GOG.com limits the number of titles it releases per week and so can curate the games on the system carefully. IndieCity makes a virtue of the indie scene avoiding the big hitters for smaller studios. Gamersgate does not require the client to install its games and also offers the Blue Coins loyalty system. Steam has an active community and its client makes installs, saves, DLC etc a much more seamless gamer-centric experience.

Community driven digital distribution service Desura.

This key strategic benefit from running a store is, I suspect, why there is the ongoing angst over Microsoft with Windows 8 and Surface. If Microsoft chooses to lock the system down into something akin to what Apple has done on iOS devices, it does give them much more control to shape the content as they see fit – but it also risks the backlash from exiting content providers. This is why it makes total sense to see the likes of Steam supporting Linux or any other open platform/console. If you are over-reliant on one system, it can all be good when things are going well – development is easier with fewer technical support needed and so on – but if the wind turns, it could be catastrophic for your business model. Remember what happened when Steve Jobs killed the cloned Mac business, a decision that made sense for Apple and killed the plans of companies like UMAX and Power Computing. (Are you listening, social gaming companies with all your eggs in a single Facebook basket?)

The Discoverability Menace

For Apple the ongoing app boom will only seem a good thing; with 300 apps per day being released, each one only adds to what the hardware can do. Given that hardware sales comprise over 50 per cent of Apple’s income, this iBoom is good for them. The lowering of the barriers to self-publishing has been key to this process, breaking the monopoly of bricks and mortar. The expansion of choice at a merry rate is currently not a problem for Apple because while individual apps may be getting less attention, the overall size of the audience is still growing as is the total number of apps downloaded and hence, so does its revenue.

The vast array of apps means that theoretically there is more choice for users but this is only to a point. Humans are notoriously bewildered by too much choice and can end up buying nothing for fear of getting the wrong thing. Stores are starting to tackle this, for example Gamersgate takes this issue very seriously as its CEO Theo Bergquist explains: “Discoverability is key to sell the right game to the right customer. Gamersgate has a history of extremely high conversion rates and this is something we’ve been working hard to solve. However, it’s kind of a trade secret for us but in general it’s a mix of the right content, good navigation on the site and recommendation functionality. ”

Within the jungle of choice, one weapon the store has is curation, as gamers tend to trust others to help guide them through complex multiplicities. Friends are the most common guide, but a store that is aligned to our thinking (either by human moderation or via mechanic intelligence) can earn our trust. Most stores have one form of curated featuring. If your game is in this spotlight, sales will follow but by its nature, only a few can enjoy its illumination. This is a key issue and the decisions of store owners can become key to the success of a developer. For example, getting featured by Apple, meant one developer received an increase in sales of 10,000 per cent. Yet only a tiny handful of the 600,000+ apps on the system can ever be featured, in part due to the design of the store. If getting featured is key to your marketing strategy then you either need a hotline to Apple or to have a re-think as 99% of apps will never bask in Apple’s reflective sheen.

By contrast, IndieCity takes a different approach, one that states that we’re the best judge of what we like, as Chris Swann, IndieCity lead remarks, “Just as with music everyone’s gaming tastes are unique, so in our view a single edited front page makes no sense. Instead we present each gamer with their own custom front page of the games in IndieCity, generated by their preferences compared to other people, combined with various other factors such as the ratings.”

GamersGate awards Blue Coins, a loyalty program for active users.

The choice to hand the power of curation to the user highlights the question about in whose interest is this power wielded? Theoretically it should be an optimum strategy between both the store owner and the user but this does not always work out. Where recommendations are weighted more towards the store’s business interests, it can end up not offering the gamer the sort of games they are interested in and will ultimately damage their trust.

Over the next few years you will see the store owners grapple with this issue. The current leader in this area is Steam. Its store design and features are excellent and recently, when Apple were spotted visiting Valve’s HQ, it sparked much buzz about a possible new console. However I wonder if it was not the design and operation of a store that was of much interest to Apple as anything else, after all Steam has been doing digital distribution for some time and is very good at it.

As they tackle discoverability, stores also need to look to future-proofing their offerings for the games and gaming trends of the future. Freemium is the next wave we’ll see on PlayStation and Xbox and the trend won’t end there. New platforms and models mean new opportunities, as Gamersgate’s Theo Bergquist explains, “Next is to grow Void the “play, don’t pay” service where gamers can play premium games for free as well as grow our indie [bundle] initiative Indiefort. We have some big plans for smart-TV but that’s too early to talk about.” I agree that the trends that will come to define gaming will be freemium (and variants), bundles and smart TVs, with the latter being another front in the store wars saga. Over the next few years we’ll see a rapid evolution in store design as well as operation and for developers, these changes will mean both opportunities and challenges.

The Developers Dilemma

So after all that store-centric talk, the question remains; which store(s) should you go with? Game theory might suggest that all of them would be your best bet, but in the real world where development and marketing resources are limited, this option is not going to necessarily pan out for you. From my own experience as an indie developer and my research these are my personal pros and cons of the different stores.

Amazon App Store – Amazon has been doing customer end work for a long time now and as you might expect, is pretty good at it. The Kindle has done and continues to do well for them and the Android-running Kindle Fire is also doing well. Until recently both the Amazon App Store and Kindle Fire had not been available in Europe, but now the former is and the latter I am sure will follow soon. Some developers have had problems with it and the IGDA has been public about it’s issues such as allowing developers to limit the devices a purchase will run on. However, we’ve found it relatively easy to get content onto and the returns have been reasonable given the limited scope it currently has. However it is still US-centric, paying you in dollars, so you lose money in the cheque conversion fees. However is it not currently as cluttered as the Google Play store, which gives you a degree of visibility.

Apple’s App Store – Currently the most valuable mobile market in terms of what users spend. Apple’s approval process can be a little unpredictable and takes around seven days to pass which can feel like an age for patches to fix issues. The store is a classic feed-forward loop in that once you are in the top charts, you tend to stay in the top. Which is great for the few and bad for the masses. Ultimately without luck, serious marketing muscle or getting featured, this is going to mean you’re in the 90%-ish of apps that do very little in the way of downloads and/or sales. They also only allow 50 review codes per version on the store, though this re-sets with each new version.

Indievania promises 100% of game revenues to the developer.

Blitz Game’s IndieCity – An open PC store in that all games submitted are in it, however you start in the ‘underground’ section and need to wait for the community to play and rate the game before it goes into the main store. Currently free of much curation or featuring it only has charts for new entries and the highest rated but at the moment it takes much less than the 30 per cent cut most other stores take. At present the user base is very small so sales will not be that great, but its openness and gamer-centric approach means there is lots of potential here, indeed the ‘gamer approved’ method of populating the main store was up and running at IndieCity long before Steam’s Greenlight. The store is expected to add more features this month.

Desura – An indie and mod community focused store, as well as a distribution means for some indie bundles too. Desura prides itself on its community and indie focused means it is very open to content from smaller developers. The site has a healthy number of users and developers have reported good sales on the platform. Though it is not as big as Steam, Desura offers games and mods for PC, Mac and Linux.

Facebook’s App Center – It was only a matter of time before Facebook realised that there was no central store of the vast array of apps it offered, meaning users tended to rely on social means or ads to find apps. So this year Facebook unveiled the App Center, where developers can place Facebook apps for people to find and install. Unlike other stores, its for Facebook apps, so has that key feature but is also interesting in the larger array of metrics they will offer developers so you can see who is using your games. It also plans to allow the sale of games for a one-off fee, opening an option that is not currently on Facebook.

Steam’s Greenlight launched recently with some controversy, charging $100 per project in an attempt to cut down on inappropriate content.

Gamersgate – A PC store that does not require a distribution system to be installed as many others do. Has a wide mixture of both indie and mainstream titles and has a curated features page, conducts sales and the like. One of the things that sets it apart is the Blue Coins loyalty system so that users earn rewards for community minded behaviour, which is a great idea. You do need to apply to be on the system but can choose whether or not to have DRM with your game. The developer store interface is also very good allowing you to easily create free keys for competitions, reviewers etc. We’ve found it a reasonably sized market and been pleased with the level of sales.

GOG.com – Another gamer-centric store. However as a closed curated space with only a limited number of release slots, it is not going to be there for all developers, though it has strong gamer support so if you do get in then expect your game to do well. GOG prides itself on the gamer-focused non-DRM content and system of distribution.

Google Play (was Android Market) – The wide variety of Android devices means that this has features like the users ability to get a refund after purchase. The developer interface is pretty good allowing you to see sales almost in realtime (but including seeing a lot of data from each customer, such as address, which I still can’t believe Google allows). Currently there is no way of giving reviewers free copies of a paid for game, which is annoying. Like the App Store, there is a strong lottery element here with the feed forward loops that mean the winners tend to take it all. Google is taking steps to improve the store and it has come a long way, but it still has work to do. Despite the problems and difficulties of supporting the vast array of devices, the continued growth rate of Android coupled with the rapid update time (normally only a couple of hours) mean it is a key platform.

Indievania – An indie-run, indie focused store that sells DRM free content developed by indie developers Alien Trap. Unlike most other stores, the site gives 100 per cent of the income to the developer, making its money via donations from gamers. It has a clean and cool storefront that showcases titles and champions its indie games via this design, offering games on PC, Mac and Linux.

Intel’s AppUp – A PC store that is pretty easy to develop for and with good support for integration. This is fairly easy to get onto and so a good route to get into the PC space. While currently the installed userbase is small, Intel says it remains committed to the platform and with its reach into the PC market and recent entry into the mobile space, this could really go places. It is also an app store as opposed to a games store, so does more than just games and does claim support for both free to play and DLC for titles. Our sales have been better than expected, but then we’ve got into the ‘top apps’ feedforward part of the system and also had a deal with Intel which saw the initial release of Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land on the system along with marketing support from Intel.

Microsoft’s XBLA – This is the Xbox 360′s digital store that has a huge range of games you can buy with Microsoft Points and a massive captive audience who can only come to you or a physical shop for new games. The store has featured both mainstream games as well as indie favourites such as Super Meat Boy, Limbo and Fez (though the latter got into a well publicised row over the cost/benefit of updating a game on the system to remove a few lesser bugs. The scene in Indie Game: The Movie where Team Meat stress about the newly launched game’s store visibility, clearly shows the value of placement to a small developer.

Some of Xbox Live Arcade’s biggest hits have been titles such as Limbo, Braid, Trials HD and Deadlight.

Sony Entertainment Network (was PSN) – As with Xbox, being the only PS3 digital distribution option means it too has a captive audience. The higher barrier to entry means it is harder to get in, but once in there is less competition. Given that games need to be ported at least, but also pass Sony’s own process in relation to what it is willing to allow, this is a much longer process then many other stores. As with XBLA this is also reflected in the update process which is subject to the same level of scrutiny and (potentially) cost. The store design itself has come on a long way since the first version, where you could only read sales text about a game and had no user reviews, so buying games was a bit of a stab in the dark, however is has now added the ubiquitous 5 star rating system. The store itself is ordered by A-Z and genre and a couple of other methods so no charts but it does have Sony’s own featuring system. As well as PS3, there is also the PS Vita and Sony has been making noises about getting more indie developers on its systems, which would be essential to getting the level of kooky and experimental content such a device would benefit from.

Valve’s Steam – Currently the largest PC games store by a long way that has done well for many indie and mainstream developers and is setting the bar in store design and features. Steam has been a huge success for both developers and players with its gamer-centric approach. The system is excellent and makes a virtue of the need to install a distribution client with an array of services such as updating version, incorporating users generated content and mods, DLC and extensive fan support. Until recently the only drawback was the backbox-like application process that was the only method for getting on to the system; you could apply and if you got a no, you’d never find out why. However Steam seems to have responded cleverly to this issue by removing one of the bottlenecks to its growing power by crowd-sourcing part of the selection process with their recently launched Greenlight. We were one of the developers on the Greenlight beta (you can see our game page here) and found it very easy to get a game page up (it only needs text, images and a video) but it is early days yet regarding how a game will be judged and appear on the main site.（source：gamesindustry）