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Sean Ryan谈Facebook游戏发展前景及趋势

发布时间:2012-09-29 17:39:10 Tags:,,,,

作者:Dean Takahashi

Sean Ryan于2011年1月加入Facebook,希望在此明确社交网站对于游戏的理解与诠释,并搞清楚游戏发行商是如何推动着Facebook成为世界上最大的游戏平台。他是Facebook游戏合作伙伴业务主管,负责将Facebook的策略传达给游戏公司,并宣传Facebook的各种战绩。在过去一个月时间里便有将近2亿3500万Facebook用户在玩游戏,而在一年前这一数值仅有3千多万。手机游戏已经成为了发展最快的一大业务,而Facebook则能够帮助手机游戏更轻松地突显于众多手机应用以及Facebook平台中。以下是Gamesbeat与Ryan的交谈内容:

Sean Ryan(from goabroad.sohu.com)

Sean Ryan(from goabroad.sohu.com)

最让我感兴趣的便是你们拥有大量的数据能够用于了解各种情况。你们是如何掌握这2亿3500万的玩家?你们根据这些数据得出了什么结论?

多样性便是一大关键。体现游戏类型的多样性至关重要,过去我们只拥有一至两种类型的游戏,而现在我们已经拥有了寻物解谜游戏,硬核游戏,街机游戏以及休闲游戏等类型。

其次便需要考虑到区域。如果你现在所面对的是中东市场,你会发现最受欢迎的是一款由中国开发商制作,土耳其发行商发行的游戏——《开心农场》,这款游戏真的是风靡了整个中东市场。但是在一两年前情况却不是这样的。那时候大多数美国开发商都还没有本土化游戏。这种趋势是从今年开始迅速上升,特别是在欧洲。如今全世界已经出现了许多注重本土化或区域化的游戏开发商了。甚至连美国开发商也将自己的游戏扩展到12或14种语言的版本。

最后便是平台。我们从最初只面向台式电脑游戏到现在已经开始涉及手机产品了。大量的iOS和Google Play商店中的畅销应用和游戏也都在使用我们的平台。这便是我们从去年开始便极力寻求的目标。而我们将继续在这领域中继续探索着,努力创造出能够迎合全世界各种玩家的多种游戏。

回顾Facebook的游戏发展史你有何想法?似乎“吸血鬼”类和“僵尸”类游戏已经离我们越来越远了?

我们前几天刚在讨论这一话题。如今我们可以看到台式电脑上的3D游戏正在逐渐崛起(不管是基于Unity还是Flash 11)。我进入这个领域还不到2年,但是当我们回顾4年前的游戏领域,会发现那时候获得“年度社交游戏”的几乎都是文字类游戏,如“吸血鬼”类游戏,“犯罪集团”游戏或“考验大脑”类游戏。而现在摆在我们眼前的则是《FarmVille 2》以及《Jet Set Secret》。它们都拥有较庞大的故事情节,优秀的音乐设置以及具有深度的游戏玩法。它们便是我心目中真正的成熟游戏。除此之外我们也能够在它们身上看到更多多样性元素,我想这应该过去四年里这一领域中最棒的主题。

我们最近刚与Blake Commagere谈论了他的最新初创公司。他表示很开心能够看到许多事物的变化,但同时也惋惜一些未曾发生多大改变的事物。虚拟商品仍然是Facebook游戏的主要盈利手段。而他希望能够创造出一种全新的商业模式,如植入性营销,而这也是他现在所致力的工作。

我们在几个月前刚刚推出了订阅式服务,这也得到了我们的合作者的支持。但是我们也发现,当着眼于全世界的台式电脑业务和现在的手机业务时,虚拟商品或其它类型的免费模式仍然是推动用户消费的最有效方式。

过去我们还推出了音乐订阅服务,即Rhapsody。一个月收费15美元。但是根据这些天的观察,我们发现有将近三分之一的用户从未使用过这一服务,并最终取消了订阅。而另有三分之一的用户一天24小时都在运行这一服务,剩下的三分之一则是断断续续进行使用。

比起订阅服务,虚拟商品的优势在于它能够有效地协调用户对于游戏的兴趣和花钱意愿。这是一种很棒的匹配方式。如果我一周只想玩一两个小时的游戏,我便不需要为游戏花钱。而如果是在像Kixeye的《战争指挥官》这类型游戏(游戏邦注:也就是说玩家大多为硬核游戏玩家)中,那么比起订阅或购买包装产品,玩家总是会投入更多钱于游戏中。

但是我也同意Blaske的看法,即我不认为这是世界上唯一的盈利模式。在强调多样性的同时,我也认为订阅服务对于某些游戏(如象棋)来说的确是一种有效的模式。肯定没人想把象棋变成一种销售虚拟商品的游戏。我们并不是依照这一方法去创造游戏。游戏同样也可以具有广告支持模式,菜单式付费模式或订阅模式。我想植入性营销便是一种很有趣的想法。尽管现在这一模式还未能挣得较多利益,但是可以肯定的是Blake的确是位人才。我们将期待着越来越多人能够想出更多面向不同类型用户和游戏的不同盈利模式。

世界上并不是只存在一种游戏类型或盈利模式。我们在亚洲市场以及世界上的其它地方都会发现,只要开发商能够准确地基于免费商业模式去创造游戏,他们便能够获得巨大的利益。特别是在手机领域。着眼于iOS的前25款畅销游戏,我们会发现大多数游戏都属于免费游戏。但是1年前却不是这种情况。幸运的是这些游戏大多数(社交游戏)都将Facebook当成了主要平台。而这一点对我们来说非常重要。

Sean Ryan(from venturebeat)

Sean Ryan(from venturebeat)

最近你都在忙些什么?当你与其它游戏公司在谈论Facebook游戏时你都会说些什么?

去年我们既扩展了团队也增加了游戏投资,即招聘了更多新员工(确切地说是过去的6个月时间里)。我们是在全球范围内进行扩展,如此才能让有效地接触到各个不同区域的开发者,像亚太地区,欧洲,以及现在的中东和拉美等地。而我现在的主要任务便是向各种合作者解释我们的平台能够带给他们何种好处。我们将接收开发者对于我们平台的种种反馈,并为今后六个月的发展制定开发计划。开发商们总是会为我们能够创造出更棒的平台而提供各种反馈信息,包括“如果你们能够在沙特阿拉伯市场也添加这些付费系统,我们便会更乐意接受这一平台”或者“如果你们能够呈现出全新的商店类型,我们便会更喜欢这一平台”等等。

而过去12个月里我们接收到最多的反馈都是关于“在手机领域你们能够为我们做些什么?”这也是为什么现在的我们会如此迫切地部署手机平台的主要原因。除此之外我们仍将向开发者们更好地呈现出这一快速发展的平台。“我们即将进行更大的完善。如此你们便能够更好地利用这一平台。”

不知道你们是否会花大量时间向用户证明Zynga并非唯一能在Facebook上取得成功的公司?然后说服他们Facebook Credits是一个很棒的理念。这是否占据着你的绝大部分的工作时间?

不管何时做出政策改变,我们团队的主要目标始终是向开发者证明我们的平台对他们业务的重要影响。我们希望通过这种方法去帮助他们。每一天我们都在与世界各地的平台竞争着,并努力争取来自开发者的更多资源分配。我们总是会花大量时间向他们解释我们的平台能够帮助他们创造出更棒的游戏。除了强调游戏本身,他们还能够更好地与我们整合在一起,从而创造出更成功的游戏体验。

Song Pop(from techcrunch.com)

Song Pop(from techcrunch.com)

就像我们在《Song Pop》这款优秀的游戏上便投入了大量的时间。比起其它游戏,它更有效地使用了我们的社交渠道(不管是在台式电脑还是手机平台上)。所以这便是一款非常值得合作的游戏。而问题则在于,你该如何将各种资源应用于你的游戏中。如果你只想创造手机游戏,我们绝对支持。问题便是关于如何使用我们的手机平台,特别是当我们整合了iOS 6并公布了新的SDK(更加强大)时。你必须想办法去适应这种新的改变,对你来说这便是利益所在。而如果你想要基于Canvas开发游戏,这里也存在这种业务的利益。特别是随着App Center的发展,玩家可以更加轻松地在Facebook上找到自己想要的游戏。

这并不是关于你需要将多少信息整合到渠道中。我们可以帮助你突显游戏。这是我们作为发现引擎的本职工作。不管是面向台式电脑还是手机,我们都扮演着发现和发行引擎的角色。所以我们会投入大量的时间去做好这些工作。而推动你的游戏获得App Center推荐的最佳方法便是确保你能够有效地使用我们的渠道。

你认为现在哪种类型的游戏才是发展趋势?

我希望看到更多不同类型的游戏。到今年底可能会出现10至20款寻物解谜类游戏。去年甚至还未出现这类型的游戏(在社交平台上)。我并未预见街机游戏或休闲游戏的崛起。除此之外也还有《Bubble Shooters》以及《Candy Crushes》这类型轻量级游戏。开发者也想出了各种各样的盈利方法,包括提供升级和奖金等。

我们同样也投入大量时间去发展博彩类游戏——对于我们来说这是再自然不过的举措了,因为这是一种极具社交性的游戏类型。而在今后6至12个月时间里我们将大力发展硬核和中核游戏。这并不是说其它游戏不有趣,只是我们认为Facebook可以与开发商们一起带给玩家更强大的游戏体验。当Unity和Flash 11的使用越来越普及时,我们便能够真正呈现出最丰富的游戏体验了。

能否更详细地解释下这两种工具?Flash 11.4是否能够帮助开发者创造出全新类型的游戏?

是这样的。Flash 11和Unity都将引进3D元素。它们能够让你的软件更好地利用图像处理单位,也就意味着你能够在网页游戏中添加更丰富的图像。《FarmVille 2》便是一个很好的例子,它拥有我们之前从未看过的3D效果。腾讯的《Robot Rising》也是一款非常出色的新游戏(游戏邦注:机甲战士爆炸类游戏)。

farmville-2(from blog.games.com)

farmville-2(from blog.games.com)

除了图像,这两种工具也将很大程度地影响着游戏的故事情节。主要是关于声音。虽然人们总是会忘记声音的功效,但是不得不承认的是这便是Kixeye,Plarium(游戏邦注:来自以色列的游戏公司)以及像Eruptive Games等小型游戏工作室获得成功的主要元素。不知道你是否玩过《Citizen Grim》,这是一款非常优秀的僵尸射击类游戏。也是我们对于之后游戏发展趋势的期许。之前玩家只能通过下载去玩这些游戏,但是现在他们也能够在网页上体验游戏乐趣了。

仔细观察的话你会发现中国市场已经远离了点击式或two-gig客户端,而转向轻量级式客户端,也就是网页游戏。Facebook亦是如此。

你认为2D游戏和3D游戏间会发生何种变化?现在的iOS平台已经能够有效地支持3D图像,但是似乎2D游戏仍然占据着较大的比例。

的确。许多公司都对此问题展开各种争辩。而不只是iOS,在主机平台上亦是如此。2D游戏能够提供给玩家非常棒的体验,就像《宝石迷阵闪电战》或《Song Pop》。这些游戏如果换成3D模式还不一定能够有这般好成绩。但是话虽如此,用户的期望总是会随着时间的发展不断抬高,他们将希望看到更多高质量的游戏体验。而基于3D模式,开发者可以将更多新游戏带向Facebook,如角色扮演游戏,MMO,即时策略游戏(像《战争指挥官》)等。如此便能够为玩家提供更加丰富的游戏体验。

创造2D游戏虽然简单,但却能够有效地吸引广泛的用户群体。所以这并不是一种非此即彼的选择,也不是说所有的内容都必须倾向于3D。直到最近,Facebook上的大多数游戏仍属于2D游戏,或带有等距2D视角的2.5D游戏。而3D游戏也逐渐涌现。3D游戏的制作成本相对较高,因为它拥有更加丰富的图像与体验,但与此同时它也能够提供更具有沉浸式的游戏体验。玩家们将能够看到更多优秀的3D第一人称射击游戏的出现——例如最近刚发行的《UberStrike》。我们将能够在桌面Facebook上看到更多一两年前还未曾出现的优秀的第一人称射击游戏。(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

The Facebook game platform: Expanding into mobile, the Middle East, and all game categories (interview)

By Dean Takahashi

Sean Ryan joined Facebook in January, 2011, in order to make sure that the social network understood the games and game publishers that were making Facebook into one of the world’s largest gaming platforms. He is the director of game partnerships at Facebook and has to communicate Facebook’s platform strategy for game companies and tell the broader story about one of Facebook’s most successful application categories. About 235 million of Facebook’s members have played a game in the past month, about 30 million more than a year ago. Mobile gaming has become one of the fastest-growing sectors of the business and Facebook is making it easier for mobile games to get discovered within its mobile app and on Facebook itself.

Here’s part one of our edited interview with Ryan. Part two runs tomorrow.

GamesBeat: What’s interesting to me about you guys is that you have so much data that you can know everything, right? What do you know about these 235 million players? When you look at all this data, what do you conclude?

Sean Ryan: A key theme is diversity. Diversity in genres of games, where we used to have only one or two genres. Now we have hidden-object games, core games, arcade games, and casual games.

Second is regions. If you look in the Middle East right now, the top game there is this Chinese-made,Turkish-published game called Happy Farm, which is just killing it in the Middle East. We didn’t see that a year or two ago. We saw mostly U.S. developers with non-localized games. This year we’ve seen a rise, particularly in Europe, but around the world, of local or regional developers. Even the U.S. developers have, in many cases, localized their games into 12 or 14 languages.

And then finally platforms. We’ve gone from a desktop-only product to having a mobile platform product. The majority of the top apps and games in the iOS and Google Play stores are using our platform. That’s the general theme we look at from last year. We’ll continue to see that going forward as we try to make sure we have a range of games for a range of players from around the world.

GamesBeat: How do you look back on Facebook gaming history? It seems like the Vampires and the Zombies games are pretty far behind us?

Ryan: Yeah. We were talking about that in the last couple of days. As we see the rise of 3D games on the desktop, whether it’s Unity or Flash 11… I’ve only been here a little less than two years. But if you look back at four years ago, the games that won Social Game of the Year were almost simple word-based games. The vampires or the mobsters or the Big Brain games. Now I look at FarmVille 2 or Jet Set Secret. They’re pretty rich games. There are bigger storylines, better music, deeper gameplay. They’re becoming full-fledged games in a way that I think is compelling. And they’re a much more diverse set of games. I think that’s the greater theme over the last four years.

GamesBeat: I just spoke recently to Blake Commagere about his new startup. He was saying it was interesting how much things have changed, but also how little some other things have changed. Virtual goods are still such a gigantic part of monetizing games on Facebook. He wants to develop new business models, like product placement, which is what he’s doing now.

Ryan: We launched subscriptions a few months ago. That’s being gradually adopted by a set of our partners. But what we’ve found, if you look around the world at both the desktop business and now the mobile business, is that virtual goods or some type of freemium model tend to be the most efficient way to drive revenue from users.

I used to run a music subscription service called Rhapsody. It was about $15 dollars a month. What we would see in those days was that about a third of our users never used it, so they were going to cancel. About a third of our users appeared to run it 24 hours a day. And then a third of our users used it intermittently.

The advantage of virtual goods, versus subscription, is that it tends to match how interested you are in the game and how much you’re willing to either spend time or spend money. That’s often a better match. If I’m going to want to play the game for an hour or two a week, I never have to spend any money. On the other hand, if I really want to get into it, with something like Kixeye’s War Commander games, where you have some really hardcore users…. They end up spending more money than a subscription or a package product might cost.

But I agree with Blake in that I don’t think it’s the only revenue model in the world. Along that diversity theme that I keep going back to, I would say subscriptions are a valid model for a section of games, like chess. You don’t really want to make chess into a virtual goods game. It’s not the way the game is built. They can have advertising-supported models or a la carte paid models or subscription models. Product placement will be interesting. We haven’t seen enough revenue generated from that model yet, but Blake’s a talented guy. I think we’ll continue to see people looking at different types of revenue models for different types of users and different types of games.

That’s what I keep going back to. It’s not just one type of game or one type of revenue model. What we’ve seen in Asia and other parts of the world is that when you build a game correctly around a freemium business model, it can be quite a profitable enterprise. We see that in mobile. When you look at the top 25 grossing games on iOS, in general, the majority of them now are freemium games. That wasn’t true a year ago. And luckily the majority of them, if they’re social games, are using Facebook as their primary login. That’s working well for us.

GamesBeat: What is your job like these days? What are you talking to game companies about when it comes to games on Facebook?

Ryan: [laughing] Depends on the week sometimes. We’ve expanded my team and our investment in gaming overall in the last year. A lot of it’s about hiring, or it has been for the last six months. That’s on a global basis, as we spread around the world making sure we have the right set of developers for different regions, like Asia-Pacific and Europe and now the Middle East and Latin America. Most of what we do is work with a wide set of partners to explain to them what’s coming down the pipe from the platform. We get their feedback on how we can improve the platform, as we look at our product development roadmap for the next six months. That could be things like, “Hey, we’d really like it if you added these payment systems in Saudi Arabia.” It could be, “Hey, it’d be nice if you had new types of stories that showed up in the feed that we’ve started to deploy….” Those are the types of feedback we get from developers about how we can be a better game platform.

Certainly the last 12 months have been all about, “What can you do for us on mobile?” That’s why deploying the mobile platform has been such a large focus for us. In addition, we try to do a better job of explaining to them what is still a pretty fast-moving platform. “These are the next set of improvements coming. Here’s how you can take advantage of them.”

GamesBeat: I don’t know if you had to spend much time on…convincing them that Zynga was not the only company that could be successful on Facebook? And then convincing them that Facebook Credits were a good idea. Was there a period of time where that was a big part of your job?

Ryan: Whenever we make policy changes, part of my team’s goal is to make sure that we explain that to developers and tell them how it’ll affect their business. We want to help them through that. Every day we compete in the world of platform and how our developers allocate resources. We spend a lot of time explaining to them how they can make better games. Not so much on the level of the game itself, but how they can integrate better with us, so that they can have a more successful experience.

We spend a lot of time with, for example, Song Pop, which is a wonderful game. They use our social channels, both on desktop and mobile, better than almost anybody. They’ve been wonderful to work with. They’re incredibly responsive, as are a lot of developers. So the question is, where should you be spending your resources in games? If you want to be mobile only, we absolutely support that. Here’s how to use our mobile platform, especially now that we’ve announced the integration with iOS 6 and our new SDK, which is quite powerful. Here’s why you should adopt that. Here are the benefits. If you want to be on Canvas, just Canvas to desktop, here’s the benefits of that business. Especially with the rise of App Center, which is increasingly how people find games on Facebook.

It’s not just about how many messages you send into the channel. We can help your game be discovered. That’s what we are, a discovery engine. We’re a discovery and distribution engine for both desktop and mobile. So we spend a fair amount of time on that. The best way to be featured in App Center, the best way to make sure you’re using our channels correctly.

GamesBeat: What do you think of the trends in the genres right now?

Ryan: When I came here, that was the one thing I really wanted. I wanted to see a greater diversity of games. The hidden-object games alone, there were probably 10 or 20 by the end of the year. That’s a category that didn’t exist a year before [on social]. I didn’t foresee the rise of arcade and casual. The Bubble Shooters, the Candy Crushes, that type of lighter-weight game. The developers are coming up with great ways to monetize it: power-ups and bonuses.

We certainly spent a fair amount of time on the rise of casino, which is a natural for us. It’s a very social genre. The next six to 12 months, it’s about core and mid-core. Not because the other genres aren’t good, but when we look at openings on the platform where we think we can deliver a powerful experience alongside our developers…. As we start to see Unity and Flash 11 become more prevalent, we can have a really rich gaming experience.

GamesBeat: Can you explain both of those a bit more? Flash 11.4 is something that will enable new kinds of games.

Ryan: Sure. Flash 11 introduces 3D. So does Unity. Both of those enable the software to tap the graphics processing unit, which means you can get far richer graphics in a web-based game than you could before. FarmVille 2 is a great example. It has 3D effects that you wouldn’t see before. You look at Robot Rising from Tencent, which is a great new game, a MechWarrior-style blow-things-up game.

It’s not just about graphics, though. It’s about storyline. It’s about sound. People forget about sound sometimes. But that’s what we’re seeing now with the success of Kixeye, the success of Plarium in Israel, and some of these smaller studios like Eruptive Games. They’re a small studio out of Vancouver. If you haven’t played Citizen Grim, it is a wonderful game. It’s a zombie shoot-’em-up. You just run around and kill everything, and it is so much fun. That’s where we’re going to see the next wave of richer games. Previously, you could only get those through a large download. Now you can get them in a web-based experience.

You’re seeing this in China already. China is moving away from the very thick client, a two-gig client, to a lighter-weight, thinner client, meaning a web-based game. We’re seeing that here in Facebook as well.

GamesBeat: What do you think is going to happen between 2D games and 3D games? On iOS now, they have pretty good 3D graphics capability, but it still seems like 2D games are the vast majority.

Ryan: Yeah. I went through this debate many other times at many other companies. I remember this on the console. 2D games can be great experiences, like Bejeweled Blitz or Song Pop. These aren’t necessarily better as a 3D game. But that being said, user expectations tend to go up over time as far as the quality of experience they’re looking for. What we’ll see in 3D, which will enable to rise of new games on Facebook — the role-playing games, the MMOs, the realtime strategy games like War Commander and others…. You get a richer experience. It’s suited to those types of games.

2D games are simpler to build, and in many cases appeal to a wide set of users. So it’s not an either-or. It’s not “everything goes to 3D” at all. But until very recently, on Facebook we’ve mostly had 2D games, or 2.5D games with an isometric 2D view. What we’re seeing now is the addition of 3D games. Those can be more expensive to make, because the graphics are richer and the overall experience can be richer, but they provide a more immersive experience. I think you’re going to see some great first-person shooters. If you haven’t seen UberStrike, which was recently revamped and relaunched…. You will see great first-person shooters on desktop Facebook that we didn’t see a year or two years ago.(source:venturebeat)


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