作者：Matthew Handrahan

Jason Avent曾是迪士尼Black Rock Studios主力人物，后来成立iOS工作室Boss Alien，他在不足18个月的时间中就从不幸的AAA领域华丽转身。Boss Alien的首款游戏《CSR Racing》发布首个周末下载量超过250万次，一个月收益超过1200万美元，并且这还是一款免费增值游戏。

Avent曾有15年从事AAA游戏开发工作，还曾担任Pure游戏总监，他在最近的伦敦免费增值游戏峰会上为观众解读了《CSR Racing》的相关数据，该游戏的用户人气极高。在主机游戏领域，200万用户就已经算是一种成功，而对于免费增值游戏而言，这不过是个体面的开端而已。

他表示“关于这款游戏的总体用户数据，我还不能公布，但它真的很不寻常。它比我之前从事项目的所有用户规模总和还要庞大，这里已经存在一个惊人的市场，如果移动设备价格降低，这个市场还会继续扩大。”

这次峰会上不少人都在讨论开发免费增值游戏的不同之处，而Avent认为其与零售游戏存在相似性的看法则尤为令人印象深刻。据其所称，像《CSR Racing》这种免费增值游戏的紧凑、粘性玩法循环，以及持续的奖励等框架，实际上与许多零售游戏并无差别。唯一区别在于盈利方式，但这并不一定需要改变游戏设计。

Avent在采访中提到，“这其中的设计原则是相同的，我做为AAA游戏开发者所得的经验就是，你必须拥有创意，你必须使用明智方法行事。你从这两种游戏开发中可收获相同的经验，只是环境不同罢了。”

CSR Racing(from itunes.apple.com)

与《飞驰竞速》和《Gran Turismo》一样，《CSR Racing》的成功得益于其核心玩法，产品价值以及展示真实汽车的特点。但与这两款游戏不同的是，玩家在此无需付费就可以完成游戏，接触几乎任何一款汽车。但这并无法阻止游戏遭遇负面评论的现象，有些用户给予了一颗星的评价。即使是现在，Avent也无法解释为何会出现这种情况，并将其称为行业剧变中的一种“排外情绪”。

重要的是，这些持有异议的声音只是极少数群体。目前，《CSR Racing》收到5000个一颗星评价，但却有30万以上的五星评价。尽管传统观念认为，出现不快的用户并不是什么好事，但他们却可以让Avent明白一件重要的事情——游戏的价格结构很可行。

他称“如果有些人没有抱怨，那说明游戏对它们来说太廉价了。这一点很容易理解。如果你随机挑选一些人，就会发现有些人比其他人更阔绰，有些人更想得到你的产品，有些人会抱怨，有些人会直言自己的需求。”

“免费意味着自由……你必须能够完成游戏，但这并不意味着你有能力完成游戏，你不可能在不付费的情况下享有一切好处。”

而这对手头拮据的玩家来说，他们就需要投入大量时间通关。与多数免费增值游戏一样，《CSR Racing》也有一个“能量”机制，即你每隔两小时都需要为汽车加油。这个策略也是免费增值模式备受争议的关键点，但Avent认为这种模式强化了游戏玩法，并最终会让产品受益。对玩家来说，短暂的间歇更易容忍，这让他们更有时间通过口头传播向他人推荐游戏。

在访谈过程中，Avent频频提到人们对免费增值模式的恐惧和观望态度。他称自己曾经也怀疑这一模式的可行性，但创立Boss Alien的经历加深了他更了解该模式未来发展前景。他以二手车推销员来打比方，如果说现在有些免费增值游戏还很粗糙，那是因为我们这个行业才刚了解如何让这一模式可行，未来人们还将使用更复杂的技术，根据玩家行为来制作盈利内容，使其成为游戏体验中一个更为紧凑的环节。

他称“我们还处于摸索阶段，我们尝试一切方式，所以难免产生一些很粗糙的内容。而我们既然可以控制玩家所处的游戏环境，就没有理由不能够根据他们之前的游戏体验出售内容。这种做法感觉会更为自然，但其本质是相同的。从许多方面来看，这实际上更邪恶，因为它更注重利用心理操纵技巧，但它对你确实有帮助。”

Avent确实认同开发免费增值游戏的心理学技巧，但他认为这一模式不应该局限于多人射击游戏以及农场模拟游戏，它还适用于更广泛的游戏题材。例如具有极高制作价值《神秘海域》等电影式动作游戏就可以采用这一模式。

在Avent看来，即使是《暴雨》这种故事导向型游戏也可以采用免费模式并由此盈利，毕竟它所瞄准的是愿意为游戏掏钱的硬核玩家群体。

他表示“这种游戏并不需要向《FarmVille》看齐，基于故事的游戏采用这一模式的方法略有不同，我也并不认为章节式内容会与此相同，但如果你确信游戏本身已经足够优秀，你就可以让用户免费通关完成游戏。但如果要体验完整的游戏，就要付费，另外还可以采用其他盈利方式，这样你就可以免费发布《神秘海域4》。这需要大量的信心和勇气，但你确实可以免费发布游戏。”

“让我们以《使命召唤4》为例，因为它是这一代主机中的典型游戏。你在其中可享受长达6小时的免费战役游戏体验，如果你想换个不同的故事视角，你就得付费；如果你想解琐拥有无限弹药的所有枪支，你也要付费。你可以在合作或多人模式中采用这种做法，这只是一个信心的问题。”

“我知道开发商会担心，像《神秘海域》这种5000万美元的大手笔投入，若采用免费模式究竟能否收回成本。但你得克服这种恐惧心理。现在单款免费增值游戏创收1亿美元已经不再是传说，并且等到人人都有一部智能手机时，这个市场的潜力还会更大。”

“如果你的免费增值模式对了，你就可以创造与此相同甚至更多的收益，我们有理由相信所有游戏都可以采用免费模式。”

不过Avent也指出主机平台是个例外。与主机平台相比，Facebook、PC、iOS和Android都是相对开放的平台，这是它们能够让免费增值游戏吸引大规模玩家的核心要素。在这种环境中，免费增值模式版本的《天际》也许具有可行性，但其主机版本却未必成功。如果免费增值模式能够像Avent所设想的那样快速发展，微软和索尼也许就应该考虑转变其平台内容的运营模式。

“如果每个拥有游戏主机设备的玩家都购买了《天际》，那么这款游戏的销量有多少？1500万份？这对于iPhone和iPad平台来说并不是什么大数目。而开发商也很难在游戏主机平台上为其引入免费增值模式，这么小的市场也不足以说服开发商慷慨免费发布游戏。”（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）

Giving It Away: Boss Alien And The Future Of Free-to-Play

By Matthew Handrahan

Boss Alien

Jason Avent seems happy, and that’s hardly surprising. As one of the more high-profile refugees from Disney’s Black Rock Studios and, since then, founder of the iOS developer Boss Alien, he has negotiated a path from AAA tragedy to a very modern kind of success in less than 18 months. Boss Alien’s first game, CSR Racing, was downloaded 2.5 million times in its first weekend, generating more than $12 million in revenue within a month. And it was free.

After 15 years in AAA development, most recently as game director on Pure, Avent has found his greatest success without charging a single penny. As he reads CSR Racing’s figures to the attentive crowd of the London Free-To-Play Summit, it’s clear that the sheer scale of the game’s popularity is still difficult to comprehend. On console attracting two million customers is considered a major success; in free-to-play it’s no more than a decent start.

“The overall number of [CSR Racing] users now, I can’t give it away, but it’s just phenomenal. Bigger than anything I’ve ever worked on all added up together, and then some,” he says. ” The addressable market that’s out there is mind-boggling already, and it’s only going to grow once the devices get cheaper.”

In a day packed with talks describing the ways in which free-to-play development is different, Avent’s is notable for openly addressing the similarities. The structure of free-to-play games like CSR Racing, he argues, with their tight, engaging gameplay loop and persistent drip of rewards, are essentially the same as any number of retail releases. The difference is the need to monetise, but that doesn’t have to change the game’s design.

“The principles are the same, and that’s the key benefit of my experience as a AAA developer,” Avent says when we meet after his talk. “You do have to be creative, and you do have to be clever about the way you do things. The stuff you’ve learned is the same but in a different context.”

“The overall number of CSR Racing users now is just phenomenal; bigger than anything I’ve ever worked on all added up together, and then some”

Like Forza or Gran Turismo, CSR Racing’s success is built on its core gameplay, its production values, and the fact that it features real cars. Unlike Forza or Gran Turismo, players can finish the game and access almost every vehicle without paying a penny, but that didn’t prevent a wave of negative reviews; thousands of one-star ratings featuring choice phrases like “Freemium Hell”. Even now, Avent finds the frustration difficult to comprehend, describing it as a form of “xenophobia” caused by the rapid changes in the industry.

More importantly, the dissenting voices are the extreme minority. So far, CSR Racing has received 5000 one-star ratings, but its five-star reviews are comfortably north of 300,000. Conventional wisdom indicates that unhappy customers are always a bad thing, but they tell Avent something very important about the game’s pricing structure: it works.

“If some people aren’t complaining, it’s too cheap,” he says. “It makes sense. If you take a selection of people, some are going to have more money than others, some are going to want your products more than others. Some are going to complain, and some are going to be very vocal.

“Free means free… You need to be able to finish the game, but by that I don’t mean be able to complete the game. You can’t have everything if you don’t pay.”

What that generally means for the frugal gamer is a greater investment of time. As with many free-to-play games, CSR Racing features an ‘energy’ mechanic in the form of your vehicle’s thirsty gas-tank, which refills every two hours. This ubiquitous tactic is a focal point for the debate around the model, but Avent believes it enforces a pattern of play that ultimately benefits his product.

For the player, short bursts are more tolerable over a longer period, giving them more time to evangelise the game via the free-to-play world’s most important form of advertising: personal recommendations.

“You could give Uncharted 4 away. It would take a massive amount of confidence, but you could give it away”

During our conversation, Avent frequently identifies with the common fears and reservations around free-to-play. He was once a sceptic, but his experience with Boss Alien has given him an insight into how far the model could eventually spread. If some freemium games are crude in their methods now – Avent compares them to used car salesman – that only reflects the industry’s understanding of how to make the model work. Looking forward, Avent sees sophistcated techniques that use player behaviour to make monetised content a more coherent part of the experience.

“We’re just learning at the moment,” he says. “We’re trying everything, and as a result I think it can come across as quite crude. Because we can control the universe the player is in, there’s no reason why we can’t start selling to you based on your previous experience, and the experience of others who have followed a similar path that you have. It feels much more natural, but it’s the same thing. In many ways, actually, it’s more evil, because it’s more psychologically manipulative. But it helps you.”

Avent clearly relishes the psychology of free-to-play development, but he believes that the model could already fit a much broader cross-section of the industry’s output. It doesn’t need to be limited to multiplayer shooters and farming sims. Cinematic action games with lavish production values like Uncharted could employ the model right now. In Avent’s view, even a story-driven curio like Heavy Rain could be given away for free and turn a profit, not least because it’s aimed at hardcore players who are used to paying for their hobby.

“It doesn’t have to be turned into Farmville,” he says. “It’s a little bit different fitting it into a story-based game, and I don’t think episodic content is quite the same, but if you were confident enough that the game was good you could let people finish it for free. I think you’d have to pay to complete it – as in do everything – and then there are other ways of monetising, so you could give Uncharted 4 away. It would take a massive amount of confidence, but you could give it away.

“It’s conceivable that single-title free-to-play games will be $100 million businesses. It’s gonna happen”

“Let’s take Call of Duty 4 as an example, because that was the game of this console generation. It seems to have set the trend. You have a six-hour campaign and that’s free: if you want a different perspective on that story you may have to pay for it; if you want to unlock all the guns with infinite ammo you have to pay for it. You could do that with co-op or multiplayer. It’s just a question of confidence.

“The fear is that you’ve spent, I don’t know, $50 million on a game like Uncharted, and are you ever going to get that back? You’ve got to get over that fear. These games make that amount of money.

It’s conceivable that single-title free-to-play games will be $100 million businesses. It’s gonna happen. And beyond, because once everyone’s got a smartphone in their hand of some form or another, the addressable market is phenomenally big.”

“If you do your freemium right, you can make the same [revenue] or more. There’s no reason why all games couldn’t be freemium.”

The exception Avent mentions is the console. Compared to consoles, platforms like Facebook, PC, iOS and Android are relatively open, an essential component of attracting an audience large enough for the economics of free-to-play to make sense. In that environment a free-to-play Skyrim would be feasible, but a console version would require the majority of the addressable market to play the game. If free-to-play evolves as quickly as Avent believes, Microsoft and Sony will need to make decisive changes to their walled gardens.

“Probably everyone who actively plays their game console bought Skyrim. How many did it sell? 15 million? That’s not very much when you look at iPhone and iPad. And people at the time said that it sucked all of the oxygen out of the market. It’s difficult to see how you could do that as free-to-play on a games console. It’s difficult to see how you could be so generous, and give so much away.”（source：gamesindustry）