作者：Jon Jordan

在不久前刚落幕的GDC Online 2012大会上，我们不难从中看到8项行业发展趋势。

1.Zynga成为行业风向标

像Zynga这种成功的大公司居然被视为行业的“支撑基础”，这一点确实不太寻常。从演讲曝光度来看，Zynga的确是今年大会上最为活跃的公司，其公司代表回顾数款游戏制作经历，也分享了创造IP以及处理服务器基础框架的方法。

但涉及盈利性问题时，Zynga目前面临的状况几乎是大家在每场会谈中不容忽视的话题，正如人们谈及Facebook或移动领域成功案例时也总会以Zynga为标杆。

作为一家仍然具有广泛用户基础，具有最佳数据分析工具，并且仍在广招大批杰出开发者的公司，Zynga在今后一个季度或者半年的表现将备受瞩目。

从这一角度上看，Zynga今后的成功和失败将成为整个社交游戏行业的一个风向标，它可以预示其他公司未来的兴衰。

2.打造自己的平台

我们提到社交游戏时，通常会下意识地将其归为Facebook和iOS/Android平台（游戏邦注：或许再加上亚马逊平台）上的游戏。

但未来6个月，我们可能会看到微软及RIM试图扭转这一局面，尽管Facebook用户已经突破10亿，但在俄罗斯、巴西和中国仍然不乏与之相当的竞争者。

而King.com、Kabam、Miniclip及Kongregate等新兴的内容供应商也已经有所行动，因为它们已经成功创建了自己的网页游戏平台。这些平台已经拥有大量现成的玩家及游戏，并且掌握了玩家游戏习惯，它们已成为这些公司在Facebook和移动平台获得成功的跳板。

所以，基于浏览器的在线发行商（其中多为德国公司）未来是否也会采用这一策略确实值得关注，因为这些公司在MMO游戏领域正面临流量下滑的困境。

3.好游戏应提供跨平台体验

EA　Digital执行副总裁Kristian Segerstrale发表了“游戏即平台”的演讲，并将这一主题视为EA的未来战略，他指出EA高管在过去12个月中已经讨论过这个话题。

EA打算将旗下游戏演变成跨平台游戏（游戏邦注：这一战略目前主要运用于《FIFA》以及《Madden》，随后将延伸到其他游戏），让这些游戏运行于任何可连接的设备，并以该公司的Origin平台为聚集中心。由此看来，Origin将成为一个集App Store、Game Center、Facebook和ESPN等功能为一体的超级平台。

你可能认为这简直是一种空想，但最让我吃惊的是EA更为长远的目标。例如，其技术团队已经可以结合HTML5和WebGL，在网页浏览器上运行高质量内容。

当然，我们已经听说过不少唱衰HTML5的声音，也知道微软将不会在IE上支持WebGL……但当EA这类公司已经可以在浏览器上运行《死亡空间2》这种高端内容（游戏邦注：正如Epic在2011年使用Adobe Flash 11 Stage 3D/Molehill技术运行《虚幻竞技场3》）时，你就不得不开始正视游戏跨平台技术。

所有游戏最终都要走上跨平台之路，而如果你无法跟上这种潮流，那就难免落于下风。

4.iTunes消弱应用曝光度，Facebook病毒性卷土重来

Facebook游戏泡沫膨胀和破裂之迅速的确令人惊外。

这有一部分要归结于Zynga最近的表现，但主要还是由于Facebook当时移除了病毒传播渠道所致。Facebook此举重创了自己在游戏开发商眼中的地位，与此同时，新兴的iOS和Android游戏却逐渐增势。

Facebook还能恢复这一增长势头吗？

从Zynga和Facebook在2012年下跌的股票趋势来看，这已经不太可能了，但现在将移动领域视为重心的Facebook看似有意挽回一些损失。

现在Facebook用户安装一款新应用/游戏之后，就可通过Facebook平台的默认设置，向整个好友列表中的人赠送礼物或进行其他互动。在此之前，用户需逐个勾选好友才能与之互动。这种调整极大提高了病毒传播性，尽管它也在用户隐私问题上引发了一些争议。

无论如何，最重要的是Facebook的平台开放性只会有增无减，它将鼓励玩家和用户广泛传播自己在应用/游戏中获得的成就。

讽刺的是，苹果发布的iOS 6却在削弱App Store应用曝光度，不知道苹果是否会效仿Facebook重返原来的政策。

5.博彩游戏成功机率有多大？

在线博彩活动管理条例及法律正在放宽限制，这是一个广泛的趋势。

对于美国而言这种现象有何意义仍然有待观望，但赌博与游戏行业却已经采取行动，意欲让玩真钱的博彩游戏进入用户手机中的应用商店。

苹果英国App Store已经出现真钱博彩游戏的身影，另一个值得注意的现象就是，博彩类游戏在2012年前10大热销游戏榜单中占据了多个席位。

这种情况表明，博彩领域吸金能力最强。我们很可能在2013年看到它成为游戏制作、用户获取和应用检索领域的主导趋势。

6.硬核游戏相续崛起

与博彩游戏一样，硬核类游戏也同样势头上涨。

在GDC Online大会上，来自Kongregate、Kabam以及Red Robot Labs等公司的代表均谈论了针对小规模但高盈利性用户创造及发行游戏的话题。

Supercell和Machine Zone等开发商则概括了他们在这一领域的做法。

这类游戏的关键要素在于富有深度的社区吸引力，它是从低强度的异步活动（例如积分排行榜、成就管理、挑战以及聊天和PVP等即时互动）延伸而来。

很显然，同步模式的设计更有难度，因为我们难以调和多数用户和好友的玩法，并且其运营成本更高，但与博彩游戏一样，它的盈利性也极高，这正是行业的的一个走向。

而《SongPop》、《Draw Something》以及With Friends系列等回合制游戏虽然很容易吸引大规模用户，但其留存率和ARPU值却并不理想。

总之，硬核社交游戏仍是一个有待挖掘的市场。

7.瞬息万变的市场

从NaturalMotion、Supercell和King.com等公司的兴起，以及Zynga的“没落”可以看出，社交游戏仍是一个充满变数的市场。

在6个月之前，NaturalMotion只是发布了一些还算成功的iOS游戏，但现在它已经成为英国最炙手可热的游戏发行商之一。

Supercell的兴起则更为迅速，头两款手机游戏发布于7月份。与之类似，King.com也是在无形间取代了Wooga，跃升为Facebook第二大游戏开发商。

而2011年最抢眼的手机社交游戏公司——例如Pocket Gems、Storm8、TinyCo等，却不得不在硬核游戏兴起、用户获取成本增长，GREE、DeNA及Zynga等巨头公司的夹击下，努力持推自己在市场中的领先地位。

但在这个充满竞争与动荡的手机游戏市场中，维持发展势头却是一件难上加难的事情。

8.何处是反省之地？

GDC Online起源和发展于奥斯丁，原因在于这个城市曾经是美国MMO游戏开发的心脏地带。在NCsoft、索尼在线、育碧、Bioware、Trion等发行商的影响下，该地区的游戏开发行业曾经盛极一时，并在90年代末达到高峰。

但它的衰落似乎也是命中注定。随着PC游戏市场的缩水，休闲PC、Facebook、移动游戏等领域的繁荣发展，投入5000万美元以上成本开发订阅模式的MMO游戏已经是一种幻想，因为一个媒体的负面报道或服务器问题就有可能让游戏在发布首周遭遇滑铁卢。

这个泡沫的破裂，也导致许多奥斯丁游戏公司相续殒落。

但MMO的长期开发周期以及深度的社交功能等问题，却催生出了GDC Online等探讨游戏设计哲学的活跃场所。

Raph Koster在今年的大会上回顾了自己的“趣味理论”十年发展历程，他的发言令人深思，也很能唤起开发者的个人责任感。也有其他人发表了一些令人印象深刻的讨论内容，例如关于免费增值游戏机制道德性的话题。

我们发现与免费增值模式游戏有关的会议经常充斥大量与鲸鱼用户、盈利方法有关的内容，但却甚少反思相关问题，这无疑将成为行业的一大悲哀。（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）

Eight key industry trends we learned from GDC Online 2012

by Jon Jordan

They say endings are just beginnings you haven’t yet explored.

It’s certainly a message UBM TechWeb will be beaming out loud and clear as it shuts down the GDC Online conference in Austin, Texas after 10 shows, removing and reinventing the show in 2013 in Los Angeles as GDC Next. It will also include the separate but co-located App Developers Conference.

But before we can begin again, we have to end so let’s conclude GDC Online with our learnings from this year’s conference.

1. Where goes big Zee, there goes us all

It’s strange that a company as large and broadly successful as Zynga could be described as an ‘underpinning’. Indeed, Zynga was the most active company at GDC Online in terms of presentations, giving post-mortems about several games, as well as talking about how it deals with subjects as varied as IP creation and server infrastructure.

Yet, Zynga’s ‘underpinning’ of GDC Online 2012 was deeper and wider than the official tracks.

Its travails were the elephant in the corner of every room hosting every talk about monetisation; just as it was the wavering benchmark for every talk about success in the Facebook or mobile space.

It will certainly be fascinating to see what the next three/six months hold for the company which remains massive in terms of reach, has the best analytics in the business, and still employs hundreds of very smart, very experienced developers.

From that point of view, Zynga’s ongoing success or failure will be a bellwether for the entire social gaming industry, and that’s most of us.

2. Build your own?

When we talk about social games, the temptation is to fall into the trap of only thinking about Facebook and iOS/Android (perhaps also breaking out Amazon).

However, on the mobile the next six months will see Microsoft and RIM attempting to shake things up, and while Facebook sails past the one billion user total, there are plenty of local equivalents whether in Russia, Brazil or China.

More strategically, the rise of content companies such as King.com, Kabam, Miniclip and Kongregate has occurred because they’ve successfully built their own web gaming platforms. Having millions of existing players and games, and understanding their behaviour has been the springboard to success on Facebook and mobile.

So it’s will be particularly interesting to see whether this sort of translocation can be mirrored by the big online browser-based publishers – many of them German – who are currently facing a similar decline to that which hit the MMOGs space.

3. Good games are everywhere

One of the most cryptic talks at GDC Online 2012 came from EA’s EVP of Digital Kristian Segerstrale.

Entitled ‘Games as a Platform’ and described as a “breadcrumb trail” to EA’s future strategy, the context itself wasn’t particularly radical. As Segerstrale pointed out, EA execs have been giving this sort of talk for the past 12 months.

But clearly, going forward, the company is looking to its franchises – currently focused on FIFA and Madden but eventually everything – to be larger than platforms; that its games will be on all platforms with your activity on any device connected and centralised through the company’s Origin platform. In that sense, Origin will become a superset of the App Store, Game Center, Facebook and ESPN etc

So far, so pipe dream, you may be thinking, but what surprised me the most how wider EA is aiming. For example, its technology lab is already running high end content through web browsers using a combination of HTML5 and WebGL.

Sure, we’re all heard about HTML5 woes and that Microsoft won’t enable WebGL on Internet Explorer yada yada… but when companies such as EA are running high end content such as Dead Space 2 in a browser – as Epic did in 2011 using Adobe’s Flash 11 Stage 3D/Molehill technology to enable Unreal Tournament 3 – you have to sit up and take notice.

All games will eventually be everywhere and if you’re not fluid enough to go with that flow, you’ll eventually be toast.

4. As iTunes gets less friendly, Facebook brings back virality

It’s surprisingly how fast the Facebook game bubble inflated and popped.

Partly this is perceptional thanks to Zynga’s recent performance, but its mainly because Facebook removed virality from the timeline. This strongly reduced the platform’s importance for games companies just at the same time that iOS and Android gaming were on the rise.

Can Facebook regain that lost momentum?

It’s unlikely, given the kicking given to the share prices of Zynga and Facebook during 2012, but it seems that the newly mobile-focused Facebook is now looking to unwind some of the damage.

Publicly unannounced but the Facebook platform is now set up so that when you install a new app/game, you can gift and otherwise interact with the complete list of your friends as the default option. Previously, you had to select individuals. This change massively increases viralty; albeit something that is already adverse publicity in terms of wider privacy concerns.

However, the bottomline (its bottonline) is that Facebook will have to become more – not less – open in terms of enabling users and players to spread their in-app/in-game achievements as widely as possible.

Ironically, this is happening just as Apple is deliberately destroying discovery on the App Store in iOS 6; at least app discovery channels it doesn’t control. We wonder how long before – like Facebook – it’s forced to reverse its policy.

5. What are the odds?

The broad global trend is that online gambling laws are being relaxed.

What this means in the case of the United States of America – notably all the individual states – we await to discover, but the gambling and gaming industries have already positioned themselves in the expectation that real-money gambling games are coming to an app store near your phone, and soon.

Indeed, Apple UK already allows real-money gambling apps to be distributed through the UK App Store, although don’t hold your breath in terms of them being featured. This is also combined with the sector’s growing momentum through 2012 which has seen casino-style games taking multiple positions in the top 10 grossing charts.

The fact is that – by its very nature – nothing monetises as well as gambling. Expect it to dominate trends in game making, user acquisition and discovery during 2013.

6. Still heading to the core

Similar to gambling, the rise of games for ‘core’ gamers – apparently the term ‘mid-core’ is frowned upon – continues apace.

At GDC Online, Industrial Toys’ Alex Seropian (ex-Bungie/Wideload) gave a session without revealing anything of much substance about his debut game, while the likes of Kongregate, Kabam and Red Robot Labs gave talks about building and deploying games for smaller but strongly monetised audience.

Similarly, developers such as Supercell and Machine Zone were briefing journalists about their activities in the space.

What’s vital about all these games are their deep community hooks, which extend from low density asynchronous activities such as leaderboards, achievements and challenges to real time interactions like chat and PVP.

Obviously synchronous modes are much harder to design, in terms of how they make the most of audience and friends’ play patterns, as well as more expensive to operate, but – like gambling – the monetisation is so high, that’s where the industry is moving

In comparison, turn-based games such SongPop, Draw Something and the With Friends games are great for building a largescale audience but suffer from low retention and ARPU rates.

That’s an audience no one wants to be making games for, at the moment.

7. All up for grabs

It may seem a truism, but what we see from the rise of companies such as NaturalMotion, Supercell and King.com, just strongly from the ‘fall’ of Zynga, is the social gaming market remains incredibly fluid.

Six months ago, NaturalMotion had released a handful of moderately successful iOS games. Now it’s the hottest UK games publisher.

Supercell’s rise has been even quicker; its first two mobile games were released in July. Similarly on Facebook, King.com has come from nowhere to overtake Wooga as the #2 games publisher on the platform.

Yet as companies rise up so other fall away. 2011′s big hitters in mobile social – Pocket Gems, Storm8, TinyCo etc – have found sustaining their market leading positions in a market impacted by the rise of hardcore gaming, user acquisition inflation and the activities of much larger companies such as GREE, DeNa and Zynga.

The fact is sustaining growth is difficult and very difficult in a market with as much competition and uncertainly as mobile gaming.

In this environment, we can only expect the expected – everything is still up for grabs. Who grabs the most – that’s the unexpected aspect.

8. Any place for retrospection?

The reason GDC Online sprouted, grew and flourished in Austin was the city was once the MMOG development heartland of America. With publishers such as NCsoft, Sony Online, Ubisoft, Bioware, Trion et al, the development scene grew quickly, peaking in the late-1990s.

But its decline was preordained. As PC gaming contracted and alternative gaming sectors – casual PC, Facebook, mobile – boomed, spending +$50 million dollars developing a subscription-based MMOG that could be killed by bad press or server issues in week one quickly became a fool’s paradise.

So that bubble popped, taking the large scale presence of many of those Austin-based companies with it.

Yet the long development cycles and deep social features of MMOGs had made GDC Online – and indeed the entire MMOG conference space – a vibrant talking shop in terms of the philosophy of games.

It was something underlined during GDC Online 2012, with Raph Koster reinvisiting his seminal A Theory of Fun talk (and subsequent book). As someone lucky enough to hear his original talk and review the book, Koster’s reprise was fascinating; almost religious in its delivery, emphasis and call for personal responsibility.

And that’s even though his attempt to place games and fun into their broadest human context failed (at least in my humble opinion).

Similar discussions were pitted throughout the show; notably the talk about the ethics of games which focused on free-to-play mechanics. Nik Davidson – a longtime MMOG developer, now with Amazon – is clearly a voice that will continue be heard in this context.

So while we look forward to LA and the new show, our hope has to be that GDC Next won’t become the yang to GDC Online’s ying. It’s very easy to pack free-to-play oriented conferences with hardnosed talks about whales and monetisation methods.

That, however, would be a tragic loss to the industry.（source：pocketgamer）