作者：Nicholas Lovell

人人都清楚付费墙所存在的危险。

它能够帮助游戏开发者赚钱。但是在市场中，因为开发者必须投入1至4美元才能获得一个用户，所以他们必须想办法留住每一个用户，但是付费墙却会让用户抛弃你的游戏。所以当你在执行付费墙时，你最好清楚它所具有的威胁性。

传统的付费墙总是会经历30天的试验过程。但是依我看来，30天的试验期是一种愚蠢的做法：你投入了大量的金钱去获得用户并告诉他们如何使用你的产品，却不做任何分析也未帮助用户进行理解，你便在他们下载了产品的720小时后竖起了一堵坚硬的付费墙。

当用户准备购买时你并未使用推销术去促成交易；

你并未使用市场营销方法去说服用户立马购买的好处；

你并未站在用户角度告诉他们你的产品具有发展前景，值得购买。

你只是在任意时刻对他们说“就是它了，现在付钱吧。”

wall（from gamesbrief）

你并未考虑到现在用户手头是否宽裕，也许在发薪日之前他们没钱去购买你的游戏，也许他们现在心情不好，非常忙，或者只是不能接受你的定价。对于我来说这并不是一种有效的营销方法。这也是我为何会说“让玩家永远免费体验你的游戏。”获得用户，留住用户，久而久之再慢慢地从他们身上赚取利益，这才是开发者应该遵循的过程。

不只有付费墙这一堵墙

在本周的GAMESbriefer周刊上，我的好友Harry Holmwood便提到了“便利墙”。与付费墙一样，便利墙也会让用户或玩家感到不快，但是开发者却很难注意到这一点。便利墙遵循着与付费墙一样的逻辑：如果你已投入大量的钱去获取用户，为什么还要竖起一道便利墙阻止他们变成付费用户？以下便是一些常见的便利墙：

下载墙：可能不存在相应的解决方法。你可能会在两种情况下流失用户：在他们下载游戏前或下载游戏后，而忘记再回到游戏中。你可能会认为基于客户端的高质量游戏的市场营销/盈利回报能够抵消这种损失。也许这是对的。但是比下载一款庞大的游戏，我更愿意选择基于浏览器的游戏。

注册墙：仍然有许多游戏在通过用户的注册前还会询问8条信息。就像最近有个用户呈现了一款游戏的注册页面，我发现在点击“注册”按钮前，我们必须填写用户面，密码，电子邮件，出生日期，两种市场营销选择，并同意四项不同的条款。要清楚，每一行条款都为用户制造“我不能再忍了”的理由。如果这不是一款基于客户端的游戏，我不会坚持到最后。市场营销人员应该只询问电子邮件，或什么都不问更好。更多信息要求只会浪费用户的时间。

难度墙：Harry提到像《英雄联盟》以及《坦克世界》等游戏便都具有曲折的学习曲线。你当然可以不添加游戏教程，但是你肯定不希望玩家在早期飞速前进而在后期又举步维艰吧。

复杂墙：最近我在Steam平台上下载了一款RPG——《Legends of Grimlock》。当我将孩子哄入眠后，我对自己说“现在我没有足够的时间去琢磨《Grimlock》。”于是我便坐下来掏出手机开始玩《口袋飞机》（游戏邦注：继《迷你大楼》后NimbleBit所推出的作品）。2个半小时过后，我仍然沉迷于游戏中。我是因为畏惧《Grimlock》的复杂度而疏远了这款游戏，我不清楚自己到底要花费多长时间才能开始感受到游戏的乐趣。但是我却能够轻松地进入《口袋飞机》中。

（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）

Beware the convenience wall: it is every bit as dangerous as the paywall

By Nicholas Lovell

Everyone knows the dangers of the paywall.

They can be good for making money, but in a market where it costs between $1 and $4 to acquire a customer, it is critical to keep those customers. Paywalls kick customers out of your service so you had better be sure that you know what you are doing if you implement one.

The traditional paywall is a 30 day trial. To my mind, a 30 day trial is insanity: you spend lots of money acquiring a customer and showcasing them how to use your product. Then with no nuance, no analysis, no customer understanding, you slam down a hard paywall exactly 720 hours after the user first downloaded the product.

You are not using salesmanship to convert a user when they are ready to buy;

You are not using marketing to convince them of the benefits of subscribing now;

You are not using customer insight to identify the aspects of your service that your prospect is willing to pay for.

You are taking an arbitrary moment in time and saying “That’s it: pay up or piss off.”

Your customer might be broke until payday, or in a bad mood, or busy, or just not receptive to a sale. Why anyone thinks this is good marketing is beyond me. It’s why I say “make your game free to play forever”. Get your customers, keep them, work out how to make money from them over time.

Paywalls are not the only walls

In this week’s GAMESbriefer’s post, my friend Harry Holmwood referred to “convenience walls”. Convenience walls can be just as off-putting for customers or players as paywalls, but they can be harder to notice. The same logic applies to convenience walls as applies to paywalls: if it costs you that much to acquire a customer, why would you put a convenience wall in the way of the customer becoming a paying user? Here are some of the common convenience walls:

The download wall: There may be no way round this. If you have a client, you are likely to lose customers in two places: before they download the game or after they download it, but then forget to go back and play it. You may feel that the marketing / monetisation payoff of having a high-quality client-based game offsets the disadvantage. You may be right. I would always rather have a browser-based game than a big download if I possibly could.

The registration wall: I still see companies asking for 8 pieces of information before they let me even register for a game. One client recently presented me with a form where I had to fill in my username, password, email address, date of birth (!), two marketing opt-ins and agree to four (!) different terms and conditions before I could click the “Register” button. Every single line item is another opportunity for me to think “I can’t be bothered”. If this had not been a client game, there is no way I would have got to the end. Top tip for marketers: ask for an email address and nothing else. Everything else can be earned over time.

The difficulty wall: Harry refers to games like League of Legends and World of Tanks has having steep learning curves. You don’t want a tutorial, but you don’t want players to feel they are making rapid progress through the early elements of the game.

The complexity wall: I was recently playing Legends of Grimlock, an old school RPG I downloaded from Steam. I came down from putting my kids to bed and thought to myself “I haven’t got time to get into Grimlock right now.” I sat down on my bed and pulled Pocket Planes out of my pocket. Two and a half hours later, I was still playing it. I was alienated by the fear of the perceived complexity of Grimlock, and how long it would take me to start having fun. I was drawn in by the accessibility of Pocket Planes.

These are four “convenience walls” that leap out to me. Can you think of others? I’d like to make an exhaustive list of the walls that get between you and playing a game. Then we can help designers eliminate them from their games.(source:gamesbrief)