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Ed Rumley谈Chillingo发行成功游戏的秘诀

发布时间:2012-11-26 11:15:10 Tags:,,,

作者:Scott Reyburn

最近,手机游戏发行商Chillingo(游戏邦注:在2010年被EA收购)发行的《Snail Bob》与《He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe》,在推出后便迅速荣登应用榜单首位。该公司还曾发行原版《愤怒的小鸟》与《割绳子》这些热作,这表明这家位于英国的发行公司肯定在寻找独立开发商与游戏发行方面采取了某些正确举措。

最近,Chillingo首席运营官Ed Rumley在采访中介绍了他们找寻开发商的标准、让游戏跃居应用榜单之首的秘诀,以及手机游戏发行的未来。

让《He-Man》这类游戏在发行后迅速登上榜单之首的秘诀何在?

he-man-most-powerful-game-in-the-universe(from mightyaction.com)

he-man-most-powerful-game-in-the-universe(from mightyaction.com)

这是个一言难尽的问题,你只看到几个星期前,《He-Man》发行后便跃居榜单之首,但你忽视了我们为此付出的几个月努力。每当我们与某个开发商合作时,我们会指定一个制作人,我们的职责是优化游戏。开发商认定的成品都会经过我们仔细研究,判断是否需要付出几个月的额外精力。只有出色品质才能在游戏市场立足。同时,我们也注重应用的盈利模式,保持游戏平衡性。同时,我们至少应确保游戏获得大量用户。我们所做的每件事都应确保用户喜爱游戏。这正是我们发行《He-Man》的做法。我们的发行方式极其类似苹果或谷歌,而后我们会采取大量营销手段让游戏获得曝光。总之,我们既要制作出优秀的游戏,而且还应让它获得一定的曝光率。

你们如何确定投资与发行对象?

作为EA的发行部门,我们主要从可玩性角度确定发行对象,无论它是首发版、原版或是授权版本,或者某个不安的开发商会让游戏下架,而后寻求Chillingo的帮助。我们会查看游戏开发的各个阶段,而后将其引入市场。从财务的角度看,我们应极力避免投资游戏开发环节,无论我们是否参与游戏发行,该作品最终都会进入市场。而我们的作用是助于它成功发行。

你们主要发行哪类游戏?

我们的工作范畴相当复杂,我们不在乎发行量的多少,我们注重跨平台发行。由于寻求帮助的数量越来越多,因此要找到发行对象存在一定的挑战难度。截止上周,走向Chillingo的开发商数目比去年同期增加了50%以上,因此,我们知道不少开发商正等待我们的帮助。但我们主要着眼于那些高品质,经过修改后可以更加精良,同时会引发大众市场共鸣的作品。

首先,我们会找到一款优秀的游戏,其次,制定盈利渠道。有时,事情会井井有条地进行,有时,它会演变为纯粹的付费下载模式,有时则是免费模式。这主要取决于产品的生产周期。当我们进入最后阶段时,我们无法重新制定发展方向,但我们可以调整发行步骤表格,保证盈利模式平衡。

能否谈谈最近发行的成功作品,以及它们的获胜原因?

最近的成功作品不在少数。比如在2012年6月E3大会期间发行的《Catapult King》,但实际上,我们是在2011年6月E3大会期间与开发商首次取得联系,因此我们的产品与营销团队在这款游戏上投入了12个月的时间。在此期间,我们考虑了游戏平衡、盈利模式、营销手段。我们研究了上百个游戏名称。我们希望它符合大众市场要求,为此我们制定了充分的准备。推出后,它成为了榜单之首。我们确实了解如何有效地推销一款应用,但又确保用户喜爱它们。

catapult_king(from iappsin.com)

catapult_king(from iappsin.com)

你如何确保游戏能够吸引并粘住用户?

这取决于我们与开发商首次会面后制定的生产周期。《He-Man》于短期内跃居全球榜单之首时,但我们的工作尚未结束,我们的职责是继续为产品提供服务。因此我们在首次接触游戏后会提供大量资源,其中包括制作人、QA、创意美术总监、销售。PR以及营销。游戏上线后,我们会调整营销战略,了解自己必须执行的行动。

EA刚刚宣布其上季度收益,我们发现其数字与移动平台上的收益增加了不少,Chillingo是否为此做出了许多贡献?

Chillingo所做的一切对此都有贡献。我们发现越来越多的杰出开发商,同时,也有更多的开发商认识了我们。我们总会源源不断地看到大量拥有出色游戏的开发商。

Chillingo最适合哪个发行平台?

两年前,我们完全着眼于iOS平台。但现在,我们也在Android与Windows Phone平台上推出大量游戏。目前,我们注重跨平台智能手机领域。

你们认为,手机游戏发行的下个目标平台在哪?

随着游戏市场的日益复杂化,我们看到,越来越多的开发商需面临更多挑战。游戏领域出现的新型硬件、平台、运作系统与软件均是引起开发商问题的各个因素。我们总认为市场分裂性并不是很大问题,因为我们具备这一方面的知识与经验,而且作为EA的一部分,我们可以共享最佳策略。我们发行越多的游戏,我们越理解游戏发行的目标平台与明智的制胜盈利渠道。因此,我们相信会有越来越多的开发商采用Chillingo这类发行服务。我们能够在市场上占据最佳优势,因为我们拥有10年的手机游戏发行经验。(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

Chillingo’s Ed Rumley on the future of mobile game publishing: ‘Fragmentation’s our friend’

by Scott Reyburn

Mobile game publisher Chillingo, who were acquired by Electronic Arts in 2010, recently published Snail Bob and He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe reached to the top of the app charts quickly after launch. Chillingo is also know for publishing hit titles such as the original Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. The U.K.-based company must be doing something right when it comes to finding indie developers and publishing games.

We recently sat down with Chillingo COO Ed Rumley to discuss what they look for in a developer, the secret to getting games to the top of the app store charts and the future of mobile game publishing.

Inside Mobile Apps: What is the secret to getting games like He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe to the top of the charts almost immediately after release?

Ed Rumley, Chillingo COO (pictured right): It’s the million dollar question and what you saw a few weeks ago was He-Man launching and accelerating to the top of the charts, but what you didn’t see was the several months of work that happens before that. Every time that Chillingo works with one of our partners, we assign a producer and our job is to really polish that game. When a developer thinks a game is ready, we have to look at it and see if it needs another month works or even more. There’s no room in the market for anything but great quality. We also have to take a close look at the monetization of an app and you have to get that balance right. It’s all about that balance, but the bottom line is that the heart of our business is the consumer’s king. Everything we do is to insure they enjoy the game. That’s exactly how we worked with He-Man. We work extremely closely with Apple or Google and then we have a lot of marketing tools to get the game discovered. It’s about making the best game you can and also getting it discovered.

IMA: How do you decide what games to fund and publish?

Rumley: Chillingo is a distribution division of Electronic Arts so most of the games we see that come through the door are in playable form, whether it’s a first version, prototype or even something that’s gone through certification but not yet live, maybe a developer that got nervous and pulled the game from the app stores and came to Chillingo. We see games in all stages of development and then we’re there to bring that game to market. From a financial perspective, what we’re not doing is crossing into that line of funding game development, whether we’re there or not, that game is going to go to market. What we’re here to do is make it go to market successfully.

IMA: What type of games are you looking for?

Rumley: Our job is increasingly complex because we’re looking at publishing less games but on more platforms. Searching for that diamond in the rough is very challenging because there’s more developers coming to us. We looked at this last week and it’s in the region of 50 percent more developers coming to us on a daily basis than the same period last year, so we know there’s developers out there looking for help. What we’re looking for are games that are high quality, games that we believe that we can make even better and games that will resonate with the mass market.

Stage one is finding a great game, stage two is how we’re going to monetize the game for the developer. Sometimes these things naturally fall into place, sometimes it’s a pure pay-per-download and sometimes it’s freemium. It depends at what stage you enter the lifecycle of the product. What we can’t do is reinvent the wheel if we enter at a very late stage, but what we can do is hone the spreadsheet behind it, which makes makes the monetization balanced.

IMA: Can you talk about recent successful games you published and why they were successful?

Rumley: There are quite a few recent examples. Look at a game like Catapult King which launched during E3 in June 2012, yet we actually first made contact with that developer in June 2011 at E3, so we had production and product marketing teams working on that game for 12 months. During that period, we were looking at the balancing of the game, the monetization, getting the game as mass market as possible. We went through hundreds of different names for the game. We wanted to get it ready for the market and we did a great job. It took off and it was the No. 1 game. We really do understand how to put benefits and features for sale within an app but make sure that the consumer is enjoying the game.

IMA: How do you try to make the games you make sticky and engaging?

Rumley: It’s the lifecycle from the moment when we first meet that developer. He-Man shot to the top of the charts and went to the No. 1 spot around the world in a short amount of time, and our work isn’t even done there. Our job is to continue servicing that product. What we’re doing is supplying a huge amount of resources from the first moment we see that game. They get a producer, they get QA, they get creative art direction, sales, PR and marketing. It’s really a case of adapting the strategy once the game goes live and understanding what we need to do.

IMA: EA just reported it’s quarterly earnings and saw a lot of growth in digital and mobile, did Chillingo have something to do with that?

Rumley: All of Chillingo contributed to that. We’re discovering more and more great developers, and more and more developers are discovering us. It never ceases to amaze us the amount of developers out there with great games.

IMA: What platform is performing best for Chillingo?

Rumley: Two years ago our business was 100 percent iOS. That has changed. We have a lot of games published on Android and Windows Phone. We are now a multi-platform smartphone business now. That’s where our business is today.

IMA: What do you guys see as the next major focus of mobile publishing?

Rumley: We see more developers comeing through the door and that’s because the market is increasingly complex. There’s new hardware, platforms, operating systems and software. It’s this fragmentation that’s causing developers problems. We always say fragmentation’s our friend because we have the knowledge and the experience, and because we’re part of EA, we share their best practices. The more games we publish, the more we understand what platform we should be going on and what’s successful monetization-wise. It’s these trends that we believe will see more and more developers using services such as Chillingo. We’re best placed in the market for this because we’ve got 10 years of experience in the mobile space.(source:insidemobileapps)


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