作者：Rob Fathey

如果你在一天中毫无收获，那将是一种浪费；也就是说，如果你在一年之中毫无所得，只会白白浪费这一年的光阴。随着2012接近尾声，我们也该好好思考这一年的收获。别担心，只需片刻功夫，我们是从中盈利了？还是赔本了？体验了哪些游戏，又制作了哪些？我们成长了吗？进步了吗？了解了吗？

当然，从商业角度看，我们收获颇丰。2012年巩固了移动平台在游戏生态系统中的地位，大多数人（游戏邦注：除了激进的反对者）都意识到移动平台在商业模式中的重要性，随着平板电脑呈现蒸蒸日上的势头，甚至那些后知后觉者也决定迎头赶上，不落其后，2012无疑向我们清晰展示出iPad与大量平板设备有望在未来几年成为许多用户的主要数据设备。

console-vs-mobile(from nexus404)

同时，我们也了解（并不是很多）到价格点的发展方向。鉴于主机平台与实体零售店准入门槛的逐渐消失，App Store与Google Play的运营趋势表明电子内容的价格终究会向零模式发展。在2012年，许多比以往更加有趣且成功的游戏并未贴上高昂的价格标签。其中大量首次上市的游戏定价均未超过99美分，而且我喜爱的某些2012年游戏已调整10英镑的价格。从其含义来看，免费游戏仍处在起步阶段，但显然会与我们长期共存；我希望，到了2013年，游戏行业可以停止关于这一事实的无休止争吵，开始致力于制作更加精良的F2P游戏。

我认为，也许这会令我们意识到，作为游戏行业，今年我们还未停止对压根不存在的零收入游戏的恐慌。甚至那些所谓专业人士与专家之间关于移动游戏的探讨常会陷入可悲的荒谬境地，因为他们坚称，移动游戏会取代其它类型的游戏，或是注定形成一个低品质的固定化小众市场——但这两种说法在智者面前总是不堪一击。同样，免费游戏的激烈纷争如同一股肮脏潮流席卷了整个2012——其中一方坚信所有游戏最终会演变为F2P模式，而另一方坚称F2P游戏本质上是存在弊端的错误方式，你将不再以专业角度讨论该问题，而是抱着愚蠢的狂热之心。

在此，我并非表明自己抱着中立态度，以观望者的角度看待这个问题没有任何利益可言（除了舒适感）。拥有强烈的信念没有错，但如果不是基于一定原由与事实而挑起的纷争则会变得毫无意义。事实上，电影院的出现并没有扼杀剧院，电视也没有毁灭电影院，电子游戏从未抹杀书籍的存在，录音带也未抹灭音乐，视频也未消灭无线电广播。媒介与娱乐行业是容纳大量多种产品与商业模式的生态系统，这是不可改变的事实。而有关会催生出某种娱乐形式、或商业模式、或发行形式会独霸该领域的想法，实则是个妄想。

我相当肯定这一方面，不仅因为该行业的深远历史以及其为我们留下的文化与娱乐遗产，也是因为我认识到这种信念的源头。游戏行业的独特性是因为里面充斥着大量“左脑型”人员，他们具有逻辑性、分析力与数学力，与支配其它创意行业的“右脑型”人员完全不同。电子游戏是基于新型技术领域孕育而生，而后逐渐横跨技术与艺术领域，这是一种创新但颇具难度的结合，正如一开始，许多玩家与行业人士对游戏是种艺术形式事实的辩驳。

左脑型人员（没错，现代心理学家驳斥了这一术语，但同比“极客”定义，该说法听起来更加文雅，不是吗？）钟爱完美答案。他们喜欢以一个正确方案解决问题，并按这种标准看待整个世界。在许多行业中，他们是完美的商业领袖——当然，总有一种最有效的方法可以从地底下开采石油或金属，用于建造飞机，修成马路或铁路网。在娱乐行业，虽然关于一系列艰难问题的“完美”解决方案会完全挫败左脑型人员，但根据情感、情绪、非理性行事则会带来致命危机。

其实，没人需要娱乐项目这种说法存在差池。如果明天电子游戏、电影、书籍、音乐、戏剧、电视节目、绘画与雕像通通消失，我们物种会遭到极大削弱，但不会有人死去。人们需要衣食住行，而娱乐是种“随意选项”，即由你自己决定——也就是说，这种选择并非基于最优化理念，而是根据自己的情感而定。

免费游戏是开发者与玩家进行金钱与体验交易的最有效方式吗？手机或平板电脑是用户体验电子游戏的最省钱途径吗？也许吧，但我们鲜少关注这一方面，因为这实则无关紧要。MP3音乐是完美平衡高品质、便捷性与容量大小的产物吗？可能是，但音像商店也致力于为你们专业提供“高音质”音乐文件。Kindle是阅读书籍的最佳平台吗？毋庸置疑，但我不会这样“阅读”书籍。有些书籍只需粗粗略过；有些会花钱购买；有些则会视为珍宝，这都是基于情感、情绪与不理性。我可能会到书店购买一本皮革包装书籍，虽然我已经拥有平装本与Kindle版本。我可能从未阅读过这本书，但我喜爱它。难道我是个傻瓜，没有发现这不是最优消费方式，且最终都没有意识到这种错误做法？不，这是我的自主权；是我享受与消遣的方式。

这就是无法实现零收入游戏的原因——并非如2012年尖锐讨论者认为的那样。许多用户仍在寻求精致游戏硬件、高价出品物与实体产品这类东西，并不是因为这是种“有意义”的消费或逻辑形式，而是基于自己的喜好，无需考虑自己的负担能力，毕竟，“经济意义”并不能用于解释自己的兴趣与爱好。

游戏行业仍处在变化与发展之中，2012年可谓达到快速发展势头，虽然2013年可能将会以这种形势继续发展，但会较少出现某些真正方面的流失。我们并不是汽油、面包片、混凝土或火车票的贩卖者。我们主要出售体验与情感，用户可以根据自己的喜好选择消费形式，而不是基于数学上的效率模式。再也不会有人担心，推出改编自莎士比亚作品的DVD会令剧院关门，或是允许街头艺人的卖艺行为会导致音乐厅倒闭。现在，我们应认识到，游戏业务的扩展会引发更多商机与多样化，这不会对我们喜爱事物造成生存威胁，或者让我们有机会冷眼旁观自己厌恶的事物走向末路。如果要为2013年制定一个新愿景，我希望是不再出现关于零收入方面的争论。移动游戏不会抹杀主机游戏，F2P模式也不会摧毁付费模式。正如森林会越长越茂密；但老树不会剥夺新树吸收阳光，新树也不会绑住老树的树根。（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）

Mobile won’t kill console. F2P won’t kill full priced

by Rob Fahey

There is no “perfect answer” to doing business with video games. Let’s call a halt to the pointless “zero-sum” debates that blighted 2012

A day in which you learn nothing is a day wasted; by which standard, a year in which we learned nothing would be a pointless waste of time indeed. It’s worth, as 2012 draws to a close (all that’s left now is the few days of indulgence before the year, in harmony with our waistbands, croaks its last), thinking about what we’ve learned. What did 2012 teach us that we did not before? Never mind, for a moment, the money we earned or lost, the games we played or made; did we grow? Did we advance? Did we learn?

From a business standpoint, certainly, we learned a great deal. 2012 cemented the place of mobile in the gaming ecosystem, forcing all but the most ardent refuseniks (so Nintendo and… er… that’s about it) to recognise mobile as an important part of their business – and even those who were slow to react to the rise of mobile gaming seem determined not to be left behind as tablets gain steam, with 2012 having shown us pretty clearly that the iPad and its myriad imitators are on track to become the primary data device of many consumers in the coming years.

We also learned some things – although not enough, I reckon – about where price points are heading. Freed of the artificial barriers to entry which define console platforms and physical retail, the App Store and Google Play have shown us where prices for digital content will inevitably trend towards – zero. In 2012, more entertaining, successful games than ever before launched at the princely price point of absolutely nothing. Plenty of others didn’t debut at far above 99p, and several of my favourite games of the year would have given me change from a £10 note. Free to play, with all that it entails, remains in its infancy, but is clearly going to be with us for the long haul; hopefully 2013 might be the year when the industry stops having ill-tempered hissy fits about this fact, and starts engaging with making F2P work better rather than loudly and pointlessly damning or exalting it at every turn.

That, perhaps, is a reasonable lead-in to something that I don’t think we learned this year, as an industry – we didn’t learn to stop being afraid of zero-sum games that don’t really exist. Discussions about mobile gaming, even among supposed professionals and experts, often descend into abject ridiculousness due to an insistence that mobile games will come to replace all other kinds of games, or that they are doomed to be a cynical, low-quality niche – neither of which position stands up to the slightest moment of intellectual scrutiny. The same applies to the vitriolic arguments about free-to-play which have washed over and back across 2012 like a stinking, polluted tide – when one side insists that everything will eventually be F2P, and the other insists that F2P is intrinsically evil and wrong, you’re no longer dealing with professional debate, but with dumb fanaticism.

I’m not saying, by the way, that we should all be cautious fence-sitters – there’s no virtue to sitting on the fence simply because it’s comfortable. Strong beliefs are good, but meaningless unless tempered by reason and fact. The fact is that cinema did not kill theatre, television did not kill cinema, video games have yet to viciously murder books, home recording did not kill music and video did not kill the radio star. Media and entertainment industries are ecosystems that accommodate an extraordinary range of different kinds of product and different business models – and that is not ever going to change. The idea that one form of entertainment, one form of business model or even one form of distribution will emerge to Rule Them All, is simply an idiot’s fantasy.

I say that with absolute confidence, not just because it is supported by countless years of history and the sheer wealth of culture and entertainment they have bequeathed to us, but because I recognise where the belief springs from. It’s the unique curse and blessing of the games industry that it teems with “left-brained” people – logical, analytical, mathematical, and quite different from the “right-brained” people who often dominate other creative industries. Video games were born with both feet firmly in the sphere of technology, only gradually moving to straddle the worlds of both technology and art – a marriage which is superbly creative but often fraught, as evidenced by the hissing recoil of many gamers and industry types alike when presented with the (stonkingly obvious) fact that games are an artform.

Left-brain people (yes, modern psychology dismisses this terminology, but it’s so much more polite than grouping you all as “geeks” and “arty types”, isn’t it?) love perfect answers. They like problems which have a correct solution, and see the world in those terms. In many industries, they’re perfect business leaders – there absolutely is a single most efficient way to extract oil or metal from the ground, to build an aircraft, to lay out a road or rail network. In entertainment, though, the idea of a “perfect” solution runs into a huge set of problems which utterly stump the left-brained – sentiment. Emotion. Irrationality. Sheer outright bloody-mindedness.

The fact is – nobody needs entertainment. Not really. If video games, films, books, music, plays, TV shows, paintings and sculptures all disappeared tomorrow, we’d be a much diminished species, but nobody would die. People need shelter, food, clothing, transport, protection, fuel – but entertainment is “discretionary”. It says so right there in your accounts. It’s spending at your discretion – and what that means is that it’s spending guided not by optimisation, but by sentiment.

Is free-to-play the most efficient way for money and experiences to change hands between developer and player? Is mobile or tablet gaming the most cost-effective route for consumers to engage with video games? Yeah, maybe – but what so few of us seem to really grasp is that this doesn’t actually matter. Is MP3 music the perfect balance of quality, convenience and file size? Probably – but vinyl shops thrive and specialist services offering “lossless” quality music files are on the rise. Is Kindle the best way to consume books? Yes, undoubtedly – but I don’t think of myself “consuming” books. Some books I just read; some I own; some I treasure. Sentiment; emotion; irrationality. I went to a shop and bought a leather-backed volume of a book I already own in paperback and Kindle alike. I’ll probably never read it. I love it. Am I an idiot, failing to see that this is not the optimal consumption path and bound to realise the error of my ways eventually? No, because this is my discretion; this is how I choose to enjoy and to spend on my pastime.

That’s why the zero-sum game will never come to pass – not as the strident debaters of 2012 believed. A very large number of consumers will still want things like dedicated gaming hardware, expensive full-price releases and physical products, not because this makes “sense” in an economic or logical way, but because they love those things and because, beyond straightforward questions of affordability, “economic sense” isn’t a welcome guest in deliberations about your hobbies and your passions.

The industry evolves and changes – never as rapidly as it did in 2012, though 2013 will probably make our heads spin just as fast – but little is truly lost. We don’t sell petrol, or sliced bread, or concrete, or train tickets. We sell experiences and emotions, and people will choose to consume those in the way that makes them feel best, not the way that is most coldly, mathematically efficient. Nobody fears that releasing Shakespeare adaptations on DVD will shut down theatres, or that allowing buskers onto the streets will eventually lead to concert halls being demolished. It’s time that we, too, learned that the expansion of the games business leads to more opportunities and more diversity, not to an existential threat to things we love – or worse, a chance to gloat over the imagined demise of things we hate. If you’ve got one new years resolution to make for 2013, make it this one – no more zero-sum arguments. Mobile won’t kill console. F2P won’t kill full-price. Cloud won’t kill local. The forest grows ever bigger; the old tree doesn’t block the sunlight from the new trees, the new trees do not strangle the roots of the old.

On which note, I’d like to wish a very merry and enjoyable Christmas (or winter holiday of your choosing) to all of our readers – not to mention a truly prosperous and wonderful new year.(source:gamesindustry)