游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

分析免费模式vs.付费模式所存在的优劣

发布时间:2013-02-06 14:58:57 Tags:,,,

作者:Tim Wicksteed

我应该采用免费模式吗?这是一个简单的问题,但答案可能更复杂。我在Twitter上与Nicholas Lovell聊天时问了他这个问题。对于我面临的两难选择,他的回答是:

“如果玩家在你的游戏上花钱1000美元或以上,你觉得满足了,那就选择免费模式……”

之后他问我是否愿意把我的难题写下来发表在网上,于是有了这篇文章。

不久之后,我将为我的游戏《Ionage》(一款关于太空战斗的RTS平台游戏,Android版正在开发中)确定商业模式。

Ionage(from gamesbrief)

Ionage(from gamesbrief)

免费模式能产生多少利润?你只要看任何一个应用商店的总收益排行榜就知道了。免费模式做得好的话,显然是很赚钱的,甚至可能足以让许多独立开发者保持独立地位、自给自足和专注于自己的技术。

然而,免费模式也存在缺陷。我认为它在三个由浅到深的层面上让独立开发者进退两难:

表层:免费模式是困难的。就像寻找成功的案例,你也能很轻易地发现不那么成功的经验。例如,《Monkey Drum》和《Punch Quest》都犯了“太大方”的错误,都没有产生游戏内消费(IAP)。对于一个人的开发团队,要做好免费模式,你需要学习的额外技术太多了。例如,数据获取和分析,或更难学习的“让玩家心甘情愿地在你的游戏中花钱”的劝说艺术。更别提发布之后好几个月的游戏(服务)支持。这些任务比单纯的设计、制作、发布和修复漏洞复杂多了。

中层:总有些人反对免费模式的存在。有些玩家因为游戏内的IAP而离开。他们认为他们更愿意先花钱买下完整的游戏,而不是让那些广告或提示告诉他们多花钱多乐趣。公道地说,我可以理解他们的想法。免费模式有点像花钱买了一支钢笔,之后才意识到你还得再买一瓶墨水……并且这墨水比你想象中的还不经用。对于非常少数的玩家而言,大部分人免费玩游戏,而少数人资助整个游戏,这是一个令人反感的主意,一定程度上也是不公平的。我也觉得,免费模式的仇视者应该大多是传统游戏的玩家——而这些人也正是《Ionage》的受众。我有时候很担心休闲玩家不喜欢我的游戏,但也抵触了硬核玩家的原则。

深层:免费模式的潜藏成本。如果用户不提前支付,那么他们就会以其他方式支付,这是存在争议的说法。这当然不只是关于游戏——大多数网站是靠广告生存的。免费产品意味着你必须在产品中嵌入商业广告。问题是:在游戏中加入商业化的东西会不会毁掉游戏?比如,免费游戏可以故意在游戏中添加烦人的“刷”任务,以此鼓励玩家花钱跳过它。

正如你所看到的,我一直在说免费模式的消极作用。那是因为我其实很欣赏免费模式的创意,我正在努力挑它的刺,以便让我自己做好失败的心理准备。

我认为免费模式不可掩盖的优势是:

*新玩家进入游戏无门槛

*无消费上限(或至少更高)

*不付费的玩家可以帮助推广你的游戏,即使他们本人并不为你的游戏花钱

……对面临激烈竞争的独立开发者而言,这些都是非常可贵的优势。

Ionage(from gamesbrief)

Ionage(from gamesbrief)

我已经决定尝试免费模式。我的结论很明确——成功取决于执行。当然,有些游戏千方百计榨取玩家的每一分钱,虽然抹黑了免费模式,但同时也可能是好游戏的典范——玩家不花一分钱也能获得极大乐趣!

正如我在前面所说的,免费模式是困难的。它不是一支让游戏自动增加收益的魔术棒。我必须好好设计游戏和它的赢利策略,以免被免费模式的反对者炮轰。Nicholas在他的免费游戏设计原则中提到,游戏必须“慷慨大方”。不是在游戏中添加无聊的“刷”任务,逼玩家付费跳过它,为什么不让付费内容配得上游戏本身?同样地,我必须以《Monkey Drum》和《Punch Quest》为前车之鉴,不要对玩家大方过头,以致于玩家找不到花钱的理由。最后,我必须确保自己的赢利策略对玩法起补充作用,而不是损害玩法。

最后,用我最喜欢的一句话总结免费模式的艺术:“人们讨厌为他们必须的东西花钱,但喜欢为他们想要的东西买单!”(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

An indie perspective on the F2P vs. premium dilemma

By Tim Wicksteed

Should I go Free-to-Play (F2P)? It’s a simple question but the answer may be more complicated. I was chatting with Nicholas Lovell on Twitter to ask his opinion on it. We got onto the dilemma I was facing and he replied:

“If you can get comfortable with someone spending $1000 or more on your game, go F2P”… Hum.

He then asked whether I’d like to put my dilemma down on (electronic) paper as a guest post for Gamesbrief, so here I am.

I’m getting to the point with Ionage (a RTS about battling space platforms currently in development for Android) where I’m going to have to lock down the monetisation strategy soon.

You don’t have to look much further than the top grossing apps list on any of the app stores to see the benefits of F2P. Done well, it clearly can be lucrative, potentially offering that holy grail to indie developers – just that, allowing them to stay indie, be self-sufficient and free to the develop their craft.

However there are also potential pitfalls to F2P that give somewhat of a dilemma. I see them occurring on 3 levels of increasing depth:

Surface: F2P is hard. As easy as it is to see the success stories, you don’t have to look much further to find the not-so-successful ones. For example Monkey Drum and Punch Quest both made the mistake of being too generous so that noone ever made the In-App Purchases (IAPs). For a one-man-band there are a whole lot of extra skills you have to learn to do F2P right. For example data acquisition and analysis, or the much harder to learn art of persuading players to part with their money inside your game without pushing them out. Not to mention the continued support of the game (service?) over the months following launch. That’s a much bigger time-commitment than just design, build, launch and a single patch to remove the bugs.

Floating in the middle: F2P haters exist. Some gamers are instantly turned off by the inclusion of IAPs within a game. They say they would rather pay upfront knowing they had the full game to enjoy without all the ads and reminders that they could be having more fun if they just paid a little more. In fairness I can sympathise. F2P can seem a bit like paying for a pen and then realising you need to pay extra for ink… and then the ink runs out quicker than you thought it would. It’s a counter-intuitive idea for a very small percentage of your players to fund your entire game while the majority plays for free – somehow it doesn’t seem fair! I also get the feeling that a good proportion of F2P haters are traditional gamers – the same traditional gamers that are the target audience for Ionage. I sometimes worry that I’ll end up with a game that casual gamers won’t enjoy and hardcore gamers won’t touch out of principle.

Deeper still: The hidden cost of free. It’s argued that if users don’t pay upfront then they end up paying in some other way. This isn’t just about games of course – most of the internet is funded by advertising. Giving a product away for free means you have to build the business into the product. The question is: does letting the business into the game spoil it? An example of this in F2P could be deliberately building an annoying grind into the game to encourage players to spend to skip it.

As you can tell I’m concentrating on the negatives here. That’s because I’m actually a huge fan of the ideas behind F2P and I’m trying very hard to find flaws to stress test the idea and prepare myself for the potential pitfalls.

The thing is I don’t think any of these arguments can counter-balance the immense positives of F2P, briefly:

Zero barrier to entry for new users

No cap on spend (or at least a much higher cap)

Freeloaders promote your game even if they don’t pay for it

… to name a few. These are invaluable to an indie developer struggling to get noticed amongst the sea of alternative titles.

I’ve decided that I’m going to give F2P a go. My conclusion is an obvious one – the success will depend on the execution. Of course there are examples of horribly manipulative games designed to squeeze their users for every last pound but there are also wonderful examples of games that are great fun even when you haven’t paid a penny!

As I started out saying, F2P isn’t easy. It’s not a magic wand that’s going to automatically increase my game’s revenue. I have to design my game and monetisation so that I don’t give F2P haters ammunition. As Nicholas says in his F2P design rules I have to “be generous”. Instead of adding a grind and making people pay to remove it, why not make the premium content really worthy of that title? Equally I must not fall into the trap of Monkey Drum and Punch Quest and give too much away so there isn’t a reason to spend. Finally I need to make sure that the monetisation technique complements the gameplay and does not hinder it.

I’ll finish with one of my favourite sayings that I think sums up the art of F2P: “People hate spending money on what they need but love to spend money on what they want!”(source:gamesbrief)


上一篇:

下一篇: