作者：Michail Katkoff

Natural Motion的《CSR赛车》虽然在一个月前刚刚发现，但现在却已经成为了iOS平台上最畅销的游戏了。之所以能在短时间内取得这样的好成绩是因为这款游戏拥有有趣的故事，出色的画面，简单且让人上瘾的游戏玩法以及平衡的游戏经济。但没有什么是绝对完美的。实际上，这款游戏便有两个地方做的不尽人意。

我将通过本篇文章去分析《CSR赛车》所有出色的特性，包括用户留存，盈利机制，病毒性传播等等，同时也将讨论阻碍它成为完美之作的两大元素。

CSR Racing（from blogspot）

核心循环

《CSR赛车》的核心循环拥有两个主要阶段：赛车和升级。玩家可以通过赛车去获得Cash。而如果玩家想要为自己的汽车添加新零部件（游戏邦注：能让汽车变得更加完善，并帮玩家赢得比赛）就需要花费Cash。每次赛车都需要花费Fuel，Fuel便是游戏的能源。随着时间的发展，Fuel将获得重新加载。玩家可以通过利用Facebook，电子邮件或sms等方式邀请好友而获得更多能源。除此之外玩家还可以通过花费升水货币，也就是Gold去填满Buel。

race & upgrade（from blogspot）

用户留存–做得很好！

提高用户留存的关键便是确保经济的平衡，提供具有吸引力的游戏玩法，稳定的故事，适当的通知以及一些特定的每日返回功能。当玩家是带着成就感完成每个游戏阶段时，你便能拥有稳定的用户留存。而《CSR赛车》便是如此。

Fuel便是《CSR赛车》中的主要用户留存驱动元素。一开始玩家将带着完整的Feul点进行10次赛车，但是随着游戏的发展，有些比赛需要玩家消费一个以上的Fuel点。而一个Fuel点的加载需要7分钟，所以玩家需要等上70分钟的时间才能看到再次充满的Fuel框、当Fuel加载完成后玩家将会收到一个通知，然后便能回到游戏中了。

升级汽车不仅能够帮助玩家赢得比赛，同时这也是一种让人上瘾的机制。游戏商店中陈列出各种不同的零部件，包括齿轮箱，引擎，车身，轮胎以及涡轮增压器等等。每个部分都拥有不同的阶段，并且下一个阶段总会变得更加昂贵。玩家可以使用Cash购买所有零部件，但同时他们也需要赢得3至7次的赛车才能获得足够的Cash去换取其它零部件。换句话说，几乎每个游戏过程都是以玩家在车上安装一个全新零部件结束。

故事的构建在提高用户留存方面也很重要。游戏中有5张被称为Tier的地图。每个Tier都拥有不同的赛车模式，但基本上来看最重要的还是Crew Battle。玩家只有在战胜Tier中的5个机组人员后才能进入下一个Tier。关键在于玩家需要不断升级自己的汽车才有可能赢得更强大的机组人员。玩家必须在地图上不断进行比赛才能获得更多Cash，从而购买更厉害的零部件以赢得Crew Battle。

例如在Daily Battle模式中，玩家将与其他赛车手（而不是自己车库中的人员）比赛。在Daily Battle中，玩家可以根据多少玩家连续比赛而获得额外的Cash。这一功能有利于付费汽车的推广。

盈利——未来的麻烦

根据我的经验，Energy能够生成20%至40%的收益。在《CSR赛车》中，虽然Fuel的几个很低，但是仍有将近20%的游戏收益是来自能源。填满能源框只需要2个Gold（1个Gold=0.1美元）。即使在《CSR赛车》中fuel的收益流并不高，但是考量到产品的低价与可消费属性，我仍认为游戏拥有较高的转换率。

玩家需要使用Cash去获得零部件，而他们也可以用真钱去换得Cash。但是我仍不认为销售Cash便是《CSR赛车》的主要收益来源。根据经验，软货币并不能带来多少利益，除非开发者将一些昂贵的软货币道具整合到游戏内的商店中。

游戏采取非常巧妙的方式去销售零部件。如果玩家购买的是更厉害的零部件，那么他便需要花些时间进行等待。当然了他们也可以通过消费gold而快速获得零部件。换句话说，这是一种双赢策略。

调谐便是一种能够提升汽车性能的消费品。基于玩家所购买的性能优化包，调谐可以在特定比赛中提升汽车的速度。游戏也将通过弹出窗口去推动玩家购买调谐（特别是当他们输掉比赛时）。

在《CSR赛车》中，汽车便是赚钱工具。根据经验，在拥有较多男性玩家的游戏中，永久的虚拟商品更好卖。我想说的是，《CSR赛车》中有50%的收益便是来自汽车的销售。一开始汽车并不是消费品，后来游戏会通过弹出窗口向玩家呈现出新汽车，并且带有更高的价格点，这时候玩家便会意识到拥有一款出色汽车的优势。同时我们还需要注意到汽车的购买流程。

不过汽车的销售从某种程度上看来也在破坏着《CSR赛车》的经济。问题就在于玩家可以立刻购买最出色的汽车，如此游戏很快便会失去乐趣，因为玩家可以很轻松地赢得每次比赛而无需获得零部件去升级汽车。唯一限制便是Crew Battle，即玩家需要在Tier驾驶特定的汽车。

相反地，游戏开发者们应该基于汽车而提供相应地图，并在玩家进入下一张地图时提供一些新汽车。基于这种方法，即使玩家在地图1中购买了最出色的汽车，他们也只能凭借这一汽车在该地图上赢取胜利。而当玩家进入地图2时，游戏竞争将变得更加激烈，所以他们之前引以为傲的汽车只会趋于普通。这便创造了一种情况，即付费玩家将不得不购买新汽车。而玩家需要做出的选择是，使用Cash购买一辆普通的汽车还是使用Gold购买一辆超级汽车。

病毒性

遗憾的是我们很少去讨论手机游戏中的病毒性传播。就像“分享”按键便是一种病毒性机制。

《CSR赛车》便具有这种病毒性机制。玩家可以通过社交网络，SMS以及电子邮件等方式分享自己汽车的图片，但是我却对这种方法能否吸引更多新玩家或回头玩家产生怀疑。

这款游戏目前所缺少的便是玩家对抗玩家模式——即让玩家能够与其他真人进行比赛而不是AI。我相信如今Natural Motion的员工们正致力于完善这一功能。

而这款游戏中唯一有效的病毒性功能要数基于奖励的邀请。即玩家通过Facebook，电子邮件或SMS等方式邀请好友加入游戏中便能获得一个Fuel点。虽然这种病毒性功能的作用大不如前，但却仍值得开发者们继续执行。

结论

《CSR赛车》是一款非常有趣的汽车管理游戏。不仅画面华丽，音效逼真，同时游戏进程也达到了最有效的平衡。同时因为玩家在每次短暂的比赛后都能获得满足感，并且因为游戏的能源机制总是推动着玩家去获得更多能源，所以他们便会一而再再而三地回到游戏中继续挑战。

然后，缺少玩家对抗玩家模式以及汽车销售经济中所存在的问题都有可能在带给免费玩家乐趣的同时而呈献给付费玩家无聊且有限的内容。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2012年7月25日，所涉事件及数据以当时为准。（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）

CSR Racing dissected

By Michail Katkoff

25th July 2012

CSR Racing by Natural Motion was launched a month ago and since then it’s been a top grossing game on iOS. In short the game has catching story, unrivaled graphics, easy yet addictive gameplay and very well balanced economy. Yet it isn’t perfect. Actually it’s two big steps away from being perfect.

In this blog post I’ll be dissecting all the amazing features of CSR Racing from the retention, monetization and virality perspectives as well as discuss two things, which are keeping CSR Racing from being perfect.

The Core Loop

CSR Racing’s core loop has two main stages: racing and upgrading. Player races to get Cash. Cash is needed to upgrade the car with new parts, which make it better and thus help to win the races. Each race costs Fuel.Fuel is the energy of the game. It reloads with time. As with all energy mechanics players can get more by sending invites via Facebook, email or sms. Players can also refill the Buel bar by spending some premium currency aka. Gold.

Retention – a job well done!

As I see it the key to excellent retention is well balanced economy accompanied with addicting gameplay, solid story and a healthy sprinkle of notifications as well as some game specific daily return features. When every game session ends with a player feeling accomplished you know you have a solid retention. And CSR Racing has in my opinion very solid retention.

Fuel is the primary driver of retention in CSR Racing. In the beginning player gets 10 races with a full bar but as the game progresses some of the races consume more than one Fuel point. One Fuel point reloads in 7 minutes so it takes 70 minutes till the Fuel bar is full again. Once the Fuel is reloaded you get a notification and you’re back into the game.

Upgrading your car is not only essential to succeed in races but also extremely addicting. And boy you have a lot of different parts in the shop! Gear box, engine, body, tires, turbo etc. Every part has several stages and the next stage is more and more expensive. All the parts can be bought with Cash and it usually takes you between 3 – 7 race wins to get enough money for the next part. In other words, almost every game session ends with you having new part in you car. Talking about sense of achievement!

The story is also very well constructed to ensure retention. There are 5 maps called Tiers. Each Tier has various racing modes but basically most important is the Crew Battle. Win races against all 5 crew members of that Tier and you’re off the the next Tier. The catch is that you need to constantly upgrade your car to win the ever tougher crew members. Player has to usually race most of the other races on the map to earn Cash so that she can purchase better parts and win the Crew Battles.

All in all CSR Racing has the foundation for the retention laid with solid economy, fun game play, awesome graphics and very addictive car upgrading. Yet Natural Motion goes an extra mile with small yet strong features increasing the traffic from daily returning users – not to mention the excellent use of game notifications on iOS.

For example the Daily Battle mode where player gets to race with other cars than the ones in her garage. In Daily Battler players earn extra Cash depending on how many Daily Battles player has been doing in a row (= how many days in a row player has played). This feature is also perfect to promote premium cars.

Monetization – future trouble ahead

According to my experience Energy generates some 20% – 40% of revenue in energy based economies. In case of CSR Racing I’d say below 20% of the revenue comes from energy as the price of Fuel is very low. Filling the energy bar costs only 2 Golds (1 Gold = $0.10, depending on the Gold bundle). But even if the revenue stream from the fuel isn’t that high in CSR Racing I still bet that the volumes (and thus conversion) are substantial due to the low price and consumable nature of the product.

Parts cost Cash so in a way they generate some revenue as players can buy Cash with real money. But again I don’t believe that selling Cash is a significant source of revenue in CSR Racing. Based on my experience soft currency is a poor generator of revenue unless you put some extremely exclusive and extremely expensive soft currency items into the in-game shop (and CSR Racing doesn’t have cars, which cost 500’000 Cash – yet).

The way the parts are sold in the game is genius. As player buys high level parts they have to wait till the part is delivered to them. Of course player can instant deliver the part by paying some gold. In other words it’s monetize or return later (win-win).

Tuning is basically a consumable boost. Tuning makes your car faster for specific amount of races depending on the tuning pack you buy. Again player is promoted to get tuning done with popups (usually seen when you lose are race).

Cars are the money makers in CSR Racing. In my experience permanent virtual goods sell very well in games with large male user base. I’d say that 50% of all revenue in CSR Racing comes from selling cars. My estimation is based on the fact that cars aren’t consumable, they look great, new car offers are presented to players via popups, cars are priced at a higher price point (though in my opinion not high enough $10 seemed to be the most expensive one) and player gets very clear advantage for having a great car. Also the purchase flow for car offers is worth noting.

Though selling cars is also something that destroys the economy in CSR Racing. The problem is that player can purchase the best car off the bat and suddenly the game becomes very boring as you win every race and don’t even need the parts to upgrade your already invincible vehicle. The only limitation are the Crew Battles, which can are driven with a Tier specific car.

Instead what they should have done is offer map based cars and unlocking new cars only as player enters the next map. This way even if player buys the best possible car in Map 1 it will only keep him winning on that map. Once the player enters Map 2, suddenly all the competition is much tougher and player’s previously invincible car is now just a regular ride. This creates a situation where paying player basically starts all over and has to buy a new car. The only question is whether player will buy a regular car with Cash or go premium againg and buy a super car with Gold.

Virality

Sadly one can seldom say anything about the virality in mobile games. It’s usually that one ‘SHARE’ button that no-one sane presses, which is counted as virality.

And this is pretty much the case in CSR Racing at this moment. You can share the picture of your car via social networks, SMS and email, but I doubt this drives a lot of new and returning users to the game.

What the game is currently missing badly is the Player vs. Player mode. Something that lets you compete against other real people instead of battling the AI. I’m sure the girls and boys at Natural Motion are working hard on this feature so enough about what the game is missing.

One (and only) good viral feature was the incentivized invitation. By sending and invite via Facebook, email or SMS to you friend you get one point of Fuel. An easy viral feature, which runs dry quickly (how many times are you going to bug your friends?) but is still definitely worth implementing basically into every game out there.

Amazing yet two big steps away from perfect

CSR Racing is a very polished fun car management game. The graphics are AMAZING. Sounds are great. Progress is extremely well balanced and you end up returning to the game dozen time a day – simply because you feel good after each short session and because you’re always left hungry for more due to the on-point energy mechanics.

Yet there’s the lack of PvP mode and the issue in the car selling economy, which leaves paid users with a boring game and limited content (you win the game in few sessions once the best card is bought) and lets the free users have the most fun.(source:blogspot)