作者：Zoya

最近我有幸与Kiloo的Simon Moller谈论了他在《地铁跑酷》等免费游戏中所使用的内容策略。他认为Glu等竞争对手都错误地为自己的免费游戏发行了续集内容。他认为频繁地推出现有游戏的更新内容才能更有效地提升游戏的用户留存和盈利。

为什么你不同意发行免费游戏续集？

任何成功的免费游戏都能成功地获得玩家并将他们长期留在游戏中。与传统的MMO和其它社交游戏一样，面对免费游戏，我们也必须将情感依附到游戏以及玩家的游戏过程中。为了维持玩家对游戏的兴趣，开发者必须提供给他们有意义的新内容。

对于像传统的盒装游戏或付费购得的游戏而言，游戏续集便很有帮助。但是如果玩家能够完全购得一款免费游戏，那只能说这款游戏的设计核心本身就有问题。

用续集去分割用户基础并不是一种好方法，特别是当你的玩家之间是以某种方式进行互动。所有的免费游戏都应该包含各种能够让玩家进行互动的方法。

总之，免费游戏的“续集策略”是介于传统盒装游戏世界和全新数字世界之间的非正宗做法。

Subway Surfers(from ugeeky)

对于《地铁跑酷》你有何替代策略？

在这款游戏最初的设计中我们留下了足够的空间，从而让我们能在之后添加更多内容，保持它在新功能设计中的迭代，让玩家可以无需购买便能体验任何新内容。我们则是通过“虚荣心”（角色，排行榜），“能量”（排行的变动，升级机制）和广告销售去赚取利益，并免费推出全新世界以保持玩家在游戏中的新鲜感。

我知道“无尽奔跑”类游戏总是拥有较高的用户留存并且能够获得更高的盈利，所以我们便通过每个月更新内容而带给玩家最新鲜的体验。这便要求我们必须在一开始创造出最精益的基础设施（这并不轻松），那么我们便能在现在获利了。

基于这些努力，我们的游戏从发行那天起每个月的DAU和MAU都一直往上攀升。如今游戏仍基于非常突出的比率发展着，并且我们也未投入任何资源去直接获取用户。我们将所有时间和努力都投入于产品中，并相信能够吸引世界各地用户的注意。我们也的确做到了这一点。

我们专注于“玩家优先”策略—-即在每次更新时都会添加更多新内容去吸引玩家的注意，即使他们在某一时刻暂时停止玩游戏。我们需要让玩家知道《地铁跑酷》的更新是值得他们投入时间的。对于那些愿意花时间玩我们游戏的玩家来说，这只是一种较为谦逊的观点。

你是否测试过这一策略？否则你是如何知道它具有成效？

该策略的确很有效。我们已经使用过一次，并且获得了所有相关的数据点。当我们着眼于整个市场时会发现，大量免费游戏续集都遭受了重创（游戏邦注：即使它们最初的游戏取得了巨大的成功）。

（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）

The secret to player engagement: never release a sequel

By Simon Moller

Why do you disagree with sequels to free-to-play games?

If you look at successful Free-to-Play games, they’ve managed to capture and retain their audience over a long period of time. Much like traditional MMO’s and other social games, it’s vital to create an emotional attachment to the game and to the progress players build in the game. To keep players interested, it is of vital importance to give them new meaningful content to interact with.

Sequels work great if the game can be fully consumed, as in traditional boxed-product or digitally delivered Pay-to-Play products. But if a Free-to-Play game can be fully consumed, that’s a flawed design at its very core.

Splitting your userbase with a sequel is particularly bad if your players somehow interact with one another. And all Free-to-Play products should contain ways for your audience to do exactly that.

In short, the “Sequel Strategy” for Free-to-Play games is bastardized between the traditional boxed product world and the new, digital world.

What is your alternative strategy for Subway Surfers?

With Subway Surfers, we left enough room in the original design and IP to add more content, and kept iterating on new feature designs and meaningful ways for players to experience new content without “consuming” it or purchasing it. We monetize through “Vanity” (Characters, Boards), “Power” (Hover Boards, Power-Ups) and advertising sales and give the new worlds away for free to keep the game fresh to players.

We knew the Endless Runner genre retained well and monetized lightly per DAU historically, so we set out to create the freshest experience by updating with new, meaningful content every single month. This required a pretty lean infrastructure that we had to build first – and it wasn’t easy – but it’s paying off bigtime at this point in time.

The product of these efforts is that we’ve seen a dramatic increase in both DAU and MAU every month since releasing. And the game is still growing at a very good rate, without us having to invest anything in direct user acquisition. We’re putting all our time and effort into the product, and trust the users to spread the word. It works.

We’re focusing on the “Players First” strategy – and every time we update it’s required to have enough new stuff to keep players excited about the game – even if they took a break from it at some point. We want to teach players that updating Subway Surfers is worth their time. It’s a very humble point of view towards the people who spend time using our product.

Have you tested this strategy? How do you know that it works?

The strategy works. We’ve experienced that first hand, and all data points to that. Watching the market (as we do quite a lot), an overwhelming percentage of Free-to-Play sequel titles have tanked hard, even if the first title was a large success.(source:gamesbrief)