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Facebook社交游戏会就此衰亡吗?

发布时间:2013-04-22 12:12:08 Tags:,,,,

作者:Mike Rose

本周可以说是基于浏览器的社交游戏发展的转折点,特别是Facebook上的游戏。

首先是Electronic Arts宣布关闭Facebook上三款大受欢迎的社交游戏,同时让人猜测它是否会关闭社交游戏子公司Playfish。

然后来自指标追踪公司SuperData的数据显示,上个月社交游戏的总收益到达了一个新低值,即1.24亿美元。该公司表示,如今的社交游戏正在给整个数字世界拖后腿。

social game(from t3kd.com)

social game(from t3kd.com)

而本周的社交游戏会经历最后的打击,还是为新开发者打开全新大门去发挥运气?

Facebook的预测是后者。根据Facebook的技术通讯经理Tera Randall:“一位开发者转变资源或关闭游戏并不能影响整个生态系统。这与主机游戏制作者将游戏从货架上撤离并不意味着商店出现问题是一个道理。”

她继续说道:“这是一种自然发展,并不局限于社交游戏,我们也经常能看到人们从一款热门游戏转向另一款游戏,或者专注于一款全新授权游戏。”

Gamasutra最近所获得的数据也证实了Randall的看法,她也表示即使艺电切断了社交游戏支持,Facebook“也不担心会出现大批撤离者。”

她继续说道:“我们也必须注意到,如果开发者进一步投资于手机平台,那么就会有越多人将Facebook当成跨平台识别系统,并且会有更多人使用News Feed,App Center以及我们的全新手机应用安装广告去推动应用发现。”

社交开发商的看法

Facebook总是认为不管什么情况都不是大问题。而真正的测试是关于社交游戏开发商们是否仍认为这是值得他们坚持的领域。

在最近几个月,来自英国的Playdemic感受到了社交游戏的巨大的成功,即其面向Facebook和Zynga.com上的游戏《Village Life》获得了将近200万的日活跃用户。

根据来自AppData的数据,这款游戏在Facebook的DAU为10万至50万,因此我们可以看出《Village Life》的玩家主要是来自Zynga.com,而这也要归功于Zynga的交叉推广机制。

Playdemic的首席执行官Paul Gouge说道:“我认为我们需要明确区分艺电关闭游戏的原因与Facebook游戏平台整体的健康。”

他继续说道:“社交游戏服务业务模式不可避免的结果便是,在某种程度上来看这对于发行商而言将是一种浪费型业务。这也解释了为何每月所生成的利益不足以支撑游戏运行成本。”

随着近来的游戏产业一直支持着“游戏作为一种服务”的哲理,Gouge认为收益将不足以继续弥补成本“而不管我们面对的是怎样的平台。作为一个产业,我们需要明确怎么做才是对玩家最好的。”

他同时也说道,这种情况将推动着玩家对游戏的期待值进一步提高。“尽管Facebook游戏平台发生了很大的改变,但是我们仍认为这是一个非常棒的的发行平台,如果着眼于2012年该平台游戏取得了28亿美元收益,我想玩家们也都会同意这一观点吧。”

Gouge所看到的并不是愿意玩社交游戏的玩家数量的下降,而是这是一个不断迎合各种改变(游戏邦注:根据什么是热门什么又是冷门)的产业。

他说道:“真正让我担心的还是我们所身处的产业对于平台,业务模式和类型拥有巨大的集体情绪波动。2,3年前,Facebook还被誉为产业中最大的机遇所在,而现在人们的集体意识似乎将其变成了一个糟糕的理念。”

他继续说道:“而真相其实总是介于中间。即Facebook对于休闲和社交游戏而言仍是非常重要的一个平台,它所提供的(包括台式机和手机)极高发现能力与用户粘性将继续伴随着我们。”

当然了,即使如此我们也很难忽视像Zynga和艺电等巨头公司相继从Facebook中抽身的事实。Gouge认为这主要是归因于Facebook是面向多个销售点(而不只是游戏)的平台属性。

他解释道:“Facebook就像一个不断改变着的生物,游戏并不是它唯一提供的内容,有些改变有利于游戏制作人,有些却无利。这便意味着那些想要获得28亿美元收益的公司需要灵活地适应该平台的改变属性,如此才有可能获取成功。”

Pretty Simple Games也是一家在Facebook上取得成功的工作室。最近其寻物解谜游戏《Criminal Case》已经获得了400多万的DAU,而该公司的通讯主管Serge Versille对于艺电的脱身行为也表示非常困惑。

他说道:“艺电取得了巨大的成功,我们很难相信他们就这么抛弃了上百万的DAU。”

他继续说道:“但是艺电并不是市场的领导者,单单在欧洲,像King等大工作室或者Social Point或Pretty Simple等小型工作室都表示社交游戏中还存在着发展与成功的机会。按照这种情况,我们认为这是能够迎合那些不愿再玩艺电游戏的休闲玩家的主要机遇。”

criminal case(from gamasutra)

criminal case(from gamasutra)

根据他在社交游戏领域中的经验,与Facebook的功能整合在一起便是帮助他们在该平台上取得成功的关键。

Versille表示:“我们公司的联合创始人Bastien Cazenave在一个月前(即谈到游戏发行前三个月DAU是如何从0上升到3百万时)曾说过一句话‘Pretty Simple基于《Criminal Case》的成功表明了,如果你希望能在短时间内获得巨大的用户,那么Facebook便仍是你的最佳在线平台选择。”

来自塞尔维亚的游戏开发商Nordeus在Facebook上也拥有一款大受欢迎的足球经理游戏《Top Eleven》。其首席执行官Branko Milutinovic认为,大型发行商的这种脱离行为在社交游戏领域是不常见的,这也不会改变什么。

他说道:“在线游戏总是需要支付一定的服务器成本,而游戏不再获利时,公司便会选择关闭游戏。也有许多大型发行商(不只是艺电)在2012年关闭了许多游戏,更别提之前几年的状况了。”

但是Milutinovic也承认他在最近几年里注意到一些情况,即相比以往,近几年Facebook上出现越来越多遭遇关闭的大型游戏。

他解释道:“我相信,随着这些大型发行商的大型IP的关闭,不管是媒体和产业都遭遇了巨大的打击。并且这些新闻也在媒体中产生了巨大的影响。”

从Milutinovic所说的,我们可以发现更多的问题是源自盈利而非玩家数量的下降。他说道:“我们仔细观察着社交游戏领域中每个发行商的发展,并且也注意到,近来发行商们所面临的最大问题并不是了解用户或听取玩家的需求。”

“作为拥有巨大的预算和授权的知名游戏还不够,在艺电的《FIFA Superstars》和《Top Eleven》的对抗中,我们也注意到前者在上个月正式关闭,而我们的《Top Eleven》却已经成为了拥有超过1000万活跃玩家的最高体育类游戏。”

从中我们可以看出,Nordeus并不在乎艺电撤离社交游戏的决定,或者其它更大的发行商的决策。

社交平台与手机平台的结合

SuperData最近的报告显示,尽管大型公司正在撤离Facebook,但这正好为小型或中型公司的发展留出了更大空间。

而我们所了解的一些大型公司也表示并未烦恼艺电的抽身。就像Wooga旗下的一些Facebook游戏便凭借着较高的MAU而走上排行榜的顶端,包括《Diamond Dash 》和《Bubble Island》,而该公司的创始人兼首席执行官Jens Begemann告诉我们,“艺电撤离该平台并未对我们造成任何困扰。”

他补充道:“与其它大型平台一样,Facebook.com也具有激烈的竞争性。也许该平台与主机的最大区别便在于,大品牌在这里往往变得不再那么重要了。为了取得成功,你便需要创造出带有最佳用户体验的优秀游戏,并持续进行迭代。这也是帮助我们在近几年成功发展游戏的重要方法。”

而King的首席营销官Alex Dale也注意到其公司现在已经拥有了超过1.08亿的月活跃用户,而King也发现那些基于手机和社交平台连接游戏的玩家都具有较强的用户粘性。

candy crush saga(from gamasutra)

candy crush saga(from gamasutra)

的确,在当前Facebook的前20名游戏中就有三款来自King,包括Facebook最畅销游戏《Candy Crush Saga》。而从MAU来看,该公司有6款游戏位于前100名游戏中。

不过Dale选择不对艺电的撤离做出任何评价。

显然,我们所交谈的每家公司当前都拥有属于自己的手机游戏,并且他们也未计划抛弃社交游戏去支持手机游戏。

举个例子来说吧,就像Playdemic便认为Facebook游戏能够帮助公司提升手机游戏的曝光率和用户粘性,Nordeus也说过他们所创造的主要是关于跨平台游戏,所以他们将同时关注于Facebook和手机平台,至少在可预见的未来中是如此。

尽管Wooga拥有许多大型Facebook游戏,但它仍是一家以手机游戏为主的公司,即更加关注于iOS平台。但是该工作室也制定了许多年末Facebook游戏计划(还未公布),它也表示在未来的游戏发行中Facebook仍会扮演着举足轻重的角色。

Pretty Simple Games也始终坚持将这两个平台维系在一起,特别是考虑到Facebook的最新手机游戏功能,如面向iOS的games feed。并且如今该开发商也能够面向平板电脑调整旗下游戏《Criminal Case》。

也许相比几年前的峰值,如今的社交游戏收益出现了较大的滑落,但是还有很多开发商认为这里仍存在未被开发的巨大空间。让我们期待在2013年剩下的日子中社交游戏将出现怎样的发展。

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

Are social games on Facebook really dying out?

By Mike Rose

This week could prove quite the turning point for browser-based social games, especially where Facebook is concerned.

First Electronic Arts said that it is pulling its most popular games from Facebook, raising questions over whether it plans to shut down its Playfish social games subsidiary.

Then figures from metrics tracking firm SuperData showed that last month, the social games segment reached a new low of $124 million in total revenue. The social games space is holding back the overall digital space, says the company.

But has this week been the final nail in the coffin for the social games space, or has it simply opened up the floor for a host of new developers to try their luck?

Facebook, expectedly, reckons it’s the latter. “One developer shifting resources or moving a game does not speak to the health of the ecosystem,” Facebook’s technology communications manager Tera Randall tells me, “the same way a console game maker pulling a game off a store shelf doesn’t mean that the store is having problems.”

She continues, “It’s a natural progression that’s not unique to social games and one we’ve always seen as people move from one hit to another, or focus on a new franchise.”

Stats shared with Gamasutra earlier this week back up Randall’s statements to a point, and she says that following EA’s cutting back of its support for social games, Facebook is “not at all worried about an exodus.”

“It’s important to note as well that if/when developers invest more in mobile (as we also have with our own apps), the vast majority use Facebook as the cross-platform identity system, as well as one of the primary ways to drive app discovery through News Feed, App Center, and our new mobile app install ads,” she adds.

Social devs speak

Talking to the platform holder is all well-and-good, but Facebook was always going to say that everything is hunky dory. The real test is whether social game developers still feel like it’s a space worth sticking with.

UK-based Playdemic has seen great success with social games in recent months, as its Facebook and Zynga.com game Village Life has around 2 million daily active users.

Notably, according to data from AppData, the game has between 100,000 – 500,000 DAUs on Facebook, thus the majority of Village Life’s players must be from Zynga.com, as part of Zynga’s incentivized cross-promotion efforts.

“I think we need to be careful here to distinguish between EA closing game services which they no longer feel are viable, and the overall health of the Facebook games platform,” states Paul Gouge, CEO at Playdemic.

“An inevitable consequence of the Social Game Service business model is that, at some point, the service will become uneconomic for the publisher,” he continues. “This is the point at which the monthly revenues generated simply aren’t sufficient to justify the costs associated with running the game.”

With the games industry embracing the “games as a service” philosophy in recent times, Gouge believes that revenues no longer justifying costs “is going to become a much more frequent occurrence regardless of platform and something that, as an industry, we need to ensure we are able to manage in a way that is the best it can be for our players.”

It will also become something that gamers actually begin to anticipate with their games, he reasons. “As for the Facebook games platform, whilst there have been significant changes we still see it as a viable and exciting platform for publishing games and if you look at the $2.8 billion in revenue spent in games on Facebook in 2012, players would seem to agree.”

What Gouge sees isn’t a decline in the number of players who are willing to play social games, but rather, an industry that is fickle and prone to changing its mind about what’s hot and what’s not much too frequently.

“What worries me is that as an industry we are good at having huge collective mood swings about platforms, business models and genres,” he says. “Only 2-3 years ago Facebook gaming was being hailed as the greatest opportunity in the industry and now the collective conscious seems to be ready to throw it out as a bad idea.”

“The truth as always is somewhere in the middle,” he continues. “Facebook is still an important platform for casual and social games and its power in enabling both discovery and engagement of players on desktop and mobile will be with us for a while yet.”

Of course, even with all this talk, it’s difficult to look past the fact that a number of big companies like Zynga and EA are still pulling away from Facebook. Gouge believes this is down to the nature of Facebook as a platform for multiple outlets and not just games.

“Facebook is a constantly changing animal, and as games are not its prime offering some of the changes are good for game makers and some bad,” he explains. “As a result this means that those companies hoping to get a share of the $2.8 billion being spent on the platform need to dynamically respond to the changing nature of the platform to succeed.”

Pretty Simple Games is another studio that is having success on Facebook. Its hidden object game Criminal Case currently has over 4 million DAUs, and the company’s head of communication Serge Versille is baffled by EA distancing itself from social games.

“EA has some big successes, and it’s hard to believe they’d just throw away the millions of DAUs,” he notes.

“But EA isn’t a market leader, and in Europe alone, big studios like King or smaller ones like Social Point or Pretty Simple are showing objectively that there are opportunities for growth and success,” he adds. “So as it stands, we’re seeing this as an opportunity to entertain casual players who will no longer be able to play EA’s games.”

His experience with the social games space is that tight integration with Facebook’s features is the key to success on the platform.

Notes Versille, “As our co-founder Bastien Cazenave was quoted a month ago, when he was talking about going from 0 to 3M DAUs in the first 3 months since releasing the game, ‘The success of Pretty Simple with Criminal Case shows that Facebook remains the best performing online platform in order to reach such an audience in such a short time.”

Elsewhere, Serbian game developer Nordeus has one of the most popular games on Facebook, football manager game Top Eleven. CEO Branko Milutinovic notes that these kinds of shutdowns from big publishers aren’t uncommon in the social games space, and that’s likely to never change.

“Online games require servers that cost, and when the game stops being profitable, the company will eventually shut it down,” he says. “Other big publishers, not just EA, closed dozen of games in 2012, not to mention previous years.”

However, Milutinovic admits that he has noticed a recent momentum in the space, with more big titles shutting down on Facebook than usual.

“I believe that both the media and the industry are experiencing a bit of a shock that these big publishers with big IPs have failed,” he reasons, “and that news is generating quite much buzz in the media right now.”

From what Milutinovic can tell, it appears to be a problem of monetization, rather than a drop-off of players in the space. “We closely monitor developments with every single publisher in the social gaming sphere, and as far as we are concerned, the biggest problem with publishing companies these days is not knowing your audience and not listening to gamers’ requests and needs,” he says.

“Being the well-known company with the big budget and licences just isn’t enough, and we could all witness that in the case of EA FIFA Superstars vs Top Eleven. Superstars has shut down last month and Top Eleven is the number one sports game with over 10 million active players today.”

As a result, Nordeus isn’t concerned about EA’s decision to move away from social games, or indeed, about what any of the larger publishers are doing.

Big hitters and mobile transitions

SuperData’s report from earlier this week suggested that while the larger companies are dropping away from Facebook, this may leave space for smaller and medium-sized companies to take up the empty space from the departures.

However, the larger companies that we talked to didn’t appear all too bothered about EA’s downsizing. Wooga currently holds a number of the top games on Facebook in terms of MAUs, including Diamond Dash (pictured) and Bubble Island, and the company’s founder and CEO Jens Begemann told me that “EA downsizing on the platform is not cause for any concern.”

“Like any big platform, Facebook.com is extremely competitive,” he added. “Probably a big difference between the platform and consoles is that big brands tend to matter less. To be successful you need to create the best games with the best user experience and continually iterate upon that. That’s an approach that has helped us grow these games over years.”

Elsewhere, King CMO Alex Dale noted that his company currently has over 108 million monthly players, while King has found that players who connect with games on both mobile and social platforms are generally the most engaged.

Indeed, King currently has three of the top 20 games on Facebook, including Facebook’s top game Candy Crush Saga. In total, the company has six games in the top 100 rankings based on MAUs.

However, Dale chose not to comment specifically on how he sees EA’s move this week affecting the platform.

Notably, each of the companies that I talked to also has a mobile games presence — and each was keen to stress that it has no plans to abandon social games in favor of mobile, as many industry people believe is currently the case.

Playdemic, for example, says that Facebook games can aid companies in discovery and engagement of mobile titles, while Nordeus says it has always been about cross-platform games, hence a focus on both Facebook and mobile will remain – at least for the foreseeable future.

Despite the fact that Wooga holds a number of the biggest games on Facebook, it is a mobile first company with its focus firmly set on iOS. However, the studio does have a number of Facebook games planned for later this year that it hasn’t yet revealed, and it says that Facebook will continue to play a big role in its future releases.

And Pretty Simple Games sees the two platforms going hand-in-hand, especially considering Facebook’s latest mobile games features such as the games feed on iOS. The developer is currently adapting Criminal Case for tablets, with Facebook integration in mind.

Social games revenue may be way down compared to at its peak a few years ago, but there are still plenty of developers who believe that there’s room to not just survive, but prosper in the space. No doubt the remainder of 2013 will show us exactly where social games are headed. (source:gamasutra)


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