作者：Shawn Foust

对于Quark Games的成员来说，这是很重要的一个月。我们公开了下一款游戏《Champs: Battlegrounds》，并开始经历支持我那各种古怪声明的漫长过程。

关于《Champs》我们有很多计划——添加硬核元素，转向3D，从回合制转向实时功能，等等，但是真正必要的设计目标还是支持竞争。

面对这款带有玩家对抗玩家组件的游戏，我们花了很多时间去考虑怎样才是“合理的”盈利方法。

我们认为，如果盈利方法带给那些不想要盈利的玩家很大的优势，那么PvP游戏并不可能长存。所以我们便创造了各种个月的选择去保护游戏体验，并确保玩家能够面对一个公平的体验。

Champs Battlegrounds（from pocketgamer）

不幸的是，有人认为为了竞争而优化与为了盈利而优化是相矛盾的，也就是允许玩家使用物品去换取自己想要的内容而非通过购买，这虽然能够降低系统的失败风险，但是也会降低每用户收益。

所以这并不是我们应该采取的方法。经过反复证明，传统手机方法总是能够带来利益。但代价是可能会给手机游戏带来耻辱，即破坏我们想要将手机变成一个“真正”游戏平台所付出的努力。

有些游戏便很好地使用了较为有效的生态系统（如《英雄联盟》和《魔兽争霸2》），我们也能够从中学习而受益于手机平台上的竞争游戏。

付费或游戏

一个纯生态系统的主要属性便是通过多种手段允许玩家获取任何可能影响游戏玩法的道具，也就是通过玩游戏或花钱购买。

在这种情况下，付费并不能为你带来优势，只能帮你节省时间。这便创造了一个高度包容系统，让那些拥有比钱更多的时间的玩家（如大学生）可以与拥有很多钱但却没时间的玩家（如银行投资家，石油大亨）相抗衡。

而在付费传达的是独特优势的系统中，提高非营利玩家的留存率将变得更加困难。

奇怪的是，大多数人不喜欢玩那些带有作弊嫌疑的游戏。

结果便会定期出现玩家流失的情况，从而提高了用户获取成本，打击了到达某一规模用户的能力，减少了游戏的病毒性并缩短了其寿命。不过从积极方面来看，销售优势也是快速赚取利益的方法。

付费系统或游戏系统的真正弊端在于，你必须确保游戏足够优秀。如果没有一个可推动消费的付费墙，游戏便需要说服根据优势以外的其它原因去花钱。

人们总是能够很容易注意到优势。花钱所换取的差异性（游戏邦注：就像能够从更多英雄中做出选择）或者独占权（装饰品）的价值总是很难进行销售。但是这却能够进一步维系起玩家与游戏间的关系。

让玩家去按压“获胜”按键总比说服他们去按压“嘿，在头上戴顶大礼帽”按键容易。特别是当这两者的标价非常接近时。

对于《Champs》，我们采取了各种方法。我们计划随着时间发展而推出上百个英雄，并且玩家可以通过付费或游戏而获得这些英雄。除此之外我们也在创造英雄层。即基于时间和金钱，级别较高的英雄总是更加昂贵。

我们创造了不同层面让玩家去感受游戏复杂度的变化——在第一层中，英雄拥有较简单的机制，并且数量也较少。当他们越往高层移动时，复杂度也随之上升，并且可能会吓到大多数新玩家。

当然了，引进不同层面也带来了公平性问题。我们该如何处理这种情况，即当一个盈利玩家在非营利玩家通过游戏获得英雄前购买了5个升级英雄？这样的竞争不就失去了公平性？

配对系统

我们到达了竞争游戏最艰难的一部分。

任何带有PvP机制的游戏都会要求足够玩家的参数，如此游戏才能顺利进行。我们一直在玩一些带有糟糕多人系统（即充满等待时间）的游戏。

在我们的例子中，因为层面系统的引进而导致问题进一步恶化了，这将导致玩家间的力量分歧，而为了维持公平性则要求他们更频繁地等待。

从本质上来看，创造层面也就创造了一个通向游戏复杂度的合理坡度，从而能够更有效地提供给玩家优势。

因为玩家花钱的速度总是快于他们能够使用新内容的速度。

这是一个有趣的问题。我们拥有一些解决方法。首先便是比起盈利而更加重视公平性。这便意味着我们会等到拥有足够大的生态系统去支持额外的等待时才会推出更高的层面。

此外，我们也设计了一个严格的配对系统去平衡玩家的级别和战斗力。

有人可能会认为，这是额外的工作。而做出确保平衡性的决定便意味着我们必须提供更多内容，更好地平衡这些内容，并只有在生态系统能够容纳这些内容时将其推出，同时更加重视留住那些不愿意花钱的玩家。这真的是一件艰巨的任务。

如果我们只是在一开始给予所有玩家10个英雄，让他们可以通过游戏获得10个英雄并花钱获得40个话，一切也就简单多了。而如果我们让任何玩家可以与其他玩家相匹配的话，一切也会更加简单。

但是随后我们也需要回到手机游戏的出发点：比起98%不花钱的玩家，付费获胜生态系统更加需要2%至3%的付费玩家。这并不是创建社区的方法。也不是构建未来的方法。

如果手机游戏公司想要创造持久的品牌，他们便需要设计一款面向所有玩家的游戏，而不去纠结他们的财政状况。

（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）

How to fight the stigma of mobile monetisation and win

By Shawn Foust

Big month for the denizens of Quark Games. We announced our next game, Champs: Battlegrounds, and began the long process of backing up my various outlandish pronouncements.

We’re looking to do a lot of things with Champs – go hardcore, move into 3D, get away from turns and into real time, etc. – but the essential design goal was to maintain competitive purity.

As a game with a significant player versus player (PvP) component – we have AI and Campaign as well – we spent an enormous amount of time considering what constituted “appropriate” monetisation.

To our minds, a PvP game cannot thrive over the long term if monetisation conveys a significant advantage over players who elect not to monetise. As a result, we made a variety of choices designed to protect the experience and ensure players end up with a fair experience.

Unfortunately, there is a perception that optimising for purity is often at odds with optimising for monetisation – namely that permitting players to acquire the things they want through things other than payment (such as playing) reduces the frustration in the system and lowers revenue per user.

It’s not an insane position to take. The traditional mobile approach has proven to be revenue positive over time. But it’s come at the cost of creating a stigma around mobile games, which hinders efforts to build mobile up as a “true” gaming platform.

I believe there are great examples of games that do very well with a less frustrating ecosystem – League of Legends and DOTA 2 come to mind – and there is a clear opportunity to bring some of these sensibilities to competitive games on the mobile platform.

Pay or play

One of the key attributes of a pure ecosystem is the permit acquisition of any item impacting gameplay via multiple means, namely by playing the game or paying for those items.

In this instance, payment does not buy you advantage, it buys you time savings. This creates a highly inclusive system that allows people with more time than money (college students) to compete with people that possess money but not time (investment bankers, oil sheiks).

In a system where payment conveys exclusive advantages, the retention of non-monetising players becomes far more difficult.

Strangely enough, most people don’t like playing games they feel are rigged. You just don’t see many people volunteering for the job of cannon fodder.

As a result, players churn for more regularly, which increases acquisition costs, reduces the ability to reach scale, diminishes virality and reduces longevity of the game. On the plus side, selling advantage is a great way to make a quick buck.

The real drawback of a pay or play system is that your game needs to be good. Without a paywall to compel payment, a game needs to convince a player to spend money for reasons other than advantage.

Advantage is easy for the human mind to grasp. The value of paying for diversity (like having more heroes to choose from) or exclusivity (decoratives) is a tougher sell. Not impossible, but it’ll certainly take a more intimate relationship between player and game.

Getting people to hit a “win” button is a lot easier than convincing them to hit a “hey, put a cool top hat on your guy” button. Especially if pricing is similar.

For Champs, we took a varied approach. We plan on releasing hundreds of heroes over time and each of these heroes may be bought via pay or play. Additionally, we are creating tiers of heroes, with upgraded heroes being more expensive in tetrms of time and money.

We created the tiers to ease players into the sophistication of the game – at Tier 1, the heroes have easier mechanics and there are fewer of them. As they move into a higher tier, the sophistication ramps up considerably, which we felt would be a bit too intimidating for most new users.

Of course, introducing tiers creates its own problem for fairness. How do we address a situation where a monetiser buys five upgraded heroes before a non-monetiser can earn them? Can’t let thing get impure, now can we?

Matchmaking and volume

And so we arrive at the toughest part of a competitive game. Matchmaking and volume.

Any game that has a PvP component requires the presence of enough players so that games can actually get going. We’ve all played games with a poorly seeded multiplayer system – queue times abound.

In our case, the issue is further exacerbated by the introduction of our tier system, which begins to create differentiated power among the player base and therefore requires more queues to maintain purity.

Essentially, the decision to make tiers to provide players with a reasonable ramp into the sophistication of the game creates power differentials that can conceivably give payers an advantage.

How? Because dollars will always spend faster than a player can play into new content.

It’s a fun problem. We have a few solutions. The first is to have monetisation take a backseat to purity. This means we’ll roll out higher tiers only when we have sufficient volume in the ecosystem to sustain additional queues (we have giant spreadsheets modelling this all out).

Additionally, we’ve devised a rigorous matchmaking system designed to balance rating and army power so people end up playing even matches.

As you folks might surmise, this is a bunch of additional work. The decision to go pure means that we have to provide far more content, balance the content better, release that content only when the ecosystem can take it and invest far more into retaining the users who don’t want to pay. It’s a giant hassle.

Life would be much easier if we just threw up our hands, gave all players six heroes to start, 10 heroes to earn and 40 heroes to pay for. It’d be even easier if we let any player match with any other player – just let the guy with Tier 2 Champs savage a first timer.

But then we’d be right back where mobile game began: a pay to win ecosystem that focuses on the needs of the 2-3 percent of payers over the 98 percent who don’t pay. That’s no way to build a community. It’s no way to build a future.

If mobile game companies are going to build enduring brands, they need to design games for gamers, regardless of their financial situation.(source:pocketgamer)