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阐述“+1”手机游戏设计战略的优势

发布时间:2013-07-01 11:34:56 Tags:,,,

作者:Joseph Kim

我在2008年向Facebook和MySpace发布了自己的首款社交游戏《League of Heroes》。当时《Mob Wars》和《Friends for Sale》刚刚发布,Zynga游戏《Mafia Wars》以及Playdom的《Mobsters》也才刚上线而已。正如许多人所知,《Mafia Wars》/《Mobsters》是直接取材于《Mob Wars》……我将在之后的内容中将此称为“横向”战略。

当时我想制作一些有所不同,但又要有可行机制的游戏。那时候我将自己的游戏设计策略称为“+1”策略,意思是我想在现成核心机制的基础上,至少添加一个有所变化的核心玩法或者高级功能,以便改进游戏。但我不能接受直接“拷贝”他人的游戏。

league of heroes(from iapps.in)

league of heroes(from iapps.in)

《League of Heroes》是首款将GVG(公会vs公会)以及高效的社交行为和合作元素融入社交平台的游戏。用户可以在选择在英雄联盟中合作,或者加入坏蛋联盟,并与对方阵营相抗衡。此外,你所在联盟中的个人行动也会影响到你所获得的奖励和命值。而游戏其余的内容基本上就是《Mob Wars》。

游戏设计非常可行,它是当时每用户平均收益最高的模式之一(游戏邦注:当时的ARPDAU是0.2美元,在移动领域这一数据还可以增加3倍)。需要说明的是,我并不是要强调这一点,它只是一款很小的游戏(是我在自己的空余时间发布的游戏),我从来没有扩大游戏规模(出于许多技术问题),当时我很关注UI和用户流等元素……在此我只是想强调“+1”战略的重要性。

“横向”vs“纵向”

任教于斯坦福大学的Peter Thiel曾通过“横向”和“纵向”两个方面描述技术进步:

进步有两种方式:横向/广泛以及纵向/深入。横向或广泛发展一般是指复制已经在运行的事物。这意味着简单地进行“整体化”。这可以想象一下中国在未来50年的情况。保守地说,它将与今天的美国十分相似。城市可以复制,汽车可以复制,铁路系统可以复制。也许有些步骤可以跳过,但总体上一切都可复制。

纵向或深度发展则不然,这意味着催生新事物。这方面的关键字眼就是“技术”。深度发展包括从0到1(而不是简单地从1至n的整体化)。

在典型的手机游戏设计战略中,我们已经看到了一些专注于横向式游戏设计的典型范例,例如Zynga、Playdom、Storm8、PocketGems、TinyCo等。

战略概述

几年前我向一些投资者和行业人士展示了这个幻灯片,描述了当时手机游戏公司所采取的关键战略:

primary mobile game strategies(from gamasutra)

primary mobile game strategies(from gamasutra)

我认为“+1”战略是个超级方法,尽管当时的发行似乎才是最看得到未来的有效战略。今天,这种方法已然成为游戏成功的重要战略。

最近我又观察了一些更为简单化的游戏设计战略,并从Peter Thiel的横向vs纵向角度来看这些方法。对我来说,这实际上只有3种关键方法:

1.横向设计:只复制一种现成的游戏,但依靠品牌、发行渠道、网络、地理位置、题材等元素参与市场竞争;

2.纵向设计:你尝试进行游戏多数内容都是新元素的设计。也就是从“0到1”的过程。

3.+1设计:你根据现成的核心机制和游戏类型开发内容,但会对游戏的1个关键环节进行提升和改进。

为什么说+1战略是王道?

+1战略会胜出这要归结于当前的市场和生态系统。

首先,让我们谈变为何+1战略为何会在手机游戏领域胜出,其他策略又会在哪些市场获得成功。

在手机游戏行业兴起之初,发行是市场竞争的关键,因此抄袭成功的游戏这个方法最为可行。当时只有一小部分人掌握了有效的Tapjoy/Offerpal等将用户引向手机游戏的策略,他们只能复制其他游戏设计。

之后,苹果App Store取缔了这种刺激奖励性质的非自然下载行为,我们也开始看到仅靠发行优势参与竞争的公司逐渐式微,而那些靠游戏设计或二者兼具的公司却开始逆袭(游戏邦注:例如Supercell和King)。

+1战略能够在当今市场取胜,主要原因如下:

1.横向发展缺乏发行优势:除了苹果/谷歌,没有人能够掌握发行主动权,所以拥有更为纵向或+1战略的公司将不断增势,更可能获得掌控发行权的平台所有者的推荐。

2.复制方法执行慢:我们现在处于一个巨大的手机游戏泡沫中(目前正处于泡沫被戳破的过程中),产生了一个极大的人才缺口,因此愈发难以找到能够快速复制成功游戏设计的优秀团队。例如,我曾听说许多工作室现在多数游戏都需要12个月的开发时间……这意味着我们真的面临一个人才缺口,以至一个由一名A种人,一些B种人,以及若干C种人,还有一个总是成事不足,败事有余的D种人组成的团队,通常会延误开发时间。

3.发行成本增长:最重要的是,由于发行成本更高,所以一款采用+1战略的游戏发布后,它就拥有时间优势来获取用户,建立战略优势,这样采用横向发展战略的公司就更加难以推出与之相似的游戏。虽然说这并非不可能的情况,但难度无疑大大提升了。

那么将垂直战略vs+1战略又如何呢?

垂直战略虽然存在,但更为罕见。垂直战略很难执行,一般失败率也会更高。此外,我也看到的一些出色的垂直式游戏设计虽然也面世了,但结构并不算完整。通常是那些+1式的垂直设计真正收获了大量市场份额,创造了更多价值。

让我们看看非移动平台的案例:PC游戏《英雄联盟》

1.出色的原创垂直游戏设计:《星际争霸》的Aeon of Strife (AoS)地图

2.+1到AoS =《魔兽世界3》的Defense of the Ancients (DotA)

3.+1到DotA = 《英雄联盟》

现在让我们再看看手机游戏案例:《Clash of Clans》

1.出色的原创垂直游戏设计:《魔兽世界》(PC RPG》中的Autumn Tower Defense(ATD)地图

2.+1到ATD=桌面塔防游戏(PC网页游戏)

3.+1到桌面塔防游戏=Facebook游戏《Backyard Monsters》和《Edgeworld》(网页社交游戏)

4.+1到《Backyard Monsters》和《Edgeworld》=《Clash of Clans》(手机游戏)

我们现在仍经常看到获得成功的横向游戏设计(例如授权卡牌战斗游戏/《Temple Run》或《Evony》的克隆游戏)以及纵向游戏设计(例如《Temple Run》、《Tiny Wings》)。但从整体战略来看,我认为现在和短其内的最大赢家还是采用+1战略的游戏。(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 “+1″ Mobile Game Design Strategy

by Joseph Kim

The following blog was, unless otherwise noted, independently written by a member of Gamasutra’s game development community. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Gamasutra or its parent company.

Want to write your own blog post on Gamasutra? It’s easy! Click here to get started. Your post could be featured on Gamasutra’s home page, right alongside our award-winning articles and news stories.

History and Context:

In the winter of 2008, I launched my first game: it was a social game on Facebook and MySpace called League of Heroes. At the time, Mob Wars and Friends for Sale had just recently launched and Mafia Wars by Zynga and Mobsters by Playdom were just launching. As many of you probably know, Mafia Wars/Mobsters were just direct rips of Mob Wars… what I will later refer to as a “horizontal” strategy.

Back then I wanted to create something different but not depart too far from the mechanics that seemed to really work. At the time, I called my game design strategy a “+1″ strategy meaning that I wanted to take an existing set of core mechanics but add at least one core gameplay change or advancement to the game to make it better. I just couldn’t respect a direct rip.

In the League of Heroes context, it was the very first game on any social platform to integrate GVG (Guild vs. Guild) and that most effectively integrated social behavior and cooperation into a game. Users would work together in leagues (effectively guilds) of heroes or villains and fight against each other. Further, the actions of one person in your league could impact your rewards and your health. The rest of the game was basically Mob Wars.

The game design worked very well as it was one of the most highly monetizing games on a per user basis at the time (ARPDAU of $0.20 during the heyday, in a mobile context you usually multiply that by x3). Let me clarify by saying I’m not trying to impress anyone with this… to be clear, the game was a very small game (launched by myself in my spare time), I never really got it to scale (lots of tech issues) and I really sucked back then at UI and user flows amongst other things… so I didn’t state the above to try to impress you but to impress upon you the effectiveness of “+1″.

“Horizontal” vs. “Vertical”:

Peter Thiel teaches a class at Stanford in which he describes technological progress in two ways: Horizontal and Vertical.

Progress comes in two flavors: horizontal/extensive and vertical/intensive. Horizontal or extensive progress basically means copying things that work. In one word, it means simply “globalization.” Consider what China will be like in 50 years. The safe bet is it will be a lot like the United States is now. Cities will be copied, cars will be copied, and rail systems will be copied. Maybe some steps will be skipped. But it’s copying all the same.

Vertical or intensive progress, by contrast, means doing new things. The single word for this is “technology.” Intensive progress involves going from 0 to 1 (not simply the 1 to n of globalization).

In the context of typical mobile game design strategies we have seen these kinds of approaches in our industry with a predominant focus on horizontal game design e.g., Zynga, Playdom, Storm8, PocketGems, TinyCo, etc.

An Overview of Strategic Approaches:

A few years ago I presented this slide to a number of investors and industry folks that represented the key strategies of mobile game companies at the time:

I argued that the superior approach would be the “+1″ strategy over time even though it seemed to most then that distribution would continue to be the most effective strategy for the foreseeable future. Today, this is certainly what has emerged as the dominant strategy for game success.

These days, I take a much more simplistic view of game design strategy and view it more from the perspective of Peter Thiel’s horizontal vs. vertical approach. For me, there’s really now only 3 key approaches:

Horizontal Design: Just copy an existing game but use brand, distribution, network, geography, genre, etc. to compete in the marketplace

Vertical Design: You are trying to design something where much or most of the game is new. This is getting from “0 to 1″.

+1 Design: You are basing your game design off of a core set of mechanics and game type but improving or changing 1 key aspect of the game

Why +1 Is Winning:

+1 is winning because of the market and the current ecosystem that we have. There are good aspects to this and bad.

First, let’s talk about why +1 wins in this space (that is mobile gaming) and where the other strategies win.

In the beginning of the mobile gaming industry, during the “Tapjoy Mafia” days (I’ll write about this some other day) distribution was the key basis of competition and so ripping games with
successful metrics on mobile worked the best. Back then only a few people had the inside knowledge of how effective Tapjoy/Offerpal was at getting users to mobile games (and understood how much and how to spend on Tapjoy) and they could just copy other designs and pump those games.

Later, Apple cracked down on incentivized distribution to game the App Store’s install velocity based charting algorithms and we began to slowly see a shift of power from companies that competed solely on distribution (all the Tapjoy Mafia) and increasingly towards companies that competed with game design or both (e.g., Supercell & King.com).

The reason why +1 wins in today’s market is for the following reasons:

Horizontal Lacks Distribution Advantage: No one besides Apple/Google significantly controls distribution anymore so increasingly there is advantage in having a more vertical or +1 vs. horizontal strategy that has a better chance of getting featured by the guys who actually do control distribution.

Copying is Slow: We are in a pretty massive mobile gaming bubble (which is currently in the process of popping) that has created a major talent shortage making it increasingly difficult to have
good fast teams that can copy winning game designs. For example, I’ve heard of more than a few studios who now have 12 month development times for many of their games because of blah, blah, blah… but the translation really being that there is a major talent shortage and so a team of an A guy, a few B and C guys, and that D guy who keeps screwing up leads to major delays.

Distribution is a Bi-yatch: Most importantly, because of how difficult and expensive distribution is once a +1 game is taking off and it has a major time advantage to gain users and build a war chest, it’s increasingly difficult for horizontal players to come in with a similar game. It’s not impossible but much more difficult.

Then what about Vertical vs. +1?

Vertical happens but has been much more rare. Vertical is hard to do so typically comes with a much higher failure rate. Further, what I’ve seen are instances of fairly brilliant vertical game designs that hit the market but are not fully formed. It’s usually the +1 on the vertical design that really garners the majority of the market and creates the most value.

Let’s take a non-mobile example: League of Legends for PCs

Initial brilliant vertical game design: Aeon of Strife (AoS) for StarCraft

+1 to AoS = Defense of the Ancients (DotA) for Warcraft 3

+1 to DotA = League of Legends

Let’s now take a look at a mobile example: Clash of Clans

Initial brilliant vertical game design: “Autumn Tower Defense” map created in Warcraft 3 (PC RPG)

+1 to Autumn Tower Defense = Desktop Tower Defense (PC Web)

+1 to Desktop Tower Defense = Backyard Monsters and Edgeworld on Facebook (Web Social)

+1 to Backyard Monsters and Edgeworld = Clash of Clans (Mobile)

We still see examples of winning horizontal game designs (e.g., branded card battle games/Temple Run/Evony clones/etc.) as well as vertical game designs (e.g., Temple Run, Tiny Wings) but as an overall strategy the huge winners for now and for the foreseeable future in my opinion will be the games that +1…(source:gamasutra


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