作者：Brandon Sheffield

初创公司是投资领域追逐的对象——虽然总有许多热词以及不时的缺乏前景等担忧围绕着这些公司，但它们有时候的确发展迅速，并使用了异于传统游戏开发商的方法。

GSN执行制作人Katherine de Leon称精简软件开发策略，以及发布最小可行性产品，实际上对游戏开发者，尤其是社交游戏领域的开发者极为管用。

她表示“我们已经以一种特殊方法将精简创业策略引进游戏行业，虽然这种方法在硅谷已经出现一段时间了，但游戏开发领域对此还是颇为谨慎。但随着时间的发展，游戏公司终会因其理想成果而慢慢转向这种方法。”

De Leon概括了使用精简开发方法将游戏引进市场的5个步骤。

agile product management(from pivotalpm.com)

步骤1：为每款游戏准备一份提案

你得确定这个市场上有多少游戏，多少相似的产品，你的市场机遇是什么（也就是说，你可以从中赚到多少钱）。

她表示，“假如我打算制作一款针织类游戏，首先我就得先判断市场大小，例如在美国有1500万妇女会针织手艺。她们平均每天教两名妇女针织技巧。这些用户的终身价值就是两美元，所以我的市场机遇就取决于项目的未来前景。你可以根据历史数据来判断。”

你还得确定你的竞争差异性——你的产品为何与众不同？“有时候这并不是因为你的产品更棒，有时候是因为它是该领域唯一的产品。但在游戏领域中你通常都有一个特殊的差异性，而这了是你该多投入精力的地方。”

de Leon称这些公司中的任何人都可以推销一款游戏，但25%的提案都会失败。

步骤2：原型阶段。

她称“一般来看，50%的原型都会失败。这种失败率听起来很高，但你需要的是一个放大的漏斗，这样你就可以从所有理念中挑选出最中意的一者进行开发。”

有些GSN原型来自直接的计划性产品，但它们每个阶段也有需要冲刺的时刻——让办公室的人在三天内制作出他们想要的游戏类型。“我们会从这三天中制作的游戏中筛选50%的产品，其中多数游戏可以经过一周多时间的润色推向市场。”

步骤3：制作最小可行性游戏

这一般需要一两周时间，但有时候可能延长至6个月，“75%的产品会失败，但这正是让你找到正确方法的机会。”

如果你想知道自己的最小可行性产品应该是什么样的，那就先想想自己所认为的最小化概念是什么，然后将其分成一半（游戏邦注：尤其是当你自己并非目标用户的时候）。GSN的目标用户，就是来自中东的中年妇女，团队中的多数成员都不属于这类用户。所以要尽快执行，正如de Leon所言“如果你花了6个月以上的时间进入市场，那时候的市场形势早变了。”

步骤4：优化

尽你所能迭代产品。“当你看到来自玩家的定向和量化信息时，最好能够依照数据并执行A/B测试找出玩家真正的需求。”

步骤5：扩展

丰富游戏体验，提升图像质量，“尽你所能扩展游戏体验，让游戏更有趣。”（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）

Getting to market fast, the lean development way

By Brandon Sheffield

Startups are the darlings of the investment community – and while there are a lot of buzzwords and an occasional lack of vision associated with these companies, they do sometimes perform fast, and use different methodologies from traditional game developers.

Speaking at GDC China this weekend, Katherine de Leon, executive producer of GSN, says that lean software development tactics, and launching a minimum viable product, is actually incredibly viable for game developers, especially in the social space.

“I think we’ve adopted lean startup tactics to the game industry in a specific way,” she says. “While this has been going on in Silicon Valley for a while, the game industry has been fairly reticent to adopt this model of development. But slowly but surely game companies are coming around, because of the results.”

De Leon outlined five steps for bringing games to market, using lean development methodology.

Step 1: Put together an elevator pitch for every single game

You need to determine how many games are in this market, how many similar products there are, and what the market opportunity is. (That is to say, the dollar number or currency value – the money that could offer you.)

“Let’s say I was going to make a knitting game,” she posed. “First I’d size the market, and say okay, some million of people – let’s say 15 million women in the USA knit. And on average every day they teach two women to knit. The lifetime value of one of those people is $2, so my market opportunity is whatever that ends up being depending on how far you project into the future. You can build that based on historical data.”

You also need to determine your competitive differentiator – why is your product unique?

“Sometimes it might not be about your product being better, sometimes it’s about being the only one in that space,” she says. “But usually in the game industry you’ll have a particular differentiator, and that’s where you want to focus your efforts.”

Anyone in their company can pitch a game, from the top on down, but 25 percent of pitches will fail, says de Leon.

Step 2: Prototype phase

“Typically we’ll see about a 50 percent failure rate,” she says. “That’s standard – I know it sounds high, but what you want is a wide top of the funnel, so you can pick all your concepts and choose what you want to get to the next stage.”

Some of GSN’s prototypes come from directly planned products, but they also hold a hackathon every quarter – three days where anyone in the office makes any kind of game they want. “We source about 50 percent of our products from games from those three days,” she says. “Most of those games can be brought to market with just one extra week of polish.”

She gave a few examples of prototypes, and how players reacted to them. Often she found that players didn’t care too much about art, it was the gameplay loop and the theme that really engaged them. She hammered home the idea that games should be shown to a beta community as quickly as possible. “If you’re proud of your prototype you’re way too late,” she says. “You should show something you’re more embarrassed of.”

Step 3: Make the minimum viable game.

This should take around one or two weeks, she says, but sometimes it can take up to six months, which she finds way too long. “75 percent of those will fail, but that’s how you find out what’s right for your business,” she says.

If you’re trying to figure out what your minimum viable product should be, take what you think is the minimum for yourself, and cut it in half, especially if you’re not the target demographic. GSN’s demographic, for example, is middle-aged women from the Midwest, and much of the team does not fit that demo. Do this as quickly as possible. As de Leon cautions, “If you take more than six months to get to market, that market will have completely changed.”

Step 4: Optimize

Just iterate on it, as much as you can. “As soon as you see qualitative and quantitative information coming from your players, hopefully you have the metrics and can do A/B testing to figure out what your players really want,” she says.

Step 5: Expand

Make the experience richer, maybe improve the visuals. “Do whatever you think will expand the experience and make your game more fun,” says de Leon. （source：gamasutra）