作者：Eric Seufert

Gamesbrief最近就针对于鲸鱼用户行为而制定特别盈利方法这一问题采访了一些游戏大师。我认为，在设计一款游戏时追随着鲸鱼用户/海豚用户/鲑鱼用户等等都是一种错误的方法：首先，这便是在假设用户中存在一种行为类型，并且基于该类型在推动着产品的使用。其次，我不相信在这一手机游戏用户获取环境中，我们能够有效瞄准“鲸鱼”用户。就像我之前所写的，我认为每一款免费游戏都需要非付费用户去推动游戏的发展。在面向鲸鱼玩家创造基本游戏体验的最大逻辑漏洞便是有关开发者能够准确获取鲸鱼用户的假设；事实上他们并不能做到这点。没有一个获取网能够提供目标过滤器去精确识别鲸鱼用户。在进行详细分析前，我必须先承认有关鲸鱼用户行为存在两种意见：

volcano-whale（from ufert）

1.鲸鱼用户是“创造”出来的，而非“天生”。也就是说一个人会在一款游戏中投入较多钱是因为游戏吸引他，而不是因为这个人本来就喜欢在游戏中花钱。

2.鲸鱼用户一次会在多款游戏中花许多钱，如果游戏能够超越其它竞争游戏而吸引这些玩家的注意，便能够自动开启收益流。

我赞同第一种看法。但是不管该理念是否支撑着特定工作室的开发努力，我仍然认为开发者不该瞄准鲸鱼用户，主要有三大原因：

第一个原因便是存在于鲸鱼用户行为中的时态元素，就像在任何消费模式中出现的那样。我可能会喜欢某些游戏并在有钱的时候进行消费，但是我却并非总是有钱去做这些事：也许我正在为一段旅行存钱，或者我的车报废了，需要一笔维修费用。实际上我将在一款游戏中花费大笔钱并不意味着我在下载了游戏后便会立刻这么做；因为我的可支配收入并不是固定的。因此如果只是基于过去行为我们并不足以瞄准鲸鱼用户：我们并不能保证这些玩家仍保留着过去的消费模式。也许我会在你的游戏中投入许多钱，但却不是一下载游戏后便这么做—-所以如果我不为游戏花钱便会在游戏中受阻，那么我便不可能在未来继续消费。

第二个原因便是开发者“盲目地”获取用户，而未真正了解他们的潜在消费水平。与我的第一个观点相反的是，我们能在未来依靠于过去的消费模式—-游戏开发者该如何基于这些模式瞄准“鲸鱼”用户？游戏开发者在从另一款游戏中获取用户时必须知道三件事：1）该用户会玩游戏，2）该用户会点击游戏中的横幅广告，3）目标用户所在游戏的开发者愿意为了金钱出售用户。第1，2点并未真正理解用户愿意为一款游戏支付多少金钱，但是第3点却表明了这点，如果开发者拥有任何分析后端，用户获取将将比最初开发者所获取的收入更没有价值。

最后一个原因便是鲸鱼用户是一种全新物种：我认为现在大多数游戏中的鲸鱼用户都是第一次将大笔的金钱投入于游戏中。为什么？因为鲸鱼用户只存在于免费游戏中，并且只有少数的免费游戏（游戏邦注：特别是手机游戏）能够从用户基础中获得适当盈利。游戏工作室正在学习并精通玩家行为，以此去预测他们是否能成为鲸鱼用户，但是他们只能在游戏内部追踪到这些行为，而不能通过其它游戏。

所以如果这种行为是预示玩家可能成为鲸鱼用户的唯一有效方法，那么创造一款游戏去优化鲸鱼用户的体验便不具有意义：我不能分辨玩家在最初开始于游戏中消费时是否就会变成鲸鱼用户，或者大多数鲸鱼用户是否是在一段时期内才变成鲸鱼用户的，而不是通过一或两次较大的购买行为。所有的这些都忽视了鲸鱼用户并不只是通过付费获取行为而进入游戏中的这一事实；他们也会通过病毒式传播了解到一款新游戏，并且不管这么传播是设计好的还是口头上的传播。创造一款针对于鲸鱼用户的游戏将会限制内容的发展，即导致游戏只能进行病毒式传播，因为开发者将可能喜欢游戏并愿意为游戏花钱的玩家数量限制在1%至3%之间。

从一款游戏中获取盈利的最佳方法便是根据用户的喜好尽可能广泛地撒网，并创造一个长尾盈利曲线。让所有人都有机会进入你的游戏中便等同于更高的病毒性和免费安装（这反过来也会将更多玩家变成鲸鱼用户），而创造一条持续的盈利曲线则意味着那些通过游戏内部购买获取乐趣的用户将拥有机会进行消费。如果1%至3%的免费转换率是标准的话，那么比起创造只针对于鲸鱼用户的游戏体验，缩减用户基础并创造带有长尾盈利曲线的深层次游戏体验将会是更可行的盈利策略。

（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）

Don’t build mobile games for whales

By Eric Seufert

Gamesbrief recently polled some gaming gurus about the wisdom of placing a singular monetization focus on whale behavior in game development. Chasing whales / dolphins / trout / what-have-you is, in my opinion, the wrong approach to take when designing a game (or, for that matter, any product): for one, this assumption presupposes a type of behavior inherent in the user and relies on that to drive product use. But secondly, I don’t believe “whales” (or any other type of player segment) can effectively be targeted in this mobile gaming acquisition environment. And, as I’ve written about before, I think every freemium title needs non-paying users to thrive.
The biggest logical loophole in building the fundamental game experience specifically for whales is the assumption that whales can be acquired precisely; they can’t. No acquisition network offers targeting filters that can accurately identify whales. Before I elaborate on this, I’ll concede that two schools of thought exist relating to whale behavior:

1.Whales are “made”, not “born”. That is, a person spends a lot of money in a game because that game inspires him to do so, not necessarily because that person is predisposed to spending lots of money in a game;

2.Whales spend prodigiously in multiple games at a time, and holding these players’ interest above and beyond competing games automatically unlocks their revenue streams.

I belong to the first school of thought. But regardless of the conceptual beliefs underpinning a particular studio’s development efforts, I still hold that whales cannot be targeted, for three reasons:

The first is that a temporal element exists in whale behavior, just as it does in any spending pattern. I may love games and spend freely when I have the money to do so, but I don’t always have the money to do so: perhaps I’m saving for a vacation or my car just died and needs to be repaired. The fact that I can and will spend lots of money in a game doesn’t mean I will do so immediately upon downloading it; my disposable income isn’t constant. So for this reason, whales cannot be targeted based solely on past behavior: previous spending patterns don’t necessarily mean those spending patterns will remain consistent. I very well may spend lots of money in your game, just not as soon as I download it — so if you design your game to discourage me from playing if I won’t spend money, you miss out on those future purchases.

The second reason is that users are acquired “blind”, without any insight into how much money they might potentially spend. Let’s say, counter to my first point, that past spending patterns could be counted on to persist consistently into the future — how can a game developer target a “whale” based on those patterns? Game developers know exactly three things when they acquire a user from another game: 1) that the user plays games; 2) that the user clicks through on the banner ads she sees in games; and 3) that the developer of the game the user came from was willing to sell that user for some amount of money. Points 1 and 2 don’t offer any insight into how much money that user is willing to spend in a game, but point 3 does: it means that, if the developer has any sort of analytics backend, the user acquired was worth less to the original developer than the amount paid for her. Clearly, this user was not a whale in that game.

And the last reason I believe whales can’t be targeted is that whales are a new species: I believe that most whales in most games right now are spending large sums of money in-game for the first time in their lives. Why? Because whales only really exist in free-to-play games, and very few free-to-play games — especially in mobile — have properly monetized their user bases. Gaming studios are learning and mastering the behaviors in players that predict their becoming whales, but those behaviors can only be tracked in-game, not from another game. How do I profile a whale in another game to target that user? I have no idea.

So given that behavior is the only valid indicator of a player becoming a whale, building a game to optimize the experience for whales makes no sense: I can’t tell if a player is going to become a whale until they’ve first started spending money in my game, and most whales become whales over an extended period of time, not through one or two large purchases. And all of this ignores the fact that whales aren’t exclusively introduced to games through paid acquisition; they also learn of new games virally, whether that virality is engineered or realized through word of mouth. Creating a game with an experience tailored to whales restricts the extent to which a game can go viral because it limits the number of people that will enjoy the game to the 1-3% who will ever spend money in it.

The best way to monetize a game is to cast as wide a net as possible with regards to user enjoyment and build a very long-tail monetization curve. Giving everyone the opportunity to be entertained by your game means higher relative virality and free installs (which in turn delivers more whales), and building a continuous monetization curve means the users who glean enjoyment from in-game purchases are given every opportunity to make them. If the 1-3% freemium conversion rate is held as a rule — as I believe it should be — then building an experience that’s only accessible to whales is a less viable monetization strategy than scaling the userbase and building a deep experience with a very long-tail monetization curve.(source:ufert)