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阐述开发者创业的风险守恒定律

发布时间:2013-09-30 10:17:37 Tags:,,,

作者:Nicholas Lovell

在游戏发展早期,发行商理所当然地控制了进入市场(或者叫作商店)的渠道。每一周都会有若干游戏发布。Gamestop、GAME和其他零售商会把游戏放在“发布新品”栏目中。有些人购买游戏只是因为它们是新的,发行商会使用玩家营销策略提高游戏的识别度和商业营销手段鼓励贿赂零售商多推广自己的产品,少广告对手的游戏。

为什么能发行游戏的公司那么少?原因有很多,但主要是因为经营资金太高。制作游戏要下大血本:数百万美元甚至只能做出一款还算达标的主机游戏;而营销这款游戏还要花相当的或甚至更多的资金。因为你要在索尼或微软的平台上发行,所以你还要支付给这些平台所有者版税,通常是每单位游戏7美元。所以如果在头一个月卖出100万单位的游戏,那么版税合计就是700万美元。但更糟的还不是这个。在商品投入市场前,你必须自己承担所有成本——有时候是提前几年就要支付的。当消费者购买游戏时,你不会直接拿到钱,而是先经零售商之手。有些零售商要三个月后才付款给供应商,而那些供应商通常是第三方经销商,这些经销商又再要在三个月后才付款给发行商。所以发行商在游戏开发中有大量投入,需要大量资金支持游戏发布,保证每一款游戏能获利千百万美元。

balancing-risk(from riskmanagementmonitor)

balancing-risk(from riskmanagementmonitor)

难怪没有多少公司能承担得起发行游戏的重任。

高额资金的要求导致风险管理的增加。因为面临风险的资金太多了,你必须保证钱只用押在正确的项目上。你必须严格审批文件的流程。你必须让核心高管首肯项目,以确保如果项目失败,不会个人因它掉饭碗,因为那是集体的决定。

矛盾的是,为了降低风险,大公司实际上增加了风险。营销团队发现,具有多人玩法的游戏卖得更好,所以他们坚持所有游戏都要有多人模式。设计师增加更多关卡。美工增加更多特效。编剧增加更多情节。营销商投入更多钱以保证公众注意到产品并且会购买。还要花大价钱聘请顾问(或者叫作外部的“替罪羔羊”)。所有这些步骤都可能减少游戏失败的经营风险。

然而,以上环节也增加了财政风险。每一个新增特征,每一个月的延期,每一个新的营销手段或,每一部资料片,都增加了面临风险的资金量。

经营风险也是个人风险。如果产品失败,负责这款产品的个人主管的工作也完蛋了。但如果他们可以证明自己在每一个营销、生产和设计环节都没有出错,那么他们就安全了。如果他们可以证明自己要求更多资金支持但被拒,那么他们就安全了。如果他们花了大钱请顾问,他们可以炒了顾问保住自己的饭碗。但是,财政风险是由股东和整个公司承担的——包括所有参与这款游戏的员工。

为了降低经营风险(这个对他们影响很大),我们已经花了二十年的时间鼓励所有重要的决策者接受财政风险(这个对他们影响不大)的大量增加。这是“精益创业”思路(游戏邦注:即Lean StartUp,这是硅谷正逐渐兴起的一种创业模式;即从公司创立的第一天,就寻找和设计出能为公司创收的来源和产品,以迅速提高自我生存能力,满足投资人的要求)的对立面。它鼓励范围蔓延和特征膨胀。它会破坏创意、威胁行业生存,长期看来,还会破坏品质,因为修饰完善由团体设计的、无序扩张的玩法体验是很困难的。

随着越来越多游戏开发者离开大公司,去小团队制作独立游戏,他们有可能对自己面临的风险产生错误的理解。如果你在大公司工作,我认为你应该改变,因为你现在的做生意的方式是很愚蠢的。如果你在独立工作室工作,我认为你应该改变处理风险的办法,因为坚持老套路很可能摧毁你的生意。

我强烈建议你记住这条简单的原则:每一次你增加经营风险,你也就增加了财政风险。如果你还记得基础物理学,你应该记得“能量守恒定律”中提到,能量是不可以被消除和破坏的;它只能从一种形式转化为另一种形式。风险也是如此。你可能减少你的个人风险,或减少项目失败的风险,但这样你就增加了公司的财政风险。你可以减少制作大投入产品的努力。你也可能增加资金集中的风险。

所以下次你认为最好延期某个项目,以便在准备就绪时发布,请意识到这种做法并没有减少风险。你只是把风险从一种形式转化为另一种形式。如果你不确定你增加了什么风险,那么就把它找出来,这是相当重要的。(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 number one rule of risk, and why it matters to your games business

By Nicholas Lovell

In the old days, publishers had reasonable control over the channel to market (or, as we used to call it, shops). Each week, a few games would be released. Gamestop, GAME and other retailers would stock them in the New Releases section. Some people would buy them simply because they were new, and publishers would use consumer marketing to build awareness and trade marketing to bribe encourage retailers to display their products more prominently than those of their rivals.

Why were there few releases? There are many reasons, but the main one was working capital. It cost a lot of money to make a game: tens of millions of dollars even for a standard console release. It costs the same or more to market a game. You also have to pay Sony or Microsoft a royalty for publishing on their platforms that is often around $7 per unit. So if you hoped to sell a million units in the first month, that’s another $7 million. But it’s worse than that. You have to pay all of those costs before the product hits the shops – in some cases, many years in advance.  When a consumer buys a game, you don’t get the money: the retailer does. Some retailers can take as long as three months to pay their suppliers, and those suppliers are often third-party distributors who can take another three months to pay the publisher. So a publisher has a massive investment in game development, and a requirement for working capital to support a game launch that can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars per title.

Small wonder few companies could afford to publish games.

The working capital requirement led to increased risk management practices. With this much money at stake, you need processes to ensure that only the right projects get funded. You need greenlight documents and approvals processes. You also get key executives focusing on arse-covering, making sure that if a project bombs, it was a collective decision, so they don’t get fired over it.

Perversely, in order to reduce risk, big companies actually increase risk. The marketing team notes that other games with multiplayer gameplay sell more units, so they insist all games must have multiplayer. Designers add more levels. Artists add more explosions. Writers add more narrative. Marketers spend more money to make sure that the public are aware of the title and encouraged to buy it. Expensive consultants are engaged to provide realism (or “blameability” – an external scapegoat is a great thing to have). Each of these steps may reduce the operational risk that the game bombs.

However, each of them also increases the financial risk. Each additional feature, each month of delay, each new marketing gimmick or additional content increases the amount of money that the company has at risk.

Here is the rub: the operational risk is a risk to the individual. If the product fails, the individual executive’s career is at risk. But if they can show that they ticked every marketing, production and design box, they are safer. If they can show that asked for more money but were denied it by the suits, they are safer. If they spend lots of money on consultants, they can fire the consultants and keep their own jobs. Whereas the financial risk is borne by the shareholders and the company as a whole – including all the staff who work on the game.

We have spent two decades encouraging and incentivising every important decision maker to accept vast increases in financial risk (which doesn’t affect them a lot) in order to reduce operational risk (which does affect them). This is the antithesis of Lean Startup thinking. It encourages scope creep and feature bloat. It is damaging to creativity, to the viability of the industry and, in the long run, to quality, because it is very hard to polish a sprawling gameplay experience designed by committee.

As more and more game developers leave large organisations and work in small teams producing independent games, they run the risk of taking this dangerous misunderstanding of risk with them. If you work in a big games company, I think you should change because your existing way of doing business is silly. If you work in an indie studio, I think you should change your approach to risk because sticking to the old way is likely to destroy your business.

I urge you to remember this one simple rule: every time you decrease operational risk, you increase financial risk. If you remember basic physics, you will remember that energy can not be destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another. Risk is not entirely different. You may be decreasing your personal risk, or the risk of the project failing, but you are also increasing the financial risk for the company. You are decreasing the number of attempts you get at making a blockbuster. You are increasing your concentration risk.

So next time you think it would be good to delay a project so that you “release it when it is ready”, be aware that you are not reducing risk, you are merely changing it from one form to another. And if you are not sure what risk you have just increased, go and figure it out. It is really important.(source:gamesbrief)


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