作者： Carter Dotson

Backflip工作室的日子过得不错。

因为这家位于美国科罗拉多的手机游戏工作室不仅今年被孩之宝公司以9位数的价格收购走70%的股票，还因为它于2011年发布的游戏《DragonVale》持续走红。

据Backflip宣布，这款驯龙题材的免费游戏在美国的收益排行榜前50已经保持了750天，下载量达到2500万，月活跃用户突破450万。

在采访中，该工作室的首席营销官Joe Lazarus，透露了Backflip之所以能让《DragonVale》保持长盛不衰，主要归功于美国的市场状态。

持续更新

Lazarus把《DragonVale》的长期成功部分归功于定期内容更新。

Lazarus表示：“我们不间断地更新游戏，《DragonVale》是我们成立工作室以来开发的第一款游戏，在游戏发布以前，我们就已经抱着尽可能维持产品的成功的野心了。

“所以我们的发布工作出动了大团队，有的搞技术有的搞创意，不断地把新内容添加到游戏中；我认为这是这款游戏能保持玩家沉浸感的原因。

“我们现在基本上每周或每两周更新一次。”

dragonvale(from pocketgamer)

让免费的免费

让Backflip引以为傲的另一个方面是，《DragonVale》实现了免费游戏承诺的关键。

在游戏开发者大会上，我遇到Backflip的制作人Bryan Mashinter。他热情地指出，《DragonVale》能够让玩家免费体验到整款游戏。这与Lazarus的看法一致。

“玩《DragonVale》的绝大部分玩家是完全免费的。有很大一部分玩家确实没有在游戏中花钱，我们无所谓，毕竟这就是免费模式的特点。

“从一开始，我们就遵循这个核心原则：我们在游戏中提供的所有东西都是可以免费玩到的。在游戏中花钱的人只是加快了游戏进展。”

Lazarus认为这是以短期的付出换取长期的回报。

他补充道：“如果你把《DragonVale》的赢利表现与和它同时处于收益排行榜的其他游戏的相比，你会发现，我们的日收益指标可能比某些短期赢利表现好的游戏来得低。

“但是，因为我们希望对玩家公平，希望让游戏提供的一切都是免费的，如果玩家选择免费玩的话；与竞争对手相比，我认为我们的游戏能吸引玩家更久。”

“所以，与收益排行榜上的其他游戏相比，我们的游戏的用户终身价值会更高。我们只要长期坚持我们的核心原则，我们就能够长期留住玩家。长远看来，这么做对我们来说是管用的。”

交叉推广

这种信任感也延伸到Backflip的其他游戏中。Backflip的《Paper Toss》、《NinJump》和《Ragdoll Blaster》的交叉推广是促成《DragonVale》成功的另一个关键因素。

Lazarus解释道：“《DragonVale》成功的另一个原因是，我们有大量休闲游戏的玩家，当我们第一次发布游戏时，我们能够在这些玩家当中交叉推广《DragonVale》。”

“所以甚至是到今天，我们仍然把休闲游戏作为低成本开发新玩家的策略……我们过去的成功也为《DragonVale》的发布助了一臂之力，那当然会继续促进《DragonVale》的成功。”

《DragonVale》发布两年后的成果(from pocketgamer)

Lazarus并不认为手机市场越来越不景气，长期成功对于占有市场可能很有意义。

“有许多公司极力保住自己在收益排行榜上的位置，我认为一定程度上，那么做对行业是有好处的；手机游戏不只是一种爱好或生活习惯，还是确实能发展成数百万级的商业，甚至是百亿级，我认为那是件好事。”

“在建立实体商业方面，小型的、中等的，大型的公司都有学习榜样，如果那正是游戏开发商有兴趣做的事的话。”

对于其他开者，Lazarus认为，他们必须选择交叉营销作为“一种推广新产品的有效的方法”。

他补充道：“还有其他推广和开发用户的方法，但我认为开发者不能只想到开发出好游戏，还要考虑如何让尽可能多的玩家看到游戏。

“市场竞争越来越激烈，但我认为新开发者的机遇还是有的，可能被挤出市场，也可能冲上应用排行榜前十。

“然而，我认为开发者必须好好考虑发如何积累受众，如何找到对你的游戏感兴趣的受众。”

《DragonVale》的成功当然证明了Backflip已经找到答案了；对于其他开发者，也许能从Backflip的成功中得到启发。（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）

Stateside: F2P needs to earn the player’s trust to unlock longterm success, says DragonVale’s Backflip

by Carter Dotson

Life is good for Backflip Studios.

The veteran Colorado-based mobile studio not only has a nine-figure acquisition by Hasbro this year to celebrate by diving into pools of gold coins, Scrooge-McDuck-style, but also because of the continuing success of its 2011 hit DragonVale.

Backflip has announced that its hit free-to-play dragon-raising game has hit 750 consecutive days in the top 50 grossing chart in the US, with 25 million mobile downloads and 4.5 million monthly active users to this day.

I spoke to Joe Lazarus, the chief marketing officer at the studio, about what Backflip has done to make DragonVale such a long-term success, and what he thinks about the state of the market at large.

All fired up

Lazarus credits the regular content updates to DragonVale for part of the long-term success.

“We’re continually updating the game,” he tells me. “DragonVale is the first game we developed as a studio where, before the game even launched, we had ambitions of this being a product that would live as long as possible.

“So we launched with a wide team in place, of both technical and creative talent, that is just continually adding new dragons to the game, new features, and I think that’s what’s managed to keep players engaged.

“We’re on pace now where about every week or two we launch content into the game.”

DragonVale

Backflip also takes pride in the fact that DragonVale tries to live up to the free part of free-to-play gaming.

Bryan Mashinter, a producer at Backflip, passionately defended DragonVale’s ability to let players experience the entire game for free when I spoke with him at GDC, and Lazarus feels the same.

“The majority of the people who play DragonVale play entirely for free. So there’s a significant portion of our audience that doesn’t spend money in the game, and we’re fine with that, that’s obviously sort of part of the freemium, free-to-play model.

“That’s one of the core tenets that we’ve held since the beginning, is that everything we’ve made in the game can be played for free. The people who do spend money in the game are choosing to, in order to accelerate progress in the game.”

Lazarus says this has come at short-term cost, but he believes there have been long-term gains with its users.

“I imagine that if you compared monetisation with metrics for DragonVale to some other games that have been in the top grossing at some point, you might find that our daily revenue metrics might be a bit lower than some that monetise better in a short-term basis.

“But, because we try to treat our players fairly, and try to offer everything in the game for free if [they] choose to play that way, I think we retain users for a longer period than any of our competitors do,” he adds.

“So that overall lifetime value of the customer is comparable if not higher than some other games in the top grossing charts. We just do it over a longer period of time, we’re able to engage players over a longer period of time. So it works out for us in the long run.”

Steps to success

And this sense of trust has extended to the rest of Backflip’s catalog, with cross-promotion from other Backflip games like Paper Toss, NinJump, and Ragdoll Blaster serving as one of the key factors behind DragonVale’s success.

“One of the reasons for DragonVale’s success is that we had a large base of users playing our more casual titles that we were able to use that audience to cross-promote DragonVale when we first launched it,” says Lazarus.

“So even today we continue to use our casual games as a low-cost way to acquire new users…the fact that we have had some successes in the past leading up to DragonVale’s launch, that’s certainly contributed to the success of DragonVale.”

DragonVale’s success, two years after launch

Lazarus doesn’t think that the mobile market is becoming stagnant, though, and that consistent successes may be good for mobile gaming.

“The fact that there are these companies that do sort of to maintain its position in the grossing charts, I think in some way, that’s a good thing for the industry, that mobile games are not just something that can be a hobby or a good lifestyle business, but something that actually can grow into a multimillion dollar, potentially eventually a multi-billion dollar business, I think is a good thing,” he claririfes.

“Small, medium, and large-sized companies have role models that they can aspire to in terms of building a really substantial business, if something that a game developer is interested in doing.”

For other developers, Lazarus says it’s important for them to about cross-promotion as “just one method – an effective method – to provide distribution for a new title.”

He continues, “There’s other forms of distribution and customer acquisition, but I think it’s important for developers to think through not only making a fun game but, also, how are you going to expose that game to as many players as possible?

“The market is becoming increasingly competitive and therefore I think there’s always going to be opportunities for new developers to come out of nowhere and have a top 10 hit where in top free or top grossing charts.

“However, I think it is important to think through sort of how are you going to build that audience, and how are you going to find the people that are interested in your game.”

Backflip certainly found its answer for DragonVale, and for other developers, perhaps there’s lessons in Backflip’s success to be learned.(source:pocketgamer)