作者：Dave Edery

如果你从来没有做过免费游戏，那么你可以找到许多介绍如何做“好”免费游戏的文章。那些文章大多是在唠叨相同的几个问题：确保适当使用分析学和A/B测试，尽一切所能最大化留存率，等等。这些问题很重要，但根据我有限的经验，我发现开发者（包括我自己的公司Spry Fox）经常犯的几个大错却很少被人提及。所以我打算在本文中谈谈这些问题。

1、不要假设其他游戏是有利可图的

《三重小镇》是Spry Fox进军免费游戏领域的诚意之作。我们受到《Bejeweled Blitz》的启发，这款游戏高居Facebook应用排行榜，应该挣了不少钱。然而，在那个时候，《Bejeweled Blitz》其实赢利不多！事实上，它的ARPU很低，只能借其他游戏望尘莫及的庞大玩家数来弥补。如果我们去问在PopCap工作的朋友那款游戏的赢利情况，他们会诚实地告诉我们，它的表现并不如我们所想象的那样。但我们没有问，所以我们在设计赢利策略时很大程度上是以我们自己的错误假设为基础的。

Triple Town(from vgblogger.com)

但愿我们是唯一犯这种错误的工作室吧，但我发现许多独立开发者也是受到某款很流行但未必挣钱的游戏的启发而做自己的游戏。不幸的是，游戏的流行并不能保证收益就高。例如，苹果或谷歌多次推荐某款游戏，那就足够使那款游戏获得可观的玩家数，但并不意味着你可以假设那款游戏很赚钱！

2、设计不要太狭隘

至今为止，《三重小镇》只有两种收益方式：出售游戏回合和出售能帮助玩家提高表现的道具。有些道具只能用现金购买，有些可以用免费获得的游戏币购买。不幸的是，我们发现只有极少数人乐意花真钱购买《三重小镇》里的游戏道具。比较多的人愿意花钱买回合（手机版游戏中的无限回合），但付费玩家的比重仍然低于我们的预期。

如果我们可以轻易想出其他可出售的东西，那就没什么问题了。然而，因为这款游戏的性质，我们没有办法。《三重小镇》现在仍然是一款单人游戏，经济系统简单，社交互动性有限且没有什么有意义的持久玩法。每一个缺陷都分别增加了这款游戏的赢利难度， 几个缺陷加在一起后，几乎使它没有赢利的可能。

我们一直在想办法提高这款游戏的社交性，最近我们发布了一个持久性玩法的更新……但这些改变花了我们大量时间和精力，但效果目前还没看出来。如果我们当初的设计能更丰富更开阔一点，也许我们就不会这么快遇到收益障碍了。

3、不要期望你的克制会得到玩家的认可

我们选择了限制玩家在一个游戏回合中能消费的道具，我们为此感到自豪。我们做出这个决定，部分是因为我们希望玩家能明白，《三重小镇》是一款讲究技术的游戏，是不能“花钱赢”的。当然，有些玩家确实领悟了我们的用意。但很不幸，其他大多数玩家都抨击我们是Zynga第二，对他们斤斤计较。

我们当然投入成本，当我们收到的回报（如果有的话）是什么还不明朗。大多数讨厌免费游戏的玩家对我们在《三重小镇》中的所作所为仍然很反感。似乎所有人都能接受游戏商城的概念，无论它有没有限制道具。事实上，许多玩家都要求我们取消商店限制，因为他们觉得烦！

以后，我们打算根据玩家反馈做对的事，且继续做玩家无法“花钱赢”的游戏。但我们不会再犯假设我们会因此得到认可或赞扬的错了。不要犯错：大部分人在游戏中购买东西是因为他们真的想要，而不是因为他们想鼓励你作为游戏设计思的德行。后者叫作慈善，抱着这种幻想是走不远的。

4、不要期望发生奇迹

现在，手机免费游戏的竞争也白热化了。想一想：《三重小镇》被苹果推荐了三次，媒体好评无数，甚至Halfbrick工作室也在他们的手机游戏中推广了我们的游戏（真是好人啊！）。然而，《三重小镇》从来没有入围iOS免费应用排行榜的前50！

在游戏刚兴起的黄金时代，凭借游戏本身的新鲜和张扬就能闯进前20名。可是这个美好的旧时代已经一去不复返了（如果你现在还能靠走老路成功，那你一定是运气爆棚了）。同其他开发者的交叉推广不能让你的游戏一飞冲天，大量的媒体报道也不行。要多管齐下，无论是有助于开发付费玩家的策略还是通过网页版游戏带动人气，或者其他任何你能运用的推广手段。

你在免费游戏领域的某些竞争者花了大量钱让自己的游戏冲上排行榜，虽然保住位置的时间很短。如果你希望你的游戏名列前茅，你必须准备好付出同样的努力，或者在另一个竞争比较不激烈的市场谋出路。

还有呢……

幸运的是，我们也避开了很多常见的误区，但我经常发现其他开发者掉进陷阱。例如：没有作为收益来源的可消耗道具、过分依赖单一的平台（无论你是开发付费游戏还是免费游戏，这都是致命的缺陷）、强调美观而不是功能，等等。制作免费游戏是困难的。花些时间和那些失败过的过来人谈谈。充分利用你能获得的在线资源。最重要的是，保证你有充足的时间做实验，和能从容应对失败！即使是行业中的佼佼者也不例外。（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）

Free-to-play tips, from Triple Town’s studio head

By Dave Edery

If you’ve never made a free-to-play game, you can find dozens of articles describing how to do it “right.” Most of those articles harp on the same handful of issues: Make sure you’re properly employing analytics and A/B testing, do everything you can to maximize your one-day and seven-day retention, and so on. Those issues are important, but in my limited experience, I’ve observed a whole set of major errors made by developers (including my company, Spry Fox) that rarely get talked about. So let’s talk about them.

Don’t assume other games are profitable

Triple Town was Spry Fox’s first serious attempt at making a F2P game. We were inspired by the success of Bejeweled Blitz, which had rocketed up the charts on Facebook and was supposedly raking in the dough. Except at the time, it really wasn’t raking in the dough! In reality, Bejeweled Blitz had a very low ARPU that was only offset by an enormous population of players that most games could never hope to match. Had we simply bothered to ask any of our friends at PopCap about Bejeweled Blitz, they would have honestly told us the game wasn’t performing as well as we believed. But we didn’t ask, and so we based our monetization design in large part on faulty assumptions.

I wish we were the only studio making this kind of mistake, but I’ve met plenty of indies who were in process of building games inspired by Game X, where Game X was something popular but not necessarily profitable. Unfortunately, a game’s popularity doesn’t necessarily correlate to revenue. If, for example, Apple or Google feature a mobile title a couple of times, that’s more than enough to give it a sizable audience—but that doesn’t mean you can assume the game is profitable!

Don’t design yourself into a corner

As of today, Triple Town only has two ways to generate revenue: We sell you turns, and we sell you items that help improve your performance in the game. Some in-game items are only available for cash, and some can be purchased with freely earned currency. Unfortunately for us, it turns out that very few people are willing to spend real money for any of the in-game items in Triple Town. More people are willing to spend money for turns (or unlimited turns in the mobile version of the game), but the percentage of paying users is still lower than we expected.

All of that would be okay if we could easily come up with additional things to sell. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the game, we can’t. Triple Town, as it stands today, is a single-player game with a very simple economy, limited social interactivity, and no meaningful persistence. Individually, each of these things make Triple Town harder to monetize effectively; together, they make it nearly impossible.

We’ve been working on making the game more social, and we’ll soon unveil an update that adds meaningful persistence…but these changes have taken a tremendous amount of time and effort, and their payoff is as-yet unproven. Had we started with a more spacious and fertile design, we wouldn’t have hit this wall so quickly.

Don’t expect recognition for your restraint.

We are proud of the fact that we chose to limit how many in-game items a player can purchase during a session of Triple Town. We made that decision in part because we wanted it to be clear to everyone that Triple Town was a game of skill, not a game you could pay to win. And certainly there have been some people who have recognized this. Unfortunately, countless others have bashed us for being a mini-Zynga and for nickel-and-diming them.

We’ve unquestionably traded away revenue, but it’s unclear what (if anything) we received in return. Most players who hate F2P games still hate what we do in Triple Town. Everyone else seems to be okay with the concept of the in-game store, regardless of whether it has limited items. In fact, plenty of players have asked us to remove the store limits because they find them annoying!

In the future, we’re going to keep trying to do right by players and keep trying to make games that you can’t pay to win. But we won’t make the mistake of assuming that we’ll be recognized or rewarded for it. Make no mistake: Most people buy things in a game because they really want those things—not because they are interested in rewarding your good behavior as a game designer. The latter is called charity, and hoping for it won’t get you very far.
Don’t expect miracles

Right now, the mobile F2P game space is brutally competitive. Consider this: Triple Town was featured three separate times by Apple, received tons of positive press, and was generously promoted by our friends at Halfbrick in their mobile games (thanks guys!). And yet Triple Town has never broken into the top 50 free apps on iOS.

This isn’t the good old days, when simply being new and noteworthy could drive you into the top 20 all by itself. (If it does, it is because you got very, very lucky.) Cross-promoting with other developers won’t get you there. Nor will great press. It takes all of that, simultaneously, and more, whether that’s paid user acquisition, driving traffic via a web-based version of your game, or any other promotional strategies you employ.

Some of your competitors in the F2P space are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars over a very short period of time to push their games to the top of the mobile charts. If you want to see your game at the top of the charts, you need to be prepared to push equally hard, or find markets that aren’t quite so competitive.

The list goes on…

There are many other common mistakes that we fortunately avoided with Triple Town, but that I often observe other developers making. For example: not having consumable items as a source of revenue, excessively relying on a single platform (which is a potentially fatal flaw whether you’re making paid games or F2P games), emphasizing aesthetic virtual goods instead of functional virtual goods (for more on this, see my recent GDC lecture), and so on. Making a F2P game is difficult! If you’ve never done it before, there’s a very good chance you’ll blow your first attempt. Take the time to talk to folks who have bitten the dust before you. Take advantage of the many online resources available to you. And most of all, make sure you’ve given yourself plenty of time to experiment and to fail gracefully! Even the best of us need that.(source:gamasutra)