作者：Zoya Street

开发者和发行商之间的关系一直在变化着。4年前，当手机游戏独立发行变成一种选择时，这一关系便改变了。就像Nicholas在《How to Publish a Game》中所解释的，这让那些机智的游戏开发者可以在不获得大型公司的许可下在市场中测试自己的游戏理念。

如今，与游戏如何变成一种服务一样，发行也开始变成服务。开发者能够将用户获取，盈利和本土化等工作外包给带有市场和技能的公司。哪些专攻安全，付费处理和广告网络等服务的公司将自己的用户基础带向应用开发者，充当起本属于发行商的全球发行角色。

Localization(from submitedge)

NQ Mobile

就像NQ Mobile过去是专注于安全服务，但是现在它们更频繁地利用自己强大的用户基础而帮助开发者提供用户获取与盈利解决方法。他们也与腾讯等大型发行商展开了合作，将自己的优势进一步延伸到其它平台上。

因为在中国市场上具有强大的立足点，所以它们所提供的一大服务便是本土化。不久前，中国发行商表示欧美游戏并不适合这一市场。在2012年的Children’s Media Conference上，一位发言人说道：“我们想要的是你们的技能而非游戏。”来自NQ Mobile的Gavin Kim认为事实并非如此。他们注意到了更多游戏取得了国际上的成功。不仅如此，他们还发现比起欧美的用户，中国用户拥有更高的终生价值。

Kim还表示，中国市场中猖獗的盗版行为“并不会影响到我。在每个市场中都存在着盗版的风险。”

他看到了市场的不断汇聚，中国和日本游戏所带来的全新设计趋势在欧美市场中不断崛起。然而，针对中国市场进行游戏本土化并不只是翻译语言那么简单。中国市场具有更明显的摩擦曲线，像《Gods and Dragons》等成功的中国游戏更有可能假设用户愿意花钱去购买它们的最初版本。而在面向美国市场进行本土化时，这种情况就需要做出改变。

我想知道如果自己的网络上拥有大量的用户，NQ的游戏在中国市场上是否足以应对那些不愿付钱的用户。Kim承认了为市场规模在游戏设计决策中的重要角色，但是他也认为文化差异也具有重要影响作用。“美国用户习惯不在网上付钱买东西”，而在中国并不存在家庭互联网使用的先例；在中国的大多数区域都不具有高速ADSL线路，互联网的普及也是伴随着近来智能手机的普及。历史上的差异便意味着用户间会出现不同的期待值。

Kim说道：“也存在年代间的转变。就像比起青少年，40代的美国人更不会在网上花钱。”所以这并不是关于经济？Kim认为，因为比起自己的父母，如今的美国年轻人承受着更大的财政压力，但似乎收入水平和盈利之间并不存在联系。数字原住民又会以不同方式去消费他们有限的资金。

Inmobi

Inmobi使用自己的数据去反驳这种情况。他们在英国，澳大利亚和美国看到了更高的用户获取成本，而部分原因是因为这些区域拥有平均较高的用户终身价值。这也是关于目标用户群体的问题；因为比起中国，这些地区的人口数量较少，而伴随着高密度的智能手机用户使得他们在广告商眼里价值倍增。市场上对于讲英语的智能手机用户的需求很高，但却供不应求。

虽然如此，Products Piyush Shah的VP同意中国市场必须出现在每个开发者的目标地图上。他说道：“中国是一只巨大的野兽。但这也是你忽视不起的野兽。”他将付费系统的发展，苹果对于黑市应用的镇压以及一些巨头在分裂的应用商店生态系统的崛起作为过去十年的主要变化，并且这些变化也推动着中国变成一个更加可行的市场。

尽管主要是作为一个广告网站，但Inmobi同时也将自己作为一个本土化服务，即带有基于每个主要区域的团队而致力于帮助开发者在该区域更好地提高应用的用户获取盈利。Shah提到了面向中国市场整合可爱的角色，同时为确保社交和盈利性而整合了适合该区域的服务。

它不仅能够更轻松地面向不同区域发行内容，同时跨平台开发也变得更容易接近。尽管Android设备的分裂性并未消失，但是Inmobi的数据显示三星Galaxy，Kindle和Nexus设备已经主导了整个市场。

而这是否意味着开发者就可以忽视HTC和LG？“问题在于，如果移植到所有Android设备上并不困难的话，你为什么不这么做？”Shah指出，伴随着Gingerbread系统的出现，跨设备兼容性变得更加容易实现了。作为一个使用低端Android智能手机的用户，我对此表示怀疑；我经常在自己的设备上运行游戏，但是它们却不像在Galaxy上运行那样稳定。当然开发者也仍可以决定优先优化哪些设备。Shah也承认：“确保你的应用可以不出现任何漏洞而运行于不同设备上是一种劳动密集型工作。”

Shah同样也表示，当提到面向国际市场创建不同Android操作系统时，分裂性仍是不可避免的重要问题。中国的百度使用了独特的方法去面对Android系统，而这并非受益于Gingerbread的跨设备兼容性。这种兼容性正是像Inmobi等平台服务提供者想要帮助开发者们解决的问题。

Infobip

游戏占据了Infobip90%的收益，过去该公司主要专注于SMS付费，而现在他们的主要业务已经分裂成本土化支持和其它发行服务。对于他们来说，本土化不只是关于语言和设计元素；他们非常热衷于通过当地运行的工作室发行游戏而帮助开发者满足他们在不同区域的需求。

他们是第一家在日本（游戏邦注：根据Mobile Payments Paolo Rizzardini的VP，这是一个“封闭市场”）提供手机付费服务给外国公司的非日本本土公司。通常情况下日本经营者都不会允许运营商像外国公司开出票据，因为致力于保障消费者的消费者友好型条例在一个国家内总是拥有明确的连接点和支持点。

Rizzardni解释道：“我们正在使用当地规范去执行市场营销。当地规范要求我们必须拥有一个门户网站去明确怎样的人会为我们的服务花钱。我们基于该方法告诉人们他们可以使用我们的付费系统购买所有的内容。这就像是一间商店。”

其它区域会带来不同的挑战。越南是其中一个让现成刮刮卡成为一种可行付费方法的地区。通过基于刮刮卡系统进行设置，Infobip能够为发行于该国家的游戏提高10倍的收益。“其目标便是在每个国家基于条例和当地用户的习惯提供最佳用户体验。越南的消费者与美国的消费者有所不同。所以我们是利用当地的工作人员去管理27个国家的地方事宜。”

付费SMS仍然是Infobip的主要优势之一；他们直接在160个国家实现了SMS付费。这也帮他们挤进了印度这些拥有较低智能手机渗透率的国家，因为SMS付费系统仍是基于10年前的方式运行着。

面对着所有竞争对手都在向中国市场迈进，我询问了Rizzardini关于Infobip在该区域的表现。他承认：“中国市场是我们所面对的最难搞的一个区域。我们在中国并未拥有当地的实体公司，如此便说明了我们在这里有很多事都做不了。当时我们也在帮助着中国公司更好地在国外获取盈利。”

Rizzardini表示，尽管他们在中国发行欧美游戏的自信不断上升，但是管制和法律问题仍是非常严重的绊脚石。“这里存在许多有关知识产权的问题。当你想要再次发行游戏时，当地的经营者都会向你索求源代码。”他所提出的解决方法便是寻求当地合作伙伴的帮助，他们可以帮你寻找解决方法。“你需要聘请一位中国公司领导者，他能够帮助你创建起与经营者之间的信任。”

Playhaven

并不是所有国际发行服务提供者都是源自更明确且更具有目标性的服务。Playhaven将自己的服务定位在用户获取，用户留存（他们将其称为用户粘性）盈利模式而提供给那些面对着国际游戏发行挑战的客户帮助。

在留存这一面，他们关于最近的趋势而创造出来的一大功能便是通知（还有其它与Infobip一样的服务）。他们会提供给开发者一定的建议去学习如何直接传递信息，即更熟练地进行推送。其首席运营官Andy Yang说道：“这是以亚马逊为教训”。消息推送必须基于用户行为而瞄准他们，并观察谁更愿意花钱，并利用折扣和促销等方式说服他们。

对于Yang来说，客户关系管理是成功应用业务的关键。他指出拥有更多资金支持的国内公司的开支总是大于小型初创企业：“他们将太多关注点放在用户获取上。如果你拥有较高的ARPU，你便足以支付用户获取的消费，”所以他们应该将真正的关注点放在学习如何提高用户粘性并管理消费。除了社交整合，Yang表示开发者必须找到合适的机会向用户展现自己的慷慨。例如在适当的时候提供免费礼物而带给他们惊喜。

他将应用和消费者的关系与餐厅和消费者的关系做了比较。他说道：“好的食物还不足以保证好的体验。你需要创造一种不会让消费者感觉自己被戏弄的有意义的关系。”Playhaven的目标是创建一个让开发者能够培养这种关系的平台。

（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）

Going global with local help

By Zoya Street

The relationship between developers and publishers is changing. It changed four years ago, when mobile games self-publishing became an option. As Nicholas explains in How to Publish a Game, this has allowed agile game developers to test ideas in the market without first asking for permission from a big corporation.

Now, just like how games have become services, publishing is emerging as a service too. Developers can outsource user acquisition, monetisation and localisation to companies with the reach and skillset to execute those tasks well. Companies that used to specialise in services such as security, payment processing and ad networks are bringing their userbases to app developers, fulfilling the global distribution roles that were once the specialty of publishers.

NQ Mobile

NQ Mobile used to focus on security, but they have more recently used their access to an enormous userbase to provide acquisition and monetisation solutions to developers. They’ve even partnered with other large publishers such as Tencent, bringing their superior reach to other platforms.

With a strong foothold in the Chinese market, part of their service is localisation. Not long ago, Chinese publishers were saying that European and American games don’t belong there. ‘We want your skills, not your games,’ said one speaker at the Children’s Media Conference in 2012. Gavin Kim of NQ Mobile says that’s not the case. They are seeing more international success for games. Not only that, but they are finding higher lifetime value from Chinese users than from audiences in the US and the EU.

The stereotype that piracy is rampant in China ‘doesn’t make a lot of sense to me’ says Kim. ‘In every market there is a risk of piracy.’

He’s seeing a convergence between markets, with new design trends rising in America and Europe that come from Chinese and Japanese games. Still, localising a game for the Chinese market is not simply a matter of linguistic translation. Friction curves are steeper in China, for example, and successful Chinese games such as Gods and Dragons were more likely to assume that the user will pay to play in their original form. This had to change when localising for the American market.

I ask if this is because with such a huge number of users in their network, NQ games in China can afford to churn users who don’t pay. Kim acknowledges the role of market size in game design decisions, but said that there is a cultural difference at work as well. ‘American users are accustomed to not paying for things on the internet,’ whereas in China there is not the same precedent set by household internet use; most of China doesn’t have high-speed ADSL lines, with internet uptake primarily coming along more recently with smartphones. That historical difference means a different set of expectations among users.

‘There is also a generational shift’, Kim said. ‘Americans in their forties are much less likely to make payments online than teenagers.’ So it’s not about economics? Kim agreed that since American young people are under more financial pressure than their parents, there doesn’t seem to be a link between income level and monetisation. Digital natives just spend their limited funds differently.

Inmobi

Inmobi countered this with their own data. They see the highest user acquisition costs in the UK, Australia and the US, in part because of a high average lifetime value for users in those territories. It’s also a question of demographics; these are smaller populations, with a high density of smartphone users, making them more valuable to advertisers than China. Demand for English-speaking smartphone users is high, and supply is limited.

Nevertheless, VP of Products Piyush Shah concurred that the Chinese market has to be on every developer’s map. ‘China is a huge monster,’ he said. ‘But it’s a monster that you cannot afford to ignore.’ He listed developments in payment systems, Apple’s clampdown on grey market apps, and the rise of a few dominant players in the fragmented app store ecosystem as major shifts in the past year that have made China a more accessible market.

While it is primarily an ad network, Inmobi also aims to position itself as a localisation service, with teams based in each major territory specialising in helping developers to improve their apps’ acquisition and monetisation in that region. Shah gave the example of incorporating cute characters for the Chinese market, as well as making sure that social and monetisation features integrate with services that work well in that region.

Not only is it becoming easier to launch in different territories, but cross-platform development is becoming more approachable. The fragmentation on Android devices is by no means gone, but Inmobi’s data suggests that Samsung’s Galaxy range has dominated the marketplace, along with Kindle and Nexus devices.

Does that mean that developers can ignore HTC and LG? ‘The question is, if it’s not that hard to port to all Android devices, why not do it?’ Shah responded, pointing out that with Gingerbread, cross-device compatibility is becoming easier. As a user of a low-end Android smartphone, I was sceptical; games often run on my device, but they are not as stable as they would be on a Galaxy. Surely developers are still having to prioritise which devices they optimise for? ‘Making sure that your app runs without bugs on different devices is labour-intensive’, Shah conceded.

Shah also warned that fragmentation remains an issue when it comes to different Android OSes built for international markets. Baidu in China has their own flavour of Android, which doesn’t benefit from the cross-device capabilities of Gingerbread. It’s these kinds of complications that platform service providers such as Inmobi want to help developers to iron out.

Infobip

Gaming represents 90% of revenue for Infobip, a company that used to specialise in SMS payments and has branched out into localisation support and other publishing services. For them, localisation is not just about language or even design elements; they are particularly keen on helping developers to meet the regulatory requirements in different territories by publishing their games through offices run by locals.

They are the first non-Japanese company to offer mobile payments to foreign companies in Japan, normally ‘a closed market’ according to VP of Mobile Payments Paolo Rizzardini. Japanese operators do not ordinarily allow carrier billing for foreign companies, because of consumer-friendly regulations designed to ensure that customers always have a point of contact and support within the country.

‘We are using local regulations in a way that serves marketing,’ Rizzardini explained. ‘Local regulations say that we must have a web portal where we state clearly what people can pay for using our services. We use that to show people all the things that they can purchase using our payment system. It’s like a shop.’

Other territories bring different challenges. Vietnam is one of the places where store-bought scratch cards have become popular as an accessible and reliable payment method. By setting them up with the scratchcard system, Infobip has been able to improve revenues tenfold for games published in that country. ‘The goal is to provide in every country the best user experience based on regulations and the habits of the local users. A consumer in Vietnam is different from a consumer in the US. So we have local people managing the a local presence in 27 countries.’

Premium SMS is still one of Infobip’s major strengths; they fulfill SMS payments directly in 160 countries. This gives them an edge in countries like India which have low smartphone penetration, since SMS payments continue to work in the same way that they did 10+ years ago.

With all their competitors touting their access to China, I asked Rizzardini how Infobip is performing in that area. ‘The Chinese market is the hardest one that we face,’ he admitted. ‘We don’t have a local entity in China and there’s not a lot that you can do there if you don’t have that. But we are helping Chinese companies to monetise their games outside of China.’

Despite increased confidence about publishing European and American games in China, regulatory and legal issues are still serious roadblocks, said Rizzardini. ‘There are a lot of issues with intellectual property. The operators out there will ask for the source code when you want to distribute a game.’ The answer, he says, is to have local partners who can schmooze their way out of trouble. ‘You need to have a Chinese company director who can build trust with operators.’

Playhaven

Not all of the international publishing service providers grew out of more specific, targeted services. Playhaven grounds its service in the acquisition, retention (they call it engagement) monetisation model (see our ARM series) to give its clients assistance with the major challenges associated with publishing a game internationally.

On the retention side, one of the features they have been making a lot of noise about recently is push notifications (other services such as Infobip also provide push). They advise developers big and small to learn to do direct messaging such as push skilfully. ‘Look at Amazon for lessons’ said COO Andy Yang. Messaging should be targeted to users based on their behaviour, being mindful of who is close to paying and needs something like a discount or a flash sale to help them get over the hump.

For Yang, customer relationship management is at the core of a successful apps business. ‘There is too much focus on acquisition’, he said, pointing out that better funded companies will always be able to outspend smaller startups. ‘If you have a high ARPU, you can afford to spend on acquisition,’ so the focus there is on learning how to increase engagement and spending. Aside from social integration, Yang said that developers have to find opportunities to be generous to users. ‘Serendipitous moments do work’, such as surprising them with free gifts at just the right time.

He compared apps’ relationships with customers to restaurants. ‘Good food is not enough to ensure a good experience,’ he said, ‘you want meaningful relationships where you’re not tricking the players.’ Playhaven aims to build a platform that allows developers to nurture those relationships.(source:gamesbrief)