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Nick Gibson谈从融资者角度看游戏开发者

发布时间:2013-11-12 10:06:29 Tags:,,,

作者:Nick Gibson

在这样一个竞争激烈的市场,新工作室以前所未有的速度发布产品,而获取第三方资金的能力也成为了关键。迅速壮大和发展缓慢的,或者成功和失败的工作室之间的差别也许就在这里。

游戏投资咨询平台的作用之一是,帮助投资商和其他基金组织找到他们应该支持和回避的游戏公司或项目。我们花了相当多时间在这个工作上,在过去仅仅3年,我们就已经对超过120个项目做了专业商业评估。

毫不意外,这份融资建议,主要是来自英国的游戏工作室,并涵盖了从好到坏的全部范围。不幸的是,许多开发者的融资提案属于后者,所以这次我想谈谈,开发者在向第三方展示自己的项目时该如何避免一些常见的错误。

1、了解目标市场

target market(from surveyshack)

target market(from surveyshack)

令人惊讶的是,相当多的工作室对自己的目标市场不够了解,甚至是一无所知。游戏类型、平台和玩家类型等因素相结合,可以产生大的、小的和不存在的目标市场。投资商必须相信工作室不仅了解他们的目标市场,而且知道这个市场有多大,有多难进入。他们需要研究并向投资商证明这一点。

2、了解竞争对手

在这样一个拥挤的市场,“独特的卖点”是关键。这里,开发者最常犯的两个错误是,试图捏造独特的卖点和避而不谈工作室的差异点。现在,投资商很容易搜索到竞争产品和服务,然而有些工作室宣称自己的产品是独一无二的,而不顾大量表明他们的产品同质化严重的证据。详尽的调查和诚实的解释工作面临的竞争情况,不仅有助于投资商给工作室定位市场,而且可以告之工作室市场的缺口在哪里。

3、自主发行的风险

随着众多市场向自主发行开放,自然有不少开发者不选择第三方的营销支持,而是自己解决。我们往往以为,一款高品质的游戏可以自己产生持续的病毒传播力,吸引上百万玩家。而事实是,开发消费者是非常困难而昂贵的;大部分游戏无法自己建立一定的玩家基础。在任何融资提案中都必须意识到这些风险,并用全面而创新的办法克服它们。

4、合适的商业模式

这是最常见的劣势和错误,表现形式有很多种。我列举几种:第一,提供过分简单或错误的财政模式(或完全不提供)并不会让你受到投资商的亲睐,毕竟他们的专业是以电子表格、财政分析和商业展望为中心的。

第二,确保你的所有假设都有先例数据为依据。所以我们经常看到基于不现实的期望而做出的预测,比如,15%的转化率、75%的30天留存率或极其夸张的新玩家数量。必须确保这些数据的保守性—-这样才经得起推敲和审查。

另一个常见的错误是收益模式选择。最近一个失意的天使投资人看了几十家英国的工作室后,向我抱怨道:“为什么英国开发者都不爱挣钱?”投资商的最终目标是拿到投资的回报,而执行无力、过分温和或不当的收益模式是无法产生多少回报的。

5、未来融资

工作室可能需要好几轮融资才能把自己的好产品投入市场。这本身不是一个问题,但没有意识到或确定这种必要性却是错误的。提供关于还需要多少资金、资金来源是什么和什么时候需要的信息。忽略或含糊这些信息只会增加未来融资的风险。

对于许多资深的工作室主管,以上几点可能是显而易见的。然而,为数相当惊人的缺乏经验的工作室都在这几点上犯错了,反而把精力放在显而易见的技术或创意能力上。无论你是寻找2.5万英镑的资助,还是500万的风投,都应该遵守以上几条经验法则—-或找人帮你处理融资的事务,这对你的投资商和你的项目融资都有好处。

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

Investor dealings: Common game developer mistakes

By Nick Gibson

In such a competitive market in which new studios are launching at an unprecedented rate, the ability to secure third-party funding can be the key differentiator between a fast start and slow organic growth, and even between a successful and unsuccessful venture.

One of the roles that Games Investor Consulting performs is helping investors and other funding bodies decide what games companies and projects they should back and which to avoid. We spend quite a lot of time on this, having conducted well over 120 professional commercial assessments in the last three years alone.

Unsurprisingly, the funding proposals, mainly from UK games studios, have spanned the full gamut from good to awful. Sadly, a great many fall into the latter, so this month I want to discuss how to avoid some of the most common mistakes made by studios in presenting their investment case to third parties.

KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET

A surprisingly large number of studios have gaps in their knowledge about the market they are targeting; some quite clearly do not understand it at all. Games genres, platforms and demographics can be mixed almost infinitely to yield large, small and non-existent addressable markets. Funders need confidence that the studio not only understands what their target market is, but also how large and accessible it is. Research and demonstrate this.

KNOW YOUR COMPETITORS

In such a crowded market, ‘unique selling propositions’ are critical. The two most common mistakes made here are the attempts to fudge the USPs and the failure to discuss the studio’s points of differentiation at all. These days it is very easy for funders to search for competing products and services, and yet some will declare they are unique in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. Thoroughly investigating and honestly explaining the competitive positioning of the studio’s projects not only allows the funder to recognise where the studio sits in the market, but can inform the studio about where the gaps in the market are.

GETTING TO MARKET

With so many markets now open to self-publishing, many developers understandably opt to avoid third party help in getting to market and instead go it alone. We often see the assumption that a game will sell itself, its superior quality creating a self-sustaining viral ripple that delivers millions of players. The reality is that acquiring customers is incredibly challenging and can be very expensive; most games fail to raise themselves above a modest player base. These risks needs to be recognised in any funding proposal and countered with comprehensive and innovative solutions.

BUSINESS MODEL

This is the most common area of weakness we see, and mistakes come in many forms. Here are a few: Firstly, providing an overly-simplistic or erroneous financial model (or not providing one at all) won’t endear you to funders, most of whose professional lives revolve around spreadsheets, financial analysis and forecasts.

Secondly, make sure any assumptions you make are backed up by precedent data. So often we have seen forecasts based on unrealistic expectations, for example 15 per cent conversion rates, 75 per cent 30-day retention rates or inexplicably massive new user flow. These need to be conservative – so beatable – and able to stand up to scrutiny.

Another common error is revenue model choice. As one frustrated angel investor complained to me recently after seeing dozens of UK studios: “Why do UK developers have no interest in making money?” Funders are ultimately after a return on investment, which they will not achieve with a weakly executed, overly benign or inappropriate revenue model.

FUTURE FUNDING

Studios may well need multiple rounds of funding to get their great opus to market. This is not in itself a problem, but the failure to recognise or quantify this necessity is. Provide information about how much more is needed, where you hope to secure the funding from and when it is needed. Ignoring or obfuscating this simply adds to the funders’ risks.

For many seasoned studio heads, most of the above points will be obvious. However, a surprisingly large number of less experienced funding applicants get them wrong, focusing instead on their more demonstrable technical or creative skills. Whether you’re a £25,000 grant-seeker as a £5 million VC funding pitcher, following these rules of thumb – or finding someone to help you do that – could make the difference for your investors and thus your project’s funding.(source:develop-online)


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