作者：Eric Benjamin Seufert

亲爱的独立手机游戏开发者：

在Gamefounders孵化器，我经常作为导师跟你们打交道；你们也经常通过我的博客给我写邮件，向我咨询意见。我很高兴与你们分享我的观点，但我发现你们的提问越来越重复。我很抱歉这么不礼貌的回复，但我认为在这里一次性把该说的都说了，对我们双方都有好处。

首先，我先归纳一下作为独立开发者的你们的现状：

你和一支小团队开发了一款免费手机游戏。经过测试你发现测试玩家喜欢你们的游戏，然后认为发布游戏一定会受到更广大的玩家的欢迎。但你们只是一个游戏开发工作室，不是市场调查机构，你不知道如何把你的游戏放到潜在的玩家手中。

第一，恭喜你们开发了手机游戏！但不幸的是，建设玩家基础是免费手机游戏开发过程的一部分。

我来解释一下。App Store中有成千上万款由业余开发者、狂热玩家和大工作室等制作的免费游戏。结果是，免费游戏的开发预算和玩家对免费游戏的期待同步上升。

这个现象背后的经济—-没有边际分销成本、大范围普及的可能性和Pareto最优价格反馈循环（游戏邦注：在标准微观经济学理论中，判断经济社会是否处于最佳资源配置状态的标准被称为Pareto最优，又称帕雷托有效配置原则。）导致必须免费的产品，并不重要。这里的底线是：手机游戏已经被完全商品化了。

这不是说你的游戏比不过App Store中的其他游戏，或者游戏的品质对它的表现不会有太大影响。恰恰相反：正是因为有这么多可以免费下载的游戏，你的游戏够好就是最基本的前提。但在免费游戏的生态圈中，制作一款好游戏并不能承诺带给你什么—-充其量就是让你的游戏有了与其他游戏竞争玩家注意力（和赢利）的基本资格。

你必须意识到的是，如果你想发行自己的游戏，你不能只是一家手机游戏开发公司，你还必须学习市场营销和分析学。

如果你没有资深的分析经验、负责分析的内部专家和胜任的营销团队，你是很难在App Store中生存下去的。毕竟，你的竞争对手包括Kabam,、Supercell、King、EA……，它们在市场营销上的投入绝对比你大得多。

所以，你该怎么办？我不知道。但我想你们有以下几个选择：

1、发行自己的游戏。为此，你需要钱—-许多钱。一方面，你必须确定你的最小可行标准，并组建团队负责分析应用商店和相关数据—-或者外包给大量手机分析服务供应商中的一个。谨慎地选择供应商；许多供应商是靠不住的。

一旦你的分析学基本建设就位了，你就必须软发布你的游戏，然后再修改。这个过程比你想象得更麻烦和昂贵。

大肆夸奖你的游戏的测试玩家不能提供有价值的反馈。你是否用比萨或电影票作为他们参与测试的奖品？他们是你的好朋友还是家人？如果是，那么他们就有可能是在说谎。

你需要大量采集与游戏无利益关系的群体的数据。这要求你在测试市场上软发布你的游戏，收集行为数据，使用这些数据迭代你的游戏。

这个过程听起来很简单，但我要提醒你以下几点：

1、你必须收集测试市场的数据。许多开发者选择加拿大作为测试市场（理由太多，我就不在这里说了）；因此那里的CPI（用户开发成本）变高了。在加拿大收集大量可执行的行为数据，你需要约2500美元的成本（每1000名玩家/2.5美元的CPI）。你可以收集少一点的数据（即需要较少的测试玩家），但这样一来，你的结果就不那么可靠了。

2、你必须分析你收集到的数据。这意味着你需要分析员（游戏邦注：分析员，不是数据专家。二者的区别很重要；他们的技能是完全不同的）。无论是手机应用还是游戏领域，有经验、优秀的分析员都很短缺，所以他们的雇用费很高。你支付给资深分析员的报酬大概与程序员相当。

3、你必须根据分析结果迭代游戏。在正式发布游戏以前，你的游戏必须达到某些基本指标，主要是与留存率有关的。即使你能够在一次生产冲刺中解决各个迭代问题，你也需要两周的时间开发每一个更新。

根据正式的软发布，很难说你的游戏需要多少次迭代。如果你的留存率指标很高的（即第一天的留存率超过40%），你可能只需要一两次迭代就能完善游戏了。

你还要考虑到，通过迭代可能不会明显地增加游戏留存率，如果留存率一开始就不高的话（比如，第一天的留存率等于或低于25%）。这样的话， 你必须解决游戏的更基本问题，这可能需要几个月的开发时间。

软发布成功后，你就可以面向全球发布了。你不会得到应用商店的推荐（你有被推荐的可能，但概率太低，所以不要抱太大希望），这意味着你必须通过营销活动来开发目标受众。

为此，你必须雇用用户开发经理（在软发布阶段不需要，只要一两个网络媒体就够了）。优秀的用户开发经理也不便宜。

雇用了资深的用户开发经理（你可能要找上一阵子，因为与分析员一样，有经验的用户开发经理也短缺）来负责营销工作后，你就可以开始根据LTV（用户终身价值）展开营销活动了。你想花多少钱取决于你希望你的游戏发展得多少；你买入的玩家越多，你支付的CPI越高。在美国，在合理的规模内开发用户，CPI应该落在2美元到5美元之间。

记住，开发少于预测的LTV的用户会让你有非常低的每单位开发利润率，但这些用户玩你的游戏几个月后，你就能收回之前承担的用户开发成本（用玩家在LTV期间产生的收益）。

在发布的几个月内是LTV的积累期，这时游戏还没达到稳定的状态；为了支付你承担的总体开销，你必须思考收益进度（即，用户什么时候回报你？）。

当然，不做营销也可以发布游戏，因为你认为游戏玩家基础可以自然积累。但事实往往不是这样的，如果你不能执行用户开发，你的游戏很可能默默无闻（这也不一定，有些游戏确实不需要营销活动就大获成功了，但你还是不能抱着侥幸心理）。手机游戏生态圈中，95%的游戏处于死寂的状态，而只有5%的游戏生机勃勃。

如果你的财政状况不允许你承担这些经营费用—-大部分是开发中的游戏遇到的问题，那么你可以试试找投资商要钱。

但即使你成功地筹到钱（游戏邦注：这种情况可能少见，除非你开发的是大平台的游戏），筹资的过程也是漫长的，所以在至少几个月的时间内你必须保持运转。

有些人可能会建议你试试到Kickstarter网站上去众筹，但除非你的名气大（在玩家当中，不是游戏/技术专家当中），否则你可能只是浪费时间。

如果发行你自己的游戏听起来太不现实了，那么你还有另一个选择：求助于发行商。

Kixeye的首席执行官Will Harbin说你不需要发行商，但那是因为Kixeye有大量收益稳定的游戏和跨平台的新游戏。你有吗？如果没有，他的建议可能对你不适用。

对于大量独立手机游戏开发者，求胜于发行商可能是最明智的做法。但是，大多数发行商只关心全球正式发布的营销活动—-极少会资助你的开发。

如果你决定让其他公司发行你的游戏，如果你没有比较优势的立场（比如你自己的资金充足或有很多发行商对你的游戏感兴趣），那么协议条款也不会对你有利，所以你不要等到几乎弹尽粮绝的情况下才去找发行商谈合作。

即使协议条款确实对你有利，你仍然要放弃相当大一部分的游戏收益—-也许介于40%-60%之间，这取决于你的财政情况、游戏的潜力和你的谈判技术；作为回报，发行商将承担你的游戏的财政风险。

Clash of Clans(from shouyou)

放弃这么一大笔收益可能会让你感到愤怒—-毕竟，如果你发布的游戏是“第二款《Clash of Clans》”或“第二款《Puzzle & Dragons》”，那么一年的收益就相当大了。但你不应该担心这个，原因有二：1、你将协商一个仅要求你提前3个月通知的退出条款；2、你发布的不是下一款《Clash of Clans》或《Puzzle & Dragons》（有可能你开发的游戏就会那么成功，但你不应该抱着这种心理制定开发计划）。

如果你意识到自己的游戏还没准备好正式发布，但你的经济承担不了软发布，那么你可以寻找开发伙伴，对方将分走你的收益的一部分，但在此之前他会资助你的开发并在你所不擅长的领域提供帮助，比如分析学。

我认为这些类型的生意已经越来越少了，但对此我还没有得出更普遍的结论。如果你有时间（和钱）探索这种生意，那么你在与发行商的任何讨论中都应该考虑到上述内容。但我想这种生意慢慢地就会消失了。

无论你选择什么路径，你应该为这个事实感到骄傲：通过发行免费游戏，你为历史上最有意义的商业模式转移之一做出了贡献。我希望你们能交好运，期待玩到你们的游戏。

（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）

Dear indie mobile game developer

by Eric Benjamin Seufert

Dear indie mobile game developer,

I interact with you on a regular basis, as a mentor in the Gamefounders incubator and when you email me via this blog, asking me to serve as a sounding board. I’m always happy to provide you with my opinions, but I’ve begun to notice repetition in the things you’re saying. I apologize for the impersonal nature of this reply, but I thought that addressing you here would be more convenient for both of us.

First, let me attempt to summarize your position:

You and a small team have developed a free-to-play mobile game. The test users you’ve watched play the game love it, and you think it’ll do well when opened up to a larger audience. But you’re a game development studio, not a marketing agency, and you have no idea about how to get your game into potential players’ hands.

First, congratulations on developing a mobile game! But unfortunately, building a user base is part of the game development process for freemium mobile.

Allow me to explain. The App Store is host to thousands of games that have been made available for free by hobbyist developers, gaming enthusiasts, and major studios alike. As a result, development budgets and players’ expectations of the games they’re entitled to for free have increased concurrently.

The economics behind this phenomenon – that no marginal distribution costs, the potential for massive scale, and a Pareto optimal pricing feedback loop have resulted in products that must be given away for $0 – aren’t important. The bottom line is this: mobile games have been completely commoditized.

That isn’t to say that your game isn’t better than others in the App Store, or that the quality of a game doesn’t impact how well it performs. Quite the opposite: with so many free games available for instant download, that your game is good is a pre-requisite for even mild traction. But making a good game doesn’t guarantee you anything in the freemium ecosystem – it is simply the minimum basis on which you enter the competition for players’ attention (and disposable income).

What you have to realize is that, if you want to publish your own game, you cannot be merely a mobile games development company: you must also be equal parts marketing and analytics company.

If you don’t have a sophisticated analytics infrastructure, the in-house expertise to extract insight from that infrastructure, and a marketing team in place, you’ll get steamrolled in the App Store. After all, you’re competing against the likes of Kabam, Supercell, King, EA, and others, all of which can vastly outspend you in marketing.

So what should you do? I don’t know. But here are what I deem to be your options:

Publish your own game. For this, you’ll need money – lots of money. For one, you have to instrument your minimum viable metrics and build an analytics infrastructure to store and parse those data points — or outsource this to one of the myriad mobile analytics vendors. Choose a vendor wisely; many won’t be around in 12 months.

Once your analytics infrastructure is in place, you have to soft launch your game and iterate upon it. This is a more onerous and expensive undertaking than you think it is.

The test users that raved about your game haven’t provided you with valuable feedback. Did you offer them pizza or movie tickets in exchange for playing your game? Are they your close friends or family members? If so, they were lying to you.

You need lots of objective data points about your game from disinterested parties. That requires soft launching your game in a test market, gathering behavioral data, and using that data to iterate upon your game.

That process sounds straightforward, but I’ll enumerate the steps involved:

1) You must accumulate data in a test market. Many developers choose Canada for this (for a number of reasons I won’t go into here); because of this, CPIs there are high. Gathering an actionable, relevant volume of behavioral data in Canada will cost you about $2.5k (1,000 users at a $2.5 CPI). You can gather less data (ie. acquire fewer users), but your results won’t be as reliable.

2) You must analyze the data you have collected. This requires an analyst (note: analyst, not data scientist. The distinction is important; the skillsets are totally different). Good analysts with experience in either mobile consumer apps or games are in short supply, making them expensive. Expect to pay an experienced analyst about the same as you pay an engineer.

3) You must iterate on the game based on the results of your analyses. You need to hit some baseline metrics, mostly related to retention, before you’re ready to hard launch. Even if you’re able to address each iteration in a single product sprint, you’ll need two weeks of development per update.

It’s hard to say how many iterations your game will require in soft launch before it’s ready for hard launch. If your retention metrics are strong (ie. Day 1 retention above 40%), you might only need 1 or 2 iterations for “polish”.

Something to consider is that you may not be able to appreciably boost a game’s retention through iterations if it’s initially very low (say, Day 1 retention at or below 25%). In that case, you’ll need to address more fundamental aspects of the game, which could require months of development.

Once you’re out of soft launch, you can launch globally. You won’t receive featuring*, which means you’ll need to acquire users in key markets through performance marketing campaigns.

To do this, you need to hire a user acquisition manager (you can get by without one in soft launch by working with only 1 or 2 networks). Good user acquisition managers aren’t cheap.

Once you’ve hired an experienced user acquisition manager (which can take a while – like analysts, user acquisition managers with experience in consumer mobile are in short supply) to lead your marketing efforts, you’ll want to start running campaigns on the basis of LTV. How much you spend depends on how quickly you want to grow your game; the more users you buy, the higher CPIs you’ll pay. You should expect CPIs to fall along a range of between $2 and $5 in the US when acquiring users at reasonable scale.

Keep in mind that acquiring users for only marginally less than their predicted LTVs will provide you with a very slim per-unit acquisition profit margin, which will only materialize after months of those users playing your game (you bear acquisition costs upfront but revenue is generated over the lifetimes of users).

You should figure out what your revenue schedule looks like (ie. when do users pay you?) in order for you to cover the overhead costs you’ll incur while LTVs are accumulating in the months after launch, before your game reaches a steady state.

Of course, you could always launch your game without marketing it, operating under the assumption that it will develop a user base organically. But more likely than not, if you can’t engage in user acquisition, your game will fade into obscurity**. The mobile games ecosystem is 95% graveyard and 5% magic beanstalk arboretum.

If you’re not in a financial position to manage the expense of these operations – which are, for the most part, only obliquely related to developing games – then you can try to raise money from investors.

But even if you’re successful in raising money (which you probably won’t be if you’re not developing a platform), the fundraising process will be long, so you’ll need at least a few months’ worth of runway available.

Some people might suggest that you try to raise money on Kickstarter, but unless you’re well known (by gamers, not gaming / technology professionals), you’ll probably just waste your time.

If publishing your own game sounds impractical, then you have another option: you can enlist the services of a publisher.

Will Harbin says you don’t need a publisher, but Kixeye has a large portfolio of games to keep its revenue stable and cross-promote new titles with. Do you? If not, his advice might not be applicable to you.

For a lot of indie mobile game developers, entering into a publishing arrangement can be the best course of action. But understand that most publishers will only take care of global hard launch marketing – few will fund your development.

If you decide to have another company publish your game, you won’t get good terms if you’re not negotiating from a position of strength (ie. you have money in the bank or a number of suitors interested in publishing your game), so you probably shouldn’t wait until you’re almost destitute to try to negotiate a publishing deal.

And even if you do get relatively good terms, you should still expect to give up a substantial portion of your game’s revenue – probably between 40 and 60%, depending on your financial position, the potential of your game, and your negotiating skills — in return for the publisher taking a substantial financial risk on your game.

You might bristle at the idea of giving away such a large portion of your revenues – after all, if you release the next Clash of Clans or Puzzle & Dragons, this could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a year. But this shouldn’t concern you, for two reasons: 1) you’ll negotiate an exit clause in the contract requiring only 3 months’ notice, and 2) you’re not going to release the next Clash of Clans or Puzzle & Dragons***.

If you realize that your game isn’t ready for hard launch but you can’t afford to fund a soft launch, you can engage a development partner that will take a revenue split but at least partially fund your development and assist you in areas that you don’t have domain expertise in like analytics, monetization design, marketing, etc.

I don’t think enough of these types of deals have been struck in the space yet to draw any broad conclusions about them. If you have the time (ie. money) to explore such a deal, you probably should do so in parallel with any discussions you’re having with publishers. But I would assume that deals like these are slow to close, so start early.

Whichever path you choose, you should take pride in the fact that, by releasing a freemium game, you’re contributing to one of the most significant commercial paradigm shifts in history. I wish you the best of luck, and I look forward to playing your game.(source:mobiledevmemo)