作者：Mike Lu

我是GREE产品副总裁Mike Lu，曾管理我们多款成功的热门游戏（游戏邦注：包括《Modern War》、《Kingdom Age》、《Crime City》），我本人也是一名游戏发烧友。在电子游戏行业中工作最棒的事情之一就是“市场调查”这部分工作。也许对人们来说这并没有什么稀奇，担对我们来说，调查就意味着玩大量电子游戏。

这并非电子游戏行业所独有的传统，但向他人取经确实是一个提高自我的绝佳方法。例如，我最喜欢的旧金山寿命餐厅是Akiko’s。

在他们下班时，Akiko的大厨会去各种餐厅观察和学习，以便更了解自己的潜在主顾的需求。这也正是我们为何喜欢玩各种游戏的原因！

手机游戏行业也不例外，我有许多工作就涉及玩手机、主机和PC等各类游戏，以便了解玩家或潜在玩家的需求，尤其是了解所谓的“鲸鱼”玩家类型。

免费游戏如此独特的一个因素就在于，我们免费开放游戏，玩家如果喜爱游戏就会在其中花钱购买新内容。其主要收益来源于更小的群体（“鲸鱼”用户）。所以何谓鲸鱼用户，为何他们要在自己所喜欢的游戏中投入成百上千美元？

作为手机游戏开发者，我清楚地知道其中一些原因，但直到我自己也成了鲸鱼玩家时我才开始真正理解这类用户的心态。我曾在另一家公司的手机游戏中投入上千美元，这让我了解了玩家在我的游戏中的许多行为习惯。我将在本文中分享自己对手机游戏鲸鱼玩家的4个发现，以及开发者如何将其运用于自己的设计。

whales(from businessweek.com)

1）鲸鱼玩家从不轻易花钱。

在我成为鲸鱼玩家之前，我曾一度认为鲸鱼只是为了减轻麻烦而花钱。“花9.99美元无需等待10分钟，就可以立即补充命值”。当然，我也曾在这方面花过钱，但经常觉得这并不是很好的投资。我可以将这9.99美元用于购买那些会对我的游戏产生长期影响的东西。即使花了上千美元，我仍然很在乎自己到底把钱花在哪了。不要以为你在游戏中推出一项200美元的道具，鲸鱼玩家就会无缘无故买下来。或者如果你让X加速了，所有鲸鱼都会趋之若骛。应该为他们提供能对游戏产生长期影响的东西，例如允许他们研究比X更多的插槽，或者以n%的比例更改资源输出量。确保他们所买到的东西真正物有所值，这样你就会看到他们反复购买。

这就引出了我的第2个要点。

2）真正的性价比。

鲸鱼玩家这一身份让我开始意识到玩家通常会评估自己在游戏中所购买之物的真正价值。这一概念非常简单，如果新道具售价100美元，但却“价值”200美元，我就会欣然买下，因为我觉得自己赚到了。付费玩家在游戏中都有这种性价比的观念，关注游戏所购之物的回报或投入产出比。这方面的一个例子是发生于我们一款游戏中的情况。我们的一个限量包只允许玩家一次购买一件。但是，由于出现了一个工程漏洞，系统却允许玩家购买多个内容包，当玩家发现时基色购买量已上升了1000%。有些玩家甚至购买了上百个内容包，害怕我们会很快发现漏洞并关闭交易。玩家购买了如此多个内容包这一现象并没有让游戏受挫，但却让鲸鱼玩家相信自己获得了极高的性价比，他们愿意继续购买。

3）碰运气。

当我正处于对某款游戏极度上瘾的状态时，我就非常关注其中的运气系统。我发现自己会继续利用这一玩法，脑中不断闪过“我知道自己将获得传说中的下一个内容包”的念头。我并不能保证自己能得到心仪的物品，这一理念似乎有违传统游戏设计，但这种免费游戏设计却正真的很适用于像我一样的鲸鱼玩家。我实际上是在“打赌”自己每次所能获得的奖励，相信我，当我真的得到那件传说中的道具时，我几乎乐得跳起来了。

4）鲸鱼玩家与你我并没有什么不同。

当我们想到这些“鲸鱼”玩家时，我们通常将他们想象成拥有大量零花钱的富人。调查显示，“鲸鱼”群体实际上再普通不过了。几乎任何人都有可能成为鲸鱼。我们无法通过个性或背景来分析、预测哪些人会成为鲸鱼，或者特定的瞄准对象。鲸鱼有可能是男性、女性、军人、医生、律师、妈妈、学生——在各行各业中几乎无处不在。这是什么意思？这意味着我们应该专注于为所有玩家创建拥有出色内容的优质游戏。

那么这些发现对游戏开发者又意味着什么？首先，我希望你认识到游戏如何获得玩家认可的重要性。这一规则适用于F2P游戏、主机、手机、PC、RPG等任何类型的游戏。要了解玩家，玩游戏并理解他们操作的过程和原因，这样你就知道该向他们提供什么内容，该在人们实际需要的内容上投入资源。

第二个关键就是，记住玩家会策略性地花钱。随便抛入昂贵的道具并寄希望于人们会购买，这并不会获得成功——付费内容必须具有意义（游戏邦注：这正是了解玩家和了解游戏的重要性所在）。玩家并不会无故掏钱，要优化他们的游戏体验，他们会考虑自己每一操作的长期价值。这是件好事，玩家会投入游戏，那你就该确保对他们作出同样的回报。

最后，记住并不存在所谓的获取“鲸鱼”用户的宝典。没有完美的目标群体或玩家类型。即使你去寻找这些玩家模式，最终也会发现真正重要的还是趣味因素。游戏质量和玩法体验是吸引玩家，尤其是“鲸鱼”玩家的招牌，所以我的建议是要专注于这些层面。（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）

Lessons on Mobile Gaming from a Whale

by Mike Lu

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.

The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

My name is Mike Lu and I am the VP of Product at GREE. I’ve worked on many of our successful top-charting titles – Modern War, Kingdom Age, Crime City – and I am a huge gamer myself. One of the best things about working in the video game industry is the “research” part of the job. This is probably not a shock to people, but research for us usually means playing a lot of video games.

This tradition is not just limited to our industry, but learning from others is a great way to improve one’s craft. Take for example, my favorite Sushi restaurant in San Francisco: Akiko’s.

On their days off, the chefs at Akiko’s make it a point to try various restaurants to observe and learn in order to get a better idea of what their potential patrons like and don’t like. Which is exactly why we like to play all kinds of games!

This is no different for mobile and a lot of my work involves playing other games which include mobile, console, and PC – all to understand the needs and wants of the players or potential players out there – and specifically to understand the type of player known as “whales.”

One of the elements that make free-to-play unique is that we give the games away for free and then are dependent on players enjoying the game and any new content enough to spend within that game. The majority of the revenue comes from an even smaller group (the “whales”). So what is a whale and why do they spend thousands of dollars in the games they love?

As a mobile game maker, I definitely had some ideas about the “why,” but it wasn’t until I became a whale myself that I started to understand the mentality. I had spent thousands of dollars on another company’s mobile game and in doing so I learned a lot about what players are doing in my game. In today’s blog post I hope to share my top three findings of being a whale in mobile games and how someone can incorporate this into their own design.

1) Whales never spend frivolously

Before I became a whale I was under the impression that whales simply just spend to alleviate their inconveniences. “Spend $9.99 to replenish your health instead of waiting ten minutes.” Sure, I spent in these areas but I often felt it wasn’t a good investment. I could put that $9.99 into getting something that will have a long-term impact to my game. Even after spending thousands of dollars I was still very careful about what it is I spent that money on. Don’t assume that if you put a $200 item in the game that whales will just grab it up for no reason; or that if you added a speedup in X, all whales will just gobble it up. Each purchase I made was calculated, and it had to make sense to the game. Give them something that’ll impact the game in the long term, like allowing them to research more than X slots, or changing the output of a resource by n%. Make the value of what they’re buying truly worthwhile and you’ll see them purchase again and again.

That brings us to my second point.

2) The true value ratio.

Part of being a whale allowed me to understand that players often associate a true value to what they’re spending in the game. The concept is fairly simple, if a new item came out that cost $100 but was “worth” $200, I’ll gladly buy it because I think I’m getting a good deal. Spenders have all created this association in game and the reward or ROI from what’s being purchased is very clear. A great example of this occurrence happened by accident in one of our games. One of our limited-edition packages was set to only allow players to purchase one at a time. However, there was an engineering bug that allowed players to buy multiple packages and when players found out purchases went up by 1000%. Some even bought a hundred packs in fear that we would soon discover the bug and turn it off. There was no set back to the game for players purchasing that many packs, but the whales were driven to believe that they were getting such a great true value ratio that they were willing to keep purchasing.

3) Leave it to chance

When I was in the height of my addiction to one particular game, I was really drawn to the chance system. I would find myself continuing to take advantage of that gameplay feature with the mantra ”I know I’ll get the legendary in the next pack” constantly running through my head. The idea that what I was getting wasn’t guaranteed seemed to be counter intuitive to traditional game design, but this aspect of free-to-play design really works for players like me (whales). I was essentially “gambling” on what my reward was each time; and trust me, the one time I did get a legendary item I was so happy that I literally jumped up and high fived the guy next to me.

4) Whales are just like you and me

When we think of these “whales” we often imagine them as rich people with a ton of disposable income. Research has showed that “whales” are way more average than that. Basically – they can be anyone. There is not one defining characteristic or profile that allows us to specifically pre-determine who could be a whale or a specific demographic to target. We have had whales that are male, female, in the military, doctors, lawyers, mothers, students – basically all walks of life. What does that mean? Well it means we need to stay focused on building great games with great content for any and all players.

So – what do all these findings mean for game developers? Well, the first take-away I hope you get here is how important it is to get to know and understand what makes your players tick. That rule applies whether you are free-to-play or not, console, mobile, PC, RPG, racing – basically anything. Know your players. Play the games and understand how and why they do things, so you know that you are giving them and spending the resources on content that people will actually want.

The second key piece is to remember that players spend strategically. There is no success in throwing up expensive items and hoping people buy them – there has to be meaning in the content (which is why it is so important to know your players and know the game). Players aren’t looking to line your pockets, but to make their gaming experience better and they are thinking long-term about each move they make. That’s a good thing. Players are committing to your game. It’s your job to make sure you are equally committed to theirs.

Third and last, remember that there is no playbook on how to reach “whales.” No perfect demographic to target or type of player to look for. And, despite looking for those player patterns, it turns out that it really is all about fun. The quality of the game and gameplay experience is what will draw in players – and specifically “whales” – so my advice is to stay focused on making those great.（source：gamasutra）