作者：Ulyana Chernyak Xsolla

F2P游戏用户如此独特的原因之一就是每个用户在游戏中投入的金钱并不相同。在F2P游戏中，玩家会根据自己认为合适的情况在游戏中投入金钱：因此，有些用户可能会在游戏中投入大量金钱，而其他用户却可能一文不花。

多数开发者欢迎这种情况 ，但无论如何他们都肯定更希望所有用户都在游戏中花钱。Xsolla将在本文探讨付费与非付费玩家之间的区别，以及开发者如何取得这两者之间的平衡。

microtransaction(from p4rgaming)

玩家——他们是谁？

在关注付费玩家数量之前，开发者应该先关注获取用户。这是个不可绕过的问题，因为每个开发者对于何谓“活跃”用户都有自己的看法。但多数调查关注的是两个代表游戏用户的群体，一是日活跃用户（DAU），二是月活跃用户（MAU）。MAU是了解用户基础究竟有多庞大的最佳概念，而DAU也很重要，因为它是游戏如何调整以便增加MAU的最佳方法。

如今拥有最高MAU的游戏应用当属King旗下的《Candy Crush Saga》以及Zynga游戏《FarmVille 2》。这两者都是拥有强大活跃用户群的成功社交游戏。这些游戏持续活跃了数年，已经成为史上最成功的电子游戏范例。虽然DAU可以体现你的游戏受欢迎与不受欢迎的变化，但却并不能显示你的游戏有多受欢迎。行业中有许多连续1周持有高DAU，但之后人气急剧下滑的游戏。关键在于开发一款让用户想持续体验的产品。创造高MAU的一个关键就在于关注用户数量。当F2P开发者拥有健康的玩家社区时，他们就可以关注如何增加付费玩家数量，并同时保持用户满意度。

盈利模式

“付费取胜”是F2P市场备受诟病的情况之一。这一词通常用于那些遵循“免费体验”模式，但却让非付费玩家处于严重劣势的游戏。许多用户并不喜欢此类游戏，这些游戏通常也会因为用户不满意而遭遇失败。虽然这看似一个给予付费玩家大量优势的明智想法，但却并不会让消费者开心。像《坦克世界》这种游戏就很重视不要创造一种“付费取胜”的氛围，其主要重心是给予玩家动力而非优势。这些游戏多数很成功，因为产品会保持消费者选择的开放性。当游戏自我标榜为“免费体验”时，用户就会想知道游戏到哪一点可让玩家无需投入但却仍然享受到乐趣。当用户不觉得自己是被迫执行微交易时，他们就会投入更多，因为他们自己想花钱。

支付方式

支付方式也发挥了重要作用，因为用户只有在他们办得到的情况下才可能在游戏中花钱。如果游戏并不提供特定支付方式，那就可能有大量付费用户因为无法支付而成为非付费玩家。这会成为一个大问题，因为它并不允许资金流通：无论F2P游戏是否拥有庞大的用户群体。让我们看看开发者如何利用这一情况。

开发商A面向全球发布了新款F2P游戏。该游戏取得了中度的成功，但开发者在寻找扩大游戏用户群体的新方法。首先，他们决定植入移动支付方式：这似乎极大增加了DAU。为上，开发商A决定关注于提供更多支付方式和解决方案，这最终提升了整体MAU。

但是，开发商A还决定增加游戏的微交易，给予付费玩家超越非付费玩家的优势。他们认为这可能会增加付费玩家数据，但却发现DAU急剧下降。为此，开发者们决定修改游戏机制，为提供并不给予玩法优势的微交易选择。这种调整会增加DAU和MAU，开发商A继续进一步平衡游戏体验。除此之外，对于游戏的消极批评也开始明显下降。通过这些发现，开发商A成功解决这种平衡付费与非付费玩家数量的问题。

总体来看，所有这些要点都显示了付费与非付费玩家之间的区别，以及开发商如何平衡游戏社区。开发者应该关注创造大量的MAU，以便获得那些在产品中投入的用户。为获得这些用户，F2P游戏不可追随“付费取胜”战略 ，而要关注并不会给予玩家超越他人的优势的动力。为了平衡这一点，开发者可以查看DAU数据找到游戏在哪个时间人气上升，这有助于他们找到受欢迎的变化方向。

开发者还应该通过提供一系列支付方式，确保玩家有机会在游戏中花钱。如果游戏并不支持自己的付费方式，用户就不会在其中花钱，无论游戏提供了什么激励因素。玩家通常会在提供了适合自身的选项的游戏中花钱，而不会在支付选项不足，缺乏即时令人兴奋的动力，或者只是因为他们不想花钱的游戏中消费。虽然每款游戏中付费与非付费玩家数量会波动变化，这些问题应该有助于开发者创造平衡的社区。（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）

F2P Games: The Difference Between Paying and Non-Paying Players

by Ulyana Chernyak Xsolla

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.

One of things that makes the F2P consumer base unique is that each consumer invests different amount of money into the game. In F2P games, players invest as much money as they seem fit: Therefore, some consumers may invest a lot of money into a game while other may invest nothing. Most developers welcome this, but regardless they would obviously prefer if all consumers invested into their game. Xsolla takes a look at the difference between paying and non paying players, and how developers can strike a balance between these two.

Players – Who Are They?

Before focusing on having a high amount of paying players developers need to simply focus on obtaining an audience.This information is hard to come by because each developer has a different opinion over what an “active” user is. Most studies however focus on two groups that represent a video game’s audience. These groups are called Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU).

MAUs are consider to be the best way to understand how big your user base is. DAUs are also important, but they are best used to figure out how a game could possibly change in order to increase your MAUs.

Game apps with the highest MAU’s are developer King’s Candy Crush Saga and developer Zynga’s Farmville 2. These are two very successful social games that have strong active userbases. These games remain active for years, and have become some of the most successful video games in history. While DAUs can represent a popular or unpopular change in your game, it never fully shows how popular your game is. They’re many games that have had a high DAU for 1 week, but dramatically fall in popularity soon after. The key is developing a product that consumers want to play constantly. Paying attention to your consumers is a key role in creating a high MAU. OnceF2P developers have a healthy community, they can proceed focus on how to raise the amount of paying players while still keeping customer satisfaction.

Monetization Model

“Pay to Win” is one of the criticism that the F2P market constantly receives. This phrase typically refers to a game that follows a “free to play” model, but gives severe disadvantages to players who don’t pay. Many consumer don’t like games that do this, and these games usually end up becoming failures due to consumer dissatisfaction. While it may seem like a smart idea to give a lot of advantages to paying players, it doesn’t make consumers happy. Games like World of Tankfocused on not creating a “Pay to Win” atmosphere with their main focus being to give incentives rather then advantages. These games have mostly been successful because the product keeps the consumer’s choice open. When a game advertises itself as being “Free to Play” consumers want to know that at any point they could not invest in the product and still have fun. When the consumer doesn’t feel forced to buy microtransaction, they will invest in them more because they want to.

Payment Methods

Payment methods also play a key role into this because consumers will only invest money in the product if they can. If certain payment methods are not offered, there will be a lot less paying consumers simply because they can’t pay with their method of choice. This can become a major issue because it simply doesn’t allow money to get through: Regardless if the F2P Game has a large audience or not. Lets take a look at how a developer can use this info to their advantage.

Developer A has released their new F2P game worldwide. Their game has been moderately successful, but the developers are looking for new ways to enlarge the game’s audience. Firstly, they decided to include mobile payment methods: Which seemed to drastically raise the DAUs.  In response, Developer A decided to focus on offering more payment methods and solutions, which ended up raising their MAUs.

However, Developer A also decided to add in game micro-transaction that gave players advantages over non paying players. While they thought this would raise the amount of paying players it ended up drastically dropping their DAUs. In response, the developers decided to revamp the game’s mechanics and offered micro transaction that didn’t give gameplay advantages. These changes raised the DAUs and MAUs, and Developer A went on to further balance the experience. In addition, negative criticism for the game started to lower drastically. By looking at these points, Developer A was able to successfully address the issues the that come with balancing the amount of paying and non paying players.

In summary, all of these points show the difference between paying and non paying players and how developers can balance their community. Developers need to focus on creating a high amount of MAUs in order to have audience that can invest in their product. To get that audience,  the F2P games need to not follow the “Pay to Win” strategy, and instead focus on offering incentives that don’t give certain players an advantage over others. In order to help balance this, developers can look at DAU data to figure out when their game spiked in popularity; which can help them find popular changes.

Developers also need to make sure that players have the chance to invest money into the game by offering a variety of payment methods. Consumers will not invest money into F2P games if their payment method isn’t supported, regardless of the incentives offers. Players will typically invest money into F2P games when it is of their choice and available to them. Players will not invest money into  a game if the game has a lack of payment options, lack of immediately exciting incentives, or simply because they choose not to. While the amount of paying and non paying players fluctuates between each game, these issues should help developers have a balance community.（source：gamasutra）