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独立开发者阐述转向F2P策略的原因

发布时间:2014-03-20 13:56:35 Tags:,,,,

作者:Alistair Doulin

我们过去数月都在开发《Battle Group》的续作,命名为《Battle Group 2》。该游戏开发过程顺利,团队也打算在今年的GDC Play大会上公之于众。除了新颖的视觉效果,更深度的卫星攻击玩法,以及重制的渲染系统外,我们还决定让游戏采用免费模式(F2P)。本文主要阐述我们为何、如何以及何时做出了这个决定。

免费模式,还是付费模式?

免费模式在过去几年人气有增无减。当《Battle Group 1》发布于2011年末,当时多数游戏采用付费模式。在过去3年中,这一形势发生逆转,付费游戏变成了小众游戏,开发者似乎唯有大打价格战才能角逐市场。

但许多人对这种新模式心存不快的原因在于它并非完全免费。它只是免费下载和体验,但如果你进入游戏了,不然就等待一段时间再执行操作,不然就付费购买游戏中的“捷径”。更糟糕的是,这似乎成了包括《Candy Crush Saga》和《Clash of Clans》等许多游戏成功的模板。以下是6款App Store中含有相似玩法和F2P机制的游戏截图。

games' screenshot(from altdevblogaday)

games’ screenshot(from altdevblogaday)

那么我们为何要选择免费模式呢?主要原因在于《Battle Group 1》(以下简单称BG1)免费版本的成功。它的下载量比付费版本多了100倍左右。问题是BG1只允许玩家免费体验头几个关卡,而《Battle Group 2》则允许玩家一路免费通关玩到结束,无需掏出一文钱。对许多玩家来说,付费玩游戏并不是一个好选择。我并不反对这类玩家的意见,只是认为他们忽略自己的技能水平在难度曲线之下时可能就需要通过刷任务才能完成这个事实。

另一方面就在于中年玩家有钱但却没时间。这类玩家(就像我一样)没有那么多时间刷任务,可能更情愿花几美元即时体验完整的游戏内容,而无需刷任务或等待延时机制。

不同的免费玩法风格

正如我在之前的文章所言,我们还开发了一款让自己超级兴奋的回合制太空游戏。我们将它暂时搁置一边,以便加快推出《Battle Group 2》,但是我们将BG2中所得到的教训运用于新款太空游戏。我们从BG2中收获的最大教训就是免费模式是一个极为包容的标签。我们有大量有所不同但却符合这一名称的形式。

1.付费体验或等待付费

*例如《Clash of Clans》或《Candy Crush Saga》

*你在玩这类游戏时会有一些选择。

1)等待人为的延迟机制

2)付费购买IAP以跳过延迟机制

3)向朋友求助完成任务或跳过延迟机制

2.付费体验或刷任务体验

*例如《英雄联盟》

*你可以在无需付费的情况下无限量体验游戏的大部分内容

*特定区域被锁定了,你有以下选择:

1)刷任务获得进入游戏所有环节的权限(所有游戏模式和所有角色)

2)付费购买IAP获得访问游戏所有环节的权限(所有游戏模式和所有角色)

这两种风格的关键区别在于你不花钱时体验游戏的方式。在前者中,你会被迫放下游戏并做其他事情。而后者则可让你持续体验游戏,你玩得越多,就可以接解更多完整的功能。愤世嫉俗的玩家可能会争论前者通常没有游戏深度,并因此停止玩游戏,确保不会玩完所有内容,或者发现重复玩法很无趣。

下一步

对我们来说,BG2就是一个试验。我们想看看标准的F2P玩法风格是否合适小型开发商,以及有趣的核心玩法是否能够让人们在无需被迫“用光时间”的情况下延长游戏体验并保持兴趣。我们听一些独立开发者朋友说过这一点非常困难,但我们还是决定自己放手一搏。

未来我们将把从BG2中所收获的经验运用于太空游戏。最重要的是我们的下一款太空游戏显然不会是通常意义上的免费游戏。我们计划将它推向更多平台,已经考虑让它采用免费,以便简化从一个平台转向另一平台的过程。我们很可能向每个平台收取一点费用,之后再让游戏完全免费,仅保留为玩家提供便利的付费选项。我们每一次承认游戏必须具有盈利性,同时保证核心循环的趣味性,以及零付费的核心体验时,就会感受到为BG2添加盈利机制的压力。

吸金机器

我听说许多人将标准的免费视为“吸金机器”。你向一端倒入金钱来购买用户,又从另一端掏出钱(通过盈利机制)。不幸的是,我认为这正是现阶段F2P游戏的一个残酷现实。重要的是,我们很难从这一领域看到获得成功的独立公司。如果没有高额的用户获取预算,并投入时间/金钱调整转化率,独立开发者就难以幸存。我们愿意冒险碰碰自己的运气 ,以过硬的玩法和战略合作伙伴关系来代取庞大的营销预算而获得关注。(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 Free To Play

Battle Group 2 LogoWe’ve spent the last few months working on a sequel to Battle Group, aptly named Battle Group 2. The game is coming along well and the team is excited to be showing it off at GDC Play this year. Other than the incredible new visuals, deeper gameplay with satellite strikes and reworked rendering system we’ve decided to make the game Free to Play. This post is about the why, how and when of this decision.

Free to Play, or Pay to Play?

Free to Play has been growing steadily in popularity for the past year or so. When Battle Group 1 was released (end of 2011) the majority of games were paid. In the last 3 years this has flipped so paid games are in the minority and it seems like the only way to compete is to join everyone at the race to the bottom.

The issue that many people have with this new style of game is that it’s not free to play at all. It’s free to download and begin to play, but once you get into the game you are either forced to wait for ever increasing periods of time between actions, or pay for the “convenience” of playing the game. What’s worse, is that there seems to be a cookie cutter formula to many of these games off the back of the success of games like Candy Crush and Clash of Clans. Below is a quick selection of six different games on the app store that have extremely similar gameplay and F2P monetization.

clone1 clone2 clone3 clone4 clone5 clone6

Little Timmy No Money

So why are we going free to play? The main reason is based on the success of the free version of Battle Group 1. It receives ~100 times more downloads than the paid version and has seen over a hundred thousand downloads across all platforms. The issue is that for BG1 we only allowed you to play the first few levels. With Battle Group 2, you will be able to play all the way through all levels, without paying a dollar. For a lot of players (like little Jimmy No Money) paying to play just isn’t an option. I have no issue with Jimmy playing the game, even the entire game if he can’t afford to pay. What he will miss is experiencing all the ships and he may need to grind a little if his skill level drops below the difficulty curve.

The flip side to this is the middle aged gamer that has plenty of money but little spare time. These players (like myself) have little time for grinding and would rather drop a few dollars to experience the full breadth of the game instantly without any grinding or waiting for delay mechanics.

Different Styles of Free to Play

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, we’re also working on a turn based space game that we are super excited about. We’ve put this on hold so we can quickly get Battle Group 2 out, however we’re taking the lessons we learn from BG2 and applying them to the new space game. The biggest lesson I’ve learned from BG2 is that Free to Play is an all encompassing label. Really, we have a number of different styles that all fit under this moniker:

Pay to Play or Wait to Play

These are games like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush

You usually have a few options when playing these games

Wait out the artificial delay mechanics

Pay with an IAP to skip delay mechanics

Ask friends for help to complete a task or skip delay mechanics

Pay to Play or Grind to Play

These are games like League of Legends

You can play an unlimited amount of most parts of the game without paying any money

Certain areas are locked off (such as ranked play) and you have these options:

Grind to get access to all parts of the game (all game modes and all characters)

Pay with IAP to gain access to all parts of the game (again, all game modes and all characters)

The core difference between these two styles is the way you experience the game when you’re not paying. In the former, you are forced to put the game down and do something else. For the latter, you can continue playing the game and the more you play, the faster you will access the full set of functionality. The cynical gamer will argue that the former often don’t have the depth of gameplay and therefore need you to stop playing to make sure you don’t burn through the content and/or find the repetitive gameplay boring.

What’s Next

For us, Battle Group 2 is an experiment. We want to see whether the standard fare F2P gameplay style is sustainable for a small developer and if having fun gameplay at the core allows us to let people play for extended periods of time without a forced “time out” to keep them interested. We’ve heard from indie friends that this is really difficult but we still want to take the plunge for ourselves.

Looking further ahead we’re going to take the lessons we learn from BG2 and apply them to the space game. The most important part is that our next space game is definitely NOT a free to play game in the usual sense. We are planning to hit as many platforms as possible (12 at last count) and we’ve been thinking about making it free just to simplify the transition from one platform to the other. It’s looking more likely that we will charge a small amount per platform and then make the game completely free with purchasing only for convenience. We feel the pressure in BG2 to add monetization in at every turn and we have conceded in places to make the game profitable, while keeping the core loop fun and the core experience accessible with zero payments.

Money machine

I’ve heard a number of people describe standard free to play games as a “money machine”. You pour money in at one end – to buy users – and get money out the other end (via monetization).

Unfortunately, I think this is the harsh reality of the Free to Play game at this stage. Importantly, it’s hard to name an independent company that has had success in this space. Without a huge budget to buy users and spend the time/money to tweak the conversion it’s difficult for us (indie’s) to survive. We’re willing to take the risk and try our luck, replacing large marketing budgets with solid gameplay and strategy partnerships to get eyeballs. Check back here in ~3 months to see how things turn out.(source:altdevblogaday


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