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非付费玩家对游戏开发者有什么价值?

发布时间:2014-06-11 14:54:43 Tags:,,

作者:Balazs Juhasz

你的非付费玩家有价值吗?

如今超过80%的应用在使用免费商业模式,超过90%的应用收益来源于此。在这些应用中,仅有5%的玩家转化成付费用户。不论你喜欢与否,都要承认有95%的用户是免费食客。

这些免费用户有什么特征呢?首先,他们都在使用你的服务器和宽带容量,你得持续提供客服支持,却不时会得到他们在应用商店留下的一星评价,最令人痛苦的是:你可能得花与获取高消费用户一样的价钱来获取此类用户。

gamer(from freegameupdate)

gamer(from freegameupdate)

所以这些混蛋就是在吸你的血?有没有什么办法摆脱他们?或者就是防止他们下载你的应用?这正是营销的最高境界——仅在那些会给你带来利润者身上花钱。不幸的是,这一点我爱莫能助——但我可以告诉你为何你必须尊重这些非付费玩家,以及他们如何以多种(有时候是间接性的)方式让你盈利。

让我们从非付费用户琐碎的价值入手:他们可能助你用病毒传播方式说服好友下载应用。这可以为你节省大量资金:你只要将平均CPI乘以一名非付费用户带来的玩家数量就可以得出结论了。但这种相当高的总数并非实际收益,但你可以通过这种方式获得一些高消费用户,后者会向你掏钱。非传化玩家比付费玩家更容易被游戏内部的好处所激励,因为这可能是吸引创他们的唯一方法:让他们去赢取付费用户可购买到的相同或相当的益处,这样他们就会很乐于使用自己的社交关系为你获取新玩家。

免费用户的最大价值在于保持付费用户娱乐性——只要你的游戏具有玩家彼此的交互空间。想象一下你的城市突然缩水95%,物种急剧减少,大家可做的事情更少了会怎么样,这正是如果游戏中没有免费玩家所会发生的情况。

除此之外,付费用户还具有游戏内部优势(游戏邦注:他们装备更好,拥有更多资源——拥有他们付费可得到的一切好处),这令他们总体上比相同玩法经验的非付费竞争对手更强大,即便是在平衡最妥当的游戏中也不例外。这将产生一种更棒的结果(更高的积分榜单排名,更高的获胜率等)。这并不是说免费玩家就应该成为付费用户的练习沙袋(除非你创造的是一款付费获胜游戏),而是说付费用户总是拥有相对于免费玩家来说更多的益处。即便你只向玩家出售个性化道具,他们仍然还是需要那些非付费玩家来做个比较,这样方能让自己所购买的东西显得与众不同。

轻松打败对手可以让付费用户获得更好的游戏体验,更热爱你的游戏,也许还会比游戏没有非付费玩家时更乐于花钱。(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

Are your non-paying players valuable?

by Balazs Juhasz

Are your non-paying players valuable?

Nowadays over 80% apps are using the freemium business model and over 90% total app revenue is generated that way. In these apps, only about 5% of the players – and you are quite happy if you hit that rate – convert to become a paying user. Like it or not, about 95% percent of your users are just free riders.

What are the attributes of these free riders? First of all, they are using up your server and bandwidth capacity – actually almost all of it (we are talking about the 95+ percent of your users, remember), keep your customer support busy, occasionally leave one star ratings in the app store, and the most painful point: you probably spent the same amount of money acquiring them as you did on your biggest spenders.

So these bastards are really just sucking your blood? Is there any way to get rid them off? Or even better, can’t you just somehow prevent them from downloading your app? Well, that’s the holy grail of marketing – spending money only on those who will bring you profit. Unfortunately I can’t help you on that – but I can show you why you should still respect your non-paying users, and how they are making you money in several (sometimes indirect) ways.

The trivial monetization method for non-paying user is in-app ads, you might even tweak your app to show ads only to those who are not willing to make in-app purchases. But in app ads won’t pay your bills unless you fly as high as flappy bird did, for example. It’s not a coincidence that publishers are turning away from this business model. (Not mentioning that in game ads tend to annoy players what has a bad influence on the retention or even worse, your direct competitors might pop up in your own app.)

Let’s move to the not so trivial values of non-paying users: They might help you to go viral by having their friends download the app. This saves you a lot of money:  just take your average CPI and multiply with the number of players brought by a non-paying user.  This, occasionally rather high sum is not an actual revenue, rather “just” a lack of expense, but you can get some high spender whales that way and their spending is a real hard cash to you. The non converting players are easier to incentivize with in game benefits than the pay ones as this might be their only way to catch up: just let them earn the same or comparable benefits that a paid user can buy and they will happily use their social connections to get you new players.

The greatest value of the free riders is keeping the paid users entertained – in case your game let’s some space for player to player interaction. Just image your city suddenly shrinks by 95%: much less variety, much less thing to do, this is what would happen if you didn’t have your free users in the game.

Furthermore, in general, paid users have an in game advantage (they are better equipped, have more resources – have all the benefits they paid for) making them on average „stronger” than their non paying counterparts with the same amount of gameplay experience,  even in the most properly balanced games. This will produce a better result (higher leader board rank, have better win ratio, etc.). It’s not about that your free players should act as punching bag for your paid payers – (only if you made a really bad pay to win game), but that a paid user should always have benefits compared to being a non paying one. Even if you sell just personalizing items to your players, they still need the non paying ones to have someone to compare themselves to and feel themselves unique that they made that purchase.

Easy to beat opponents will provide paid users with a better gameplay experience making them feel better, love your game more and probably pay you more than they would without your non paying users.(source:gamasutra


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