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作为游戏平台的Facebook所具有的风险

发布时间:2015-01-21 11:01:32 Tags:,,,,

作者:Nick Gibson

韩国已经开始担心Facebook上的博彩游戏了,而最近他们所采取的解决方法,也就是关闭所有Facebook游戏导致开发商们遭遇了数百万美元的损失。

facebook(from develop-online)

facebook(from develop-online)

再一次地,Facebook向我们证实了这是政府监管部门的最大目标之一,但这也是考虑在此开发游戏的游戏公司所面临的众多陷阱之一。面向Facebook开发游戏的工作室还面临着哪些其它陷阱?这个平台到底有多开放且是否仍是可行的平台?

该平台具有稳定性;是发行并维护游戏的一个安全且持久的平台。但从你在该平台能够做的事来看,Facebook也仍然是最不稳定的一个平台。其政策总是会受到突如其来的改变的影响,虽然有能力的团队能够从技术上应对这种状况,但这却会对商业模式造成不利影响。

平台所有者总是会不断发展他们的平台,从理论上看这将同时造福于用户和公司,但在Facebook上却存在发展过程中所出现的赢家与输家。即在每次政策转变后,都会有些公司倒闭或离开。

那些依赖于用户发送推送信息的应用会突然发现他们的主要市场营销渠道大幅度缩小了。当Facebook引进单一的货币时,它便驱逐了那些支持全新且赚钱的微交易市场的公司。

从根本上看来Facebook是一个达尔文式的平台。玩家会出现快速的转变,并且数量也非常惊人。但平台改变的方式会将这种情况放大。

有些开发者曾提到Facebook的“税收”,这并不是指收入分享之类,而是处理Facebook的技术和平台政策的改变的应急成本。如果你不能预留出这比资金,你便有可能溺死于水中。

面对改变

最开放的平台正缓慢且有序地关上了门。最近的改变指令要求每一个新产品只能是关于登录,发送电子邮件与搜索朋友列表。如果你想要获得用户的位置,访问用户的状态,代表用户发表内容,了解用户的生日以及其它API行动,你便可能遭到审查。

一些忙碌的小型团队的命运将由全新游戏所决定,就像加州刑法中的“三振出局”规则一样。在遭到三次拒绝后,你便不能再次提交游戏,而到底还要等多长时间则还未具体说明。相比较之下,苹果那虽然会招开发者抱怨但却至少允许申述的审批过程看起来更加现代化。

如果一个平台的审批系统不能有效,持续且灵活运行,那么开发者便会选择其它平台。我们还不清楚Facebook的功能到底有多强大,但可以肯定的是这并不是我们可以轻松运行的对象。在许多其它游戏平台上,特别是主机,我们总是很难发行一款游戏。甚至连Gabe Newell也承认Steam的Greenlight失败了,它并不适合许多独立PC开发者。

作为一个先允许后限制新市场的开放平台,Facebook仍然备受瞩目。Coin只是Facebook先邀请第三方去创造新应用然后再限制他们行动的众多例子之一。它最新的API也将阻止成功的公司产品去获得用户数据流等信息。

除非是基于一些不受新规定限制的交易,否则像Flipboard和Hootsuite等基于用户的推送而收集或进行推荐的应用将从2016年4月开始被封锁,新应用也是如此。这对于那些尝试着在Facebook平台上发挥创造性的公司来说是一个非常严重的策略风险—-如果你无意识地与Facebook的未来产品展开竞争,你便会发现自己遭到了禁止。

所以这个难以预测且不断改变的平台是否能够带给游戏利益?Facebook已经见证了许多游戏公司的离去或转向其它更加稳定且发展更加迅速的手机市场。结果便是,Facebook的游戏收益逐渐趋于平衡并会开始下降。

Facebook仍然是一些有利可图的游戏公司的归属地,并且仍然能够帮你赚钱,但前提是你能在不可预测的改变发生时快速做出应对。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转功,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The perils of Facebook as a games platform

By Nick Gibson

When South Korea started worrying about gambling games on Facebook, their startling solution recently was to summarily switch off all Facebook games – a decision that has undoubtedly cost developers millions of dollars.

Once again, Facebook proved it is one of the biggest targets for government regulators, but this is just one of the pitfalls facing games companies considering developing on its still huge platform. What other tank traps await studios developing for Facebook? How open is it and is it still viable?

A platform implies stability; a safe, consistent place to launch and maintain games. But Facebook is still the most notoriously unstable of platforms, in terms of what you can do with its platform. Its policies have always been subject to sudden and enforced changes that aren’t too difficult for competent teams to navigate technically, but whose impact on commercial models can be severe.

Platform holders naturally seek to continually evolve their platforms, which theoretically should benefit users and companies alike, but on Facebook there are evolutionary winners and losers. After each major policy shift, companies have died or left.

Apps that relied on being able to send free recruitment posts into everyone’s feeds suddenly found their main marketing channel had been drastically reduced. When Facebook introduced its single currency, it ejected the payment and offers companies that had underpinned a new and lucrative microtransactions market.

Facebook is a very Darwinian platform in general. Players can churn swiftly and in huge numbers. But the way the platform changes amplifies this considerably.

Some developers describe a Facebook “tax”, referring not to the revenue share, but a cost contingency (budgeted as high as 25 per cent for some) to handle changes to Facebook’s technology and platform policies. Fail to put that aside and you could be dead in the water.

Face of change

What was the most open of platforms has slowly but steadily been closed down. Recent changes mandate approvals for every new product that does more than just log you in, scrape email and search friend lists. If you want to get a user’s location, access a user’s status, publish on behalf of the user, know a user’s birthday and other API actions, you need to be vetted.

A small and presumably busy team now makes life/death decisions on new games, with a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule reminiscent of Californian criminal law. After the third rejection, you cannot submit again until a time-out of unspecified length. This makes Apple, whose sometimes arbitrary approval process makes developers complain but at least allows appeals, look positively modern.

If a platform’s approvals system doesn’t work smoothly, consistently but flexibly, developers will go elsewhere. It remains to be seen how well Facebook’s functions but they are certainly not easy to run. On many other games platforms, particularly consoles, it is surprisingly hard to get a game released. Even Gabe Newell admits that Steam’s Greenlight is broken and not fit for purpose for many indie PC developers.

Facebook is also notable for the strategic use of its open platform to allow and then restrict new markets. Coins is just one example of how Facebook has repeatedly invited third parties to innovate new apps before later banning their activity. Its latest API will block a range of successful companies’ products from the formerly permissible activity of reading users’ streams.

Unless some kind of grandfather deal is done, already live apps like Flipboard and Hootsuite that collect or make recommendations based on users’ feeds will be blocked from April 2016, and new apps are blocked altogether. This is a serious strategic risk for companies trying to innovate on the Facebook platform – you could find yourself banned or curtailed if you’ve unwittingly been competing with Facebook’s future products.

So is this unpredictable and constantly changing platform still commercially viable for games? Granted, Facebook has seen a steady exodus of games companies either leaving or turning to the less choppy and faster growing mobile market. As a result, Facebook’s games revenues plateaued and then started to fall.

Facebook is still home to some of the most profitable games companies, and it can still make you money, but you better be ready to move fast when unpredictable changes inevitably happen.(source:develop-online)

 


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