作者：Tadhg Kelly

以下是所有想成为游戏公司的投资者所具有的一个问题：

假设你面对着两家工作室。工作室A拥有一个创造大型游戏的策略。他们计划获得你的投资并用其创造出最棒的游戏，然后获得成功。工作室B拥有的是不同的理念。他们计划创造一些较小的游戏，并在游戏间创造一个平台和生态系统，观察哪些更成功。然后通过进一步推动而获取最终的成功。

工作室A的模式是对于单一属性的深入赌注。而工作室B的模式是跨越市场的一个广泛的赌注。你会选择哪一种模式呢？或者让我以另一种方式来问这个问题：

假设你所面对的是两家技术初创公司。初创公司A拥有一个创造一件大型产品的策略。它计划获得你的投资并用其创造出最棒的产品，然后获得成功。初创公司B拥有一个不同的理念。它计划创造许多小型产品，并在它们之间创造一个平台和生态系统，观察哪个更成功。然后通过进一步推动而获得最终的成功。

怎样才是更明智的投资选择？初创公司A拥有初创公司B不具有的专注点。初创公司A也许能够在一天中运行多个产品，但是对他们来说尽早专注于最有潜能的产品才是关键。相反地，初创公司B选择本末倒置。如果他们创造出一系列糟糕的产品，那么所有产品都会遭遇失败。

这很重要。对于大多数技术投资者来说第二个问题很明显。他们的回答通常都是A。然而如果对象是致力于游戏的初创公司时，投资者可能会更倾向于B。但这却是大错特错的。

我将通过本文对此作出解释。

游戏并不是“内容”

我并不是说游戏不是一种风险投资。它们当然是。它们甚至比大多数技术投资更有风险，因为它们更多地依赖于创造性和娱乐，这是史上两大难以预测的元素。当然了，你也需要其它安心保障，即解释游戏每部分的开发的原型或计划。或者你了解团队中存在一些能够成就某些事业的优秀人才。

另一方面，技术投资社区（我指的是Valley，即更加传统的金融家及其复制者）总是倾向于将游戏等同于内容。他们认为游戏就像书籍，电影和音乐。内容是具有有效期的。内容很少具有深入价值。现在的内容也比过去更加自由。内容是不可能创造Peter Thiel（游戏邦注：1996年创办了Thiel资产管理公司Thiel Capital Management，并在2002年更名为Clarium Capital Management）的垄断平台的一种终端产品。

我想说的是这一形象是错误的设定。当然了，游戏是娱乐产品，但它们同时也是平台，通常情况下是垄断平台。如今在线/离线，零售/服务，单人/多人之间的界线越来越模糊。在过去几年里人们一直尝试着将内容式的融资带进游戏中，但却都未获得成功。游戏需要的是与内容模式不同的开发。它们通常更像是技术产品。每一个真挚的游戏业务都不只是创造一款游戏然后像电影那样解散团队。他们有可能创造同一款游戏的1个，2个，5个，10个，20个甚至100个版本。

当然了，并非所有游戏开发者都想这么做。例如许多独立开发者就会想着重新开始并像艺术家那样创造一些全新的内容。然而基于创造可重复游戏的有趣引擎的游戏业务将会一直存在着。就像微软创造Windows或Oracle那样。你并不应该根据发行模式去投资他们，而是应该将自己当成初创企业做出选择。

初创公司和工作室

任何平台业务的模式都是创造一个优秀的产品，吸引更多用户，创造用户忠诚度然后从中找到发展与获取收益的策略。这不仅是Uber，AirBnB，Tinder，Facebook，Skype，Twitter，Snapchat以及谷歌等公司所遵循的模式，同时也是《我的世界》，《星战前夜》，《行尸走肉》，《莫希怪兽》，《英雄联盟》，《部落战争》，《足球经理》，《疯狂橄榄球》，《愤怒的小鸟》，《万智牌》，《战争游戏》等游戏所遵循的模式。

Minecraft(from baidu)

实际上这也是大多数工作室（不管是独立工作室还是大型公司的组成部分）获取成功所遵循的方式。创造一款游戏与创造一件产品一样复杂。对于产品来说，机制通常是直接的，问题也将变成是使用他们的体验是否正确。在游戏中同时也存在机制是否有趣的附加方面，即需要开发者通过多次试验进行识别。专注力很重要。你不能分心。

这也是游戏工作室年复一年地致力于同一款游戏，将其卖给同样的用户，发展用户并赚取数十亿美元然后继续创造游戏的原因。就像Facebook一只致力于将Facebook变得更好，Mojang一直致力于完善《我的世界》，听取社区的反馈，添加更多功能并修改漏洞。Bungie始终致力于创造更棒的《Destiny》，CCP一直完善《星战前夜》等等。

当然了，也有些公司会在之后创造一些授权游戏，就像发行商那样（如动视，任天堂或Glu）。同样地也有一些公司迫于环境的压力希望赶在别人之前开拓一片领域（如Zynga，BigPoint）。在亚洲市场，像腾讯等公司便垄断了市场，并且玩家对其质量的期待并不高。然而这并不意味着这种方式适合当前任何初创工作室。

微软并不是从第一天就开始致力于一些不同的软件和OS应用，苹果也不是一开始就在创造计算机，平板电脑，手机，音乐播放器和电视。对于游戏而言你会认为这种选择是不言而喻的，但是出于一些原因，投资者可能不能马上领悟过来，所以他们选择了B。

工作室B发生了什么

对于工作室B的情况我们拥有首席发言权。因为我们见证了一些基于这一模式且拥有足够资金的公司遭遇了失败。他们会使用创新技术影响自己所有的游戏并努力成为自己认为存在着的领域的领导者。他们会说“我们不只是在创造游戏，我们也在改变游戏”，这是他们的宏伟目标。但在任何情况下，真正的结果是他们变成了太空架构师。

他们的核心技术通常都是创造事前产品，所以其要求也是模糊的。这是一种过渡设计，所以将会变成一种局限因素从而抑制产品（游戏）中的创造性。而小型独立开发者可以快速改变产品以回应玩家的反馈，而无法摆脱架构的工作室B通常都会花过多时间去解释失败的原因。所以当某一环节出错时他们往往不能轻松地改变方向。他们的核心技术通常都被当成真正的需求。

所以工作室B的游戏往往都不如人们所期待的那般精益，通常需要花较长时间才能到达基本的游戏状态或需要经过多次迭代才能发现游戏的乐趣。这也是它们糟糕的原因。此外这也解释了为何工作室B会成为复制品的制造者。因为意识到自己要花很长时间去创造产品或看到有意义的改变，他们通常都选择复制其它现有的内容。这也意味着他们将创造一些劣质的复制品从而难以获得忠实的粉丝。这是一个不可避免的循环。

比起技术世界，获取忠实用户在游戏世界更加迫切。用户是每个工作室所创造的关键资产，而非技术。如果没有用户也就没有消费者，没有免费市场营销渠道，没有收益，自然也就没有下一次的发行了。如果未意识到这一点，你将会浪费许多钱并最终导致破产。

所有市场中的玩家都期待他们投入时间去玩的游戏足够优秀。不管是休闲游戏还是硬核游戏，独立游戏还是博彩游戏都是一样的。不同部分的定义轴心是不同的，但原则却是相同的。没有人会喜欢拐弯抹角的无聊游戏。如果你希望玩家能够与朋友聊你的游戏，它就不能只是复制其它游戏的一些内容。

此外，一旦开始制作某件产品，我们就更难去消灭它。在初创世界中技术投资者已经了解了这一事实。一旦初创公司扩展到一定程度，它一定会涉及其它产品领域（就像谷歌涉及地图，文件，邮件等等领域）。他们将聘用更多员工，租用办公室，运营成本和管理成本都会增加。但这种情况都是会发生在适当的时候，通常都不是公司刚诞生的时候，否则初创公司将冒险致力于一些永远都不可能成功的产品中。但是初创公司却总是承诺着他们终有一天会获得成功。

对于游戏工作室来说也是如此。一旦你已经致力于多款游戏，你便很难放手。每个团队都致力于他们认为可能成功的游戏，并且认为只有坚持到最后才能看到结果。所以在这里问题就变成每一款游戏是否需要额外的投资去寻找出入，不管是发挥其潜能，还是害怕回答变得尖锐的问题。所以工作室B最终将与任何糟糕的软件公司一样拥有各自失败的项目但却难以做出删除它们的决定。

换句话说，工作室B就像是一个善意的钱坑。

真正的价值

我发现许多投资者看到《愤怒的小鸟》只花费14万美元的成本以及Zynga在2个月内便创造出了《FarmVille》第一个版本这样的故事时非常兴奋，并且他们选择与那些将较短的时间和成本创造出游戏当成首要选择的CEO合作。他们通常会使用一些容易实现的目标作为类比，并将容易获胜和分析作为获取成功的方式。但这往往只会造成悲剧。

创造游戏并不是淘沙取金。我知道有些工作室采取了这一做法并获得了成功，但大多情况都不是如此。相反地，创造游戏更像是创造一种服务。它需要投入注意力和努力。有时候一些过分追求自我提升的工作室会为此投入1亿美元但却一无所获。但这并不是一个常见的故事。大多数情况下有能力的工作室都具有获得成功的条件（游戏邦注：注意力，足够的预算和时间），所以他们总是能够不断创造出更棒的作品。

所以众多投资者们，你们是否找到了问题的答案？下次当有人带着一个广泛的策略并承诺能够轻松摘取果实时，你一定要再三考虑是否对其作出投资。想想他们是否真的拥有游戏计划并面向真正的用户开始创造游戏？他们的策略是否具有核心技术支持？他们是否为获得无数一开始未购买游戏安装的用户制定一份实际的计划？他们是否正在创造一些具有深度的内容？

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

Investing In Games: Broad Or Deep?

Posted Dec 7, 2014 by Tadhg Kelly

Here’s a question for all you would-be investors in game companies:

Suppose two studios approach you. Studio A has a strategy centered around making a big play on one game. It plans to take your investment and use it to make that game as best it can and find success. Studio B has a different idea. It plans to make many small games, build a platform and ecosystem between them and see which works. Then to accelerate what works to success.

Studio A’s model is a deep bet on a single property. Studio B’s model is a broad bet across the market. Which should you choose? Let me ask the question another way:

Suppose two technology startups approach you. Startup A has a strategy centered around making a big play on one product. It plans to take your investment and use it to make that product as best it can and find success. Startup B has a different idea. It plans to make many small products, build a platform and ecosystem between them and see which works. Then to accelerate what works to success.

Which is the smarter investment? You invest in Startup A because it has focus whereas Startup B does not. Startup A may well scale into operating multiple products one day, but early focus on a killer product is key. Startup B, on the other hand, is putting the cart before the horse. It will make a dozen crappy products, all of which will fail.

Here’s the thing. The second question is obvious for most tech investors. They’ll always answer A. And yet (in my experience at least) when it comes to startups working in gaming, investor types tend to prefer answer B. But they are absolutely dead wrong.

I’ve written this article to explain why.

Games Are Not “Content”

I’m not saying that games aren’t risky investments. Of course they are. They’re probably riskier than most tech investments because they rely more on the virtues of creativity and entertainment, two factors that are historically difficult to predict. Of course you might need that extra level of reassurance, that prototype or plan that explains how the game is to be developed in parts rather than all at once. Or that assurance that you have some great talent on the team who will bring the thing home. I get that.

What I am saying, on the other hand, is that tech investment communities (by which I mean the Valley, more traditional financiers and their various clones) harbor a mental image about games that tends to equate them to content. They see games on the same shelves as books, movies and music, and draw a line. Content expires. Content rarely has deep value. Content is often freer than it used to be. Content is an end-product with no opportunity to build one of Peter Thiel’s monopolistic platforms.

And what I’m saying is that that image is wrong. Of course games are entertainment but they are also platforms, often monopolistic platforms. Increasingly so as the lines between online/offline, retail/service, single/multiplayer continue to blur. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to bring content-style financing to games but it has never worked. Games require a kind of development that isn’t the same as the content model. They’re usually much more like technology products. Every serious games business is not trying to build a game and then disband (like a movie). It’s there to build 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 or 100 versions of the same game. Ad infinitum.

Granted that isn’t the ambition of every game developer. Many indies, for example, relish starting over and always build new things in the manner of artists. However scalable games businesses are all built on the idea of making re-playable fun engines that will perpetuate. Just like Microsoft does with Windows or Oracle does. Far from investing in them along the publishing model, you should be investing in them as you would startups.

Startups and Studios

In any platform business the model is to build a great product, attract great users, drive great loyalty and then figure out a growth and revenue strategy from that. That’s Uber, AirBnB, Tinder, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Snapchat and Google. But that’s also Minecraft, EVE Online, The Walking Dead, Moshi Monsters, League of Legends, Clash of Clans, Football Manager, Madden, Angry Birds, Magic: The Gathering, Game of War and many more.

Actually it’s the general path to success for most studios – whether independent or as part of a larger company. Making a game is just as hard as making a product. With products the mechanics (what an app is supposed to do) are generally straight forward and the question becomes about whether the experience of using them is right. In games there’s also the added dimension of whether the mechanics are fun, which can take a lot of experimentation to figure out. Focus is the key. And distraction from focus is bad.

This is why studios generally work on the same game year in, year out, selling to the same customers, growing their audience and raking in billions of dollars doing it. Just like Facebook keeps working on making Facebook better, Mojang keeps working on making Minecraft better, listening to its community, adding features and fixing bugs. Bungie keeps working on making Destiny better CCP keeps working on making EVE Online better. And so on.

Granted some companies later go on to develop several franchises as publishers (like Activision, Nintendo or Glu, say). Similarly some are blessed by circumstance to make a big grab across a number of areas before it becomes clogged or expensive (Zynga, BigPoint). And in the Asian market some operators like Tencent have such a monopoly lock and a low quality expectation from players that being broad works. However that doesn’t mean it’ll work for any startup studio today. Far from it.

Microsoft didn’t start day one by committing to a dozen different software and OS applications any more than Apple started by making a computer, tablet, phone, music player and television streamer all at once. You would think that would be self-evident for games too, yet for some reason investors don’t get it. They choose B.

What Happens To Studio B

I’ve had a front row seat on the Studio B situation on more than one occasion. I’ve seen several well-funded companies built on this model expire. Tragically so, indeed, because the people involved were great. But still they had the wrong model. Here’s why they fail:

Studio Bs tend to spend a lot of money on back-end technology and tools for products that they intend to work on one day. They tend to have a meta-pitch, like an innovative technology that they plan to leverage across all of their games and become the leaders in a space they imagine will exist. They say “we’re not just making a game, we’re changing gaming”, which is a noble goal. But in almost every case what happens is they become architecture astronauts.

Their core technology, y’see, is generally built pre-product and so its requirements are fuzzy. It’s over-engineered, and in turn becomes a constraint preventing innovation on the products (the games). Whereas a small indie can chop and change their product quickly in response to player feedback, an architecture-obsessed Studio B often ends up spending an inordinate amount of time explaining why things can’t be done without breaking everything. So if things are going wrong they are unable to change course without massive pain. Sometimes not at all. And their core tech eventually needs to be pivoted anyway as actual requirements eventually intrude.

So Studio B’s games are never as lean as they appear to be, always under-specced and take way too long to get to a basic playable state or meaningfully iterate to find their fun. And this is why they suck. Furthermore this is why Studio B’s typically become clone-makers. Realizing that it’s taking too long to make products or see meaningful change in them, they almost always end up rationalizing that what they need to do is carbon-copy something else. And that means they make shitty clones with zero prospect of gaining loyal fans. It’s a vicious yet inevitable circle.

Even more than in the tech world, in the games world acquiring and inspiring loyal fans is essential. The audience is the key asset that every studio builds, not the technology. No audience, no customers, no free marketing channel, no revenue, no next release and next release and next release. Not realizing that is how you spend a lot of money and then go out of business.

Players in all markets expect the games they invest their time into to not be half-assed. Whether casual or core, indie or casino, it’s the same. The axes that define “assed” vary from sector to sector but the principle is the same. Nobody likes a boring mealy-mouthed game. If you want your players to talk to their friends about the great game they’re playing, for example, it can’t just be a rip-off of something else.

Furthermore it’s much harder to kill a product once it’s underway than it is to greenlight it in the first place. Tech investors already know this to be true in the world of startups. Once a startup scales to a certain level it will get into other product areas (like Google with maps, docs, mail and so on). People will be hired, offices rented, operating costs inflate and management too. But that has to happen at the right time, generally not at the beginning of a company’s life, otherwise the startup risks being half-committed to a bunch of products that are never likely to work well. But said startups always promise that they will one day.

The exact same thing is true for games studios. Once you’ve got multiple games on the go it’s difficult to can any one of them. Every team working on every game believes that their’s is The One, and will rationalize that until the end of time. The question becomes whether each game needs some extra investment to find its way, whether each is only half way to its potential, and the fear of failing at answering that question only intensifies. So Studio Bs end up like any bad software company juggling a variety of failing projects and never deciding to kill any of them.

Studio B, in other words, is a well-intentioned money pit.

The Real Value

I’ve seen plenty of investors get very excited by that story that Angry Birds only cost $140k to make and that Zynga built the first version of FarmVille in two months, and worked with several CEOs who come to believe that solving how to make games for half that cost in 10% of the time is their number one priority. They often use the analogy of low-hanging fruit, of easy wins and analytics as a way to success. They tell that story so much that they eventually become believers, but it leads to a tragic end.

Making games isn’t panning for gold. I know there are a couple of examples of studios that did sort of do it that way and found success, but it far more commonly fails. Instead making games is like building a service. It takes focus and diligence. I also know that sometimes that has resulted in over-bloated studios on ego trips that end up spending $100m and going nowhere. But that story is not the norm. Most of the time when talented studios are given the right conditions for success (focus, enough budget, time) they go on to make great things.

So, wonderful investor types, do you now understand? The next time someone comes to you with a proposal that promises a broad strategy and lots of low hanging fruit, pause and think. Do they have a game plan that starts with a real audience? Is whatever core tech underpinning their strategy real? Do they have a tangible plan for getting their first million users that doesn’t start with buying a lot of installs? Are they making something deep?

If no, pass. Invest in Studio A instead.(source:techcrunch)