作者：Sponsored Article

精确的参数对于设计的重要性

不久前的市场调查以及来自设计团队的各种见解为我们提供了大量有关游戏设计的信息。现在，深度的数据追踪监视着玩家所采取的每一个步骤。如此设计师便能够掌握并回应任何改变了设计过程的看法以及游戏的市场营销方式。

以前，开发团队是不可能接触到游戏的市场营销，而现在一些充满远见的公司已经将市场营销带到他们的开发过程核心中。免费游戏模式的发展始终伴随着数据可用性以及当前市场营销所拥有的战略性作用，但是发行商与开发者们是否能够跟得上这种范式转移呢？

marketing(from gamesindustry)

先从了解你的数据开始

根据游戏发行商Craduga GmbH的市场营销副总裁Andrea Casalinga，市场营销部门掌管着有关游戏，用户获取，广告，与用户粘性相关的用户留存等所有活动。在Craduga中，数据科学始终排在游戏开发策略的前列，并会推动市场营销活动的发展。Casalinga说道：“不管是用户获取还是用户留存，我们的主要需求都是‘科学的’分析数据。商业智能在现在任何游戏中都扮演着主导角色。”

“每一款游戏都拥有无数追踪调用能够确保每一个改变都处于正确的方向上。这里的关键在于测试。就像在我们的部门中，我们会测试任何一个小小的变量的每一个小小的细节或者一个完全不同的方法。测试是寻找解决方法并作出调整的最佳方法。”

来自External Games，同时也是群组通讯和社区游戏应用公司Palringo的前CMO的Magnus Alm也表示赞同。他表示Palringo从一开始便是基于参数而运行，而最近他们一直在努力完善其分析工具。

Alm说道：“我们尝试着确保作为一家公司的我们能够了解用户的行为以及他们对于我们的产品，更新和整体用户体验的反应。产品拥有者需要深入研究各种参数，并基于事实而非假设去明确开发任务的先后顺序。我们的性能营销经理便会不断挖掘各种数据，并深入研究各种渠道以及游戏性能，如此我们才能更有效地完善我们所需要的市场营销方法。”

模糊的界限

团队间的整合与交流就像模糊的活动与宣传之间的界限一样。而用户获取与盈利就像一枚货币的两面一样，用户粘性和用户留存将推动这两种活动所创造的价值的发展。

手机游戏工作室We Play Dots的市场营销负责人Christian Calderon通过说明他们工作室要求对于游戏内部盈利与游戏外部市场营销提供完整的市场营销支持去解释这一点。“因为开发者经常与同一渠道的合作者一起致力于用户获取方面的盈利，他们的努力将在运行用户获取的群组中相辅相成并发挥最佳作用。”

Making Fun的首席执行官John Welch提到了在今天的免费经济环境中，我们需要基于动态的用户行为数据以及整个团队间的交流而持续对产品进行优化与完善。

Welch说道：“在这一过程中，跨团队交流是对于受数据驱动的优秀设计的反馈，我们也相信出色的业务是基于市场营销团队与产品团队之间有效的团队交流而建立起来的。我们还相信这是整个公司创造有趣且吸引人的产品的责任，并且这能够让世界各地的用户了解到这些产品。”

作为一种观察核心的市场营销

市场营销者所扮演的角色已经扩展向一个全新的领域，如游戏开发。因为现在的市场营销扮演着更加重要的角色，而在接收并理解了用户获取，用户留存于盈利等游戏数据后，对于市场营销者来说的下一步便是将这些观察整合到全新游戏的开发中。

Quest Complete Consulting的联合创始人Margeaux Sullivan便见证了市场营销的发展，即变成一个利用科学数据所提供的观察去呈现全新游戏的价值主张的更重要的数据驱动的角色。

Sullivan说道：“作为市场营销者，与开发者紧密合作去了解他们关于游戏的看法并讨论他们如何将自己的游戏与同类型其它游戏区分开来是非常重要的。同时保持与分析者的交流也非常重要，因为他们会提供给你有关元数据的背景与可视化内容，他们会测试一些理论并将整个团队带向基于事实的决策制定中，同时他们还主张更有效的数据理解而不是各种猜测。开发者将决定哪些游戏机制较吸引人，而分析者则会传达社区对此的看法。”

随着手机游戏产业进入一个饱和的免费市场，市场营销者不再扮演一个单一的角色，他们的手将伸向游戏中的每个环节。

deltaDNA的首席执行官Mark Robinson说道：“最近几年里我们看到市场营销者的角色已经遍及游戏开发的每个领域，即从用户获取，用户留存到盈利。这种扩展主要是受到详细数据的可用性的发展，数据科学家的出现以及市场营销者在理解并使用数据的核心角色的形成等方面的影响。”

“现在对于市场营销者来说最重要的是，他们能够使用丰富的数据和先进的工具去了解用户粘性，运行测试，创造详细的玩家细分，并推动巧妙的玩家互动。”

就像我们在deltaDNA所看到的那样，未来所有玩家数据将被整合到一个单一的环境中并创造出各种强大的工具帮助市场营销者在免费游戏中（游戏邦注：在这里盈利与亏损所需要的改善方法也是不同的）进行分析，测试与盈利。

当市场营销者随着手机游戏产业不断发展时，这些数据类型对于他们来说也会越来越重要。

（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）

How data has redefined the role of the game marketer

By Sponsored Article

And the importance of accurate metrics for better design

It wasn’t so long ago that game design was informed primarily by market research and the insight – credible or otherwise – of the design team. Now, that takes second place to the reams of live, in-depth data tracking that monitors every step players take. Being able to monitor and respond to real-time insight has transformed the design process, and with it the way games are marketed.

Previously, the marketing function sat outside the development team and worked with what it was given; now, forward-looking companies have brought marketing into the heart of the development process. The explosion of the F2P model has gone hand-in-hand with the availability of data and the strategic role that marketing now enjoys, but are publishers and developers up-to-speed with this paradigm shift?

Start by knowing your data

According to Andrea Casalinga, Vice President of Marketing at games distributor Craduga GmbH, the marketing department is in charge of all activities surrounding the game, user acquisition, advertising and retention relating to user engagement. In Cadruga, data science is front and center to game development strategy and drives marketing activity. “From UA to retention, the main need is to have ‘scientists’ analyzing numbers,” Casalinga said. “A role that is now mandatory in any game is Business Intelligence.”

“Every game has hundreds of thousands of tracking calls to make sure every change is in the right direction. Here, the key is testing. Within my department we test every small detail against a small variation or againsttaking a completely different approach. Testing is the best way of finding solutions and making improvements.”

Magnus Alm, Head of External Games and former CMO at group messenger and community gaming app company, Palringo, agrees. He said Palringo has been metrics-driven since its inception, but it has recently been working hard at refining its tools for analytics.

“We are trying to make sure that we, as a company, have a common understanding of the behavior of our users and how they react to our products, updates, and overall user experience,” Alm said. “The product owners are deeply engaged with the metrics, and make sure that the priority of tasks for development sprints are based on facts rather than assumptions. Our Performance Marketing Manager is also constantly digging down into the data, looking at both channels and game performance, so we can effectively refine our marketing approach as needed.”

Boundaries blur

Integration and communication between teams has developed as boundaries between activities blur and converge. Acquisition and monetization have become two sides of the same coin, with player engagement and retention driving the value derived from both activities.

Christian Calderon, Head of Marketing at mobile game studio We Play Dots, explains this by saying that his studio requires full-time marketing support on both in-game monetization and marketing outside the game. “Because a developer is often working with the same channel partners on the monetization side as they are on the user acquisition side, these two efforts work hand-in-hand and function best, for this studio, under the same group that is running user acquisition”.

John Welch, CEO of Making Fun, makes the point that today’s freemium economic environment requires continuous product improvement based on dynamic behavioral user data and cross-team communication.

“In this pursuit, cross-team communication is the feedback lubricant for superior data-driven design, and we believe that great businesses are built on healthy cross-team communication between marketing and product teams,” Welch said. “We also believe that it is the entire company’s responsibility to develop fun and engaging products, and to drive awareness for these products to millions of people all over the world, we are all delineated within that objective.”

Marketing as an insight hub

The role of the marketer has expanded into new and previously unchartered realms, such as game development. Because marketing is now taking a more central role; receiving and interpreting game data across acquisition, retention, and monetization, the next logical step is for the marketer to feed this insight into the development of new games.

Margeaux Sullivan, co-founder of Quest Complete Consulting, has watched the evolution of game marketing first-hand, into a more central data-driven role that involves utilizing insight provided by the data scientists to inform the value propositions of new games developed by marketers.

“As a marketer, it’s important to work closely with developers to understand their vision of the game and to discuss how they will differentiate this game from others in the genre,” Sullivan said. “It’s also important to keep in constant communication with analysts, because they provide context and visualization of raw data, they contribute to and test theories, and they steer the team towards fact-based decision making, and they encourage a meaningful interpretation of data rather than a hunch. The developers decide which game mechanics are compelling, and the analysts reveal whether the community agrees.”

With the evolution of the mobile games industry into a saturated freemium market, the marketer is no longer a single role, but rather one that permeates all aspects of the game.

Mark Robinson, CEO at deltaDNA said, “In recent years we’ve seen the role of the marketer develop across all areas of the game, from acquisition and retention through to monetization. This expansion has been driven by the increased availability of detailed data, the employment of data scientists, and the marketers’ centralized role in interpreting and acting on data.

“It’s now of primary importance to marketers that they have access to rich data plus the advanced tools required to help them understand player engagement for themselves, run tests, create detailed player segments, and generate intelligent player interactions.

The future, as we see it at deltaDNA, lies in the collection of all player data into a single environment and the creation of powerful tools for marketers to analyze, test, and monetize, particularly in F2P where marginal improvements can be the difference between profit and loss.”

This type of data has become even more important to marketers, as they continue to evolve with the burgeoning mobile game industry.(source:gamesindustry)