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看Kabam在高端手机游戏领域与中国市场的发展

发布时间:2015-11-24 11:28:01 Tags:,,,,

作者:Dean Takahashi

Kabam一直以其在游戏领域发展前沿的位置感到骄傲。在Facebook因为虚拟社交游戏创造了太多垃圾内容而开始压制它们时,它即时做出了转变。当免费网页游戏开始对手机游戏让步时,它也做出了正确的选择。而现在,他们正从大型手机游戏组合转向基于品牌和AAA级质量设计的少数游戏。

kent wakeford(from venturebeat)

kent wakeford(from venturebeat)

对于一家只有7岁的公司来说,他们已经做出了许多改变,而该公司的首席运营官Kent Wakeford也在GamesBeat Summit上谈到他们在旧金山的公司最近将转向高端手机游戏领域。

Kent Wakeford:现在是成为手机游戏开发者的好时机。市场正以极快的速度发展着。去年,我们参加了一些会议并讨论了一款数十亿美元游戏的潜力。而它就在这里。这并不只是关于一款数十亿美元的游戏,而是一款像《部落战争》那样能够创造数十亿美元的游戏。

我们必须看到的一大机遇是这种转变将继续着,并将不断巩固着。想想市场的最顶端在过去3年里所发生的改变。例如在2012年,排行第一的畅销游戏一个月的收益是30万美元。而在2015年,排行第一的游戏每个月已经能够创造出120万美元了。

更有趣的是,2012年全年排行第一的游戏所创造的总收益大概是460万美元。那时候Kabam所创造的游戏是《亚瑟王国》。而在今天,排行第一游戏所创造的总收益大概是8000万美元。这可是1750%的增长率啊。

这比《部落战争》更加戏剧化。我们市场上排行前五的游戏在整个产业中所占据的份额是严重失调的。如果回到2012年第一个季度并着眼于那时候排行前五的游戏,你会发现它们创造出了4100万美元的收益。这一收益在整个市场中的份额大概是10%。从那时以来我们发现更多游戏涌进了市场,并且有些游戏拥有更强大的创造性,但如果你着眼于今年第一季度排行前五的游戏,它们共创造了9.25亿美元的收益,并占据了22%的市场份额。而《部落战争》,《Candy Crush》,《战争游戏》则一直待在前五的位置上,并未改变。

我们发现这个产业正朝着最高点快速移动着。市场份额和收益都倾向于最顶端的游戏。这与其它内容产业是非常一致的。

Ian Sherr:为什么这推动着你去改变业务方式?

Wakeford:如果你仔细想想当下的机遇是什么的话,你便会发现机遇和发展潜力都是来自市场的最顶端。你该如何创造能够到达市场最顶端的产品?对于我们来说那便是彻底改变我们的关注点。我们大概是在一年前开始进行转变。从那时起我们便着手调整我们的业务模式,即开始专注于创造较少的作品,并作出一些艰难的决定。

对于我们来说这便是改革者的困境。“较少的作品”意味着我们今年将只创造几款游戏。而去年我们创造了18款游戏,前年是20款。并且我们今年将创造出比去年更多的收益。

我们已经放弃了我们过去所做的许多事,如Facebook策略游戏。我们放弃了这整项业务。我们拥有一项第三方发型业务,在一年里便从0发展到3000万美元,并在隔年又增加到6000万美元,但是它却不存在创造一件十亿美元产品的潜能。所以我们还是放弃了这项业务。我们所看到的机遇是专注于招募最优秀的人才并组建最出色的团队,然后将所有的资源整合在一起。

Sherry:你是否认为这些改变能够让你们出现在前五名的排行中并改变当前的局面?我听许多其它游戏公司说过,要想挤进那五名是不可能的事。

Wakeford:收获市场顶端消费者的心是个巨大的挑战。但我相信如果你能够获得产业中一些最优秀的人并让他们专注于单一产品的创造(避免分心),你便更有可能实现这一目标。

Kabam便迎来了非常让人惊讶的结果。我们之前发行的三款游戏都获得了苹果的Editor’s Choice。他们的质量标准从未像现在这么高。在过去三个月里我们的一款游戏也一直都待在排行榜前10内。我们的表现一直都不错,并希望能够继续坚持下去。

Sherr:我发现市场营销是一大趋势。当回首2012年,我们会发现许多市场营销方法都是交叉推广。而现在,我们看到了Super Bowl上的Kate Upton。而你们又是怎么做的?如果是要与动视或艺电,甚至是迪士尼等拥有大量市场营销预算的公司对抗的话将会很艰难。

WakeFord:这便是市场上的另一大根本转变。对于那些顶端的游戏来说,市场营销创造了一个结构化优势。你在今天看到的市场营销与《使命召唤》发行时使用的市场营销非常相似。这是一种巧合。《Candy Crush》在六本木之丘的建筑上进行宣传。而《部落战争》则利用了东京的地铁和广告牌。《海岛奇兵》更是让一些有名的人在中国电视上装扮成他们游戏的角色。在上一次的Super Bowl我们打了胜战。这是关于顶端游戏如何进行市场营销并投入生态系统中其他人所遥不可及的资本的根本性转变。

Sherr:这是否意味着那些较小的开发者将被迫离开?这是否将成为一个由动视,艺电和育碧等公司引导着的主机世界?

Wakeford:你已经看到了顶端市场与剩下市场间的快速分裂。这种情况会一直维持下去。这就像是一张简单的电子表格。对于排行第100的游戏,如果它花费20%的收益进行市场营销,那么一个月的消费便是24万美元。这算是一款不错的游戏。但如果你的游戏每个月的收益是8000万美元,并且你每月花费1600万美元去吸引全新用户,那么这种差距将把你远远地带离剩下的市场。你将基于这样的规模展开冒险并开辟一个完全不同的领域—-Super Bowl上的广告,地铁上的广告,建筑外观的广告等等。

进入这一产业的顶端市场营销和专门技术将进一步推动顶端市场的发展。这很好,但这同时也会为产业的其它部分创造更多挑战。

Sherr:让我们看看引起这一切的《愤怒的小鸟》,但是现在它却成为了手机游戏产业的Pets.com。事实上是他们创造了手机游戏市场营销与品牌化,并最早开始销售毛绒玩具。你是如何看待这种突然间的衰败,这对于我们所创造的模式又有何影响?

Wakeford:Rovio在《愤怒的小鸟》中的付出是非常显著的。他们拥有强大的品牌意识。但他们也遇到了与我们现在所面临的同样问题,即面对着产业中许多非常快速的转变。Rovio在2009年创造了一款付费游戏。而这款游戏也非常出色。它获得了超过20亿的安装率。它的的品牌认知度可说仅此于迪士尼的角色。但是它还是未能适应市场的变化。

在2009年和2010年,当付费游戏主导着市场时,他们拥有巨大的付费下载空间。但是在2011年至2013年之间,市场发生了快速转变,免费游戏开始成为主要业务模式。将游戏当成服务运行,考虑一致的设计,有效的操作与市场营销性能等技能在各大公司间不断兴起。如果你仔细观察Rovio最后所做的事,你会发现它们在2011年发行了一款付费游戏,在2012年又发行了另一款游戏,而在2013年发行了《星球大战》。他们直至2013年才发行了一款免费游戏。也就是比起创新,他们一直坚持做着之前所做的事。

Sherr:从外人眼里看来,这种崩塌有点突然。到底是哪里出错了?

Wakeford:对于我们的产业来说很有趣的一点是我们时时都能了解到发生了什么。你可以拿起手机并浏览排行榜单,看看谁的排名上升或下降了。App Annie便是一个很棒的信息来源。你可以浏览数据并根据每安装收益去判断游戏是否获得了成功。在今天,人们总是能够预测到未来六个月可能发生的事。

Sherr:你们始终坚持的一件大事便是瞄准亚洲市场。我们也发现亚洲公司尝试着将他们的游戏带到西方市场,但却未能获得成功。虽然也有许多例子能够反驳这一情况,但一般说来,这还是一件很难做到的事。你认为为什么会出现这种情况?以及该如何扭转局面呢?

Wakeford:关于亚洲市场我们首先应该意识到这是一个主导市场。但是任何公司都未能从策略上真正思考在亚洲市场的发展。三周前App Annie发布了一封报告,即关于现在中国市场的安装率已经超过美国市场。来自Digi-Capital的报告揭示了一个iOS安装价值是中国一次安装价值的8倍。所以也许我们可以暂时忽视这个市场?但接下来又出现一份报告显示包括中国在内的Android市场所创造的收益已经超过iOS。

如果你们还是对此感到怀疑,Newzoo的报告将解除这种疑惑,即他们的报告显示明年中国手机游戏所创造的收益将超过美国,也就是在2016年中国将创造77亿美元的手机收益。而美国则为74亿美元。而在2017年,中国的手机收益将达到93亿美元,美国为82亿美元。中国市场的发展速度将持续赶超美国市场。他们之间的差距也会不断拉大。如果我们中的任何人打算从现在起在18个月内greenlight一款游戏,那么到那时候他会发现中国市场所创造的收益已经超过北美市场10亿美元了。

Sherr:你们是如何避免像《智龙迷城》所遇到的问题,即在日本市场位于顶端但是在这里却难以做到?你们是如何实现种种跳跃?

Wakeford:我们已经在中国市场花了许多时间。人们都说在这里发展很难,而我想强调的是,这远比人们想象中的还要难。这个市场比其它市场更快速地发展着。我们看到在这里每个月游戏都能创造4000万至5000万美元的收益—-包括《海岛奇兵》。但要想在这里获得成功还是非常困难。我们发现这个市场具有很大的分裂性。这里有200多个Android商店。运营商计费扮演着更重要的角色。并且这里还存在我们之前从未听过的有关防火墙,文件大小和设备等技术问题。

Sherr:你是否认为比起设计问题,技术问题更棘手?

Wakeford:其实比起文化问题,技术问题和分裂性反而更容易克服。文化是最困难的一部分。为了获得成功,你必须深入当地文化并创造一款能够与当地消费者形成共鸣的游戏。到目前为止还很少有西方游戏公司能够成功做到这点。Supercell离目标很近了。而《使命召唤》也在不断尝试着。

《海岛奇兵》是一个很好的例子。这款游戏25%的收益都是来自中国市场。还有一个有趣的例子便是艺电。艺电真正本土化了《植物大战僵尸2》,包括游戏玩法,系统设计,平衡,经济,UI和UX等等。结果便是《植物大战僵尸》在亚洲市场所创造的收益占其总收益的33%,甚至还超过了在北美市场的收益。我认为如果你真正去进行尝试,你便有可能在这里获得属于自己的成功。

Sherr:让美国人面向中国用户创造游戏与让中国人创造面向中国用户的游戏有什么区别?

Wakeford:这是一种截然不同的做法。这里有许多发行合作伙伴。就像我们便调整了北京办公室以专注于面向中国市场本土化我们的游戏。那些来自中国的人才更了解中国的游戏。所以我们选择让他们来为中国用户创造游戏。我们公司的根既扎在了美国也扎在了中国。我们拥有与中国紧紧维系在一起的文化。所以我们重新调整了关注点并尝试着开启中国市场的大门。

Sherr:你还有其它想分享的内容吗?

Wakeford:我们正着眼于业务上的两大结构性转变。一个是最顶端市场的市场份额的巩固以及从市场营销角度,游戏质量,游戏预算,生产时间安排看来这意味着什么。还有一个转变便是亚洲市场。这是一个具有主导性的市场。我们需要清楚这点。那些能够打开中国市场的公司将获得比其它公司更快的发展速度。

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

Kabam explains its pivot into triple-A mobile and China (interview)

DEAN TAKAHASHI

Kabam prides itself on being ahead of the curve in gaming. It zigged when Facebook cracked down on viral social games because they produced too much spam. Then it zagged when free-to-play web games started giving way to mobile. And now it is shifting away from a big portfolio of mobile titles to a select few games based on brands and triple-A quality design.

That’s a lot of change for a company that is just seven years old, and Kent Wakeford, the chief operating officer for Kabam, talked about the San Francisco company’s latest pivot into high-end mobile games in a conversation at our GamesBeat Summit event with Ian Sherr, the executive editor of Cnet.

Kent Wakeford: It’s a great time to be a mobile game developer. The market is growing at such a rapid pace. Last year, we were at these conferences talking about the potential for a billion-dollar game. It’s here. It’s not just one billion-dollar game, it’s billions with an S. Clash of Clans will make multiple billions of dollars.

What’s a very big change that we’ll all have to understand is that there is a shift going on, a consolidation. Think about the top of the market, the change over the last three years. Go back to 2012. The number-one top-grossing game did about $300,000 a month. In 2015, the number-one game is doing about $1.2 million.

What’s more interesting, though, is that if you look at the number-one game for all of 2012, which did about $4.6 million altogether—At that point Kabam had that game. It was Kingdoms of Camelot. Fast forward to today, the number one top-grossing game is doing about $80 million. That’s 1,750 percent growth.

It’s more dramatic than just Clash. The top five games in our market are taking a disproportionate share of the entire industry. If you go back to the first quarter of 2012 and look at the top five games in that first quarter, they did $41 million in revenue. They had a 10 percent share of the entire market. We’ve seen a lot more games to market since then, a lot more growth and innovation, but if you look at the top five games in the first quarter of this year, they did $925 million in revenue, 22 percent of the market. Those games haven’t moved. Clash, Candy Crush, Game of War. They’ve all been consistent at the top.

We’re seeing a radical shift in our industry toward the top. Market share and revenue are going to the top games. It’s pretty consistent with other content businesses.

Ian Sherr: Why is that driving you to change the way you do business?

Wakeford: If you think about where the opportunity is right now, the opportunity and growth potential are at the top of the market. How do you create a product that’s at the top of the market? For us we had to radically shift our focus. This started about a year ago. We embarked on a transformation and restructuring of our business in which we focused on fewer products and made some tough decisions.

This is the innovator’s dilemma a lot of us think about. “Fewer products” means only four new games this year. Last year it was 18 and before that it was 20. We’ll still do more revenue than we did last year.

We’ve let go of a lot of things we did in the past, like Facebook strategy games. We divested that entire business. We had a third-party publishing business that grew from zero to $30 million in one year, $30 million to $60 million in another year, but it didn’t have the potential to create a billion-dollar product. We divested and got out of that business. The opportunity is there in focusing and getting the best people on the best teams and aligning all these resources together.

Sherr: Do you think that doing this will allow you to get into that top five and be able to break that grip? I’ve listened to a lot of other game companies say that, realistically, there’s no way to get in there.

Wakeford: Capturing the hearts and minds of consumers at the top of the market is a challenge. It’s lightning in a bottle. But I believe that if you get the best people in the industry and allow them to focus on the single vision of creating that product – eliminate all other distractions – you have a much better shot at achieving it.

The results are amazing within Kabam. The last three games we launched all received Editor’s Choice from Apple. The quality bar has never been higher. We have a game that’s been consistently in the top 10 over the last three months. We’ve been doing a pretty good job and we’re staying focused.

Sherr: One trend I’ve seen a lot is marketing. If I look back to 2012, a lot of the marketing was cross-promotion. Nowadays, we have Kate Upton at the Super Bowl. I can’t turn anywhere without seeing a Clash advertisement. How do you deal with that? Going up against the marketing budgets of Activision or Electronic Arts or even Disney, that’s quite a challenge.

Wakeford: It’s another fundamental shift in the market. For those top games, marketing creates a structural advantage. The marketing you see today is very similar to the marketing you see at the launch of a Call of Duty. It’s happening. Candy Crush is wrapping buildings in Roppongi Hills. Clash is taking over subways and billboards in Tokyo. Boom Beach has celebrities in TV shows dressing as characters from their game in China. We have the battle royal at the last Super Bowl. It’s a fundamental shift in how the top games are able to market and spend capital at a rate that others in the ecosystem can’t.

Sherr: Does that mean smaller players are forced out? Does it become the console world, where Activision, EA, and Ubisoft run the industry?

Wakeford: You’re already seeing that, a rapid divergence between the top of the market and the rest of the market. That will perpetuate itself. It’s a simple spreadsheet exercise. The number 100 game, if it spends 20 percent of its revenue on marketing, that’s $240,000 a month. That’s an okay game. But if you’re making $80 million a month and spending $16 million of it every month to bring new users in, the divergence will keep taking you above the rest of the market. It allows you, at that size and scale, to take risks and open up different areas – Super Bowl ads, subway takeovers, buildings wrapped in brands created within our ecosystem.

That type of top-level marketing and the expertise that’s coming into this industry is going to further push the top of the market up. That’s great, but it creates more challenge for other parts of the industry.

Sherr: Let’s look at the character that began all of this – Angry Birds, which I guess is now the Pets.com of the mobile-game industry. They practically invented mobile-game marketing and branding and selling plush toys. What do you think of that sudden fall and how it applies to the model we’re developing?

Wakeford: What Rovio did with Angry Birds is phenomenal. They had huge brand recognition. But it’s a similar issue to what we’re facing now, with so many rapid shifts in our business. Rovio came out with a paid game in 2009. That game was phenomenal. It’s been installed more than 2 billion times. It’s second in brand recognition only to Disney characters. But it didn’t adapt.

They owned the paid download space when paid games were the dominant part of the market, 2009 and 2010. But between 2011 and 2013, the market shifted and free-to-play became the dominant business model. The ability to run a game as a service, to think about consistent design and live operations and performance marketing, these were all skills that grew and flourish within companies, whether it’s Kabam or others. If you look at what Rovio ended up doing, though, in 2011 they launched another paid game. In 2012, another paid game. In 2013 it was Star Wars. They didn’t launch a free-to-play game until the end of 2013. They kept doing what they were doing before instead of innovating.

If you look at Disney’s Tsum Tsum, that’s a phenomenal game and it could have been theirs. It should have been theirs. But it’s this concept of not adapting to the market and the industry as it changes.

Sherr: The collapse, from the outside, seemed sudden. How can we tell that things are going wrong?

Wakeford: What’s interesting about our industry is that we can know what’s going on by the hour. You can pick up your phone and see the charts, see who’s moving up and down. App Annie is a tremendous resource. You can look at the data and see whether a game is going to be successful based on the revenue per install. People are able to predict, today, what’s going to happen in six months.

Sherr: One big thing you’ve been doing is aiming your business toward Asia. We’ve seen Asian companies try to bring their games to the West and not succeed, as well as the other way around. There are a couple of examples that disprove the rule, but generally speaking, it’s a hard thing to do. Why do you think that is, and how do you break through?

Wakeford: The first thing about Asia is that we have to recognize it’s the dominant market. Any company that isn’t strategically thinking about Asia isn’t thinking strategically. App Annie came out three weeks ago reporting that installs in China now exceed the number of installs in the U.S. We saw the report from Digi-Capital showing that the value of an iOS install is eight times greater than an install in China. So maybe we can ignore it for a moment? But the next report comes out showing that the Android market, including China, is now bigger in terms of revenue than iOS. Just spread out over more people.

If there were still any doubters – if we still believe the world is flat – Newzoo came out showing that revenue from the mobile game space in China next year will surpass the U.S. Next year China will generate $7.7 billion in mobile revenue. The U.S. will generate $7.4 billion. The year after that, in 2017, China will be up to $9.3 billion and the U.S. $8.2 billion. China continues to grow faster than the U.S. market. That gap will continue to expand. If any of us are thinking about greenlighting a game with a production schedule maybe 18 months from now, once we’re done the market in China will be more than a billion dollars greater than North America.

Sherr: How do you not have the kind of troubles that Puzzle & Dragons did, going from the top in Japan to not the top here? How do you make those jumps?

Wakeford: We’ve been spending a lot of time in China. People talk about China being hard, and I want to emphasize that not only is China hard, it’s harder than people even guess. The market is growing faster than anywhere else. We’re seeing games that are now doing $40 to $50 million a month in revenue – including Boom Beach, which has been a great success. But it’s hard. We see a great deal of fragmentation. We all know about the 200 Android stores. Carrier billing plays a much more prominent role. There are tech issues are firewalls and file size and devices we’ve never heard of.

Sherr: Do you think it’s more the technical problems than the design issues?

Wakeford: The technical issues and the fragmentation are easier to overcome than the cultural issues. Culture is the hardest part. To be successful, you have to tap into the culture and build a game that resonates with consumers there. So far there have been very few western game companies that have done that. Supercell has gotten close. Call of Duty is trying.

Boom Beach is a good example. 25 percent of their revenue comes from China. The other interesting example is EA. EA truly culturalized Plants Vs. Zombies 2. Completely new SKU. The gameplay, system design, balance, economy, UI, UX—The result was that Plants Vs. Zombies generated more than 33 percent of its revenue in Asia. It’s generating more revenue in Asia than in North America. If you really try, there’s a great deal of potential success to unlock.

Sherr: And the difference is taking Americans and having them make the game for China, versus having people in China make it?

Wakeford: There are different approaches. There are publishing partners. We’ve reoriented our entire Beijing office to focus on culturalized games for China. These are people in China who know gaming in China. We’re having them build product for a Chinese audience. The roots of our company are Chinese-American. We have cultural ties to China. We’re refocusing everything to try and open the way there.

Sherr: Is there anything else you’d like to bring up?

Wakeford: We’re looking at two tectonic shifts in the business. One is the consolidation of market share at the top and what that means from a marketing perspective, game quality, game budgets, production schedules. The other shift is Asia. It’s the dominant market. We all need to be aware of it. The companies who are able to open up that market will see significant growth at a faster rate than the rest.(source:venturebeat

 


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