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《Pokemon Go》是否能够真正获得盈利?

发布时间:2016-07-26 16:20:59 Tags:,,,,

作者:Ramin Shokrizade

不管是在英国还是美国都有记者问过我这个问题,但是因为那时我还在英国,所以还未亲自玩过这款游戏。如果你看过我上次在Gamasutra发表的文章,你便会记得我说过存在许多消费者迫切希望看到一些能够将自己与其他人连接在一起的超级社交游戏:

“就像《赫芬顿邮宝》上所说的那样,比起遗产/模拟内容,消费者更喜欢连接,只要你能够满足他们的这一需求,你每年便能赚到数万亿美元。如此为何我们不去赚这笔钱呢?”

我在4月份于圣彼得堡举办的西方游戏开发论坛上发表了“现在手机游戏开发的状态”的演讲,并解释了为什么在有无数消费者对社交游戏充满需求的现在我们却经历着裁员和收益下降等问题。我的解释是,这是因为我们并非真正在创造社交游戏。更确切地说应该是,我们正在创造的都是一些反社交的游戏。当我说了因为Tinder所拥有的社交机制,奖励机制和大量用户生成内容,所以它是当下我最喜欢的游戏时许多人都感到非常困惑。而当有人问我“所以现在的游戏需要去与Tinder竞争?”时我的回答是:

“它们当然需要去与Tinder竞争。当我说了我们在这一领域的主要竞争是Tinder而不是其它游戏时,我是非常坚决的。所以这便是我们需要超越的内容。而我们到底能否创造出一款比Tinder有趣的游戏呢?这就像一道基准。这里的关键便在于我们该如何赋予我们的游戏社交性。如果我们的游戏不断阻碍玩家间的交流,他们便会继续保持陌生状态并且不能进行互动,如此他们便不能在游戏中进行社交。而当我们开始在游戏中添加交朋友的内容,即真实生活中的朋友,特别是像Tinder所使用的那种让玩家与当地的玩家进行互动的方式,情况会变成这样?你可以想象你将与住在旁边街区的人一起玩游戏的情境。你可以自行选择是否与这个人见面,而别人也可以选择是否与你见面,如此你们便有可能在游戏领域中交到朋友。

pokemon go(from dyhjw)

pokemon go(from dyhjw)

这便是强大的变革游戏。现在的我们虽然拥有技术,但是我们却还不能有效去适应这些技术。虽然这些技术已经成功用于交友领域,但在游戏领域却还未发挥功效。”

而《Pokemon Go》的安装量在短短五天内便超越了Android的Tinder。

所以现在它成为了第一款将现实世界中的人真正聚拢在一起的游戏。就像之前预测的那样,他们将坐等收货数万亿美元的收益了。即使这个项目所占据的股权并不多,但是任天堂的股票却在两天内上升了75亿美元。而随着时间的发展他们的股票可能会逐渐下跌,但是整个世界以及我们的产业却不会非如此。随后消费者的期待将永久转移,而这里的所堆积的收益也会变得越发明显。

所以,《Pokemon Go》到底能否获得盈利?

盈利的关键并不是取决于你的盈利模式。而是你必须创造出一个能够满足消费者需求的产品。当我受聘于一家公司去帮助一个产品获得盈利时,我所做的第一件事便是确保该产品满足消费者的需求。的确在当时看来它并非如此。我的建议便是尽可能使它满足消费者的需求,或者就是放弃它。而对于放弃产品的决定我是非常自豪的,因为这也等同于拯救了这家公司。

但为了真正理解为什么《Pokemon Go》如此成功,我们需要往更深层次进行探索。因为现在我在英国还不能玩这款游戏,所以我便决定先和18岁的邻居Thea预演一次《Pokemon Go》之旅。我们在Royal Leamington Spa周边走了5公里去测试了包括孵育箱在内的所有功能。之后当我能够登录游戏时我便在一天内打卡了30公里的区域,同时我还在当地的停车场,酒吧,商店以及Pokemon体育场中遇到了其他玩家。

在Pokestops中你可以获得用于攻击野生Pokemons以及其它目标的球。这些目标通常会出现在公园以及靠近商店的城市人行道上。它们每隔几秒便会进行重置,如此你便不愿走太远而更希望待在原地等着它们重生。如果你不具有完整的9个蛋,蛋的掉落频率便会提高,而如果你会频繁地访问Pokestops,你在游戏中90%的时间便都会拥有完整的9颗蛋。

你必须将蛋放进孵育箱并行走一段距离去孵育它们。你将获得一个可以永久使用且不用钱的孵育箱,但是它一次只能孵育一颗蛋。你也可以选择购买额外的孵育箱,但每次购买一个额外的孵育箱却只能使用三次,如此算来孵育箱的成本是很高的。蛋的孵育距离可能是2公里,5公里或偶尔的10公里。而需要行走10公里去孵育的蛋将提供给你最棒的奖励。所以游戏中存在许多激励玩家去执行这一游戏机制的内容,因为有些非常稀有的Pokemon可能会从某个蛋中跳出来并在足够成熟时带给玩家更多经验值。来自蛋里的Pokemon是自动捕获的。我们可能会在行走过程中偶然遇到一个高价值的Pokemon,而它往往需要我们投入30或40颗球才能将其收入囊中。

在公园的中心位置会有许多人在游戏。大多数Pokestops将因为玩家所使用的Lures而吸引更多玩家的出现。同时Pokestops也会呈现出使用Lure的玩家名字,从而让其他玩家清楚自己该去感谢谁!当某个地方将会出现特别有价值的Pokemon时,这里便会吸引更多人的注意。而大多数Pokemon只需要玩家投出1,2个球便会被收复。

除了lure外还有其它能够提高你身边Pokemon出现机会的方法,即incense。你可以够买incense,或者有时候它们也会作为升级奖励而出现。

你所捕抓到的任何Pokemon都可以带给你经验值,即能够提升你作为训练师的级别。当到达第5个级别时你将能在体育场中战斗,但关于升级最重要的一部分还是你身边所出现的Pokemon的质量将会提高。每次捕抓时你将能够获得100个stardust,并可以以此去提升Pokemons的能力。但是因为stardust的数量并不多,所以你最好能够将其储存起来并用于值得让你投入stardust的Pokemon身上。如果你获得了足够特定类型的Pokemon,你也可以去进化它们,但现在游戏机制其实还有点混乱,因为如果你找到20个特定类型的Pokemon,并选择进化,那么其中的1个Pokemon便会获得进化,而它可能并不是你所拥有的最厉害的那个。要记住进化和推进并不相同。

所以到底是怎么一回事呢?如果你读过我的《Supremacy Goods》或《How Pay to Win Works》的论文,你便会清楚在游戏中销售奖励将会逐渐削弱游戏对于所有人的价值。在我的《Group Monetisation》文章中我也深入讨论了团体机制的深度。但在《Pokemon Go》这款游戏中你却必须获取一切东西。你当然可以购买更多幸运蛋(游戏邦注:它们能够让你在30分钟内获得双倍经验值),孵育箱,球和lure。但所有的这些东西都需要你离开房间去探索周边世界。玩家会聚集在他们家/工作场所/学校附近的Pokestop,而如果他们频繁地做这件事,他们便能够经常见到同个社区的所有其他玩家。

对于消费者来说这并不会带给他们通过花钱而获胜的感觉。当我前往公园时我注意到公园中几乎所有Pokestop都拥有一个lure,并且是很多人都在使用lure。人们会分担使用lure的责任,我想这会让他们更加舒心。为了从所有lure中获得最大利益,你可能需要绕着公园走好几圈。在走了5公里后我们的手机电池可能就快用完了,但是对于许多人来说多走走路也是一种很好的锻炼方式。有人建议我多带一块备用电池并在游戏的时候关掉照相机功能如此我便能够玩更长时间的游戏,但是即使没有这些建议我在第一天游戏的时候便完成了30公里的目标了。我只需要每隔几个小时回家充充电就好了。

一个小时是足以释放许多lure,incense,球,并且也能孵化许多蛋。你不知道与朋友穿越公园去寻找更多Pokestops并捕抓更多Pokemons是多有趣的事。当你的电池耗尽时你可以快速回家并在家里决定要进化哪只Pokemon以及如何分配stardust。

但是在《Pokemon Go》中我们也遇到过两次奖励取消的情况。它们都不是明显地呈现出来,所以我必须多玩几次游戏才能发现它们,但这的确是一个不小的问题了。如果你们想要进一步了解“奖励取消”可以去阅读我所写的一篇名为《Top F2P Monetisation Tricks》的文章。从根本上来看这是关于提高给玩家一个奖励,但又驳回了这一奖励或者不让玩家使用这一奖励的情况。这样做不仅会让消费者感到受挫,同时也会导致开发者与消费者之间出现矛盾。每个人都有自己的忍耐点,如果你让消费者感到非常不快,他们便有可能选择离开。而在《Pokemon Go》中,或许是因为游戏太有趣了,玩家在真正考虑退出前更愿意忍受许多不快。

而奖励取消中最糟糕的地方还是在于蛋与孵育箱的处理。玩家会获得一个能够反复使用的孵育箱,但是他们同时也将获得9个蛋。如果玩家拥有9个孵育箱便能够以超过别人800%的速度去孵育这些蛋。而这足以变成一种通过花钱去加快速度/获胜的游戏机制。同时当玩家意识到如果自己不花钱就必须多行走9倍的时间才能孵化出同样数量的蛋时便会觉得很受挫。

因为高成本以及玩家的种种不快,网络上已经出现了许多帮助玩家快速孵化蛋的方法。而正是Niantic在推动着玩家去尝试这些方法或使用第三方平台去帮助自己孵化蛋。这也将破坏玩家在游戏中的实践以及决定游戏成功的社交元素。

关于奖励取消的另一个内容便是库存管理系统。本来游戏的库存空间应该是无限大的,但是它却出现了非常低的上限并因此惹恼了玩家。每次当训练员升级一批自己新获取的道具时,他们的库存空间便会达到最高点。而当你的库存已满时你便不能再从Pokestops中获取任何奖励了,其中也包括蛋。而这时候如果强迫玩家去决定该销毁哪个道具则会让他们非常难受。

以下便是我关于《Pokemon Go》的盈利系统的最终总结:

支持面:

1.尽管这里有很强的通过付费而前进/获胜的游戏机制,但是玩家并不会立刻察觉到这点。

2.它巧妙使用了群组盈利技巧。

3.它并不会让玩家耗尽所有东西。像幸运蛋,球和lure都不会随着时间的流逝而失去其原有的价值。

否定面:

1.在蛋/孵育箱系统中使用奖励取消只会带给第三方平台更多利益而不利于Niantic的盈利。

2.在库存系统中使用奖励取消将会导致玩家随着时间的发展而越来越受挫。

如果游戏中未使用这两次奖励取消,我可能会给予这款游戏的商业模式“超级优秀”的评价。而对于那些认为《Pokemon Go》的热潮会逐渐退去的人来说,我认为通过对这款游戏的评价我并未看到与之相关的迹象。不过就像我们在上面所提到的,这款游戏的盈利能力是会受到相应影响的。

虽然生活在农村的玩家不能像城市中的玩家拥有如此多访问Pokestops的机会,但我相信在他们在用光自己手机的电之前一定会想办法“去城镇”或公园的。如果是我的话我就会选择和朋友一起做这件事。而当你真的去这么做的话你便会发现实际情况比听起来的更加浪漫。

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

Can Pokemon GO Monetise?

by Ramin Shokrizade

I’ve had press in both the UK and USA asking me this question but since I am currently in the UK I had a delay playing the game myself. If you caught my last article here on Gamasutra, I claimed that there was immense consumer demand for hyper social games that connect them to other people:

“If, as the Huffington Post article posits, consumers will largely choose Connection over legacy/analog addictions, then there are annually trillions of dollars just sitting on the table. Why aren’t we grabbing that money?”

My talk on “The Current State of Mobile Game Development” (sorry no video for the first 10 minutes) at the West Game Development Forum in April in Saint Petersburg explained why we were experiencing layoffs and revenue declines at a time of unprecedented consumer demand for social games. I explained that this was because we were not making social games. If anything, we are making anti-social games. I confused a lot of people by saying that Tinder was my favourite game at the moment because of its social mechanisms, reward mechanisms, and heavy use of user generated content. When confronted with “So now games have to compete with Tinder?” I respond at 32:47 in the video with:

“They do have to compete with Tinder. I make no reservations when I say that our primary competitor in the space is not other games, it’s Tinder. So that’s the bar we need to match. Can we make a game that’s more fun than Tinder? That’s the benchmark…The key is how social we can make our games. If our games continue to set barriers between other players so that they are completely anonymous and can’t interact, then that’s going to prevent them from being social. But when we can actually start making friends in our games, real life friends, especially the way Tinder does where the people you are interacting with are in your local area…can you imagine what it would be like if you were playing with the people who live right down the street from you? And you have the option of saying yes I want to meet that person, and that other person says yes I want to meet you, then now you’ve just made a friend in your gaming space?

That would totally revolutionize gaming. We have the technology, but we are being slow in adapting that technology. It’s being used very successfully in the dating space but not in the gaming space.”

Pokemon GO installs exceeded the number of Android Tinder installs in just five days.

So now the first game that truly brings people together in real space has hit the market. As predicted, trillions of dollars are just sitting there for them to collect. Even with a minority stake in the project, Nintendo’s stock value went up 7.5B USD in two days. They may lose some of that over time as the shock of success wears off, but the world and our industry will never be the same. That was just one quick handful from all that cash sitting on that table. Consumer expectations have permanently shifted, and that table full of money is becoming easier to see.

So…

Can Pokemon Go Monetize?

They key to monetisation is not your monetisation model. It’s having a product that meets consumer demand. When I’m hired by a company to “monetise” a product, the first thing I do is make sure the product meets consumer demand. Typically it doesn’t in current state. I recommend how to make it meet consumer demand, and/or I recommend cancelling the project. I’m just as proud of the projects I’ve cancelled, saving companies close to a billion dollars, as the products I’ve recovered. I don’t list them on LinkedIn but they are just as important.

But to really understand why Pokemon GO works, let’s look under the hood. I’m in the UK where access is still rationed, so before I could get logged in I went on a Pokemon GO tour with my 18 year old neighbour Thea. We walked around lovely and historic Royal Leamington Spa for 5 kilometers so that we could test most or all of the functionality including egg incubation. Later when I was able to log in I clocked an additional 30km in one day while interviewing other players in the local parks, pubs, shops, and Pokemon gyms.

Pokestops are places where you can get balls needed to throw at wild Pokemons, and other odd things. They tend to be most concentrated in parks and in major urban walkways near shops. They reset every few minutes so if you can’t be bothered to walk much you can find an area with 3 or 4 of them and just kind of do a little circle every time they respawn. Eggs drop often if you don’t have the full 9 you can carry, so you will spend 90+% of the time with all 9 eggs if you are visiting pokestops regularly.

Eggs are interesting in that you have to put them in an incubator and then walk some distance to hatch them. You get one unlimited use incubator that costs nothing to use, but can only do one egg at a time with it. You can buy additional incubators but these only last 3 uses each and are expensive. Eggs require 2km, 5km, or (rarely) 10km to hatch. The 10km eggs give the best rewards by far. So there is a lot of incentive to exercise with this game because some really rare Pokemon pop out of eggs and they give a lot of XP when they mature. Pokemon from eggs are also auto-captured. We ran into one high value Pokemon on our walk and it took us some 30 or 40 balls to catch it.

This was in the middle of a park where dozens of people had come to play the game. Most of the Pokestops were buffed up with Lures that players had used on them. When you click on one of these buffed up Pokestops, it actually gives the name of the person that put that lure, so you know who to thank! Where this one particularly valuable Pokemon had spawned, there were over a dozen people there trying their hardest to catch it. Most Pokemon give in after one or two balls are thrown their way.

In addition to lures you can drop on Pokestops (these are the ones that shops are using to lure in customers), there is also incense which can increase the chance of Pokemon just appearing next to you. You can buy these and sometimes they are given as rewards for levelling up.

Any Pokemon you capture gives you XP which can raise your trainer level. Getting to level 5 lets you fight in gyms, but the most important part about levelling up is that the quality of Pokemons that spawn around you is based on your trainer level. You also get 100 stardust for each capture, and this is used to power up Pokemons. This isn’t much, so it’s best to save it up until you have a really good Pokemon worth boosting. If you get enough of a certain kind you can also evolve that kind, but currently that mechanic is a bit confusing because if you find 20 of one type and hit evolve on one, it only evolves one and it might not be your best one. Evolving and boosting is not the same thing.

So what is going on here? If you’ve read my Supremacy Goods or How Pay to Win Works papers, you know that selling the rewards in a game undermines the value of that game not only for that one person, but for everyone. I go into a lot of depth as to the group mechanics of this in my Group Monetisation paper. But here in Pokemon GO you have to earn everything. Sure you can buy more lucky eggs (these boost XP for 30 min), incubators, balls and lures. But all of these things still require you to leave your house and explore your world or they don’t do you any good. Players tend to cluster at the Pokestops near their home/work/school and if they do this regularly they get to meet all the other players in those neighbourhoods.

So none of this feels intensely like pay to win to the consumer. When I was in the park I noticed that almost every Pokestop (there were dozens) in the park had an active lure on it but it was many people dropping lures. People were sharing the responsibility for dropping lures and I think that made them feel better about doing so. For every lure they dropped, 5 other people were dropping lures that directly benefitted them. To get the most benefit from all those lures, you probably had to do several laps around the park. Our phone battery was ready to give up the ghost after 5 km but for most people that’s a good hour or more of walking which is great exercise. People I ran into were recommending I get spare batteries and turn off the camera while I played so I could play even longer before charging up but I did 30km in my first day on my own phone even without those pro tips. I just had to return home for a recharge every few hours.

An hour is enough time to drop a lot of lures, incense, balls and maybe even work a bunch of incubatored eggs. It’s difficult to overstate just how much fun it is walking through the park with a friend trying to hit as many Pokestops as possible and get all the Pokemons. When your battery runs low you head home and can then decide who to evolve and how to spend your stardust in the comfort of your home.

On the downside, we have two serious cases of reward removal in Pokemon GO. These are not immediately obvious so I had to play for a while to see them, and reward removal is a bit subtle. I describe reward removal in detail in my popular Top F2P Monetisation Tricks paper for those that want to understand it better. Basically it is the process of giving the player a reward but then taking that reward away or not letting them use it. The goal is to frustrate the consumer and create a “contest of wills” between developer and consumer. Everyone has a breaking point and if you make the consumer uncomfortable enough they will either spend or quit. For more information on the psychology at play, check out my Secrets of F2P: Threat Generation paper. In the case of Pokemon GO, the game is so much fun that the players will put up with a lot of discomfort before considering quitting.

The worst area of reward removal is how the eggs and incubators are handled. You get one incubator that you can use over and over, but you get 9 total eggs. If you had 9 incubators you would advance your eggs (a key source of XP and quality Pokemons) 800% faster. That’s a huge difference, enough to make this a straight up pay to progress/win mechanic. Also, a player is going to feel bad when they realize they have to walk 9 times as far to hatch the same number of eggs if they don’t spend money.

Because of the cost and discomfort, the internet is already flooding with memes of cell phones attached to ceiling fans, as a way of effortlessly and quickly maturing eggs. By trying to monetise through discomfort, Niantic is going to push players to attempt these methods or even pay a third party for devices that no doubt will reach market soon to auto mature eggs. This will also undermine the exercise and social aspects of the game which are key to its success.

The other way that reward removal is applied is in the inventory management system. Inventory space could be infinite but it is capped at a very low number to create discomfort in the player. Every time the trainer levels up a bunch of new goodies are earned, often putting the inventory space “over the top”. When your inventory is full you don’t get any rewards from Pokestops, not even eggs. Forcing the player to decide which of their valuable items to destroy on a regular basis generates a lot of player discomfort, which is the objective of reward removal.

So here is what my final report card looks like for Pokemon GO’s monetisation system:

Pro’s:

1. While it is heavily pay to progress/win, it’s not immediately perceived that way by players,

2. It makes excellent use of group monetisation techniques,

3. It never runs out of things to buy. Things like lucky eggs (which boost XP gain by 100% for 30 minutes), balls, and lures don’t become less valuable over time.

Cons:

1. Intense use of reward removal in the egg/incubator system in a way that will make 3rd party vendors very rich but drain money away from Niantic,

2. Intense use of reward removal in the inventory system that will make players increasingly uncomfortable as they advance in the game.

Without the two uses of reward removal, I would have rated the business model for this product as “Superior”. Sadly, I have to drop it two steps to “Above Average”. For those that suggest Pokemon GO’s popularity will wane, I’m not seeing any reason for this in my evaluation of the product. Its ability to monetise will certainly wane due to the critical flaws listed above.

Yes people in rural areas are going to have limited access to Pokestops, but I think they will be tempted to “go to town” or the park just to play the game until their phone runs out of power. If it was me, I would go with a friend and make it a Pokemon GO date. It’s really more romantic than it sounds…(source:gamasutra)

 


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