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开发者探讨手游IAP盈利模式的未来

发布时间:2017-06-06 09:21:05 Tags:,,

本文原作者:William Grosso 译者ciel chen

移动手游是一个大市场行业

你之前一定听过手游行业现在市场庞大——是的没错,而且这有必要在这里再强调一遍:手机游戏,更普遍地来说是F2P(免费)手游现在已经是一个巨大并且竞争激烈的市场了。例如你可以考虑到以下:

现在移动手游有着比无论是电脑游戏还是主机游戏都要大的市场。

现在App Store中有250万款app,和超过60万的游戏。

现在那些能帮助手机游戏盈利的中间件公司价值越来越高了,它们都能卖到几十亿美元。

Power Rangers: Legacy Wars(from gamasutra.com)

Power Rangers: Legacy Wars(from gamasutra.com)

最大型的手机游戏每年能盈利数亿美元。

所以当你处在一个巨大的市场之中,而这个市场的消费者相当热情、但却有无数大量的竞争者来跟你争夺这个行业市场份额时,会发生什么?

有一点始终是公司之间竞争市场份额最看重的——那就是产品质量。我们来看看手游市场里的游戏产品质量——大部分游戏都很棒并且时刻都在进步,其整体发展速度快到令人惊叹。

这样所造成的另一个结果就是商业成熟化的巨大趋势——随着市场的成熟,要想出如何使产品接近消费者以及如何获得他们的业务就变成了各个公司的最主要的关注点了。

在2014年到2016年期间,举个例子,领头的游戏公司在他们的市场营销和用户获取方式上日益复杂化(并且越发自动化)了。比如说我们会看到:

Google Play开始支持新手游发行的预先登记注册。

手机游戏在电视上的广告日益增多

高级的用户目标锁定,比如Facebook的定制观众以及用户目标的重新锁定都是用来提高用户获取以及用户留存效率的。

游戏商业复杂性增加

在Scientific Revenue,我们看到了商业复杂性日益增加的趋势,这种趋势已经延伸到了游戏本身——这点在那些把IAP作为主要盈利方式的游戏中尤为显著。

为了能更加了解这个趋势,可以从一个稍微不同的方法来思考一下F2P模式:F2P模式实际上意味着销售点位于游戏内部(不是在Amazon或Gamestop)并且由游戏控制着销售点内容。

以下的主要趋势都是有这个观点引发的所有简单逻辑结果:

LiveOps成为了服务平台。像Playfab这样的公司越来越多地启用了特殊的游戏内行为、限时事件、行为动机,以及针对个别玩家或者各段玩家提供某些内容。我们可以把这些公司提供的服务看做游戏内的管理平台,这类服务不但有助于提升体验而且可以有针对性地降价或提供商品供应来增加收入。

动态定价服务和收益最优化服务。像Scientific Revenue这样的公司利用数据和机器学习(能力)来调整和优化盈利模式从而增加收益。

收益调整和控制服务。广告和中介类公司已经存在了相当长一段时间了,并且他们一直在利用预测性分析和机器学习能力来进行定位目标的。这其中日益复杂化的广告控制是新内容——这些公司现在正在根据“是否有可能进行IAP购买的”对游戏进行细分,从而由此作出决定要不要在这里(游戏)展示广告。

即将到来的热潮:不同的(游戏)商品供应及其类型

考虑到F2P游戏模式的真正意义在于其销售点位置,也就是说这种模式会是用来思考手游盈利模式的一种非常有用的方法。手游工作室现在越发地能把握住他们自己新角色(运行付费通道),与此同时他们还会采用零售的最佳实践方法。

这条趋势线的下一个浪潮将会是IAP多样化产品的供应。五年前的大部分IAP向游戏都在下列商品的销售上出现了变化:

有一到两种虚拟货币。通常会有一种“硬”货币(需要玩家购买的货币),有时还会有“软”货币或者“可赚取”货币(玩家可以在游戏中赚取的货币)。

一些DLC或者内容包。

少量可通过真实货币购买,跟游戏玩法有关的商品。“广告屏蔽”和“获取双倍金币”是最常见的该类商品。

还有一些游戏有更加成熟的商业模式,不过上面列表的内容是是跟定义的公认最佳实践内容最接近的。

如今,大部分新发行游戏都有以下内容:

在游戏中起到不同作用的两种或两种以上的虚拟货币

有包括硬币店、载入游戏时的启动画面以及弹出广告等在内的多个销售点。

由游戏内容决定的带有特殊目的的购买流(比如,当游戏处于“需要更多流通货币”流时,游戏就会提供更简便的购买体验而对用户对可用的金币包加以限制)。

用真实货币进行道具包和货币包的购买交易。

特价商品是为部分用户精心设计的。

举个例子,如果你看过我最近安装在手机上的游戏(nWay的《Power Rangers: Legacy Wars》),游戏里的IAP内容如下:

两种货币:能量水晶和能量金币

主页上永不下架的特价商品——即有角色类商品(可以用能量金币或者水晶购买)也 有道具包商品,都需要用真钱来交易。

金币商城里“特价放送”的标签,并且总带有常绿的“马上到期”字样(所以特别有购买号召力)。

为“新玩家”特别提供的仅留存24小时的商品。

等等……

总而言之,现在的游戏比过去几代游戏有了更多可以出售的商品、商品种类更加丰富、有更多游戏内容方面的商品和道具包。

(当然了,要能做好IAP管理,向合适的玩家呈上合适的商品,这需要有大量的服务端机器与专业知识。所以很庆幸我们正在进入一个“机器学习”的年代)。

年金化收费(游戏中的年卡/月卡/周卡):与众不同的收费类型

年金化收费(游戏中的年卡/月卡/周卡)是一种越来越流行、越来越重要的付费方式,它完全符合了高度细分、为用户特别制定商品的思路。

年金化收费(游戏中的年卡/月卡/周卡)就是以极低的折扣价购买后随时间推移交付购买内容的形式(“年金给付”)对游戏货币或者物品进行的购买。实际上的购买方式是一次性付款,付清款项后该年金(年卡/月卡/周卡)开始生效。
这个礼包将持续28天每天给玩家1000个Iso-8以及100个英雄点数(也就是说在年金周期里总共给玩家28000个Iso-8和2800个英雄点数)。相比之下,最小的Iso-8包也要1.99美元1200个。所以,年金的付费方式代表了划算得叫人吃惊的一笔交易,不过它需要一定的时间才能把其全部价值交付给支付用户。

你不难猜测,年金化的付费方式将玩家分成了两类——一种是较冲动型消费的玩家类型,另一种是认为售卖的商品值得花时间等待来获取(以低折扣价格作为交换条件)的玩家类型。简而言之,年金化付费方式对那些兜里有钱且有较好的冲动控制力的“喜欢计划的人”来说,是有吸引力的【这些人通常会成为“磨工”(有耐心的人),因为他们有抵制购买冲动决定的能力】

这里有一点要注意的就是,年金化的付费方式有非常强有力的用户留存能力。这跟每日登陆奖励的作用很像,年金(年卡/周卡/月卡)的存在会鼓励玩家定期登录游戏。于是当然了,一旦用户形成了日常登录游戏的习惯,他们就有更大的可能成为长期玩家。

结束语

在这篇文章中,我们讨论了IAP的盈利模式趋势以及现代手游在游戏内为玩家制定的,日益复杂化的商品供应。玩家也得到了越来越多样化的游戏内商品内容,并且有了更多的付费方式可选。

如果能合理制定IAP的盈利模式,不仅能显著提高盈利,还能增加玩家的愉悦感(如果你是个“喜欢计划的人”,你会想要游戏提供的年卡/月卡/周卡礼包的)。

不过相应地这也将增加游戏设计和执行的工作量:设计者必须设计出游戏所提供的商品内容,然后他们还得在对的时间里把合适的商品推送给合适的玩家——你一定最不希望看到玩家在游戏的每一个阶段都要面对超大量可供选择购买的商品。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源。或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Mobile Gaming is Big Business

You’ve heard it before. Mobile games are now big business. But it’s true, and it’s worth mentioning once again: Mobile gaming, and free-to-play gaming more generally, is now a huge and highly competitive market. Consider, for example:

Mobile games are now a bigger market than either desktop or console games.

There are now 2.5 million apps in the appstores, and over 600 thousand games.

Middleware companies that help mobile games monetize are increasingly valuable and are being sold for billions of dollars.

The biggest mobile games make hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

What happens when you have a huge market of enthusiastic consumers, with an enormous number of companies competing for their business?

Well, for one thing product quality goes through the roof as companies compete for business. And we see this in mobile gaming – the games are generally awesome and they’re getting better all the time. The overall rate of improvement is astounding.

Another consequence is that there’s a huge trend towards commercial sophistication—as the market matures, figuring out how to reach consumers and how to get their business becomes a major focus point for companies.

In 2014 to 2016, for example, leading gaming companies became increasingly sophisticated (and increasingly automated) in how they marketing and user acquisition. For example, we saw:

Google Play start to support pre-registering for mobile games.

Mobile games increasingly advertising on television.

Advanced user targeting, such as Facebook custom audiences and retargeting are being used to make user acquisition and retention more effective.

Commercial Sophistication Increases

At Scientific Revenue, we see this trend towards commercial sophistication increasing, and extending far into the game itself. This is especially true for games that leverage in-app purchases for a significant percentage of their revenue.

To understand this a little better, think of the free-to-play model in a slightly different way: free-to-play really means that the point of sale is located inside the game (not at Amazon or Gamestop) and the game controls what happens at the point of sale.

The following major trends are all simple logical consequences of this point of view:

LiveOps as a Service. Companies such as Playfab are increasingly enabling special in-game behaviors, limited time events, behavioral incentives, and offers targeted at individual players or segments of players. Think of them as in-game concierge platforms, helping to enable better experiences but also targeting specials and offers for increased revenue.

Dynamic pricing services and revenue optimization services. Companies like Scientific Revenue leverage data and machine learning to tune and optimize monetization models and thereby increase revenue.

Revenue tuning and control services. Advertising and mediation layers have been around for a long-time, and have been leveraging predictive analytics and machine learning for targeting.

What’s new is the increasing sophistication around ad control – companies are now segmenting based on “likely to buy in-app purchases” and then making a decision about whether to show ads at all.

The Coming Wave: Different Offers and Types of Offers

Thinking of free-to-play as really being about the location of the point of sale is, it turns out, a very helpful way to think about monetization trends in mobile gaming. Mobile game studios are gradually coming to grips with their new role (running the checkout aisle), and are adopting best practices from retail as they do so.

The next wave in this trendline is offering increasingly differentiated products for in-app purchases. Five years ago, most IAP oriented games had some variation on the following items for sale:

One or two virtual currencies. Usually there was a “hard” currency (that players bought) and sometimes there was a “soft” or “earned” currency that players earned in game.

Some DLC or content packs

A few items related to gameplay that were sold for real-money. “Ad blockers” and “Coin Doublers” were the most common.

Some games were more commercially sophisticated, but the above list came close to defining generally accepted best practices.

Nowadays, most new games come with:

Two or more virtual currencies with different roles in the game.

Multiple points of sale, including a coin store, a splash-screen while the game is loading, and interstitial ads.

Special purpose purchase flows depending on game context (for example, a “more currency needed” flow that offers a simpler purchase experience and restricts the user to a subset of the available coin bundles).

Bundled merchandise and currency packs sold in real-money transactions.

Special offers carefully designed for segments of the population

For example, if you look at the most recently installed game on my phone (nWay’s Power Rangers: Legacy Wars), it has:

Two currencies: Power Crystals and Power Coins

An always-populated special on the main page, which has either characters (available for power coins or crystals) or bundled merchandise deals for real-money transactions.

A “Special Offers” tab in the coinstore, with evergreening specials that go away (and so have a special call to action)

“New player” offers that are only available for the first 24 hours.

And so on …

Figure 1. nWay’s Power Rangers: Legacy Wars is a well-designed example of current in-game merchandising trends.

Generally speaking, more things are for sale than in previous generations of games, there’s a greater variety of merchandise, and there’s more awareness of contextual offers and bundles.

(and, of course, managing this properly, presenting the right offers to the right players, requires a substantial amount of server-side machinery and expertise. It’s a good thing we’re entering the era of machine learning).

Annuities: A Different Type of Offer

Annuities are an increasingly popular, and important, type of highly segmented and user-specific offer that fits perfectly into this line of thinking.

An annuity is a purchase of currencies or goods that is offered at a steep discount and delivered over time (the “annuity payments”). The actual purchase is a lump sum, paid at the beginning of the annuity.

An annuity is just a sequence of payments that a person receives in exchange for an initial investment. Interest payments by a bank into a savings account are a common kind of annuity.

Insurance companies usually offer another type of annuity where you pay a large sum now (say $100,000), and then receive a guaranteed amount – say $5,000 a year – for the rest of your life.

Here, for example, is an annuity from Marvel Puzzle Quest.

Figure 2 The VIP Pack from Marvel Puzzle Quest is an Annuity

It delivers 1000 Iso-8 and 100 Hero Points every day for 28 days (so, 28,000 Iso-8, and 2,800 Hero Points, over the lifetime of the annuity)For comparison, the smallest Iso-8 bundle is for 1,200 units of Iso-8, and costs $1.99. So, the annuity represents an AMAZING deal, but one that delivers its value over time.

As you might guess, annuities tend to split the population between more impulsive players and those players who value the items being sold, but can wait to receive them (in exchange for a discounted price). In short, annuities appeal to “planners” who are affluent and have good impulse control (these people often become “grinders” otherwise due to their ability to suppress their impulsive buying decisions).

Note that annuities also have a very strong retention component. Much like daily login rewards, the presence of an annuity tends to encourage users to log in on a regular basis. And, of course, once the user is in the habit of playing daily, the user is much more likely to be a long-term player.

In Conclusion

In this article, we talked about IAP monetization trends, and about the increasing sophistication of the offers being made to players inside modern mobile games. Players are increasingly being offered a wider variety of options, and offered a wider variety of offer types, inside games.

Done properly, this increases monetization significantly while also increasing player happiness (if you’re a “planner”, you want to be offered an annuity).

But it also increases the amount of work involved in game design and implementation: someone has to design the offers, and then they need to be displayed to the right players at the right time — the last thing you want is to present every player with an overwhelming set of alternative purchases to make at every step of the game. (source:gamasutra.com


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