本文原来源: www.gamesindustry.biz 译者游戏邦ciel chen

根据Newzoo公司调查，今年手游年收入比去年增长了19%达461亿美元。因此，如果你觉的现在做手游就能赚钱也无可厚非。那么为什么不干脆所有的开发者都去开手游赚钱就好了？

事实上，只有少数强大的发行商才能做出真正的手游大作。有一个令人吃惊的数据——应用商城收入中94%产出于排名前1%的发行商（像Supercell、Machine Zone以及King Digital这些发行商巨头）。这些数字显然会让大部分发行商心里不舒服，这引出了一个问题：“明明整体发行商在手游上投入的资金并没有增多，为什么还有那么多游戏没办法在这个领域里分得一杯羹？”

从F2P游戏中赚钱对大部分开发者来说向来都是一个屹立不倒的大难题。想尝试利用广告与IAP有效地平衡玩家体验与盈利需求之间的平衡是一个他们天天都在纠结抗争的问题。

其中一个游戏赚不了钱的主要原因是开发者在IAP定价上以及广告频率设定上的表现得不够自信。有太多的开发者只想他们的玩家能有更好的玩家体验，这样的话一方面来说确实是值得赞扬的，但是如果没有盈利，最后终究得让游戏为此做出一些变动。

醒醒吧，钱就在你眼前

开发者常常为自己创造的游戏变得充满广告和侵略性盈利机制而感到不太自然。他们由于沉迷于用户留存率的数值而在服务广告和IAP定价方面表现得过于谨慎。

尽管这对于玩家来说是有好处的，但如果只有2%的玩家会真正在IAP花钱，那你的游戏有如此多的用户留存率还不赚钱还有什么意义？

大部分F2P游戏都没有盈利

事实上，只有30%的F2P游戏能得到10c的日活跃用户平均收益（ARPDAU），或者1美元的用户生命周期价值（LTV）——这些数值是证明游戏能赚钱的指标。

要想能赚大钱，你首先得有一个好游戏——这是关键，不过如果你有了好游戏还没能赚钱，那是时候采取行动，认真考虑创造一些稳定的收入了。

接下来就是干货了

提高你的IAP定价

为了想要保证用户留存率，开发者常常自己的IAP价位定的特别低，然而在游戏中，价格和需求之间存在一种非弹性的关系。这个其实和容易就能相通——每个游戏都是一个垄断市场，因为这里不存在价格竞争。

一款成功的游戏就是要达到正确的平衡，如果你不够大胆，你的IAP策略就可能会失败。我们的数据表明，那些游戏收费两倍贵的游戏也能大概赚人家的两倍。正如上图你可以看到，当最低价格点增加时，中间值几乎不会改变，但ARPDAU实际上会大幅增加，而且价格点低于2美元的明显降低了游戏价值。

卖，卖，卖！

想让玩家进行一次购买行为是可以的，但是想要在IAP上取得成功来获取盈利是真的很困难。除非你可以刺激每个消费者在游戏生命周期中进行三次IAP支付。

根据DeltaDNA分析，第一笔交易平均价值为5.20美元。这一价格在第二笔交易会上涨至9.10美元，并将继续在第十笔交易上涨至23美元（如下图所示）：

iap number（from gamesindustry.biz）

为了实现这点，你的游戏得要有一个核心消费循环，这样无论你的玩家发展到什么程度都还需要进行再次消费。如果你的游戏构建来只能刺激单次IAP消费，这样十有八九是不够的。游戏利用消耗资源或机制来鼓励玩家收集或获取特定的物品，以使整个游戏盈利流程得以顺利进展。

你还需要至少有5%的消费者是“鲸鱼”（大R玩家）。鲸鱼（大R）就是那些每个月会在游戏上砸超过100美元的玩家。值得注意的是，只有大概16%的游戏能达到这种标准。

提供更多的广告

我们根据自己进行的“游戏内置广告研究”发现，很多开发者把广告看作是一种不得不接受的邪恶存在，然而，超过一半(52%)的开发者不确定他们是否采用了正确的广告策略，以达到他们在F2P游戏上的最高收入，然而仅有3%的开发者觉得自己的广告策略是“有效的”。

我们还了解到，98%的玩家不会在IAP上花钱，尽管玩完一个游戏小节后会有40%到50%的玩家弃游的现象很常见。就是这样的情况下，还有许多开发者仍然只在一个游戏小节中提供一个广告或更少的广告服务，这也是为什么去年广告收入只占游戏总营收的35%。

问题在于，很少有开发人员能够分析广告频率和IAP定价对玩家体验的影响。如果没有这些知识，他们会让恐惧感控制自己，并采取一种极端谨慎的方式，但这些担心是合理的吗?

去年，旧金山大学的一个团队使用了来自deltaDNA平台的匿名数据来研究广告频率和用户留存率之间的关系。研究发现，没有证据表明游戏第一节的广告密度对用户留存率有影响。

旧金山大学助理教授Nick Ross说：“没有证据表明在游戏第一小节中的广告密度会影响到玩家决定是否要继续玩游戏第二小节。”

事实上，deltaDNA Insight团队对平台数据的样本进行了分析，由此确定了广告对游戏的盈利能力的影响。根据下图可见，如果开发者没有把握好广告的分寸，没能合理地将之投入使用，他们会冒着侵蚀IAP支出和转换的风险。

小心谨慎并付不起账单

开发人员仍然面对着的一个巨大的盈利问题就是他们无法分析不同盈利因素对玩家体验的不同影响。现在自然的倾向是开发者谨慎而过于慷慨。但残酷的现实是，谨慎和慷慨并不能支付开发游戏的账单。

一款好的游戏可以有次等的盈利机制，但在次等的游戏中你是无法做出成功的盈利机制的。所以如果你的用户留存率的指标够高够厉害，你就可以在盈利机制的制定中更果断大胆些。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

According to research firm Newzoo, this year, mobile games revenues are set to surge by 19% year-on-year to $46.1 billion. Therefore, you’d be forgiven for thinking that gaming’s most lucrative segment was in rude health. So why isn’t every mobile games developer rolling in cash?

In reality, it’s only a handful of juggernaut publishers that are actually making the big bucks, as a staggering 94% of App Store revenue is generated by the top 1% of publishers, like Supercell, Machine Zone and King Digital.

These numbers clearly won’t make comfortable reading for the majority of publishers, which begs the question: “Why are so many games failing to stake a claim to their share of the pot, when there’s never been more money being spent on mobile games?”

“Trying to effectively balance the player experience with the need to monetize through ads and in-app purchases (IAP) is a daily struggle”

Making money from free-to-play games has always been a granite-tough business for many developers. Trying to effectively balance the player experience with the need to monetize through ads and in-app purchases (IAP) is a daily struggle.

One of the main reasons that games don’t make money is because developers just aren’t confident enough when it comes to IAP pricing and ad frequency. Too many developers just want their players to have a great player experience, which on one hand is commendable but if it isn’t paying the bills then something needs to change.

Wake up and smell the money

Developers have always felt uneasy about packing their beloved creations full of ads and intrusive monetization mechanics. Obsessed with retention, most developers tend to be overly cautious when it comes to serving ads and pricing IAPs.
While this might be good for the player, if only 2% of players actually spend money on IAPs, what’s the point of great retention figures if your game’s still not making money?
Most F2P games aren’t profitable

In fact, only 30% hit the 10c Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU), or $1 Lifetime Value (LTV) – a figure needed to start being close to making money.
To achieve strong monetization you first need a great game. That’s key, but if you’re still not making money, it’s time to step up to the plate and get serious about generating some solid revenue.

Are you sitting comfortably? Here’s how.

Increase the price of your IAPs

In a bid to preserve retention, developers often price their purchases too low, yet within a game, there is a very inelastic relationship between price and demand. It’s obvious when you think about it, each game is a monopoly, there’s no competition.

1

A successful game is all about striking the right balance and your IAP strategy can fail if you are not daring enough. Our data shows that games that charge twice as much, tend to make roughly twice as much money. As you can see in the chart above, median conversion hardly changes when the minimum price point is increased, but the ARPDAU actually increases dramatically, and price points lower than $2 are shown to devalue games significantly.
Sell, sell, sell!

Getting players to make a single purchase is good, but it’s actually very difficult to monetize successfully with IAP, unless you can inspire an average of three IAP payments in each spender’s lifetime.

For mobile games on deltaDNA, the first transaction on average is worth $5.20. This increases to $9.10 for the second and continues to increase all the way to $23 for the tenth transaction, as the chart below illustrates:

2

To achieve this, you need a game with a core spending loop where no matter how far the player has progressed, there will still become a need to spend again. If your game only builds to a single IAP payment, the chances are it won’t be enough. Games utilising depleting resources or mechanics, which inspire the user to collect or acquire specific items to enable progression, work well.

You also need to have a minimum of 5% of spenders being Whales. Whales are defined here as players who pay more than $100/month. It’s worth noting, that only 16% of games achieve all these measures.

Serve more ads

We know from our In-Game Advertising Study that developers see ads as a necessary evil, yet more than half (52%) feel unsure whether they are adopting the right ad strategy for their highest monetising F2P game, while only 3% describe their approach to advertising as ‘effective’.

We also know that 98% of players won’t spend on IAPs, while it’s also common for between 40% and 50% of players to leave a game after just one session. Yet many developers still only serve one ad or less per session, which is a reason why ad revenue only accounted for 35% of total game revenue last year.

The problem is that few developers have the technology to be able to analyze how ad frequency and IAP pricing impacts the player experience. Without this knowledge, they let fear take over and adopt an ultra-cautious approach, but are these fears justified?

“If ads aren’t properly measured and applied, they run the risk of cannibalising IAP expenditure and conversion”
Last year a team from the University of San Francisco used anonymized data from the deltaDNA platform to examine the relationship between ad frequency and retention. The study discovered that there was no evidence of first session ad density affecting retention.

Nick Ross, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco stated: “There is no evidence to suggest that the density of ads, shown by a game in the first session, affecting whether a player returns for a second session.”

In fact, the deltaDNA Insight Team took a look at a sample of platform data to determine the effectiveness of advertising on a game’s ability to monetize. As can be seen below, if ads aren’t properly measured and applied, they run the risk of cannibalising IAP expenditure and conversion.

3

Caution doesn’t pay the bills

The big monetization problem developers still face is their inability to analyze how different elements of monetization impact the player experience. The natural tendency is to be cautious and overly generous. But the harsh reality is that caution and generosity doesn’t pay the bills.

You can often have sub-standard monetization in a good game, but you can’t have successful monetization in a sub-standard game, so if your retention KPIs are strong you can afford to take an assertive approach with your monetization.（source：gamesindustry.biz ）