原文作者：Matt Suckley 译者：Megan Shieh

欢迎回到In-App Purchase Inspector，在这里我们会以消费者的视角，定期测评一些F2P游戏。

每期文章，我们都会考虑游戏中IAP的诱因、压力、它们的感知价值、IAP带来的扩展内容还有整个游戏体验的评估。

最终目的就是看看这游戏究竟值不值得我们砸钱，不花钱的游戏体验是否也能让玩家感到满足。

这次就让我们来看看F2P手游——《疯狂出租车：亿万富翁》（暂译，游戏原名：Crazy Taxi: Gazillionaire）。

Crazy Taxi: Gazillionaire（from pocketgamer.biz）

世嘉和旗下的Demiruge工作室最近再次将曾经最受喜爱的DC轻游戏《疯狂出租车》搬到了移动设备上。

再现经典

世嘉显然看到了该系列在F2P移动领域的发展潜能。

此前推出过支持iOS和安卓系统的游戏《疯狂出租车：都市狂奔》，在这个以车道为基础的驾驶游戏中，世嘉选择了一条更传统的路线。该游戏于2014年1月份测试发行，这个名字中带有‘疯狂出租车’的移动轻游戏确实吸引了一些眼球。

尽管一开始要配合《疯狂出租车》如此纯粹的街机风格有些困难，它只不过是通过时不时地点击屏幕来收集虚拟钱币，但《亿万富翁》却带来了惊喜。

与原作不同，玩家在游戏中不是扮演出租车司机的角色。游戏场景设置在一个由的机器人出租车主导的城市，玩家扮演出租车公司的老板（运营商），升级他们的车队，并通过累积车费来雇佣新的司机。随着游戏的推进，玩家在游戏中将获得越来越多的司机。

尽管《亿万富翁》与经典的《疯狂出租车》系列游戏存在差异，但它保留了原作中深受用户喜爱的特色。

公平游戏

与所有的放置类游戏一样，《亿万富翁》是围绕着软货币的积累而建立起来的，而软货币反过来又被投入到升级中，以提高累积的效率，无限循环。

新作中的软货币和原作一样，都是美元。

游戏的主要场景是一个俯瞰城市的地图，代表乘客的图标会出现在玩家的视野中，当乘客被选中的时候，出租车公司老板就会发配一辆车来接送该乘客，将TA载到目的地。

每次运载得到的现金回报都会被累积到一起，而这些累积起来的钱会被用来升级车辆，以提高收费标准。

比较复杂的部分是招聘司机。与《皇室战争》中的Units（单位）一样,Driver Card（司机卡）可以使用副本进行升级，从而生产更高的车费。每张司机卡只能在一个特定的区域内使用。

通往亿万的道路

这些卡片通常是在车辆升级到一定程度的时候给出的奖励，但也可以通过Scratch Tickets来获得。就像现实生活中的彩票一样，每张彩票都提供6个随机奖励。

彩票偶尔也会被作为完成任务的奖励，或激励玩家观看广告的鼓励（稍后将详细介绍）。但是解锁A级彩票需要等待4个小时，而解锁S级的彩票需要等待8个小时。

跟《皇室战争》里的规则一样，一次只能解锁一张彩票；除非玩家愿意通过观看视频广告来减少一个小时的等待，或支付硬通货来完全绕过计时器。

钻石是游戏中的硬通货，价格从1.99美元（80个）到19.99美元（1,100个）不等。

这些钻石可以用来购买A级，S级和疯狂级彩票，售价分别为50，250，和750个钻石。钻石还可以用来购买即时现金或限时的Cash Doubler（现金翻倍器）。

通过观看广告来玩游戏

19.99美元与其他当代免费游戏IAP中的最高价格比起来，相对较低，这在很大程度上说明了该游戏对F2P货币化的态度。

游戏中的免费奖励非常多，也很大手笔，免费彩票、助推器、甚至钻石，都相对多很多。

与普遍的F2P不同，《亿万富翁》建立于大规模的视频广告整合之上，激励用户观看视频广告。

为了让视频广告成为核心回路的一部分，一些飞艇会周期性地飞过城市上空，点击它们以后，你会得到一些观看视频广告的回报，要么是现金，要么就是现金翻倍器、钻石、或彩票这类较大的奖励。

Crazy Taxi: Gazillionaire（from pocketgamer.biz）

其他方面，如果玩家在一段时间后回到游戏中，他们缺席期间生成的全部收获可以通过观看视频广告来进行翻倍。

这些回报足以保证广告视频的弹出不会有打扰的感觉；并且每个广告中都包含一个虚假的闪屏广告，以向世嘉往日的其他游戏致敬——从《战斧》到《兽王记》。

这种为建立货币化机制所付出的关心和关注，在游戏世界并不多见，它的影响力不容小觑。

面面俱到

放置类游戏的货币化机制似乎不太有倾略性,《疯狂出租车：亿万富翁》的设计也并未与此产生任何冲突。

免费钻石的资源很充裕，因此花钱的压力几乎不存在；观看视频广告被认为是一种值得花时间的投资，而不是降低游戏体验的苦差事。

再加上《疯狂出租车》系列一如既往充满活力的特色，即使是原作最铁杆的粉丝也不会排斥这个经典再造。

总结：一个既迷人又慷慨的轻游戏，它以实质性的奖励推动了广告视频的价值，使其超越IAP。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Welcome back to the In-App Purchase Inspector - our regular look at free-to-play games from the consumer’s perspective.

In each instalment, we consider the incentives or pressure applied to make in-app purchases, their perceived value, the expansion offered by IAPs and the overall value of the experience.

The end goal is to see whether the game makes a good enough case for us to part with our cash, or whether players are content – or engaged enough – to ‘freeload’.

This time we’re taking a look at Crazy Taxi Gazilionaire, Sega and Demiurge Studios’ free-to-play clicker revival of the madcap Dreamcast favourite.

All I Want

Sega clearly sees Crazy Taxi as a franchise with potential in the free-to-play mobile space.

Having previously gone down a more traditional route with lane-based driving game Crazy Taxi: City Rush in 2014, it certainly raised a few eyebrows when an idle clicker with the Crazy Taxi name was soft-launched in January.

But though it was initially difficult to reconcile Crazy Taxi’s arcade purity with a genre that involves little more than racking up virtual currency by occasionally tapping the screen, Gazillionairepleasantly surprises.

Rather than playing the role of the cabbie themselves, here the player is cast as the operator of a taxi firm in a city dominated by driverless robo-cabs, upgrading their fleet and hiring new drivers by racking up fares.

It’s certainly a different Crazy Taxi, but it retains the personality for which the original was so loved.

Fare game

Like in all idle games, Gazillionaire is built around the accumulation of soft currency, which is in turn ploughed into upgrades to make that accumulation more efficient, ad infinitum.

Here, as in the original, this currency is represented simply in dollars. Icons representing passengers appear on a top-down view of the city, which when tapped sends a car out to collect and deliver them to their destination.

Each of these adds cash to the kitty, which is spent on upgrading vehicles for higher fares.

More complex is the act of recruiting drivers. Acting like units in Clash Royale, driver cards can be upgraded using duplicates, thus enabling them to generate higher fares. Each can only be used in one specific region.

Road to Gazillion

These cards are often given as rewards for levelling up a vehicle to a certain point, but can also be earned through Scratch Tickets. Presented like a scratch card, each of these offer six random rewards.

They too are occasionally given as rewards for meeting objectives or as part of an incentivised ad offer – more on that later – but Class A Tickets take four hours to unlock and Class S Tickets take eight hours.

Like in Clash Royale, only one can be unlocked at a time, unless the player is willing to either watch video ads to reduce the wait by one hour or pay hard currency to circumvent the timer entirely.

Diamonds are the hard currency, with bundles ranging from $1.99 for 80 to $19.99 for 1,100.

These can be used to buy Class A, Class S and Crazy Tickets – 50, 250 and 750 Diamonds respectively – as well as either instant cash or a cash doubler for a fixed period.

View to play

$19.99 is rather low for an upper tier in a modern free-to-play game, and this says a lot about the game’s attitude to free-to-play monetisation.

Rewards are plentiful and generous, with the number of Tickets, boosts and even Diamonds you can receive for free relatively high.

Instead, the game builds around extensive incentivised video ad integration.

Making it part of the core loop, there are blimps that periodically fly over the city. When tapped, they either offer a cash reward up-front, or they offer something much larger – a cash doubler, Diamonds, or Tickets – in return for watching a video ad.

Elsewhere, when the player returns to the game after a period away, the entire haul that’s generated in their absence can be doubled with a video ad.

The rewards are more than sufficient to ensure that these ads never feel intrusive, and each is also preceded with a fake splash-screen ad that pays loving homage to other titles in Sega’s back catalogue – from Golden Fax to Altered Beets.

This is the kind of care and attention that’s so rarely paid to the establishment of monetisation mechanics within the game world, and it goes a long way.

Crazy Through

Idle games don’t tend to be aggressive with monetisation, and Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire doesn’t buck this trend at all.

Diamonds are abundant, pressure to spend is pretty much non-existent and video ads are made to feel like a worthwhile time investment rather than a chore that takes away from the experience.
Add to that a vibrant personality worthy of Crazy Taxi’s legacy, and it’s hard to imagine even the most die-hard of fans taking exception to this F2P reimagining.（Source: pocketgamer.biz ）