手游的成功之道（一）：F2P游戏设计

原作者：Will Freeman 译者：Willow Wu

本系列文章将会分享一些Unity用户的建议，这些用户同样也是成功手游产品的开发者。第一篇我们要从设计的基本概念入手，谈一谈F2P游戏要如何实现成功。

就算你不是手游专家，不了解最新的用户获取方法是什么，你也知道F2P游戏的世界很复杂。

从免费游戏到成功的免费游戏需要花费很多心血，还要涉及到一堆类似“重定位”、“广告招标网络”以及“每付费用户的有效成本”等等令人眼花缭乱的短语，同样也令人恐惧。

Pokemon Go(from news.qq)

但是你如果把游戏设定成免费也可以增加游戏的曝光率，有可能会为你带来上百万的潜在玩家。

如果你还在犹豫下一步该怎么走，可以继续往下看——本文提出了一些实用有效的建议来帮助开发者们提升免费游戏的成功几率，无论是游戏本身还是收益方面。

纵观那些榜单成绩优异、盈利可观的Unity F2P游戏，它们的创作团队对于如何才能让游戏获得收益有很多不同的看法，但是有一点是一致的——在你设计任何东西之前就要确定好这是个免费游戏，把F2P设定嵌入到游戏的最核心部分，还有最重要的就是你能做出一个好游戏。

当然，说起来容易做起来难。但是很多工作室都遵循这种方法在移动市场上获得了巨大成功，也能在一定程度上帮助失败的产品起死回生。

“你必须在所有开发工作开始之前就确定要不要做免费游戏，因为之后的所有东西都要以F2P为中心，”Pocket PlayLabs的合作创始人&CEO Jakob Lykkegaard说。他们的热门游戏《果汁方块》（Juice Cubes）是由Rovio团队发行的，收获了2500万的下载量以及相当可观的200万日活跃用户。

“在《果汁方块》之前，我们在Lost Cubes上犯了很大的错误，我们在开发中途想把付费游戏做成免费游戏，最后我们做出的是一个带有F2P特点的付费游戏，玩家完全不买账。”

F2P设计究竟应该是什么样的？在某些名利双收的游戏工作室看来，这就跟广大Unity用户的设计偏好有关。

Madfinger的合作创始人&CEO Marek Rabas说：“我们把精力集中在hardcore玩法上，但是依然保持高质量的画面。” 他们的产品《死亡扳机2》（Dead Trigger 2）目前在市场上表现极好，下载量已经超过8000万次。

在Rabas看来，F2P成功设计源于“出色的核心玩法、惊艳的环境画面、高质量的模型以及动作捕捉，这些都要围绕F2P机制构建。”

Mad Finger和《死亡扳机》IP传达出的信息就是如果传统游戏设计理念跟F2P机制适配，它仍然可以脱颖而出，在市场中占据自己的一席之位。人们对F2P模式有种误解,认为它们的成功必须依靠微型核心循环和类似轮盘赌这样考验运气的设计机制。的确,这些设计会有效果，但重点是只要你从第一天就开始思考如何才能将玩法和F2P结合到一起，思考要选择那种盈利模式，可以说无论是哪种类型的游戏都不会以失败告终。

盈利方式当然不是唯一的，在如今，限时付费机制依然有很多人用，除此之外还有游戏内广告、角色个性化IAP、app外交叉推广以及可解锁性内容可以利用。

但不管你采用哪种盈利方式，有一件事情必须明白：你不能故意刁难玩家让他们不得不花钱，这可能会对你的收益产生反效果。

除了惹恼玩家之外还有很多事情可以做。

Jelly Button的合作创始人&创意总监Moti Novo解释说：“我们尽量避免使用收费门槛（需要付费才能看到指定的内容），取而代之的是我们会设计一些场景，促使玩家自发地想要为游戏花钱，虽说他们不是非得要这样做。”尽管Jelly Button的成立时间并不长，但他们最近发行的Unity游戏《海岛冒险》已经达到了日活跃用户93万。

“我们希望付费玩家和非付费玩家能得到一样的游戏体验，在进阶方式上也不会有失公允，”Novo继续说，“我们相信赏心悦目的游戏环境和有趣的社交互动能够留住玩家，不管他们愿不愿意氪金。”

就如Jelly Button所示，没有花钱取胜（pay-to-win）或者是付费门槛设定的游戏也能获得成功。但事实上，对于这个以色列开发团队和许多同时代的人来说，情况恰恰相反。

类似地，如果你的免费游戏是依靠广告获得收益，那么关键就在于如何才能把它们自然地融入到设计中，不会让玩家产生厌烦情绪。

Magma Mobile的CEO Nicolas Sorel说：“我们的商业模式就是‘免费+广告’，”Magma Mobile把旗下的所有游戏都换成了Unity引擎，比如说大受欢迎的《汉堡》（Burger），达到了3.8亿次下载。“有时候我们会在游戏中加入一些IAP物品，但是主要还是靠广告盈利。在制作游戏的时候，我们尝试把这些广告投放在适合的地方、适合的时间。尽量达到平衡状态，避免让玩家反感、破坏他们的游戏体验。

“有一点我要说明，”Sorel继续说，“我们不用侵入性广告，而是用条幅广告（banners），比较不会打扰到玩家。当我们向玩家推荐IAP商品的时候，广告会自动移除。如果玩家通过IAP购买了东西，我们表达感谢的方式就是移除游戏广告。”

在免费游戏中，放置合适的广告能很好地发挥作用——就比如用Unity开发的手游《天天过马路》，当时仅有两人的游戏工作室Hipster Whale让它风靡全球。《天天过马路》在不强迫玩家观看广告的前提下，利用Unity的广告生态系统将广告植入到游戏中，并且内容都是推广其它游戏，这样对Hipster Whale和玩家都有好处。

就算你没有七位数的用户获取预算也可以投放广告，而且这跟工作室规模大小没有关系，广告的使用方式非常多。

Lonely Few的合作创始人&开发人员Rod Green说：“我们选择将《彩独》（Blendoku）设定为免费游戏，所有关卡都是不用花钱的，我们管这种叫‘无尽测验（unlimited trial）’。游戏包含广告，在开发的过程中我们也添加了一些可供购买的扩展内容。” Lonely Few是由两人组成的团队，他们的极简风格游戏受到了广大玩家的喜爱。

“对我们而言，最关键的一点就是让玩家可以付费移除广告。如果玩家想要购买一些额外的内容，我们会把这些额外的内容当作一款付费产品来看待。此外，游戏中不卖任何道具，因为我们觉得这种做法和‘无尽测验’的理念相悖。”

Lonely Few选择这种模式是因为他们知道自己没办法得到高额的营销预算，但他们的设计理念很独特，希望能从普通玩家群体中获得收益。

Green总结说:“如果《彩独》是付费游戏，那么在一开始就会导致我们损失很多玩家，”这就让我们回到了最初的建议——无论你是预算资金充足的巨头公司还是创意十足的雏鸟公司，免费游戏都可以为你开辟出一条路，吸引大批玩家涌入（其中还有付费用户）。

如果你处理得当，从第一天开始就把它融入到游戏设计中，免费设定可能就会成为移动产品成功的关键因素。

那些想要利用F2P机制让游戏吸引更多玩家、获得更多受益的开发者们就可以按照这个方法，而且不需要牺牲玩法或者是创意向F2P妥协。仔细思考什么样的盈利模式才是最适合你的产品，另外还要避免广告、IAP以及付费门槛的不恰当使用引起玩家反感，想要像某些Unity游戏那样挣大钱不是什么不可能的事。

当然，除此之外还有其它地方需要下功夫，本文仅仅只是系列文章的第一部分。如何才能做出一个成功的手游产品，让Unity用户给你一些历经实践考验的建议。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

In the first of a series of pieces sharing advice from Unity users that have that found success in the mobile space, we look at the basic concepts of designing for the free-to-play realm.

You don’t need to be an expert in the latest form of the user acquisition funnel to know that the world of free-to-play games is a complex one.

There exists a vast industry built around turning free games into successful ones, and a host of bewildering phrasing around the likes of retargeting, ad bidding networks and effective cost per paying user.

It can feel as intimidating as it can be bewildering, but making your game free can also serve as a gateway of discoverability, and potentially bring millions of customers to see your creation.

And for those unsure about the best way forward, fortunately there are some realistic, practical things you can do to give your free game the best chance of success, both critically and commercially.

Speak to the various studios that have seen their Unity-authored F2P games enjoy both healthy chart position and revenues, and while they all have a lot of different ideas about how to monetize, one concept is universal.

Make the decision to go with free before you design a single thing, build it into your game’s very core, and be sure that, above all else, you have a good playable game.

That is all easier said than done, of course, but it’s a lesson that has led to many studios meeting with remarkable mobile success, and brought some back from a point where games were not making anything like enough money.

“Free-to-play can only be decided on before you start any development, as it includes every single thing in the game that follows,” offers Jakob Lykkegaard, Co-Founder and CEO of Pocket PlayLabs, which saw its puzzle hit Juice Cubes picked up and published under Rovio’s own Rovio Stars banner, before it went on to secure over 25 million downloads and a still sizable 2 million daily active users.

“We had – before Juice Cubes – made a big mistake with Lost Cubes, as we tried to make a premium game free-to-play in the middle of the production,” continues a reassuringly frank Lykkegaard. “We ended up with a ‘free premium game’ that didn’t monetize at all.”

But what exactly is designing for free-to-play? For some of the most successful studios, it about the kind of design a number of Unity users will likely warm to.

“We concentrate on hardcore gameplay and our visual quality still remains top-notch,” says Marek Rabas, CEO and Co-Founder of Madfinger, which continues to enjoy much success with its Dead Trigger 2 title, now downloaded 80-million-plus times.

And according to Rabas, designing for F2P success stems from delivering “great core gameplay and visually stunning environments, high quality models, motion capture animation, all built around F2P mechanics.”

What Mad Finger and the Dead Trigger IP have shown is that, if paired with workable freemium mechanisms, traditional game design values and concepts can still make for a significant mobile success story. There’s a misconception that free-to-play success demands designing a game built from the likes of microscopic core loops and roulette-style spinners. Those concepts can work too, but the point is this; as long as you are thinking how to apply your gameplay to free from day one, and what monetization model you choose, almost any genre or form can thrive.

The monetization methods can vary wildly, of course, and today while pay wall timers continue to remain popular, in-game ads, character customization IAP, cross-promotion for external apps and the established unlockable content remain viable options.

But however you monetize your mobile game, one thing is clear; pestering your player to spend – or making obstacles to progressing for free too aggressive – is not the way forward, and can ultimately be financially counterproductive.

Yet there is much you can do without disgruntling your player base.

“We tried avoid using pay walls, but instead try to create scenarios where the player would want to spend money in our game, even though he doesn’t have to,” explains Moti Novo, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Jelly Button; a studio seeing its recent Unity-authored release Pirate Kings enjoy some 930,000 daily active users, despite the team being a relatively new entity.

“We wanted to make a place where payers and non-payers would have identical experiences and a balanced progression,” continues Novo. “We trusted that a beautiful environment, and a fun enough interaction with friends we would keep people involved in the game regardless of whether they want to pay or not.”

As Jelly Button demonstrates, you needn’t commit to pay-to-win and aggressive pay-walling to meet with success. In fact, for the Israeli team and many of their contemporaries, quite the opposite is true.

Similarly – the experts agree – if you are relying on ads for revenue in your free game, it’s about integrating them into the design if the game in a way that feels natural, and won’t aggravate the player.

“Our business model is ‘free plus ads’,” states Nicolas Sorel, CEO of Magma Mobile, which has turned to Unity for all of their games such as the wildly popular Burger, and enjoyed 380 million downloads across its catalogue. “Sometimes we implement some in-app purchases, but majority of our model is ads monetization. When we build a game, we try to put ads at a good place and at the right moment. We try to find the right balance not to annoy our users and so we don’t ruin their Magma Mobile experience.

“But I want to be clear,” continues a clearly passionate Sorel. “We avoid intrusive ads; we try to make a clean integration of banners that don’t annoy our users. When we integrate in-app purchase in a game to buy something, we automatically remove ads. If a user buys something in-app, our way of thanking the user is to remove advertising in the game.”

Well-placed ads can certainly work well in free games – as case in point being the Unity-authored hit Crossy Road, which made two-man studio Hipster Whale a global success story. Harnessing the Unity Ads ecosystem, Crossy Road integrated commercials into its gameplay without ever forcing them on players, and only ever promoted other games: something that worked for both Hipster Whale and its players.

Ads, it is clear, offer an option available to studios of every size, even if they don’t have a seven-figure user acquisition budget. And they can be used in myriad different ways.

“We chose to release Blendoku for free with the core of the game – so all levels are free,” offers Rod Green, Co-Founder and Developer of Lonely Few, a team of two that saw a mobile hit with their minimalist puzzler. “You could call it ‘unlimited trial’. It’s ad supported and […] we added purchasable expansions over the course of development.

“A key thing for us was to make any purchase remove ads. We figured if you want to pay for some extra content then we’ll treat it like it’s a premium paid product. We also don’t have any consumable purchases as we feel they don’t fit the ‘unlimited trial’ concept.”

Lonely Few selected the model as they didn’t expect to have access to a big marketing budget; they were developing a distinct concept and thus wanted to be able to capitalize on grassroots support.

“The initial paid barrier to entry would have seriously hindered Blendoku’s ability to be shared and enjoyed by so many people,” concludes Green, taking us back to the opening point. Whether you’re a big-budget powerhouse or a small, creatively bold start-up, free can offer a gateway to you’re game that can bring players – some of them paying – pouring in.

If you handle it right and design it into your game from day one, free can be an important part of making your game a mobile success story.

Those that want to harness the potential of free-to-play to make their creation reach more people – or make them more money – can design it into the game from the start, without sacrificing gameplay standards or ideas. Consider the monetization model that best matches your design, and avoid irritating your users with your ads, IAP or pay-walls, and matching the success of some of the most bankable Unity-authored projects is far from impossible.

There’s rather more to it than that, of course, which is why this is just the first in a series of blog posts looking at how to make your mobile game a success, with advice from Unity users that have done it themselves.（source：unity ）