历时四年：Jam City开发者谈三消王牌Cookie Jam的发展历程

原作者：Craig Chapple 译者：Willow Wu

人们常说，在F2P的世界中发行游戏不是终点，而是起点。

它们不是普通商店架子上的产品，客人给钱后产品就脱手了。它们是一种服务，需要进行长期的运营维护、升级，通常要耗费好几年的时间。

PocketGamer.biz一直以来都热衷于研究新鲜热门游戏的开发过程，但是开发人员对于那些发行好几年的游戏是如何处理的呢？

为了寻找答案，这场访谈将会与相关的开发者讨论他们在运营成熟游戏方面的经验。

在本篇中，我们会和Jam City创意开发部门的负责人Shane Nakamura谈谈他们色彩缤纷的三消王牌手游《碎碎曲奇》（Cookie Jam）。

2014年，《碎碎曲奇》在移动平台发行，目前在全球范围内已累积了1.1亿下载量，成为了美国手游的旗舰产品。游戏的成功也促使了续作《碎碎曲奇大爆炸》（Cookie Jam Blast）的诞生。

PocketGamer.biz: 《碎碎曲奇》已经四岁了，从发行到现在走向成熟，你是如何看待这款产品的？

Shane Nakamura: 回顾从发行到现在的经历，我得说这一路上既有胜利也有挑战。

游戏发行后不久，各方面的数据都呈快速增长状态，持续了好几周。市场发展空间大、竞争少、用户获取成本低，任何优化、改进似乎都能引起玩家的热烈反响。

但是随着时间的推移，要实现增长变得越来越难了。游戏市场的改变是多方面的，所以我们想出不同的办法来提高游戏的市场表现力。

但即使是在今天，《碎碎曲奇》仍然在增长，创造新的里程碑。

《碎碎曲奇》目前的运营团队有多少人？

现在大概有30名开发者。

在你们看来，客户支持和更新有多重要？之前你们在这方面是怎么做的？

客户支持对我们来说是非常重要的。我们实时监控着客户支持系统，并且非常严肃地对待这些问题——我们有一位专门的客服工程师，他的首要任务就是根据客户的反馈来优化游戏。

玩家的支持需求能够反映出游戏的健康状况，而且也会直接影响留存率。

你采取了哪些措施来确保《碎碎曲奇》能在发行数年后依然拥有庞大、活跃的玩家基础？

上一个问题我就讲到了客户支持的重要性，还有一些处理问题的方法。如果《碎碎曲奇》在交互上出现了问题，游戏稳定性变差，那么玩家就不会想继续玩下去了，留存率也会随之下降。

Cookie Jam（from pocketgamer.biz）

留存率就是《碎碎曲奇》的北极星，它是我们制定决策的重要参照指标。举个例子吧，如果我们设计了一种新的游戏特色，在收益方面效果绝佳，但是对留存率并没有任何帮助，那我们就会进行调整。没有高而稳定的留存率，你得到的收益也只是短期的。

《碎碎曲奇》能获得持续稳定的高收入你认为要归功于什么？你们是如何维持的？

首先，我们有一群才华横溢的团队成员，他们有非常丰富的背景经验。

就如人们所说的那样，我认为把对的人放在对的位置是游戏成功的重要原因之一。

我们做事是百分百投入的——不管是创造新的游戏特色还是处理技术负债问题，还要谨慎规划好产品路线图。

有什么KPI是可以分享的吗？比如下载量、日活跃用户数或留存率？

《碎碎曲奇》的下载量已经超过1.1亿了。

鉴于玩家的期待并没有特别大的变化，他们还是喜欢类似的游戏体验，再加上续作《碎碎曲奇大爆炸》的出现，你觉得对这会对你们的创意发挥有什么影响吗？

这问题提得好。关于《碎碎曲奇》的创作自由度，比如要进行关键内容更改或者是引入新的游戏特色时，我们会多加考虑，从战略的角度去思考。因为这个IP已经是一个“老字号”了。

我们之前稍微改变了下用户界面的按钮颜色，马上就有玩家给了低分、出现了负面评论。对我们其中的一些人来说改变不是那么容易的事。

而《碎碎曲奇大爆炸》对我们来说就是一个尝试玩法创新的好机会，我们不敢拿《碎碎曲奇》来冒险。

我们在开发过程中面临的最大挑战就是产品差异化。以《碎碎曲奇》为基础当然是有很多好处，但是你如果不能清楚地表现出这两个游戏的区别那也会引来麻烦。

要考虑的事情非常多，但如果我能有机会重来一遍的话，我肯定还会加入更多改变。我的意思并不是说《碎碎曲奇大爆炸》没有非常成功，而是我们从开发过程中学到了很多。

你们学到了什么？你们现在仍可以从《碎碎曲奇》上学到新知识吗？有得到什么后见之明吗？

手游开发是非常多面化的，而且所有东西都在快速发展，一天下来你没有收获那是不可能的。

在Jam City,我们对于游戏内容的取舍都是从分析角度进行测试、评估的。这就意味着作为一个游戏开发者，我们可以把自己的设想带入到开发过程中，通过分析和测试来验证它们。

其实这是《碎碎曲奇》开发过程中我最喜欢的环节之一，通过数据我们可以了解到很多事情，进一步研究玩家动机。

如果我能带着迄今为止学到的经验回到四年前，那我真的想象不出由此获得的成功规模将会有多可怕。了解玩家行为，发行有针对性的游戏特色和内容，这样才能得到最好的效果。

最后一个问题，《碎碎曲奇》的开发经历有没有让你对公司有更深的认识？或者是让现在的工作更加得心应手？

这是毫无疑问的。我们现在一边在做新项目一边运营着老游戏，我们想把之前学到的经验和A/B测试结果进行全面应用，不仅仅是用于我们这个团队，还要扩散到整个公司。

Jam City无疑是我有幸加入过的最具合作精神的公司。这里的文化确实有助于信息的共享、高效合作，这也是Jam City成功以及实现持续增长的直接原因。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

It’s often said in the world of free-to-play development that launching a game is the beginning, not the end.

These aren’t boxed products released onto shop shelves, never to be worked on again. These are games-as-a-service that require constant operation and updating, often over a period of several years.

PocketGamer.biz has long been investigating the Making Of notable games soon after their launch, but what happens long after a game is released?

In an attempt to find out, this regular feature will talk to the developers behind maturing live games about their experience so far. You can read all previous entries here.

In this entry we discuss the original colourful hit match-three mobile game Cookie Jam with Jam City GM and VP of creative development Shane Nakamura.

The title was first launched on mobile in 2014 and since then has amassed 110 million downloads worldwide, making it the US publisher’s flagship title. The title’s success led to a sequel in the shape of Cookie Jam Blast.

PocketGamer.biz: With Cookie Jam now more than four years old, how do you reflect on its performance – from launch to the mature title it is now?

Shane Nakamura: If I look back at the performance and growth of the game from launch to now, it’s been a really exciting journey filled with wins and challenges.

Shortly after the launch of the game, we saw pretty rapid growth week over week. There was less saturation, less competition, cheaper UA, and any improvement to the game seemed to yield big wins.

Over time, achieving growth in the game has become more challenging. The marketplace has changed in many ways, causing us to take different approaches and focus on new ways to improve the game’s performance.

Even today, four years later, Cookie Jam is growing and reaching new performance milestones.

How big is the team currently handling live ops on Cookie Jam?

Our current Cookie Jam team is about 30 developers.

How important do you consider customer support and updates to be? What has been your approach to this?

Customer Support (CS) is super important to us. We monitor our CS ticket count in real-time and address the issues in a serious way; serious in the sense that we have a designated CS engineer whose main priority is to make improvements to the game through addressing CS tickets.

A game’s CS ticket count is a good reflection of its health and can directly affect retention metrics.

What steps have you taken to ensure that Cookie Jam maintains a sizeable and active player base all this time after its launch?

In the last question, we touched on the importance of CS and the measures we take to address issues. If Cookie Jam has UX problems and the code is unstable, we are going to lose players and our retention will drop.

Retention is Cookie Jam’s North-star, it’s the key metric we filter our decision through. For example, if we develop a new feature and it performs great from a monetary standpoint but negatively impacts retention, we make changes to the feature. Without strong retention, you’re limited to the short-term gains.

To what do you attribute Cookie Jam’s consistently impressive grossing performance and how do you sustain it?

I’d say, first of all, we’ve got a really smart and talented team over here with experience stemming from a wide range of backgrounds.

With that said, I think having the right people in the right places has been a large factor in the success of the game.

We are extremely focused in all that we do – be it creating an exciting new feature or addressing things like tech debt – and take care to prioritise our production roadmap appropriately.

Any KPIs such as downloads, DAU or retention you’re willing to share?

Over 110 million Downloads for Cookie Jam.

With player expectations for somewhat of a similar experience they’ve had over the past four years, and the expansion of the IP with Cookie Jam Blast, does that have an impact on how creative you can be with this particular title?

Great Question. When it comes to taking creative liberties with Cookie Jam, we have to be a bit more thoughtful and strategic when introducing big changes or new features because the IP is so established.

We’ve even received negative reviews and angry player comments after slightly changing the colour of our user interface buttons. Change is hard for some of us!

As far as Cookie Jam Blast goes, it’s been a great opportunity for us to innovate and make some big changes to gameplay that would be very risky in the original Cookie Jam.

One of the biggest challenges we’ve had in the development of Cookie Jam Blast is product differentiation. Basing the game off of our existing Cookie Jam IP has a lot of positive benefits, but there are also downsides if you can’t clearly message to the player how the games are different.

There are so many things to take into account and if I had the opportunity to do it again, I would make some changes for sure. Not to say that Cookie Jam Blast hasn’t also been extremely successful for the company, but we’ve learned so much in the process.

What lessons have you learned/are you still learning from Cookie Jam? Is there anything about the game that, in hindsight, you’d now handle differently?

Mobile game development is so multifaceted and everything moves at such a fast pace, I feel it’s impossible to not learn something every day.

At Jam City, everything we put in or take out of the game is tested and measured from an analytics perspective. This means as games developers, we’re always going to bring our own assumptions to the process of developing a feature, and through analytics and testing, we can validate those assumptions.

It’s actually one of my favourite parts of developing for Cookie Jam, because we learn so much looking at the data and dive deeper into player motivations.

If I could go back four years with the knowledge I have today, I can’t even imagine the level of success we’d have. Understanding our players’ behaviour and releasing specific features and content have made the most measurable impacts.

Finally, how has your experience with Cookie Jam informed where you are/what you’re working on now?

Absolutely, without a doubt, it has. We are currently working on new projects along with running our live games and we want to make sure we’re applying all our previous learnings and A/B test results across the board; not just within the walls of our studio but throughout the entire company.

Jam City is hands down the most collaborative company that I’ve ever had the privilege to work at. The culture here really promotes information sharing and collaboration and I attribute a lot of Jam City’s success and growth directly to this.（source：pocket gamer ）