在虚拟交易峰会伦敦站上，GameDuell联合创始人Michael Kalkowski向开发者和用户剖析了facebook排名前25款社交游戏共有的一些基本元素，而这些可以用以协助其他的开发者提高他们在社交游戏领域的虚拟成交额度。

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毕竟虚拟交易所创造的收益是社交游戏目前营收的主要途径，据Michael Kalkowski分析现在整体游戏的虚拟营收总值将高达750亿美元。

以下是Michael Kalkowski认为一款成功的社交游戏必须具备的10大基本元素。

10，用户日反现分红（类似赌场伎俩）

这个主要是用于对用户进行收益反现优惠，比如说Bejeweled Blitz的用户就能够在该款游戏中有一定的机率去赢取游戏每天向用户做的一些反现的优惠。这些伎俩是赌场中最常见的一些方式（有永远的输家，就没有永远的客户），当这些手法也进入社交游戏的时候可以对用户粘性带来更积极的影响。

9，游戏可爱因素

玩家最喜欢做的就是去营救或者和其他的朋友一起分享那些惹人怜爱的动物。

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8，预设值约定

比如说在6个小时内有娴熟技巧的工匠将会帮助你学会如何建造自己的宫殿。这些预先设置的游戏程序是目前社交游戏中已经用得相当普遍，特别是农场类的游戏对这些的依赖更为明显。

7，辅助竞争力

设置一些让用户可以在更高级别进行竞争的辅助性产品，并且这些辅助性的东西是可消耗的，会随着使用度耗尽。

6，能量

在游戏设置中，用户要么用时间去等待游戏进程，要么花费一定的金额购买额外的能量直接进入游戏的下一环节。Michael Kalkowski认为购买能力/道具的这一环节就相当于购买回自己的生命，这个进程对于用户来讲是充满吸引力的。

5，通关与奖励

现在通关的奖励五花八门，Michael Kalkowski认为一些功能性的奖励或许更能触动用户，比如mafia wars引进这些通关奖励和战利品的时候，日活跃用户开始扶摇直上。另外还有一些跨游戏之间的激励，比如在mafia wars游戏中通关可以获得另外一个游戏Frontierville的刀具等等。

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4，友邻互动

比如访问你朋友的Frontierville，并且做5个操作动作，你可以获得红心或者硬币之类的奖励。而且红心是你声望的标志，可能牵涉到你的红利等等方面。

3，组团行动

在Michael Kalkowski看来，最强大的病毒元素是玩家的组团行动，在餐馆游戏当中，你可以雇佣你的朋友到你的餐馆帮忙，这样可以节省你一大笔的费用。mafia wars就很明智地利用了这一点。

2，工艺构成

比如farmville要营造马厩的时候，单凭一个人说很难获得足够的构造元素的，这个时候就需要你的朋友们共同协作，所以当马厩概念被farmville推出的时候，他们5月份的日活跃用户整整提升了20%。

1，限量供应

这个是一个相当行之有效的推广策略，比如24小时限购，或者买二送一之类的。这些促销并不是用户寻常能够购买到的，一旦开发者过分推动商品的数量，可能玩家就会兴趣缺缺了。（本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明：游戏邦）

What virtual good earned $75 billion in revenue?  Michael Kalkowski, co-founder of GameDuell humorously opened with this question and went on to list the 10 essential features that improve monetization in social games.

So what virtual good was it?  Michael revealed that it was letters of indulgence, which 15th century Dominican friar sold these to sinners.   These goods were based on fear, and Michael explained that it was emotional triggering that caused people to get up and purchase these goods that gave them peace of mind.  Certainly, the religious connection made for an easier sales pitch.

So if you’re a game developer, without the ability or desire to terrify your users into buying virtual goods, what can you do?  Michael looked at the top 10 features that improve monetization and are featured in the top 25 social games that exist today.

10. Daily Bonuses

Bejeweled Blitz, for instance, has a daily bonus and a slot machine so that players can win a random amount each day.  This has been known by casino’s forever, and social games are using it to great advantage.  Michael shoed a great chart showing how PopCap fought off a downward slope simply through daily bonuses.

9. Cuteness

People love rescuing and sharing cute animals.  GameDuell doubled the number of feed entries from their game by introducing unlockable cute fuzzy animals.

8. Appointments

”In 6 hours a very skilled artisan will show up in your city to help you build a Shrine.”  These kinds of scheduled gameplay moments are rampant in games, and of course cause users to come back regularly.  Farm games rely heavily on this mechanism.  Appointment plus the risk of losing something is powerful to people.

7. Boosts

Before play sessions, you can buy boosts to help you compete at the highest possible level.  They should be consumable and deplete over time.

6. Energy

This refers to any scarce resource that limits how much a player can do in a given play session.  Players can wait for a refill or buy a new amount of energy to continue playing.  Michael explained that it’s like buying a part of your life back, which is one of the most attractive things to human beings.

5.  Achievements & Quests

There are all kinds of rewards for quests and achieving certain levels, but Michael emphasized that functional rewards work best and excite users.  His example was Mafia Wars, and when it introduced achievements and loot, the number of Daily Active Users increased steadily for a few months.

Michael also hinted at cross-app questing, something which Zynga has been doing more lately.  Complete Mafia Wars quests and get Frontierville knives, for instance.

4. Neighbour Interactions

Visit your friends and do 5 actions in FrontierVille, and you get XP, Coins and Hearts.  Hearts determines your ‘reputation’, which determines how much bonus you and your friends get for continuing to help.  It’s the evolution of a “multidimensional reinforcing engagement viral loop”, according to Michael.  This is true, and I see it as the early stage of social evolution.

3. Crew

The “strongest viral element” that Michael observed was groups of friends.  In the restaurant games, you can hire your friends to your restaurant and it saves you money as well as gives them bonuses.  It also has that social advantage of just seeing your friends work.

Mafia Wars uses crews wisely, as every friend you bring into your crew confers you with another advantage.

2. Crafting

The horse stable in FarmVille requires a series of different elements to create.  You can’t get all the items yourself, so you have to send feed posts to ask friends for help.  When FarmVille introduced the horse stable, their Daily Active Users increased by 20% in March of 2010.

1. Limited Offers

This is all about merchandising and smart marketing, and an easy way to introduce this is to put special offers directly into your payment flow.  “24 hour sales”, “Buy now and get 2 for 1” and other sales tactics can increase revenue by 20%.

The other method is to create limited items that are limited in time (on Holidays) or limited in quantity (only 500 items in the world).  This makes users that don’t usually buy, buy.  You can “literally see the bumps in your revenue charts.”  Problem is that they must be limited, and if you over extend you lose their power.（source：social times）