游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

长文分析:为什么“付费获胜”成为了一种成功的商业模式

发布时间:2018-12-07 08:45:06 Tags:,,

长文分析:为什么“付费获胜”成为了一种成功的商业模式

原作者:Nick Shively 译者:Vivian Xue

如果你去问MMO老玩家们他们退坑的原因都有哪些,他们的第一个回答很可能是“付费获胜”机制。你花了好几个星期、几个月甚至几年时间磨练一个角色,却被一个疯狂氪金的玩家击败,这感觉不怎么好受。然而,“付费获胜”这个概念并不是一夜之间诞生的。相反的,开发者们花了很长时间才逐渐摸索出最有效的盈利方式以及为玩家所接受的微交易系统。

许多玩家可能还记得微交易系统出现前的日子。在上个世纪90年代至2000年初,市面上大部分MMORPG的收费形式分为两种: 订阅制和买断制。玩家需要购买游戏的本体和/或每个月支付订阅费用;一些人认为这是MMO游戏的“黄金时代”。为了让消费者付费,开发商需要不断发布新鲜有趣的内容,因为玩家期待他们每个月花出去的钱能得到一定的回报。从另一方面来看,由于当时MMO游戏需要资金投入,有一定的门槛,玩家群体质量也相对较高。

然而,如果订阅和买断制真这么好,为什么大量MMORPG游戏要改用F2P模式呢?

大量开发商涌入市场

MMO游戏最大的模式转变之一发生在《魔兽世界》大热之后。除了各种表情包的诞生,《魔兽世界》对在线游戏世界产生了重大影响。在《魔兽世界》出现之前,MMORPG市场上的选择还是比较多的,但大部分比较小众的游戏,比如《无尽的任务》、《星球大战》、《魔剑》、《天堂》等。它们与《魔兽世界》的最大的区别在于是这些游戏面向的均不是大众玩家。

《魔兽世界》利用了暴雪庞大的玩家基础。即便你曾认为打《无尽的任务》很可笑,也会立刻觉得《魔兽世界》是一个很酷炫的游戏。暴雪从他们的《星际争霸》,《魔兽争霸》和《暗黑破坏神》系列中吸引了大量玩家,并且创造了一个玩家本就很喜爱的沉浸世界。最重要的是,他们通过大量营销来使游戏获得了全球的知名度。出于这些原因,以及一些其它的原因,《魔兽世界》成为了并且仍然是现存最流行的MMORPG。

Vainglory(from venturebeat)

Vainglory(from venturebeat)

几年后,大量其他开发者目睹了这一成功,包括《魔兽世界》疯狂的吸金能力,也想从中分一杯羹。 于是大量MMO游戏涌入市场,有些质量相当好,而有些就不怎么样了。我们见证了诸如《指环王Online》、《龙与地下城Online》、《永恒之塔》、《科南时代》和《先驱者》(Vanguard)等游戏的诞生。然而,少有游戏能与《魔兽世界》相抗衡,再说既然玩家的MMORPG需求已经得到了满足,他们也没必要跳坑了。

这种趋势导致了一系列后果。首先是大多数工作室停止为MMORPG游戏的设计和维护投入数亿美元。我们最终得到的是大量低质量的2D和3D MMORPG,比如《龙魂》、《巫师之怒》和《龙之谷》。这些并不一定都是非常糟糕的游戏,但它们肯定缺乏大预算游戏的“令人惊叹的因素”。

另一个不幸的后果是像《星球大战》和《先驱者》这样看似热门的游戏停服了。许多还存活在市面上的游戏也被迫转为F2P模式。不过当时F2P还没变成雷区。大多数时候,游戏只是利用收费墙屏蔽一些非付费玩家罢了。2001年发行的《江湖》(Runescape)就属于这种,许多失败的订阅制MMO游戏开始采取类似的模式。

当时MMORPG已处于十分不利的状况,但最糟糕的情况还未到来。在2012年左右,大量的网页游戏攻占了市场:《神曲》,《天使联盟》(游戏邦注League of Angels),《王者之路》(Lords Road)等等。它们基本上是一些自动挂机刷怪的游戏,并且根据玩家充值的金额数对他们进行奖励,而不是他们花费的时间或技能的高低。这些游戏实际上是成功的,至少在一段时间内,否则就不会有数百个这样的游戏和数千个服务器的存在。有人认为,中国市场对MMO游戏的兴趣推动了这一趋势,但如果这是唯一的原因,那么这些游戏就不会在欧洲或美国也十分普遍。

MMO手游的兴起

在同一时期,手机游戏呈现强劲的发展势头。除了《糖果苏打传奇》和《愤怒的小鸟》之外,MMORPG游戏(《混沌与秩序》)和卡牌收集游戏(《巴哈姆特之怒》)都获得了巨额的收入。在卡牌收集游戏中,玩家通过氪金可以获得巨大的优势。此外,在像《巴哈姆特之怒》这样的游戏中,企图赶超鲸鱼玩家几乎是不可能的;各类活动对消费金额最高的玩家进行奖励,并拉大了非付费玩家和付费玩家之间的差距。

我就不再详细讨论手游了,我的重点是F2P和付费获胜是手游中的常见商业模式。如果你观察F2P和买断制游戏,你会发现它们的收入和下载量有着惊人的差距。即便是一款售价极低(10美元以下)的游戏也无法与一款F2P相比。

例如,《使命召唤:黑色行动》(6.99美元)的下载量仅为10万,而《现代战争5》(F2P)是5000万。如果有5000万人愿意尝试F2P,却不愿意花少于10美元购买一款游戏,那么市场究竟在哪就很明显了。许多这些F2P游戏都是围绕花钱来快速升级或获得更强大的装备而设计的。

玩家是造成问题的部分原因

尽管有些人会把指责玩家视为受害者有罪论,但游戏玩家的行为确实直接影响了开发者的创作。为什么会有大量的F2P游戏?因为人们不想购买游戏或支付订阅费用。更糟糕的是,一些玩家理所当然地认为游戏应该是免费的、同时不应该偏向那些愿意花钱的人。如果越来越多的玩家愿意先购买再玩游戏,那么F2P游戏也就不会大行其道了。但事实却相反,人们一方面不愿意为游戏花钱,另一方面又抱怨着F2P游戏里的付费获胜机制。

游戏行业内存在一个争议性的观点:如果开发者创作出了更好的内容,玩家肯定会掏钱支持他们。以下是一个证明为什么这是个错误论断的例子:Elysium。60版本的《魔兽世界》不仅被认为是有史以来最优秀的MMORPG之一,而且Elysium上都是游戏的“硬核”玩家。典型的休闲(免费)MMO玩家可能甚至不知道Elysium是什么,而且就算他们试玩了也很可能不合胃口。

在写这篇文章时,Elysium服务器上有超过1万名活跃玩家。虽然这不是一个庞大的数量,但还是比市面上很多活跃的MMORPG游戏要多。如果向每个用户收取标准的14.99美元订阅费,每月总收入将接近15万美元。而靠每月150美元和310欧元,Elysium基本无法维持他们的网站和服务器的运营。目前,只有两台服务器获得了充足的资金,大部分来自单一支持者的捐赠。

当然,Elysium不收取任何费用,仅仅依靠捐款维持运营,但如果玩家愿意为他们喜爱的高质量内容付费,这些服务器又怎么会因为小小的财务问题而徘徊在停服的边缘呢?多年来人们一直在向暴雪寻求官方的60怀旧私服,如今终于出现了,但却没有人愿意花钱支持。

寻找鲸鱼玩家

虽然没有玩家愿意为内容付费是问题的主要原因,但那些氪金过度的玩家也是个问题。我不是在评判这些人消费方式(如果你有钱,尽情花吧),但是当钱可以购买近乎无限的力量并且破坏了其他玩家的体验时,它确实是一个问题。这些在游戏中花费数百或数千美元获得显著优势的玩家被称为“鲸鱼”或“氪金战士”。

虽然数据存在差异,但几乎所有数据都表明鲸鱼玩家是F2P游戏盈利的驱动力。 Swrve(2014)的一项研究报告称,50%的手游收入来自0.15%的玩家。一般来说,F2P游戏中只有2-5%的玩家会消费,并且消费金额呈大幅递增。

游戏公司很早就意识到了这一点,并研究如何开发专门针对这类玩家的游戏。我们在游戏里花钱变强时,我们的大脑中会产生一种化学反应,使我们感觉良好。没有底线的人,无论是在财务上还是心理上,会让自己一遍遍沉沦在这种感觉里,直到发现自己在几个月内在一款游戏中花费了数千元,尽管这款游戏可能对他们来说没什么意义。接着只需要让剩余的玩家感到足够的快乐,就能让游戏变成热闹的游乐场,供这些鲸鱼玩家任意踩踏。

从经济学角度来说,这种游戏设计方式绝对是合理的。假设一款手机游戏下载量为1000万,其中2%的用户愿意花20美元支持他们喜爱的游戏,然后0.1%的真正的鲸鱼玩家消费至少10,000美元,加起来大约是1.04亿美元的收入。即使你把鲸鱼所消费金额降低到1000美元,那么收入仍可达到1400万美元,这远远超过成本了。一般手游的制作成本在5万到2百万美元之间。

那么我们再把它与付费订阅游戏进行比较,付费订阅游戏的玩家数量远少于这个数。如果100万人为一个游戏支付60美元,每个月再支付15美元的订阅费用,总收入只有7500万美元,并且这个数字将在第一个月后大幅下降。此外,为了让游戏内容配得上费用,制作成本将远高于F2P网页游戏或手游。据估计,《魔兽世界》的开发成本为6300万美元,前四年的运营成本达到了2亿美元。

就算你不愿意花钱,付费获胜游戏的开发者们还是会继续加大对这块的重视。你不会花钱,但总有人会。

质量胜于一切

市场上的3A级MMORPG一直不多。多年来只有少数几款游戏达到了《无尽的任务》、《魔兽世界》或者《激战》的质量。目前,仍然有少数付费订阅和买断制游戏,它们并没有受到付费获胜机制的腐蚀。

事实上,北美和欧洲所有顶级的MMORPG游戏使用的都是同一种商业模式:《魔兽世界》《最终幻想14》《上古卷轴》《激战 2》和《黑色沙漠》。当然,这些游戏都受到购物商城概念的影响,但比起大部分游戏,它们的氪金力度已经小多了,提供的付费物品也通常是装饰品或扩充库存之类的东西。为了维持生计,即便是这些顶级游戏也不得不加入一定的付费项目,这展示出了付费获胜机制的强大影响力。

尽管当前市面上有上千款F2P游戏,最终能存活下来并且变成热门游戏的往往是那些质量高的游戏。一款下载量为1000万的F2P游戏不一定真的有这么多玩家。这些游戏的设计理念是在初期通过提供新奇的的内容来吸引大量玩家,然后一旦收入下滑游戏就会被放弃或者进入“维护模式”。一个强调付费获胜的MMO游戏往往几个月后就会过气。

如何阻止付费获胜趋势

付费获胜这个概念很可能永远不会从游戏行业中消失。只要有把钱放在首位的开发人员,以及想通过氪金赶超他人的玩家的存在,付费获胜会永远存在于MMO游戏中。

如果你想改变现状,你可以用时间和金钱投票。即使你一分钱也不花,参与付费获胜的游戏也将让这种商业模式继续运作下去。如果足够多的人行动起来,可能会造成一种行业风向的转变——走向玩家友好化。行业会根据消费者的需求和愿望转变,电子游戏行业也不例外。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

If you ask nearly any MMO veteran to list aspects of a game that turn them off, chances are that ‘pay-to-win’ is at the top of the list. It’s never a good feeling to put weeks, months, or years into a character only to be destroyed by another player simply because they dumped insane amounts of cash into the game. However, the concept of pay-to-win didn’t simply happen overnight. Instead, there was a gradual shift in how developers figured out how to make money the most efficient way and what players were willing to accept from microtransactions.

Many players will remember a time before microtransactions. During the 1990s and early 2000s, most MMORPGs came in two forms: pay-to-play and buy-to-play. Players would be required to buy a base game and/or pay for a monthly subscription; some would consider this the ‘Golden Age of MMOs.’ In order to stay in business, developers needed to release new, interesting content because players expected a certain value for their monthly fee. On the other side, the MMO playerbase was generally higher quality because of their financial investment and a barrier to entry.

However, if things were supposedly so good during the times of pay-to-play and buy-to-play, why have so many MMORPGs implemented the free-to-play business model?

Influx of Developers

One of the biggest paradigm shifts for MMO design happened after the success of World of Warcraft. Memes aside, World of Warcraft had a significant effect on the world of online gaming. Before World of Warcraft, there were still a decent amount of choices for MMORPGs but most were fairly niche with specific audiences in mind. There were games like EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, Shadowbane, and Lineage. The main difference is that none of these were branded for your typical gamer.

When World of Warcraft came along, it tapped into Blizzard Entertainment’s massive audience. Even if you laughed at the idea of playing EverQuest, World of Warcraft instantly seemed like the ‘cool’ game to play. Blizzard drew from a massive pool of players from its StarCraft, Warcraft and Diablo franchises, and it created an immersive game world that players already loved. On top of that, the company used tons of marketing to make sure the game was known worldwide. For those reasons, among many others, World of Warcraft became, and still is, the most popular MMORPG in existence.

After a few years, tons of other developers saw that success, including insane profits that World of Warcraft was generating, and attempted to get a piece of the action. There was a massive influx of MMOs; some were fairly good quality while others… not so much. We got games like Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Aion, Age of Conan and Vanguard. However, few games had the draw that World of Warcraft did, and there was no reason for players to jump ship if their MMORPG needs were already met.

This caused a few things to happen. The first is that most studios stopped dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into MMORPG design and upkeep. What we ended up getting was an influx of lower quality 2D and 3D MMORPGs, such as Last Chaos, Allods Online, and Dragon nest. These weren’t necessarily all terribly games, but they definitely lacked the ‘wow factor’ of the big budget releases.

Another unfortunate effect was the closure of seemingly popular games like Star Wars Galaxies and Vanguard. Many games that didn’t close were forced to shift to free-to-play in order to stay alive, or at least stay on life support. At this time, free-to-play wasn’t necessarily the red flag that it is now. Most of the time, free players were simply gated off from premium content. This was the case with RuneScape all the way back in 2001 and many MMOs that failed at pay-to-play attempted something similar.

Things were looking unfavorable for MMORPGs at this point in time, but the worst was definitely yet to come. Around 2012, there was an invasion of free-to-play browser games: Wartune, League of Angels, Lords Road, [insert anime title] online. These are the games that essentially play themselves and reward players more for how much money they invest, rather than time or skill. And these games are actually successful, at least for a limited amount of time, or there wouldn’t be hundreds of these games with thousands of servers out there. There’s the argument that the new interest in MMO gaming from China helped with this movement, but if that was the sole reason then these games wouldn’t be as prevalent in Europe or America.

Introduction of Mobile Gaming

During this same time period, mobile gaming was starting to pick up a lot of momentum. It wasn’t just Candy Crush or Angry birds, either. There were also MMORPGs (Order & Chaos Online) and CCGs (Rage of Bahamut) that were generating insane amounts of revenue. In the latter, players could gain a significant advantage simply by spending as much money as possible. Furthermore, there was almost no other way to catch up in games like Rage of Bahamut; the events rewarded players who spent the most money and created a major gap between free players and those who payed.

While I could go into an extreme amount of detail regarding mobile gaming, the main point to take away is that both free-to-play and pay-to-win are considered the norm on the platform. If you look at sales and downloads between free games and buy-to-play games the difference is staggering. Even games with a tiny price point (under $10) don’t come anywhere close to free-to-play titles.

For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies ($6.99) only has around 100,000 downloads compared with Modern Combat 5’s (free) 50 million. If 50 million people are willing to try a free game versus spending under $10, it’s obvious where the market is. And many of these free-to-play games are built around spending money to either level up quicker or obtain more powerful equipment.

Players are Part of the Problem

While some would correlate blaming players to victim shaming, there is a direct link between the actions of gamers and what developers produce. Why is there an abundance of free-to-play games? Because people don’t want to purchase a game or pay a subscription fee. Even worse, some players have a sense of entitlement where they feel games should be both free and not cater to those willing to spend money. If more players were willing to spend money upfront, there would be a smaller emphasis on free-to-play titles. Instead, people don’t pay for games and then complain about pay-to-win mechanics in free games.

There’s an argument floating around that if developers created better content then players would surely dip into their wallets to fund the game. Here’s an example of why that’s a false dichotomy: Elysium. Not only is vanilla World of Warcraft regarded as one of the best MMORPGs to ever exist, but Elysium’s playerbase is full of ‘hardcore’ gamers. Your typical casual(free) MMO player probably doesn’t even know what Elysium even is, and they’re not likely to stick around once they’ve tried it out.

As of writing this, there are more than 10,000 active players on Elysium’s servers. Although that’s not an exuberant amount of players, it’s more than many active MMORPGs currently on the market. If each user was paying the standard $14.99 subscription, it would total close to $150,000 per month. Elysium can barely keep its website and game servers running at $150 and €310 per month. Currently, only two servers have been fully funded and most of the donations came from a single backer.

Of course, Elysium doesn’t charge a fee and operates solely on donations, but if players were willing to pay for high-quality content that they love, shouldn’t these servers not be on the verge of shutting down due to a minuscule financial burden? People have been begging Blizzard for an official Vanilla server for years and yet one exists that no one wants to fund.

Hunting for Whales

While players not willing to pay for content is a major part of the problem, there is also an issue with those willing to spent too much. I’m not judging the way these people spend their money (if you’ve got it, spend it whatever way you like), but it does become a problem when money can buy near infinite power and degrades the experience for everyone else. These players, who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to gain a significant advantage, are called ‘whales’ or ‘wallet warriors.’

While the numbers vary, nearly all data suggests that whales are the driving force behind free-to-play monetization. A study by Swrve (2014) reported that 50 percent of mobile income comes from 0.15 percent of a game’s population. Generally, only 2-5 percent of a free-to-play game’s playerbase will ever make an in-app purchase and the amount spent scales drastically.

Game companies realized this a long time ago and learned how to develop games that specifically target this types of players. There’s a chemical reaction in our brains that makes us feel good for spending money and gaining instant power in a game. People without limitations, either financially or psychologically, will abuse this feeling over and over until they’ve spent thousands in a game they might not care about in a few months. The rest of the players in the game are made just happy enough so that it feels like a nice, populated playground for the whales to stomp around in.

Economically, it definitely makes sense to build games this way. Let’s say a mobile game has 10 million downloads and 2 percent are casual spenders that drop $20 to support a game they enjoy. Then there are the 0.1 percent who are true whales spending at least $10,000. That’s approximately $104 million in revenue. Even if you tone down the amount spent by whales to $1000 then that’s still $14 million for a game that didn’t cost nearly that to build; a typical mobile game costs $50k to $2 million to make.

Now compare that to a subscription based game, which is going to have far less users. If 1 million people paid $60 for a retail copy of a game and then $15 for a one-month subscription that’s only $75 million total, and that number will fall off drastically after the first month. Furthermore, in order to develop a full-priced game worth a subscription, the costs would be well higher than a free-to-play browser or mobile game. It’s estimated that World of Warcraft cost $63 million to develop and $200 million to maintain for the first four years.

Even if you’re not spending money, knowingly playing games with pay-to-win mechanics reinforces the drive for developers to keep building them. You don’t have to spend money because someone else will.

Quality Wins

There were never an abundance of AAA quality MMORPGs on the market. Over the years, there have only been a handful of games that reached the quality of EverQuest, World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars for their time. Currently, there are still quite a few subscription and buy-to-play games around that don’t suffer from pay-to-win mechanics.

In fact, all of the top performing MMORPGs in North America and Europe utilize one of those business models: World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, The Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, and Black Desert Online. Of course, each of these titles has also been influenced by the idea of cash shops, but it’s definitely not as outrageous as most and generally consists of things like cosmetic items or inventory expansion. In order to survive, even these top-tier titles have been required to become hybrids, which should demonstrate the power of pay-to-win or pay-for-convenience.

Despite the thousands of free-to-play games around, it’s the high quality ones that survive and become the most popular. Just because a free-to-play game has 10 million downloads doesn’t mean there are that many players. They’re designed to initially attract a larger number of players by offering something shiny and new, and then once revenue starts to decrease they’re abandoned or put on ‘maintenance mode.’ It’s rare for an MMO with an emphasis on pay-to-win to stay popular for more than a few months.

How to Stop P2W

In all likelihood, the concept of pay-to-win will never be erased from the gaming industry. As long as there are developers who value money above all else and players who will spend any amount to gain power over fellow players, pay-to-win will exist in MMOs.

If you want to make a difference, you can vote with your time and your wallet. Even if you don’t spend a cent, taking part in a pay-to-win economy allows that business model to keep working. If enough people made that conscious choice then there might be another industry shift that is more player friendly. Industries shift on the needs and wants of consumers, and videogames are no different.(source:MMOGAMES  )


上一篇:

下一篇: