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

广告赞助效果明显,中国社交游戏不缺创意

发布时间:2011-01-20 13:59:59 Tags:,,,,

有些人认为中国游戏(或者其他中国产品)缺乏创意,但不得不承认,中国游戏产业至少在运营模式上极富创造性。

中国游戏产业的营收模式并非西方同行普遍采用的零售方式,那么他们的对策是什么呢?微交易模式、病毒式游戏设置、令人上瘾的游戏心理——早在欧美MMO游戏将免费模式当成救命稻草之前,他们的在线游戏就已经广泛推行这种战术,他们的社交游戏营收策略甚至比Zynga还要超前。

在社交游戏这一领域,中国同行采用的方式可能和西方大相庭径,他们设计了极富传染性的游戏玩法(这个可以想象一下《FarmVille》游戏玩家每时每刻都在担心自家菜园失守的情形),植入了大量的嵌入式广告,建立了相对完善的用户隐私条款(可是Facebook会设置这种让用户获知谁访问了自己页面的功能吗?)

开心农场

开心农场

游戏邦通过Fast Company整理出了关于中国游戏市场营销的一些案例:

最有创意、最能聚集人气、最能吸金的莫过于中国社交游戏,其中最为典型的当属《开心农场》,该游戏是五分钟公司在2008年针对人人网开发的第三方应用。后来Kaixin001所推出的《开心花园》,甚至是Zynga一年后才登台亮相的《FarmVille》,都因这款游戏受益匪浅,获得不少灵感。据游戏邦了解,有四分之三的人人网用户都在玩《开心农场》,反观Facebook,玩《FarmVille》的用户比例还不到10%。

这类游戏的超高人气为开发商打开了一扇市场营销的大门。在2009年4月,乐事薯片对《开心农场》的用户展开了宣传攻势——而《FarmVille》却是在一年多之后才在游戏中植入了广告产品。人人网的广告营销产品经理Alex Miller表示,“我们让用户在游戏中种植乐事土豆,这种土豆品种更优良,它的个头更大,可以为用户创造更多利润,之后他们还可以建造乐事工厂。”他表示,之前仅有45%的玩家吃过乐事薯片,但游戏嵌入广告之后,尝过乐事薯片的用户比例上升到了65%。

《开心农场》和人人网这两者的战术都比Facebook和Zynga更具侵略性,据尼尔森调查显示,广告赞助已经成为中国社交网站的最大营收来源。Kaixin001平台的《开心花园》还鼓励玩家播种Lohas,榨出由中粮集团推出Lohas果汁饮料;除此之外,玩家还可以在游戏中抽奖赢取Lohas果汁。《开心餐馆》的玩家可以在自己的虚拟小饭店中张贴广告,以此赚取游戏虚拟货币;在虚拟小饭店酒足饭饱之后,他们还可以自然而然地掏出箭牌口香糖。

尽管西方同行对中国游戏存在不可避免的文化偏见,但从上述案例中我们可以看到,他们至少在了解用户需求这一点做得十分到位,同时又很擅长将这种服务转化成利润。而且这种操作反过来又可以为游戏本身加分,吸引更多的新用户,实现娱乐和运营的高度统一。相信这种创新理念也将逐渐贯穿到这个国家的娱乐、商业等其他领域中。总之,西方游戏的微交易模式或多或少都受到了亚洲同行的影响。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

China’s Social Games, Advertising, “Innovation”

Some argue that China has no creative chops in gaming (or anything else), but its hard not to acknowledge the fact that China’s industries, gaming especially, have at the very least innovated on business model.

We’re talking about an industry that had literally no way to monetize in a traditional Western retail framework. So what do they do? Microtransactions; viral gameplay; the psychology of addiction – this has been their approach with online games long before western MMOs considered going free-to-play a last-ditch option to save the ship, and this has been their approach with social games before Zynga made the industry blow its collective lid last year.

With social network games, it could be argued that China simply goes for what the West doesn’t have the stomach to do – in aggressive social gameplay (imagine watching your Farmville game 24/7 to make sure your neighbors aren’t actually STEALING your crops), in-game advertising, and in establishing privacy norms(what if allowing users to know who visited your Facebook page was an internally planned feature? Imagine if they monetized this feature!).

For example, from Fast Company:

The major innovations have come in social gaming, the biggest driver of traffic and revenue. The most popular game is Happy Farmer, a third-party app developed for Renren in 2008 by a firm called Five Minutes. This was the inspiration for Kaixin001′s Happy Garden — and for Zynga’s FarmVille, which debuted nearly a year after the Chinese versions. Three-quarters of Renren users have played Happy Farmer; by comparison, less than 10% of Facebook users play FarmVille.

Gaming’s immense popularity has opened up new channels for advertising. In April 2009, Lay’s potato chips launched its Happy Farmer campaign — more than a year before FarmVille had any product placement. “We let users grow Lay’s potatoes, which are bigger and beefier and create more profit for the user, and then we let them create a Lay’s factory,” says Alex Miller, advertising product manager at Renren. Before the campaign, he says, 45% of users surveyed had tasted Lay’s during the previous month. Within two months, that figure had jumped to 65%.

Both networks have been much more aggressive than Facebook and Zynga in sprinkling product placement throughout their games — and according to Nielsen, this is quickly becoming the biggest revenue source for China’s social networks. Players of Kaixin001′s Happy Garden can plant seeds and squeeze juice for Lohas, a soft drink made by COFCO, China’s biggest food manufacturer; they can also enter a lottery to win Lohas. And players of Happy Restaurant can earn virtual currency by hanging ads for companies on the walls of their virtual eateries. After meals, they can also hand out sticks of Wrigley’s gum.

Regardless of the inevitable cultural biases in assessments of creativity, these services are certainly innovating in finding and exploiting what their users want while turning a profit – and in turn will influence more and more the direction of discourse on individuality, entertainment, commercialism, and more in this country, and beyond. We in the West more or less adopted microtransactions from Asia. What’s next?(source:gamasutra)


上一篇:

下一篇: