据Venturebeat报道，手机社交游戏平台OpenFeint日前与Adknowledge联合推出一项新的应用推广服务平台OFX 2.0，支持开发商对采取了安装游戏等操作行为的用户提供奖励，进一步推广游戏，让手机游戏实现更大的收益。

尽管这并不是最新的做法，但也确实给游戏应用开发商们提供了99美分付费下载应用之外的其他创收选项。游戏邦获悉，如果开发商创建了一款投放OpenFeint平台的手机社交游戏，那么OpenFeint软件就会自动追踪用户免费玩游戏的操作过程，或者用户开始免费玩游戏的起点。当用户闯过游戏中一定的关卡时，OpenFeint就会向其提供一个选项，让该用户付费以加速游戏进程。

当然，用户可以付费继续玩游戏，也可以选择另一条途径，那就是Adknowledge提供的广告赞助选项——如果用户按要求注册成为Netflix的会员，或者安装了该服务指定的一款应用，那么他们就可以免费获得游戏虚拟货币，否则就只能自己掏钱购买。

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据游戏邦了解，这种服务选项被称为“按安装奖励”（pay-per-install）模式，OpenFeint平台的游戏开发商和发行商可采用这种服务作为创收渠道。开发商可以使用该渠道推动游戏下载量，比如在另一款游戏中进行广告交叉推广，为下载此游戏的玩家提供那款游戏的免费虚拟货币，这样玩家就可以使用这些虚拟货币购买所需的游戏道具。OpenFeint将针对这种服务抽取一部分提成，开发商也可以通过这条新途径获取更大收益。

Tapjoy这家手机应用推广公司不久前也创建了一个名为“按操作奖励”（pay-per-action）的服务平台，它的运营理念更为领先，采用了移动分析公司Apsalar的追踪工具，考察玩家在游戏中的行动，要求玩家执行一定的操作步骤，然后对他们提供奖励，这种方式更有助于增加游戏的黏性。Flurry公司也有此类的服务，它通过旗下的AppCircle应用推荐引擎，向用户推荐相应游戏，用户如果下载安装了该游戏，Flurry就会从游戏营收中抽取一部分服务费用。

Adknowledge总经理Chris Smutny表示，“手机平台将是游戏开发商争夺玩家的下一个战场，Facebook平台上盛行的免费模式将在手机领域取得重要突破。”

目前使用OpenFeint平台软件开发工具包的游戏开发商已超过4800家，他们的游戏玩家规模已经突破了6600万人。据称将首先采用OFX 2.0这个平台新服务的公司是社交游戏开发商CrowdStar，该公司与OpenFeint一样均由YouWeb资助成立。OFX 2.0平台将于3月7日正式上线。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

OpenFeint and Adknowledge open up a new way to make money from mobile games

The days when game developers could only get 99 cents for a mobile game are fast disappearing. Now they’re figuring out new ways to make money. OpenFeint and Adknowledge are launching a new platform today called OFX 2.0 which rewards players for taking certain actions like installing a game.

It isn’t a new idea, but it certainly shows that game app makers won’t be hurting for ways to monetize mobile games. It is one more way that the mobile gaming market could take off and become as lucrative as the multibillion-dollar social gaming market on social networks.

This is how it works. Developers create their games with the OpenFeint social mobile games platform. The OpenFeint software carefully tracks how far a user gets into a free-to-play game, or one where a user can start playing for free. When the gamer crosses a certain threshhold, OpenFeint offers an option for the gamer to pay in order to make further progress. The user can pay, or they can pursue a different path.

That’s where Adknowledge comes it with its offers, or alternative payment options which are really special ads. The player can receive free virtual currency — which the player would otherwise buy with real money — in exchange for doing something like signing up for Netflix or installing an app. The latter is called “pay-per-install” distribution, and it will now be offered as a standard monetization path for the game developers and publishers who use OpenFeint.

Game developers can use pay-per-install distribution to boost the sales of their own games. They can, for instance, put an ad into another game that rewards those players with virtual currency if they install the game developers’ app. The game player uses the virtual currency reward to buy goods in a game that they would otherwise have to spend real money on. OpenFeint keeps a slice of the revenue for itself. But developers wind up with a new way to make money.

Rival mobile distribution firm Tapjoy has also created what it calls a “pay-per-action” monetization platform, which goes a  step further. That system uses analytics from Apsalar to figure out how far a gamer gets into a game. It then gives them rewards for being more engaged in a game. Flurry also has a variation on the same business with its AppCircle app recommendation engine, which recommends games to players and then gets a cut of the business if the user installs the game.

“Mobile is the new frontier for game developers looking to reach the next wave of gamers,” said Chris Smutny, general manager for Adknowledge. “The free-to-play phenomenon that became popular on Facebook is about to explode on mobile.”

OpenFeint has more than 4,800 developers using its software development kit and those developers have more than 66 million game players. One developer that will use the new OFX 2.0 platform is CrowdStar, a sister company of OpenFeint’s (both are funded by YouWeb). The OFX 2.0 platform will be available on March 7.（source:venturebeat）