在去年3月份的SXSW大会上，社交游戏开发商Playdom首席执行官John Pleasants发表了关于社交游戏未来走向的主题演讲，分享了Facebook游戏的开发、营销成本，以及社交游戏的用户平均投入等不少有价值的信息。以下是游戏邦编译的John Pleasants部分演讲内容：

john pleasants

Facebook游戏运营成本

人们最关注的话题之一就是社交游戏的开发成本，据Pleasants所称，每款游戏的平均开发成本约为10万至30万美元，而游戏的市场营销预算则可能占据开发成本的50%以上。如果是一款叫好叫座的游戏，其市场营销预算就可能在几个月内飞升至数百万美元。

许多大型游戏公司仍以每安装获取成本来评估市场营销成效，这一领域的每安装获取成本约为50美分，但Pleasants认为也有一些公司出价可能高达2至3美元。

社交游戏的收益

虽然有许多游戏公司是通过广告赞助模式创造收益，但Playdom却选择以贩售道具为主的微交易模式盈利。该公司的微交易占据其总营收的90%（游戏邦注：这是2010年3月左右的数据），约有2%的用户为Playdom游戏虚拟商品付费。

Pleasants称如何每名付费用户每月可以为某款游戏消费20美元，并且能够持续3至6个月，那就可以说明这是一款成功的好游戏。我们还可以通过这组数据推算出该游戏的大体营收情况，以《FarmVille》为例，该游戏当时的DAU约为3000万，假如有60万用户每天都在为游戏虚拟商品买单，他们每月消费20美元，那么该游戏每月的收益就可能达到1200万美元，也就是一年1.5亿美元。

MySpace走向没落

Playdom刚投身社交游戏领域时的立足点是MySpace，但该公司现在有75%的流量来自Facebook，而MySpace的发展则每况愈下。不过Pleasants认为一个健康发展的MySpace平台更有益于所有的游戏开发商。

Playdom在2010年3月左右共有350名成员，其规模仅是Zynga的三分之一，而MAU而是难敌Zynga游戏，但该公司凭借3000万以上的MAU，以及2%的付费用户，已足以在社交游戏领域占据重要的席位。

市场竞争加剧

Pleasants强调的另一点是，社交游戏领域竞争激烈，市场已经趋近饱和，每天都有大量新游戏在Facebook露面，所以新晋开发商很难在此找到立锥之地，唯一的出路就是购买更多的Facebook广告来提高曝光率打响知名度。

由于购买Facebook广告已经成为社交游戏项目采纳的运营模式之一，所有不少人推测广告业务已成Facebook的重要营收来源。据称Zynga已是Facebook平台最大的广告主，导致Facebook平台开始呈现2001年初互联网创业潮的迹象。

社交游戏正繁荣发展

从旧金山的GDC大会中就可以看出，游戏领域的专家和权威都已开始关注社交游戏，随着Facebook主流社交游戏平台地位的确立，这一市场的竞争形势将日趋严峻，游戏开发成本也将持续攀升。正如Pleasants所言，大家现在还处于社交游戏的第一阶段，这个领域的成熟发展尚未到来。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Economics Of Facebook Games

By nickoneill

Last week at SXSW, John Pleasants, CEO of Playdom, spoke about “The Future Of Social Gaming”, but the greatest takeaway was the current economics of Facebook Games. If you are looking to get into the business or are already a player in the space, there were a number of important facts disclosed by Pleasants. What’s clear is that the business is a smaller version of the movie industry with the difference being that games can be improved as users interact with them.

The Cost Of Facebook Games

One of the most interesting statistics disclosed by John Pleasants was the cost of developing games. According to Pleasants, the average game costs between $100,000 and $300,000 to produce. When asked about the total cost of marketing the game, he stated that it wasn’t included and that the marketing budget is often upwards of 50 percent of the cost of developing the game. For games that become hits, marketing budgets can skyrocket into the millions as the game grows over months.

So with such a large marketing budget, how much does it cost to drive users? Right now large gaming companies continue to measure everything on a cost per install basis. The average cost per install is around 50 cents, however Pleasants suggested that when they are really pushing hard, the company could pay upwards of $2 to $3 per install.

Generating Revenue

While numerous gaming companies are generating revenue through advertising sources, Playdom has opted to generate most revenue through micro-transactions, primarily consisting of virtual goods sales. Right now these micro-transactions account for 90 percent of Playdom’s revenue. Approximately 2 percent of the company’s user base pays for virtual goods. So how much do the paying users spend?

According to Pleasants, if the average paying user for a game is paying $20 a month for 3 to 6 months, it’s considered a successful game. With these numbers, you can quickly do the math on how much revenue is being generated. Let’s use Farmville as an example. The application currently averages around 30 million daily active users. That means 600,000 are paying each day. If each of those paying users are generating $20 a month, that application alone is generating $12 million each month, or almost $150 million a year.

MySpace Is Becoming Less Relevant

Playdom started out with all of their applications being based on MySpace. When we interviewed Playdom last March, the company was just beginning their expansion to Facebook. Now the company has 75 percent of their traffic coming from Facebook and MySpace continues to be on the decline. However John Pleasants suggested that a healthy MySpace platform would be beneficial to all application developers.

Now with 350 employees, Playdom is still a third of the size of Zynga and they are an even smaller fraction when it comes to monthly active users. However with over 30 million monthly active users, the company has a large enough foot print to produce statistics that are found across the industry (e.g. 2 percent of a social game’s user base pays).

Harder To Break In

One other thing John Pleasants highlighted during his talk was that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to break into the social gaming space as the market is becoming increasingly saturated and competitive. With multiple games launching on Facebook each day, it’s difficult to stand out from the pack and the only way to really drive installs is through buying Facebook ads.

The shift toward Facebook advertising becoming a critical component of the social gaming business model also forces one to ask how sustainable this business is for Facebook. It has been reported that Zynga is the largest advertiser on Facebook, making Facebook’s business model similar to that of the early “dot com” startups which imploded in 2001.

Social Games Are Booming

Following the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, it’s clear that just about every gaming industry professional is focused on social games, most of which reside on Facebook. As Facebook continues to grow as a gaming platform, the market will become more competitive, and the cost of production will most likely increase as well.

As John Pleasants highlighted, we are in the first inning of social games, and while the players may have already been selected for the most part, there is a long evolution ahead.（source:socialtimes）