作者：Jeremy Liew

Jeremy Liew是Lightspeed Venture Partners的常务董事，他关注互联网和手机领域的投资行为，对社交媒体、商业、游戏、经济和增加盈利的方式尤为感兴趣。他在博客上发文阐述社交游戏如此吸引投资者的原因，以下是游戏邦编译的相关内容：

2009年，社交游戏瞬间变得特别热门。EA花费超过3亿美元收购Playfish，而Zynga和Playdom（游戏邦注：Lightspeed Venture Partners也是Playdom的投资方）也都已募得大笔资金。传统电脑游戏的在很长一段时间内保持稳定增长，但幅度并未像主流社交游戏公司呈现出的那般巨大。去年社交游戏的发展轨迹如此非同寻常能说明什么呢？为何引领这股潮流的是新兴公司而并非大型发行商？关键因素有三：开发、销售和曝光率。

social games developers(from chinasocialgames.com)

开发

现在，视频游戏制作已和拍摄电影无异。最棒的视频游戏（游戏邦注：即所谓的AAA级游戏）目前成本在3000万至5000万美元之间，需要3到5年方能制作完成。当然，回报也异常丰厚，《使命召唤：现代战争2》在发布5日内便售得5.5亿美元。但是视频游戏销售带有极大风险，只有非常卖座的游戏才会产生盈利。游戏运营以大作为主导，“命中目标”的成本如此之高，因而需要更长时间才能知晓产品是否产生盈利。此类尝试需要平衡游戏能否成为巨作的内在危险性，只有大型发行商才有实力承当此任。

社交游戏的情况则大不相同。社交游戏可在3至6个月内开发完成，总开发成本只需数十万美元。社交游戏开发商仅仅是做了个web 2.0页面。他们先发布测试版游戏，该版本并没有所有可玩性元素。如果游戏受用户关注，这个项目便会继续投资开发。但是如果游戏没有吸引用户，开发商便会停止游戏的投资。这种做法有利于降低风险。而且，开发商也会迅速知道游戏是否能有效运转，可以不断根据玩家偏好的调查数据来发布新内容。

由于社交游戏的开发时间和成本较少，因而它们为那些初创公司提供的投资回报态势不同以往。初创公司或许觉得倾其所有来开发3000万至5000万成本的游戏甚为艰难。但是他们完全能够负担得起数款社交游戏的开发费用，而只要其中之一成为巨作，便足以让公司获得成功。在开发速度和专业化构建社交游戏等竞争性因素方面，初创公司确实有一定的优势。

销售

逾75%的主机和PC视频游戏销售额仍来自零售渠道。这是大型游戏发行商展现自身价值之处，他们控制零售渠道，确保顾客能够买到他们发行的游戏。你很难在沃尔玛、Gamestop和百思买之外的其他地方买到这些游戏。在这点上，社交游戏再次呈现出不同态势。社交游戏的平台是浏览器，因而任何连上网络的人都可以马上玩到游戏，无需前往商店付费购买。Facebook是最流行的社交游戏平台，由于账户注册免费而且许多人已经是该网站的用户，所以事实上社交游戏的销售不存在任何冲突。所有用户都可以马上玩到游戏。

此外，传统游戏不是免费的，这是显而易见的事实。新发布游戏售价通常在40美元到60美元间。在玩家不知道自己是否会喜欢玩之前，需要先付费购买游戏。这成为游戏销售障碍，因为确定自己喜欢某款游戏后玩家才真正愿意购买。然而，社交游戏是免费的。它们通过向免费玩家销售数字商品来产生盈利。因而玩家可以在付费之前先尝试游戏，只在他确定自己喜欢游戏之后才花钱。此动态带动盈利增长，解释了Zynga为何目前已有上亿的月活跃用户。与之相比，视频游戏大作《使命召唤：现代战争2》也只卖出800万套。

曝光率

在主机游戏领域中，曝光率源于游戏评论和营销。营销有可能非常昂贵。就开发成本而言，《使命召唤：现代战争2》的预算高达2亿美元，包括营销以及制造和销售光盘的成本。在这个方面，社交游戏仍然与之存在差异。病毒性增长是社交游戏的核心要素。现有玩家通过邀请、Facebook动态、通知和其他交流渠道让新玩家了解某款游戏。游戏发行商无需为此等曝光支付资金，除了在游戏中融入推动病毒性增长的设计元素的成本。

对主机游戏来说，游戏评论是免费的，但具有易变性。游戏行业媒体主要由硬核玩家构成，他们的偏好反映传统核心玩家的取向。游戏评论读者也将自身定义为硬核玩家。从某种程度上来说，这会导致游戏越来越迎合硬核玩家，将“非游戏玩家”弃之不顾。相比之下，偶然显现的社交游戏曝光途径使每个人（游戏邦注：不仅是硬核玩家）都有机会接触到游戏。我确信所有Facebook用户都曾经见过好友游戏动态或收到过收集游戏内礼物的邀请。这种范围更大的曝光触及的玩家基数更为庞大。而且，社交游戏对非游戏玩家来说也简单得多。

当然，广告也在新社交游戏发布中占有一席之地。Zynga近期发布的所有游戏都同时采用广告和交叉推广两种方式，这使得《Farmville》、《Café World》和《Fishville》的用户量急剧攀升。而且，Zynga发布社交游戏的费用也少于动视发布《使命召唤：现代战争2》的费用。事实上，前25位中许多社交游戏的广告费用都不高，如《Happy Acquarium》、《Farmtown》和《Friends for Sale》（游戏邦注：作者所在公司是《Friends for Sale》发行商Serious Business的投资方）。在此等环境中，初创公司便能够与大型开发商齐头并进。

社交游戏的这三个特征可以合理解释为何相对传统游戏行业而言，为何主导增长的是初创公司而并非大型发行商。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2009年12月1日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why The Economics Of Social Gaming Are So Attractive To Investors

Jeremy Liew

Jeremy Liew is a Managing Director at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where he focuses on investments in the internet and mobile sectors, with a particular interest in social media, commerce, gaming, financial and methods for increasing monetization.

In 2009, social gaming exploded onto the scene. EA bought Playfish for more than $300 million just a couple of weeks ago, and Zynga and Playdom (we’re an investor in the latter) both raised large rounds of financing this year. Traditional computer gaming has been showing steady growth for a long time, but not the tremendous growth that the leading social-games companies have shown. What is it about social games that has enabled such a difference in trajectory over the last year, and why has it been startups and not the big established publishers that have led the charge? There are three key factors: development, distribution and discovery.

DEVELOPMENT

Making video games is now like making movies. The best video games (“AAA” or triple A games) now cost between $30 million and $50 million and can take three to five years to build. In an upside scenario, the returns are commensurate – Modern Warfare 2 sold $550 million in its first five days. But videogame sales show a strong power curve – only the very bestselling games turn a profit. Games are a hit-driven business, and when the cost for a “shot on goal” is so high, and it takes so long to see if the shot goes in, only the biggest publishers can afford to take the number of shots that are required to balance the inherent risk of whether a game will be a hit.

Social games show a very different profile. Social games can be launched in three to six months with a total development cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Social-game developers have taken a leaf out of the web 2.0 page. They launch a game in beta, without completely fleshing out all elements of gameplay. If the game finds an audience, it will earn further investment in development. But if it does not, then the investment is stopped. This helps mitigate risk. Furthermore, developers know quickly if a game is going to work, and are able to iteratively launch new features based on actual data on what players like to do.

Because social games reduce development time by an order of magnitude and development costs by two orders of magnitude, they offer a very different risk-return profile for startups. A startup may find it hard to put all its eggs in one basket to build a $30 million to $50 million game. But they can certainly afford to launch multiple social games, and only one needs to be a hit to make a company successful. When competitive advantage lies with speed of development and expertise in building social games, startups have a real advantage.

DISTRIBUTION

More than 75% of console and PC videogame sales still come through retail. This is where the big game publishers add a lot of their value. They control retail distribution and can make sure that customers have an opportunity to buy the games that they publish. It’s hard to buy a game if it isn’t on the shelves at Walmart, Gamestop and BestBuy. Again, social games show a different profile. Social games are played in a browser, so anyone who has access to the internet can play the games right away, without having to go to a store or to pay anything. Facebook is the most popular platform for playing social games, but since it is free to join Facebook, and many people are already users of Facebook, there is virtually no friction in the distribution of social games. Anyone can play right away.

Furthermore, it may be stating the obvious, but traditional games are not free. A typical new release game sells for between $40 and $60. A prospective player would have to pay money to buy the game before he had played it (before he knows if he will like it). This creates a barrier to adoption as he needs to be pretty sure that he will like a game before he is willing to buy it. Social games, on the other hand, are free to play. They make their money by upselling digital goods to the free players. So a player can try a game before spending any money, and indeed only spend money after he has established to his own satisfaction that he’ll enjoy the game. That dynamic helps drive much more trial, and explains how Zynga now has more than 100 million unique visitors per month, which compares to the 8 million units sold of Modern Warfare 2, the best game launch of all time.

DISCOVERY

In the console-game world, discovery happens both through game reviews and through marketing. Marketing can be very expensive. On top of development costs, Modern Warfare 2 had a launch budget of $200 million, including marketing and the cost of producing and distributing discs. Once again, social games are different. One of the core elements of social games is their viral growth. Existing players enable new players to discover a game through invitations, Facebook feed posts, notifications and other communications channels. This discovery is free to the game publishers, beyond incorporating design elements into their games that facilitate viral growth

Game reviews for console games are free, but fickle. And the game-industry press mostly consists of hardcore players whose tastes reflect the traditional core-gamer audience. The readers of game reviews are also self-selected to be hardcore gamers. To some extent, this has caused games to cater even more to their core-gamer audience, making them ever more inaccessible to “non gamers.” In contrast, the serendipitous avenues for discovery of social games mean that everybody (not just core gamers) is exposed to the opportunity. I’m sure that just about every user of Facebook has seen feed items about games and been sent invitations to collect gifts sent inside games. This much broader exposure leads to the much larger player bases noted above. It also leads to a different style of gaming that is much easier for non-gamers to adopt.

Of course, advertising also plays a role in launching new social games. Zynga has begun launching all its most recent games with both advertising and cross-promotion blitzes, which has led to very steep growth curves for Farmville, Café World and Fishville. But once again, the amount that Zynga spends to launch a social game is one to two orders of magnitude less than what Activision (NSDQ: ATVI) spent to launch Modern Warfare 2. Indeed, several of the top-25 social games, including Happy Acquarium, Farmtown and Friends for Sale, have never had any meaningful advertising put against them. (We’re an investor in Serious Business, the publisher of Friends for Sale.) In such an environment, startups are able to play on more equal footing against bigger publishers.

These three characteristics of social games go a large way towards explaining why there has seen such explosive growth over the last year in that sector relative to the traditional gaming industry, and why this growth has been dominated by startups and not the big publishers. (Source: paidContent)