作者：YULIA VAKHRUSHEVA

Ben Cousins于2007年在EA对免费游戏逐渐感兴趣的时候加入这个公司，在该发行商采取一系列步骤设定免费游戏市场战略期间，他迅速升迁到关键的职位。在这位资深英国制作人得到为EA的《战地：英雄》（游戏邦注：《战地》系列游戏免费作品，由EA的DICE studio制作）效力的机会后，Cousins做出了决定——抛开零售产品，全身心投入数字游戏领域。在他在EA工作的这段时间里，Cousins做出的许多决定不仅令他广受行业人士赞誉，而且也使他在过去数年间迅速升职。Cousins现在的任务是什么呢？他的任务是将《Battlefield Play4free》做成西方最大的以客户为基础的免费游戏。

Cousins在媒体采访中就免费游戏现象、用户群体以及数字游戏未来等问题谈到了自己的看法。以下是游戏邦编译的访谈内容：

Ben Cousins(from next-gen.biz)

在GDC 2010上，你曾发表过演讲，称免费的网页游戏将会撼动整个游戏行业。为什么会发生这种情况呢？游戏玩家究竟有何改变？

核心游戏行业的人们低估了网络对用户产生的影响。如果我们回顾下历史上其他运营环境（游戏邦注：在演讲中，Ben以20世纪30年代美国超市随个人汽车拥有数增加而不断增加为例），我们就会发现价格低廉和更方便的服务会让消费者乐意降低对质量的要求。当新技术增加了某些东西的便利性，大型公司会很惊奇的发现他们的消费者正逐渐转向那些不起眼的竞争者。

互联网为核心消费者提供了更便宜更方便的游戏（游戏邦注：比如Nexon的《Combat Arms》成了《使命召唤》的竞争者）。传统发行商对这些游戏的竞争性视而不见，因为他们的质量都不高，但他们并不明白质量只是消费者在做决定时考虑的因素之一。

在《Battlefield Play4free》中，你们提供了免费的高清第一人称射击体验。高清图像是扩展免费模式游戏的唯一方法吗？其他开发商还应该关注除高清图像外的哪些其他游戏元素呢？

游戏制作成高清图像只是个巧合而已。我们想要在尽量短的时间内制作出现代打斗风格的射击游戏，因为我们发现其他发行商在这个领域做得很不错。而发布游戏的最快方法是利用《战地2》和《战地：叛逆连队2》等其他《战地》系列游戏，而这些游戏恰好是高清图像。而且Easy团队恰好热衷于制作高质量游戏，对后处理过滤器也稍有染指，虽然我们并没有要求他们这么做，最终我们得到了个很棒的产品。

撇开产品价值不谈，我觉得硬核玩家下个关注潮将是那些深度植入社交网络来驱动病毒性获取和留存的免费游戏，也可能是3D技术在浏览器中的运用。另一个与开发无关的增加受众数量的方法是，与其他销售商开展战略合作来接触新地区和人群。

我还记得在Casual Connect Europe 2006的“Hype or Real Deal?”讨论会上，99%的成员和玩家表示韩国的免费模式永远不会在西方市场获得成功。仅仅4年之后，Zynga就证实了这是个错误的想法，EA旗下这款长期为硬核PC游戏玩家所钟爱的《战地》也有了个卡通风格的免费产品。你认为哪些是西方市场中最好的免费游戏？你如何看待这片领域的发展？

让我们从游戏设计、营销和盈利三个方面来说明。

从设计方面来说，Brian Reynolds在Zynga制作的游戏《FrontierVille》确实令人印象深刻。游戏精致且设计巧妙，有着最优化的欲望循环和病毒性机制，而且内容的寿命也很长，确实是款吸引人的游戏。

从营销方面来说，我不得不注意到《Travian》和《Evony》极具挑战性的广告竞赛。我不知道这种竞赛是否能够带来盈利，但很显然它们在争夺头号网页战略游戏的过程中投入甚多，不断更新广告内容且实施极具挑战性的战略。

人们为了避免游戏中的工程损失、避免在游戏中被其他玩家所攻伐和控制和向社群炫耀而购买道具。

从盈利方面来说，我倒想吹嘘下自己公司的产品，《战地：英雄》应该是目前西方市场中最好的作品。游戏中有大量可供选择的道具，而且我们很经常更新与某些文化相关的服饰包，将其与其他EA大作搭售。我们的商品化也做得很棒。我们要求所有玩家通过网站来打开游戏，在那里我们使用内置广告来推销道具。我们还在游戏中提供限时“热门”道具以及限时充值奖励，还向那些介绍好友在游戏中注册的人提供免费的货币和道具奖励。而且，游戏前端有个完整的商店，你也可以在游戏中任何时候点击某个按键来进入商店。我们甚至在用户被杀死后向他们推广产品。

自游戏发布以来，这些功能和内容使得我们的饿月ARPU增加了5倍。与竞争者相比，我们唯一的不足之处便是付费方式，近期发布的Live Gamer将会解决这个问题。

对于这种运营模式的未来而言，我觉得现在我们还只是了解皮毛而已，我们需要更深入了解玩家愿意购买何种类型的虚拟商品。人们也正变得更愿意和更能接受购买虚拟商品。同时，我们正看到硬核玩家逐渐转向这片领域。在波兰和巴西之类的发展中国家市场，用户跳过主机时代直接接受我们这种类型的游戏。

因而玩家数会逐渐增多，ARPU也会继续上涨，这意味着开发团队将会敢于制作更大的游戏，游戏也就会随着变得更大，有着更丰富的内容和功能并且更为精致。在接下来的数年来，我们会在Facebook上看到有任天堂般质量的游戏，它们的深度堪比《模拟人生》或《魔兽世界》。在核心玩家领域，我们会看到在200美元笔记本电脑的浏览器上便可以玩有着PS3图像质量的免费游戏。

社交游戏似乎很受媒体关注，但社交网络之外也是风云变幻。Nexon在全球市场获得了成功，Bigpoint的门户网站上也有1亿左右的用户。用户获取是这些终端游戏网站的命脉。你对免费游戏销售的发展有何看法？你会选择自行发行的做法还是遵从传统的开发商和发行商合作的模式？

Facebook确实是个新兴的自发行平台，网站中含有许多之前需要特别构筑的东西。他们有注册流、用户数据存储、好友列表、用户间短消息、社区功能，还有着自己的盈利化方式Credits。对独立游戏开发者而言，这看起来是个完美的端对端发行平台，可以将应用迅速投放市场。

当然，你也可以与BigPoint或其他游戏门户网站合作来获取用户。但是除非你的病毒性机制很棒或者有着《战地》之类游戏的盛名来驱动用户关注，否则将需要付出大量金钱（游戏邦注：或许占预期盈利的很大比例）来购买用户。

从你在EA期间获得成功的作品《战地：英雄》中，你获得了什么经验？对那些想将现有游戏重新制作成免费在线游戏的开发商和发行商有何建议？

最大的经验之一是如何理解我们的目标用户。起初我们猜想，硬核玩家并不会喜欢这种免费且简单化的《战地》游戏。但事实是，用户的75%是硬核射击游戏粉丝。随后我们认为，这些用户可能就是原本的EA核心射击游戏玩家。但这又是个错误的猜想，硬核《战地》游戏和《战地：英雄》的高峰期是《战地：叛逆连队2》发布当月。上述两款游戏的销售量都创下纪录，应该是互相起到了推动作用。

我对那些现在想采用免费模式的开发商的建议是：你们行动的太迟了。你们需要学习很多内容，或许三年后你们才会对我们构成威胁。

硬核玩家对虚拟商品极有怨言，他们觉得以道具为基础的盈利带有欺诈性，并且损害到了游戏可玩性。然而，近期却有数千万人花25美元购买《魔兽世界》坐骑“天界战马”。虚拟商品确实会损害到游戏可玩性吗？应该或不应该出现哪些做法？

我们在《战地：英雄》中采用了这种做法，12月份开始出售更强大的武器和让玩家有一定优势的道具。如果你看过论坛和各种相关报道，你会认为这个做法几乎会让游戏万劫不复。但事实上，当月我们的ARPU和用户数有所增加！

这种做法营造出一种巧妙的平衡，免费玩家可以娱乐，付费玩家在游戏中有一定的优势。我们永远不会出售“杀死团队所有人”或任何为付费玩家提供极大优势的道具，《战地：英雄》中技艺娴熟的免费玩家还是可以在单挑中消灭技艺不精的付费玩家。然而，最大的错误在于人们过于担忧这种销售道具的优势。我们发现人们对其的接受性远比我们想象的要强。这是个基本的人类心理。

照此说来，你觉得哪类道具能带来最多的盈利？为什么？

你需要出售各种不同的道具。在不同时段里，所有用户的表现都会有所不同。你出售的道具数量越多，用户就越有可能花上大笔金钱。我们找寻到的道具组合方式是：玩家每周或每月购买一次以使游戏进展速度较快的便利性道具；玩家在受到威胁或感到挫败时使用的消费性道具；改变战斗态势或让玩家与众不同的优势性道具；

人们为了避免游戏中的工程损失、避免在游戏中被其他玩家所攻伐和控制和向社群炫耀而购买道具。

许多公司已经从盒装游戏转型为在线游戏。你觉得构建和运作成功的免费游戏需要何种团队和能力？

我们很欣赏在线游戏的运作方式。你可以更快地发布游戏然后在开发过程中获得用户反馈，而不必等到为时过晚。与我们现在采用的工作方式相比，传统的开发模式感觉非常危险。

而且，你需要愿意长期提供支持的团队。我们的工作趋势是持续不断地稳步向前推进，而不是赶工制作，这种做法并不适合所有人。

我们最大的创意和竞争性在于研发出支持在线服务的项目管理结构，在分析、开发和调度间创造出良性循环，确保我们总是朝正确的方向发展。

battlefield-play4free(from multiplayerblog.mtv.com)

你现在已经是Easy Studios的总经理，可以自由指导EA下一步免费游戏战略的实施。你要如何利用这个优势来制作出最好的免费游戏？你会根据现有游戏来开发还是制作新游戏？

我们在《Battlefield Play4free》上下了很大的一个赌，我正竭尽全力将这款游戏铸就成西方市场上最大的以客户为基础的免费游戏。如果游戏成功成为巨作，我们专注于将其继续扩展，根据数据将其改善并继续围绕游戏对所有发行服务进行革新。

Phenomic（游戏邦注：《Battleforge》和《Lord of Ultima》的制作人）也在开发新战略游戏，这款将于2011年面世的游戏将是对EA大手笔系列游戏的再一次延伸。在我们发布这两款游戏后，会细致观察它们的表现以及市场的发展态势，然后拟定下一步的计划。接下来的游戏可能是新游戏，也可能是对EA现有系列游戏的延伸。

你已经在游戏行业中工作十多年之久，在Lionhead、索尼和EA等公司待过。你经历过三次主机时代变迁，现在正处在免费游戏的风口浪尖上。有人告诉我说免费游戏并不会成为游戏的最终模式，不久我们就是看到新形式出现。你可曾看到游戏行业的未来？

我的预言是：附带电脑的电视机将成为标准，在浏览器上运行HTML 3D。这种产物将会让现在的游戏主机消失殆尽。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年2月8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）

From the Frontlines of the Free-to-play Games Invasion

YULIA VAKHRUSHEVA

Joining EA during the roaring times of the publisher’s early interest in free-to play-titles back in 2007, Ben Cousins was able to quickly rise in rank and play a key role during the first of many steps that were taken by the publisher to set up their strategy towards the free-to-play market.  After the experienced British producer received the opportunity to work on EA’s Battlefield Heroes, a free-to-play spin off of the franchise created by the EA’s DICE studio, Cousins also made the definitive choice to leave retail products behind and fully devote himself to digital instead. Those and many other choices he made throughout his time with EA have given Cousins both industry wide praise and a decent number of promotions in the past couple of years. Cousin’s current mission? To turn Battlefield Play4free into the biggest client-based free-to-play game in the western world.

Jussi Laakkonen sat down with Ben to get his perspective on subjects such as the free-to-play phenomenon, surprising demographics and the future of digital.

At GDC 2010 you delivered a compelling presentation in which you argued that the free-to-play, browser-distributed gaming is a disruptive force that will shake up the games industry. Why is that? What’s going on with the game players?

People in the core games industry are underestimating the impact the Net will have on their audience. If we look at other historical business environments (in my talk I looked at the rise of the supermarket as car ownership increased in the US in the 1930s), we discover that consumers are often happy to take a drop in quality in return for a lower price and/or more convenient service. When a new technology accelerates the convenience of something, incumbent companies are often surprised to find their customers moving over to an “inferior” competitor.

The Internet makes cheaper, more convenient versions of games available to core consumers (an example would be Nexon’s Combat Arms as an alternative to Call of Duty). Traditional publishers ignore these titles because they are “lower quality,” without understanding that quality is only one factor consumers consider when making a choice.

With Battlefield Play4Free, you’re trying to bring a high quality HD first person shooter experience into the free-to-play model. Is having high definition graphics the next and only step to expanding the free-to-play model beyond its aforementioned ‘low-budget reputation’? What other game elements beyond HD graphics should other developers focus on?

The HD graphics are actually a bit of an accident. We wanted to get a modern combat style shooter out in the market ASAP because we see other publishers doing well in that space. The quickest way for us to launch a game was to bring in assets from other Battlefield games like BF2 and Bad Company 2, and these assets happened to be quite hi-res. Add to that the fact that the Easy team just loves building quality titles and will make little touches like post-processing filters even if you don’t ask for it, and we ended up with something really nice.

Aside from production-values going up, I expect the next big wave of the more core-gamer focused free-to-play games will have deeper social network integration to drive viral acquisition and retention, and perhaps the use of 3D-in-a-browser tech to reduce the drop off we all see between registration, download and installation of the game. Another non-development related way of expanding audiences is to engage in strategic partnerships with other distributors to expand into new territories and demographics.

I remember the “Hype or Real Deal?” panel at Casual Connect Europe 2006, where 99% of the panelists and the audience believed that the “weird” Korean free-to-play model would never succeed in the Western markets. Fast forward just four years: Zynga is killing it and EA’s Battlefield, a long time love affair for hardcore PC gamers, has a cartoon-styled, free-to-play spin-off. What do you think is the state of the art in free-to-play in the Western markets, and how do you see the space developing?

Let’s look at game design, marketing and monetization.

For design, it’s hard not to be impressed by what Brian Reynolds’ team has done with FrontierVille at Zynga. It’s a very polished, smartly-designed, really charming game with optimized compulsion loops, viral mechanics, and scope for a long life-span of content, determined by the user. Great stuff.

On the marketing side I can’t help but notice the extremely aggressive ad campaigns of Travian and Evony. I don’t have much insight into whether these campaigns are profitable—but there’s obviously huge commitment, constant refreshing of the ad content, and super-aggressive strategies going on there as they fight for the number one browser strategy spot.

People buy items to overcome deliberately engineered frustrations in the game, to overcome or avoid the frustration of being dominated in competition by other players, and to simply show off and peacock to the community.

As for monetization, I’m going to blow my own trumpet here and suggest that Battlefield Heroes is the current state of the art in the Western world because of its approach to store catalog and merchandizing. We have a huge selection of items, and we refresh very regularly with culturally-relevant clothing bundles and tie-ins with big EA titles. We have great merchandizing as well. We require all users to launch the game via the website, where we use in-house ads to push items, we have time-limited “Hot Deal” offers and a time-limited first-time funding bonus, and we offer free funds and items to people who refer friends to register for the game. In addition, we have a full store in the game front-end and an in-game store accessible at any time with a single button press. We even push offers to users after they’ve been killed.

Since launch, our monthly ARPU has gone up five times as a result of the addition of all these features and content. The only place we under-index compared to the competition is with payment instruments, and our recent Live Gamer deal should fix that.

As for the future of this business model, I think we are still scratching the surface of what types of virtual goods people are willing to buy. People are also becoming more willing and comfortable buying virtual goods. At the same time, we are seeing the hardcore gamers move into this space, while the grandmas and mums are introduced to gaming through Facebook. In developing markets like Poland and Brazil, users skip the console altogether and come directly to us.

So the audiences will increase, and the ARPUs will go up, which means teams will be able to make bigger bets, the games will be bigger, with improved content and features and more polish. In the next few years we’ll have Nintendo-like quality on Facebook with games there as deep as The Sims or WoW, and in the core-gamer space we’ll see free-to-play games with PS3-quality graphics running in a browser on a $200 laptop.

Social games seem to get all the press, but there is a lot happening outside of the social networks. Nexon has success around the world, and Bigpoint has 100 million users on their portal. User acquisition is the lifeblood of these and every other destination game site. How do you see the distribution of free-to-play games evolving? How can you make self-publishing work, or should you just go with a traditional publisher-developer model?

Facebook is actually emerging as a kind of boiler-plate publishing platform for self-publishing. It’s covering lots of things which have previously had to be built from scratch. They have a registration flow, user data storage, friends list, user-to-user messaging, community features—and now with Credits they even have monetization. For an independent game developer, this is starting to look like a solution for getting to market fast with a full end-to-end publishing platform for your app.

There’s also the possibility of working with another partner like BigPoint or other portals to drive users, but at the end of the day, unless your viral mechanics are amazing, or you have a big IP like Battlefield or Tiger Woods to drive awareness, you are going to have to commit to a large ad buy (as a proportion of forecasted revenue) to build an audience. It’s a cutthroat world out there.

What have been the biggest lessons learned from Battlefield Heroes (a game that you championed within EA)? What advice would you give developers and publishers now re-envisioning their existing IP for the online, free-to-play model?

Our single biggest lesson has been one of understanding our target audience. We assumed that the core gamers wouldn’t want to play a free, simplified version of Battlefield. As it stands, 75% of our users are core shooter fans. We then thought this must mean we are cannibalizing our customers of EA core shooters. This is also an incorrect assumption—the biggest ever period for the core Battlefield games and for BF Heroes was the launch month of Bad Company 2. Both titles had record sales. Buzz for one game feeds the other.

My advice to people now re-envisioning their IPs for free-to-play: Wow—you guys are late. You have a lot to learn. See you in three years.

There was a very vocal backlash against virtual goods by core gamers who saw item-based monetization as cheating and ruining the game-play. Yet tens of thousands lined up to buy the Celestial Steed for $25 on World of Warcraft just recently. Is there really a chance of ruining your game-play by going all out with virtual goods? What are the dos and don’ts?

We jumped into the hot water with both feet in Heroes when we started selling more powerful weapons and advantage-giving “widgets” in December. If you read the forums and various knee-jerk pieces in the press, you would have thought that we’d killed the game. In actual fact we increased our ARPUs and our user-base that month!

It’s a fine balance between keeping your free players entertained and letting the paying users get an advantage in the game. We’d probably never sell a “kill the rest of the team” button or any items which gave a seriously frustrating advantage to a paying player, and a skilled free player in Heroes can still take out a less-skilled paying player in a one-to-one battle. However, the biggest mistake people make is being too nervous about selling advantages. We have found people will accept it more than you think. It’s basic human psychology.

On that note, what kinds of items do you see driving most monetization? Why?

You need a blend. All consumers are different at different times, and the bigger your catalog, the more choice and opportunities to spend big. What we find works is a blend of: convenience items that are a weekly/monthly cash sink to keep players progressing at a competitive speed, consumable items used when the player feels threatened or frustrated in the moment, advantage-giving items to turn the tide of battle, and visual upgrades to stand out from the crowd.

People buy items to overcome deliberately-engineered frustrations in the game, to overcome or avoid the frustration of being dominated in competition by other players, and to simply show off and peacock to the community.

Many companies that have made the transition from boxed games to online games remark on how different it is to run an online service. What kind of team and competencies do you need to build and operate a successful free-to-play game?

We much prefer this way of working. You get the game out faster and get user feedback during development—not later when it’s too late. Compared to the way we work today, traditional “fire and forget” development feels like very risky, uneducated guesswork.

In addition, you need a team that is willing to be in it for the long-haul. We tend to work at a constant, medium tempo rather than “crunch and crash”—which doesn’t suit everyone.

Our biggest innovation/competency has been around developing a project-management structure that supports a live service—creating that habitual loop between analysis, development and deployment to make sure you are always working on the right feature.

Being the GM for Easy Studios has given you a lot of freedom and influence to direct the next step in EA’s free-to-play strategy. How are you planning to use this to the fullest to make the best free-to-play titles to date? Will those feature existing franchises or actually result in new IPs as well?

Our big bet is Battlefield Play4Free so I’m putting my full force behind that title to try and make it the biggest client-based free-to-play game in the Western world. If we hit big with that game we’ll be focusing on expanding that title out, improving it against the key performance indicators and continuing to innovate all the publishing services around the game.

Phenomic (creators of Battleforge and Lord of Ultima) are also working on a new strategy game which will ship in 2011 and is an extension of another large EA franchise. After we’ve launched those two titles and observed how they and the market are developing, then we’ll look to our next steps. These could include new IPs or be extensions of existing EA franchises.

You’ve worked over a decade in the games industry at companies like Lionhead, Sony and Electronic Arts. You’ve seen three console generation transitions and you are now on the frontline of the free-to-play disruption. Something tells me that free-to-play isn’t the final word on games—that we’ll be talking about some new disruption pretty soon. Is there anything in your crystal ball?

Here’s my prediction: Embedded computers will become standard in TVs, runnning HTML 3D in a browser. And they’ll kill the console business. (Source: Casual Connect)