作者：Jeff Tseng

虽然Facebook已经恢复了某些社交游戏的病毒性营销选项，但是与以往相比，这些应用可选的口碑推广选项仍然较少。对某些工作室而言，这导致获得新玩家的平均成本增幅高达30%。

处在病毒性和日活跃用户逐渐下滑的境况中，社交游戏公司都在重新评估他们的运营模型。

病毒性的下滑导致了两种情况：

1、开发商认为利用病毒性渠道来获取用户越来越不可行，便转而将关注点放在留存狂热玩家之上，分析和优化用户行为以获得更高的盈利。

2、无法顺时而变的社交游戏1.0公司从市场上消失。

facebook-games(from technostreak.com)

创造性

最终的结果是，社交游戏公司被迫在游戏开发中展现更多的创造性。

游戏变得越来越有吸引力，新游戏已经开始关注更新的题材，比如寻找隐藏物品。

对于那些有资源构建下一代社交游戏的公司而言，盈利已经在稳步增长。但是小型独立开发商会面临更多的挑战。

Facebook又重新启用合适的病毒性渠道，并开始构建被动渠道，即玩游戏的用户会看到非开发商或其他用户发出的营销信息。

这些被动渠道被称为曝光度推广和游戏请求，在增加玩家对病毒性游戏的接受方面无法起到作用。有如下两个原因：

1、从心理学上说，只有玩家对玩家的病毒性渠道才能够有效地推动长期的用户参与度和留存率。当Facebook尝试成为营销者时，刺激因素发生改变，病毒性选项开始对社交游戏开发商无所用处。从根本上来说，病毒性口头营销必须是玩家对玩家进行的。

2、通知渠道的保存限期也比病毒式渠道要长得多。因为它们比稍纵即逝的信息推广让用户看到的时间更长，有更高的可能性为用户所看到并让用户安装应用。病毒性渠道必须充满粘性。

Facebook无意创造只有大型社交游戏公司才能繁荣发展的生态系统。更多的竞争意味着：

1、Facebook广告的点击或印象收费更高

2、催生能够吸引更多用户的高质量游戏

3、用户会购买更多的虚拟商品和Facebook credit

独立开发者特别相信Facebook这个传播平台，因为上面有数亿用户可以自由分享想法、观点、新闻和游戏。

所以尽管Facebook的平台规则变化无常，并且总在淘汰弱者，但是它却增强了现存参与者的竞争力，迫使社交游戏开发商像传统游戏开发商那样开动脑筋。

社交游戏2.0

整个行业现在正朝向全新的领域前进，那就是社交游戏2.0。人们希望能够看到更多创新型的游戏机制、更有深度的游戏玩法，更为重要的是，游戏具有真正的社交性。

通过不断对病毒性渠道这个曝光方法进行创新和改变，Facebook可以确保这个行业不断成长和演变。

希望能够看到Facebook在接下来数个月的时间里不断对病毒性渠道进行改革。

Facebook必须维持用户体验和推广的平衡，而且还必须以某些能够给社交游戏带来更深层次参与度的方式来恢复病毒性。只有当用户而非平台成为关键影响因素时，才可能出现这种状况。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why Facebook Games Must Get More Creative

Jeff Tseng

Although Facebook has restored some viral marketing options for social games, these applications still have fewer options for word-of-mouth promotions than in the past. This has driven up the average cost to acquire new players by up to 30 percent for some studios.

Amid declining virality and active daily users, social game companies have been scrambling to re-evaluate their business models.

Two things happened as a result of the decline in virality:

Developers anticipating that viral channels would be a less viable option to acquire users pivoted their focus to retaining avid users by focusing on analyzing and optimizing user behavior to drive higher monetization.

The social gaming 1.0 companies that were not able change their approach and philosophy to development have disappeared from the market.

Get Creative

The net result is that social game companies have been forced to become more creative with development.

Games have become more engaging, and upcoming titles have started to focus on newer genres like finding hidden objects.

Monetization has seen a steady increase among companies with the resources to build the next generation of social games. But small, independent developers have faced more challenges.

Facebook has attempted to resurrect viral channels in fits and starts around passive channels, where some users who played games would see a marketing message that was not controlled by the developer or another user.

These passive channels, called discovery feeds and game requests, are ineffective in increasing viral game adoption. There are two reasons why.

Psychologically, only peer-to-peer viral channels are effective in driving long-term user engagement and retention. When Facebook tries to become the marketer, the incentive changes and viral options are rendered useless for social game developers. Viral word-of-mouth marketing must fundamentally be peer-to-peer.

Notification channels also have a significantly longer shelf life as a viral channel. Because they stick around longer inside users’ profiles than fleeting news feeds, they have a higher chance of being seen and converting users to installs. Viral channels must be sticky.

It’s not in Facebook’s best interest to create an ecosystem where only large social gaming companies can thrive. More competition means:

Better costs per impressions or clicks for Facebook ads

Higher quality games for a larger slice of the user base

More purchases of virtual goods and Facebook credits.

Indie developers believed in Facebook as a distribution platform specifically because they offered their hundreds of millions of users the ability to freely share ideas, thoughts, news and yes, games.

So while the pendulum swung hard to the left and knocked out the weaker players, it strengthened the surviving participants and forced social game developers to think like, well, game developers.

Social Gaming 2.0

The entire industry is now moving toward a new paradigm: Social Gaming 2.0 is here. Expect more innovation in game mechanics, deeper game play, and most importantly, games that have been developed to be truly social.

Facebook can ensure the continued growth and evolution of this industry by continuing to innovate around viral channels as a means of discovery.

Expect to see continued experimentation from Facebook on how to open viral channels back up in the next few months.

The company just announced the re-opening of game messages on news feeds under special circumstances.

Facebook has to strike a balance between user experience and distribution, but also must restore virality in a form that triggers deeper engagement on social games. This can only happen when people are the key influencers, not platforms. (Source: All Facebook)