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开发商称Facebook硬核游戏更具盈利性

发布时间:2011-10-14 16:49:37 Tags:,,,,

作者:Michael Thomsen

有时候我们会划分出一些本未存在的类别。我们将一些游戏称之为“硬核”并不是因为它们存在着某些较为特别的性质(如:海军陆战队,色情内容,朋克摇滚或者瘾君子),而是因为我们想要赋予其一种特殊的光环。将一款游戏称之为硬核游戏,并在它身上添加一种严肃感和意义,以便我们无需深入思考什么才是真正的严肃感与什么才是真正有意义的了,比如《星际争霸》或《反恐精英》便是这类型的游戏。

我们同样也可以使用这种分类去区分那些“社交”或“休闲”游戏,使其远离严肃性。(没人会把《星际争霸》和《反恐精英》这些硬核游戏当成社交游戏吧?)但是在过去几年,如《FarmVille》,《CityVille》,《Cow Clicker》,《愤怒的小鸟》,《宝石迷阵闪电战》以及《水果忍者》等“休闲”或“社交”游戏巨作不用冲锋枪装备和桥塔便在Facebook上大放异彩,并吸引数以千万玩家的注意,但是对于“硬核游戏玩家”来说,这些游戏并不具有吸引力。

不论粉丝是否深陷于自己所下的定义中,整个游戏产业都在向前发展着,越来越多游戏开发者看到了更多拥有更强大开发工具的发行平台,这些平台能够帮助他们以最小的障碍获得最多的用户。

像Kabam、Kixeye以及Free Range公司都在针对于浏览器和社交网络而制作一些较严肃的游戏。同样地,一些较大的发行商如艺电,育碧,2K Games也开始针对旗下的大型游戏制作Facebook版本。这些公司正在改变着游戏产业。

这是当前发展态势

Kixeye首席执行官Will Harbin说道:“玩家会判断游戏,但是不会去判断平台。我认为自己是个狂热的游戏玩家。我拥有Xbox 360也拥有PlayStation 2,Wii以及高效率的个人电脑。从80年代早期我便开始玩游戏了。我最喜欢的游戏类型是即时策略游戏,角色扮演游戏,大型多人在线游戏,而在那时根本没有像现在的Facebook游戏。所以我认为我们可以在Facebook上添加一些更具硬核性的东西。我们认为这是一个完全开放的广阔空间。”

Kixeye(游戏邦注:原名为Casual Collective)一直在努力更新旗下的《Desktop Tower Defense》和《Minions》,并花了3年的时间去建造一个专属且更具易用性的游戏中心。随后,在2010年早些时候,Kixeye发觉整个游戏市场已经充斥了各种休闲游戏,所以他们便决定转移注意力到Facebook上的一些传统竞争类游戏中,以及其它小游戏平台上。

《Backyard Monsters》便是Kixeye改组后的第一款游戏。这是一款带有社交性的实时战略游戏,玩家可以不断给自己的后院设防,以此阻挡军队的攻击。Harbin表示:“这款游戏并不是很完美,毕竟这是我们重组后的第一款游戏。虽然游戏中有可爱的怪物,但是也有很多血腥的场面,我们也安插了一些真正的策略因素,而这是以前Facebook游戏所不具备的。”

“在《Backyard Monsters》取得成功之后,我们认为Facebook玩家并不希望再看到那些农场游戏或者像《Mafia Wars》这些基于文本的角色扮演游戏的复制品了。所以我们认为Facebook具有更大的发展空间。”

battle_pirates(from gamasutra)

battle_pirates(from gamasutra)

一年半以前,Kixeye只有3名员工。在《Backyard Monsters》以及另外一款即时策略游戏《Battle Pirates》获得成功之后,该公司的员工增加到60名。Kabam作为Kixeye最大的竞争者之一,是另外一家在社交网络中通过创造传统的竞争游戏以及网页游戏而获利的公司,其员工已经多达450人了。

既是社交游戏玩家也是掌机游戏玩家的Kabam品牌营销副总裁Ted Simon说道:“根据调查数据显示,现在有很多身份重叠的游戏玩家。70%的社交游戏玩家也在玩掌机游戏,特别是我们所说的‘硬核社交游戏玩家’甚至多达82%。根据报道,有55%的Kabam玩家表示因为在玩社交游戏,所以他们已经减少了在其它平台上的游戏时间了。”

Kabam于2006年(游戏邦注:原名为Watercooler Inc.)带着制作社交游戏的目标诞生了。2009年,其第一款Facebook策略游戏《Kingdoms of Camelot》不仅吸引了大批死忠玩家,还得到那些轻视社交游戏的评论家大力赞扬。结果,该公司决定全身心投入于制作社交平台以及手机平台上的传统游戏,并随后发行了《Dragons of Atlantis》,《Global Warfare》以及《Glory of Rome》。

这些传统游戏的玩家数量还远不及《FarmVille》,《CityVille》以及《Mafia Wars》等Zynga游戏玩家,后者游戏在7月份共吸引了超过2亿6千名用户。而相同时间段,Kixeye凭借其两款游戏才获得了500至600万的MAU,Kabam游戏的MAU也才达到了9百万。

虽然传统游戏的玩家还不多,但是它们却拥有很大的潜力,能够轻松地适应社交网络以及网页平台。而且这些硬核社交游戏玩家的数量也堪比为掌机游戏付费的用户规模。

对Facebook男性用户而言,严肃的游戏更有吸引力

关于”硬核“的一个假设是,它是用来描写一种游戏类型,而严肃的游戏玩家便会喜欢这种类型。根据玩家统计资料可以看到一个真相:年轻人更喜欢硬核游戏。新款硬核社交游戏的用户反馈参数更是证明了这个问题。对于男性玩家来说,一些具有严肃性的理念更具有吸引力,事实也证明如此。

Harbin说道:“在我们的游戏玩家统计资料中可以看到95-96%的玩家是男性。我想说的是我们的玩家中有40%是来自于北美的男性,而且年龄层大概在20-40岁之间,其余的便是来自于西欧,澳大利亚,以及少部分亚洲地区。所以我们基本上把全世界的男性玩家都当成游戏的目标用户了。”

同样地,Kabam最近做了一项调查,与其它类别的社交游戏相比,硬核社交游戏更加能够吸引男性玩家的注意。Simon表示:“在休闲游戏中,有将近61%的女性玩家,而在这些女性玩家中更有高达62%的玩家年龄超过40岁。”

“Kabam玩家都偏向男性。有72%的男性玩家,而其中的55%年龄低于40。所以在衡量用户层方面我们的视角也有别于休闲的社交游戏。”

Kixeye的5至6百万月活跃用户中,“大约”有10%玩家愿意为游戏花钱。虽然Kabam拒绝与我们分享特殊的财政数据,但是根据报告,虽然传统的以男性为中心的游戏玩家远远少于社交游戏,但是也是有利可图的。

Kabam首席产品官Andrew Sheppard说道:“硬核社交游戏玩家会玩更频繁地玩游戏,并花费更多时间于游戏上。他们更愿意花钱购买游戏内容,也会在此投入更多的钱。如此,对于我们来说最大的挑战便是创造出能够吸引玩家的游戏,留住这些玩家并激励他们进行消费。这真的不是件容易的活儿。”

传统游戏的男性玩家比起其他社交游戏玩家愿意购买更多的游戏商品,而他们的购买动机是受到不同的需求推动。Harbin说道:“我们的用户会购买那些功能道具。起初我们想要提供一些对于分数或者玩家游戏性能没有帮助的装饰道具。我们以为这么做会大获成功,没想到事实却完全相反。因为没有人会真正想要在自己的‘院子’里种植盆栽树,或者插旗子和火炬。”

“在我们的游戏中,玩家通过自己的游戏成绩去展示自己。就像在《Battle Pirates》中,如果你想要战略其他玩家的岛屿,那么你便需要获得更高的分数并提高自己的能力。玩家愿意花大钱去提高自己的防御能力,如购买武器装甲,船体等等。也有些玩家选择花钱去修理船舶,从而帮助他们更好地进行战斗。”

当掌机游戏玩家老是抱怨微交易的同时,硬核游戏玩家则更喜欢根据游戏表现而获得奖励,让胜利的光环照耀着自己。对于任何围绕着微交易并以竞争为主题的游戏来说,任何玩家都可以卷入相同的竞争圈中,并因此触动每个玩家的神经系统,让他们感受到游戏的紧张感。

Harbin说道:“平衡是个关键因素。我们希望确保每个玩家只要玩得好,也能与那些愿意花钱游戏的玩家竞争,并战胜他们。我们不希望那些特别或者专属的道具只是用来销售,而是所有玩家都有机会通过游戏获得它们。对于同样是玩家的我们来说,这点真的很重要,而我们也一直在尝试着向玩家展示这些虚拟商品的理念。”

虽然没有明确的标准模型,但是Kixeye已经通过区分不同玩家级别而大获成功了。有些玩家选择花钱去提高自己的游戏技能而进入到一个更高的级别中,让自己在游戏中更具有竞争性。而那些低级别的游戏玩家也可以凭借自己的级别去抵御其他玩家的进攻,如此能够保持整个游戏的公平性。

社交网络中呈现出的关于传统视频游戏设计的新问题其实很少出现在掌机上,因为在掌机游戏领域,任何东西都是建立在一个单一的购买点基础上。社交游戏和浏览器游戏都必须与玩家建立起长期的关系,确保玩家愿意反复回到游戏中并为游戏掏腰包。所以硬核社交游戏开发者必须是人际关系的专家而非只是专业开发者。

Sheppard表示:“如今的玩家有如此多的选择,所以如何做才能吸引他们的注意并保持他们对于游戏的兴趣真的是个巨大的挑战。为了了解我们的玩家想要并需要什么,我们投入了大量的财力和物力。我们不仅在商业智能,分析工具已经工作人员方面花大钱,同时还建立了一个庞大的玩家体验小组,确保完美能够倾听玩家的想法,并与他们保持最密切的联系。”

选择Facebook作为游戏平台还有一个好处,便是你可以使用该平台上的一些机制,这也是其它平台所不能给予的。Free Range Games总裁Chris Scholz说道:“你可以轻松地使用Facebook上的一些优秀机制,如聊天,发信息,查看哪个好友在线,从而帮助你的游戏更好地进行配对,排行,用户登录,异地挑战等内容。”

Free Range是家新公司,其宗旨是继续制作传统且具有竞争性的社交游戏和网页游戏。它的首个产品是一款第三人称射击游戏《FreeFall Arcade》,在游戏中最多四个玩家可以组成一个小组去阻挡盟军的进攻。这款游戏只有5个关卡,并且也只有少数的枪支和敌人,如此能够进一步缩短与极具紧张感和依赖性的掌机游戏的区别。

与Kabam和Kixeye一样,Freefall也能够轻易地在Facebook站稳脚跟。Scholz说道:“很多Facebook游戏看起来或玩起来并没太大差别,总是有些眼睛大大的可爱的角色,或者一些突然跳出来告诉玩家要选择哪个按钮的画面。虽然Facebook大有潜力,但是我们仍在等待一款优秀游戏的出现,让硬核玩家能够真正意识到Facebook的价值所在。”

模仿和复制只可能衍生出一些没有竞争力的产品,如《FarmVille》的复制品,而硬核游戏也不可避免会受到这种情况的影响。Harbin说道:“在Facebook我们很难找到真正优秀的开发者,所以当人们想要去开发一款即时策略游戏时,我们总是会看到一些之前游戏的影子。在这里并没有一款真正优秀的体育游戏,角色扮演游戏,动作类游戏以及竞赛游戏。”

“我们之前已经制作了许多作品。而我们现在正制作着多款策略游戏,并跃跃欲试,开始尝试角色扮演游戏和竞赛类游戏等。”

Facebook的一大长期竞争优势便是便携性,这能让玩家和开发者同时受益。Sheppard表示:“游戏体验是可携带的并且不依赖于任何设备,意味着只要有网络,我便可以在工作场所,家里或者任何地方玩《Kingdoms of Camelot》。”

Facebook是世界上最大的社交网络,虽然只成立仅短短的5年时间,却已拥有超过7亿的用户。虽然很难想象,但是终究有一天Facebook会开始慢慢衰弱,或者被一些拥有更多卓越技术的平台所超越。

Harbin表示:“显然,总是依赖于发行平台并不是一个很好的商业惯例。而且这不只是我的个人想想法,这也是我们正在积极努力,希望在不久的未来能够改变的一个理念。”

“同时我也必须澄清,我们并不是想要完全脱离Facebook。这是一个很好的合作伙伴,我们很高兴能够与之合作,但是我们也在积极考察着其它优秀的平台。《Backyard Monsters》便在Facebook以外的其它12个网站发布了。从现在算起,也许不到5年的时间玩家便可以在Kixeye自己的网站上玩我们的游戏了。”

开发者需顺时而变

对于广阔的市场中充斥着各种游戏内容,我们不免会感到疑惑——手机平台的壮大,Wii、iOS的发展以及Facebook风卷云涌都让我们不禁担忧,传统的竞争类游戏是否还会有明天?

但是真理便是,游戏产业能够重新调整自己,让“硬核”游戏体验在充斥着交互性游戏的环境中也能够站稳脚跟。同时,那些大发行商的压力也会随着游戏产业的发展而变大,如果他们想要保住自己的地位便需要不断去适应这种发展,并做出调整。2K Games最近在Facebook发行的《文明》便是个典例。

civ world(from gamasutra)

civ world(from gamasutra)

2K Games市场营销副总裁Sarah Anderson说道:“将《CivWorld》带到Facebook符合我们欲在深受玩家喜爱的平台上发行一款AAA级游戏体验的策略。如今的Facebook已经达到我们预想的要求,能够帮助我们的游戏吸引到更多的玩家。而且我们认为,比起及时的市场机遇,我们更应该提供给玩家一款有吸引力的游戏。”

EA通过收购一些拥有已被认可的商业模型的公司而进入新市场,但是最近他们又开始更为直接地尝试推出自己的IP。《龙腾世纪》有属于自己的Facebook版本,其开发商最近已被重新命名为BioWare San Francisco,由此可见EA对专属IP的重视。

通过联合推出《文明》,2K和Firaxis的业务发展方向都朝前迈进了一步,这并不仅因为《文明》是个人电脑史上规模最庞大的一款游戏,而且因为这是一款更能够适应网页平台的回合制策略游戏。

Anderson说:“我们的游戏中包含了开始与结局,有的国家和玩家会赢得游戏,但是有的却不会。我们在游戏中的每天消费设置中添加了一些限制,以保证玩家不能轻易获得胜利,并保持游戏的公正性和平衡性。所以这是一款非常特别的游戏,不论是硬核或非硬核玩家都能够参与其中。”

这些较大的发行商推出了许多独立操作的免费游戏,如《Maple Story》,《Combat Arms》以及《League of Legends》这些没有任何社交网络推广也能大放异彩的游戏。而作为其竞争者的Kixeye认为应该缩小游戏中的病毒式传播,采用定位更为精准的市场营销策略。

Harbin说道:“我们关注于那些有可能喜欢游戏的玩家。我们并不想依附于那些外部政策而决定我们是否要采取病毒式传播模式。虽然我们也领略到一些病毒式传播的优点,并愿意采纳它们,但是这并不是我们的核心模式。我们更愿意花钱于市场营销中,以此保证我们可以获得最合适的目标用户。”

总的看来,“硬核”和“社交”游戏到底存在何种交集仍然是个困扰我们的问题。Harbin说道:“免费的浏览器插件,如Flash(如今随处可见)只能够带给你与个人电脑或掌机在12年前,或者更久之前相等的功效。”

“但是新版本的Flash,不仅能够支持OpenGL,还能为我们带来更多服务。而你也可以利用这个技术制作出更棒的游玩法。”

虽然在Facebook上玩《Killzone 3》或者《Portal 2》的时代尚未到来,但是经过证明,这个平台着实是个富饶之地,能够帮助那些在过去十年里不能真正过渡到掌机平台上的游戏重获生机。如即时战略游戏,竞赛类游戏,回合制角色扮演游戏,策略游戏或者团队射击游戏等并不需要像其它社交游戏那样,为了获利而想方设法吸引最多的玩家。

Harbin说道:“对于我们来说,这么做并不是在扩大我们的用户基础,如果我们有像《Battle Pirates》的那种用户获取机制,并且有大约1千5百万至2千万的用户,那么这真的称得上是价值达数十亿美元的项目了。我们并不想就任何庞大的数字来说事,数以千万计的玩家并没有多大意义。”

“较小的数字也能成就大事。我们的目标只是开发出最好的游戏给愿意付费的玩家,更有针对性地吸引他们的注意,并且提高用户粘性。”(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

We’re Going to Need Another Category: Going Hardcore on Facebook

by Michael Thomsen

Sometimes we invent categories that don’t actually exist. We call some groups of games “hardcore” not because they share qualities with other things given that distinction (e.g. Marines, pornography, punk rock, drug abuse) but because we want to create an aura of specialness around them. By calling a game hardcore, we privilege it, adding a seriousness and meaning without having to further tax our brains about what is really so serious and meaningful about, say, StarCraft or Counter-Strike.

We can also use categories to diminish other games, fencing them off from any possible seriousness because they are “social” or “casual.” (Can anyone think of hardcore games like StarCraft and Counter-Strike as not social?) Over the last several years new and untrustworthy titans have emerged from these instantly dismissible categories: FarmVille, CityVille, Cow Clicker, Angry Birds, Bejeweled Blitz, Fruit Ninja — anything that can run on Facebook or attract tens of millions of players without the use of an assault rifle or pylon is not to be trusted by “hardcore gamers.”

Is that over? Whether fans stuck in the mud of their own rhetoric like it or not, the industry is churning forward, and the barriers between these seemingly contradictory categories are being broken apart.

Where fans see stereotype, a growing number of developers see a distribution platform with an increasingly powerful set of development tools, capable of reaching a wide audience with the least number of obstacles in the way.

Companies like Kabam, Kixeye, and Free Range are all making serious games for browsers and social networks. Likewise, big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, and 2K are beginning to experiment with offshoots of their biggest franchises. These companies are changing the industry. Here’s how.

This is Not a Future State, This is Happening Today

“Gamers judge games, they don’t judge platforms,” Will Harbin, CEO of Kixeye, told Gamasutra. “I definitely consider myself an avid gamer. I have an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3, a Wii, and a souped-up PC. I’ve been playing games since the early ’80s. My favorite genres are real-time strategy games, role playing games, and MMOs, and there was nothing like that on Facebook at the time. So we thought there was an opportunity to do something a little more core on Facebook. We saw it as a wide-open space.”

Kixeye, formerly Casual Collective, tried its hand at updates of Desktop Tower Defense and Minions, and spent three years trying to build itself into a quick and accessible game hub. Then, in early 2010, after realizing the market was flooded, the company decided to refocus on traditional, highly-competitive games for Facebook and other Flash platforms.

Backyard Monsters was the company’s first game after the relaunch — a social twist on real-time strategy games where players fortify their own backyards while others amass armies to attack them. “It was a little bit softer, because it was our first go-round,” Harbin said. “It had cute monsters, but there was lots of blood, and we had real strategic elements in the game that really weren’t on Facebook before that.”

“After the success of [Backyard Monsters] we thought the idea that gamers on Facebook don’t want real games was more about developers — who were spending more time copying one another with variations of farming games or text-based RPGs like Mafia Wars. We saw it as a wide-open space.”

A year and half ago, Kixeye had three employees. Following the success of Backyard Monsters and another RTS hit, Battle Pirates, the company has grown to 60 people. Kabam, one of its biggest competitors, is another company that has enjoyed success creating traditional competitive games for social networks and browser play. Its staff has grown over to over 450 employees.

“Research data reveals a high degree of overlap already exists” between social gamers and console players, Ted Simon, vice president of brand marketing for Kabam, said. “Seven out of 10 social game players are also playing games on a console, and that number rises to 82 percent among what we call ‘Hardcore Social Gamers.’ 55 percent of Kabam players report that they have decreased their amount of playing time on other platforms as a result of their social game playing.”

Kabam formed in 2006 — then called Watercooler Inc. — with the goal of producing social games. In 2009 its strategy game Kingdoms of Camelot become one of the first Facebook games to attract a dedicated following and earn genuine praise from critics typically dismissive of social games. Consequently, the company dedicated itself to making traditional games for social and mobile platforms, with follow-ups like Dragons of Atlantis, Global Warfare, and Glory of Rome.

The total number of players for these traditional game experiences is still small compared with Zynga’s games, including FarmVille, CityVille, and Mafia Wars, which cumulatively attracted over 260 million players in July. Kixeye has between 5 and 6 million monthly players for its two titles, and Kabam’s titles drew 9 million players in July.

Yet even with smaller numbers, traditional games have several powerful qualities that make them an easy fit on social networks and browsers. And their player numbers are more than competitive with the number of players paying for serious games on consoles.

Facebook for Men: It’s Serious This Time

One of the assumptions about the word “hardcore” is that it describes only a kind of game and the serious-minded players who appreciate them. Peeking behind the demographic curtain reveals a more precise truth: hardcore games are ones young men are most likely to consider serious. The player metrics from this new brand of hardcore social games confirm this idea overwhelmingly. The very idea of seriousness is something that appeals most strongly to men — overwhelmingly so.

“The demographic is pretty much 95 or 96 percent male,” Harbin said. “I’d say probably 40 percent of our users are North American males between the ages 20 to 40, and the rest are spread out through Western Europe, Australia, a little bit in Asia. We pretty much just target the male gamer demographic on an international basis.”

Likewise, Kabam recently completed a survey to measure its player base against the rest of the social games category, and found that hardcore games are significantly more appealing to men. “Casual social gamers have a pronounced female skew with women making up 61 percent of players, 62 percent of whom were over the age of 40,” Simon said.

“Kabam players skew heavily male. 72 percent are men and the majority, about 55 percent, are under 40 years old. So, we’re looking at a very different audience than the mass of casual social games.”

Of Kixeye’s 5 to 6 million monthly players, “somewhere around” 10 percent are actually spending money. Kabam declined to share specific financial data, but reported that, even with a significantly smaller player base than other social games, traditionally male-centric games can be lucrative.

“Hardcore social gamers play more games and spend more time playing those games,” Andrew Sheppard, chief product officer of Kabam, said. “They report a much higher incidence of purchasing in-game content, and spend more on their purchases. The challenge is in creating a game that will appeal, attract, retain and motivate these players as purchasers. That’s no easy task.”

While traditional male players tend to buy in equivalent, or slightly higher, percentages than other social games, their purchases are often motivated by different needs. “Our user base buys functional items,” Harbin said. “We tested decorative items that have no bearing on score or performance. We thought it would go gangbusters, but it was really like crickets chirping. Nobody really cared about putting bonsai trees, flags, or tiki torches around their yard.”

“People in our games express themselves through how well they play the game. For Battle Pirates, it’s really all about your score, and ability to loot other people’s islands. People are spending a whole lot of money on their offensive capabilities, and a whole lot of money on their defensive capabilities — so things like weapons, armor, ship hulls, and things like that. Some choose to speed up their ship repairs so they can get right back out there and battle.”

Console players have rankled at the idea of microtransactions. Hardcore players tend to love prizes connected to performance, adorning themselves in the plumage of victory. The idea that someone could simply buy their way into the same competitive circle touches a nerve for many players, a central risk for anyone making a competitive game built around microtransactions.

“Balance is a key element,” Harbin said. “We want to make sure that any user, if they play well enough, can compete and succeed with people who are paying money. There are no special or super exclusive items that can only be bought. Everything can be earned. That’s really important to us as gamers, as we’re still trying to prove the idea of virtual goods to this audience.”

While there is no standard model, Kixeye has had success so far by separating players by level. Choosing to spend lots of money on performance boosting items bumps you up into a higher level, where the play is more competitive. Lower-level players are, likewise, protected from attack by players outside of a certain range of their own level, which ensures a rough kind of fairness.

To Hold You in Time

Social networks present a new problem for traditional video game design rarely experienced on consoles, where everything built up around a single point of purchase. Games for social networks and browsers must build a long-term relationship with players, ensuring that they’ll be interested enough to return again and again, and hopefully spend a small bit of money each time they do. Hardcore social developers must be relationship experts, not just expert developers.

“With so many options available to players today, it’s a major challenge to both capture a player’s attention and keep them engaged,” Sheppard said. “We devote considerable resources to understanding what our players want and need. We have made a significant investment in [business intelligence] and analytics tools and staff, as well as building a large Player Experience team to ensure we are listening to our players concerns and maintaining on-going communication with them.”

Another great benefit of putting a game on Facebook is the associated backbone of pre-existing infrastructure that you might otherwise have to build from scratch. “You can easily leverage what Facebook is great at, like chatting, sending messages, and seeing who is online, to help in matchmaking, better leaderboards, user registration, and asynchronous challenges, among other things,” Chris Scholz, president of Free Range Games, said.

Free Range is a new company hoping to continue the trend of making traditional, competitive games for social networks and browsers. Its first game, FreeFall Arcade, is a third person arena shooter where teams of up to four players cooperate in holding back waves of alien enemies. While the game only has five levels and a relatively small number of guns and enemies at this point, it’s a considerable step toward narrowing the gap between the intense, reflex-dependent action experiences on consoles.

Like Kabam and Kixeye, it’s been easier for Freefall to stand out on Facebook. “A lot of games on Facebook look and play the same, with cutesy big-eyed characters, and the intolerable on-ramp intro with pop up graphics telling you what button to click,” Scholz said. “The potential is there for Facebook, but I feel that we are still waiting for the breakout hit that will make core gamers recognize Facebook’s value.”

Hardcore games have been susceptible to the same copycatting and replication that has made less competitive games like FarmVille into boilerplates. “There still haven’t been a lot of really good developers coming to Facebook and we’re starting to see the same sort of thing happen, where people say they’re just going to developing a real-time strategy game,” Harbin said. “There are no good sports games, no good RPGs, no good action games, no good tournament arena-style games.”

“We’ve got a lot more work ahead of us. We’ve got a couple more strategy games on the way, and we’re starting to lay the groundwork on an RPG engine and a tournament arena battle engine and a few other things we’ve got up our sleeve.”

One of the long-term advantages of Facebook is its portability, which further benefits both players and developers. “The gameplay experience is portable and does not rely on any single device,” Sheppard said. “I can actively manage my empire in Kingdoms of Camelot from work, home or even on the go — as long as I can connect to the internet, I can play.”

Facebook is the biggest social network in the world today, with more than 700 million users, and yet it has been open to everyone for just five years. It’s hard to imagine, but there may yet come a day when Facebook begins to wane, or else is subsumed by an even more encompassing technology.

“It’s never good business practice to rely on one distribution vehicle,” Harbin said. “That’s not just in the back of my mind, that’s right in the forefront — that’s something we’re actively working on.”

“I want to make it clear, we’re not about moving off Facebook at all. They’re a great partner, and we like working with them a lot, but we are working on figuring out what other platforms we can move onto. Backyard Monsters is on 12 other networks outside of Facebook. People will be able to play our games on the Kixeye site much sooner than five years from now.”

The Future is Everything, In Its Rightful Place

The sudden and often confusing rise of broad market gaming content — empowered by mobile phones, the emergence of the Wii, the iOS upsurge, and the tidal wave of Facebook users willing to prune gardens and unscramble jewels — has made it easy to fear for the future of traditional, competitively-oriented games.

The underlying truth is that the industry has simply been rebalancing itself, making “hardcore” game experiences simply one small category in a newly flourishing spectrum of interactive culture. Meanwhile, the burden of the biggest publishers in the industry will be to keep pace with this expansion, across all ends of the spectrum if they’re to maintain their stature. 2K Games’ recent release of a Civilization variant on Facebook is one example of this foundling process.

“Bringing [CivWorld] to Facebook is consistent with our strategy of delivering triple-A entertainment experiences on the platforms where gamers want to play,” Sarah Anderson, vice president of marketing for 2K Games, said. “Facebook has grown to a point where we can deliver a compelling game experience to a vast audience. We felt it was a compelling game to offer the audience rather than a timed market opportunity.”

EA has approached the new markets primarily through acquisitions of other companies with proven business model, but has recently begun experimenting with more directly with its headline IP. Dragon Age has its own Facebook game and its developer was recently renamed BioWare San Francisco, suggesting an even greater focus on IP crossovers.

2K and Firaxis had an even more natural transition with Civilization — not just because it’s one of the biggest franchises in PC history, but because a turn-based strategy game is tantalizingly adaptable to browser play.

“Our game has a beginning and an end, including nations and players that win — as well as those that don’t. We impose daily spending limits to ensure that victories can’t be bought and that the game stays fair and balanced. It’s a fundamentally different game that both core and non-core fans can enjoy,” said Anderson.

These big publishers are, of course, only catching up with the many stand-alone free-to-play games like Maple Story, Combat Arms, and League of Legends, which have quietly but persistently found a way to flourish even without a social network to help promote them. Building on the examples of these competitors, Kixeye found that it was best to minimize the degree of social network virality in its games and instead trust in highly targeted marketing.

“We do very focused marketing for the users that we know will like the game,” Harbin said. “We never want to be beholden to any external policy that affects what we can and can’t do from a viral perspective. We do get a lot of unexpected virality, and we’ll take it, but that’s not really our core model. We can afford to spend a lot of money on marketing and make sure that we acquire the right users.”

What convergence will be between “hardcore” and “social” in the fullest, most bedazzling sense remains distant. “The freely available browser plug-ins, like Flash — which is available everywhere — give you roughly the same horsepower as a PC or console gave you maybe 12 years ago or so,” Harbin said.

“With the new version of Flash coming out supporting OpenGL that gives us even more. There’s a lot that you can do with technology that translates into real gameplay.”

The days of playing Killzone 3 or Portal 2 on Facebook are not here, but it is proving to be a fertile ground to keep alive some genres that seemed have been lost in the shift to console play over the last decade. RTSs, arena tournament games, turn-based RPGs, strategy games, and team-based shooters, don’t have to attract the hundreds of millions of players that other social games do to be massively profitable.

“To us it’s not really about massively expanding our user base,” Harbin said. “If we had the user mechanics of Battle Pirates and had a user base of around 15 to 20 million users, that’s a multi-billion dollar business. We’re not talking about gigantic numbers; we’re not talking about hundreds of millions of people.”

“You can do a lot with much smaller numbers. It’s really about finding highly-engaged, super-targeted pockets of gamers out there and developing games for them.”

It may sting some serious-minded players, but the best chance for hardcore games surviving is becoming more and more closely connected to the social platforms they once derided. You could call it ironic. Or you could let go of the labeling pretenses and simply love what you love, letting that draw you through places you’d never seriously thought about going.(source:.gamasutra


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