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提供多种IAP选项 捆绑销售作用显著

发布时间:2011-11-26 21:12:05 Tags:,,,

作者:Noel

游戏积点绑定内容并不新颖。早在内置付费模式(简称IAP)出现前,Zynga就以发行“积点”应用提高玩家游戏声望或其他地位著称。其实他们推出的不仅是获得获得游戏积点的渠道,而是各种价位的应用,我认为这是开发者企图在榜单中崭露头角而采取的策略。

时光飞逝,如今更多公司开始追随大流,开发需靠“积点”前进的游戏,因此这片领域总是不乏伙伴。我基于传承原因放弃此模式,而是瞄准适合单机应用的内容。

上次圣何塞360iDev大会上,Mark Johnson的发言令我印象深刻。我依然记得他用自己经典英国腔调称:“我们也许低估用户在虚拟交易中的付费意愿”。真的?

bundles from gamesfromwithin.com

bundles from gamesfromwithin.com

我找机会查看某些热门游戏的畅销虚拟道具。下列截图是我刚刚截取的,但结果依然一样。我想让大家猜猜这些虚拟道具来自哪些游戏。

chart from gamesfromwithin.com

chart from gamesfromwithin.com

我对于结果非常惊讶。畅销虚拟道具不再是售价99美分的内容,位居前列的商品包括售价49.99美元的捆绑内容(游戏邦注:或更高价位)。这太疯狂了!我确实低估玩家的付费意愿,只在《Flower Garden》提供售价99美分的肥料瓶。

《Flower Garden》的捆绑内容

在《Flower Garden》随后的更新内容中,我决定进行小试验,添加两个额外肥料选择:一个售价2.99美元,一个售价5.99美元,二者均提供更丰富的内容(有20、70和150剂量)。这同我在其他游戏中看到的价位相比简直微不足道,但我依然不想因设定高价捆绑内容而流失用户。

结果呢?

最畅销的道具依然是售价99美分的单个肥料瓶。但很多用户也充分利用其他两种捆绑选择。下面是《Flower Garden》过去两个月的肥料销售情况:

fertilizer sales from gamesfromwithin.com

fertilizer sales from gamesfromwithin.com

下面我们通过收入查看此阶段的销售情况(游戏邦注:这里依然是以免费版本为例):

fertilizer revenue from gamesfromwithin.com

fertilizer revenue from gamesfromwithin.com

现在两种捆绑内容的收益同单个肥料瓶非常接近,尤其是较大容量,即5.99美元内容。

超出想象

最后,捆绑内容是否作用显著,或大家购买同样数量的肥料,但投入更少资金?遗憾的是,我无法以纯数据角度回答此问题。查看引入捆绑内容前后的肥料销量不是明智做法,因为每次更新内容后,用户都获得显著增长。我甚至无法通过销售数据将此常规化,这需要基于日活跃用户的数量,但遗憾的是,这不是我追踪的数据范围。

但我觉得有两点能够说明为何捆绑内容作用显著。

1. 更多选择

融入不同程度的捆绑内容让玩家在决定如何购买内容方面享有更多选择。就我读过的买家心理学来看,消费者喜欢在购物时拥有选择性。他们非常投入购买过程,会进行相应评估,他们觉得自己所做决定的最佳选择。这似乎说明,若游戏融入更多肥料选择,会有更多用户购买内容。

2. 高投入性

这点非常重要。只要用户花钱购买5.99美元的捆绑内容,他们就会更投入游戏。可以确定的是他们会再次返回游戏,把所购买的商品玩够本。即便他们返回游戏与虚拟商品无关,但所耗资金就起到很好的提示作用。促使用户回访游戏主要涉及:他们将挖掘更多游戏内容,更融入其中,进行更多虚拟交易,同更多好友分享,给予家人更多问候。

我将来无疑会继续融入捆绑内容。玩家可以从中受益,而我们则可以从中获得更忠诚的用户。这是个双赢局面。

游戏邦注:原文发布于2010年7月29日,文章叙述以当时为背景。(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

IAP Bundles: More Than Just Good Deals

by Noel

In-game point bundles are nothing new. Even before the time of in-app purchases, Zynga was famous for releasing “points” apps to increase your game reputation or other stats. The fact that they released not just one way of getting points, but many different apps at different price points, was something I dismissed as a marketing tactic to try to get noticed on the charts.

Fast-forward to now, and as more companies are jumping into the bandwagon of games that need “points” to make progress, we’re still bundles. Again, I chucked that up to legacy reasons and doing what worked with the standalone apps.

Discovering Bundles

It was at the last 360iDev in San Jose, that Mark Johnson said something that really stuck with me. I can still hear him say it with his fine British accent: “I think we might be underestimating how much people are willing to pay for in-app purchases”. Really?

As soon as I had a chance, I looked at the best-selling IAPs for some popular games. The screenshots below were taken today, not back when I looked at them, but the results are very much the same. I let you guess which games these IAPs came from.

I was very surprised with what I saw. The top-selling IAP was never a $0.99 one, and there were bundles of $49.99 or higher towards the top! That was crazy! I was indeed underestimating what players are willing to buy by only offering a measly $0.99 fertilizer bottle in Flower Garden!

Bundles In Flower Garden

As part of the next Flower Garden update, I decided to run a little experiment and add two more fertilizer options: A $2.99 one and a $5.99 one, each of them giving you a slightly better deal on fertilizer (20, 70, and 150 doses). That was still nothing compared to the price tags I was seeing in those other games, but I didn’t want to alienate users by slapping some ridiculously high bundle prices.

The results?

The most popular item by number of sales was still the single fertilizer bottle for $0.99. But a lot of people took advantage of the the other two bundles as well. This is how fertilizer sales for Flower Garden Free have been for the last two months:

But now, let’s look at that same period by plotting revenue (again, only Flower Garden Free, the full version is very similar but it wasn’t easy to combine the two to display them here):

Now the two bundles are a lot closer to the single bottle, especially the larger, $5.99 bundle.

More Than Meets The Eye

In the end, were bundles effective, or are people buying the same amount of fertilizer and leaving less money in the process? Unfortunately I can’t answer that question from a pure data point of view. Looking at fertilizer sales before and after I introduced the bundles is no good because the number of users increased dramatically at each update. I can’t even normalize them by the number of sales, it would have to be by the number of daily users, and unfortunately that’s not a statistic that I’m tracking.

However, I think we can argue two really good points about why bundles are great.

1. More choice

Having different levels of bundles give players more choice on how they want to purchase something. From what I’ve read about buyer psychology, people love having choices when buying something (just don’t give them too many choices!). They are more involved in the buying process, they evaluate it, and they feel better about the decision they eventually make. So that seems to indicate that more people might buy fertilizer if there are a few bundle options than if there’s only one.

2. Commitment

This is the biggie. Whenever a user purchases a $5.99 bundle (or a $49.99 one!), they became more committed to your game. You can also guarantee they will come back again to get their money’s worth from that purchase. Even if they had the intention of coming back to your game without the purchase, having spent that money is a nice reminder to do so. And having people come back to your game is what this is all about: They will explore more of the game, get hooked more, make more in-app purchases, show it to more of their friends, and send more bouquets to their family.

I have no doubt that I’ll be using bundles in the future. Players get a good deal, and you get committed players. It’s a win-win situation.(Source:gamesfromwithin


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