作者：Jon Jordan

OMGPOP旗下游戏《Draw Something》的成功充分说明，手机游戏领域的病毒式传播效果很惊人。

虽然我们倾向将此定义成一夜成名，但其实公司是历经众多起起伏伏才取得今天的成就。

该公司CEO Dan Porter在最近采访中介绍了OMGPOP过去的发展，以及《Draw Something》如何取得2500万次下载量，1000万DAU，10亿次日广告印象等系列成就。

Dan Porter from businessinsider.com

这是手机社交游戏领域的又一“一夜成名”范例，能否谈谈公司在尚未获此成绩前的情况？

在推出《Draw Something》前，我们制作过许多游戏（游戏邦注：包括手机、网页及Facebook平台）。每次我们心里都在想，也许这款游戏将一炮而红，但每次推出后，游戏不是略有瑕疵，就有不够有趣。

我们鼓足很大勇气，继续在游戏领域中摸索，将自己积累的经验教训落到实处，但我们总觉得，社交互动模式定存在某些有待我们进一步挖掘的元素。

在《Draw Something》中，所有这些元素都得到充分体现。这是个酝酿5年才“一夜成名”的故事。

Draw Something from plainfaceangel.blogspot.com

你们之前曾推出一个青少年约会网站，从中你们学到什么？

这个约会网站表现得非常糟糕。管理用户个人资料这块内容没有什么扩展空间。

多年来，你们获得众多风投资本，这给公司的面貌带来什么变化？

首先这让我们得以维持公司的发展，让我们能够制作自己期望的游戏作品，而不是承接外包项目。

我们想要创建的不是推出众多热作的公司，而是具有自己的模式和操作特色的公司。最终，我们算是有做到这点。

这是种高风险高回报做法。星火资本参与了我们的所有融资。对于企业家来说，拥有自始自终都予以支持的投资者非常重要。

你们从Flash转投Facebook，然后是手机游戏，你们在吸引用户方面的策略发生什么变化？

作为游戏公司，我们的两着眼点是，我们是否能够通过制作有趣的内容掳获用户的芳心？我们是否能够从中获得收益，靠此谋生？

网页平台便于开发者获取用户，但我们很难从中创造收益。随后Facebook开始出现，由于我们着眼于同步即时游戏，所以这虽然是个非常不错的平台，但并不适合我们。

在制作首款手机游戏时（游戏邦注：即《Puppy World》），令我们颇为吃惊的是游戏的创收率。换而言之，玩家愿意在游戏中购买我们所制作的游戏道具，而且付费操作非常方便。

到推出《Draw Something》时，整个搭配就更加完美——玩家几乎能够即时同好友共同体验游戏，因为你随身携带手机，若你想要掏钱强化游戏，操作过程也非常简单。

能否谈谈自己的游戏设计背景？

我有2个孩子，今年45岁。在加入OMGPOP前，我从未接触过游戏行业。虽然我喜欢游戏，但算不上硬核玩家。

我的多数游戏都是基于自己的构思设计而成。我曾怀疑自己能否得到游戏设计师的职位，我并不擅长此道。

但也许由于我是局外人，我有很多社区和网络工作经验，而不是纯粹的硬核游戏设计师，因此我能够创作出富有创造性的作品。没有排行榜，没有持续的关卡，没有合作体验。我猜想，应该没有“真正”的游戏设计师有创造过类似的作品。

我觉得自己非常幸运，运气悄悄降临到我和团队成员的身上，但我同时觉得，游戏定有包含某些创造性元素，因为我本身并不懂游戏设计，不会局限于设计原则的条条框框，也许正是这些元素令游戏脱颖而出。

我从小最喜欢的游戏包括《Life》、《Monopoly》、棒球及在街上踢足球。这些都对我产生一定的影响。

能否谈谈《Draw Something》的设计和开发过程？

这是个反反复复的过程。我们将最终游戏作品转移到手机平台，然后投入其中进行体验，旨在确保游戏能够在此平台顺利运作。

我们多数时候都是基于这样的想法：在手机平台操作什么内容会富有趣味？在电脑上打出答案，就像我们在网页平台所进行的操作，这在手机平台上毫无趣味可言，所以我们进行了相应的调整。这一点和设定游戏节奏都非常重要。

你什么时候意识到自己的游戏是款热门作品？

我们首次获得3万次下载量的时候。我记得自己当时还这样想；“再过30天，下载量也许就能够突破100万次。”

这带有点传奇色彩。随后游戏的下载量突破10万次，看起来很有希望提高到100万次。但我们始终无法挤入App Store的前25榜单，一直停留在26，这令我们感到颇为沮丧。

我们在随后的一周里对游戏做出些许改进，然后游戏就开始呈现迅猛发展趋势。我妻子频繁发短信告诉我，“游戏现在上升到第22！第16！现在是第8名！”然后我们意识到，自己推出的是款有趣的作品。

《Draw Something》有什么营销计划？你们在用户获取方面的投入多不多？

我们头一周有投入一点资金，这令游戏迅速蹿升到第6的位置。之后就再没掏过钱。参加GDC时，所有人都问我：“你们应该投入很多资金才得到第1的位置。”他们完全无法相信我们没有花半分钱。

就在那个时候，我发现这个行业现状充满讽刺——例如人为操纵应用排名，巨额营销预算等。我们变成与《Temple Run》、《愤怒的小鸟》或《Words With Friends》一样的反常现象。我们的游戏没有进行营销，光凭用户喜欢游戏内容，然后进行口头传播而获得知名度。

同时在iOS和Android平台制作和发行游戏会不会很困难？你觉得跨平台策略是否有给游戏的成功带来促进作用？

我们的开发人员Steve是Marmalade专家。他负责组合游戏内容，起初整个操作并不怎么非常困难。但Android版本不甚理想。虽然iOS版本位居榜单第1，但Android版本却处在第78。

随着游戏的蓬勃发展，两位Android开发人员向我表示，“我们想要优化游戏的Android版本”。他们在此投入两周的时间，随后Android版本获得显著发展。游戏开发的确需要我们投入热情。

这对我们的成功起到很大的推进作用，因为玩家能够同好友进行跨平台体验。这非常重要（游戏邦注：对于单人游戏来说，这也许没有这么重要）。

关于玩家的互访方式，最令你吃惊的是什么？

令我惊讶的是，竟有如此多用户在线即时体验游戏。我曾在聚会上看到几乎所有与会人员都坐下来玩这款游戏。他们仿佛同时上下线，这种感觉太美妙了。

他们在Facebook、Twitter和Instagram分享信息和交流，远远超出我的预期。

再来就是线条带给玩家的自豪感，这是我植入游戏的古怪构思。有次在苹果商店，一位雇员在我信用卡上看到OMGPOP，然后他开始根据好友的线条长度，向我说明他们的排名情况。这实在太棒了。

关于这款游戏的未来运作和更新，你们有什么计划？

首先就继续运作这款游戏。其次就是推出《Draw Something Seasons》和《Draw Something Rio》，我开玩笑的。

无论是继续支撑款游戏，还是推出其他更新内容，这都是非常重大的战略决策。坦白讲我们现在还没有明确答案。有新的消息我们会告诉大家。（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）

OMGPOP’s Dan Porter on how his ‘outsider’ game design style helped boost Draw Something to 25 million downloads

Via experiments with Facebook and teen dating services

by Jon Jordan

The success of OMGPOP’s Draw Something is a great example that the virality of the mobile gaming business is alive and well.

But while it’s tempting to label the game an overnight success story, as if often the case, the company itself has experienced many half successes and plain failures in order to get to this point.

We caught up with its very excited CEO Dan Porter to dig into the company’s past to find out how it shaped its success; currently measured in terms of the game’s 25 million downloads, 10 million daily active users and 1 billion daily ad impressions.

Pocket Gamer: So another ‘overnight success’ in the social mobile gaming space. Talk us through your pre-success times?

Dan Porter: We made a lot of games before Draw Something – on mobile, web and Facebook. Each time we believed maybe this was the game. And each time as the game unspooled, it either had a slight flaw or was fun but not fun enough.

It took a lot of faith to keep noodling away on games and applying what we learned, but we always felt there was something at the core of the real social that we were trying to capture.

In Draw Something, it all came together. It was an overnight -five year – success.

One service you previously launched was a teen dating service. What did you learn from that?

That dating sites are a terrible business and being in the business of policing people’s profile pictures is not scalable!

You’ve taken a bunch of VC money over the years, so how has that changed the company ethos?

For one it has given us the runway to get this far. And it has allowed us to make the games we want instead of contracting to make other people’s games.

You try to position a company that this isn’t a just hits business, that you have a formula and operational leverage. But at the end of the day, it kind of is.

It’s high risk high reward. One of our investors, Spark Capital, participated in every round we ever did. Having a fund believe in you all the way through is so valuable as an entrepreneur.

As you’ve gone from Flash to Facebook to mobile games, how has your focus changed in terms of how you try to engage with your audience?

The two things that we were looking for as a business were, could we engage players by making something really fun for them?And could we monetise it, i.e. make a living from it?

The web was a good place to engage players but a tough place to monetise. Then Facebook came along and as we were looking at synchronous, real-time gaming, was a better platform than the open web but not perfect for us.

When we made our first mobile game (Puppy World) we were astounded at the monetisation rate. In other words, we made things people were happy to buy in the game, and the payment friction was so low.

When we made Draw Something, it was the perfect marriage – you could play almost real-time with your friends because you have your phone with you anywhere, and if you want to spend to enhance the game, it’s super easy.

What’s your background in terms of game design?

I am a 45-year old father of two. Before OMGPOP I never worked in the game industry. And while I like games, I wouldn’t call myself a hard core gamer.

I designed the majority of the game based on ideas I had. I doubt I could ever get a job as a game designer anywhere and I would most certainly be terrible at it.

But maybe there was something about the fact that I am an outsider, someone with more experience in community, the internet and such, than a pure hard core game designer, that lead to a fresh and slightly out of the box design of the game. No leaderboards, no persistent leveling, cooperative… I wonder if someone who was a ‘real’ game designer could have ever made this game.

I think I am incredibly lucky and that fortune smiled on me and the team, but I also think there is something outside of the box about the game because I honestly couldn’t design my way out of a ditch, and that makes this game special.

My favourite games growing up were Life, Monopoly, baseball and tackle football (American) in the street. Those were my influences.

What was the design and development process of Draw Something?

It was highly, highly iterative. We took the legacy game we had, moved it mobile and then played it obsessively to make sure it was right for the device.

A lot of it was driven by the idea what’s fun to do on the phone? Typing the answer out, like you do on the web, for example was not fun to do on the phone so we changed it. That and the pacing of the game was key.

When did you think you had a hit on your hands?

After the first day we had 30,000 downloads. I remember thinking, ’30 more days of this and maybe we will hit 1 million’.

It seemed just epic. Then we broke 100,000 and it seemed possible that we could get to a million. But we had trouble breaking the App Store top 25. We were stuck at 26, which was depressing.

We made some performance enhancements to the game over a week or so, and then it really started to explode. My wife started texting me, ‘You’re at 22! You’re at 16! You’re at 8!’ Then we knew we had something special.

What was the marketing plan for Draw Something and did you spend much in terms of user acquisition etc?

We spent a little money the first weekend to climb to number 6. We never spent a penny afterwards. At GDC, every one asked us ‘You must be spending so much money to be #1′. They couldn’t believe we weren’t spending a penny.

It was then that it struck me in some ways how cynical the industry is – bots, huge marketing budgets etc. We really were an anomaly – like Temple Run or Angry Birds or Words With Friends. It wasn’t marketing. People just loved the game and told other people about it.

How hard was it to develop and launch simultaneously on iOS and Android, and how much do you think going cross platform helped the game’s success?

One of our developers Steve is an expert in Marmalade. He put the game together and initially it wasn’t too hard. But the Android version was not good. While iOS version was #1 in the charts, the Android version was stuck at #78.

As the game took off, two of our Android developers came to me and said, ‘We want to make it nice on Android’. They did in about two weeks and the game blew up on Android afterwards. It needed the love.

It’s been super important to our success because players can play with their friends across devices. That is powerful. For a single player game, maybe it wouldn’t be so important.

What’s surprised you in terms of how players are interacting?

It surprises me how many people play the game live and out loud. I’ve seen whole parties of people sitting around and playing. It’s like they are simultaneously online and offline in a cool kind of way.

The sharing and conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram was way more than I could ever expect.

Also, the pride people have in their streaks, which was a wacky idea I threw into the game. I was in the Apple store and an employee saw OMGPOP on my credit card. He started ranking all his friendships for me by how long their streak was. It was awesome.

What’s your plan in terms of supporting the game and building on the franchise?

Number one, hold on for deal life. Number two make Draw Something Seasons and Draw Something Rio. Just kidding…

It’s a big strategic decision about supporting the one title or rolling out other parts of the franchise. The 100 percent honest answer is we don’t know the right answer yet. I’ll let you know when I do.（Source：pocketgamer）