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游戏化项目可从Zynga运营模式借鉴的4点经验

发布时间:2012-03-28 18:01:43 Tags:,,,

作者:Gabe Zichermann

Zynga旗下的《FarmVille》、《CityVille》和《Mafia Wars》不但是史上最成功的数字游戏,而且还给其他领域的项目上了一堂生动的经济课。

观察Zynga发展历程,我们可以从中借鉴成功的运营模式,并将其运用于其他网站、应用程序或服务体验甚至是政府服务等项目。这就是所谓的“游戏化”现象,它应该向Zynga模式看齐。

以下就是游戏化项目可从《FarmVille》等社交游戏汲取的经验:

1.制造“免费”的错觉

《FarmVille》等社交游戏通过用户付费获得了可观收益,但其用户策略却与其他在线内容截然不同。

社交游戏并不是向用户收取固定费用(游戏邦注:例如每周4美元),而是提供了一种免费娱乐的错觉。其过程如下:

1)恭喜你!你太棒了,你可以进入下一关。

2)现在你有一个新的前进目标,请查看这辆拖拉机。

3)要获得这项道具,你需要1万张虚拟钞票。

4)你可以通过刷任务赚足这些钞票(通过社交媒介推广我们的产品)。

5)或者花钱跳过这个环节,直接获己所需。

这种设计很棒,它向用户呈现了“时间 VS 金钱”的选择,从中可以看出社交游戏设计师深谙人们对选择权和自尊感的渴望。

如果你选择跳过这一环节,你就是从时间价值而非价格角度出发来做决定。与此同时,那些不想付费的玩家,也可以通过在社交媒介推广内容而实现目标。

经验:如果条件允许,最好给予用户付出时间(以及进行社交推广)或金钱的选择。这样他们会更开心,投入也会更多。

farmville-20-free-farm-cash(from blog.games.com)

farmville-20-free-farm-cash(from blog.games.com)

2.不要设置支付上限

这种时间 VS 金钱的方法同时也为《FarmVille》用户提供了高度定制化的选择和触发系统。虚拟货币及灵活的触发系统可在一定程度上混淆产品定价的概念。与此同时,它也支持游戏通过个化性及微交易模式最大化地从每名用户身上获取收益。

2012年2月份,Zynga报告称公司营收达3.11亿美元,拥有1.53亿独立用户,每用户平均收益(ARPU)约2美元。在平均仅有3%社交游戏用户付费的情况下,付费用户的ARPU值接近于60美元。还有一些用户每月在《FarmVille》中的开销多达成百上千美元。

经验:将你的产品/服务拆分成更小的元素,出售个性化物品,使用虚拟货币来克服差别定价的问题。

3.关注触发活动和细节

你提供的服务体验再棒,用户也总会有厌烦、分心和离开的时候。最佳方法就是持续创新,为用户创造更多日常互动机会。

关注触发事件和小型操作是产品创收的关键所在。不要将自己的转化系统设计为孤注一掷,然后将用户弃之不顾的体验,要全面观察用户的操作行为。换句话说,要看出促使用户采取行动的触发因素(游戏邦注:这方面可借鉴Badgeville、Bunchball和BigDoor等游戏化平台)。

发现关键行为的触发因素之后,就要寻找可减少用户流失率并提升ARPU(有时可能只会提高1-2%)的干预措施以便提高转化率。例如,《FarmVille》产品团队发现如果玩家每月需要消费35美元,就会提高一些用户的流失率。Zynga就会让用户采取社交行为以替代支付现金,使这一收益达到36美元。这可以立即将流失率降低好几个百分点,并额外创造数百万收益。

4.以简单性吸引更多用户

这是个令人痛苦的事实,但如果你想让项目实现效益,就必须要有更多用户。要在提升每用户平均收益的同时,植入更多内容以维持项目发展。

俗话说:“留客容易入客难”,虽然此话不假,但要做到这一点是远远不够的。对社交游戏来说,吸引新玩家就是业务运营的关键,所以它们总是尽量保持简单性,以便减少引进新玩家的障碍。我们不需要那样重视玩家刚起步的关卡,但很需要关注他们持续体验的时间。

经验:获取用户是一个关键的发展策略,所以要尽量保持游戏化体验各个环节的简单性。(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

Zynganomics: 4 Secrets of the Social Gaming Business Model

by Gabe Zichermann

Zynga’s Farmville, CityVille and Mafia Wars aren’t just the most successful digital games of all time; they also present an amazing economics lesson that everyone can learn from.

When we observe Zynga’s story, we can learn from its user behavior, discover new patterns, and apply these lessons to any website, app or experience – including our national governments.

We can take the best lessons from games (like loyalty and behavioral economics) and apply them to other areas.

The practice is called gamification, and Zynga sets the gold standard.

Let’s take he top economic lessons from FarmVille and apply them to business.

1. The Illusion of “Free”

Social games like FarmVille generate a lot of money from user payments, but their consumer strategies are radically different from other kinds of online content.

Instead of a fixed paywall (e.g. pay $4 per week or get nothing), social games offer the illusion of free entertainment. The method looks something like this.

1.Congratulations! You’re so awesome that you’ve achieved the next level.

2.Now you need a new object to keep moving forward. Check out this tractor!

3.To buy this item, you’ll need 10,000 in virtual cash.

4.You can earn this money by grinding away at your “job” until you earn enough currency (while promoting our product through social media), or

5.You can simply pay money to skip the line and get what you need now.

This design is brilliant. By presenting the purchase option as “your time vs. your money,” social game designers tap into both our desire for choice and our sense of self-importance.

When you choose to skip the line, you’re making a decision in favor of your ego. The decision feels less about the price-value continuum, and more about time-value. Meanwhile, those who choose not to pay are promoting the game on social media.

The lesson: Where possible, give people the option of paying with time (and social promotion) or money. They’ll be happier, and ultimately pay more.

2. Never Limit How Much Someone Will Pay

The time-money approach to conversion also allows FarmVille to offer highly discriminated pricing, which provides users with highly customized offers and triggers. Virtual currency and a flexible trigger system causes some degree of pricing confusion. At the same time, it also allows the game to extract the maximum revenue from each user by making conversion to sale incremental,personalized and micro-transaction based.

In Feb. 2012, Zynga reported a $311 million revenue on 153 million unique users, for an average revenue per user (ARPU) of right around $2. But given that only about 3% of people pay for social games on average, the paying player ARPU is probably closer to $60 per user. Once you distribute that number across a natural curve, it becomes obvious that some users are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars a month to play FarmVille.

The lesson: Break your product/service into smaller elements, sell those items privately, and use a virtual currency to overcome the price discrimination problem. The strategy will unlock your revenue upside.

3. Focus on Trigger Activities, Sweat the Details

No matter how good your experience, people will always become bored, distracted and leave for one reason or another. The single best way to combat this is to constantly innovate and add more to your users day-to-day interactions.

Equally important to generating revenue is focusing on triggers and small actions. Rather than designing your conversion system as an all-or-nothing experience and leaving the minutiae up to the user, develop a comprehensive, action-based view of your users’ behavior. In other words, monitor what is making users take action (see gamification platforms like Badgeville, Bunchball and BigDoor).

Once you understand the key behavior triggers, raise conversions by looking for small interventions that reduce churn and raise ARPU – sometimes by as little as 1-2%. For example, say that FarmVille product teams discovered that asking for more than $35 in purchases per month caused unusually high churn for some users. Zynga would change the call-to-action at $36 by asking for social activity instead of cash. This would immediately reduce churn by a couple percentage points, and ultimately generate millions in additional revenue.

The lesson: Instead of simply putting things on sale, look for the small details in the user conversion funnel that can deliver incremental revenue and reduce churn.

4. You Always Need More Players

This might seem painfully obvious, but you consistently need more players to keep an economy growing. While you’re looking to raise revenue per player, incorporate more input to sustain growth.

Take the old saying: “It’s cheaper to retain an existing customer than recruit a new one.” While that may be true, it’s not enough to grow a business. For social games, recruitment is a core part of business — at every turn, the game makes it as easy as possible to bring new people in. We need not be as concerned with the starting level a player is on, but rather with how far they can progress.

The lesson: Customer acquisition is an essential part of any growth strategy, and should be made as easy as possible, integral to every aspect of your gamified experience. (source:mashable


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