作者：Joost Rietveld

作为热门游戏《植物大战僵尸》与《宝石迷阵》的开发者，PopCap首席游戏设计师David Bishop在伦敦游戏大会上阐述了可能导致手机游戏开发遭遇失败的10大原因，游戏制作人应该予以重视。

植物大战僵尸(from strategyguide)

忽视免费模式。免费商业模式既能够给玩家提供免费的游戏内容也能够通过IAP为开发者创收，所以这是一种非常重要的商业模式。如今，iOS App Store中有65%以上的游戏收益来自免费产品。

忽视Android和亚马逊Kindle Fire发展潜力。凭借谷歌手机操作系统当前的增长率，Android用户很快就能够赶超iOS。而亚马逊推出的Kindle Fire平板电脑更将进一步推动这种发展趋势。

忽视Facebook及其社交图谱。Facebook连接功能及其潜在社交图谱能够给手机游戏设计师提供大量的社交数据。但是如果人们不能在手机上使用Facebook，就更不用谈如何将它融入游戏元素中了。

忽视智能手机的“智能性”。作为手机游戏开发者你应该尽可能地利用各种手机功能，如联系人列表，日期和时间，地理定位功能等。如果你忽视了这些功能，就好比是只使用了一半的工具，那么你的游戏肯定也体现不出“智能性”。

忽视玩家的手机游戏操作习惯。比起长时间沉浸于游戏中的群体，手机游戏玩家中更喜欢“小点心”类型的游戏。《宝石迷阵》的设计便是围绕着1分钟游戏体验而进行，而这也是为何它能够吸引玩家平均投入43分钟的重要原因。一款游戏如果能够允许玩家快速退出游戏，便能够很容易赢得玩家的青睐（不管他是否真的愿意快速退出游戏）。

为游戏创造掌机控制器。掌机游戏和手机游戏是两种完全不同的类型。但是如果你忽视了这种差异性，并煞费苦心地制作游戏控制器——要求玩家长期触碰屏幕，这会大大影响游戏的可用性。

添加了各种指南的复杂游戏设计。手机游戏玩家总是希望能够随时加入或退出游戏。而如果你为游戏添加了冗长的游戏指南，将会大大增加任何游戏环节的准入障碍。

刚发布便添加过多功能。如今的游戏正从产品向服务模式转型。你必须在预发布阶段避免“功能累赘”现象让玩家能够在刚开始时面对一些较简单的功能；并通过定期更新而进一步提高游戏发布后的用户粘性。

夸大加速计的作用。让每个玩家都采用加速计控制方式将会阻碍其游戏体验，并最终导致他们对游戏感到厌烦。我们应该谨慎地使用这些技术。

关注错误的分析或完全忽视分析数据。游戏开发应该尽力保持艺术与科学的平衡。如今我们能够轻松得到用户分析资料，所以保持开发过程中的科学平衡就简单多了。但是如果忽视了用户分析信息，那就偏离了以玩家为中心的游戏开发原则。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2011年11月11日，所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。（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）

PopCap’s 10 rules for commercial failure in mobile games development

November 11, 2011

Joost Rietveld

PopCap, the company behind social gaming hits as Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled, has a way of doing presentations at conferences. Last year’s Social Gaming Summit presentation was insightful in the sense that developers were advised to postpone trying to make money from their game until there is some serious traction.

At yesterday’s London Games Conference, PopCap’s presentation was equally remarkable. During a brief presentation David Bishop (Senior Game Designer) presented the mobile development community with 10 rules that would ensure commercial failure in mobile games. Game producers take notice, or not…

Ignore freemium. The freemium business model, offering the baseline content for free while generating revenue from in-game purchases, has proven itself a worthy business model. Indeed, 65% of all games revenue on iOS’ Appstore already comes from freemium games.

Ignore Android and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Android users are soon expected to overtake iOS adoption with the current growth rate of Google’s mobile operating system. Over 550,000 Android devices are activated every day, adding to the 100 million strong installed base. Amazon’s Android infused Fire tablet might well add to this movement. [1]

Ignore Facebook and the social graph. Facebook connect and the underlying social graph offer a huge wealth of social data that can be cleverly used in mobile game design. However as nobody uses Facebook on their mobile phones, why implement this in your game DNA, right?

Ignore the ‘smart’ in smart phones. As a mobile games developer you have access to mobile phone features such as contact lists, date and time, and location. Ignoring these features is like using only half of your toolbox, not particularly ‘smart’..

Ignore mobile gameplay behavior. Mobile game players prefer to ‘snack’ games rather than to eat meals. Bejeweled is designed around one minute game sessions and this is exactly why the game keeps players hooked for an average of 43 minutes. Being able to put down the game any minute is appealing to the mobile gamer, even though she does not.

Recreate console controls for your games. Console games and mobile games are two different species. Not taking into account the differences, e.g. having elaborate controls that require touching the screen all over, takes away from the usability of the game.

Have complex game design with lots of instructions. Mobile gamers want to be able to drop in and out of the game at any given moment. Starting your game with book length instructions is a huge entry barrier to any play session.

Feature overload your game at launch. Games are in a transition from being a product to being a service. Preventing the ‘feature creep’ to sneak into pre-release development allows for a timely release, a simpler and easier to enter game, and, regular game updates offer engagement tools post-release.

Accelerometer over-emphasis. Implementing accelerometer control for every player command is guaranteed to put players off. Use this often available technology sparingly.

Focus on the wrong analytics, or ignore them all together. Game development should walk the fine balance between craft and science. With user analytics up for grabs, the science part of game development has become a lot easier recently. Ignoring the possibilities that user analytics offer would take away from a player focused development process.

Bishop said that when these rules would be implemented, it would lead to even bigger market share for PopCap (Bejeweled is already installed on 150 million smart phones). The company might have grown up even more after being acquired by EA for a whopping 1.3 billion USD, PopCap certainly haven’t lost their wittiness!(source:strategy guide)