作者：Ivor Tossell

3月末，一款名为《Draw Something》的游戏出现在智能手机上。这是一款两名玩家相互猜猜对方所花内容的游戏：一名玩家根据一个单词在自己的手机上画出单词的含义，而另外一名玩家需要根据对方所画的猜词。这款游戏让玩家能够通过在触屏手机上画画进行交流，可以说是一款具有一定挑战性的游戏。但与此同时这也是一款非常有趣的游戏——至少在前面30或40轮来说是这样的。

draw something from iloveapps.hk

所以这款游戏引起巨大轰动。在短短的50天时间内，《Draw Something》就获得了5千万下载量，并且共有超过1500万玩家积极地在自己的手机上玩这款游戏。引起如此巨大反响自然会吸引来一些商家的注意，所以很快地Zynga便以2亿美元的高价收购了这款游戏。但是在收购后一周里，游戏的人气却急剧下滑，流失了500万玩家。

显然出现这一结果应该归咎于Zynga。但是说实话，此时全世界的社交游戏都处在黯淡且变幻无常的境地。大概只有圈中人才知道为何会出现这种情况。

《Draw Something》便是我们所谓的“社交游戏”，这一术语其实带有糟糕内涵。社交游戏市场充斥着许多只提供少许游戏玩法的“免费”游戏，但是却时常要求玩家花钱“升级”游戏。

最典型的社交游戏应该非《FarmVille》莫属了。这款游戏要求玩家反复执行相同任务以完善他们的数字农场——或者玩家也可以付钱执行这些任务。游戏中的“社交性”体现在玩家将自己的农场与别人的农场进行比较，或者与自己的Facebook好友不断讨论游戏内容。如今《FarmVille》的流量也出现下滑。根据AppData数据显示，《FarmVille》的日流量在过去一个月就下跌了60万，即现在只剩下450万的用户了。

虽然《FarmVille》没有基于高尚的人道主义，但是这却是一款有利可图的游戏，给Zynga带来了超过10亿的利润。并且这款游戏的成功也掀起了一股数字游戏淘金热潮，随后许多大大小小的游戏开始模仿这款游戏的免费模式和付费前进模式。结果便是整个社交网站充斥各种让人恼火且平淡无奇的免费游戏，且不断窥视玩家的腰包。在这个领域复制其它公司的游戏再平常不过了：是否有人还记得《Scrabulous》，这款抄袭了《Scrabble》的游戏在被指控之前确实取得不错成绩。而Zynga本身也因为复制竞争者的一些游戏落下不好的名声。

但是《Draw Something》的出现为这个领域注入了新鲜血液。行业还没有任何猜猜画画类复制品，所以《Draw Something》具有绝对的独创性，且游戏还呈出相互协作的氛围。因为玩家在游戏中的目标是有效传达单词的内容给对方，所以他们就会尽可能清晰地画出单词的含义而让对方更容易猜到。除此之外《Draw Something》还引领了另外一股潮流：作为完全基于智能手机的一款应用，这款游戏充分利用触屏媒体的优势。也就是说玩家并不能在台式电脑上玩这款游戏。玩家可以在游戏中连接到自己的Facebook帐号并找到好友，但是游戏却未提供给玩家任何访问网址（这一点着实让Facebook感到焦虑）。

所以，到底是什么原因让一款能够在短短数月里获得1500万玩家的游戏迅速流失三分之一的玩家？

从某种程度上来看，设计弱点便是一大问题。游戏设置较慢——如果你同时和五位玩家玩游戏的话这便不是问题，但是如果同时有20个好友想和你一起游戏的话问题便大了。除此之外，游戏中的单词选择局限也是个严重问题，也就是玩家可能多次面临“八胞胎母亲”这个单词。

用户总是会面临的一个问题便是：他人即地狱。用户能够选择与Facebook好友或随机玩家共同游戏。但是玩家是否真的愿意看到其它关于猜猜画画游戏的复制品？

更为重要的是，《Draw Something》也难以逃脱关于社交游戏的诅咒。虽然是一款免费游戏，但玩家却需要在游戏中面对无数关于其它社交游戏（游戏邦注：如《Restaurant Story》，《Tap Paradise Cove》和《Tiny Slots》等）的广告，且游戏内部也设有需要玩家花钱的机制（如购买更多颜色等）。而如果你花2美元购买付费版本，你便不会受到这些侵扰。

现在有消息说，在Zynga的支持下，《Draw Something》将向广告商出售单词，从中更多利益。事实上，在这款游戏中我们已经能够看到像“谷歌”，“奥迪”之类的单词。

从其本身来看这并非糟糕想法；因为商业本身也是一种文化。但是作为广告商，像NHL那样鼓励用户在Twitter和Pinterest分享自己所创造的曲棍球产品，从而导致出现大量用户创造的品牌形象，随后会出现反冲效果。但是如果《Draw Something》的流量能够因此继续增长的话，这便不是问题。

不过讽刺的是Zynga发现自己陷入了一个圈套中，即他们花费2亿美元的高价，希望从收购的游戏中谋取更多利益，但用户却逐步远离这款游戏。虽然如此，Zynga毕竟是创造无娱乐价值休闲游戏的先驱。社交游戏已经演变成一个只会赚钱但却无法提供任何有意义内容的“不毛之地”。社交游戏领域局势不容乐观，Zynga正在对其进行挽救。（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）

Drawing conclusions from a social gaming fad

Ivor Tossell

I’m not sure what schadenfreude looks like, but let me draw a crude sketch for you.

At the end of March, a game called Draw Something started appearing on smartphones. The game was a Pictionary-style game for two: One player is given a word to draw on their phone, which the second player then tries to guess. Antlers! Tugboats! Octomom! The game ends up being an exercise in communicating by pawing pictures onto a touch screen, which is actually fairly challenging. It really is fun, at least for the first 30 or 40 rounds.

The game exploded. Draw Something had been downloaded 50 million times in 50 days, and more than 15 million people were actively playing it on their phones. The American start-up suddenly looked like takeover material, and soon it was being bought by Zynga, the controversial creators of FarmVille, for a cool $200-million (U.S.). And then – within weeks – its popularity plunged, dropping a full five million players.

Sucks to be Zynga. But the world of social gaming is bleak and fickle. And if anyone should have known, it’s them.

Draw Something is what we call a “social game,” a term fraught with lousy connotations. The social-gaming market has been dominated by “free” products that offer little gameplay, but constantly press players to spend money on “upgrades.”

The archetypal social game, of course, is FarmVille, a game that asks players to perform repetitive tasks to improve their digital farmland – or pony up real cash to do the same. The “social” angle comes in the form of comparing your farm to the next farm over, and endlessly haranguing your Facebook friends to come play too. FarmVille’s numbers have been declining as well. According to AppData, a usage-tracking site, Farmville’s daily traffic has dropped by 600,000 in the last month, down to 4.5 million users.

FarmVille might not have advanced humanity, exactly, but it was profitable, turning Zynga into a company valued in the billions. Its success, in turn, spawned a digital gold rush, with imitators big and small trying to replicate its free-to-play, pay-to-get-ahead magic. The result was an entire category of irritating, spammy, entertainment-free diversions, junking up social networks and clamouring for your money. Copying other companies’ products isn’t uncommon in this space: Those with long memories might remember Scrabulous, the shameless Scrabble clone that flourished before being lawyered into oblivion. Zynga itself gained an unsavoury reputation for all but cloning the work of competitors who tried to enter the space.

But Draw Something was a breath of fresh air. Hardly a simple Pictionary clone, Draw Something has a creative, collaborative vibe to it. Since the goal is to get a message across, players are challenged to draw clearly and guess well. It was ahead of the curve in another respect too: Built from the ground up as a smartphone app, it takes full advantage of the touch-screen medium. In fact, you can’t play it on desktop computers at all. It connects to Facebook to find your friends, but otherwise it never sends you to visit the site. (This should make Facebook nervous.)

So, how could a game that gained 15 million players in a matter of months lose one-third of them even quicker?

In part, design weaknesses were a problem. Gameplay is slow, which is fine when you’re playing five games at once, but quickly wearying when 20 friends want to play. Word choice is limited. You can only draw Octomom so many times.

Users also ran up against a hitch that has nagged humanity for some time: Hell is other people. Users had the choice of playing against their Facebook friends, or anonymous, random Internet denizens. Would you like to see some finger-drawn reproductive bits? Then do I have an Internet for you.

More to the point, Draw Something couldn’t escape the curse of social gaming. The free version bombards players with a never-ending rotation of ads for other social games (Restaurant Story? Tap Paradise Cove? Tiny Slots?) and offers schemes to buy in-world cash. A $2 paid version spares you these indignities.

Now comes word that, under the aegis of Zynga, Draw Something wants to make further money by selling words that people guess to advertisers. In fact, the game was already asking people to draw words like Google and Audi, gratis.

This is not a terrible idea in and of itself; commerce is culture, after all. But as advertisers like the NHL, an early client, encourage users to share their hockey-themed creations on Twitter and Pinterest, the influx of user-created branded images could spark a backlash in short order. But if Draw Something’s numbers continue to plummet, it might not be an issue.

It’s ironic that Zynga finds itself on the hook as users abandon a game it just paid $200-millionfor, even as it searches for ways to wring it for dollars. After all, the company was a pioneer of unentertaining entertainment for the listless. Social gaming has become a wasteland of pointless exercises and money grabs. Is there any wonder that the people have become accustomed to picking these things up, poking at them, then dropping them? The social-gaming picture isn’t pretty, and Zynga helped draw it itself. It should have been able to guess what it meant.(source:The Globe And Mail)