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开发者讨论实行免费模式的关键因素

发布时间:2012-09-03 18:05:49 Tags:,,,,,

作者:Zoya Street

问题:Tadhg Kelly表示开发者一直面临人们对免费模式的误解这个问题。对Tadhg而言,免费模式注重“赚取回头客利益”。Benjamin Cousins则通过Twitter表示异议,他提出初次购买才是免费商业模式的关键。

显然,初次购买与重复消费都很重要,但是如果你必须就此区分优先次序,那么你是关注人们的首次购买,还是重复消费呢?

dau-conversion-arppu(from deconstructoroffun.blogspot.com)

dau-conversion-arppu(from deconstructoroffun.blogspot.com)

回答:

Ian Marsh(Nimblebit游戏开发者)

毫无疑问,我注重初次购买,这样可以推动更多用户对游戏及品牌上的投入。推动重复购买利于最终获取更多利益,但如果你的目标是制作拥有大量忠实粉丝的游戏,那么吸引更多人投入游戏则显得尤为重要。

另一方面,一旦玩家进入游戏,发现游戏的价值,他们极有可能成为回头客。比起付100美元的1000位玩家,我宁可从付1美元的10万名玩家那获取同等或略低的收益。

Teut Weidemann(育碧在线专家)

经典的F2P游戏就是依靠多名付费用户获取最大收益,并非依赖单一买家。如果一位顾客只为游戏付费一次,玩家是无法体会到游戏中的乐趣,所以他们必须支付更多费用。付费用户生命周期较长,如果他只为你的游戏付费一次,那就表明你的游戏在进程、消费模式上存在问题,或者只是道具的设计不妥。

免费模式只适用于特殊游戏及年轻用户群。小孩子喜爱免费模式。道具的贩卖主要针对成人市场,因为他们可支配的收入最高。所以,如果想获取利益,可以考虑制作拥有多种消费模式的成熟F2P游戏机制。

Tadhg Kelly(What Games Are顾问)

只着眼于一次性交易,将不可避免地导致游戏成为一次性用品。用户可能会消费,但游戏价值很快就会流失,因为你并没有为其提供长期价值。这种做法无异于欺骗用户,因此同顾客建立关系、策划营销战略或者扩大品牌影响力的希望只会成为泡影。

这种手段是一种零售动态,可以是朝顾客叫喊买卖,诱惑他们购买一个续集,或是在顾客意识到自己购买的是劣质品前卷钱潜逃。通常网上市场强烈抵抗这种销售方式,因为他们更侧重社区性、社交性以及推荐品。所以你应该考虑营销战略,市场动量指标及信任度。

短期投资会导致更多的短期盈利——最终造成负收益。

Teut Weidemann(育碧在线专家)

我再次申明我是多么反感这个问题:

大家都清楚收益的简单算法:活跃用户(DAU)*转化率(conversion)*每付费用户盈利(ARPPU)。如果其中任何一个因素升高,你就会很高兴。如果有两个因素升高,那你可以在夏威夷附近买座岛屿。目前还未碰过三者同时升高的情况。

所以,《英雄联盟》已拥有1100万用户,但是他们的转化率不高。

《坦克世界》的ARPPU存在上限,但是其它两项指标都不错。

《Desert Operationsin Germany》的用户数量与转换率都偏低,但是ARPPU特别高。

但针对这个有三个变量的等式,提问你最关心初次购买和重复消费这两者中的哪一个方面,我想这并不合适。

Harry Holmwood(Heldhand咨询公司创始人)

当然,实际上这不是一个选择问题,拥有较低ARPPU、影响力巨大的游戏与拥有较高ARPPU的小型游戏同样可行,但目前我们合作的日本游戏则是将留存率及重复消费置于首位。在商业中,获得回头客通常比挖掘新客户更容易。目前我们的最大问题是在挖掘新用户上我们还不够敏捷,我们仍会浪费大量金钱捕获错误用户。我希望接下来这些年,行业能就这一方面进行改进。

Patrick O’Luaniach(nDreams首席执行官)

我有点偏离这一话题,但是对一些以盈利为目的F2P游戏反应过度也会存在风险。游戏提供过多的免费元素确实会削弱用户的购买欲望。根据以往的不快经历,我完全同意F2P游戏并不适合采用相对低价的单次购买模式——几年前,我们制作的一款免费Facebook游戏就遭遇此困境,而且确实处于“最糟的两种处境”——低转换率及低ARPPU。

所以,我偏向于重复消费模式——我更乐意创造一个小型的热闹社区,保持玩家消费的激情,而不是拥有大量一次付费后就离开的玩家。我主要考虑长远利益。

Andy Payne(Mastertronic总经理)

我更想围绕社区制作一款游戏,或者围绕游戏成立一个忠实的社区。所以我常常会通过赠送额外价值、性能和福利(游戏邦注:这些都是玩家或用户乐意付费的对象),从众多用户中合理获取微薄收益。我们想要玩家自愿付费,不是强迫性付费。这样有助于我们掌握游戏的真实情况,并且有可能同真正有价值的用户建立商业关系,后者会随着时间的发展为我们创造收益。所以,对我来说每时每刻留住用户才是关键。

Simon Read(New Star Games游戏开发者)

我同意Tadhg的观点,开发者不应该站在道德高地指责免费模式很邪恶,但这并不意味着老式的共享软件模式不可行。

显然,《新星足球》(简称NAA)要求玩家在测试期后解锁完整版内容,这种做法存在风险,因为游戏必须制作精良,才能避免玩家到达一定水平时就绕道而行,所幸有大约39%的玩家在NSS中解锁了职业模式。许多玩家还继续购买了物品(游戏邦注:该游戏大约50%的收益来自游戏内的虚拟货币销售),所以为玩家提供充分的付费理由这一点特别重要。(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

What is more important – the first purchase, or repeat business?

by Zoya Street

This is the second ‘Gamesbriefers’ post, in which industry experts debate topical questions about game design, marketing and business strategy.

Question:

Following Gasketball’s well-publicised problems, Tadhg Kelly argued the developer’s difficulties stemmed from misunderstanding freemium. To Tadhg, freemium is all about “earning repeat business”. Via Twitter, Benjamin Cousins disagreed, arguing that the first purchase is the priority for a freemium business, not the repeat business.

Clearly both are important, but if you had to prioritise with limited resources, would you focus on getting people to spend their first dollar, or on making those who have already spent to spend more?

Answers:

Ian Marsh Game developer at Nimblebit

I would definitely focus on driving first purchases to get as many people invested in your game and your brand as possible. Fine tuning to promote repeat purchases might be more lucrative in the end but if your goal is to build a game with a passionate following getting as many people invested in your game at all seems important.

The other thing to remember is that once a player dips their toes in the pool and finds it agreeable they’re much more likely to become a repeat customer. I’d much rather make the same or slightly less revenue from 100,000 players paying $1 than 1,000 paying $100.

Teut Weidemann Online Specialist at Ubisoft

Classic – working – f2p games make most revenue with multi spenders, not single buyers. If a customer only buys once your game failed to be fun to the player so that he spends even more. Payers also have longer lifetime usually and spending only once shows that your game has problems with progress, spending patterns or the items are simply too badly designed.

Freemium only works in special game types and younger audiences. Kids love fremium. Item sales work in mature markets and thats where the spendable income is highest. So if you think business then think mature f2p multi spending.

Tadhg Kelly Consultant at What Games Are

The problem with focusing on the one transaction is that it will inevitably make your game somewhat smash-and-grab by nature. So they will spend, then the value of the game will fall off pretty quickly because you have not focused on providing good long term value. You’re not so much building an audience as bilking it, and thus any hope of a relationship with the consumer, building a marketing story or expanding your brand go out the window.

Smash-and-grab is a retail dynamic based on the idea of either wowing the customer and then getting them to buy a sequel, or wowing them and running away with their money before they realise you’ve sold them a turd. Online markets are generally pretty resistant to that process though, because they are more community, social and referral focused. So instead you need to be thinking in terms of a marketing story, of momentum and of loyalty.

Short termism always leads to more short termism – and that eventually catches up with you.

Teut Weidemann Online Specialist at Ubisoft

Let me rephrase as I don’t like the question how it is being phrased:

As everyone knows an easy calculation of revenue is active users * conversion rate * ARPPU. If any one of those three factors is high you can be happy. If two are high you can buy an island near Hawaii. All three is unheard of.

So League of Legends has a huge reach with 11 million users but their conversion seems not to be high.

World of Tanks suffered from a capped ARPPU, but the rest was fine.

Desert Operationsin Germany has low users, low conversion but insanely high ARPPU.

A question which asks which ONE of TWO you would focus on on a THREE equation is not fair.

Harry Holmwood Founder at Heldhand consultancy

Not an either-or in reality of course, and a broader-appeal game with a low ARPPU can be just as viable as a niche one with higher ARPPU, but from the perspective of the (Japanese) games we’re working with at the moment, the focus seems to be to prioritise retention and repeat business over getting the first dollar. In business generally it’s easier to get repeat business from an existing customer than to win a new one. The big problem at the moment is we’re not being smart enough when we acquire new users, and are still spending a lot of money to acquire the wrong ones. My hopes are that this will be one of the big improvements we see in the industry over the next year.

Patrick O’Luaniach CEO at nDreams

Slightly straying from the topic, but there is a real danger in overreacting to some of the slightly mercenary F2P titles and making a game which offers so much free value there really isn’t much incentive to pay anything. From bitter experience, I’d strongly agree that F2P doesn’t work with a single relatively low value purchase – we created a F2P Facebook game a couple of years ago which suffered from this problem, and it really was the “worst of both worlds” – small conversion rate, small ARPPU.

So I favour repeat business over the first purchase – I’d rather create a small passionate community who keep buying things (a community that I understand) rather than have lots of gamers who pay once then go away. This is mainly due to the long term value.

Andy Payne Managing Director at Mastertronic

I would rather build a game around a community or better still build a community around a game that was loyal and committed. So for me it is about getting small pieces of money from many, many people reasonably often by delivering extra value, features and benefits which players/customers want to pay for. I want our players to give us money, not because they have to, but because they WANT to. That will keep us on top of our game and hopefully have a business with real value and  real customers which generates profits over time. So retain the customer every single time for me.

Simon Read Game developer at New Star Games

I agree with Tadhg that developers shouldn’t sit on some imaginary moral high ground proclaiming freemium to be evil, however it doesn’t mean that the old shareware model cannot work.

Clearly New Star Soccer takes that approach by requiring players to unlock the full game after a trial period. This is a risk because the game has to be good enough for people not to turn away as soon as they reach the gate, but fortunately around 39% of players do unlock the career mode in NSS. Many then go on to make further purchases (around half of the revenue comes from purchases of in-game currency) so offering the player an avenue to spend more is absolutely essential.(source:gamesbrief


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