作者：Lloyd Melnick

我将在Casual Connect上进行有关“赢得战争：如何创建一家成功的社交游戏公司”的演讲。而在此之前我想预先写下一篇有关该演讲的文章，并在此强调一些重要的内容。

社交游戏的成功

在演讲的第一部分我将着重阐述如今社交游戏领域有多么复杂，以及不同利益相关者是如何看待成功并如何资助你的业务。最重要的是，社交游戏并不是一种简单的赚钱机器，华尔街对其发展起着重要的影响作用。只有不到25%的游戏能够达到收支平衡，或取得收益；换个说法便是：四款游戏中只有不到一款游戏能够获得成功。尽管每个人都认为自己是与众不同的，并坚信着自己的游戏肯定能够获得成功，但是事实就是即使你做得再完美，成功女神未必总会站在你这一方。即使在一些大型社交游戏公司（如Playdom，EA以及DeNA）中也是如此，所以如果你无视了这种可能性，那就等于你在无视现实。因此为了创建属于自己的业务，你首先必须牢记这一现实。

当你开始创建属于自己的业务时，你同样也需要明确你的目标是什么，以及达成成功的要素是什么。成功主要是由三大要素所构成，并且这三大要素是相辅相成的。首先便是生存，你必须拥有足够的资源，并全身心投入自己的业务中，确保自己的产品具有成功的机会。其次则是收益，任何优秀的公司都必须能够赚取利益（从而才能够获得生存）。回顾过去5至10年，你将会发现如果你的游戏不能赚钱，你便不可能获取成功。最后，对于大多数社交游戏公司来说最大的成功便是能够“功成身退”；对于许多企业家来说真正的成功是能够公开发行股票或以合理的价格卖掉公司。

潜在和现有投资者的心里都清楚成功包含了哪些要素。他们都希望能够适时抽身并赚取投资回报。机构投资者（游戏邦注：如VC风险投资，私募资金以及大多数天使投资等）都希望自己的投资能够获得更大的回报。因为这种回报是来自适时的抽身，所以投资者并不会对那些看起来有利可图但却未能提供任何实在利益的公司感兴趣。除此之外，回报也是衡量成功的一重要措施。假设投资者预测到自己的大多数投资都遭遇了失败，那么他们便会希望那些获得成功的少数项目能够带给他们多于最初投资金额的回报。当你在融资时最后这一点至关重要，因为你肯定也不希望看到投资者不能从自己的投资中获得回报。

Investors(from padtmedical)

如何获取成功

尽管在游戏产业中获取成功并不容易（大约75%的产品都是以失败告终），但是也存在提高成功率的可能性。首先必须优化游戏的终身价值（LTV）。其中包含了四大元素：

盈利。游戏公司必须在游戏开发的第一天起便将盈利机制整合到设计中去。，并适时吸引消费者的关注。

用户粘性。也许你认为这只是一种陈词滥调，但是我们却不得不重视游戏的乐趣。如果玩家不能在游戏中感受到乐趣，他们便会离开游戏，从而导致游戏最后的失败。

用户留存。与上述那点一样，游戏必须让玩家愿意反复回到游戏中。我发现许多社交游戏便是因为做不到这一点而遭遇了失败。有些玩家只会玩一两次游戏便不愿再回到其中。所以对于社交游戏公司来说，成功的关键便是深入影响玩家的思维，让他们即使身处游戏世界以外也能够想起游戏。

病毒性。病毒性是社交游戏中非常重要的一部分内容，并且随着广告成本的不断提升，这一元素变得日趋重要了。开发者必须在一开始便将病毒性整合到游戏中，并推动着玩家主动与好友分享游戏体验。

Melnick Conundrum

在演讲的最后我将提到Melnick Conundrum，也就是两个相互矛盾的成功元素：专注和多样化。考虑到社交游戏市场的竞争本性，如果你不能全身心地投入，你便很难获取成功。你将在这个市场中与无数拥有数十亿美元资产的公司竞争，而他们的唯一目标便是创造出成功的社交游戏。一个拥有10位或20位员工的公司能够创造出一款优秀的社交游戏，但是他们却不可能同时创造出主机游戏，休闲下载游戏或浏览器游戏，尽管还是有许多人在进行这种尝试。

2009年，在我的第一家游戏公司Merscom中，我们便决定只关注于社交游戏，并结束我们的休闲下载游戏业务（尽管这是一个有利可图的业务并且我们也拥有了五大成功的游戏）。最终在8个月后我们成功地将公司出售给了Playdom。

与专注相对应的便是多样化。如果一款游戏的成功率只有25%，而你又全身心地专注于这款游戏中，那么当它遭遇失败后，你便会一无所有。你可以将游戏文件夹当成一个共有基金管理者，并通过确保游戏类型，平台和时间安排等元素的多样化而平衡成功风险与回报。

所以我才建议你们明确Melnick Conundrum。即专注于基于免费模式的社交游戏，但同时也不忘开发或发行一些没有多大关联性的其它类型游戏，从而降低失败的风险。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2012年7月20日，所涉事件及数据以当时为准。（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）

How to Build a Great Social Gaming Company presentation

By Lloyd Melnick

Next Wednesday at 4:00 pm, I will be speaking at Casual Connect about “Winning the War: How to Build a Great Social Gaming Company.” I wanted to post a preview of that presentation (I will post the actual presentation after the show) and highlight some key points.

Success in social games

The first part of the presentation will focus on how difficult the social games space has become, how different stakeholders view success and how to fund your business. Most importantly, social gaming is not the easy money-machine some  in the press and Wall Street make it out to be. Less than 25 percent of games  break even or make a profit. Let me repeat that figure in a different way: less than one out of four games breaks even. Although everyone thinks they are different and they are entirely confident their game will be successful, the reality is even if you do things perfectly the odds are against you. You see similar numbers from the big social game companies (Playdom, EA, DeNA), so to think you are immune from the odds is to deny reality. Thus, you need to build your business with this reality in mind.

As you are building your business, you also need to understand what you are building towards, what constitutes a success. There are really three key elements for success, and they build on each other. First is survival, you need to have enough resources and runway to operate your business and give your products a chance to succeed. Second is profitability, any good business needs to make money (to survive, see previous point). If you are not making money, you probably will not have a success you can look back at in 5-10 years. Finally, the holy grail for most social game companies is an exit; true success to many entrepreneurs is either a public offering or selling their company.

Potential and existing investors also have a clear picture of what constitutes a success. It is having an exit and the return on their investment. Institutional investors (VC, PE and most Angels) make investment for a large payoff. This payoff comes from an exit, they are not interested in a company that may be profitable but doesn’t give them a benefit. Moreover, the return is a key measure of success. Just having an exit is not enough. Given that they are expecting the majority of their investments to fail, the ones that succeed need to return a high multiple of what was initially invested. This last point is very important to keep in mind when raising capital, as you do not want to raise so much money that it makes most exit opportunities unattractive to your investors.

How to succeed

Although success is not easy in an industry where 75 percent of the products fail, there are ways to improve the odds. First, you need to build games with the goal of optimizing lifetime value (LTV). This consists of four elements:

Monetization. Companies need to incorporate monetization into the game’s design from day one. A successful social game will have monetization that flows with the gameplay and appeals to consumers at appropriate time.

Engagement. It sounds trite, but the game has to be fun. If a player is not enjoying themselves, they will leave and the game will fail.

Retention. Related to the above point, the game has to bring players back again and again. In practice, I find this is the area that most often leads to failure in a social game. Someone will play once or twice, may enjoy themselves, but will never come back. The key to success is getting into the player’s head, so they are thinking about the game when they are not playing.

Virality. Virality has always been an important part of social games (hence the word social), but with the cost of advertising on a perpetually upward spiral, it is even more important. Viral hooks need to be incorporated from the onset and players need a reason to share the experience with their friends.

The Melnick Conundrum

The final part of my presentation at Casual Connect will focus on what I refer to as the Melnick Conundrum, the fact that two key determinants of success are at odds with each other: Focus and Diversification. Given the competitive nature of the social game market, it is impossible to succeed without sufficient focus. You are competing with literally billion dollar companies whose singular goal is to make successful social games. To think that a ten-or twenty-person company can create a great social game when they are also creating console titles, casual download games or browser games is delusional, yet many try.

In 2009, at my first game company, Merscom, we decided to focus on social gaming and to end our casual download business even though it was quite profitable and we had a string of top-five games. The end result was we ended up selling our company to Playdom about eight months later (You can decide if we made the right choice).

The counter to the need to focus is the need to diversify, hence the Melnick Conundrum. If a game only has at best a 25 percent chance to succeed (I don’t believe you can fight the law of averages) and you are focused on creating one great game, if the 75 percent wins you have nothing left. You need to look at your portfolio more as a mutual fund manager, balancing risk and return by diversifying between genres, platforms, schedule, etc.

And that is the way I suggest you address the Melnick Conundrum. Keep your focus on social games that leverage the free-to-play model but either develop or publish multiple titles that are not closely correlated to reduce the risk.

Again, I will be going into more depth on this topic on Wednesday at 4:00 pm at Casual Connect, so if you can make it I would love to have you there.(source:lloydmelnick)