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2012年游戏产业的5大趋势

发布时间:2012-12-07 17:38:21 Tags:,,,,

作者:Kris Graft

每到12月份我就会开始感叹时光飞逝,特别是当我开始总结过去12个月内所发生的种种时:也就是在今年2月份,在拉斯维加斯所举办的DICE Summit上我看到Tim Schafer不断核查着手机去追踪其团队在Kickstarter的融资情况;也就是在今年,Zynga投入上亿美元的资金去开启手机游戏市场的大门。

当然了,今年还发生了许多引人注目的大事,而从现在来看,我们可以为此总结出五大趋势,即2012年游戏产业的5大趋势。

融资所迎来的新机遇

过去几年出现了许多像Kickstarter的融资活动,但是Tim Schafer的游戏项目《Double Fine Adventure》在2月份所进行的融资更是掀起了游戏领域的集资热潮,即唤起了产业中一些新的发展机遇并为一年中剩余的时间确定了一个强大的发展主题。

通过这次融资,《Double Fine Adventure》共获得了超过330万美元的资金(远高于其40万美元的目标),并创造了Kickstarter平台上融资新纪录。随后Obsidian Entertainment的《Project Eternity》以将近400万美元的融资金额再次打破了记录。并且Kickstarter在2012年的融资项目中不只是面向游戏软件,同时还包括了硬件设备。就像基于Android系统的Ouya主机便在此获得了860万美元的融资,Oculus Rift VR头戴显示设备也在此筹集到了超过240万美元的资本。

但是创造者并不总是将Kickstarter当成融资平台。就像《Wing Commander》的创造者Chris Roberts便在自己的网站上发起了一项融资活动,并结合了在Kickstarter的融资而最终为自己的航空游戏《Star Citizen》筹得了超过620万美元的资本。Introversion独立运行的融资活动也募得了62万5千美元的资金。

但是并非所有选择Kickstarter平台的创造者都能够取得成功——也出现了许多夭折的活动。但是不管成功与否,Kickstarter不仅为开发者提供了独立筹集资金的平台,同时也为旁观者和投资人呈现出了各种吸引人的故事。

向手机平台转变

今年,社交游戏开发者将更多时间和资源分配给了手机平台,就像Facebook上的资深玩家便同时在自己的智能手机和平板电脑上安装了游戏。

Facebook推动了那些原本只面向浏览器平台创造社交游戏的开发者开始转向手机平台。这些社交网站呈现出了更多新的病毒式渠道,让各种游戏能够经由Facebook好友进行传播,而现在游戏开发者也可以将他们的原生手机游戏整合到Facebook的开放式图谱中。

9月的一份报告指出,Zynga,艺电和迪士尼/Playdom的浏览器社交游戏的日活跃用户整整下跌了2位数。与此同时最畅销的手机游戏更是持续吸引了更多玩家的注意。

而为了追随着玩家的喜好,开发者便不得不改变发展策略。就连始终坚守于社交游戏的Wooga也表示他们的关注点将不再只是Facebook游戏,也将转向手机游戏,并将任命一半以上的员工(共拥有250名员工)去执行智能手机和平板电脑的游戏开发。Crowdstar也已经停止了社交游戏的开发业务而专门开发手机游戏。King.com则专注于提供跨平台的游戏体验(从浏览器到手机平台的过度)。而Zynga投入2.1亿收购了《Draw Something》的开发商OMGPOP的行动也说明了这家Facebook领头游戏开发商认可了手机游戏的价值所在。

中层游戏开发者逐渐被排挤出去,并且很显然不只有社交游戏开发者在瞄准手机平台。每一年都会涌出现上百万台新手机,手机硬件也日趋强大,Facebook本身也将更多注意力投向了手机平台。我相信2013年这种转变将更加成熟,并且有可能渗透到整个产业中的各个角落。

告别MMO订阅

当BioWare Austin的《星球大战:旧共和国》因为玩家的流失而转变成免费模式时,“免费”MMO和每月订阅模式的发展希望真的是彻底落空了。

MMO(from gamasutra)

MMO(from gamasutra)

还有Funcom的《神秘世界》——每个月向玩家收取费用的有趣的MMO;当玩家不再玩游戏时,该公司便不得不进行重组,并相应地裁减员工。如今这款游戏虽然仍是基于订阅模式,但却不能用于说明如何基于现代MMO执行订阅模式。

出现这种情况不只是因为订阅MMO模式存在缺陷,同时新的MMO以及在线游戏的发行大多都倾向于免费模式。2012年,玩家的期望值发生了巨大的转变,现在,除了《魔兽世界》(诞生了8年多的时间)和《EVE Online》外,订阅模式几乎已经从MMO中消失了。

中层开发者的衰败

在当今的主机时代发展的中间阶段,曾有预言者对游戏产业发起警告:在高预算的AAA级电子游戏领域与其它工作室进行面对面的竞争将会变成一种更加艰难的任务。

去年便出现了这种情况,并且这种趋势一直持续到了今年——而中层游戏开发者及其游戏正在脱离这一主流发展方向。 Square Enix的《Sleeping Dogs》的低销量更是严重影响了该发行商的收益(游戏邦注:游戏原名为《True Crime: Hong Kong》,由United Front Games开发,Activision发行,但却一度因为销量不佳为理由而被取消开发,2011年Square Enix最终获得该游戏的版权)。

Lightbox Interactive的《星际雄鹰》在5月份发行时获得了不错的评价,而在10月份,该公司遭遇了裁员,并决定向手机领域转变。动视旗下的《Prototype 2》的开发商Radical Entertainment也经历了裁员;《007传奇》的开发商Eurocom则在进行裁员后开始专注于手机平台。

THQ旗下的Vigil Games工作室则未进行重组,并在今年夏天推出了一款大受好评的游戏《暗黑血统》。这款游戏虽然获得了140万的销量,但是THQ却表示这仍未到达他们的预期。THQ的总裁Jason Rubin在11月份表示:“在当前的市场中,只有真正顶级的游戏才能吸引游戏玩家的注意。”

如果你想要在这种激烈的竞争中生存下来,创造出属于AAA级游戏,并打败《使命的召唤》,《战争机器》,《刺客信条》以及《光晕》,你便需要投入更多的资金并吸纳更多人才。但是即使拥有了这些元素却还不能保证最后的成功。

对于多样性和包容性的需求

inclusiveness(from gamasutra)

inclusiveness(from gamasutra)

今年,电子游戏产业似乎到达了一个转折点,在各大电子游戏网站和社交媒体中更是频繁出现了有关多样性和包容心的讨论。

11月末,性别问题,也就是Twitter中关于为何游戏产业中的女性玩家数量这么少的问题标签更是向世人揭示了许多工作环境中所存在的性别歧视问题。

但这只是众多多样性问题中的一点。就像《杀手:赦免》的预告片便引起了众人对于游戏中厌女症的激烈讨论——其开发商IO Interactive最终也出面进行道歉(预告片中主角Agent 47持枪杀死施虐的修女)。当《古墓丽影》的一个开发者提出玩家希望“保护”主角Lara Croft免受性侵犯时便遭到了游戏记者们的谴责。

Anita Sarkeesian更是为维护电子游戏中女性的权益而发起了一个Kickstarter筹资项目。尽管在众多支持力量中也参杂着各种性别歧视观点,但是最终Sarkeesian还是在此实现了最初的目标,从中我们也可以看出人们对于女权维护的支持不只是来自于言语上,还体现在行动中(掏腰包)。

除此之外还有都铎提倡包容性与性别平等的例子:《光晕4》的开发商343 Industries便在游戏中明确了反对性别角色定型;艺电也公开表示反对《婚姻保护法案》;作家兼游戏设计师Anna Anthropy也在Indiecade上(游戏邦注:一项独立游戏开发的国际盛会)大胆地反对“具有标志性的角色”设定;在波士顿举办的面向游戏的No Show Conference更是提倡更多女性能够加入演讲者的阵容中(希望能够占至少一半的数量)。

这些行动都具有非常强大的传播作用,并且每天都能吸引许多人的关注。而随着越来越多人对于电子游戏的关注——包括玩家和开发者,他们也将更加肯定电子游戏能够与自己共同成长。

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

The 5 trends that defined the game industry in 2012

By Kris Graft

Once December hits, pretty much every year I marvel at just how fast time flies. That feeling of the swift passing of time was inflated as I scoured the stories of the past 12 months: Was it really just this year that I saw Tim Schafer at the February DICE Summit in Las Vegas, constantly checking his phone to keep track of his crazy Kickstarter campaign? Was it really just this year that Zynga dropped hundreds of millions of dollars to buy its way into the mobile market?

There were a lot of individual pieces of news, but with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the news with the most impact culminated in the five following trends: the trends that defined 2012.

Crowdfunding’s new opportunities

There had been plenty of Kickstarter campaigns for games the past few years, but it was Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Adventure in February that blew the doors open on crowdfunding for games, waking the industry up to new possibilities and setting a strong theme for the rest of the year.

Double Fine Adventure drew in more than $3.3 million (a fair bit above the $400,000 target) and shattered previous records for Kickstarter. But then along came Obsidian Entertainment’s Project Eternity, which brought in nearly $4 million. And Kickstarter in 2012 wasn’t just about game software, but also about hardware. The Android-based Ouya console raised $8.6 million. The Oculus Rift VR headset, which major game studios vouched for, raked in over $2.4 million.

Creators didn’t always use Kickstarter for crowdfunding. Chris Roberts, best known for his work on Wing Commander, launched a crowdfunding campaign on his own website, then added a Kickstarter campaign, reaching a combined total of over $6.2 million in funds for his spacefaring game Star Citizen. Introversion’s independently-run crowdfunding campaign is now at $625,000.

Not everyone who took to Kickstarter was successful — there were a number of notable campaigns that came up short. Success or failure, Kickstarter offered not only the means for developers to independently fund their games, but also oft-compelling stories for onlookers and contributors — sometimes about oh-so-close misses, sometimes about a late-campaign rally to success.

The mobile transition

This year, social game developers allocated even more time and resources to mobile platforms, as Facebook’s most dedicated players embraced games on their smartphones and tablets.

Facebook has been helping facilitate mobile adoption for game developers who previously were focused on browser-based social games. The social network opened up new viral channels to allow games to organically spread among Facebook friends, and now developers can more fully hook their native mobile games into Facebook’s Open Graph.

One report in September showed how Zynga, Electronic Arts and Disney/Playdom’s social browser games were seeing double-digit declines of daily active users, month to month. Meanwhile, the top-grossing mobile games continue to gain traction.

Businesses are changing their strategies in order to follow where the players are going. Social game stalwart Wooga told Gamasutra that its main focus is no longer on Facebook games, but on mobile, with over half of its 250-person staff working on smartphones and tablets. Crowdstar has halted development of social network games to focus on mobile. King.com is concentrating on cross-platform browser-to-mobile experiences. And there’s Zynga, whose $210 million purchase of Draw Something developer OMGPOP this year showed just how much the leading Facebook developer thought mobile games were worth.

As mid-tier developers are squeezed out it’s obviously not just social game developers who are flocking to mobile phones. With millions of new phone activations happening each year, mobile hardware becoming more powerful and Facebook itself focusing its efforts on mobile, 2013 will continue to see the maturation of this transition, in all parts of the industry.

So long, MMO subscriptions

If there was any hope left for “premium” MMOs and the monthly subscription model, those hopes were dashed in 2012 when BioWare Austin’s Star Wars: The Old Republic swiftly declined in players, and eventually transitioned to the free-to-play business model.

There was Funcom’s The Secret World — an interesting MMO that charged players a monthly fee. When the players didn’t show up, the company had to restructure, lay off workers and soldier forward. The game still is subscription-based, but isn’t exactly an example of how to make the subscription model work in a modern day MMO.

It’s not just the shortfalls of the subscription MMO model that are notable, but also the success of new MMOs and online-focused games released this year, that launched as free-to-play games. Player expectations shifted dramatically in 2012 — and aside from the lumbering giant World of Warcraft (released eight years ago) and the rather brilliant EVE Online, the subscription model for MMOs is all but finished.

Mid-tier fallout

At about the mid-point of the current console generation, prognosticators warned the game industry: Going toe-to-toe with studios in the top-tier, high-budget “triple-A” video game sector is going to become an increasingly harrowing task.

We saw this happening last year as well, but the trend continued in 2012 — mid-level developers and their games are falling out of the picture. Slow sales of Square Enix’s Sleeping Dogs hurt the publisher’s earnings this year — a disappointing shortfall, as the publisher made a special effort to scoop the game up from Activision, where it was called True Crime: Hong Kong.

Lightbox Interactive’s Starhawk released to some solid reviews in May, but by October the studio was hit with layoffs, and transitioned to mobile games. Activision-owned Prototype 2 developer Radical Entertainment also suffered layoffs; 007 Legends developer Eurocom cut staff and began focusing on mobile.

THQ’s Vigil Games didn’t see restructuring, and released a well-reviewed game in Darksiders II over the summer. That game sold 1.4 million units, but THQ said it still didn’t meet expectations. THQ president Jason Rubin conceded in November: “In the current marketplace only the absolute top tier of releases is making an impact on game consumers.”

If you want to survive and thrive in triple-A, and fight against the Call of Dutys, the Gears of Wars, the Assassin’s Creeds and the Halos, you’re going to need a whole lot of money and a whole lot of talent. And even if you have those ingredients, nothing is certain.

Resounding calls for diversity and inclusiveness

The video game industry seemed to reach a turning point this year, as frank, open discussions about diversity and gender inclusiveness frequently took place on video game websites and social media.

In late November, gender-related issues that were being expressed throughout the year appeared to culminate in the #1reasonwhy Twitter campaign. The hashtag, brought about by the question of why there are relatively few women in the game industry, exposed many examples of sexist behavior in the work environment, and put that ugliness up for the world to see.

But that was only one of the many pointed instances that brought diversity issues to the surface. There was a certain trailer for Hitman: Absolution that caused an uproar and sparked discussion about misogyny in games — developer IO Interactive eventually apologized for the teaser, which showed protagonist Agent 47 violently beating down gun-toting dominatrix nuns. Game journalists took Crystal Dynamics to task when one developer suggested players will want to “protect” main character Lara Croft from sexual assault.

Blogger Anita Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter for a web series investigating female tropes in video games. Along with support for her efforts came disgusting, juvenile, sexist reaction from internet posters with limited brain capacity. But in the end, the Kickstarter was funded well over its goal, and the people had spoken, not only with their words, but with their wallets.

We could go on with examples of calls for inclusiveness and gender equality: Halo 4 developer 343 Industries talked openly about fighting gender stereotypes in the game; Electronic Arts officially took a stand against the Defense of Marriage Act; author and game designer Anna Anthropy spoke out against “token characters” in games at Indiecade; Boston’s No Show Conference for games aimed to have women make up at least 50 percent of the speaker lineup. Of course, Gamasutra contributing writers were an active part of the discussion as well.

The movement is concentrated, but it’s spreading, picking up traction every day. As people who care about video games grow up — both players and developers — they’re becoming more vocal and insistent that video games grow up with them. (source:gamasutra)


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