作者：Virgile Delporte

从1999年起，我有幸供职于一家游戏中间件公司。工作非常有意义，但总有些麻烦。为什么？可能是因为游戏中间件是最难营销和出售的东西之一了。

电子娱乐行业是快速成熟的产业，特别是随着在线游戏、手机游戏和平板游戏的迅速普及。上世纪80年代是创意人才和小团队利用有限的资源创造巨大成功的黄金时期。

过去10年，许多工具和中间件公司出现了，它们努力在繁荣的行业里闯出一片天地。例如，在2000年中期，随着Havok和PhysX（这两家公司分别被Intel和NVidia收购了）的兴起， 革新游戏玩法面临一个重大机遇——在游戏中添加即时物理元素。

随着游戏设备的性能不断增加，机遇也越来越多，也许你就会开发出某种成功的工具。为了最大化你的成功机会，我要提醒你不要犯以下错误——这些是我与其他中间件供应商合作开发市场时总结出来的。

有些建议你可能已经很清楚了，但我可以告诉你，许多公司在开发市场时常常忘记某些核心部分。

错误1：无市场，无社交网络

无论你是网上还是网下推销和出售，采用正确的营销策略绝对是必要的——即使你的产品很强大，你也别指望不费任何努力就出售它。

低成本营销产品的简单方法如下（有些更昂贵一些，有些需要更高投入）：

一个好网站。显而易见，但必不可少。网站的外观必须有现代感，生动、容易获取信息、公开定价。基本上我推荐网上销售。

社交网络。你的公司必须有一个LinkedIn档案，我建议你还要有Twitter和YouTube帐号。Facebook可以提供非常临时的支持，但它在这个阶段还不能产生主要的收益动力。

PR和沟通交流。你必须尽可能分享你的故事和成功。博客和Twitter都是不错的选择，可以增加你的信誉和名气，并且让你更容易被搜索引擎发现。如果你的资本足够，我强烈推荐PR代理，但为了最大化投入的回报，你必须非常明确你的目标。

出席商业展会。游戏社区相当小，并且人们比以前更少旅行了，一些大型游戏活动往往能吸引到你的目标受众，比如游戏开发者大会（GDC）。无论你是不是作为参展商出席展会，你都应该提前准备，以更节省开支和最大化影响力。提前组织讨论会和认真准备你的演示材料。

另外，你可以挂靠到大技术供应商/参展商的展位。他们通常提供营销曝光的工具和收费2000–5000美元的展位，如果你的产品合适的话。这会帮你节省大量组织工作。

广告。这不是我的首先方式，但不可忽略。从Google AdWords开始，然后在专业杂志上发布广告。无论如何，只要你打算做广告，你就一定要衡量投入能否收到理想的回报（游戏邦注：通过制作自定义链接、登录页面、促销代码等）。

错误2：无评估样本的简单途径

经过漫长的讨论和估算内部工具和技术成本，你终于完成产品的包装了。恭喜你！等等——其他开发商要怎么看到它？

当今世界，不提供容易使用的技术评估版本，无论是什么产品，都是不受欢迎的。为了追踪使用情况，你必须决定执行什么许可程序。注意：执行一些许可工具可能会非常复杂和费成本。通常会先使用内部技术，但还可以使用其他产品。关于许可的详细情况，请看维基百科。

其他开发商在评估你的中间件时，往往得费一番功夫，所以评估必须包含文件、样本和其他罗列在下一个错误中的元素。

错误3：没有清楚的价目表

你认为你的解决方案是无价的，可能会为你的客户产生巨大价值。所以你担心有些竞争者可能会利用你的价目表。如果是这样，你有两个选择：一是不要卖中间件了；二是根据你的核心目标确定价目表。无论如何，最难办到的事就是，确定清楚而简单的定价。

还要记住：无论你的中间件价格是多少，总有些聪明的工程师会告诉生产商：“我不到一周就可以做出比那个更好的东西来！”

简单地说，你有如下选择：

免费。这种价格模式在好几年前就出现了，并且现在最流行。它可以与下面的模式中的一种相结合。免费游戏现在发展也很快。Chris Anderson在他2009年的畅销书《Free》中，很详细地解释了为什么免费是一种非常好的价格模式。有不少公司和机构提供免费技术，游戏开发领域也有这种现象。

廉价的中间件（低于1000美元）。你的策略是“商品化”。祝你好运：你会很难过，需要100的奉献精神和投资商出一些钱，如果你想好好做这一行且以此谋生的话，特别是如果你的产品市场非常狭小。

然而，如果你想服务开发商群体如Unity Asset Store，又不想投入太多时间，那么这么做还是蛮有意义的。记住，如果你想出售一件收支相抵的产品，合格的游戏开发工程师的平均工资应该有多少？

中等价位（1000美元–25000美元）。这个价位适用于专业级中间件开发公司。他们当中有些人是游戏公司的子公司。成功的例子如Unity、Rad Game Tools（Bink video codec等工具的制作商）、Scaleform（被Autodesk收购）、 Havok（被Intel收购）、Kynogon（AI引擎和其他工具，被Autodesk收购）、 Virtools（被Dassault Systemes收购）。

高端价位（25000美元以上）。你很难做出这一类中间软件，目前主要有极少数的游戏引擎如Epic Games的Unreal引擎和Crytek的CryEngine引擎。大开发公司习惯于信任高端引擎，然而他们现在也开始考虑这个价格是不是太高了（他们会根据每款游戏100–200万美元的标准来谈判，跨平台的话还要更多资金）。

除了软件许可，软件开发者也喜欢基于版税的定价方法。然而，开发商不喜欢与其他人分享潜在的收益。这当然是合情合理的，但固定收费率/项目或一份简单的开发者许可（不管是许可开发什么）会更让人接受，甚至可能给你带来更多收益。

错误4：无应用演示样本

你的技术很出色！所有人都同意……如果他们能够亲眼见识的话。代码说明不了什么。所以你还是做一款能证明你的技术有多强的应用吧。

成品绝对是关键的，然而我已经见过太多中间件供应者犯下相同的错误。演示样本就是你的活广告，如果做得好，一定会让你产品走俏。如果你的资源条件不允许你请最好的平面设计师或游戏设计师参与你的项目，那么请看以下办法：

1、如果有游戏工作室对你的项目感兴趣，那么你就向对方提供免费的技术支持。这么做至少有两点好处：你可以得到产品的如实反馈，通常有助于改进；这是你的第一封推荐信——显然，如果你能说服某些大公司，那就说明你的项目很可能会赚钱。但是，请记住，你正在寻找市场原料，而大公司往往严格封锁项目的外部沟通渠道。

2、雇用一支团队做样本。低价雇用团队的办法是有的；其中一种就是利用如 www.elance.com这样的资源平台；另一种就是去离你最近的一所游戏开发学院，请一帮学生做你的项目。后一种办法要求你投入更多时间，但让你有机会与专业的老师和一批天才-学生一起工作。

显然，第三条出路就是利用你的技术做一个完全商业性的游戏，这需要相当多的资源。著名的虚幻引擎的开发商Epic Games就非常精通这个方法。他们的应用样本就是一款重量级AAA电子游戏系列《战争机器》。

错误5：无技术支持

这个听起来可能有点像太过简单的建议，但我已经见过这个错误太多次了。授权中软件意味着让你开放源代码——有时候是关键代码。如果你的客户在评估过程中不能达成协议，那么这就是一个找不到买家的信号。

更重要的是，在开发者遇上故障时，必须能够进入论坛或其他类似的地方，很快找到解决办法。如果你的社区很小（一开始很小是很正常的），那么你要保证提供良好的FAQ版块、让客户能通过电子邮件联系到你、最好还有Skype之类的联络方式。及时回复——否则你的潜在客户可能会不高兴，无论你的产品有多好。

错误6：无源代码

这一点尚有争议。如果你关注知识产权，并且是与律师和投资商支持的公司合作，这就是一个让你痛心的决定。然而，一点感同身受的心理会让你不那么痛心；游戏开发商讨厌调试工作（通常来说），当他们遇到问题自己又解决不了时，往往会非常难过。

一些聪明的开发商使用的解决办法就是：以中等价位开放源代码。Unity就是这么做的。

总之，记住，你要提供交付产品的组件，这是作为开发者的责任。能够减轻QA和售后支持的压力也是很重要的。

错误7：无跨平台支持

越来越多玩家希望在多个平台上玩相同的游戏，如将手机上的游戏放在PC或电视上玩，但不需要对这些平台另外付费。一般来说，开发商为了最大化他们的收益，会寻求真正的跨平台技术或容易移植的技术。

因此，如是你做了一种强大的新渲染工具或AI工具，你必须记住这一点。只有支持多个平台或至少容易移植，你的技术才会吸引人。

错误8：无自定义或无服务

“我不希望我们成为服务商！”中间件程序包的首席开发者告诉他的老板。你的想法是，制作中间件，然后通过授权软件就能自动赚钱了。这确实是个好主意。但如果你坚持这么做的话，你会失败的。

除了极少数的例外，基本上所有中间件供应商都会为他们的大客户提供超出原计划的服务。主要原因是：你必须有收益才能生存和发展。这些高附加值的服务包括培训、咨询、保险服务、定制特色开发和完成项目开发等。

Virtools花了几年时间才接受这个想法，开始分配一些资源（销售额和定制开发团队）给一些大目标客户提供额外服务。但这不是一件简单的事；服务团队有时候会被认为是低级的，而核心的研发团队显然是上等的。

然而，如果我们做不到，我们就可能遭受损失，不得不放弃这个项目。另外，我们的中间件原本不会达到这么高的质量水平：给产品的中间件组建一支内部团队是保证它确实可用的最好办法。

错误9：无明确的合法协议

你认识这个证明在安装过程中你接受产品的合法条款的小对话框吗？确实，这个很重要，为什么？因为它通常关系到一个奸商签下支票或交出他的按期支付的信用卡表格来买你的东西。

在终端用户许可协议（EULA）中有好下关键原则：

保证你的团队中有人持有EULA：她或他是你计划改变任何商业模式、定价或功能时的关键人物。如果有的话，列出与你的产品组合在一起的开源组件。

总之，你必须分配一些预算给律师，让他帮助你解决这关键的一步。你在网上可以找到大量模板。

错误10：不向游戏开发之外的客户出售技术

如果你的技术定位是电子娱乐行业，你就面临最差的环境了。然而，一旦你克服困难，挤进市场，你的业务就会很容易扩展到其他领域——要求不高、容易合作的行业等。

除非你只盯着游戏机平台（如果是这样，请读一读关于这些小盒子正在失宠的文章，然后再做打算吧），你的中间件应该能够出售给其他行业，如军工业（电子学习和严肃游戏）、建筑业（制作销售工具）。我到一件轶事，我记得在2004年或2005年的GDC展会上，超过30%的合法商业协议与军工业有关。这些家伙知道去什么地方找最好的工具——相信我吧。

结论

如果你被以上10个错误打击到了，那么抱歉啦！我希望你至少能意识到，为游戏开发市场提供专业的中间件是存在一些障碍的。如果你的野心纯粹是分享你的知识，而不要求回报，你可以把你的代码或工具公布出来，提高你的名气。

如果你准备进入这个行业，那就太好了！与最有创意最强大的游戏工作室合作是一件非常令人兴奋的事。你会看到硬件和软件的新发明，见到赏识你的杰出开发者，你每天都会很有动力与你的团队一起工作，并且，你有可能得到丰厚的回报！（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 Top 10 Mistakes Tool Developers Make

by Virgile Delporte

Since 1999, I’ve had the luck to work in the game middleware industry. It’s been extremely interesting, but something of a crusade. Why? Probably because game middleware is one of the hardest things to market and sell.

The electronic entertainment industry is a fast maturing sector, especially since the rapid democratization of online games and more recently mobile games on smart phones and tablets. If you’re old enough to have been young in the 80s, we’re back — definitely for the good, to an amazing opportunity for talented creative individuals and small teams to create a blockbuster with limited investment.

Quite a few tools and middleware have popped up over the past 10 years to try and build a healthy business out of this booming industry. For example, there was a great opportunity to innovate gameplay by adding real-time physics in the mid-2000s, with the rise of Havok and PhysX (both companies have been acquired, respectively by Intel and NVidia).

There are many more opportunities to come with the ever-growing processing power of the gaming devices, and one of these successful tools could be coming from you. In order to maximize your chances to be successful, here are some easy-to-remember rules that I try to work with when helping other middleware vendors to go to market.

Some of these recommendations may seem obvious to you, but I can tell you many companies aiming to go after this market often forget some of these essential parts.

Mistake Number 1: No Marketing, No Social Network Presence

Whatever you promote and sell online and offline, putting the right marketing strategy in place is absolutely essential — even if your product is a killer, and you expect it to sell without any type of effort.

There are some easy ways to market your product at low cost; some others are rather more expensive, and require a much higher investment:

A good website. Obvious but essential. The look must be modern, alive, the information easily accessible, the pricing exposed, and in most cases I would recommend online sales.

Social network presence. Your company must have a LinkedIn profile and I recommend Twitter and YouTube accounts, too. Facebook fans are a nice to obtain very casual support, but it’s not the main revenue driver at this stage.

PR and communication. You must share your story and successes as much as possible. Blogging and tweeting is a real commitment, but it will improve your reputation and credibility over time, as well as your search engine optimization (SEO). If you can afford it, a PR agency is highly recommended, though you must be very clear with your goals in order to maximize the return on investment.

Be present at tradeshows. The game community is rather small and while people tend to travel less than a few years ago, a few major game events tend to gather most of the people you want to target first, starting with the San Francisco-based Game Developers Conference. Whether or not you are present on the show floor as an exhibitor, make sure you carefully plan your participation in advance, in order to optimize the costs and maximize the impact. Set meetings weeks in advance and prepare your demo material carefully.

One of the things you can do is to be hosted by larger technology providers/exhibitors. They usually offer a package with some marketing exposure and a kiosk against a limited fee of $2,000 to $5,000 if your product is compatible with theirs, and it will save you a great deal of organization to rely on them.

Advertising. This isn’t my preferred track, but it can’t be ignored. It starts with Google AdWords and goes all the way up to printing advertising in professional magazines. In any case, if you advertise, make absolutely certain you can measure the return on investment (by creating custom URLs, landing pages, promo codes, etc.)

Mistake Number 2: No Easy Access To Evaluation Copies

You have just completed the packaging of your product, following a long discussion with your peers to try and monetize your internal tools and tech. Congratulations! Well, wait — how are other developers going to take a look at it?

In today’s world, not providing an easy access to an evaluation version of your technology, whatever it is, is simply unacceptable. You will have to decide what licensing mechanism to implement, in order to track the usage. Warning: implementing some licensing tools can be very complex and costly. Internal tech is often used at first, but there are a number of products available. For more information about licensing, check this Wikipedia page.

It will require quite some work for another developer to evaluate your middleware, so the evaluation must also contain documentation, samples, and other elements listed on the next page.

Mistake Number 3: No Clear Pricelist

You believe that your solution is priceless and may add tremendous value for your clients. You are worried that some competitors might take advantage of your pricelist. If so, here are two options: Don’t sell middleware, or refine your pricelist based on your core target. In any case, the most difficult exercise is, indeed, to nail down clear and simple pricing.

Remember, also: Whatever the price of your middleware, some smart engineers will tell their producer: “Naaah. I can do much better than that in less than a week!”

As a general outline, there are a few options:

Freemium. This pricing model popped up quite a few years ago and is currently the most popular. It is combined with one of the others below. Free-to-play games are also the fastest growing segment these days. Chris Anderson, in his bestselling 2009 book Free, has spent valuable time explaining why free is a very good pricing model. There are quite a few companies and organizations that provide free technology, including to the game development world.

Inexpensive middleware (sub $1,000). Your strategy is to go “commodity.” Good luck: it will be tough and will require 100 percent dedication and quite some money from investors if you want to be serious about this and make a living out of your tools, especially if they are addressing a very niche market.

However, it’s a fun area to be in if you just want to serve a developer community like the Unity Asset Store, without too much time investment. Remember the average salary in Western countries for qualified game development engineers (likely you!) How much do you need to sell of your product to reach break-even?

Middle class pricing ($1,000 to $25,000). This pricing applies to professional middleware developers. Some of them are spin-offs from game studios. Some successful examples in that price range, just to name a very few: Unity, Rad Game Tools (makers of the Bink video codec and tools among others), Scaleform (acquired by Autodesk), Havok (acquired by Intel), Kynogon (AI Engine and tools acquired by Autodesk), Virtools (acquired by Dassault Systemes).

High-end ($25,000+). This category is complex to enter and currently mainly consists of a happy few game engines, like Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and Crytek’s CryEngine. Large development houses used to trust these high-end engines, yet they now tend to consider that the price is way too high (deals negotiated around are $1 or 2 million / game, sometimes more for multiplatform).

Additionally to a software license, a pricing based on royalties is tempting for the software publisher (you). However, developers, like anyone really, don’t like to share their potential revenues. Rationally, it would make a lot of sense, but a flat fee / project or a simple developer license regardless of what is built with it is much more acceptable, and might end up being much more profitable for you.

Mistake Number 4: No App Demo

Your technology is outstanding! Everybody will agree… if they see it in action. Code doesn’t sell well. Be ready to create an application that demonstrates how great your program is.

This piece is absolutely critical, yet I’ve witnessed the problem many times with middleware providers. The demo is your best sales tool, and can go viral if done properly. If you don’t have the internal resources to get the best graphic designer or game designer to work on that project, there are options:

Provide the tech free-of-charge together with support to a talented local game studio interested in your project. There are several benefits: You get some real-life feedback on the product, often requiring adaptation; you get a first reference. Obviously, if you are able to convince some big guys, you may be able to get some cash out of this project. However, keep in mind you’re looking for marketing material, and larger houses often restrict external communication channels about their projects.

Hire a team to build the demo. There are now several ways to hire a team at low price; one of them is to use a sourcing platform like www.elance.com; another one is to go to your nearest game development school and put a bunch of students on the project. The latter option will cost you more time investment, but will also let you network with teachers and a pool of talent that could work with you down the road.

Obviously, a third option is to build a complete commercial game powered by your technology, which requires quite some resources. Epic Games, the makers of the ultra-famous Unreal Engine, have understood this very well. Their app demo is a superstar triple-A video game series: Gears of War.

Mistake Number 5: No Technical Support

This may sound like a simplistic recommendation, but I have witnessed this case many times. Licensing middleware means outsourcing code — sometimes critical code — to you. If your client can’t reach a business guy during the evaluation, it’s a very bad sign for potential buyers.

More importantly, developers must be able to access a forum or something equivalent to get rapid answers in case they hit a roadblock. If your community is very small, which is natural at first, make sure you provide a good FAQ section, and make yourself available by email — and ideally over Skype or equivalent as well — to answer all your clients. Respond quickly — otherwise your potential customers will not feel at ease, regardless the quality of your product.

Mistake Number 6: No Source Code

This one is controversial. If you’re building intellectual property and are working with both lawyers and investors to back your company, it will be a painful decision. However, a little empathy will help you make it happen. Game developers hate to debug (in general) and tend to have a really bad time when they hit a problem and are not capable of solving it themselves.

There is a solution that some smart developers have been able to capitalize on: price source code access at a premium price. This is the case with Unity, for example.

All in all, remember you’re providing a component of a shippable product that will be the entire responsibility of its developers (or publishing partner). Being able to ease QA and post-sales support is valuable.

Mistake Number 7: No Multiplatform Support

There is a growing trend for players to expect to seamlessly play the very same game on multiple platforms, from their smartphone to their PC and television (whether consoles or smart TVs) without paying for their game on each platform. Even more traditionally, though, developers are looking for true cross-platform technologies, easily portable, in order to maximize their revenue potential.

Therefore, if you build a new amazing rendering pipeline or the next artificial intelligence tools, you must keep this in mind. Your technology will only be attractive if truly multiplatform, or at least easily portable.

Mistake Number 8: No Customization or Service Offering

“I don’t want us to be a service business!” said the lead developer of the middleware package to his boss. Your idea is to build this middleware and make money automatically by licensing the software. It’s a great idea, really. But you will fail if you stick to this.

Apart from a very few exceptions, all middleware providers end up servicing their largest clients well beyond what they planned. The main reason: you need revenues to survive and grow. These high-added-value services include training, consultancy, premium support (like 24/7 access to a developer), custom feature development and complete project development.

While at Virtools, it took us a few years to accept this idea and allocate some dedicated resources (sales and a custom development team) to offer additional services to a few key, targeted clients. It was not always easy; the service team was sometimes considered lower tier, while the core R&D was obviously Premier League.

However, if we hadn’t done it, we would have had to call it a loss, and move on to the next project. In addition, our middleware wouldn’t have ever reached the level of quality it did: Having an internal team building a product with a middleware is the best way to ensure it’s actually really usable.

Mistake Number 9: No Clear Legal Agreement

You know this little box you tick to confirm you accept the legal terms of your product during the installation process? Actually, this matters, and guess what: it’s often related to the bad business guy who will sign the check or hand over his duly completed credit card form to buy your stuff.

There are a few critical rules in the End User License Agreement (EULA):

Make sure somebody in your team owns the EULA: she or he is the go-to person if you plan any changes in your business model, pricing, or features.
List open source components integrated into your product, if any.

Overall, make sure you allocate some budget for an attorney to assist you with this critical step. There are tons of templates you can find on the web (this one, for example, looks good), which is useful as a start but cannot be an end.

Mistake Number 10: Not Being Ready to Sell Your Technology Outside of Game Development

By targeting the electronic entertainment industry with your technology, you are ready for the worst possible environment. However, once you crack that nut and perform in this market, your technology will go well beyond — in industries that are sometimes less demanding, easier to work with, etc.

Unless you only target gaming console platforms (if so, read a few articles about the decline of these little boxes and reconsider), your middleware should be able to sell to a few very interesting industries, like the military business (e-learning and serious games), the architecture business (to create amazing sales tools). As an anecdote, I remember exhibiting at GDC in 2004 or 2005 and summing up the leads we got at the end of the show. Over 30 percent of the qualified contacts were in a business related to the military. These guys know where to get the best tools — trust me.

Conclusion

If you are discouraged by the above checklist, sorry! I hope you will at least realize that there are some barriers to entry when it comes to providing professional middleware and tools for the game development market. If your ambition is purely to share your knowledge without generating revenues, you can post your code or tool on a marketplace and increase your reputation.

If you are ready to get started, that’s great! Working with the most creative and powerful game studios is really exciting. You get to see what’s coming next in terms of hardware and software innovation, meet brilliant developers who love your product and motivate you every day to work harder with your team, and get the most added value that’s possible. Have fun!(source:gamasutra)