作者：Przemyslaw Szczepaniak

HTML5手机游戏的盈利——这应该是继HTML5手机游戏出现在市场上以来网页游戏开发者们所讨论的最重要的话题。最近我写了一篇文章指出一些最常见且可被接受的盈利解决方法。同时，其他开发者和发行商也写下了自己的看法。在此我将参考Photonstorm的Richard Davey或者MarketJS的Ben Chong的观点。尽管这个市场具有巨大的潜力，并且开发者们也一直在努力，但是对于这一领域的未来以及游戏盈利的发展他们始终没有十足的把握。我曾经多次说过，缺少市场意识是导致那些大公司将更多资源和支持投向HTML5游戏的主要原因，同时，开发者们也很难找到更多安全的空间去推广游戏并从中盈利。

HTML5 games(from rivellomultimediaconsulting)

还有其它想法吗？

我们知道大多数知名发行商的盈利机遇。每位开发者多多少少都拥有一些经验，他们一直在探索着市场，并且知道只有少部分发行商能够真正带来潜在的安全利益。游戏出租，订阅收益，广告，游戏授权或免费模式都是常见的解决方法。但是这些方法是否都具有可能性？让我们能够扩展更多有关解决方法的知识，从而进一步推动HTML5游戏的盈利发展。我们不需要将自己局限在一些最有名或者经过检验的方法中，而是应该不断探索更多不同的解决方法。

从游戏开发所获得的知识和技能便是你最宝贵的财富

我注意到许多开发者使用的是预制引擎，如CooconJS，Impact等等。而我则更愿意使用自定义代码。因为这更不受限制，也无需花费额外的成本，除非我们能够投入更多时间去编写代码。而多亏如此，我们总是能够找到更有效的方法去解决问题或找到开发游戏的全新方法。拥有自己的程序库能够帮助你更好地获得盈利。你也可以将自己创造的程序库授权给其他人使用，就像游戏引擎那样。这是你的工作和努力所得，并且是能够与别人进行分享的有益体验。谁知道呢，也许你的技能对于那些未能解决自己代码问题的开发者而言就是最完美的解决方法。如此你便能创造出一个“面向HTML5游戏的代码解决方法”的迷你商店，就像免费游戏中的IAP商店那样。这就是一种基于想象力的工作，而我们是否需要对自己设定一些限制？

除了将你所获得的知识应用于游戏的代码编写外，你还可以利用这些知识去吸引客户。这一解决方法不仅要求你必须获得更多联系人，同时还需要你具有与开发领域相关的更多经验。但不管怎么说，这一方法能够有效地满足你对更多资源的需求。你有可能需要创造出具有创造性的新代码，并且在面向客户准备游戏的过程中也需要努力获得更多经验。可以说你一直在汲取更多知识！

除此之外还存在一种方法能够让你通过自己的技能获利。如果你认为你的游戏开发技能足以轻松地打败其他竞争对手，那就果断地向其他游戏开发者发起挑战吧！这真的是一个很棒的理念，因为作为这种竞赛的优胜者，你所获得的利益远比1，2年游戏授权/广告/出租等方法赚得的利益多得多。但是这一方法也存在着2大弊端：1.这种竞赛的机会并不多；2.大多数竞赛都不允许那些已经发行游戏的开发者加入。

让我们暂时回到收益分享的话题上

我们可以基于应用内部购买，广告或订阅方式与发行商分享利润。难道仅仅局限于此？当然不是。发行商的创造性以及HTML5游戏的跨平台潜能让我们能够采取其它有趣的方法去赚取游戏利益。最近我有幸与Odobo的法务和业务经理Rob Smith进行交谈。在整个过程中我了解到，基于收益的投资也是一种有利可图的赚钱方式，并且是开发者在全新环境下（游戏邦注：不同于原生应用的封闭世界和社交网络那样）发挥自己技能的良好机遇。“如今，管制在线游戏产业本身的价值大约在350亿美元左右，而这一领域的玩家价值也远高于社交或休闲游戏产业中的玩家（一些研究表明其差额大约在每个玩家100美元左右）。但是管制游戏领域在进入更广阔的开发社区过程中却具有一些障碍。而Odobo则通过提供给开发者认证服务器端技术去应对这些障碍，即帮助那些刚进入这一领域的开发者可以无需获得专业认证而创造出具有创造性的管制游戏。有些平台也支持这一做法，即让开发者可以无需管理信用控制，业务开发和法律资源，就像Odobo那样，提供给开发者既定的‘下游渠道’。我们希望开发者能够创造出更棒的游戏并推翻创造性界限，但是如果开发者一直将时间花费在企业支持服务上，他们便很难做到这一点。”这不仅为我们创造了全新机遇去利用“二十一点”或“老虎机”等游戏而赚钱，同时也为开发者们创造了一个全新且独立的市场。“开发者不仅获得了标准的授权特许，同时也能够将自己的社交游戏玩家带到Odobo Play的游戏中，从而获得标准游戏授权许可中附属的额外利益。”虽然这并不是唯一一种替代方法，但是却能帮助开发者们更轻松地获利。关于这一理念我有两点指示：采取与FGL面向Flash游戏一样的做法，并创造出基于HTML5游戏的网络，并且完全专注于支持这类型游戏。

结论

就像我们所看到的，并不是只有开发者希望找到面向HTML5盈利的全新解决方法。我们必须专注于相关公司创造性的一面，尝试着找到盈利的新解决方法能够推动着我们更积极地寻找更多有帮助的理念。研究证明，标准的HTML5游戏盈利方法并不是唯一方法。我相信，开发者们很快便能迎来更多机遇，从而为自己的游戏创造出更多利益。

（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）

Are there alternative/additional solutions to earn from HTML5 games?

by Przemyslaw Szczepaniak

Monetization of mobile HTML5 games – this is by far most important and vast topic discussed by many web gaming developers since the HTML5 mobile games showed on market. Recently I wrote an article which pointed out the most common, known, and accepted monetization solutions.  Much in the same way, other developers, and publishers were describing their own point of view. Here I refer to known entries by Richard Davey of Photonstorm or Ben Chong of MarketJS. Despite the potential, and higher effort, there are still not enough solutions to give developers peace of mind about future of their business, and games monetization. Many times I have mentioned the lack of market awareness which causes low interest of big companies into investing more resources and support into HTML5 gaming, as there is still a lack of safe space to distribute and monetize games for many developers.

Are there any other ideas?

We know well of monetization opportunities of most known publishers. Every developer who has some experience, and was researching the market, knows that only a handful of publishers can really bring potentially safe revenues. Games rental, subscription revenues, advertisements, games licensing or freemium are common solutions. But, are those all possibilities? Let me try to fill up the knowledge we have already with couple solutions that may in my belief give more potential to HTML5 games monetization. We don’t really need to limit ourselves to most known/’tried and tested’ ways – we should seek, and experiment IMHO.

Your knowledge and skills from game development are your precious treasure.

I noticed that many developers use pre-made engines such as CooconJS, Impact, and many others. From our point of view, we prefer to use own, custom code. Why? No limits, no additional costs, except maybe that we may spend more time on coding. But, thanks to that we can always find new and cool ways to solve problems or find new ways for the game development. Having your own libraries can be a really good way to monetize part of your knowledge. The libraries you create could be also licensed to others, same as game engines are don’t you think? This is actually your work, your effort, and experience that can be also used by others. Who knows, maybe your skills are a perfect solution (or a quicker way to achieve the same) for those developers who cannot solve their coding issues? In a funny, and smart way you may create a mini shop with “Coding solutions for your HTML5 games” – just like the IAP shop in freemium games. That’s just imagination working, but do we need to limit ourselves?

Moreover using knowledge you gained on coding your own games, can be also used in getting a client work. This solution requires a vast number of contacts, and a higher experience in a field of development. But overall this is a perfect way to fill your need for more resources to go on. You may produce new innovative code, get more experience while preparing a game for a client. You are always gaining on that!

There is one more way you might consider profitable from a point of monetizing your skills. If you think your skills of game development are high enough to easily compete with others, search for game developers contests! Actually this is really good idea because of one reason: being a winner of such contest can bring you more money than you would get sometimes in a year or two of licensing/advertising /renting your games. But, there are two disadvantages: 1. there aren’t many contests; and 2. most of them strictly forbid developers to enter with a game  already released officially.

Let’s go back to revenue shares for a moment…

Here we know that we can share profits with publisher basing on in-app-purchases, advertisements or subscriptions. Is that all we can do? Actually no. The creativity of publishers, and cross-platform possibilities of HTML5 games brings another interesting way to earn gaming revenues. Recently I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Rob Smith, Legal and Business Affairs Manager at Odobo. During a chat, I learned that gambling based revenues may be also be a lucrative ways of income, and a great opportunity for developers to use theirs skills in completely new environment, far different from closed world of native apps, and social networks. “… the regulated online gaming industry alone is worth around $35bn today and the player values are significantly higher than those available to the social or casual gaming industry (some research journals place this well in excess of $100 average per user) (…) yet the regulated gaming sector has traditionally held a number of barriers of entry to the wider development community. Odobo’s model for example removes this limitation by offering developers a certified server-side technology stack that allows developers who are new to this sector the foundations to build creative and innovative regulated games, without having to be experts on certification. This is complimented by a platform that empowers developers by removing the need for developers to manage credit control, business development and legal resource, as Odobo as the platform holder provides them with the established downstream channel. We want developers to create great games and push boundaries of innovation and yet it’s harder for a developer to warrant this investment if they are continually finding their time is spent on corporate support services”. This actually brings not only a new opportunity to earn money on Black Jack or Slot Machine games revenues, but also creates a new, and independent market for developers. “… it offers developers not just a standard licence royalty but equally the ability to send their own social game players to the Odobo games on Odobo Play and gain affiliate revenue on-top of the standard game licensing royalties”. IMHO this may not only be a good alternative, but also can make live of developers easier. I believe there are two directions of this idea: going the same way as FGL did for flash games, and bring a network based only on HTML5 games, with full support to them.

Conclusions.

As we can see not only the developers want to find out new solutions for HTML5 monetization. We need to focus on a creative side of our businesses. Trying to find new solutions for monetization keeps us active in searching, and brings more ideas. Researches proves that the standard ways to monetize HTML5 games aren’t the only way. There are more and more opportunities coming soon I believe and more enablers for developers to reach greater returns for their games. I think that I may fill up the knowledge shown here with more cool, and profitable solutions soon.(source:gamasutra)