作者：Zoya Street

我喜欢《Ridiculous Fishing》。这是一款带有美丽图像和核心循环的出色游戏，并且总是能够带给你欢乐。

在购买了这款游戏后五分钟，我已经做好了投入更多钱的准备了。在收到游戏的信息提示后，我前往商店购买钓鱼线，并注意到其它商品。我注意到了灰色的枪支和软皮，并决定购买它们以探究这些商品的用途。但是在我轻敲了该商店的道具并准备输入密码时，什么都没发生。

对此我疑惑不已，我又轻敲了屏幕确定了帐号里还有可用余额。但还是什么都没发生。于是我来到屏幕下方想寻找“购买”按键，但却什么都找不到。

Ridiculous Fishing(from technobuffalo)

原来Vlambeer并不想向我们收钱。

这并不是唯一一款理论上拥有核心循环但却未能适应免费或付费模式的付费游戏。《Ridiculous Fishing》的设计就像是一款免费游戏，即玩家不断收集钱并以此换取虚拟商品。《Ridiculous Fishing》并不是纯粹的精神作品，即脱离于商业世界。这也是一款通过让玩家射鱼而赚钱的游戏。

Vlambeer认为在玩家花了3美元购买游戏后不再收取任何费用能让自己在众多免费游戏开发商中获得较高的道德评价。但是我却认为这纯粹是无稽之谈。我在GDC大会上说明了原因。

《Shellrazer》通过应用内部购买赚取了30%的利益。这款游戏售价2.99美元，不过本周它在iOS平台上实行限免。这款游戏与《Ridiculous Fishing》具有相同的RPG机制，但却以货币代替了经验值去表示角色的升级。不过与《Ridiculous Fishing》不同的是，在《Shellrazer》中玩家可以选择花钱购买货币而不是局限于刷任务去获取。

来自Ninja Robot Dinosaur Entertainment的Shane Neville注意到，额外的30%收益就足以让他们辞去白天的工作而全身心投入于独立游戏创造。他从未使用过斯金纳箱。他并不会阻碍玩家进行应用内部购买。他甚至不会等到玩家缺少足够的虚拟货币但却想获取某一道具时才让他们花钱。

这也是《Ridiculous Fishing》所缺少的机制。并且这一机制能够支持独立开发者专职于独立游戏的开发。

Neville将玩家分为三个不同的群组。一组便是愿意投入大量时间而通过刷任务去升级道具的人；一组是拥有各种各样的技能，并且是通过出色完成游戏而赚取更多货币；最后一组则是愿意投入大量金钱而升级道具（游戏邦注：不愿繁琐地刷任务）。虽然Shellrazer主要是面向前两组玩家，但是如果玩家愿意的话他也能让他们轻松地花钱。便有8%的玩家属于第三组。

在GDC谈话中，Neville强调了顺应玩家需求的重要性。对于我来说，“刷任务”是不尊重玩家的时间，而付费墙则是不尊重玩家的金钱。所以它们都不应该出现在优秀的游戏设计中。除了应用内部购买，开发者不需要再添加其它内容到《Ridiculous Fishing》的核心机制中。应用内部购买并不会一下子便将游戏推到邪恶的境地，具有道德性的免费游戏也还是有可能存在的。

（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）

Hey Vlambeer: you CAN sell IAPS without selling your soul

By Zoya Street

I love Ridiculous Fishing. It’s a charismatic, unpretentious game with a beautiful aesthetic and a core loop that can’t fail to put a smile on your face.

Within five minutes of buying it, I was ready to spend more money. After receiving a prompt from the game’s messaging, I went into the shop to buy fishing line, and noticed other things were available too. I browsed through greyed-out guns and buffs, and decided I wanted to spend extra money to unlock a couple of them them so that I could see what they do. I tapped a greyed-out store item and prepared to enter my password.

Nothing happened.

Confused, I tapped the bit of the screen showing my available balance. Nothing happened. I scoured the mostly-empty lower portion of the screen for a ‘buy’ button. There is nothing there.

Vlambeer doesn’t want any more of my money.

This isn’t a case of a paid game theoretically having the right core loops to probably make it not terribly hard to adapt into a free-to-play or paymium format. Ridiculous Fishing is already designed just like a free-to-play game. The entire meta-game is about racking up money and spending that money on virtual goods. Ridiculous Fishing is not an artifact of pure spiritual insight, divorced from the mucky world of commerce. It’s a game about making money by shooting fish.

Vlambeer thinks that by refusing to take any more of my money after the first $3, they are occupying a moral high ground that F2P developers have, for the most part, abandoned in pursuit of profit. I think that this is nonsense. And I’ve just been to a GDC talk that demonstrates exactly why.

Shellrazer makes 30% of its revenue from IAPs. It normally costs $2.99 to buy, though it’s free this week on iOS. It’s no Ridiculous Fishing, but it shares the same adapted RPG meta-game in which coins take the place of exp for character upgrades. Unlike Fishing, in this game you can choose to buy coins instead of earning them through grind.

As far as Shane Neville of Ninja Robot Dinosaur Entertainment is concerned, that extra 30% of revenue has allowed him to quit his day job and become a full-time indie. He hasn’t used skinner boxes. He doesn’t baffle the user into buying IAPs accidentally. He doesn’t even ask the user to consider spending money until and unless they try to unlock an item that they don’t have enough virtual currency for. All he has done is create one screen where users can spend real money to get more virtual money. The same virtual money that they could either grind or play very skilfully to earn without spending a penny.

This is the exact kind of interface that is conspicuously absent from Ridiculous Fishing. And it’s allowed him to support himself full-time as an indie developer.

Neville sees his players in three different groups. One group is willing to give up a lot of their time, and will grind to make money to upgrade their items. Another has an abundance of skill, and will make a great deal of money quickly by playing the game well. The third group is willing to give up some of their money to upgrade without grinding and play the way they want to. Shellrazer is optimised for the first two kinds of play, but makes it possible to spend money if the player wants to. 8% of them choose to do so.

In his GDC talk, Neville underscored the importance of respecting your players. To me, ‘grind or get out’ is just as disrespectful of your players’ time as paywalls are disrespectful of players’ money. Both should be absent from good game design. There is nothing that needs to be added to Ridiculous Fishing‘s core mechanics or meta-game to successfully integrate IAPs. IAPs will not make the game suddenly more evil. Ethical free-to-play is far from impossible.（source：gamesbrief）