作者：Patrick Miller

“免费模式正在扼杀电子游戏！”如果你曾经听到这句话一次，那么你就已经听到这句话上千次了。从商业的角度看，免费模式是一个实用的工具，因为与付费模式相比，它可以让小工作室吸引到相当多的受众和获得更多的总收益。但是，付费模式又比免费模式更稳定更有保障。然而，没有人喜欢玩或制作让人觉得只是“向钱看”的游戏。我们并非希望免费模式消失，而是要擅长利用它。

从今年的薪资调查的评论来看，赢利是所有人心中的大石头。虽然开发者和玩家都不约而同地唾弃免费游戏，但值得一提的是，过去三年的薪资调查表明，免费游戏开发领域的失业率有所下降，而平均薪资水平有所上升。当然，这些结果并非全拜免费模式的崛起所赐，但如果你考虑一下传统的付费游戏开发周期所产生的隐形开支，你可能就不会那么质疑免费模式了。

monetize(from ingenesist.com)

正如我们所想象的，传统的游戏开发模式介于娱乐产业和好莱坞模式之间，也就是召集一个一次性团队来做一个项目；而软件开发模式，则是一队开发者专注于制作或改进一件产品，直到产品售出。如果你是一个制作Microsoft Word的开发者，可以相当肯定地说，一旦你完成发一个版本的Word，你就会有大量后续工作要做——如修复漏洞、发布新补丁以及制作新版本的Word。而如果你是游戏开发者，你的游戏会在某个时候“完工”，并且你的工作室可能暂时没有其他项目让你做。基本上，游戏开发相当于电影制作者，但没有任何协会或支撑结构来维持那种模式。

另一方面，许多免费游戏却会为了赢利而尽早发布，然后再慢慢添加新功能和内容。只要有东西可以添加到游戏中，开发工作室就能让员工继续改进那款游戏，而付费游戏的开发可不能这样（游戏邦注：订阅游戏也是，但它们倾向于靠长期吸引玩家的注意力来赢利，这是比较困难的）。逻辑上说，那意味着免费游戏开发行业的失业率很低（当然，前提是游戏表现良好）。正如影片剪辑师buddy Brian所说的：“开发付费游戏就像制作热门电影，开发免费游戏就像制作一档电视节目。”

免费游戏的支持者经常提到，街机游戏就是这种赢利模式的原型。但他们没有看到，有些街机游戏实际上命中了赢利策略设计的圣杯——它们让付费玩游戏变得有趣。玩免费模式的《街头快打》，很快就会让人觉得无聊，因为即使失败，也没有损失。而当玩家只有固定的命数，游戏就变得有趣了，只是你要一遍又一遍地玩相同的片段。如果每玩一分钟就要支付25美分，那么你会觉得你自己必须小心翼翼地玩，并且不断地问自己值不值得再花25美分玩下一关。事实上，这种游戏体验被现实的利益（你口袋里的钱）强化了。

另一个关于赢利策略设计的特殊案例是，久负盛名的“金钱游戏”，也就是让两个玩家打赌游戏的结果。格斗游戏已经将种形式运用到相当荒唐的程度了，但作为狂热者的我，本人喜欢花一两美元使游戏内的每一分钟都具有现实的份量，由此提高利益风险。我输的时候比赢的多，但激动人心的过程使我觉得付出是值得的。随着免费模式的持续发展，我认为免费游戏会越来越多，而在内容上贴价格签的游戏将越来越少。

没有人喜欢玩把自己沦为“赚钱机器”的游戏。但付费游戏的销路已不如10年以前了，而免费模式也给我们带来新的生产模式，如“关键时刻”和“一发布就下岗”——这两种都使吸引、培养和留住有才能的开发者变得更困难。如果我们希望在游戏行业中看开发者能够养家糊口、买房购车，一直干到退休，我们就必须通过能让所有人——开发者、服务者和消费者都高兴的方式来解决“赚钱”这个大问题。（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）

Why monetization is our industry’s next big problem – and opportunity

By Patrick Miller

“Free-to-play is killing video games!” If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times. From a business perspective, free-to-play is a useful tool because it can offer smaller studios a shot at an extraordinarily wide audience and higher overall revenues than the pay-once model – which, in turn, means more stability and job security. But nobody likes playing – or making – a game that feels like it’s powered by your wallet, either. Rather than wish f2p would go away, we’ll just have to get really good at using it.
More (money, problems)

Judging from the comments from this year’s Salary Survey, monetization is on everyone’s minds these days. But while devs and consumers alike aren’t shy about heaping disdain upon free-to-play games, it’s worth pointing out that over the last three years of salary surveys, we’ve seen a gradual decline in layoff rates and an increase in average salaries. Certainly, not all of those gains are necessarily due to the rise of the f2p model, but if you think about some of the hidden costs incurred with the traditional pay-once development cycle, you might be a little bit less skeptical about f2p.

Traditional game development, as we think of it, is somewhere between the entertainment industry/Hollywood model, where you assemble a one-time team of people to produce one project, and the software development model, where you have a team of developers focused on building and improving a product for as long as that product is sold. If you’re a developer making, say, Microsoft Word, you can be pretty sure that once you’ve shipped a version of Word, you’ll still have plenty of work left to do with fixing remaining bugs, releasing new patches, and working on the next version of Word. If you’re a game developer, though, at some point your game will be “done,” and your studio might not have another project for you to work on. Essentially, game devs end up with all the liability of a film worker, but without any of the unions or support structures that make that model sustainable.

On the other hand, many f2p games launch as early as they can put together a minimum viable product in order to start getting revenue coming in, and then gradually add new features and content after launch. As long as there is something to add to the game, there’s a reason for the dev studio to keep people employed and working on the game, which simply isn’t true for pay-once games. (This is also true for subscription-based games, but their success tends to depend on their ability to monopolize a player’s attention for a long period of time, which is tricky.) Logically, that means we should see fewer layoffs in f2p game dev (when the games are performing well, anyway). As my film editor buddy Brian put it, “Pay-once dev is like working on a blockbuster film, free-to-play is like working on a TV show.”
Fun-to-pay?

Free-to-play proponents like to mention that arcade games were the first example of monetization design. What many people seem to miss is that some of those games actually hit the Holy Grail of monetization design; they made paying fun. Play Final Fight on free-play mode and it gets dull fast because there’s no cost to failing. Play it with a fixed amount of lives and continues and things get more interesting, but you end up playing through the same segments over and over. Play at 25 cents per continue, and you’ll find yourself marshaling every last pixel in that health meter, asking yourself whether it’s worth another 25 cents to see the next level, and so on. The experience is actually enhanced by the presence of actual, real-world stakes (the quarters in your pocket).

Another unorthodox example of effective monetization design is the time-honored “money match,” where two players bet on the outcome of a game. The fighting game community has taken these to rather ridiculous extremes (see the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 $50,000 money match between Toan and Fanatiq), but as an enthusiast myself, I love upping the stakes by putting a dollar or two on the line just to give each in-game moment a little bit more real-world weight. I lose more than I win, but the extra thrills make it worth it. And as f2p models continue to develop, I suspect we’ll see more going on in f2p than just sticking a price tag on in-game content.
Make the world go round

Nobody wants to play a game that makes you feel like a cash cow. But pay-once games are harder to sell than they were 10 years ago, and those business models also gave us wonderful workplace practices like “crunch time” and “laying everyone off after ship” – both of which make it harder to attract, cultivate, and retain talented developers. If we want to see the game industry become a place where developers can reasonably see themselves supporting their families, buying homes, and sticking around until retirement, we’re going to have to solve The Money Issues in a way that makes everyone – devs, suits, and consumers – happy. (source:gamasutra)