问题：

既然最初的吃惊已经过去了，现在可以考虑一下你对OFT调查（游戏邦注：OFT，即The Office of Fair Trading，英国公平交易局，其职责主要是消费者保护比如维护消费者信用方面的竞争）作何感想？对于游戏业，这种详细审查是否必然会出问题，还是可能存在积极意义？你能估计到的最好（和最差）情况是什么？

回答：

Ben Board（Boss Alien资深产品总监）

对我而言（以下是我的个人观点为），OFT对游戏业的审查是三种因素的混合作用导致的，即流言、玩家与家长之间的困惑，以及某些游戏使用的“强力”销售手段。

我有一点担忧结果。如果这些东西只是由常识和公平的分析决定的，那么我会认为事实是令人满意的：这些游戏生产出来后是全球出售的，而只有英国存在OFT调查，这使得局部限制成为对英国游戏业及其销售生意的惩罚；关于IAP公平的规定肯定很难制定和监管；这些游戏显然获得大量合法收益，且娱乐了许多人；虽然我不太了解合法方式，但我很好奇政府要让人们知道什么东西是可以互相买卖的，是否会有困难。

在我看来，合理的结论应该是，问题不在于游戏的销售途径，而在于游戏被销售的方式：这是苹果应用商店的问题。不是说苹果或谷歌的问题——行业必须帮助消费者理解他们要下载什么。毕竟，我们已经几乎合并应用商店了。在我们的俱乐部，我们使用“免费游戏”或“免费模式”来表示“免费+IAP”的商业模式，尽管这个词事实上并不能表达所有含义。那甚至不是我们在应用商店中对它的称呼：我们只叫它“免费”，难怪《每日邮报》那么轻易就把它扣上虚伪的帽子了，我认为这种叫法得改一改了。

在想办法限制设备销售和教育家长方面，也有一个平台问题。那是必然的，但不是我们应该负责解决的问题。

作为玩家和父母，我认为是时候给由IAP支撑的游戏想一个更合适的叫法，在应用商店中贴一个更合适的标签和做一个更确切的分类，同时保持它们作为主导模式应得的“被发现能力”和显著性（今天，收益排行榜上前9款应用均为免费游戏）。比如，“随心所玩”之类的叫法？

我担忧的是，交涉不会合理，而是被有话语权的专业政客、无理的削减、情感故事和获胜的选举所操纵，那样的话，理性就退居其次了，一切都无法预料了。

Stuart Dredge（《卫报》记者）

我认为这最终会由苹果、谷歌等平台所有者解决——这有望消除国家之间存在差异的风险。创建一个儿童分类，明确规定这一分类中的应用如何使用/营销IAP，以及教育父母如何锁定他们的设置，似乎是合理的办法。

最终，还是一个责任的问题——从平台所有者到父母，再到开发者。

在赢利手段方面，我认为已经超过“强力”的程度了，应该说是“欺骗的”、“操纵的”和“耻辱的”。我还找不到有什么充分的理由将69.99英镑的应用归为儿童游戏。我已经在数款儿童游戏中看到，在游戏开始的前15分钟内就弹出“你想购买虚拟道具吗？”的促销信息。有越来越多的游戏显然以促进消费为重点来设计游戏玩法（游戏邦注：如“你的宠物病了，你想治疗它吗？”就是最赤裸祼的例子之一）。

虽然数量不多，但仍然不少的开发者采用了这种糟糕的策略，所以我觉得OFT调查不可避免。

这一周，看到有些游戏开发者和游戏公司更加关注“我们如何回避规定？”，而不是“我们如何保护孩子和教育家长？”，真是令人沮丧。

我也希望，在规定威胁到他们之前，一些游戏公司能够更加关注这些问题。税收减免可能是个重大问题，但这些IAP问题并不是新出现的，也许在确定“儿童游戏适合什么不适合什么”中，本应该有更多引导性措施。

有一些灰色地带，例如《神庙逃亡》、《切绳子》、《愤怒的小鸟》都不是儿童游戏，但它们的玩家中有许多是儿童，所以如何界定这些游戏就不得而知了。

我是不是在纠正你不能制作摩西怪物式的月付费的iOS儿童游戏？

我知道《Magic Town》在他们的虚拟阅读世界中就是付月费的，但那是在图书中。就我个人所知，你不能对儿童游戏那么做，然而这可能是一个解决办法——父母每月为一款游戏支付1.99英镑，游戏中包含一定量的虚拟货币，按周发给孩子？

这可能是另一种游戏设计，但可能是设计儿童版《FarmVille》/ 《Smurfs’ Village》式、不鼓励消费的游戏的一个方案——教会孩子如何管理虚拟资源。

我真正的希望是，全球开发者大会、苹果能花一半的时间考虑它的iOS 7是否能增加一个新儿童模式/应用商店分类/家长须知。

Alice Taylor（MakieLab创始人）

正解，游戏订购现在还不是选择。

Mark Sorrell（Hide & Seek开发总监）

很大程度上，我同意Stuart。我们详细地指出某些开发者的可疑行径，警告他们这可能引来调查或规定。

放开显而易见的方面不说，儿童游戏问题似乎最不受关注，但也是对英国游戏业威胁最大的。将所有应用分类为真正的“儿童类”和“非儿童类”是不可能，因为这意味着分类方案必须适用于全体游戏。所以Teut建议的儿童模式应该更合理一些。这样，相同的应用可以根据谁在玩它来配置资源，而不是根据谁应该玩它。

我认为苹果很轻易就能解决这个问题，同时一次性解决正当的开发者和父母面临的问题。他们从来没有意识到父母在现实世界中如何使用设备，以及许多人通常如何使用平板。这本是他们应该做到的。

我是不是应该在这里建议一下，针对儿童的应用应该吸引儿童返回游戏？因为它们确实应该。

Ben Board（Boss Alien资深产品总监）

我很焦虑，甚至唯恐提出这个怪异的问题——我们有没有确凿的非《每日邮报》证据表明儿童大量误用父母的钱？

我没打算抹煞这个问题的重要性，如果它确实存在的话——毕竟我也为人父母，我的好朋友当中有些就是儿童，但暗示对儿童有害是一个区分探讨与合理性的好办法，即使没有证据。本周的例子：MMR。

但如果确实存在合理的证据，我也乐意接受。

Charles Chapman（First Touch Games主管）

多重帐号或设置儿童模式是显而易见的，也是相当简单的解决方案，但愿这就是讨论的结果。

从另一个娱乐领域的角度来说——我目前正在度假，花了相当多时间和钱在迪斯尼公园里。每一场演出/展览的出口都要经过出售品牌商品的商店，这是可以接受的现实。这是主题公园类似于IAP的地方，除非你已经花了100美元进去主题公园，如果你确实屈服于诱惑或冲动，那么你可能会再花10美元、20美元或更多。关键的区别是，父母许可是必须的，解决儿童模式和IAP许可的问题也是一样，我们已经前进一大步了。

当然，仍然有一些立场问题，但很大程度上，这些与其他任何行业面临的问题并无太大差异。正如我刚才所说的主题公园，显然就是一个最讽刺的例子，但超市和其他零售店把商品放在便于刺激消费者冲动购买的地方，无论消费者是儿童还是成人。一个极端的例子是，“购买金子让你的宠物活下来”，太挖苦了，甚至有些邪恶，但这是没有办法监管的。然而，我想这确实也是一个相当好的提高留存率的机制。

Kristian Segerstrale（Playfish首席执行官）

多重帐号很好，但我个人不太肯定是否实用，因为不太方便。我的想法是：

1、硬件制造商应该执行“儿童模式”。很像“飞行模式”，这个模式禁用某些功能，需要额外的验证步骤。除了IAP，还要禁用信息应用和打电话。对于游戏，我认为这是非常实用的功能，同时也避免孩子在玩游戏时上出现tweet信息、文本信息、邮件和电话等。

2、更多基于内容的商业模式。对我来说，关于《Candy Crush》最有趣的一件事是，内容管理商业模式居然管用。我发现儿童应用往往徒有其表，内容上却相当肤浅（如《Kapu Forest》和《Toca Band》）。如果那些应用有未解锁的额外内容，我倒会考虑多花一些钱。在《Toca Band》中，如果我收了新音乐的提示，或者在《Kapu Forest》中，如果我收到新动物的提示，给孩子看看，应该是件乐事，作为父母我可能也愿意花钱。然而我还没看到任何人这么做。但似乎可行。

3、理解问题的严重程度。我知道的许多内容生产者经常对话他们的高玩（消费多的玩家），绝大多数这类玩家都意识到自己花了很多钱，也满足于他通过消费获得的价值。儿童的无益消费确实存在——但我还没看到任何关于这个问题严重程度的数据。根据我知道的公司的客服信息来看，这个问题并没有太严重。我希望能看到相关的数据。我确实认为这只是行业的PR问题，但我也认为我们必须理解这个问题到底有多严重。

Oscar Clark（Applifier倡导者）

我们正被迫考虑我们的游戏设计方式，这是一件好事。尤其是当我们面临这个问题，可能与Kristian等人一样认为这个问题并不太严重时。那并不意味着我们都认为诱骗人们消费是可以接受的行为，因为在密码输入超时或颜色代码按钮刺激错误的购买以前，我们询问了，关于这些问题的讨论，我们显然都持相同的看法。

但这不是产生直接影响的问题，而是一个观念问题。免费游戏的玩家常常带着失望离开游戏，或体验过游戏之后被利用。总之不觉得高兴。这就是“社交游戏的后遗症”，我们已经探讨这个问题近两年了。所以，我一直在考虑为什么会出现这个问题。对钱的关注取代了对内容的关注。事实上，我扯得更远了。对“鲸鱼”玩家（每月消费超过100美元的忠实粉丝）的关注，使我们很难不把注意力全放在赢利上。我们公司最近做了一次玩家调查，发现乐意分享的人不仅消费更多，而且对游戏的推广和留存率贡献更大。所以，为什么我们不把目标受众定位为这类“分享者”，不要再捕捉什么“鲸鱼”了。也许，这样更人性化一点。

所以我们怎么办？我有一点担心无法预料的结果，结果可能是有意义的但相对残酷的解决办法。看看这里提出的建议，如关闭IAP或甚至做一种“儿童模式”的设置，我不太信服。部分是因为切换的不方便，部分是因为我很焦虑他们可能会被比我还聪明的人破解。然而，更大的问题是，游戏体验的积极创意是否会受到约束。短视的设计师只希望挣快钱，却打着我们这些希望做好游戏的人的旗号，也许这就是不可避免的后果。

也许应该“审核”经营者，但我仍然觉得执行最低程度的行为标准是应用商店的责任，如果游戏破坏了这个标准，就不要让游戏上架。关于如何控制应用“竞争商店”的市场营销活动，他们还有其他规定。为什么不用规定杜绝这种情况发生？确实，我认为一定程度上是应该的。如果苹果不得不偿还你的消费者，却不从他们口袋里掏钱，就应该受到惩罚。但我希望的是，那种短视挣快钱的行为的最终惩罚是，像渡渡鸟一样走向灭绝。这种行为的最终消失不是因为受到OFT调查，而是因为被调查暗示着受众不再信息我们了。

如果有什么积极意义，我认为OFT调查让我们更加关注免费游戏的问题了。我们必须恢复信任，如果我们希望避免免费游戏成为游戏史上的污点的话。

我希望OFT调查意味着所有离开主机领域、投身于“儿童游戏”的杰出游戏设计师能意识到，这对游戏开发来说，免费游戏并不是一个容易或安全的目标。它是复杂的，受限的，比行业的其他领域（除了赌博游戏）更需要付出努力。（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）

[Gamesbriefers] Are there upsides to the OFT investigation into F2P?

By Gamesbriefers

Question:

Now that the initial surprise has passed, what are your feelings on the OFT investigation? Is this kind of scrutiny inevitably going to be problematic for the industry, or are there potential upsides to the investigation? What are your best (and worst) case scenarios with regard to the eventual report and recommendations?

Answers:

Ben Board Senior Product Lead at Boss Alien

To me (and these opinions are my own) this has arisen from a mix of tabloid-spun bollockry, genuine confusion in players and parents, and ‘robust’ sales techniques used in some games.

I fear the outcome a little. If these things were decided by common sense and dispassionate analysis alone I would think the facts are favourable: these games are produced and sold globally, making local restrictions a punishment only for UK industry and sales; rules around IAP fairness are surely hard to formulate and police; these games are manifestly making oodles of legitimate money and entertaining huge numbers of people (and I bet even MPs play Candy Crush); and while being a dullard in legal ways I wonder if the government will struggle to tell people what they can sell each other.

That rational conversation should conclude, in my view, that the problem is not the way games sell but the way they are sold: this is an App Store problem. Not to say it’s Apple and Google’s problem – the industry must help them to help punters understand what they’re about to download. After all, we have all but annexed the app stores. In our club we use the label ‘Free To Play’ or ‘Freemium’ for the free-plus-IAPs business model, although those three words don’t actually communicate that at all. But that’s not even what we call it in the stores: we just call it ‘free’, which is easily for the Daily Mail to describe as disingenuous, and I think that’s what’s going to have to change.

It’s also a platform problem in finding a way to limit access to sales for devices which are often lying around the house, and educating parents. That’s necessary but less our problem to fix.

As a player and parent and a Dev Who Cares I think it’s time we had a better name for games funded by IAPs, and a label or categorisation in the stores, while keeping their discoverability as prominent as such a dominant model deserves. (Today the top nine grossing apps are F2P games.) Something like ‘Pay what you like?’

All that said my fear is that the conversation will not be rational, but will be run by professional politicians with loud mouths, unground axes, emotive stories and and elections to win, at which point sense comes second and all bets are off.

Stuart Dredge Journalist at The Guardian

I think this will ultimately be solved by the platform owners – Apple, Google etc – which will hopefully ease the risk of differences between countries. Creating a Kids category, defining clear rules for how apps use / market IAP within that category, and educating parents on how to lock their settings seems the sensible way forward.

Ultimately, it’s about responsibility – from platform owners, from parents and from developers too.

I’d go further than ‘robust’ though. I’d go with ‘scammy’, ‘manipulative’ and ‘dishonest’. I’ve yet to read a convincing reason for ￡69.99 IAP to be included in a children’s game. I’ve seen several children’s games that pop up a ‘would you like to buy some virtual items?’ prompt well within the first 15 minutes. And there are a growing number of kids’ games where the gameplay has clearly been designed around encouraging purchases (the ‘your pet animal’s sick, do you want to heal it?’ being one of the most obvious examples).

I feel like bad practices from a small but still significant number of developers have brought this upon themselves, and everybody else, so the OFT investigation was inevitable.

It’s also been disheartening this week to see the immediate response from some games developers and games industry bodies being far more focused on ‘how can we avoid regulation?’ than on ‘how can we protect children and educate parents?’

I also wish some of the industry bodies had seemed to care as much about these issues *before* the threat of regulation as they do now. Tax breaks might be an important issue, but these IAP issues aren’t new, and perhaps there could have been more leadership in terms of defining what is and isn’t appropriate in the children’s sector.

(Ben, none of this is aimed at you, btw, I’m just replying after your email, which I agreed with).

There are some grey areas – e.g. Temple Run, Cut the Rope, Angry Birds aren’t children’s games, but they are played by lots of children, so how regulation applies to those is anyone’s guess.

Am I correct in thinking that you *can’t* do a Moshi Monsters-style monthly subscription for a children’s game on iOS now?

I know Magic Town did it for their virtual reading world, but that’s in the Books category. As far as I’m aware, you’re not allowed to do it for kids’ games, yet this might be one solution – parents paying ￡1.99 a month, say, for a game that includes a certain amount of virtual currency given to kids every week?

It would be a different kind of game design, perhaps, but it might be a way of doing the FarmVille / Smurfs’ Village genre for children without encouraging purchases – and teaching them about managing their virtual resources.

My genuine hope is that at WWDC, Apple will have a decent 5/10 minute chunk of its iOS 7 keynote devoted to a new Kids mode / App Store category / parental stuff.

Alice Taylor Founder of MakieLab

Correct, game subscriptions not currently an option.

Mark Sorrell Development Director at Hide & Seek

I’m largely in agreement with Stuart. We’ve both written at length about the more suspicious activities some developers have been engaged in and both warned that this would likely lead to investigation or regulation.

To leave the obvious aside, the issue of *also* for kids games is the one that seems to hold both the least obvious solutions and the biggest threats to the larger industry in the UK. The fact that delineating all apps into meaningful ‘For Kids’ and ‘Not For Kids’ categories is impossible means that solutions need to work across all titles. So Teut’s suggestion of kids mode makes far more sense than kids apps. Then the same app can configure itself to respond to who is actually playing it rather than who is supposed to be playing it.

I do think this is a problem Apple could solve very easily, and simultaneously solve the problems faced by legitimate developers and parents in one fell swoop. They have never recognised the way that parents especially use their devices in the real world, nor the way tablets are often used by multiple people. And they should.

Is this a good place to suggest that apps aimed at kids should be designed to give the kid *back* after a play session? Because they should.

Ben Board Senior Product Lead at Boss Alien

I’m nervous even asking a heretical question – but do we have any hard non-Daily Mail evidence that children are mis-spending parents’ money at scale?

Not to diminish the significance of that problem if it is proven to exist – after all I’m a parent, and some of my best friends are children – but implying harm to kids is a great way to separate a discussion from rationality even if there’s no such proof. This week’s example: MMR.

Would happily accept reasonable evidence if it does exist, though.

Charles Chapman Director and Owner at First Touch Games Ltd.

Multiple accounts or device kids modes are the obvious, and relatively easy, solution here, and hopefully that will be the outcome of this.

To give some perspective from another entertainment area though – I’m on a family holiday at the moment and have spent a fair amount of time and money at Disney parks. It’s an accepted fact that after every ride/show/exhibit the exit flows through a shop selling branded merchandise. This is the theme park equivalent of IAP, except you’ve already spent $100 getting in, and if you do succumb to the temptation or tantrum, then you’re probably in for $10, $20 or more. The key obvious difference is that parental permission is needed, so solve the kids mode & permission issues for IAP and we’ve made a big step forward.

Of course there are still the positioning issues, but largely these are not too different from any other industry. Theme parks, as I’ve said, are the most obviously cynical example, but supermarkets and other retailers position product as impulse buys whether by kids or not. The extreme example of ‘buy gold to keep your pet alive’ would be cynical and somewhat nasty, but pretty un-policeable. However I can’t imagine it would be a particularly good retention mechanic either.

Kristian Segerstrale CEO of Playfish

Multiple accounts would be great but I’m personally not sure they would be used because of the inconvenience. My 2 cents would be:

1. Hardware manufacturers should implement a “Kid mode”. Much like an “Airplane mode” this would block some functions and create an additional authentication step around others. In addition to IAP I would personally I’d love for it also to stop messaging apps and making phone calls. I would find this a really useful feature not just for games but for avoiding random tweets, texts, emails, phone calls etc being made while kids are playing with the device.

2. More content-based business models. One of the most interesting things to me about Candy Crush is that the content gating business model works. I always find that great kids apps tend to be highly polished but very shallow in terms of content (thinking Kapu Forest or Toca Band for example). If either of those apps had unlockable additional areas I would consider paying a fair amount for them. If I got a notification that a new song is available in Toca Band, or a new animal in Kapu Forest, that would be a great little event to show my kids and I’d likely want to pay as a parent. I haven’t seen anyone nail this yet. But it does feel doable.

3. Understanding the size of the problem. Many content makers I know regularly talk to their high spenders and the vast, vast majority of them are aware they are spending a lot and are content that they are getting value for that spend. Unwanted transactions by kids or other people than the account holders clearly do happen – but I haven’t seen any data on the magnitude of the issue. Judging by customer support tickets by type in companies I’ve seen it hasn’t popped as a significant category of complaint (but then I haven’t run an aggressive kids apps company). Would love to hear any data on it. I do think it needs fixing for industry PR alone but I also think it’s important to understand how big the problem really is to put it into perspective.

Oscar Clark Evangelist at Applifier

The ideal that we are being forced to reconsider the way we approach games design is a great thing. Not least when we shake out the issues and probably find as Kristian (and other have said) the level of incidents seems to be relatively low. That doesn’t mean that any of us think its an acceptable behaviour to trick people into paying because we ask before the password time-out or colour code buttons to encourage mistake purchases and its obvious that we all feel this way from all the discussions on these subjects we have had on this forum.

But the problem is not one of direct impact, its a problem of perception. Players of F2P games are so often coming away feeling disappointed, or manipulated after their experience. Rather than delight. This is the ‘Social Games Hangover’ many of us have talked about for nearly two years. So I’ve been thinking about why this has happened; and again Kristian talks about it below. The focus on the money detracts from the focus on the content. Actually I’d go slightly further. The focus on the Whale (Truefans who spend $100+ each month) makes it really hard to avoid it being all about the money. We (Applifier) did a survey of players recently and found that the people willing to share not only showed greater spend, but also a greater contribution to the discovery and retention in a game. So why don’t we instead segment our target audience to those ‘Sharers’ and maybe stop just hunting Whales. Perhaps that will be a little more human.

So what do we do? Well I am a little concerned about the unforeseen consequences of what I fear will end up being well meaning but relatively crude solutions,. Looking at the proposals made here and elsewhere like settings for switching off In-App purchases or even the ‘Kids-Mode’ as discussed below; I’m not quite convinced. Its partly because of the inconvenience factors of switching, partly because I’m nervous about how they might be circumvented by smarter people than me. However the bigger issue is the knock on effect on how this will limit positive creativity for the good experiences. Perhaps that’s an inevitable consequence that short-term designers in it for the quick buck have on those of us who aspire to making better games.

Maybe its from the ‘Collated Experience’ days of running an operator deck, but I still feel it’s the responsibility of the Store to have minimum behaviour standards and if games breach those, don’t let them on the deck. They have other rules about how they control marketing activity that means they pull other ‘competing stores’. Why not have rules that protect against this circumstance? Indeed I’d argue that to an extent they do. There are penalties if Apple have to refund your customer, it doesn’t come out of their pocket in the end after all. But what I hope in that in the end the biggest penalty will be that behaving in this short-term money grabbing way will go the way of the Dodo. It will become extinct in the end not because of an OFT investigation, but because that investigation is a symptom of an audience who no longer trusts us.

If there is a good thing out of this I believe it is that it makes us pay attention to that. We need to rebuild trust if we want to avoid F2P becoming a footnote in history.

I hope that this OFT investigation means that all those talented game developers out there who leave the console space to set up their own studio to make ‘Games for their kids’ will realise that this isn’t an easy or safe target for game development.  Its complicated, regulated and requires a much higher level of diligence than almost any other aspect of the industry, with the possible exception of Gambling (and rightly so).(source:gamesbrief)