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探讨游戏内置商店的售价高低排序问题

发布时间:2013-05-16 16:49:40 Tags:,,,

问题:

有位读者询问,他在自己的商店中是否该将虚拟货币按价格高低来排列。你们针对开发者布置自己的游戏内置商店是有何建议呢?

回答:

Will Lution(免费模式&移动游戏顾问)

我认为比起整体布局,排序本身并不算是一个大问题:因为一项IAP道具是一种非通用商品,其价值是通过对比而产生的,所以你如何呈现这种对比情况更为重要。

所以我认为强调“最受欢迎”和“最实惠”是挺普遍的现象。但我不认为线性地增加存款就是最好的事情——拥有价值相对较低的“牺牲型”IAP更能够推动销量。

但如果你可以进行多元化测试,那不妨一试,直到你获得自己所猜测的数据为止。如果这是一款iOS游戏,你就无法轻易更改IAP价格了。你可能要将IAP价格设置成不可调整状态,但内容包的大小却可以调整,由此你可以进行一些回归分析,并找到最佳内容包设置。

in-game store(from spryfox.zendesk.com)

in-game store(from spryfox.zendesk.com)

Ben Board(Boss Alien高级产品主管)

运营一款F2P游戏最引人注目的地方在于,它与零售业极为相似。对此我会重视来自经营高速公路商店店主的建议。何时该推出买一送一优惠活动?促销时间多长?如果给这样东西降价,是否就该给另一样东西提价?

你该如何定位自己的促销活动?

我不认为一个简单的回答就能解决问题,而是要自己去尝试。要针对不同的商品组合进行AB测试,设计好屏幕使之能够根据玩家的状态进行排序——例如,你有一些付费意愿很高的玩家,针对这一群体的商品布置就要不同于那些长期非付费玩家,后者可能更容易因廉价促销信息而动心。想想商店中的促销商品(例如货币包)以及一次性的IAP道具。我同意Nicholas的建议,即在早期玩家展示极具吸引力的物品,例如货币加倍器,以便他们掏钱买东西。你可以针对这些用户提供不同的促销内容。

Teut Weidemann(育碧在线专家)

首先:不要提供过多价格点,不然会让用户感到困惑。可以推出5种价格点,最多不要超过7个。

其次:要记得对于某些格式的内容,你不能更改价格(例如短信服务)。

第三:要使其中一个价格点极具吸引力和号召力,这个价格会成为你的ARPPU(每付费用户平均收益)。

我们应该区分游戏道具商店与游戏货币商店。在道具商店中,你不能根据价格进行产品分类,而是根据类型或游戏特定属性来分类。

至于将最昂贵的商品摆在前列,这一点我也不能苟同。如果一名即将付费的用户发现了道具标价99美元,而自己无论如何都不会支付这个价钱,那他很可能就会转身离去。只有铁杆用户才会接受这种高价,所以没必要将高价商品摆在最前面。

Charles Chapman(First Touch Games Ltd.主管及所有人)

这里的其他回答都显得更为系统化,但我要说的是数年之前与某人发布我们首款F2P游戏时的两点建议:

a.先列出最大/最贵的道具。

b.无论最大的IAP道具是什么,都要在它之前添加另一个IAP。

这里的原因在于,人们一般都是从头开始看起,所以等他们看到更便宜的道具时,他们至少已经看过比它更贵的东西,能够通过对比做出选择了。其次,这种做法还可以让中级道具更具吸引力——这好比是餐厅的酒水列表中的心理学,人们总是倾向于选择“价格适中”的东西。所以在上面的b项中,我们添加了另一层次的道具,并不是真的指望大家去买它,可事实上真有人这么做了。

Mark Sorrell(Hide & Seek开发总监)

需要指出的是,游戏中的一切东西都要使用游戏内置货币购买。即便这只是一次性、永久更新的能力或物品,用游戏内货币对其标价,确保玩家的游戏帐户中仍然留有余额,以便他们有所选择地购买,而不是未经思考就冲动购买。

我觉得不得不做一些补充。

我认为这是个有点危险的问题。

这其中当然存在一些普遍原则,但这些东西“超级”重要,我得避免提供空洞的解决方案。Teut对于99美元售价不可摆在前头的观点也许是对的,但也不能把5美元这种低价摆在第一位。那么到底该设置哪种价格点?

这要取决于大量的实际情况,并且这个问题还要因人而异(游戏邦注:例如,开发者可通过一些明智的设计,促使可能消费49美元的粉丝,购买99美元的东西),妥善处理这个问题可能极大提升游戏收益。

另外,要经常考虑到那些与收益相关的所有问题,并进行测试和迭代,令其提供更出色的价值,而不只是提升收益。当你调整收益模式时,一定要确保自己跟进了与用户获取和留存有关的数据。出售太多令用户不再玩游戏,或者将其推荐给好友的道具,并不是一桩好生意。

例如,我看到在《Clash of Clans》中有不少用户购买资源搜集器的增速功能,这比直接购买游戏货币更没效率,这不但会增加玩家的困惑,而且价值更低。但我在此并不是要批评Supercell设计不当。

Charles Chapman(First Touch Games Ltd.主管及所有人)

这真是一个确保所有东西都要用游戏内货币来购买的好点子。它还支持游戏绑定有意义的奖励性视频广告以及其他盈利工具。就我个人而言,我并不喜欢“注册NetFlix获得3000个积分”这种促销活动,但我认为奖励性视频广告是一个人人都会获益的无缝绑定方案。

Ben Board(Boss Alien高级产品主管)

《CSR Racing》是以现金形式而非游戏内货币提供一次性的大型IAP内容,这种方法很管用。要求玩家用Gold而非现金购买IAP,对于没有Gold的玩家来说就是一种障碍——如果他们真想花钱,他们希望一步到位,而不是分成两步执行。

Oscar Clark(Applifier倡导者)

我认为这正是令我们陷入麻烦的争议所在。

问题的焦点在于如何尽快赚到更多钱——假如这就是你的目标,当然Charlie的策略当然值得推崇。从零售策略的角度来看,他的建议也十分正确。但依我个人经验来看,如果你的计划是创造长期的终身价值,那这就不是正解了。

在我看来,这个问题的框架就有问题。

你要向玩家出售什么价值?玩家的生命周期是哪个阶段?他们能否看到数量折扣的好处,还是将游戏视为一个销金窟?

我认为Will关于评估虚拟商品价值而进行对比的观点很好,但我认为这其中还涉及到我们传达或暗示商品潜在价值的方式。

如果你在我对游戏还不感冒之前,就向我展示从最昂贵到最低价排列的商品目录,我肯定会走人。如果在我准备为游戏花钱,而你却没有展示促销信息时,我可能就不会在游戏中花太多钱。

在此我们有许多可以运用的有效零售技巧,而不只是创造短期收益。例如,当我运营3UK平台时,我们发现一次性促销完全没有用处。我们发现最初一个月可提升3倍收益,但随后两个月的收入却急剧下降。最后,我们发现每用户平均收益仍然无所增长。后来我们决定发布每款游戏6周之后,对其进行降价处理(从6英磅降至3英磅,然后是1英磅),并在其降至1英磅之后一周撤掉游戏。这些操作可以为处于各个生命周期的玩家设置一种合理的价值预期。使用这些技巧之后,我们发现玩家平均每月投入开始有所增长。

我的观点是什么呢?就是我们要先为用户增加价值,并找到传递价值的最佳方式——而不只是依赖商品列表,我们应该向零售商看齐。

Ben Cousins(DeNA欧洲游戏工作室主管)

唯一的答案当然就是“执行A/B测试”。

“一次准确的测量胜过一千名专家的看法。”

Eric Seufert(Grey Area营销主管)

我完全赞同Ben观点,引用一句话:

“如果我们有数据,那就用数据说话。如果我们只有看法,那就采用自己的看法。”

Oscar Clark(Applifier倡导者)

这里我也想引用两句话……

“这并不只是钱的问题……”

在Ben所举例子中,他们使用的一种有效付费货币确实将价值与游戏的长期寿命相挂钩(但我并不认为这对我来说就有足够的价值)。

“谎言,可恶的谎言和统计数字”。

……这意味着我们可能过于依赖自己所能够测量的数量,并误解了它的重要性。当然,1000名专家的看法也可能形成数据。

Ben Cousins(DeNA欧洲游戏工作室主管)

“我们的虚拟货币是否应该按价格高低来排序?”这个问题在我看来,其实可以用数据驱动的方式进行测试。

“我们游戏中哪些功能最有趣?”可能就属于那些无法用数据分析得到答案的问题。

在我看来,开发者无需纠结于到底要怎么做,测试了就知道了。

Will Luton(免费模式&移动游戏顾问)

我认为这里的问题在于,要明确哪些内容应该进行测试,因为执行一场多元测试需要耗费大量时间,漫无目地的测试对所有人都没好处。

Tadhg Kelly(Jawfish Games创意总监)

这让我想起了A/B测试需要解决的同类问题。这名读需要需要像可配置的服务器端一样创建自己的商店(避免每次进行调整时都需要经过App Store审核),并进行A/B测试,然后尝试新的配置以便得到最佳方法。毫无疑问,大家都知道这里不存在终极正确答案,所以管用就好。

Ben Cousins(DeNA欧洲游戏工作室主管)

我不认为进行A/B测试就是唯一的答案,但你们有没有人可以不用A/B测试就解答这个问题?

Will Luton(免费模式&移动游戏顾问)

为什么不测试?因为这可能无法得到正确答案,并且浪费时间。

Ben Board(Boss Alien高级产品主管)

A/B测试是很棒很有必要的方法,但并非唯一的答案。每个A/B测试都需要花些时间(在开发及等待结果的过程中),资金和机会成本。所以你在选择何处入手时,要有一些智慧。

Anthony Pecorella(Kongregate虚拟商品游戏制作人)

为了不重复大家的观点,我要举两个例子来回答问题。

《Pixel People》有一项IAP会使所有建筑的计时器加倍。我会在早期就购买这项道具,也许在四五个回合后我就会看到这种升级道具的价值。但这种升级只能在特定建筑内购买,而这个建筑可能是我所建造的最后一栋楼,这等于我根本用不上这东西。虽然这种针对特定建筑的购买设计可能“挺可爱的”,但却是一个失误的经济策略。所以开发者应该及早针对玩家推出合适的购买选项,令IAP在玩家的游戏生命周期中发挥作用。

我们在Kongregate也看到玩家发现游戏中的高价商品时止步不前的现象。如果你想先在游戏中花个10美元或20美元,但最先看到的却是500美元的高价,这不但会把你吓走,还会最小化你对自己首次购买的商品的估值。在我们网站,以及我们所合作的一些游戏,我们会选择不让从未花钱的玩家看到过高的售价点(一般是超过100美元的售价)。在玩家首次消费之后,尤其是到达一定规模的交易,我们才会向其展示更高的售价点,因为这些高价商品此时才会对玩家产生吸引力。虽然这并不能解释根本问题,但确实提供了一种额外的调整方案。(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] Low to high, or high to low?

By Gamesbriefers

Question:A GAMESbrief reader asked whether he should list his virtual currency from most expensive to least expensive in his store, or the other way round. What advice do you have for developers thinking about how to lay out their store?

Answers:Will Luton

Free-to-play and mobile games consultantI think order itself is less a concern than the whole presentation: Because an IAP is a non-generic good the perception of value is created through comparison, so how you display that comparison (and what the comparison is) is the important bit. In my book I go in to a bit of depth on this and use Dan Ariely’s Economist subscription experiment as an example (see his TED Talk on it here).

So, I think you’re right on highlighting “most popular” and “best deal” as is commonplace. However, I don’t think a linear increase of savings is necessarily the best thing – having a “sacrificial” IAP which is poor value comparatively can drive purchases higher.

However, if you can multivariate test the story, do so – until you have that data you’re just guessing. If this is an iOS title you can’t vary IAP prices easily (or at least without creating inaccurate data tinged by player comparison to old prices). You might set this up so that the IAP price doesn’t change, but package size does, from this you can do some regression analysis and work out the optimal packages.

Ben Board Senior Product Lead at Boss AlienOne of the striking things about running an F2P game is how much it looks like retailing. I would value the advice of someone who runs a high street store. When should you do a two-for-one deal? How long for? If you cut this price, should you raise that price? How, indeed, do you position your offers.

I don’t think there’s a single answer to this, just things to try. AB test different combos. Engineer the screen so the ordering can be based on player stats – e.g. if you have someone who seems happy to pay, that suggests a different layout than a long-term non-payer, who might be more swayed by a very cheap intro offer. Think about offers presented in the shop (like currency packs) versus in-situ, one-off IAPs, if you have them. I like Nicholas’s advice to present the player with a compelling early purchase, like the coin doubler, to get them to pay something. You might present offers differently for those people.

Teut Weidemann Online Specialist at UbisoftFirst: do not offer too many price points. Users get confused. 5 is a-ok, 7 max.

Second: remember that for some formats you have price points where you cant change the price (SMS)

Third: make one point attractive enough so its a no brainer to buy; that will be your ARPPU (see Dan Ariely)

Having said that, we should separate the in game item shop and a shop to sell in game currency. In the item shop, you won’t sort items by price, never, you sort them by category or game specific attributes.

As for most expensive first: I disagree. If a user who is on the edge of paying sees a $99 price point he will likely not pay simply because just the existence of such a price point will turn him away. Only engaged users will use that $99 anyway, so why display it first.

Charles Chapman Director and Owner at First Touch Games Ltd.Other responses here are far more scientific, but I remember having this discussion with someone a couple of years ago before we launched our first F2P game, and the two bits of advice were:

a. Order items from largest / most-expensive first.

b. Whatever your largest IAP is, add another above it.

For (a) the logic was simply because people read from the top, so by the time they get to the cheaper items they’ve at least had a look at the more expensive packs to make comparisons.
(b) was to make the mid level items look more appealing – like the restaurant wine list psychology – people tend to go for something ‘mid-priced’ whatever that may be. Looking back, (b) can be seen as a bit cynical. We did add a level above, not realistically expecting people to buy it, but of course people did.

Mark Sorrell Development Director at Hide & SeekThe points made by all about Anchoring are very useful.

It is worth pointing out that everything should be purchased by in-game currency. Even if it’s a one-off, permanent upgrade, ability or object, price it in the IGC and make sure it leaves some IGC left over from any of your IGC packages, to allow people to sample spending, alongside the ‘no-brainer’ purchase.

I feel obliged to add -

I think this is a bit of a dangerous question.

There are general guidelines of course, but this stuff is *super* important and I’d be wary of offering blanket solutions. Teut’s point about $99 being the first number people see might be right. But $5 is probably too low. So where is the exact point? That will depend on a *huge* number of issues, and change from individual to individual, (a fan who buys at $49 might be up-sold to $99 with some smart design) and getting it right will have a significant effect on revenue.

More generally, always think about all revenue related questions early and often and forever and test and iterate and aim to offer great value, not just raise revenue. When you make changes to your revenue model, make bloody sure you’re tracking what it does to acquisition and retention. Selling lots of an item that makes people stop playing your game, or recommending it to their friends, isn’t good for business.

Aside: I’d love to see the numbers on users buying ‘boosts’ for resource collectors in Clash of Clans. They are definitely less efficient than just buying currency directly, which is also possible, and so would seem to add confusion and offer lower value. Which doesn’t seem sensible. But I’m loathe to accuse Supercell of getting things wrong

Charles Chapman Director and Owner at First Touch games Ltd.That’s a really good point about making sure everything is purchased with in-game currency. It also allows for meaningful integration of incentivised video ads, and other revenue tools. Personally, I really don’t like things like ‘Sign up to NetFlix for 3000 credits’ offers, but incentivised video ads are a pretty seamless solution where everyone’s a winner.

Ben Board Senior Product Lead at Boss AlienWell, CSR offers one-off large IAPs in the fiction for cash, not in-game currency, and they work very well. Requiring that purchase to be in Gold rather than cash means friction for players who don’t have it – if they want to spend a couple of bucks they would rather do it now, not in two steps.

Do think about the granularity of the virtual currency, though, to give you most flexibility with smaller-scale purchases. But that’s a different conversation.

Oscar Clark Evangelist at ApplifierI think this is exactly the kind of debate which gets us into trouble.

The focus is just on how to make as much money as quickly as possible – and if that is your objective then of course Charlie is spot on with his strategy. Actually his advice is also largely right from a retail strategy point of view too. But from my experience it isn’t the right answer if your plan is to build longer-term lifetime value.

I feel like I’m about to tell that old joke about when you ask for directions only to be told “Well I wouldn’t start from here”

To me the frame of the question is wrong.

What value are you selling to the player? What is the lifestage of that player? Are they capable of appreciating the benefits of volume discounting or will they instead see your game as a money pit?

I think Will has a raised a good point about the comparison when assessing the value of virtual goods but part of this I would argue is about the way we communicate or foreshadow the potential value of that item.

If you show me a list from most expensive to cheapest before I care about the game I will churn. If you don’t show me discounting options when I am ready to spend as much as possible I won’t spend as much on your game as I might have done.

There are so many opportunities to use effective retail techniques to do more than just generate more short term cash. For example when I ran the 3UK platform we found one-time sales to be completely useless. We saw a 3x increase in revenue for one month followed by a sharp drop in income for the next 2 months. In the end we saw that the average revenue per user over time remained unchanged. But when we instead built a process where every game launched would be reduced in price 6 weeks after it was released (from £6 to £3, then later to £1). More than that we decided to remove the game from the deck a week later after it was reduced to £1. These actions set up an expectation of value which made sense to players at all life stages. Through these techniques we saw players making the decision to increase their average monthly spend.

So what’s is my point? Lets work out how we add value to users and find the best way to communicate that – not just rely on lazy lists where we can’t decide on the best order. We are all retailers now.

Ben Cousins Head of European Game Studios at DeNAThe only answer is of course ‘run an A/B test’.

“One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions”

Eric Seufert  Head of Marketing and Acquisition at Grey AreaI agree completely with Ben, and will throw in a related quote:

“If we have data, let’s go with that. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”

Oscar Clark Evangelist at ApplifierTwo quotes come to mind for me too…

“Its not about the money…”

…well not just the money – and in Ben’s example their use of an effectively premium currency does infer value to the long term life of the game (I just didn’t think it was enough value for me)

“Lies, damn lies and statistics”

…meaning we can over rely on the data we can measure, as well as misinterpret its significance. And of course 1000 expert opinions collected properly could constitute data :0)

Ben Cousins Head of European Game Studios at DeNA“Should our virtual currency offers be ordered low to high or high to low?” seems to me like exactly the type of thing which can be tested in a data-driven way with very little chance of noise.

‘What features in our game make it the most fun?” would be an example of something that you maybe wouldn’t get great answers from using data analysis.

My comment just referred to the original question. IMO there’s little point in developers wasting energy trying to figure out what to do, just test it.

Will Luton Free-to-Play and Mobile games consultant

I think there’s value in questioning what’s worth testing, because it takes time to create a multivariate tests and blindly running them is benefit to nobody.

Tadhg Kelly Creative Director at Jawfish GamesThis strikes me as exactly the sort of problem that A/B testing was meant to solve. Your reader needs to focus on is building his store in such a way as to be configurable server-side (and therefore avoiding an App Store approval every time he wants to make a change), A/B-able, and then try a few configurations to see what works best. As no doubt everyone will say, there’s no ultimately right answer, so whatever works.

Ben Cousins Head of European Game Studios at DeNAI don’t think anyone is suggesting that a/b/n testing is the only answer, but would any of you not use an a/b test to answer this question?

‘should we list our virtual currency from most expensive to least expensive in the store, or the other way round?’

Will Luton Free-to-Play and Mobile games consultantWhy wouldn’t you? Because it might not be the right question and waste of time.

Ben Board Senior Product Lead at Boss AlienABTs are great and necessary, but not the only answer. In the universe of possible options you have to start somewhere. Every ABT you do takes time (in development and in waiting for results), money and opportunity cost. You have to apply some smarts to choose where to start.

Ben Cousins Head of European game studios at DeNAI agree. I’m obviously looking at the question isolated from any meta-questions.

Anthony Pecorella Producer for virtual goods games at KongregateIn an effort not to reiterate the many good observations already made, I’ll keep my reply to two specific examples.

Pixel People has an IAP that doubles the timers of all buildings. I would have purchased this fairly early on, after perhaps 4 or 5 game sessions at which point I could really see the value of such an upgrade. However the upgrade was only purchasable within a specific building, and entirely by chance that building was literally the very last building I built (out of the initial set), at which point I had no use for it. While perhaps “cute” to design purchasing within a building, the reality is that it is a poor strategy financially and it is a prime example of the points made earlier about surfacing and targeting players appropriately with offers that make sense with where they are in the game lifecycle.

At Kongregate we do see players balk, sometimes very vocally, at seeing high price points in games. When you’re considering putting your first $10 or $20 into a game, seeing a $500 price point is not only intimidating but also minimizes the perceived value of your first purchase. On our site, and in some of the games we work with, we instead choose to suppress large price points (generally above $100) from players who haven’t purchased before. After an initial purchase, especially above a certain size, we can then reveal that larger price point because it now makes more sense for the player. While it doesn’t solve the bid-endian / little-endian debate, it does provide an additional tweaking point that you can work with.(source:gamesbrief


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