问题：

假设你经营一家大型游戏公司。你持有《星球大战》授权，可向平板电脑和手机平台发布游戏以配合下一部电影的宣传。这款游戏过后当然会含有IAP内容以提供多样的定价策略，但它最初售价点该如何定夺？这可是《星球大战》，市场上肯定会有超出你想象的推广活动。粉丝也当然会预先付费。那么你发布之初会定价4.99英磅虏获铁杆粉丝，还是选择免费模式以便尽量收获大量用户？为什么？

回答：

Ben Counsins（DeNA欧洲游戏工作室主管）

免费。“需求”、“炒作”、“营销”是一切可推高IAP销量以及增加用户预先投入的东西。

我们都知道，获得广泛用户是困难的一环，当你找到用户后，就比较容易从他们身上盈利。我深信在我有生之年，我们将会看到拥有数十亿玩家，外加60美元以上的终身价值（LTV）的游戏品牌。

Harry Holmwood（Marvelous AQL Europe首席执行官）

两者都会选。可以在两个对等的区域进行测试，衡量用户反应和收益之后再决定。

Angry-Birds-Star-Wars(from what30.blogspot)

Andy Payne（Mastertronic总经理）

我当然会选择免费，就是免费。

Mark Sorrell（Hide & Seek开发总监）

免费。《星球大战》超级粉丝和《星球大战》观众并不是同一类人，并且观众数量要远超过粉丝。所以还是择其最大者而从而。

我怀疑《星球大战》游戏脱离原来的叙事框架，并完整采用免费增值模式设计可能存在一定难度。

Emily Greer（Kongregate产品、营销及财务高级副总裁）

根据游戏的质量和类型来决定吧。平庸的游戏（一般授权游戏都容易沦为这一类型），或者一种不适合采用F2P模式的游戏类型，最好还是选择预先付费模式，通过超级粉丝创造收益。

Eric Hautemont（Days of Wonder首席执行官）

无论你选择哪种模式，都必定会失败。

《星球大战》属于那种会让授权商大获其利，但对获得授权者来说却很糟糕的IP，我还没有哪个与Lucas签约授权合作的公司因《星球大战》获得授权而赚到钱。

Tadhg Kelly（Jawfish Games创意总监）

我的直觉是，你应该采用预先付费模式。F2P的好处之一在于它可以让你的游戏获得更多曝光度（游戏邦注：例如提升10倍下载率）以免游戏陷入沉寂，或者在应用商店首页获得推荐等。但《星球大战》已经是响当当的品牌了，人人都已经看过与这部电影相关的信息，也认可它所存在的价值。并且这款游戏会在所有商店中自动获得编辑推荐，因为他们会认为这是一个了不起的产品。

Oscar Clark（Applifier倡导者）

这是我最喜欢的问题之一，我也常看到它引向同一个答案。但我真想从两个角度进行说明。

我们多数人认为免费的价值在于用好“需求价格弹性”这一概念。我们总是说薄利多销，但实际上情况更为复杂。从生命周期来看，反复购买本身也存在问题，例如长期风险、买家反悔、玩家疲劳、害怕损失等等。

也有人认为付费模式很可行。如果有足够的玩家期待（或者营销），我们就会看到许多玩家买你的游戏。如果游戏理念具有通俗性，品牌价值和品质，那么新粉丝也会觉得自己“可以”去买这种娱乐奢侈品。但这样你就无法获得采用免费模式所能得到的潜在用户。免费模式的潜在用户规模（鉴于一定的营销预算）总是更为庞大。不过我承认《星球大战》的粉丝已经够多了。

设置预先付费模式，你也就提前为游戏价值设定了期望值。你这是在要求玩家为玩游戏的资格付费……最糟的情况是让他们觉得这就是“他们可享受的所有内容”，最好的情况是这会限制他们向游戏额外投入金钱的预期。

如果你采用付费游戏有可能会成功，拥有快乐的粉丝。但很少出现一开始采用付费模式就能大获其益的情况。所以选择免费模式似乎仍是最佳策略。

Stuart Dredge（《卫报》记者）

付费版《星球大战》游戏（不含IAP）可能会赚到一些钱，而F2P版《星球大战》游戏则可赚到比这多5倍甚至10倍的游戏。但如果付费版本所选择的游戏理念最适合它，并且获得一定利润，那为什么不同时采用两种模式呢？当然，前提是开发者的资源和条件允许。

我也认为，成熟的游戏/娱乐品牌若无高明的策略，就无法采用F2P模式。但我强烈反对如果拥有出色富有创意的游戏理念，就必须采用付费模式的观点，不能仅仅因为能够赚到一些钱就采用付费模式。

Martin Darby（Remode首席文化官）

这要取决于执行方式。如果你发布了一款含IAP内容的游戏，那你就是在运行一项实时服务。你在游戏上线首天就不可惹恼大多数用户，所以如何植入IAP就成了游戏执行的一个关键环节。

我并不认为F2P模式就是万能丹。它很适合一些设计模式，但却未必适合其他的。这个问题好像忽略了这种情况。所以我不知道该如何回答这个问题，因为这要考虑到游戏设计是否有利于IAP，或者不利于IAP所以要采用预先付费模式。

简而言之，这是一个很难回答的问题，因为盈利模式只是任何游戏提案的一个角度而已，而后者的目的却是服务市场需求。（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] Should you go free-to-play with big name ip?

Question:You run a big games company. You have the Star Wars licence to release a game on tablets and phones to coincide with the next movie. The game will definitely have IAP to provide variable pricing over time, but what is your initial price point for the game? This is Star Wars. There will be more marketing out there than you can possibly imagine. Fans will definitely pay upfront. Do you launch at £4.99 to capture that demand or do you price it at zero to get the widest possible audience? And why?

AnswersBen Cousins Head of European Game Studios at DeNA

Free. ‘Demand’, ‘Hype’, ‘Marketing’ are all things that can drive higher-than-normal IAP as well as increased likelihood of up-front spending.

As we all know, reach is the difficult part. Once you find consumers, monetizing them is the easy part. I’m convinced we’ll have billion-player franchises with 60-dollar-plus LTVs within my lifetime.

Harry Holmwood CEO of Marvelous AQL EuropeBoth.  Trial in two equivalent territories and gauge user reaction and revenues.

Andy Payne MD at Mastertronic

I would go free, free and free.

Mark Sorrell Development Director at Hide & SeekFree. Star Wars FANS and Star Wars fans are not the same people and there are a lot more fans than FANS. So go for the biggest audience.

I would suspect that a Star Wars game would have difficulty getting far enough away from narrative to really embrace the full design principles of freemium, that said.

Emily Greer SVP Product, Marketing and Finance at KongregateThe quality and type of game determines the decision. A mediocre game (as licensed games tend to be), or one in a genre unsuited to F2P, is better off charging up front and getting its revenue from the superfan.

Eric Hautemont CEO of Days of Wonder

It doesn’t matter which way you go, you’re doomed and will lose your shirt either way 8-/

Star Wars is in this category of licenses that are great for the licensor, but terrible for the licensee – I can’t think of a single Star Wars licensee that made money on their deal with Lucas.

Tadhg Kelly Creative Director at Jawfish GamesMy instinct is to say you charge up front. One of the benefits of f2p is that it drives wider exposure of your game (10x download rates etc) to bring you out of obscurity, maybe get featured on front pages of app stores and so on. But there is no bigger idea than Star Wars, everybody has already been exposed to it, and considers it valuable. And it will automatically get featured status in all stores by editorial departments because they’ll consider it to be a big deal.

Oscar Clark Evangelist at Applifier

This is one of my favourite questions and one I seem to always come back to the same answer on – but honestly I try to argue both sides.

Most of us argue the value of Free using the concept of ‘Price Elasticity of Demand’. We argue (and I would say a little disingenuously – I know I’m guilty of this too) that if we sell lots of things at a very small price that we can fill up the whole of the curve. It’s not a bad shorthand; but its much more complex in practice. Repeat purchases have their own questions in terms of lifecycle, long term risk, buyer remorse, player fatigue, fear of loss, etc.

There is an argument that Paid ‘can’ work. If there is sufficient player anticipation (or marketing) then we will see lots of players buying our game. If the concept has the associated accessibility, brand values and quality then new-fans may also feel able to grant themselves ‘Permission’ to buy which is necessary for any entertainment or luxury product. However, you will have reduced the potential size of the audience than had you gone free. The potential scale of the audience from Free (given the same marketing budget) will always be bigger. Although I admit that with Star Wars perhaps that’s still enough people.

By setting an up-front price, you also have set an expectation of the value of the game. You have asked players to pay upfront for the privilege of playing… and at worst that sets an expectation that this should be ‘All they can eat’ or at best limits their expectation of how much additional money they may wish to put into the game.

You can succeed if you go paid. You can have happy fans. But there are very few circumstances where starting Paid leaves money on the table. Going free seems again to be the best strategy.

Stuart Dredge  Journalist at The Guardian

I’m not keen on the ‘leaving money on the table’ line of thinking on the paid or F2P question.

Yes, perhaps a paid Star Wars game with no IAP would make x, versus a F2P Star Wars game making 5x or 10x (for example), but if the paid game is a marvellous idea that would work best as a paid game, and make a decent profit, why not do it as well as the F2P game? Resources permitting, of course.

I agree that no (adult) gaming/entertainment brand can’t lend itself to F2P with smart thinking. But I’d push back strongly against the idea that if there are beautiful, creative game ideas for that brand that would suit a paid model better, they shouldn’t get made because they’d leave money on the table.

Martin Darby  CCO of Remode

It really does depend on the execution. If you’re launching a game with IAP then you are inevitably running the game as a live service. You don’t want to annoy the *majority* of the customers of that service from day 1, so how necessary the IAP’s are to playing the game become an essential part of the execution.

I don’t believe F2P is a panacea anyway. It works brilliantly with some design patterns; not so well with others. This question seems to ignore that. I don’t know whether to accept the question on the basis that the game design is highly conducive to IAP or whether it is not and therefore the upfront fee would just be a quick buck.

In short, it is a difficult question to answer because the monetisation model is just one of the lenses through which to view any game proposition which is aiming to serve a market need/desire.（source：gamesbrief）