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避免游戏遭遇商业失败的7大要点

发布时间:2013-06-04 17:49:34 Tags:,,,,

作者:Anamaria Todor

每天都会有上百款新游戏出现在iOS,Android以及Facebook等平台上。但其中却只有不到10%的游戏能够赚取足够的利益而获得最后的成功。

我自己便经历过失败,半失败以及一些真正的成功。以下我将列出几个能够帮助你避免商业失败的技巧。

Failure-Success(from blog.cheetahlearning)

Failure-Success(from blog.cheetahlearning)

1.研究你的平台

所有新游戏在真正问世前都具有自己的行为榜样。当你正在设计游戏时,你应该尝试着玩这些行为榜样游戏,并理解为什么它们能够取得成功。

你最好能够选择位于同样平台上的游戏作为榜样。如果你正在创造iPhone游戏,并且是基于自己学生时期在PC上玩过的游戏,那么你就需要明确是否有人曾经将类似的游戏带到当前的游戏市场中。

如果排行榜上已经出现了类似的游戏,那这便是一个好的迹象!拥有成功的竞争者是件好事,如此你便能够知道自己所选择的方向是对的。

2.尽早从玩家身上盈利

当你越早让玩家为游戏中的内容花钱时,你便能够引导他们更深入其中。你这种投资是来自三种不同的元素:

玩家决定安装游戏

玩家决定进入游戏(游戏邦注:他们可以安装游戏但却可能永远都不会玩游戏)

玩家决定花钱

前两点只是关于时间的投入,但是当玩家决定为游戏花第一笔钱时,他们便已经从某种程度上购买了游戏。这比其它方式能够累积更多投资,随后便会涌现出更多来自其它消费活动的投资。

如果你能让玩家在游戏早期投入一些金钱,他们便不会轻易离开游戏或忘记游戏。

3.创造社交压力

当玩家开始玩游戏时,你必须尝试着让他们能够连接到Facebook上。如此你便能够告诉他们所有也在玩同款游戏的好友。如果玩家的很多好友都在玩同样的游戏,他们便会更有动力继续游戏。

如果他们的好友并未在玩同样的游戏,你也可以向他们介绍游戏中的其他玩家,并发展他们之间的游戏友谊。如果玩家间拥有共同的兴趣,那么社交关系将是推动他们再次回到游戏中的重要原因。

虽然病毒式传播内容经常会被当成是垃圾邮件,但是它们也能够带来一些好的效果,即当你能够提供给那些与好友一起玩游戏的玩家更多乐趣时。

4.首先基于适当参数进行测试

当你创造了一款游戏后,你便需要面对大众进行测试。大多数开发商都会面向较小的市场发行游戏的测试版。例如在讲英语的国家中,澳大利亚和加拿大便是足够大的测试领域,你可以在面向全世界发行游戏前在此进行测试。

尽早使用参数,当你在进行测试时,你必须确保自己正在获取用户留存数。然后你需要明确游戏在面对真正的玩家时是否可行。如果你拥有较低的用户留存数,你便可以开始完善其中的一些内容,如教程。

如果你看到的是非常糟糕的用户留存数,你便可能需要完全改变游戏。如果这么做还是不行,并且你们公司拥有足够的预算的话,你便可以选择重头再来。

5.为你的游戏添加个性

许多游戏遭遇失败是因为它们看起来并不吸引人。如果你创造了一款带有自己个性并且在视觉上具有很大吸引力的游戏,它便有可能备受瞩目。思考你想要呈献给玩家怎样的感受,并努力去完善用户界面的视觉效果。

当你注意到自己对视觉效果并不满意时,请果断重新设计。我发现如果能够呈献给玩家独特的外观,游戏的玩家留存便会迅速提升。

小窍门:添加像日光,阴影以及流水等效果。动画是创造创造沉浸式体验和生动世界的重要元素之一。

6.专注于群组

你必须在开发过程中让一些人去玩游戏。如果你只是让团队成员去确认游戏玩法,你便会失去一些更客观的看法。

就拿我自己来说吧,以前当我在创造游戏时,只要游戏一具备可玩性,我便会将其教到陌生人手上。我会向好友咨询他们是否有认识的人在我们的目标平台上玩游戏,并邀请这些人加入焦点测试小组。

当项目以外的人尝试着去玩你的游戏,并告诉你什么可行以及什么不可行时,你便能够发现各种问题而及时纠正。同时你还必须在测试之后给予测试者一定的奖励。就像我便给过参与者电影票作为奖励。

7.在发行时进行适当推广和营销

如果你是小型开发者,你便有可能在发行时忘记了营销和推广任务。如此,人们该如何发现你的游戏?如果你只依赖于口头传播,那么游戏只有可能获得少量的安装,并且不可能忘排行榜顶部攀升。

我的建议是,你需要获得足够的资金去支持用户获取。一般情况下你总是很难做到这点,所以你可以先获得足够的资金去进行测试,然后获得最低可行参数并将其呈现在投资者面前。如果你拥有足够有益的参数,你便有可能获得大量资金去进行市场营销。

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

7 tips to prevent your game from failing

By Anamaria Todor

Every day there are hundreds of new games coming out on iOS, Android, Facebook, and on all the other platforms. But less than 10% of them will ever make enough money to become successful.

I myself have gone through some failures, some less failed stuff and also some real successes. Here’s a few pointers on how you can minimize the risk for your game to become a commercial failure.

1. Research your platform

All new games have some kind of role model out there when they come out. When you are designing your game, you should play all those role model games and try to understand why the chosen models are so successful.

It’s particularly important that the role model is on the same platform as your game will be on. If you are making an iPhone game based on a game you used to play on a PC when you were a teenager, you should look up if someone has already successfully brought a similar game to the current game market.

If there’s already a similar game on the charts, it’s a good sign! A successful competitor is good, since then you know that you are building on something that works.

2. Monetize your players early on

When you get your players to pay you something early on into the game, you get them to feel more invested into the game. You can think of the investment being accumulated from three different aspects listed below.

Player decides to install the game

Player decides to enter the game (note, they can install but never start the game)

Player decides to spend money

The first two are just time invested into the game, but once the player decides to do their first purchase inside the game, they’ve sort of bought the game. This accumulates more investment than anything else, followed by more investment from all the other money spending activity that will happens.

If you can get the player to spend some real money into the game in the early first few sessions, he or she will have too much invested to just quit without a good reason and they won’t forget about your game that easily.

3. Create social pressure to continue

When the player starts playing the game, try to get them to connect to Facebook. This way you’ll be able to show them all their friends who are also playing the game. If the player has lots of friends playing the game, it will be a very positive signal for the player to continue playing.

If they don’t have friends in the game, think about introducing people who play the game and making virtual friendships between your players, even tough their are strangers. The players share a common interest, playing this game, and if they have similar interests, the social ties will give enough of a reason to return to the game.

Viral posts have usually been seen as spamming your friends, but there are good things that come out of this, if you provide more fun for the players who are playing with friends.

4. Do a beta test first with proper metrics

Beta tests should be conducted once you have a properly made game and you want to test the game on the masses. Most developers launch their game to beta in smaller markets. To go with a native English speaking audience, Australia and Canada are big enough testing grounds to see some results before actually launching the game worldwide.

Work on your metrics really early on, and when you do a beta test, be sure that you are getting retention numbers. Then you will see if your game works with real players. If you see low retention numbers, you can start to work on improving things like your tutorial.

If you see terrible retention numbers, it might still be possible to do a total pivot and change the game radically. If it isn’t possible, you might still have enough cash in your company to start all over and fix things.

5. Add personality to your game

Lots of games fail because they look unappealing. If you make a visually appealing game with lots of personality, you’ll be noticed. Think about what kind of feelings you are providing to the players, and make your user interface work flawlessly with the visuals.

When you notice that you aren’t happy with the visuals, don’t be afraid to redo the entire graphics. I have seen player retention significantly improve when the game gets a unique look.

Quick tip: Put a lot of effort into effects like adding sun light, shadows and flowing water. Animations are an important part of creating an immersive, living world.

6. Do focus groups

Your game needs to have real people playing it while you develop it. If you just leave the validation of the gameplay to your team mates, you will lose much critical insights.

What I did with my previous games was that once the games were playable, I put them into the hands of strangers. I asked my friends if they had other friends who played games on the platform I was developing on, and got these people to participate in some focus group testing.

You’ll spot so many mistakes that can be corrected when a person who hasn’t been involved in the project plays the game and tells you what is wrong and what works. Remember to reward your testers after the tests. For example, I gave away two movie tickets to each participant.

7. Do proper promotions and marketing when launching

If you are a smaller developer, you might forget that you need to do lots of marketing and promoting of the game when it is launched. Otherwise, how will people discover your game? If you are only relying on word of mouth, the game will get a few dozen installs a day and it won’t start climbing the charts.

My only advice here is that you need to get funding to do paid acquisition. Most of the time, you can’t get significant sums of funding for paid acquisition, so negotiate enough funding to do a beta test that provides minimum viable metrics, then show the metrics to your investors. If you have good metrics, you will be able to do proper marketing via paid acquisition.(source:gameanalytics


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