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Wooga称开发商身份更有利于推出发行业务

发布时间:2013-08-12 13:47:09 Tags:,,,

作者:Christian Nutt

位于柏林的休闲游戏工作室Wooga最近宣布推出新发行项目,帮助位于丹麦哥本哈根工作室Tactile Entertainment发行游戏《Airheads Jump》。

据Wooga首席运营官Jan Miczaika所称,Wooga“首先是一个游戏开发商,这一点是不变的原则”,他认为这正是Wooga将成为优秀发行商的原因。

Wooga管理团队认为公司可为小型开发者提供的内部资源包括“市场营销、用户支持、本土化、社区管理, 及关于免费模式和盈利性的知识。”

他们的目标是将这些小型外部团队引向Wooga内部游戏团队所走的路线,Miczaika表示,“我们会对来自外部团队的游戏一视同仁,它们可以使用我们的BI工具,我们有专门的Facebook群组,他们会给予反馈,提供建议。这些系统可以紧密结合。这并非绝对无私心的帮助,但我们认为自己有许多资源和知识可以帮助其他团队。”

与这一领域的其他公司一样(游戏邦注:例如有道易和Facebook也宣布展开发行业务),出现这种现象的原因在于许多开发者难以在拥护的市场中获得足够的曝光度。Miczaika认为“市场上有不少出色的独立开发团队,而苹果App Store中的竞争已经十分激烈,排行榜前列的游戏几乎没有变动,通常都是原来几张面孔。用户获取成本也随之水涨船高,我们估计每月大概就有4000款新游戏面世。”

Airhead Jump(from app2top.ru)

Airhead Jump(from app2top.ru)

Wooga的合作方式

Wooga的发行方式绝非传统的发行模式,Miczaika将传统发行模式描述为:“开发者制作内容之后就抛给发行商。”针对《Airheads Jump》这款游戏,Wooga在其中的“元游戏和润色上投入了大量精力。”

“对我来说,我们本身就是开发者这一点很重要,这并不意味着发行不重要,而是说发行拥有许多分支工作。”

“我们非常明确的一点,也就是不同于其他发行商的地方就在于——我们是由产品主管来拍板做最后的决定。我们会提供建议,但会对内部团队和外部团队一视同仁,都是让产品主管做最后的决定。”

当然,Miczaika表示产品主管还负有“令项目可行”的责任。Wooga会根据其理解的用户品味和分析结果提供改进建议,并告知对方“你们如果愿意可以据此调整。”

“我们会根据分析和预先A/B测试为他们制定一个决定。但我认为最终由谁拍板更重要。”

Wooga的需求

Miczaika称公司正在全球范围寻找能够提供“从玩法模型到正在开发的游戏等一切内容”的“移动开发者”。

“我们有位专门的工作人员,负责参与所有独立开发者会议,并寻找大量游戏原型。”

他称Wooga挑选合作伙伴主要有两大标准:

1.“游戏理念,或者原型,必须很有前景。”

2.“我们很重视开发团队的人员是否跟我们合拍,是不是也有共同的游戏制作理念,这一点甚为重要。”

Miczaika的目标是建立长期合作关系。“《Airheads Jump》开发商Tactile有一系列游戏即将面世,我们所达成的协议并不会受到法律约束,我们会一起制作大量游戏,我认为这是一种完美的局面。”

当然,这里还涉及到运营问题。Wooga有言在先,“我们不会赞助资金”,所以开发者无法从Wooga获得资金支持。

Miczaika表示,“通常来说,这里会有收益分成,但却是极为公平的分成。最好的情况是人人都获利,大家都开心。”

“我们花了很长时间建立一家公司。游戏是一咱很小但却涉及人脉的产业,所以如果你想在游戏行业至少立足10年,你就得公平对待他人,你得信守承诺,并建立一种人人都满意的可持续商业模式。”(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

Wooga: Being a developer will make us a strong publisher, too

By Christian Nutt

Prominent Berlin-based casual game studio Wooga has recently announced a new publishing program that it is pilot-testing with Copenhagen-based Tactile Entertainment for its game Airheads Jump.

According to COO Jan Miczaika, Wooga is “first and foremost a game developer, and that’s not going to change.” But that is precisely why he feels the company will make a good publisher.

Around Wooga, the management team saw “internal resources and capabilities which smaller developers can use: marketing, customer care, localization, community management, knowledge about free-to-play and monetization.”

They decided to make them available to external developers too, something the company’s structure made possible.

The goal is to plug these small, external teams into the Wooga machine the same way its internal game teams do: “We treat a game coming from the outside the same way we’d treat an internal game,” Miczaika says. “They use our BI tool, we have Facebook groups where people bounce off ideas, give feedback, and so on. It’s very closely integrated.

“It’s not completely altruistic, but we thought we have a lot of stuff — resources and knowledge. How can we help these people?”

Like other comers in this space — Yodo1 and Facebook also just announced their own publishing efforts — this is very much about empowering discovery in an incredibly crowded space. “There’s great indie teams out there,” says Miczaika. “Just the App Store has become very challenging. The top is kind of frozen right now. You see the companies over and over. User acquisition is getting more expensive. We estimate there are 4,000 new games coming out every month.”

Working With Wooga

Wooga’s approach is a far cry from the “obsolete” traditional publishing model, which Miczaika describes as: “a developer makes something and throws it over a wall to a publisher.” For Airheads Jump, Wooga worked “a lot on the metagame, on the polishing.”

“What is important to me is that we’re a developer, first. Which doesn’t mean that publishing is less important, but it has a lot of ramifications,” Miczaika says.

“One thing we make very clear which is maybe something which is also different from other publishers — we say explicitly the product lead has the final say, we give input and we have an opinion, but it’s the same way for our internal teams and our external teams. Whoever has the vision for the product has the final say.”

Of course, that person also carries the responsibility for “making it work,” says Miczaika. Wooga offers input based on its understanding of player tastes and analytics, and then says “you can deviate from this if you want.”

“We help them make an informed decision based on analytics and prior A/B tests. [But] I think having the final say is very important,” Miczaika says.

What Wooga Wants

Miczaika says that Wooga is looking for “primarily mobile” developers from around the globe offering “everything from gameplay prototypes to games which are in progress.”

“I have one guy who’s dedicated, who goes to all of the indie developer conferences and looks at a ton of prototypes,” Miczaika says.

He says there are two main criteria to building a relationship with Wooga:

1. “The concept, or the prototype, has to be promising.”

2. “We really closely look at the team to see if these are people we want to work with, who share a similar idea of making games, and that’s important.”

Miczaika’s goal is to build long-term relationships. “[Airheads Jump developer] Tactile, they have a whole pipeline of games coming up. The agreement that we reached, while it’s not legally binding, is that we’ll do multiple games together, and I think that’s a perfect scenario.”

There is, of course, the business question. Up front, there’s this: “we don’t fund,” so don’t come to Wooga asking for money.

“Generally, it’s a rev split, but also a very, very fair split,” says Miczaika. “The best way is everyone makes money and everyone is happy.”

“We take a very long term approach to building a company. Gaming is such a small and well connected industry that if you want to be in gaming for 10 years or more, you have to treat people fairly, you have to stick to your word, and just build a sustainable model where everyone’s happy,” Miczaika says. (source:gamasutra


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