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迪士尼收购社交游戏公司Playdom究竟能获益什么?

发布时间:2010-10-26 16:56:31 Tags:,,,

在社交游戏新兴行业中,一次收购可能对整个游戏环境产生重要的影响。不论收购价格高低与否,对杰出公司的收购将改变世人对整个市场的认知。迪士尼公司7月对Playdom的收购就再次引起了人们对如下问题的思考:社交游戏是真实的还是泡沫经济?该行业是否能继续存活?迪士尼收购Playdom是否物有所值?

迪士尼城堡

迪士尼城堡

迪士尼公司为收购Playdom而付出的天价无疑吸引了群众的眼球。当时,为了收购有4010万月活跃用户与480万日活跃用户的社交游戏公司Playdom,迪士尼在5亿6320万美元的基础上为可能的额外收入又支付了2亿美元,总计以7亿6300万美元的价格收购Playdom公司。平均算来,迪士尼公司为Playdom每个日活跃用户支付了159美元。

当然,以上的数据可能并不精准。比如我们没有算入Playdom在MySpace等其他社交网站的流量等因素。但不论如何,此次收购迪士尼堪称是出手阔绰。

然而,当一家颇具规模的大型公司愿意大手笔收购一家新兴公司时,事情往往并不是没有表面那么简单。迪士尼公司收购的不仅仅是Playdom公司本身,他们收购的更是一个“增长神话”。但是,Playdom并没有马上显示出这方面的效益。

同比,当去年11月Ea公司以4亿美元收购Playfish之后,Playfish的日活跃用户从2009年6月的600万,到收购时翻倍增长到1300万人。然而在进入2010年后,Playfish、Playdom、Zynga、CrowdStar和RockYou等多家社交游戏公司都没有明显增长。

AppData对Playdom收购前6个月的流量进行分析指出:2010年4月中期Playdom的流量开始呈现下降趋势,最高700万日活跃用户到7月下旬被收购时仅余500万。与其他许多顶尖社交游戏公司一样,Playdom的经营受到了Facebook平台变动的影响,但据说Playdom通过提高对每个用户的盈利,其年收入在今年也同样有所增长。关于这方面,外界人士进行准确测量。

因此,颇多人都认为迪士尼公司以EA的双倍价格收购了用户量更小的Playdom公司。且在收购后,Playdom并没有发成预期的流量激增神话。那么,迪士尼收购Playdom究竟意欲何为呢?在此次收购后,媒体并没有进行后续报道。因此我们试图探索迪士尼收购Playdom的背后动机,了解收购当时Playdom的现状。

首先,一部分人持否定态度,认为Playdom是骗子公司,而迪士尼则是自愿上当的傻瓜。另一方面则有人认为Playdom是跟着时局转变发展战略,而迪士尼也是经过深思熟虑才做出的收购决定。下面我们对两种不同的观点分别进行分析:

1,批判的观点

在收购消息公布之后,我们听到了各方对Playdom公司的强烈质疑。一位资深业内人士指出,Playdom的发展策略就是在公司发展之后钓一个有钱的傻瓜。对此,其他许多业内人事也赞同这一观点。

在2009年许多社交游戏公司通过抄袭他人创意和病毒式传播技术获得迅速增长的情况下,一些业内人士认为Playdom在当时的许多发展策略有所逾越,即便在规范宽松的社交游戏领域都不能为业内人士认同。

当时Playdom究竟做了什么引起人们如此强烈的不满?在许多贬低者眼里,Playdom公司自身的收购策略(Playdom曾在一个月内收购了8家公司)其实是为了单纯的合并流量,没有长期的公司开发发展计划。换句话说,Playdom就是在制造社交游戏泡沫,希望在泡沫破灭前将公司出售。

Playdom公司的一位前任员工承认了Playdom的这种堆积策略,但他指出其中也有收购并不是出于这类目的,如Raph Koster。

然而,Playdom在今年5月对Acclaim的收购事例恰恰说明Playdom为了名誉进行各种收购。Acclaim公司曾在90年代因发行《永远的蝙蝠侠》、《真人快打》和《疯狂摔角》等游戏而声名大噪。但自从被Playdom收购以来,Acclaim公司被重组为大型多人网络RPG游戏开发商。Playdom在招徕Acclaim旗下1500万注册用户后,在8月悄悄关闭了所有Acclaim游戏。

另外,当这类被Playdom收购的公司无声无息消失的同时,一些地处遥远的工作室却担负起了发行Playdom新游戏的重任。今年Playdom成功发售的社交游戏Social City目前占有Playdom公司四分之一的MAU.而负责发布这款游戏的PushButton Labs是一家不隶属于Playdom,但经验丰富第三方开发公司。

Social-City

Social-City

实际上,Playdom开发的几款热门游戏都十分值得赞誉。但问题是Playdom的多款受欢迎游戏都是由其山景城总部以外的工作室开发,Playdom的山景城总部在聘用300多名员工的基础上却开发出Treetopia和Fish Friends这类仓促之作。

山景城总部的员工对其无法开发出令人满意的游戏持有多种不同看法。其中有人认为公司中许多年轻人虽然曾经接触过游戏行业但并未从事过管理工作,因此突然之间成为游戏开发者,他们的功能无法正常发挥。

而另一位早期员工则对该公司在2009年6月从EA招揽到Playdom的首席执行官John Pleasants提出斥责,他认为,在John Pleasants来之前,Playdom公司几乎可以和Zynga相比较,但之后Zynga遥遥领先,而Pleasants的表现却不尽如人意。

当然Playdom公司的山景城总部并不仅仅开发游戏。但有人认为迪士尼可以选择收购另一家规模较小的创意游戏工作室,那也许只需花费其收购Playdom零头,但同样可以创造出一个强势的社交游戏商业。

一些持怀疑态度的人认为迪士尼公司对Playdom抱有过于美妙的幻想,或者迪士尼公司急于向股东展示今进军新兴行业的决心。

认为市场缺乏Playdom规模的游戏公司或许能支持这一观点。毕竟Zynga太大,而CrowdStar则有其他问题。因此当时没有其他游戏开发公司有足够的规模引起迪士尼的注意。

而且显然,迪士尼公司钟爱社交游戏新市场甚于传统市场。在收购Playdom之后的4天里,迪士尼以6亿6000万卖掉Miramax电影制作工作室。此次交易足以弥补其对Playdom的收购。

2,迪士尼对Playdom的多方关注

认为迪士尼公司受骗上当的这种观点过于简单而很难令人信服——迪士尼执行官曾经了解业内人士对Playdom公司的看法。如果Playdom名不副实,迪士尼不可能不知情。另外,即便当时迪士尼迫切进入社交游戏领域的心情加速了收购进程,但曾成功收购Pixal和Marvel Entertainment的精明执行官们不可能收购一个废物。

因此,一种更加积极,也可能更加接近正确答案的观点是:迪士尼公司收购的不仅仅是Playdom旗下的流量和一系列游戏工作室。支持这一观点的是人们极少谈论的Playdom公司拥有的两大实力。

所谓的Playdom公司实力其一是指Playdom的集中式基础设备。该公司在测试各种成功或失败游戏的过程中不断地对这些设备进行“优化”。

有报导称,Playdom公司多年来都投入大量资金(可能近千万美元)用于优化其分析和货币化平台工具和团队。也正因此,Playdom公司在过去的几年盈利和流量明显增长。

相信迪士尼公司在关注收入增长的同时,也十分关心Playdom公司的收入是如何增长的。

对用户的特性和行为的深入了解是所有社交游戏公司取得成功的关键。虽然迪士尼并没有收购到景山城中最有创意的游戏开发工作室,但它却获得可以提供分析优势的软件。

迪士尼公司的一位资深执行官指出,Playdom卓越的分析能力在此次收购案中占有重要地位。迪士尼公司同时也将Playdom的专业分析能力用于社交游戏领域之外。“这种能力适用于我们公司的所有游戏平台,并创造了极大的价值。”

Disney Interactive

Disney Interactive

其二是Playdom对全球其他游戏发行平台和用户的了解。Playdom是第一家与德国i-Jet、巴西Mentes公司合作的美国社交游戏公司,此外Playdom还曾在Hi5、MySpace、iPhone、Android等平台发布过游戏,同时还有Moblyng等第三方工作室为其开发手机游戏。

据投资公司Norwest Venture Partner的Tim Chang所说,Playdom一直以来都将开发国际性网站作为自己的发展目标。通过开发第三方工具,进行跨平台宣传都是为了实现这一目标。同时,Chang还指出,Playdom是一个十分有好的合作伙伴,是迪士尼发展社交游戏良好的合作伙伴。

在外界看来,迪士尼公示十分重视Playdom的基础设备和组织能力。收购Playdom之后,迪士尼公司将重心集中在子公司的迪士尼品牌开发上。

有消息称,迪士尼公司和Playdom都极力发展这一策略。收购之后,多款正在开发中的Playdom游戏为了全力支持迪士尼品牌游戏而被中止。目前为止,Playdom在被收购后唯一发布的游戏是ESPNU College Town。

3,Playdom的现状和未来发展

迪士尼公司的支持者或许会将此次对Playdom的收购与之前成功的收购案例相比较,尤其是迪士尼收购创意工作室Pixar。其销量不仅稳固了Steve在迪士尼的地位,同时也带动了迪士尼股票的上涨。

但是与Pixar的收购案例不同,Playdom公司拥有的是与其他顶尖社交游戏公司不同的创意财富。迪士尼收购Playdom的真正关键在于迪士尼公司是否能在游戏领域有所建树。

历史证明这将是一个艰难的过程。20年来,迪士尼公司曾开发各种特许经营和米奇等经典卡通形象。这一期间迪士尼公司可谓是有失也有得,而近几年来,由于迪士尼旗下的互动媒体组一直处于亏损状态。

但是,近来的许多迹象表明迪士尼公司正试图重振游戏分部。今年十月,迪士尼公司将Playdom的首席执行官John Pleasants任命为迪士尼互动的合作总裁,负责管理所有游戏相关工作。

社交游戏的兴起为迪士尼发展数码商业创造了机会。该公司公司旗下拥有大量深受用户欢迎的内容元素。这些元素十分适于发展虚拟商品的商业模式。除了贩售电影票,实际商品、电视经销权等各种货币化手段外,迪士尼公司现在可以开发内含虚拟货币的各种主题游戏——这将成为迪士尼公司的新盈利方法。

Pleasants是EA公司前任首席运营总监,他拥有丰富的核心游戏经验。但就如我们上文提到的,尽管Pleasants在社交游戏行业广受好评,但并不是所有人都相信他的才能。

John Pleasants

John Pleasants

尽管人们可能无法清楚了解被收购后的Playdom公司表现。然而如果每用户盈利有所增长,迪士尼公司的未来盈利也可能加速增长。另外,Playdom拥有的4000万月活跃用户也可以帮助促进游戏领域外的迪士尼流量。

上文提到的Playdom低水平雇员问题,我们据悉许多Playdom现任员工开始另谋差事。尽管许多小型公司表示面试过许多Playdom员工,这一消息还有待迪士尼公司证实。

总结

总而言之,Playdom虽然面临这内部人员水平较低,收购策略不集中等质疑,但该公司仍凭借其稳步增长最终被迪士尼公司以天价收购。除了以上事实,值得指出的还有Playdom公司即便早期遭遇Zynga的挑战后仍然存活了下来,并且在2010年也获得了一定效益。在此基础上,Playdom公司也对发售公司股票股充满斗志。

今年,社交游戏市场相对紧缩。然而Playdom却在这一时局下被迪士尼公司以天价收购。尽管Playdom公司的策略制定和行业表现并不尽如人意,迪士尼提出的收购价格在某别人眼里接近天价,但实际上很多后期的Playdom投资商并没有从此次收购中获得太多收益。

不论如何,经历过短暂而动荡时期的Playdom公司现在将为迪士尼发行和货币化各种内容贡献自己的力量,该公司也能帮助提高迪士尼对网络商业的了解。(本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译)

In a new industry like social gaming, a single acquisition can have a disproportionate effect on the ecosystem. The buyout of a prominent company changes perceptions across the market, whether the price is high or low.

Disney’s July acquisition of Playdom has certainly had that effect, setting off a new round of speculation on some familiar themes: Is social gaming a real business, or a bubble? Has the industry produced viable companies? Is Playdom worth what Disney paid?

There’s no doubt that in Playdom’s case, the acquisition price raised some eyebrows. Disney paid $563.2 million, with the possibility of an additional $200 million earnout, for a company with (at the time) 40.1 million monthly and 4.8 million daily active users. Calculating by the full $763 million, that equates to $159 per DAU.

There are nuances to that number — like Playdom’s MySpace traffic, and other issues that we’ll discuss below — but by nearly any measurement, Disney paid handsomely for Playdom’s users.

When a large, established company buys a startup for a sizable amount, it’s usually said that they’re not just acquiring a company, they’re acquiring a “growth story”. This was not immediately evident in Playdom’s case.

When EA bought Playfish for $400 million last November, Playfish had just doubled from six million daily active users on Facebook in June of 2009, to 13 million at the time of acquisition.

By contrast, neither Playfish nor Playdom, not to mention Zynga, CrowdStar or RockYou, has shown much growth in 2010. Only companies that began 2010 small or not yet on Facebook have grown appreciably.

An AppData view of Playdom’s traffic in the six months before its acquisition shows a decline from a high of over seven million DAU in mid-April to around five million in late July, when it was acquired. Like its peers at the top of the social gaming world, with the increasing challenges of distribution on the Facebook Platform in 2010, Playdom had been growing revenues by improving its per paying user monetization metrics, we hear, which can’t be gauged as easily by outsiders.

Thus, many noted that Disney appeared to pay almost twice what Electronic Arts did, for a company with a smaller audience and without the same obvious traffic growth story.

What were Disney’s motivations in buying Playdom? Following the acquisition, relatively little fresh reporting went into the story. So we set out to dig a little deeper into Disney’s motivations, and the reality at Playdom at the time it was bought. What emerged were often very different perspectives from people who had relationships to Playdom prior to the acquisition.

On one side are the negative voices, drawing Playdom as a cynical con-man and Disney as the willing dupe. The alternate view is that Playdom was, like everyone else in the space, simply figuring out its strategy as it went, and that Disney made a well-considered choice for its own future.

Below, we deal with both of these two takes on the acquisition. One note: While we spoke to a number of sources for this story, including both industry onlookers and ex-Playdom employees, most of our sources asked to remain anonymous, citing potential repercussions in the tight-knit social gaming community.
Critical Views

Immediately following the acquisition, we heard some strongly-worded skepticism from a number of sources outside Playdom about the company. “Playdom’s only strategy was to grow and flip to a greater fool,” one prominent industry figure told us. Others offered more or less the same opinion.

The social game industry is, in many ways, a quite cynical place — an attitude perhaps carried over from 2009, when many companies grew from “fast follow” products that closely copied others and spammy viral techniques. Some executives that we spoke to seemed to feel that Playdom had crossed some kind of line in its strategy during that time, even by the loose standards of the social gaming world.

What did Playdom do that was so objectionable? In the view of the detractors, Playdom’s own acquisition strategy — it bought at least eight other companies over the same number of months — was intended to simply bulk up its traffic, without creating a viable long-term structure. In other words, Playdom was creating a bubble, and betting that it could sell itself before it popped.

One former employee said that this roll-up strategy was real. “We all talked about it internally, we all knew that was the reason that these companies were being bought, with some exceptions. We didn’t get Raph Koster [of Metaplace] for that reason. But all we were doing was driving up the value,” the employee told us.

Acclaim, which Playdom bought in May, was an example brought up by more than one source to illustrate how  Playdom bought some companies for name cachet and reputation. Acclaim became famous in the 1990s for its association with titles and franchises like Batman Forever, Mortal Kombat, and WWF Wrestlemania, but by the time of Playdom’s acquisition it had been restarted under new management as a MMORPG maker. Playdom touted Acclaim’s 15 million registered users after the buy, but had quietly shut down all of its games by August.

While some of Playdom’s acquired companies appeared to quietly disappear into the organization, other far-flung studios played a disproportionate role in keeping Playdom viable through new game releases.

This year’s decline in Playdom’s traffic would have been far more severe without highly successful releases like Social City, which at one point accounted for a quarter of Playdom’s MAU. PushButton Labs, an experienced third-party developer not owned by Playdom, helped with that game.

Playdom’s other successful recent titles were also developed outside of its Mountain View headquarters. Verdonia, which grew quickly but harbored serious flaws that led to a later fall, was created by a previously-acquired company, Green Patch, also in Mountain View headquarters. Market Street, Playdom’s most successful game outside its city-building titles, was developed by the San Francisco office.

City of Wonder, however, was developed in Mountain View.

The fact that Playdom produced hits is laudable. But its biggest success rested on one studio outside of Mountain View. The headquarters in Mountain View, while it employed over 300 people including executives and support staff, produced games like Treetopia and Fish Friends, which were built hastily and were criticized for relying heavily on copying concepts from other titles.

Employees had varying views of why Mountain View seemed to have a harder time producing good content. “There were a bunch of kids running the place who had never been in the game industry, never managed anything before, and suddenly they’re game producers and executive producers. Of course it was dysfunctional,” said one source.

Another early employee seemed to pin the blame on John Pleasants, the experienced CEO hired away from Electronic Arts in June of 2009, saying that the company felt like it was on course to rival Zynga until Pleasants came on. Afterwards, Zynga pulled ahead, while Pleasants was not as aggressive as he could have been.

Mountain View did more than just produce games — more on that below. But with Eugene doing so well, one might speculate that Disney could have simply picked out and bought an equivalent small, innovative studio for a fraction of the price it paid for Playdom, and built a strong social gaming business around that core.

Skeptics believe that Disney may have bought into a too-rosy story of Playdom, or that the acquisition team could have been pressured into buying an internally troubled, but externally much-admired industry leader by Disney executives who wanted to show shareholders that they were leading in a hot new industry.

The lack of other available companies of Playdom’s size may support these views. Zynga is too large, while CrowdStar has, according to conflicting reports, either rebuffed or been rejected by several suitors, or has other issues. For the moment, there aren’t any other companies with enough size to fit the bill.

And Disney clearly preferred a hot new market to its old standbys. Four days after buying Playdom, Disney sold off its Miramax movie production studio for $660 million, enough to cover the Playdom acquisition.
Disney’s Broader Focus

The view that Disney was duped is too simple to be credible — Disney executives had extended contact with Playdom in 2010, and had contacts in the industry who could inform them of any problems at Playdom.

Similarly, while a desire to look like it was paying attention to a hot trend could have contributed to the acquisition, it’s unlikely that a savvy CEO like Bob Iger, who also oversaw the acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel Entertainment, would buy a total dud.

A kinder – and possibly more accurate – view of the acquisition is that Disney was buying more than just Playdom’s traffic and a jumble of studios.

Two important, but little-discussed, strengths of Playdom suggest a basis for that view.

The first of those strengths is Playdom’s centralized infrastructure, which the company has “perfected” while testing both its successful and failed games.

Playdom has reportedly poured a significant portion of its revenue over the past year, possibly running into tens of millions of dollars, into the teams and tools behind its analytics and monetization platforms. As part of this, it has seen its revenues grow significantly in the past year, we’ve heard, especially in proportion to its traffic.

While Disney no doubt appreciated revenue growth, the more important part is how that revenue grew.

Understanding user metrics and behavior (and knowing which metrics are the right one to understand) is a key part of the social game business that many companies, both small and large, have failed to fully appreciate. While Disney may not have acquired the most innovative game production studio in Mountain View, it did acquire software that could give it a competitive edge for years to come.

A senior Disney executive that we spoke with confirmed that Playdom’s analytics ability played a significant role in the acquisition, saying that Disney is using Playdom’s expertise in analytics outside of social gaming. “These are skills that are applicable across our gaming platforms and are already proving incredibly valuable to us,” the executive said.

A second, related strength is Playdom’s understanding of other game publishing platforms and users around the world. Playdom has been the first US-based social game company to enter into relationships with publishers like Russia’s i-Jet and Brazil’s Mentez, and its has published games on Hi5, MySpace, the iPhone, Android and other platforms. It has had third-party studios like Moblyng work on its mobile titles.

Creating a worldwide network was always part of Playdom’s plan, according to Tim Chang, the principal at Norwest Venture Partners who led an investment in the company last year. “That was something they were always intending, building out third party tools and doing cross-promotion.They’re very partner-friendly, an easy shop to talk partnerships with, and that also made it a good DNA fit for Disney, because Disney’s goal is to put their catalog of branded IP into social gaming,” Chang told us.

Disney’s goals, as seen from the outside, do seem to value Playdom’s infrastructure and organizational knowledge over its track record as a collection of studios. Since the acquisition, Disney has been moving the company toward producing branded content from Disney’s many other subsidiaries, as Bob Iger hinted in Disney’s post-acquisition earnings call.

Sources say that both Disney and Playdom are even more aggressive about this strategy than has been publicly admitted. Following the acquisition, some of Playdom’s in-progress titles were reportedly canceled, in favor of focusing on Disney-branded games. Playdom’s only release since the acquisition is ESPNU College Town, which supports Disney’s ESPN sports subsidiary, although we’re told it was in production before the buyout.

Although Playdom may release unbranded games in the future, it also makes the most sense for Disney, a very international company, to focus on spreading its existing, successful IP around the world.
Playdom Today and Tomorrow

Supporters of Disney might also point out that the company has done well with other acquisitions — especially Pixar, the innovative studio whose sale gave Steve Jobs a board seat and chunk of Disney stock.

Pixar may be a unique case: the company has proven time and again that its own unique vision and technology are unparalleled. Too much rode on the $7.4 billion Pixar deal for Disney to risk letting its executives meddle; Pixar was thus able to assert its independence early on and has reportedly kept it since.

Playdom, by contrast, has a creative heritage that differs little from other top social gaming companies. Internal restructuring may fix Mountain View. But the real question is whether Disney itself can do a good job at gaming.

History suggests that will be a challenge. In two decades of producing titles based on major franchises and characters like Mickey Mouse, Disney has had hit or miss success, and in recent years has lost money at its Interactive Media Group.

However, there’s some sign that Disney may want to reboot its gaming division. In October, Disney put Playdom CEO John Pleasants ahead of Steve Wadsworth as co-president of Disney Interactive, with responsibility over all gaming.

Disney has reason to refocus its digital business for the sake of social gaming. It has a large portfolio of content that users love, that appears to be a great fit with the free-to-play virtual goods model that drives most social gaming revenue. In addition to movie tickets, real-world merchandise, television distribution rights, and every other way of monetizing its content, it now can create themed games that include virtual goods — essentially creating an entirely new revenue stream around pre-existing content.

Pleasants, who was once chief operating officer at Electronic Arts, is an experienced core gaming executive. As we noted above, not everyone is confident in his talents, but he mostly gets positive reviews in the social game industry.

And Playdom’s may be able to grow without the rest of the world seeing exactly what’s happening. With per-user revenues already rising, Disney may be able to further accelerate revenue growth with its own entertainment expertise. Playdom’s 40 million MAU can also help push traffic to other Disney properties outside of gaming.

As for Playdom’s lower-level employees, we’re told that many are now considering their options elsewhere, in part driven by the desire to work for agile startups over a major corporation. “I don’t think they’re any longer vested in Playdom as an organization,” a recruiter who has worked with many current Playdom employees told us, while smaller companies also said they’re interviewing numerous people from Playdom. It will be up to Disney to prove that it can rival Silicon Valley’s pull for existing and future workers.
Conclusion

Playdom grew, and then sold, at a time when companies could be successful despite internal challenges and an unfocused acquisition strategy. Despite those facts, it’s also worth pointing out that the company survived its early encounters with Zynga and stayed viable through much of 2010. At one point, Playdom even reportedly had ambitions toward a big IPO.

The market has tightened considerably this year, however. Playdom, like other companies, likely had neither a perfect plan or an internal conspiracy to dupe a larger acquirer. Instead, the company figured out its strategy as it moved, and ended up falling short of a perfect performance. While Disney’s price was considered high by some, later Playdom investors likely didn’t profit much by the sale.

And yet, following its short and tumultuous history, Playdom could now become an important part of how Disney distributes and monetizes content, and possibly help the rest of the company improve its understanding of how to do business on the web.

[Correction: An earlier version of the story said that City of Wonder was developed in Eugene. It was developed in Mountain View. Also, Verdonia was developed in Mountain View, and the San Francisco location is an office.](Source:Inside Social Games)


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