作者：Rohit Goyal

游戏领域既复杂又难以预测。从Zynga的崛起和式微，《Draw Something》一夜成名，《Flappy Bird》富有争议性的成功，以近最近King宣布将进行IPO等现象来看，这个市场真的出现什么致胜法则了吗？

游戏仍然是最具风险的领域之一。在2011年《愤怒的小鸟》创造了同样的轰动效应，令手机游戏成为当时最炙手可热的行业之一。但要记住，每1款成功的游戏背后，必有1000个失败的故事。今天就让我们来谈谈为何这一行的失败现象如此普遍。

我要分成两部分来讲。

第一，我将谈谈今天多数游戏公司在做什么。

第二，我会讲讲他们如何确保不再犯这些错误。

所以我想从创始人如何投身游戏领域，他们的经营理念，目标和愿景这个问题切入。

我发现了两个最为普遍的现象：

1）他们因单个游戏理念而进入游戏行业

2）他们因为有多个游戏理念而投身这一行（但这些理念彼此之间并不相关）

这两个战略各有好坏

让我们看看第一种由创始人因某一个游戏理念而起家的现象。现在这个游戏理念可以是类似于“Clash of Clans”这种潜在价值达数百万美元的理念，但它还需要一些特定元素才能成为高价值的热门游戏：

*头天就需要高投入，以便开始项目，雇佣至少10人的团队及其所需的资源。

*高水平的游戏设计和技术能力

*能够完美执行理念的可靠团队

clash_of_clans_logo(from supercell)

Supercell拥有执行《Clash of Clans》所需要的一切。他们第一天就拥有可观的资金（因为该团队信誉良好，之前曾开发过大量游戏，拥有10年以上的游戏从业经验）。他们是游戏设计专家，在创立Supercell之前曾设计过大量游戏，掌握了可行经验。这一点可以从Supercell公司网站看出端倪：

“Supercell是由曾创造许多热门游戏和成功IP的游戏行业元老而创立。我们每位成员都有10年以上的游戏开发经验，曾一起面向12个不同的平台推出了165款以上的游戏，这些平台包括Facebook、Xbox 360、XBLA、iPhone（以及其他移动平台）、PC和Mac。”

很显然，多数游戏创业公司一开始并没有这些资质。因此这种现象在多数情况下的结果不是产品无法及时面世，就是出现不够成熟的作品。Supercell因盈利性问题而将《Battle Buddies》撤出市场，尽管该游戏获得了舆论的好评。

如果这个不成熟的产品无法在市场上发挥良好的表现，创业公司就会陷入经济危机，因为他们之前已经毫无结果地投入了太多资金和时间。

现在再来看看第二种现象：

它在多数情况下要看运气。团队拥有大量有趣的游戏理念，他们开始逐一开发这些游戏，寄希望于它们其中之一会成为《Temple Run》或者《Subway Surfer》。这种情况下，多数时候团队不是在数个不成功的项目之后逐渐丧失斗志，就是再也没有资金开发其他理念了。这一模式的最大弊端就在于，除了掌握了更多技术经验，他们的下一款游戏无法得到任何帮助。所以每款游戏都会成为一个新的初创团队，而由于运营一个初创公司就已经很困难了，所以这一战略的多数下场如何就不难猜了。但这一模式也并不总是消极的，有时候也会发生一些奇迹，比如团队果真创造出了《Temple Run》或《愤怒的小鸟》。而这唯一获得成功的游戏则可以让你创造一个价值无限的游戏公司，但这会考验你的时间和耐心，因为你的前几款游戏可能都难免失败结局。Rovio在《愤怒的小鸟》走红之前曾创造了51款表现平平的游戏。

那么要最大化你在游戏领域中的成功机率，最好采用什么战略呢？

找到你的利基市场/基于特定理念或游戏风格开发产品。

找到你的利基市场，是指尽量专注于特定的游戏风格，以便你之后再基此开发大量游戏理念。例如，Rolocule就是位于印度普纳的一家游戏公司，他们发布了多款基于网球、羽毛球和壁球的成功作品。他们在iTunes获得了苹果推荐。他们的高明之处在于为自己创造一个特别的利基市场。他们只专注于体育题材，并且仅瞄准网球、壁球和羽毛球这种使用球拍的运动项目。

你会发现开发了一款羽毛球游戏后，再开发网球或壁球游戏就很简单了。你可以将之前的游戏开发经验运用于下一款游戏。Rolocule因发现当时市场上还没有羽毛球游戏而明智地选择了这个利基市场。所以，通过以正确的模式选择合适的利基市场，Rolocule将自己打造成了印度最成功的游戏公司之一。你去观察King游戏，也能够看到该模式的智慧之处。他们的的每款游戏几乎都采用相同的游戏设计、盈利和用户获取模式。结果就是他们现在都准备在美国上市了，因为他们可以重复自己在《Candy Crush Saga》中所做的事情。

candy-crush-saga(from misselainetan520)

总而言之，我可以说失败固然有原因，但成功也不是偶然的。重要的是一开始要考虑初创公司而不仅仅是游戏。因为游戏会失败，但只有你放手了，公司才能算是真正失败了。问题就在于搞清楚：你的公司该如何发展？假如首款游戏不成功该怎么办？你的利基市场是什么？为何这一款游戏就能成功？（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）

Why most mobile gaming ventures fail?

by Rohit Goyal

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.

The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

The business of gaming is complex and unpredictable. From the rise and fall of Zynga, overnight success of Draw Something, controversy driven success of Flappy Bird and the recent announcement of Candy Crush maker King’s IPO, is there a winning formula emerging?

Gaming still remains one of the most risky segments. Back in 2011 Angry Bird created same kind of sensation and made mobile games as one of the hottest thing to be in. But remember there are 1000 failure behind one success story in gaming. So let’s talk about why there are so many failures.

I will break this into two parts.

First I will talk about what most gaming companies doing today?

Second I will talk about how they can ensure not to make some of these mistakes.

So one question I tried to focus on was how founders started into gaming; with what philosophy, with what objective, with what vision?

I have observed two most common scenarios.

1) They started with one single game idea.

2) They started because they had multiple game ideas (but these ideas had no relevance with each other).

Now there are pros and cons in both the strategies

Let’s talk about the first scenario when the founders started with a single game idea. Now this single idea can be(it has to be) a potential multimillion dollar idea like ‘clash of clans’ but that requires some particular things to make it a multimillion hit game:

- Needs a high investment on day 1 to start the project to hire at least 10 people team and required resources

- high expertise in game design and tech

- a solid rock-hard team to execute the idea perfectly

Supercell had everything to execute clash of clans. They had handsome investment on day 1 (because the team was credible, worked on multiple games before, had good exposure of working in gaming industry for 10+ years). They were game design expert as they designed multiple games before founding Supercell, learned what works what not.

See this info from their website itself:

Supercell was founded by a team of industry veterans with a solid track record of creating hit games and successful IPs. Each and every one of us has 10+ years of development history and together we have shipped more than 165 games on 12 different platforms including Facebook, XBOX360, XBLA, iPhone (and several other mobile platforms), PC and Mac.

So obviously most of the gaming ventures don’t have all these things when they start out. Hence most of the time with this scenario either the product doesn’t even make it to the market or it is not mature enough when it goes into market. Supercell pulled out Battle Buddies from market due to poor monetization, despite getting positive reviews from critics.

So after this immature product don’t do well in market, venture gets into major money crisis as there was already a lot of investment in terms of money and time with no result.

Now coming to the second strategy:

This is most of the time hit and miss game. The team has multiple interesting ideas in their mind and they start developing them in the hope that one of them would turned out to be a temple run or subway surfer. In this case most of the time either the team loses its motivation after a couple of unsuccessful release or they run out of cash to work on further ideas. The biggest disadvantage in this model is that there is no carry forward benefit in the next game except the technical learning. So each game turned out to be a new startup and as running one single startup is already damn tough so you get the idea how this strategy turns out. But obviously it’s not all that negative, sometime things happen for good and you actually come up with a temple run/angry birds. And the good thing about games is that with one single successful game you can build a multimillion dollar company as the scale here is too big (in 10’s of millions). But it might take a lot of time and patience as your first few titles might fail.

Afterall Rovio took 51 title before coming out with Angry Birds.

Now what is the best strategy to go for if you want to maximize your chances in gaming (obviously nothing can be ensured for 100%)?

Find your niche | build on a particular philosophy or game style.
What I mean by finding your niche is try to focus on one particular type of game style which you can repeat for multiple game ideas later. For example Rolocule is a Pune based gaming company in India. They have released successful titles based on tennis, badminton and squash. They were featured by Apple on iTunes. What they did smartly was to create a particular niche for themselves. They just tried to stick to sports category that too only for the racket games like tennis, squash, badminton.

You see how easier it would be to develop a tennis game or a squash game after you have developed a badminton game. You can improve your next game tremendously from the learning of your previous game. Rolocule also selected their niche smartly by finding that there was no badminton game in the market at that point of time. So by selecting the right niche then going with the right model they made it to one of the successful gaming companies from India. Even if you try to observe King’s games you will see how beautiful there model is. Each of their games follows almost same kind of model in terms of game design, monetization and acquiring users. And the result is they are filling for an US IPO because they can repeat all the things they did in Candy Crush Saga.

In conclusion I would say while there are reasons for failure, there are reasons for success too. What’s important is start thinking about the venture and not just the game. Because it’s the game which fails not the venture until you quit. The question that needs to be asked is: how your venture is going to grow? What if your first game doesn’t work? What is your niche? Why this particular game would work?（source：gamasutra）