作者：Pete Koistila

游戏体验：警告——-玩游戏可能成瘾

你一旦开始就无法收手了。这就是《Clash of Clans》。这款游戏初次发布之后，在教程中间序列就展开了Goblins攻击，你就会深深陷入其中，无法回头了。

你首次启动《Clash of Clans》，可能很会连续不间断地玩上数个小时。游戏极具成瘾性和粘性因素。你会一直重返游戏。让我们分析一下其中的原因吧。

它的用户界面通俗易懂，图像也极为精致，音效和音乐与游戏体验相得益彰，你们多数人都不会太容易对游戏生腻，因为它具有“深度”，设计精良的核心循环，留存性、盈利和社交机制来支持游戏体验。

核心循环：清晰和简单，持续进步

设计精良的核心循环会奖励玩家的积极行为，并推动玩家每次游戏的进程。《Clash of Clans》核心循环由三个不同的操作组成：

Clash_of_clans_core_loop(from gamasutra)

1.通过收集资源，你可以获得万能药和钱币。

2.建设和训练你的军队需要花费万能药和钱币。

3.通过战斗你可以搜集更多万能药和钱币。并且这会影响你的排名。

留存性：新手、中级和精英群体

留存率衡量的是你让玩家重返游戏的有效性。例如，有多少比例的首天游戏玩家会在第二天重返游戏。

据Supercell的Ilkka Paananen所述，Supercell追踪的关键指标是第1天、第7天和第30天的留存率。Supercell成员Lasse Louhento曾透露，公司将《Clash of Clans》玩家划分为三个阶段：新手、中级和精英群体。每个群体都有不同的游戏体验方式，留存率也不尽相同。

在你首次开始玩游戏时，你会注意到教程内容就已经将你吸引到游戏中，我就会接连不断地学到新内容。重要的是，在游戏的早期阶段并不会对此有太多的依赖性，因为这可能会令新手困惑。优化教程部分极大提升了这款游戏的留存率。

在新手阶段，玩家必须成功完成任务并成为社区中富有价值和投入性的成员。

盈利性：关于消费者行为的心理学

《Clash of Clans》中几乎所有的细节都是针对盈利而设计（游戏邦注：例如常规的军队训练和建设你的村庄）。你总是有需要花钱的地方。这里的盈利方式取决于你加速游戏进程的需求。你玩得越多，就越需要花时间获得成就。或者通过花钱走捷径来加速游戏进程。

在游戏最开始，你有相当数量的免费宝石（游戏内置货币，可用真钱购买）。在数个小时后，你就会用光这些免费宝石，因为你已经将所有宝石用于购买黄金和万能药（这是游戏中的两种软货币，可用宝石购买）。此时你对于宝石的心理概念已经成型了。黄金和万能药是廉价的，你得用宝石来购买这些东西。现在你必须获得更多宝石，你可以通过游戏中的“商店”购买这些东西。你购买首批宝石所需投入的真钱门槛很低。《Clash of Clans》优化了用真钱执行首次交易的操作。

如果你想查看自己需要花掉多少真钱才能获得宝石，这就会运用到另一项心理技巧：只有当你打算购买更多宝石时，游戏才会以真钱形式呈现价格。否则你就只会一直投入黄金和万能药这两种软货币。

游戏玩法的竞争层面是一个盈利环节。有些玩家想比别人投入更多钱来发挥更出色的表现。《Clash of Clans》排名前列的玩家之一Jorge Yao就曾在游戏中投入3000美元，以便维持6个月稳居《Clash of Clans》玩家榜单之首的状态。

这些铁杆玩家（鲸鱼用户）在现实生活中甚至也能得到特殊照顾。Supercell为这些付费玩家组织了提供免费啤酒和零食的特殊活动。

这款游戏的平均每用户收益（ARPU）是4.6美元，日常收益则从75万至515万美元左右。其盈利策略的确卓有成效。

Clash of Clans(from coc.duowan.com)

社交层面：你想成为我的部落成员吗？

《纽约时报》曾报道Jorge Yao这名玩家花钱稳定自己在这款游戏中6个月的排名。他成了一个虚拟名人，也因此成为一个社交媒体明星，获得了超过3万个Facebook点赞，将近10的Twitter粉丝，其Youtube采访视频观看次数超过40万。这怎么可能呢？《Clash of Clans》中的一名玩家怎么就上升成了社交媒体明星呢？

《Clash of Clans》其中含有多个社交层面：首先，游戏通常会引导玩家创造自己的部落同好友玩游戏，并为自己的部落吸收新成员。部落成员通过发送增援部队而相互帮助。你可以用苹果ID通过Game Center或者使用Facebook帐号挑战好友。你的Game Center好友会在你登录该平台时现身。

其次，游戏中的整体&部落信息板总是保持可视性和可用性。你可以同世界其他玩家分享自己的信息，也可以只同自己的部落成员分享。

第三，排名列表（顶级部落、顶级玩家）支持用户浏览顶级玩家资料，访问他们的村庄（想象一下你可以在其中访问任何村庄以及查看排名第一的玩家所在的村庄，这种感觉棒极了！）以及部落资料。你可以搜索到任何部落。部落拥有两种不同类型：仅受邀请可入，以及任何人都可加入的类型。这一切都在鼓励玩家一起玩游戏。不要忘了Louhento提到将玩家划分成三个群体的情况。有一个群体被称为精英群体。这也正是Jorge Yao人气如此之高的原因。他是某个被称为North 44这个仅受邀请可入的精英群体成员。任何人都可以在顶级玩家列表上浏览他的资料，查看他的村庄。

你可以用单人模式或多人模式玩游戏。如果你选择以单人模式玩游戏，游戏仍会鼓励你使用所有之前罗列的功能来同他人一起玩游戏。你可以在任何时间从单人模式切换到多人模式。你可以用可视的“攻击”按钮完成这个操作。这里有个很高明的逻辑：你可以在单人或多人模式中投入真钱。这两个模式都很有粘性和成瘾性！

这款游戏的社交层面似乎极为奏效，《Clash of Clans》的Facebook月活跃用户（MAU）从2013年第一季度的100万增长至2014年第二季度的730万。所有的Supercell游戏（游戏邦注：包括《Clash of Clans》、《Hay Day》和《Boom Beach》）截止2014年2月7日，日活跃用户共达294万。

数据不会说谎，它的社交层面、游戏体验、核心循环、留存和盈利性都比以往更奏效了。（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）

Game monetization design: Analysis of Clash of Clans

by Pete Koistila

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.

Game experience: warning – playing may cause addiction

Once you start you can’t stop. That’s Clash of Clans. Right after the first launch of the game and in the middle of the tutorial sequence the attack of Goblins starts and you are sucked into to the game. There is no return back.

You will easily play Clash of Clans for many hours in a row without any breaks once you launch it for the first time. Game is heavily addictive and sticky factor is very high. You just keep on coming back over and over again. Let’s analyze why?

User interface is easy to get into, graphics are extremely stunning, sound FX and music live along the game experience and most of all you will not get bored easily as game has “depth”. Well-designed core loop, retention, monetization and social aspect mechanics support entertaining game experience. Let’s see how.

Core loop: clear and easy, just keep on progressing

Well-designed core loop rewards player for being active and promises progress for each return session. The core loop of the Clash of Clans seems to consist of three different actions:

By collecting the resources you get elixir and coins.

By building and training your troops you spend collected elixir and coins.

By battling you collect more elixir and coins. And you can affect your ranking.

Image: Core loop of Clash of Clans [1]

Retention: newbies, mid-range and elite-groups

Retention rate measures how effective are you at getting players to come back to your game. For example what percentage of the players who played your game in day one are still playing in day two. [2]

According to Ilkka Paananen from Supercell, the key indicators Supercell is tracking are 1, 7 and 30-day retention rates. Lasse Louhento from Supercell has revealed that for Clash of Clans the company breaks down the audience into three stages: newbies, mid-range and elite-groups. Each of the segments play the game different ways and have different retention rates. [3]

As you start to play the game for the first time you will notice the tutorial part just sucks you into the game and you keep on learning new things after another. And what is important, not all dependencies are available at the early phases of the game as those might confuse newbies too much. Improving the tutorial part has boosted the retention of the Clash of Clans [3].

Newbies is the stage, players have to successfully complete to become valuable and engaged members of the community.

Monetization: it’s all about psychology of consumer behaviour

Almost all of the details in Clash of Clans are designed towards monetization (e.g. regular troops trainings and building your village). You always have a place to spend more money. Monetization method is based on the need of speeding-up your game progress. More you play, more time you spend to get achievements done. Or you could cut the paths and spend real money instead to fasten your progress in the game.

In the beginning of the game you have decent amount of free gems (in-game currency, which can be bought with real money). After few hours of playing you finally run out of free gems, because you have spent all your gems to gold and elixir (two soft-currencies, which can be cheaply bought with gems). At this point your psychology about gems is already formed; gold and elixir are cheap and you have purchased those with gems. Now you need to get more gems and you would get those by purchasing via the same “Shop” where you spend all your free gems. The threshold to purchase first gems with real money is low. Clash of Clans is optimized for the first purchase with real-money.

When you want to check how much real money you need to spend to get gems another psychological trick is used: price is presented in real money only when you are about to purchase more gems. Otherwise you keep on spending two soft-currencies: gold and elixir.

One aspect of monetization is a competitive level of game play; some people are willing to spend whole lot of money to be better and faster than others. [4] One of the former top players of Clash of Clans, Jorge Yao, has reported to spend about 3000 USD into Clash of Clans in order to stay six months dominating the Top Players rank list [6].

These hard-core players (whales) are even treated with a special care in real life. Supercell has organized special events for paying players with free beer and snacks [5].

Average Revenue Per User Estimates (ARPU) is estimated to be 4,60 USD and daily revenue estimates vary from 750 000 USD to 5,15 million USD [7, 8, 10]. Monetization really seems to work.

Social aspect: will you be my clan mate?

New York Times reported about a former top player called Jorge Yao, who spent over six months on top of the Clash of Clans ranking list [6]. Jorge Yao gained virtual celebrity and became to social media star; he has gained over 30000 Facebook likes, almost 100000 Twitter followers and his Youtube interview has been watched over 400 000 times. How is this possible? How a single player of Clash of Clans could rise to social media star?

Clash of Clans has several social aspects in it: First of all, player is regularly guided towards creating own Clan to play with friends and recruit new members to your Clan. Clan mates help each other by sending reinforcement troops. You may challenge your friends via Game Center with your Apple ID or using your Facebook account to connect. Your Game Center friends appear when you are logged into Game Center.

Secondly Global & your Clan message board is always visible and in use. You are able share your messages with other players around the world or only with your Clan mates.

Thirdly ranking lists (Top Clans, Top Players) include the possibility to view top player profiles, visit their villages (imagine you could visit any village and see how number one top player’s village looks like – awesome!) and view clan profiles. You have a possibility to search any Clans. Clans have two different types: invite only or anyone can join. All these encourage you to play together. Join your troops with your allies. And remember what Louhento mentioned about dividing the player audience into three groups. One group was called elite-groups. This explains the popularity of Jorge Yao also. He was part of the invite only elite-group called North44 [6]. Anyone could have viewed his village and see his profile on Top Players list for months.

Also you have a possibility to play the game in a single player mode or multiplayer mode. If you choose to play the game in single mode, you still are encouraged to play together with others with all the previously listed features. You may anytime to switch from single player mode into multiplayer mode. This is encouraged with a visible Attack button. Logic is very smart: you may spend your real-money in a single player mode or multiplayer mode. And both modes are sticky and addictive!

Social aspect seems to work very well as Monthly Active Users (MAU) of Clash of Clans Facebook app has risen in one year from 1 million (in Q1/2013) to 7,3 million (in Q2/2014) MAU (Quarterly average). All Supercell’s games (including Clash of Clans, Hay Day, and Boom Beach) combined to have 29,4 million daily active users on February 7, 2014.

Figures won’t lie, social aspect, game experience, core loop, retention and monetization all work better than ever. Try it yourself and you are hooked. [7, 9, 10]（source：gamasutra）