免费模式（F2P）已经成为多数手机游戏盈利结构之一。不要将这里的“免费”误认为是不赚钱的意思，F2P游戏通常可能创造远超过付费游戏的收益。

但这并不意味着每款F2P游戏都能赚钱。说实话，多数此类游戏并没有成功盈利。每一个成功故事的背后，都积压着成百上千款失败的游戏。

F2P-design-rules(from gamesbrief)

免费游戏如何盈利？

通常来说，游戏开发者会通过IAP，赞助服务，广告等赚取收益。

IAP即用户在应用本身内付费。IAP适用于任何类型的应用，甚至是用户已经付费的付费应用。例如，付费获取游戏中的内置货币，或者解琐一项升级功能。

赞助服务是指玩家做一些能够让游戏开发者创收，他们自己又能获得游戏中的一些报酬。例如：观看视频或者注册某些服务的30天试用，以便获得游戏内置货币。

广告是指游戏开发者通过用户浏览或参与广告或合作伙伴的活动来创收。这可以是传统的条幅或插页广告，或者本地广告和产品广告位等类型。例如：赛车游戏中电子公告牌上的广告，推广另一款游戏的一个主题栏目（可能还带有链接），或者游戏本身用于推广另一个IP的主题。

这些并非创收的唯一途径，但多数免费游戏会结合使用以上方法，通常还会一次性用上全部方法。

免费模式是一项艰难的工作

免费游戏只能靠运气获得成功吗？

不，热门免费游戏都会精心设计以吸引玩家，并鼓励玩家执行那些会让游戏开发者获利的行为。良好的游戏设计是一门科学，而这门科学又要经受应用商店每天的考验。

你不能只是在游戏中抛入一个条幅广告或者一些IAP内容就算大功告成了。这里甚至不存在所谓的成功法则。成门有许多门路，但失败的途径却更多。

你可能走岔路了

有太多免费游戏犯下了会创造障碍点，鼓励玩家“糟糕”表现，让玩家厌恶游戏等简单的错误。

不要试图规定你的游戏运行方式，或者你应该使用哪种机制，我要告诉你的是千万不可犯的一些错误。

我的目的是说明开发者在F2P设计中的一些普遍误区，以及如何更正这些错误。

“F2P”意味着真正“免费”

我们有许多不同的方法可以在用户无需付费的情况下，令免费模式具有可行性和盈利性。如果你过了一段时间就呈现一个要求用户必须付费才能继续下去的屏幕，那么你的游戏就不是真正的“免费”，它只能算是付费游戏，只是试用版本或样本较长而已。免费游戏必须能够让你的大多数玩家能够真正体验。

没错，大多数玩家永远不会在你的游戏中花钱。我所听说的情况是，仅有0.5-3%的玩家会购买IAP。

这是一个相当小的比例。但却已经足够为优秀的游戏创造数百万美元收益。这些愿意付费的玩家实际上在为余下的大多数群体买单。

如果你反个方向来思考，这就意味着超过97%的玩家永远不会购买IAP。

如果你游戏最棒的环节只是为“付费”玩家而设置，那就意味着你大多数用户永远无法见识到它最棒的一面。同理，如果你惩罚这些非付费玩家，那你就是在惩罚超过97%的用户群体！这听起来并不像是一个很好的商业决策，不是吗？

要兼顾付费和免费玩家的乐趣

例如，你有一款游戏，其中有个环节可以让玩家体验一个小时左右，获得游戏中最有趣的体验，并最终赢得一个奖杯。或者，你可以购买一项IAP，并在5分钟内就赢得奖杯。

付费玩家可以更早获得奖杯，但他们真的乐在其中吗？如果游戏容易变得无足轻重，或者你让付费玩家跳过了最棒的环节，他们实际上就无法享受到任何乐趣了。如果游戏就这样戛然而终那么付费还有什么意义呢？

要确保你能够为付费玩家提供足够的内容，让他们像免费用户一样获得乐趣。

不要仅仅依赖广告收益

免费游戏收益多数来自广告，赞助服务或IAP。

但后者收益通常更可观。广告当然能够创收，并且如果你有足够的玩家这种盈利方式也确实值得你投入时间。如果你的活跃用户不足1万，你就根本看不到任何创收的可能。

广告收益是用CPM来计算的，即每千次印象成本。一次印象是指一名用户看到广告一次。

我所听闻的典型CPM通常是0.5至2美元左右。我还没有遇到过能够创收2美元CPM的开发者，我听许多广告代理商声称他们的客户能够实现2-10美元CPM，所以我知道确实存在这样的开发者，但我所认识的开发者CPM通常都少于1美元。

这意味着，如果你有1000名玩家在一天内每人都看到两则不同的广告，你一天的收益大约就是……1-3美元。

这听起来并不是很乐观吧？

现在，如果你有10万名玩家，他们每人每天看4-6则广告，你才能够实现一定的收益。但如果你的目标用户不足5万人，那么广告模式对你就是弊大于利了。

为IAP合理定价

不要认为你有一把很棒，售价100美元的宝剑，那0.5-3%的付费玩家就一定会购买它。你必须真正在IAP上下功夫，令其吸引大量玩家，尽管多数人并不会真的花钱购买。

看看你的竞争对手！对照一下那些类似，或者你自己喜欢玩的游戏。注意它们针对每笔交易的收费。

多数游戏的货币购买选项低至1美元。如果你提供售价1美元可荼得1000枚硬币的选项，而你商店中最廉价的道具要3000枚硬币，那么该道具可以让你创收3美元。

但如果你提供购买硬币套餐的优惠选项时情况就不同了。许多游戏提供了一种你一次性购买得越多，所得实惠就越多的选项。例如，1美元购买1000个硬币，10美元购买1.5万个，100美元购买30万个。在这个例子中，你所获得的“最划算”交易是每1美元购得3000个硬币，但只有一次性支付100美元的用户才能得到这种实惠。所以你可能还是想将你的IAP定价为每1美元获得1000个硬币这种情况。

提供服务而非产品

你在制作游戏的过程中，要记住应用并非产品，它们是你所提供的服务。

你得持续更新应用，持续添加新内容。无论你的产品功能有多完整，或者游戏有多棒，你停止开发的那一刻就是你的游戏人气停止增长的时候。

想想游戏中的经济，玩家会赢得的硬币vs他们消费硬币的商品数量。你该如何长期从玩家手中拿回这些硬币？如果你的商店所提供的内容是定制皮肤，玩家会购买他们喜欢的一种皮肤，而其余的硬币就过剩了。那么你最终要添加新内容，将价格抬得更高，确保玩家必须赢取新奖励。

这对新手或休闲玩家来说可能会更糟糕，通常会让玩家彻底离开游戏。

所以要为你的游戏做长远的规划。（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）

Free to Play Game Design: How not to do it wrong

Free to play has become one of the most common mobile game monetization structures. Don’t mistake the “free” in “freemium” to mean you won’t make money though; free to play games are often generating millions more in revenue than some of their premium game counterparts.

That doesn’t mean every freemium game will make money. To be honest, the majority of them don’t. For every success story you hear, there are hundreds if not thousands of other games that didn’t quite get it right.

How do free games make money?

Generally, game developers make money on free games via in-app purchases, offers or advertising.

In-App Purchases or “IAP” is when a user will pay for something within the app itself. IAP is found in any kind of app, even premium ones where the user has already paid. Example: Paying money for in-game currency or to unlock a powerup.

Offers are when the player does something that makes the game developer money, in exchange for something in-game. Examples: Watching a video or signing up for a 30 day trial of some service to get in-game currency.

Advertising is when the game developer makes money by users viewing or engaging with advertisers or partners. These are your traditional banner or interstitial ads, in addition to other types like native ads or product placements. Examples: A real advertisement on a billboard in a racing game, a themed section of a game that promotes another game (and possibly a link), or the game itself themed to promote for another existing IP.

Those aren’t the only ways to make money, but most freemium games use some combination of the above methods, often all of them at once.Freemium is hard work

Are freemium games a crap shoot? Is it just luck that makes one app successful and another not?

No, there is more to it than that. The top freemium games are carefully constructed to hook the player and encourage behaviors that will make the game developer money. There is a science to good game design, and this science is put to the test every day in the app stores.

You can’t just throw in a banner ad and a couple of in-app purchases and call it a day. Nor is there one (or even a dozen!) formulas for success. There are many ways to succeed, but even more ways to fail.

You might be doing it wrong

Too many freemium games make simple mistakes that create friction points, encourage players to behave “badly”, turn off players from enjoying the game, or just simply aren’t any good.

Instead of trying to dictate how your game should work and/or which mechanics you should use, I will instead tell you some of the many things you should not be doing.

My goal is to explain some common mistakes and misconceptions developers might have about free-to-play design and how to correct them.

“Free-to-play” means being actually “free”

There are lots of different ways to make freemium work and to make money without requiring the user to pay to play. A game isn’t really “free” if you put up a screen after a while that says you must pay to continue. Then it’s a premium game, with a long trial or extensive demo. Freemium games have to actually be free to play for most of your players.

That’s right, the majority of players will never pay for anything within your game. The statistics I’ve heard is that only 0.5-3% of players will ever pay for an in-app purchase.

That’s a pretty small number, 0.5-3%. But that is enough to generate millions in the right games. Those players that are willing and interested in paying in a sense pay for the rest of the group.

If you think about it the other way though, that means over 97% of players will never pay for an in-app purchase.

If the best parts of your game are only for your “paying” players, then that means the majority of your player base will never see it. Likewise if you punish the non-paying players, then you’re punishing over 97% of your player base! That doesn’t sound like a good business decision, now does it?

Paid players need to have as much fun as free one

Likewise, paid players need to enjoy your game as much as the free ones do.

For example, let’s say you have a game that has a part where you can either play for an hour or so, doing the most fun parts of your game, and at the end earn a trophy. Or, you can buy an in-app purchase, and earn the trophy in about 5 minutes.

Well, the paid player got the trophy sooner, but were they really having fun doing it? If the game becomes trivially easy, or you let players skip the best parts because they paid, they aren’t actually going to have any fun. What good is paying for a game if it then ends abruptly after?

Make sure you have enough content to keep your paying players as happy as your free ones.

Can’t rely on just ad revenue

Freemium games monetize most commonly through ads, offers, or in app purchases.

It’s more so the latter, honestly. Ads certainly pay, and they can be totally worth your time if you have enough players. If you have less than 10,000 active users, you aren’t going to see much money at all.

Ad revenue is calculated in “CPM”, which is “Cost Per Mille”. Mille means one thousand in latin, so CPM really means “Cost Per Thousand Impressions” An impression is when a user sees an ad.

Typical CPM I’ve heard is $0.50 to $2. I have not met a developer who was making $2 CPM, I have heard many advertising agencies talk about their clients earning $2-10 CPMs, so I know they’re out there, but every developer I’ve talked to about it has <$1 CPM.

That means that, if you have 1,000 players who each look at two different ads in one day, you can earn somewhere in the range of… $1-3 a day.

Not much, is it?

Now, if you have 100,000 players, who each look at 4-6 ads in a day, you’re starting to talk about enough money to make it worth your time. But if you have or are aiming for less than 50,000 users, ads will probably harm you more than help you.

Price in app purchases correctly

Just because you have an awesome sword for sale that costs $100, doesn’t mean that 0.5-3% of players will buy it. It’s not automatic, you have to actually make good in app purchases that interests many players, even if the majority won’t actually buy it.

Check your competition! Look at games that are similar, or games that you like playing yourself. Note how much they charge for each purchase.

Most have currency purchase options for as low as $1. With that, they can usually buy at least one medium sized to large store purchase. If you offer 1000 coins for a $1, and your cheapest item in your store is 3000 coins, you are in a sense charging $3 for that item.

That is not quite true when you offer a deal for buying coin in bulk. Many games offer a scale that the more coin you buy at once, the cheaper it becomes. For example, 1,000 for $1, 15,000 for $10, or 300,000 for $100. In this example, the “cheapest” you can get coin is 3,000 per dollar, but only for people who buy in $100 blocks will get that deal. So you would still want to price your IAPs using the 1,000 per $1 approximation.

You’re providing a service, not a product

As you make your game, you have to remember that apps are not products, they are services that you’re providing.

You have to keep updating them, you have to keep adding more content. Doesn’t matter how feature complete you are, or how awesome the game is, the moment you stop development is the moment your game stops growing in popularity.

Think about your economy, how much coin will players earn vs. things they can spend coin on? What will you do to get coins out of player’s hands in the long term? If all you offer in your store is customizable skins, players will purchase the one skin they like and horde the rest of their coins. Then as you eventually add new content, you will have to drive prices higher and higher to make sure players have to actually work to earn the new rewards.

This can make the game a much worse for new or casual players, and often can turn them off from the game completely.

Plan your game to last for the long term.（source：tobiahmarks）