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利用现有资产开发具有创造性的游戏

发布时间:2015-02-04 11:10:05 Tags:,,,,

作者:Ed Biden

很难相信现在的App Store才6岁半—-它诞生于2008年7月,并且那时候只拥有800款应用。而现在,用户每秒会在此下载800个应用,每个月更是达到20亿个应用,当前该平台上的应用已经高达85万款了。

游戏更是掌控着这个市场,其数量甚至是第二大类别应用的两倍,并且每个月会增加1万多款新游戏。App Store的准入障碍较低—-你可以独自编写代码并发行一款简单的游戏,但是获得成功的障碍却越来越高。随着市场不断成熟,这种情况总是不可避免,但是在手机领域尤为突出,各种规模的开发商都在寻找获得竞争优势的方法。除了游戏数量外,还存在3个能够预示这种发展的内容。

首先,畅销排行榜单的变化不大。《Candy Crush Saga》和《部落战争》已经待在前3名游戏中长达2年多了。这些游戏就像《使命召唤》或《魔兽世界》那样都牢牢锁定着各自的类型,并且只瞄准一个平台。排行榜单中前10名游戏几乎都是长居于此,并且Supercell和King的游戏更是占据了前10名中一半的游戏。任何能够挤进榜单前列的游戏都将备受关注,因为它们毕竟是少数能够做到这点的,并且背后通常都拥有一个强大的品牌支持,如Kim Kardashian。

其次,用户获取成本不断上升。根据SuperData,从2013年6月到2014年6月,用户获取成本上升了37%。Machine Zone最近为《游戏战争》投入的4千万美元广告费用也代表着大型公司在市场营销方面所支出高额的费用。SuperData同时也表示如今的CPI平均值是2.78美元,而每用户平均收益却只有1.96美元—-这对于开发者来说并不是一个可观的数值。

再而,游戏的制作成本急剧上升。Super Evil Megacorp花了2年半的时间开发了《Vainglory》,并且其图像更接近于AAA级游戏的标准而不是我们常见的普通手机游戏的标准。小型开发商也能够创造出带有突出外观的游戏,如《纪念碑谷》或《荒原》,但前提是他们选择了能够降低制作成本的风格化外观。甚至连《炉石传说》中的UI转变也表示这是少数现有的工作室能够达到的优化标准,更别提那些独立工作室了。

所以我们该如何面对这些情况?我们该如何在越来越艰难的市场中展开竞争?这是我们在Wooga中不断问自己的问题,甚至当我们在面对已经取得成功(游戏邦注:《钻石爆爆乐》,《Pearl’s Peril》和《果冻爆破》)以及仍然处于开发状态的作品时。

着眼于排行榜时,我们可以清楚地看到复制游戏很难获得成功,就像同是Supercell开发且与《部落战争》具有类似机制的游戏《Boom Beach》。《Candy Crush Saga》的复制者也具有同样的结果。这也是我们在Wooga不会复制其它游戏的原因。这同样也是缺少创造性的表现,基于这些原因,许多人提出了完全相反的对策:发挥根本性的创新精神。

这也是我在上一款游戏中所使用的方法。尽管Wooga一直在创造休闲单人玩家游戏,我却打算创造一款行动策略游戏。我自己喜欢这类型游戏,并觉得一定会有对当前App Store所提供的游戏不满足的用户喜欢这款游戏。我认为凭借Wooga中的人才,我们对于游戏设计的理解以及我们在创造性过程中使用的用户测试,我们一定能够在任何类型的游戏创造中获得成功。但是在之后看来,这一方法似乎只会被误以为在复制游戏,就像我未能意识到当前市场的状态以及基于当前公司的技术,工具盒用户创造游戏的价值。

游戏就像复杂的系统,特别是致力于提供给玩家多年游戏体验的行动策略游戏。我们拥有一个很棒的原型,并且游戏玩法也很新颖有趣。但是当我们越深入细节时,我们便发现越多问题。因为游戏方法是新的,所以我们需要想出全新的方法去解决这些问题—-我们可以从其它游戏中获得灵感,但是之前却从未有人解决过这样的问题。我们的团队在这点上表现得很好,但是我们却花费了大量的时间和努力去重新创造游戏的大部分内容。

Hearthstone(from softpedia)

Hearthstone(from softpedia)

此外,当我们解决了设计问题后,我们意识到在游戏发行前我们还将面临一些难以消除的风险。通过保持真正的游戏愿景,我们最终创造出与《炉石传说》和《坦克世界》相似的强烈同步的PvP游戏玩法。这些都属于成功的游戏,但是考虑到其现有的PC用户,它们都属于大型游戏。我们同样也开始听到一些关于中核用户的CPI的故事,即比我们现有的游戏所拥有的最佳LTV高出好几倍。所以从整体看来,我们并不敢保证我们的游戏是否具有目标用户,并且如果存在的话我也不清楚能否从中获利。

尽管我们的团队对这款游戏充满热情,但不幸的是,对于我们这些专业创造游戏的人来说,商业现实是不容忽视的。最终我决定是时候停止浪费时间和金钱并开始致力于一些更有潜能的新内容。我意识到我们有点太过自负了,即在没有工具,设计知识以及能够与已经创造出这类型游戏的开发商的用户相匹敌的用户时就认为自己能够创造出与它们一样优秀或更加出色的新游戏。

我记得《部落战争》是对于《Backyard Monsters》的迭代而《Candy Crush Saga》则是对于《宝石迷阵闪电战》的完善。但在它们取得巨大的成功前,Supercell便拥有一些有经验的团队去致力于《Hay Day》和《部落战争》,而King也拥有休闲游戏门户网站,并且拥有面向Facebook然后面向手机平台开发游戏的经验。这些公司已经拥有一些能够依靠的现有资产,并且他们能够利用并改善来自其它游戏中的机制。

对于具有一定规模和经验的Wooga来说,我们也拥有许多可利用的现有资产。我们拥有现有的用户,已建立的IP,在无数次用户测试中所获得的游戏设计经验,当前游戏所吸引的百万玩家,以及如何创建广泛的内容渠道的认知等等。尽管之前我们并未意识到它们的价值,但是我们我们作出了全面发挥创造性的选择。我们的核心游戏玩法是不同的,在我们的早前游戏中,我们专注于更加硬核的用户。我们真正使用过的Wooga的唯一资产便是早前游戏的专业技术。在事后检查中,我们意识到这也是避免在项目过程中遭遇主要问题的一个领域。

不过我要说清楚,当我提到创新时,我并不只是在说设计。我指的是制作的方方面面,从你所选择的用户和游戏类型到你所拥有的技术等等。设计可以是创新且成功的,但当你基于现有的资产进行创造时,创新设计将是最好的保障。《炉石传说》便是一个很好的例子:该团队基于暴雪所拥有的大量资产去创造出这款成功的游戏。此外还包括设计团队的经验,“魔兽争霸”的品牌优势以及暴雪在游戏仍处于测试阶段便能号召50多万名粉丝的能力。其游戏玩法非常新鲜,并且App Store中也还未出现这类型游戏,但即使是在一开始,该团队所面临的风险也被暴雪的种种优势阻挡在外了。

我同样也认为不管你是像Wooga这样拥有280名雇员的中型开发商还是小规模的独立开发商,这种方法都是适用的。关键在于你需要识别你所具有的特殊技能与资产,以及你能够在何处最有效地使用这些资产。小型公司可能需要选择较小的利基市场,但他们同时也需要获得一定的成功以赢回成本。作为一家小型公司,你可以选择一个不是太大的利基市场去吸引更多玩家的注意。当你选择了一个市场后,你应该专注于创造工具,电子邮件列表等营销渠道以及其它市场去帮助你进一步发展自己的业务。

根据我最近的经验,我决定自己的下一个项目将依赖于更多Wooga的资产进行创造。对于我来说这是提高游戏发行机遇并获得成功的最佳方法—-我敢保证许多开发者都会产生共鸣的。与产业中的大多数人一样,我之所以致力于游戏中是因为喜欢游戏。依赖于Wooga所拥有的资产创造游戏可能会太过约束。但这却只是一种附加约束,而不是对于整个项目的定义,就像俗话说的那样,创造性总是喜欢被约束的。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

After the Gold Rush: Competing in today’s App Store

by Ed Biden

It’s hard to believe that the App Store is only six and a half years old – it was launched in July 2008 with just 800 apps. Now there are 800 apps downloaded every second – 2 billion a month – and the number of apps available has grown more than 1,000 fold to 850,000.

Games dominate this marketplace, with more than twice the number of apps as the next biggest category, and well over 10,000 new ones being added each month. The barriers to entry remain low – you can code and release a simple game on your own – but the barriers to success continue to get higher. This is typical of all markets as they mature, but it is striking just how fast this has happened in mobile, and developers of all sizes are finding the competition fierce. Beyond the sheer quantity of games available, there are three clear indicators of this development.

Firstly, the top grossing charts are largely static. Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans have been in the top 3 games for over 2 years now. These games appear to have locked down their respective genres in the way that Call of Duty or World of Warcraft has on other platforms. Many of the other games in top 10 are similarly long lived, and just two developers: Supercell and King consistently account for at least half of the top 10. Games that do manage to break into the upper reaches of the charts are notable because they are so rare now, and often supported by very strong brands, such as Kim Kardashian.

Secondly, the cost of user acquisition is rising steeply. SuperData estimated that the cost of acquiring a user increased 37% between Jan 2013 and Jan 2014. Machine Zone’s recent $40m advertising campaign for Game of War illustrated just how much money the top companies can throw at marketing. SuperData also reports that CPI now stands at an average of $2.78 for mobile games, whilst average revenue per user is just $1.96 – not a good ratio for developers.

Thirdly, the production values of games have increased dramatically. Super Evil Megacorp spent two and a half years developing Vainglory, and it showed – the graphics looked closer to AAA standard than what we would normally expect from a mobile game. Smaller developers can pull off great looking games such as Monument Valley or Badlands, but only when they choose very stylized appearances that facilitate lower costs of production. Even the UI transitions in Hearthstone demonstrate a level of polish that few established studios, let along Indies could hope to pull off.

So where does this leave us? How to we compete in a market that has become this tough? It’s a question that we ask ourselves a lot at Wooga, and even with our current successes (Diamond Dash, Pearl’s Peril and Jelly Splash) something that we are still working out.

Looking at the charts it is clear that cloning games does not lead to success – the only game with similar mechanics to Clash of Clans is Boom Beach, also by Supercell. Replicates of Candy Crush Saga have performed similarly poorly. It is for this reason that we do not clone games at Wooga, and never have. It’s also creatively unsatisfying and for a combination of these reasons many people advocate the opposite end of the spectrum: radical innovation in the hope of striking it lucky.

This was my approach on my last game too. Whilst Wooga has a history of casual, single player games, I set out to make an action strategy game. I loved the genre myself, and felt there must be an audience who were likewise unsatisfied by the current offerings on the App Store. I felt that given the talent at Wooga, our understanding of game design and the amount of user testing we used in the creative process we could make a success in any genre. But in hindsight this approach seems just as misguided as cloning games, as I had failed to recognize the current state of the market and the value of building on existing company expertise, tools and audiences.

Games are complicated systems, especially action strategy games designed to give years of play. We had a good prototype and the gameplay was novel and fun. But the more we worked on the details the more problems we threw up. Exactly because the gameplay was novel, we needed novel solutions to these problems – we could get inspiration from other games, but no one had solved these exact problems before. The team did a great job of working through these, but it took a huge amount of time and emotional effort to be continually rebuilding large sections of the game.

Furthermore, as we worked through design issues, we realized that we were left with a number of risks that we could not remove before launch. By staying true to the vision of the game we had ended up with intense synchronous PvP gameplay that only Hearthstone and World of Tanks came close to. These are successful games, but it seems largely because of their existing PC audience. We also started hearing horror stories about the CPIs for the mid core audience, several times higher than the best LTV any of our existing games had. In combination we were not sure if the audience we were targeting existed, and if it did whether we could profitably reach them.

Despite the team’s enthusiasm for the game I could see that this was becoming a passion project for us rather than a legitimate chance at creating a commercial hit, and unfortunately for those of us that make games professionally, commercial realities cannot be ignored. Eventually I decided it was time to stop burning time and money and start on something afresh with greater potential. I realized that we had been arrogant enough to assume we could build something as good or better than what was already out there, despite having none of the tools, none of the design knowledge, and no audience compared to developers that were already making these sorts of games.

I remembered that Clash of Clans was an iteration on Backyard Monsters and Candy Crush Saga a refinement of Bejewelled. But even before their big successes, Supercell had experienced teams working on Hay Day and Clash of Clans, and King had its casual gaming portal and picked games out of that to develop for Facebook and then mobile. In each case the companies had existing assets that they built on, as well as refining mechanics from other games.

A company with the size and track record of Wooga has plenty of assets to build on. We have an existing audience, established IPs, game design experience earned through hundreds of user tests and millions of players on our live games, the know how to set up extensive content pipelines and so on. We hadn’t recognized their value before though, and instead choose to innovate across the board. Our core gameplay was different, our elder game novel, we were attacking a more core audience we knew only as players ourselves. The only asset of Wooga that we really used was building on technical expertise from previous games. In our post mortem we realized this was also the one area that was free from major problems over the course of the project.

Let me be clear though, that when I talk of innovation, I am not talking solely about design. I am talking about all aspects of production from the audience and genre you choose to the technical setup you have as well. Design can be innovative and successful, but innovative designs are best supported when you build on existing assets elsewhere. Hearthstone is a great example of this: the team built on a vast wealth of assets that Blizzard had to make the game a success. There was the experience of the design team, the strength of the Warcraft brand and Blizzard’s ability to recruit half a million fans whilst the game was still in beta. The gameplay was fresh, the genre basically non existent on the App Store, but even from the outset the risks that the team faced were greatly reduced by building on Blizzard’s strengths.

I also believe that this is the case whether you are a mid sized developer like Wooga with 280 employees, or an indie developer with a fraction of that scale. The key is to recognize the particular skills and assets that you have, and the niches where you can best apply these. Smaller companies may need to choose small niches to succeed, but they also need smaller successes to cover their costs. As a smaller company you can serve niches that aren’t big enough to warrant the attention of bigger players. As you serve that niche you should aim to build up tools, marketing channels such as email lists and other assets that aid your future work and thereby grow your business.

Learning from my recent experience, for my next project I will work on something that builds on a far greater number of Wooga’s assets. This is the best way for me to maximize my chances of seeing my game launched and successful – a goal that I am sure many developers can sympathize with. This might sound like a dispassionate approach to making games, but I don’t feel that it needs to be. Like most people in the industry, I work in games because I love games. Building on the assets that Wooga already has may seem constraining given the wonderful variety of games that exist. But it is an additional constraint and not the definition of an entire project, and as the saying goes, creativity loves constraints. (source:gamasutra)

 


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