作者：Mike Hergaarden

我是从2005年开始创造基于浏览器的多人游戏，随后Matt也加入并致力于图像方面的创作。几年后，也就是在2009年，我们正式创建了M2H。尽管现在这是一家只有我们2个人的公司，但是我们却成功地与一些非常出色的自由职业者进行合作。

我们是从创造一些小型迷你游戏开始，如此我们便可以有效学习有关游戏开发的方方面面，并尝试各种不同的技术，平台，盈利模式等等。我们共创造了13款浏览器游戏和手机游戏。

我认为我们的很多款游戏都获得了成功；例如我们的网页游戏《Crash Drive》便获得了超过2000万次的网页点击。我们的手机游戏也获得了很不错的下载量，如《Verdun》便在Steam上拥有很好的成绩。但是我们通常很难明确有关成功的衡量标准，并且游戏领域的发展也不断改变着我们制作成功游戏的方式。

因为已经创造了一些手机游戏并且考虑到玩家们更倾向于在手机上完游戏，我们便打算将自己的一些成功网页游戏变成手机游戏。我们的网页游戏《Crash Drive》获得了很多关注，我们也认为它能够变成一款成功的手机游戏。

Crash Drive(from develop-online)

而手机游戏所面临的问题通常都是关于市场营销与推广—-独立开发者通常都未拥有足够的资源和资本去推广自己的游戏。这个市场已经达到饱和，所以为了提高游戏的流量，你需要花费较高的成本去推广游戏。还有很多游戏因为其它游戏获得更多关注而遭受到忽视—-这是手机市场一个让人悲伤的事实。

所以我们打算基于《Crash Drive 3D》网页版本的成功去创造手机游戏《Crash Drive 2》。《Crash Drive》的成功真的让我们大吃一惊，因为它的图像并不是特别精致，并且汽车的物理设置也带有漏洞，但显然这些问题都不能阻止玩家们喜欢它的游戏玩法。所以我们才选择了《Crash Drive》并完善了图像，添加了更多汽车和关卡，汽车升级系统以及无缝且具有用户友好型的多人游戏系统。

与许多开发者一样，我们也是使用Unity去开发游戏，并且将iPhone和Android当成目标平台，因为对于将网页游戏带到手机而言这是相对直接的方法。还有一些元素是开发者需要考虑到的，即尽管Unity能够帮助我们解决一些移植问题，但是手机配置却会让你很头疼，这不只是关于屏幕分辨率（屏幕高宽比）和不同的输入方法。

我们是使用能够轻松调整的GUI开发的《Crash Drive 2》，以此能够处理不同规格的屏幕。而对于输入内容，我们牢记手机拥有有限的输入选择，因此我们会相应地设计游戏。与大多数开发者一样，我们是使用C#语言进行编程，而关于图像工具我们使用了Photoshop去创造纹理和GUI，并且取决于不同的美术师，他们会使用3D max，Maya或Blender创建模型。

当最终向手机平台移植时，尽管我们知道该在屏幕按键上呈现一些内容，但我们却对此毫无经验。

我们知道《Crash Drive》具有一定的粉丝基础，因此我们可以向粉丝宣称这将会是《Crash Drive》的续集。但是对于我们来说关键不只是告诉玩家这是网页游戏的续集，同时我们还要向他们推广这是一款手机版本的游戏—-在当前手机市场中，挤进排行榜前100名是件非常困难的事，所以我们认为可以同时进军所有平台。

为了获得更多用户，我们选择与发行商Spil Games进行合作（他们拥有1.3亿用户），并利用他们的市场营销能力。这样的合作关系让我们能够尽所能地开发游戏。

开发者所面临的一大问题便是带着完成游戏便是循环的终点的错误想法；但其实这才只是开始。一旦完成了游戏，开发者便需要进行大量的市场营销以向玩家推广游戏。而与Spil Games的合作让我们能够避开这一任务而继续开发下一款游戏。

Crash Drive 2 (develop-online)

虽然我们设计了手机游戏，但同时我们也未放弃网页游戏。因为我们使用的是Unity，所以同时面向手机和网页开发游戏便不是什么难事；这里存在的唯一区别便是屏幕规格，输入选择，并且通常情况下网页都不具有盈利系统，但就像我说的那样，如果你一开始就将手机纳入规划中，这便会是个简单的任务。

我想对所有使用Unity的手机开发者说，过去的跨平台开发问题已经不再是什么难题；你们应该始终为手机游戏提供一个网页演示版本：如此移植到网页便会更加简单，反之亦然，这么做的话你便能够拥有一个很棒的市场营销工具。

交叉推广让我们对游戏的未来与成功更有信心。我们并不只是纯粹地创造游戏而未希望获得最好的结果—-与许多没有足够市场营销知识和预算的手机开发者一样，我们也想看到更好的结果。

我们已经拥有了网页用户，他们便是你进行市场营销的绝对目标群组，所以这真的是一个有效的工具。我们甚至还会使用我们的射击游戏《Verdun》去推广其Steam Greenlight页面，以及之后在Steam上的完整游戏。这对于《Verdun》来说也是有帮助的；我们获得了29天的Greenlight（游戏邦注：Steam一个月只Greenlight10款游戏），并且随着网页版本拥有超过千万的点击，所以它每天能够在Steam商店中带来超过2000次的游戏点击。

所以我想在此对那些拥有“应该会”成功的游戏或理念的手机开发者说：你们应该制定一个计划，创造一个网页版本（或者面向更多适合你的游戏的平台），创造自己的盈利模式，选择一个适合的发行伙伴去处理游戏的发行与推广工作。

（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）

The evolution of mobile game marketing

By Mike Hergaarden

I started out in 2005 with browser based multiplayer games, with Matt joining me on the graphic side soon after. A few years later, in 2009, we officially founded M2H (A summary of our history can be found on our blog) Right now it’s just the two of us in the company, but we make a lot of use of some very talented freelancers.

We started with small minigames, which was a great way to learn all the aspects of game development, allowing us to play with different techniques, platforms, monetisation models and so forth and (if I leave aside the countless minigames we have developed) we have about 13 browser and mobile titles in our portfolio.

I would consider many of our titles a success; for instance our web game, Crash Drive, received over 20 million web plays. We have had a good amount of downloads for both our mobile games and our title Verdun is doing very well on Steam. However, the measure of success is often difficult to quantify and the landscape of games is changing the way we make successful games.

Having made a couple of mobile games and with a view to the fast movement players are making to play on mobile devices, we were keen to leverage this and look to make some of our more successful web games into mobile titles. We knew that our web game, Crash Drive, received a huge amount of web plays and these numbers made us think its popularity (coupled with the fact the game mechanics lend themselves to mobile gaming) would really work as a mobile game.

The issue for mobile games is always marketing and promotion – often indie developers do not have the resources or money to make it work for the mobile market. The market is saturated, so to make any impact on traffic to your game the cost of promotion is high. There are so many good games that never get the attention they deserve simply because other games attract more attention – a sad reality of the mobile market.

So, we set about making Crash Drive 2, a mobile game simply based on the success of the web version of Crash Drive 3D (Crash Drive), except that we wanted to improve it on every front. The success of Crash Drive surprised us because, quite frankly, the graphics weren’t that fancy and the car physics were bugged, but apparently none of this mattered to the players as they loved the gameplay. So we took Crash Drive and improved the graphics, added more cars and levels, a car levelling system and a seamless and user-friendly multiplayer system.

As with many developers we use Unity for development of our games and now, with the introduction of iPhone and Android as build targets, it is relatively straight forward to have your web game running on a mobile. However, I am slightly playing it down, there are some factors that developers need to consider because, while Unity takes away most of our porting pain, mobile deployment can be an annoyance, not least because of screen resolution (aspect ratio) and differing input methods.

Knowing this, we developed Crash Dive 2 with a GUI that can easily scale; to address the screen differences. For the input, we kept in mind that mobile has limited input options and thus designed the game accordingly. We, like most developers, code in C#, and for graphical tools use Photoshop for texturing/GUI and, depending on the artist, it’s 3D max, Maya or Blender for modelling.

Then when finally exporting to mobile, although we need to make sure to display some on screen buttons, we had a painless experience.

We knew that our fan base for Crash Drive was there, therefore it made sense to us to announce a sequel to this audience. The key for us was not just pointing those players to a web sequel but to promote the mobile version to them as well – in the current mobile market it’s hard to break into a top 100 spot, so we thought we may as well make one big move using all platforms at the same time. Utilising this existing web traffic and engaged audience seemed like a no brainer.

We worked with a publishing partner, Spil Games, in order to maximise on the audience numbers we could reach (they have a huge reach on the web, a staggering 130 million users) and utilise their power in marketing. This partnership allowed us to do what we do best, which is developing games.

A massive issue for developers is thinking that finishing a game is the end of the cycle; it is literally the beginning. Once a game is ‘finished’ there is a huge amount of marketing to be done to get your game to the players. Working with Spil Games allowed us to hand over this task and continue on to develop the next title immediately.

We designed the mobile game first, however, web was always in our mind. Since we use Unity, developing for mobile and web at once is a no brainer; the only major differences are screen sizes, input options and the fact that web basically has no monetisation systems available, but like I said, if you plan this with mobile at the front of your plans, it is a simple task.

The multi-platform development issues of the past are really not issues anymore and I would say for all mobile developers using Unity; always provide at least a web demo version of your mobile game right away: the conversion to web is so much easier than vice versa and you will already have yourself a marketing tool at the ready.

Cross-promotion of games is allowing us to feel a level of comfort and confidence in the future and for the success of our mobile titles. We are not just making a game and mindlessly hoping for the best – as so many mobile developers, without marketing know-how and budget, are forced to do.

The web audiences are there, and they are your absolute target group for marketing, so it really is an obvious tool to use. It is free extra traffic so it makes a lot of sense. We even used a web player game of our shooter Verdun to promote its Steam Greenlight page and later on the full game on Steam. It has worked brilliantly for Verdun; we were Greenlit in only 29 days (when Steam only Greenlit about ten games a month) and with the web version boasting over ten million plays it still consistently brings in over 2,000 sessions per day on the Steam store.

So, I would say to any mobile developer out there, with a game that *should* have been a success or with an idea that *should* be a success: make a plan, make a web version (or more platforms if this works for your game), work out your monetisation model and get a great publishing partner to take the reins on marketing and promotion.(source:develop-online)