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Kabam关于如何创造AAA级游戏与开拓中国市场的分析

发布时间:2015-08-17 15:12:29 Tags:,

作者:Dean Takahashi

Kabam一直以其领先的游戏排名为傲。但当Facebook因为病毒性社交游戏制造了太多垃圾而开始镇压它们时,Kabam开始发生转变。随后当手机游戏逐渐赶超免费网页游戏,它们再次发生转变。现在,Kabam开始从创造大量手机游戏转向基于品牌和AAA级质量设计的少量游戏。

对于一家只有7岁的公司来说这真的是一次巨大的改变,其首席运营官Kent Wakeford在GamesBeat Summit上与Cnet的执行编辑Ian Sherr谈论了他们旧金山公司最近转向开发高端手机游戏的计划。

以下便是他们的对话摘录。

 

Kabam-logo(from gamerboom.com)

Kabam-logo(from gamerboom.com)

Kent Wakeford:现在对于手机游戏开发者来说是很棒的时期。市场正以极快的速度发展着。去年,我们在这些大会上谈论过数十亿美元游戏的发展潜能。而现在正是发挥这些潜能的时候。并且我们看到的不只有一款数十亿美元的游戏,而是有许多像《部落战争》那样创造了数十亿美元的游戏。

这是我们需要意识到的巨大改变,并且这种改变仍将继续。让我们想想市场的最顶端以及在过去三年里所出现的改变。回到2012年,市场上最畅销的游戏在一个月内只创造了30万美元。而在2015年,排名第一的畅销游戏的月收益已达到了120万美元。

更有趣的是,当你着眼于2012年全年排名第一的游戏,即共创造了460万美元的游戏,你会发现那是Kabam所创造的游戏,也就是《亚瑟王国》。而今天,年度最畅销游戏的总收益达到了8000万美元。这是以1750%的速度增长着。

这种戏剧化不只出现在《部落战争》身上。我们市场上的前五款游戏在整个产业中所占据的份额是不平衡的。如果你回到2012年第一季度,并着眼于那时候排行前五的游戏,你会发现它们共创造了4100万美元的收益。它们占据的市场份额是10%。从那以后我们看到更多游戏涌入了市场,整个产业出现了更多发展与创新,但当你着眼于今年第一季度的前五款游戏时,你会发现它们创造了高达9.25亿美元的收益,并且在市场中的份额高达22%。而像《部落战争》,《Candy Crush》和《战争游戏》则始终待在排行前列的榜单中。

我们的产业正在朝着最高端发展着。市场份额和收益更多是来自最高处的游戏。就像我们的其它内容业务一样。

Ian Sherr:为什么你们要改变业务方向?

Wakeford:当现在的你开始思考发展机遇的话,你会发现机遇和发展潜力都是在市场的最顶端。那么你该如何创造能够出现在市场最顶端的产品呢?对于我们来说便是从根本上转变我们的关注点。大概是从一年前开始的。我们进行了业务上的调整,即专注于创造更少的产品并作出一些更艰难的决策。

我们中的很多人都认为这是创造者所面临的困境。“更少的产品”意味着我们在今年只有4款新游戏的诞生。而去年则有18款,前年有20款。但不管怎样我们将创造出比去年更多的收益。

我们已经放开了过去所专注的一些东西,如Facebook策略游戏。我们改变了整体的业务。我们的第三方发行业务在一年时间内从0发展到了3000万美元,并且在隔年又从3000万美元发展到6000万美元,但它仍不具有创造数十亿美元的产品的潜能。所以我们也放弃了这一业务。如今的我们所具有的机遇是专注于获得最优秀的人才去组建最出色的的团队并将所有的这些资源组合在一起。

Sherr:你是否认为这么做能够让你们进入前五排行中并且能够打破当前的局面?说实话我听过许多其它公司都表明自己没办法做到这点。

Wakeford:掌握市场最顶端的消费者的心思是个巨大的挑战。但我相信如果你能够获得产业中最出色的的人才并让他们专注于创造最出色的的作品(避免其它让人分心的事宜),你便更有可能实现目标。

Kabam便取得了让人惊讶的结果。在过去三年里我们所发行的游戏都获得了苹果的“Editor’s Choice”。游戏的质量标准达到了史上最高水平。我们拥有一款在过去三个月里始终位于排行榜前十的游戏。我们也一直专注于这样的决策。

Sherr:我经常关注的一个趋势是市场营销。如果追溯回2012年,我们会发现最常见的市场营销是交叉推广。而现在,我们可以看到像Kate Upton在Super Bowl上表演等广告方式。如果未曾看到《部落战争》的广告,我可能便不会去尝试这款游戏。你是如何处理这种情况的?面对拥有较高市场营销预算的动视或艺电,甚至是迪士尼真的是个巨大的挑战。

Wakeford:这是市场中所出现的另一大根本性转变。对于那些顶级游戏,市场营销创造了一种结构性优势。你所看到的今天的市场营销与《使命召唤》发行时所使用的市场营销非常相似。这是一种意外。我们可以在六本木之丘看到《Candy Crush》的广告。《部落战争》的广告更是遍布整个东京的地铁站和广告牌。《海岛骑兵》邀请了一些名人装扮成游戏中的角色出现在电视节目上。在上届Super Bowl上我们还举办了battle royal。这是关于高级游戏如何进行市场营销以及基于同一个生态系统中其它游戏达不到的投资成本进行营销的根本性转变。

Sherr:这是否意味着一些较小的公司将被迫离开?这是否将成为一个主机控制着的世界,即动视,艺电和育碧将主导着整个产业?

Wakeford:我想你肯定已经看到了市场前列与剩下市场间快速被拉开的距离。这种差距会一直保持着。这就像是一张电子数据表。当一款排行100的游戏花费了20%的收益于市场营销中,那么它一个月的开销便是24万美元。这是一款还不错的游戏。但如果你一个月赚到8000万美元的收益,并且每个月需要投入1600万美元去吸引新用户,那么市场的差异性将逐渐把你带离剩下的市场。你可以基于一定的规模进行冒险并打开一些完全不同的领域—-如Super Bowl上的广告,地铁里的宣传,建筑外部的广告便是我们生态系统中的新尝试。

这种高级的市场营销以及产业中全新的尝试将进一步推动市场向上发展。这是种好的现象,但这也为产业中的其它部分创造了更大的挑战。

Sherr:让我们看看开启这种局面的大角色—-《愤怒的小鸟》,我想它现在就像手机游戏产业的Pets.com(游戏邦注:因为垃圾太多资金太少而关门)。实际上他们是开创手机游戏市场营销,品牌推广与贩售毛绒玩具的先锋。而你又是如何看待他们的突然衰退,以及如何将他们的经验应用于我们当下所面对的模式中?

Wakeford:Rovio在《愤怒的小鸟》身上所采取的做法是特别的。他们拥有强大的品牌认知。但这也与我们现在所面临的问题一样。Rovio是在2009年带着一款付费游戏出现在人们的视线中。那是一款非凡的游戏。它获得了超过20亿次安装。它的品牌认知度仅次于迪士尼所创造的角色。但它却未能适应情况的变化。

当付费游戏在2009年和2010年间主导着市场时,他们拥有着付费下载空间。但在2011年至2013年间,市场开始发生改变,免费游戏成为了主要的业务模式。将游戏当成一种服务去运行,思考一致的设计,进行有效的操作并执行市场营销的能力在包括Kabam在内的各大公司中不断发展着。在2011年和2012年Rovio先后发行了两款付费游戏,在2013年他们发行了《星球大战》。实际上在2013年年末以前,他们未曾发行过一款免费游戏。比起创新,他们只是不断地做着之前所做过的尝试而已。

如果你玩过迪士尼的《Tsum Tsum》,你会发现这是一款特别的游戏,因为它并未去遵循市场的主流。

Sherr:从外部看来这种坍塌似乎很突然。到底是哪里出错了呢?

Wakeford:关于我们的产业很有趣的一点是,我们能够实时了解最新动向。你可以拿起手机去浏览表格,观看别人的发展变化。App Annie便是一个很棒的资源库。你可以通过数据去了解游戏每次安装所获得的收益,从而去判断它是否成功。在今天人们已经能够预测六个月内可能发生的变化了。

Sherr:你一直坚持的一件事便是瞄准亚洲市场。我们发现亚洲公司一直在尝试着将游戏带到西方市场但却未能获得成功,反过来也是如此。虽然出现一些案例能够反驳这一观点,但是一般说来,这还是一件很困难的事。为什么会这样呢,你觉得怎么做才能打破这种情况?

Wakeford:关于亚洲市场,我们必须承认这是一个主要市场。任何未将亚洲纳入计划范围的公司都是未曾进行战略性思考的。三个月前App Annie的报告便指出现在中国的安装率已经超过美国。虽然来自DigiCapital的报告告诉我们每个iOS安装的价值是中国市场每个安装价值的8倍,但这能否代表我们可以忽视这一市场?还有一份报告指出,在收益上,包括中国在内的Android市场已经超过了iOS市场。他们已经覆盖了更多用户。

如果还存在疑问的话,我们不妨看看Newzoo的报告,即明年中国手机游戏的收益将有可能超越美国。明年中国市场将创造出77亿美元的收益,而美国市场则为74亿美元。之后,也就是在2017年,中国手机游戏市场的收益将达到93亿美元,而美国为82亿美元。中国市场将以比美国市场更快的速度发展着。他们之间的差距将不断被拉大。如果有人考虑从现在起在18个月创造出一款游戏,那么当我们完成游戏时,中国市场所创造的收益将已经超过美国10亿美元了。

Sherra:你们是如何避开像《智龙迷城》等游戏所遇到的问题,即在日本排行前列但在中国市场却未能如愿?

Wakeford:我们在中国市场中投入了许多时间。人们认为攻克市场很难,但是我想强调的是这比人们想象的还要困难。现在我们认为每个月能够创造4000万至5000万美元的游戏是成功的游戏。但是创造出这样的游戏是很难的。这里存在巨大的分裂性。我们都知道这里存在200多间Android商店。所以运营商支付扮演着非常重要的角色。同时这里还存在着我们未曾听过的防火墙,文件大小以及设备等问题。

Sherr:你是否认为这更多的是关于技术问题而非设计问题?

Wakeford:比起文化问题,技术问题和分裂性反而比较容易克服。文化是最复杂的一部分。为了获得成功,你需要深入探析当地文化并创造出能够引起当地消费者共鸣的游戏。到目前为止只有少数西方游戏公司能够做到这点。Supercell已经非常接近这一目的了。《使命召唤》仍在尝试中。

《海岛奇兵》便是一个典型的例子。这款游戏25%的收益便是来自中国市场。艺电也是另一个有趣的例子。他们对《植物大战僵尸2》进行了彻底的本土化。即全新的游戏玩法,系统设计,平衡,经济,UI,UX都是亚洲市场的收益占据这款游戏总收益33%的主要原因,其在亚洲市场的收益比美国市场还多。如果你真正去尝试的话便会发现这里存在着巨大的成功潜能。

Sherr:让美国人为中国用户创造游戏和让中国人为中国用户创造游戏是否存在区别?

Wakeford:关于这点存在一些不同的方法。我们重新调整了北京办公室以专注于中国游戏本土化。我们中国办公室的员工们都很了解中国的游戏。所以他们将负责为我们的中国用户创造游戏。我们与中国具有紧密的文化联系。我们将尝试一切方法去发展中国市场的业务。

Sherr:是否还有其它你想提及的内容?

Wakeford:现在的我们正着眼于业务上的两大结构转变。首先是巩固顶端市场的份额,这是从市场营销角度,游戏质量,游戏预算,生产计划等等角度来看。还有一大转变便是关于亚洲市场。这是一个不可忽视的市场。我们必须牢记这点。如果一家公司能够打开这个市场,他们便能够以更快的速度获得更大的发展。

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

Kabam explains its pivot into triple-A mobile and China (interview)

DEAN TAKAHASHI

Kabam prides itself on being ahead of the curve in gaming. It zigged when Facebook cracked down on viral social games because they produced too much spam. Then it zagged when free-to-play web games started giving way to mobile. And now it is shifting away from a big portfolio of mobile titles to a select few games based on brands and triple-A quality design.

That’s a lot of change for a company that is just seven years old, and Kent Wakeford, the chief operating officer for Kabam, talked about the San Francisco company’s latest pivot into high-end mobile games in a conversation at our GamesBeat Summit event with Ian Sherr, the executive editor of Cnet.

Here’s an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kent Wakeford: It’s a great time to be a mobile game developer. The market is growing at such a rapid pace. Last year, we were at these conferences talking about the potential for a billion-dollar game. It’s here. It’s not just one billion-dollar game, it’s billions with an S. Clash of Clans will make multiple billions of dollars.

What’s a very big change that we’ll all have to understand is that there is a shift going on, a consolidation. Think about the top of the market, the change over the last three years. Go back to 2012. The number-one top-grossing game did about $300,000 a month. In 2015, the number-one game is doing about $1.2 million.

What’s more interesting, though, is that if you look at the number-one game for all of 2012, which did about $4.6 million altogether—At that point Kabam had that game. It was Kingdoms of Camelot. Fast forward to today, the number one top-grossing game is doing about $80 million. That’s 1,750 percent growth.

It’s more dramatic than just Clash. The top five games in our market are taking a disproportionate share of the entire industry. If you go back to the first quarter of 2012 and look at the top five games in that first quarter, they did $41 million in revenue. They had a 10 percent share of the entire market. We’ve seen a lot more games to market since then, a lot more growth and innovation, but if you look at the top five games in the first quarter of this year, they did $925 million in revenue, 22 percent of the market. Those games haven’t moved. Clash, Candy Crush, Game of War. They’ve all been consistent at the top.

We’re seeing a radical shift in our industry toward the top. Market share and revenue are going to the top games. It’s pretty consistent with other content businesses.

Ian Sherr: Why is that driving you to change the way you do business?

Wakeford: If you think about where the opportunity is right now, the opportunity and growth potential are at the top of the market. How do you create a product that’s at the top of the market? For us we had to radically shift our focus. This started about a year ago. We embarked on a transformation and restructuring of our business in which we focused on fewer products and made some tough decisions.

This is the innovator’s dilemma a lot of us think about. “Fewer products” means only four new games this year. Last year it was 18 and before that it was 20. We’ll still do more revenue than we did last year.

We’ve let go of a lot of things we did in the past, like Facebook strategy games. We divested that entire business. We had a third-party publishing business that grew from zero to $30 million in one year, $30 million to $60 million in another year, but it didn’t have the potential to create a billion-dollar product. We divested and got out of that business. The opportunity is there in focusing and getting the best people on the best teams and aligning all these resources together.

Sherr: Do you think that doing this will allow you to get into that top five and be able to break that grip? I’ve listened to a lot of other game companies say that, realistically, there’s no way to get in there.

Wakeford: Capturing the hearts and minds of consumers at the top of the market is a challenge. It’s lightning in a bottle. But I believe that if you get the best people in the industry and allow them to focus on the single vision of creating that product – eliminate all other distractions – you have a much better shot at achieving it.

The results are amazing within Kabam. The last three games we launched all received Editor’s Choice from Apple. The quality bar has never been higher. We have a game that’s been consistently in the top 10 over the last three months. We’ve been doing a pretty good job and we’re staying focused.

Sherr: One trend I’ve seen a lot is marketing. If I look back to 2012, a lot of the marketing was cross-promotion. Nowadays, we have Kate Upton at the Super Bowl. I can’t turn anywhere without seeing a Clash advertisement. How do you deal with that? Going up against the marketing budgets of Activision or Electronic Arts or even Disney, that’s quite a challenge.

Wakeford: It’s another fundamental shift in the market. For those top games, marketing creates a structural advantage. The marketing you see today is very similar to the marketing you see at the launch of a Call of Duty. It’s happening. Candy Crush is wrapping buildings in Roppongi Hills. Clash is taking over subways and billboards in Tokyo. Boom Beach has celebrities in TV shows dressing as characters from their game in China. We have the battle royal at the last Super Bowl. It’s a fundamental shift in how the top games are able to market and spend capital at a rate that others in the ecosystem can’t.

Sherr: Does that mean smaller players are forced out? Does it become the console world, where Activision, EA, and Ubisoft run the industry?

Wakeford: You’re already seeing that, a rapid divergence between the top of the market and the rest of the market. That will perpetuate itself. It’s a simple spreadsheet exercise. The number 100 game, if it spends 20 percent of its revenue on marketing, that’s $240,000 a month. That’s an okay game. But if you’re making $80 million a month and spending $16 million of it every month to bring new users in, the divergence will keep taking you above the rest of the market. It allows you, at that size and scale, to take risks and open up different areas – Super Bowl ads, subway takeovers, buildings wrapped in brands created within our ecosystem.

That type of top-level marketing and the expertise that’s coming into this industry is going to further push the top of the market up. That’s great, but it creates more challenge for other parts of the industry.

Sherr: Let’s look at the character that began all of this – Angry Birds, which I guess is now the Pets.com of the mobile-game industry. They practically invented mobile-game marketing and branding and selling plush toys. What do you think of that sudden fall and how it applies to the model we’re developing?

Wakeford: What Rovio did with Angry Birds is phenomenal. They had huge brand recognition. But it’s a similar issue to what we’re facing now, with so many rapid shifts in our business. Rovio came out with a paid game in 2009. That game was phenomenal. It’s been installed more than 2 billion times. It’s second in brand recognition only to Disney characters. But it didn’t adapt.

They owned the paid download space when paid games were the dominant part of the market, 2009 and 2010. But between 2011 and 2013, the market shifted and free-to-play became the dominant business model. The ability to run a game as a service, to think about consistent design and live operations and performance marketing, these were all skills that grew and flourish within companies, whether it’s Kabam or others. If you look at what Rovio ended up doing, though, in 2011 they launched another paid game. In 2012, another paid game. In 2013 it was Star Wars. They didn’t launch a free-to-play game until the end of 2013. They kept doing what they were doing before instead of innovating.

If you look at Disney’s Tsum Tsum, that’s a phenomenal game and it could have been theirs. It should have been theirs. But it’s this concept of not adapting to the market and the industry as it changes.

Sherr: The collapse, from the outside, seemed sudden. How can we tell that things are going wrong?

Wakeford: What’s interesting about our industry is that we can know what’s going on by the hour. You can pick up your phone and see the charts, see who’s moving up and down. App Annie is a tremendous resource. You can look at the data and see whether a game is going to be successful based on the revenue per install. People are able to predict, today, what’s going to happen in six months.

Sherr: One big thing you’ve been doing is aiming your business toward Asia. We’ve seen Asian companies try to bring their games to the West and not succeed, as well as the other way around. There are a couple of examples that disprove the rule, but generally speaking, it’s a hard thing to do. Why do you think that is, and how do you break through?

Wakeford: The first thing about Asia is that we have to recognize it’s the dominant market. Any company that isn’t strategically thinking about Asia isn’t thinking strategically. App Annie came out three weeks ago reporting that installs in China now exceed the number of installs in the U.S. We saw the report from Digi-Capital showing that the value of an iOS install is eight times greater than an install in China. So maybe we can ignore it for a moment? But the next report comes out showing that the Android market, including China, is now bigger in terms of revenue than iOS. Just spread out over more people.

If there were still any doubters – if we still believe the world is flat – Newzoo came out showing that revenue from the mobile game space in China next year will surpass the U.S. Next year China will generate $7.7 billion in mobile revenue. The U.S. will generate $7.4 billion. The year after that, in 2017, China will be up to $9.3 billion and the U.S. $8.2 billion. China continues to grow faster than the U.S. market. That gap will continue to expand. If any of us are thinking about greenlighting a game with a production schedule maybe 18 months from now, once we’re done the market in China will be more than a billion dollars greater than North America.

Sherr: How do you not have the kind of troubles that Puzzle & Dragons did, going from the top in Japan to not the top here? How do you make those jumps?

Wakeford: We’ve been spending a lot of time in China. People talk about China being hard, and I want to emphasize that not only is China hard, it’s harder than people even guess. The market is growing faster than anywhere else. We’re seeing games that are now doing $40 to $50 million a month in revenue – including Boom Beach, which has been a great success. But it’s hard. We see a great deal of fragmentation. We all know about the 200 Android stores. Carrier billing plays a much more prominent role. There are tech issues are firewalls and file size and devices we’ve never heard of.

Sherr: Do you think it’s more the technical problems than the design issues?

Wakeford: The technical issues and the fragmentation are easier to overcome than the cultural issues. Culture is the hardest part. To be successful, you have to tap into the culture and build a game that resonates with consumers there. So far there have been very few western game companies that have done that. Supercell has gotten close. Call of Duty is trying.

Boom Beach is a good example. 25 percent of their revenue comes from China. The other interesting example is EA. EA truly culturalized Plants Vs. Zombies 2. Completely new SKU. The gameplay, system design, balance, economy, UI, UX—The result was that Plants Vs. Zombies generated more than 33 percent of its revenue in Asia. It’s generating more revenue in Asia than in North America. If you really try, there’s a great deal of potential success to unlock.

Sherr: And the difference is taking Americans and having them make the game for China, versus having people in China make it?

Wakeford: There are different approaches. There are publishing partners. We’ve reoriented our entire Beijing office to focus on culturalized games for China. These are people in China who know gaming in China. We’re having them build product for a Chinese audience. The roots of our company are Chinese-American. We have cultural ties to China. We’re refocusing everything to try and open the way there.

Sherr: Is there anything else you’d like to bring up?

Wakeford: We’re looking at two tectonic shifts in the business. One is the consolidation of market share at the top and what that means from a marketing perspective, game quality, game budgets, production schedules. The other shift is Asia. It’s the dominant market. We all need to be aware of it. The companies who are able to open up that market will see significant growth at a faster rate than the rest.(source:venturebeat)

 


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