作者：Joost van Dreunen

世界上应该没有几个地方比拉斯维加斯更浮夸了吧。当你到达这座城市并在爱聊天的出租车司机的陪伴下搭乘汽车前往市中心时，你便能感受到这里与众不同的审美。

Las Vegas(from develop-online)

我很难对其作出具体描述。你可能会看到百乐宫门口的巨大喷泉或迷你版的埃菲尔铁塔。拉斯维加斯就像一座汇聚了各种华丽建筑并将其堆积在沙漠中心的城市。

在这座城市的赌场里，到处都铺着厚厚的地毯，并且这里无时无刻都充斥着浓厚的烟味。老虎机区域也始终都会传来摇响声。尽管游戏设计师往往不会选择将玩家致于一种无限的多巴胺循环中，但是游戏设计师却也能在赌场类游戏中找到一些具有价值的经验教训。

一旦你进来了，你便出不去了

在过去，赌桌上总是能够创造出足以让赌场能够提供给访问者便宜（甚至是免费）的房间和自助餐的巨大收益。在这里，用户获取非常简单，因为有谁会不愿意住免费的酒店呢？赌场运营者认为，如果人们未住在你的酒店里，他们便不会去玩你的机器与赌博，如此你便会没了生意。所以所有赌场都会想办法最大化自己的交易。随着时间的发展，他们将不断提供越来越多强大的功能并添加各种类型的娱乐形式去吸引消费者的注意。

同时赌场也成为了用户留存的专家。它们的建筑风格都很容易让人感到混乱。这里不会设置钟表，也没有方向灯，并且你要前往任何地方都需要经过一大排老虎机，这也是为了诱惑你去玩一把。每家赌场都会提供许多服装店，珠宝店，纪念品店，酒吧和餐馆。这便是一种完善的忠诚方案。即能确保人们始终待在赌场里并在这里进行消费。这样的设定也变得与在一开始吸引消费者进入赌场一样重要了。

拉斯维加斯提供了能够传达游戏体验和设计的潜在的经济方式。但这里也存在一个教训，即拉斯维加斯一直都在变化着。

市场的变化

如今免费提供住宿的经济模式已经不再可行。相反地，现在的赌场致力于提供一种完整的体验：这里会有世界知名DJ，精彩的杂技表演，知名演员以及大厨制作的绝美佳肴—-而所有的这一切都只是为了娱乐你。

如今，所谓的“酒店费用”成为了赌场的主要收入，而那些来自游戏的收益则大大减少了。老虎机和赌桌已经不能再为整个赌场提供足够的收益了。虽然游戏仍然具有巨大的吸引力，但是从财政角度来看它已经不再是拉斯维加斯的发展核心了。

我们经常在谈论设计，开发，发行与市场营销，就好似它们都是相互独立的个体。但其实并非如此。游戏的每个方面都是相互联系的。但如果游戏本身变成配角的话会怎样？

在争夺起居室地位的战争中，主机不断提供各种不同的内容，希望能在内容方面占据优势。手机游戏又何尝不是如此。如今大部分用户都非常熟悉今天智能手机的各种功能，他们也已经开始探索各种非游戏应用。就像我们所了解的那样，游戏是教授人们了解一台新设备如何运行，拥有怎样的优点以及如何操作的一种有效方式。

尽管这种情况似乎已经过去了，但是我们也发现许多大型发行商改变了策略并朝媒体公司转变，即能够提供除单纯游戏发行以外的更多不同形式的娱乐。就像艺电便通过致力于电子竞技领域并委任其首席运营官Peter Moore去管理这项业务而进一步扩展自己的生意。动视最近也收购了来自Major League Gaming的一些关键资产希望能够进一步构建一些比赛和具有竞争性的游戏分支内容，同时在今年年末，该公司还将发布《魔兽世界》的电影。

如今宣称游戏不再是游戏产业的核心还为时尚早。但在市场营销费用不断增加并且游戏公司必须不断想出全新且有趣的理念的产业中，更多公司开始着眼于更多不同的内容了。更准确地说，一些大型发行商将致力于减轻风险，即他们将开始瞄准那些不只是游戏的活动和收益流。

（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）

Learning Las Vegas: What devs can learn from the gambling hotspot of the world

By Joost van Dreunen

There are few places in the world tackier than Las Vegas. From the moment you arrive and politely sit through the banter of a chatty cab driver on your way into town, there is a distinct aesthetic that overwhelms the senses.

I can’t quite put my finger on it. It may be the enormous fountains at the Bellagio, or that mini Eiffel Tower. Don’t get me started on that gold, gleaming Trump building. Las Vegas, it seems, is an innocuous collection of dolled-up buildings, piled together in the middle of the desert.

Inside the casinos, there’s a persistent, dull smell of cigarette smoke and thick carpet. Fields of slot machines rattle and blink. Despite being generally eschewed by game designers for their crude mechanics of keeping people in an infinite dopamine loop, casino-style games hold some valuable lessons for the games industry.

ONCE YOU’RE IN, YOU’RE IN

For one, back in the day, gambling tables generated so much revenue that they allowed casinos to offer hotel rooms and buffets for cheap – or even free – to visitors. User acquisition was easy, because who doesn’t like getting a free hotel room? Casino operators reasoned that if people don’t stay at your hotel, they won’t play at your machines and tables, and you’ll go out of business. So it was crucial for the different casinos to maximise their traffic. Over time, this led them to offer increasingly outrageous features and add all types of entertainment to draw in customers.

Casinos also became experts at retention. Their very architecture is designed to be confusing. There are no clocks, no direct sunlight and you can’t go anywhere without having to pass through a large bank of slot machines, each vying for your attention. Every casino offers an abundance of clothing shops, jewellery outlets, souvenir stores, bars and restaurants. There’s a loyalty program for pretty much everything. Keeping people in the casinos, and getting them to spend their money while there, became as important as just getting them to visit in the first place.

You can see where I’m going with this: Las Vegas provides physical evidence of the way underlying economics inform game experiences and design. But here is the lesson in all this: Las Vegas has been changing.

SIN CITY’S SURVIVAL

The economics of offering hotel rooms for free no longer makes sense. Instead, casinos now seek to offer a complete experience: there are world-famous DJs, spectacular acrobatic performances, celebrity performers and high-brow cuisine – never before had I paid $35 for a plate of spaghetti – all for the sole purpose of entertaining you.

Today, it is the so-called ‘resort fees’ that are the primary source of income and much less so the money earned from games. No longer do one-armed bandits and roulette tables bring in enough to float the rest. The games, while still a big draw, are – at least from a financial standpoint – increasingly less at the core of Vegas.

All too often we talk about the design, development, publishing and marketing of games as if they exist in complete isolation. Which they don’t. Games are highly contextual in every aspect. But what if games themselves become a sideshow?

Consoles, in their bitter battle over the living room, continue to diversify their offering, hoping to one-up each other with unique content. The same can be said for mobile games. Now that the lion’s share of the audience has familiarised itself with the various features of today’s smartphones, they’ve also started to explore non-gaming apps. Games, as we’ve seen repeatedly, are an excellent way to teach people how a new type of device works, what its strengths are and how to operate it.

While this may seem far away, we have already seen several major publishers change their strategy to become more like media companies, offering a wider range of entertainment beyond purely publishing games. EA expanded its universe by formalising its eSports efforts and putting its COO, Peter Moore, at the helm. Activision recently acquired ‘key assets’ from Major League Gaming to further build out its tournaments and competitive gaming branch and, later this year, the firm will release its World of Warcraft movie.

It is too early to claim that games are no longer at the centre of the games industry. But in an industry where marketing expenses continue to rise in tandem with the pressure of having to always come up with something new and exciting, companies will look to diversify. More precisely, big publishers will look to mitigate risk – and, by doing so, are starting to lean on activities and revenue streams that are not just games.(source:develop-online)