本文原作者：James Batchelor 译者ciel chen

确实，有一件很多开发者无疑都希望避免的事：当游戏创作不再是纯粹的艺术。毕竟他们的游戏终究是要发行的，并且大多数情况下，他们发行的游戏都得赚到够多的钱以资助他们下一款游戏的研发。

这个真相在手游行业体现得更加突出，可以说手游市场是开发者所面临的竞争最激烈的市场。尽管这将使开发者不再能够全身心投入到一个基于激情的项目中，但不管哪家工作室，他们都希望能吸引到发行商，能接轨最广大的用户，这就要求他们得去了解更多游戏发行中与商业相关的内容。

ZeptoLab的董事长兼CEO Misha Lyalin这样告诉GamesIndustry.biz：“商业变得越来越以数据为导向：用户保留量、ARPDAU(每付费用户平均收益)等等之类的数据，这些都是在游戏通过审核进入初始阶段时我们用来判断其有没有潜能的标准。很简单，把游戏直接给你的朋友家人玩来进行判断——这就是我们想要的。我们真的不喜欢那些只给了个游戏标题然后说‘那，这是我的游戏，我玩过了，是我喜欢的。’这已经过时了。现在开发者需要的是尽其一切可能快地掌握对一些数据的理解。”

但对于一个在事业的起步阶段，梦想着把游戏带给数以百万计用户的开发者新人来说，像MAU(月活跃用户数)、ARPDAU（每付费用户平均收益）这类的数值就已经非常可怕了吧？何况像LTV(生命周期，用户在生命周期内为某游戏创造的收入总计)、FTUE(初次用户体验)等这样的缩略词就更别提了。

Lyalin承认：“对某些开发者来说——他们确实是希望自己开发出来的东西能够让这个世界喜欢。不过现在开发者必须有所改变。我们现在也已经在做出改变了。”

Cut The Rope（from gamesindustry.biz）

“当我们发行《割绳子》的时候，我们也曾经一样：我们希望这款游戏能在发行后让人们喜欢上它。但是现在我们已经做出了改变，这也是开发者要做出的改变——以后在正式发行游戏以前得做游戏的试发行来考察搜集得来的所有数据指标。开发者必须适应这样的改变，没别的办法，这就是现实。”

ZeptoLab工作室近来决定将其成功所获成果投入到其他开发者身上，帮助带领他们的游戏进入手游市场。该公司的发行部门到目前为止一直保持很低调，但最近却发表了声明说公司将开放接受一切开发者提交的游戏代理发行申请——甚至承诺将保证对每一个申请进行进行反馈。

ZeptoLab并不是实行这项业务的唯一工作室。不论是手游还是PC/主机游戏领域里，都有数不清的独立游戏发行商在这个业务中蒸蒸日上地崛起，不过ZeptoLab依旧有信心能够脱颖而出并向其他开发者伸出援手。

“想在手游领域发行游戏就得有经验；而开发者如果想让自己的游戏被发行，就得掌握一些发行商想要的内容。”

“有难度，而且难度相当大。我们肯定没法保证能够把所有好游戏作品都找来（因为竞争超激烈）。但是我们存在一定的竞争优势，以及我们开发游戏的方法对于第三方开发者是由潜在利好的。所以我们在日益激烈的竞争中依旧感到自己足够强大。”

ZeptoLab在《割绳子》游戏的发行里学习了很多在手游市场发行的经验。如今它有信心能够帮助其他工作室进行游戏的发行

但是如果开发者想要获得ZeptoLab的青睐，这就得回归最重要的数据指标——不过这些数据规模可能没你想的那么大。

Lyalin解释道“我们对某类数据和某类反映的影响会比较深刻——如果一名开发者可以从亲密的朋友们那里或者一个小圈子的人们那里得来某种反馈，又或者可以把游戏发行在一两个特定市场中，这样我们就可以对一些初步数据进行考察——我觉得这些都是有所助益的。”

ZeptoLab不会像大部分发行商那样专门成立一个发行部门，它们对代理游戏的挑选讲究到了难以置信的程度——也因此它只在游戏大会和交易展上和开发者谈论发行事宜。尽管该公司开放接受所有的游戏代理申请，但它目前每年最多就发行两款游戏。

“我们现在所追寻的就是我们对自己有的期望：趣味、品质和创新。我们希望所代理发行的游戏是能让我们为之骄傲自豪的，我们希望所代理发行的游戏能让玩家享受到跟在《割绳子》中一样的愉悦——这就是我们之所以讲究的原因。”

“我们有意将代理发行的游戏看做自己的游戏，但如果是这样的话，我们就没办法发行很多的游戏了，因为我们人手有限。”

像很多类似King、Zynga这样的龙头手游企业一样，ZeptoLab也希望能寻到一款游戏成为下一款最受欢迎的mid-core游戏。一个又一个手游公司都想逃离出过度拥挤的休闲游戏领域，于是“Mid-core”这个词就被这些公司用烂了，然而他们又对这个词都有着各自不同的具体定义。

“对于我们来说，一款mid-core游戏就是容易上手但想玩得精则相对困难的F2P游戏，并且它要具备让用户长期停留的潜力。”

“我们要的不是针对非常小众目标用户的游戏。我们需要的是更广大的用户群、更容易上手的玩法、长期用户留存潜力以及F2P的游戏机制——这是我们对mid-core游戏的定义。”

由于像《部落战争》、《战争游戏》和《雷霆天下》这些游戏到现在已经在手游热门榜榜首上呆了好几年了，所以开发者现在寄希望于多人在线游戏让他们在手游市场能有所建树是情有可原的。不过Lyalin相信这并非必要条件，尽管它确实能给开发者提供最好的契机来汇集、以及更重要的是保留住最大程度上的用户量。

“多人竞技并不是游戏成功的必要元素。但是人们是喜欢社交的——他们喜欢和其他人进行交互。倘若说现代发展史对我们有什么启示的话，那就是人们在类似Facebook这类的网站中变得越发喜欢社交了。这在游戏中也有相同的体现，所以多人竞技是一个蛮重要的概念——对core games来说更是如此。休闲游戏倒未必，但对于core和mid-core游戏而言，多人竞技这个内容要素确实是有关键性作用的。”

目前已经有许多的游戏代理申请向ZeptoLab提交了， ZeptoLab坚持履行了对每个开发者的申请进行回复的承诺。Lyalin说这多亏了许多公司员工能出力一起检阅这些他们收到的申请。然而鉴于所有的申请者都能收到回复，Lyalin强调说只有那些尽了最大努力的申请能得到他们所期盼的较全面反馈。

“显然如果提交的代理申请是比较不成熟的，那我们的反馈也就会相对较短，不过如果你提交的游戏代理申请是一个可玩版本的游戏，我们将会给你一个全面的检阅和回复——无论发不发行这款游戏我们都会这样做的。”Lyalin说。

他还说，关于为所有申请代理的开发者提供反馈这件事，ZeptoLab鼓励那些被拒绝的申请者希望他们能在未来继续做申请的努力：“如果你得到的反馈是‘不行，这个游戏对我们来说不合适’或者说你没有得到任何反馈，那么你要再次和这家发行商合作的机会就比较小了。如果你较早地和发行商建立建立联系、那么也许下次再来的时候，由于记住了需要改进的内容，因此提交的申请质量会有所提高。通过这样的方式，我们和合作伙伴分享开发和发行游戏的知识，并且希望他们能在未来还能找到我们一起寻求合作的机会。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

It’s a truth many developers no doubt wish to avoid: the creation of games is not a purely artistic affair. Ultimately, their games need to be released and, in the vast majority of cases, that release needs to generate enough revenue to fund their next project.

This is particularly true on mobile, arguably the most competitive market any games developer faces. And while there will be the rare exception who can afford to pour their heart and soul into a passion project, any studio that hopes to attract a publisher and reach the broadest audience needs to understand the more commercial aspects of launching a game.

“Business has become very number-oriented: retention, ARPPU, and things like that,” ZeptoLab chairman and CEO Misha Lyalin tells GamesIndustry.biz.

“It’s something we can work on once a game goes through our process but the initial phase has to show potential. It’s easy to measure just by giving the game to your friends and family to play – that’s what we’re looking for. We don’t really like people who just submit a title, saying ‘here’s my game, I played it, I like it’. That’s something that has been left in the past. Now developers need to gain an understanding about numbers as soon as they humanly can.”

But to a new developer, a start-up with dreams of getting their games into the hands of millions, are metrics like MAU, ARPDAU – not to mention other acronyms like LTV, FTUE and so on – incredibly intimidating?

“To some, yes,” Lyalin admits. “Some people develop something and hope that the world will love it. But developers now have to change. We have changed.

“When we released Cut The Rope, we were exactly the same: we were making games and hoping that people would like them when they were released. But we have changed, and developers have to change as well. Now you need to do soft-launches and look through all the metrics you gather before you fully launch your game. Developers need to adapt to this, it’s the reality. There’s no other way around it.”

ZeptoLab is the latest mobile studio to decide to channel its own success into helping other developers bring their games to market. The firm’s publishing arm has kept a low profile so far, but recently announced it was open to any and all submissions – even promising a guaranteed response to every single applicant.

The Cut The Rope studio is not alone in this. There are countless indie publishers on the rise, in both the mobile and PC/console spaces, but ZeptoLab is confident it has what it takes to stand out and aid its fellow developers.

“People that publish in the mobile space have to have experience,” Lyalin says. “And if developers want to have their game published, they have to have something companies will want.

“It’s tough, it’s definitely tough. We’re definitely not guaranteed to find all the good titles [because of all the competition]. But we have certain competitive advantages, and the way we approach our games and development is potentially beneficial to third-party developers as well. So we feel strong as the competition grows.”

rope
ZeptoLab learned a lot about the mobile market from the release of Cut The Rope. Now it feels confident enough to help publish other studios’ games
But if developers want to win over ZeptoLab, it comes back to those all-important numbers – although perhaps not on the scale you might think.

“We’re impressed by some sort of numbers, some sort of reaction to the game,” Lyalin explains. “If a developer can gauge certain feedback from close friends, a small circle of people or maybe launch the game somewhere – in one or two markets, so we can see some preliminary numbers – I think all that helps.”

Unlike most developers that open a publishing arm, ZeptoLab is being incredibly selective – hence its decision to only discuss its publishing operations with developers at conferences and trade shows until recently. Even though the firm is open to all submissions, it intends to release a maximum of two titles per year.

“We’re looking for the same things we expect from our games: fun, quality and innovation,” says Lyalin. “We’re just looking for games we’d be proud to say were published by ZeptoLab. We’re looking for something our players would enjoy as much as they have our own games. So that’s why we’re being very selective.

“It’s our intent to treat them as internal titles. If we do that, we just don’t have that many people to be able to do so many games.”

Like King, Zynga and many of the leading mobile firms, ZeptoLab hopes to find the next big mid-core hit. ‘Mid-core’ is a term bandied about by many a company trying to step away from the impossibly crowded casual market, but everyone has their own definition as to what this actually means.

“For us, a mid-core game is a free-to-play title that is easy to pick up and play, but relatively hard to master,” Lyalin says. “The long-term retention potential [needs to be] there.

“We’re not looking for titles that are targeted at a very niche audience. Broader audience, easier to pick up and play, long term retention with free-to-play mechanics – that’s what we would define as mid-core.”

With the likes of Clash of Clans, Game of War and Mobile Strike dominating the Top Grossing charts for years now, developers could be forgiven for thinking multiplayer games are the only titles that can establish themselves in the market now. Lyalin believes that it’s not essential, but it can give developers the best chance of gathering, and more importantly retaining, the largest audience.

“You don’t have to have multiplayer to succeed,” he says. “But people are social – they like to interact with other people. If recent history has shown us anything, it’s that people are becoming more social on the net with things like Facebook. It’s the same thing with games, so multiplayer is an important concept – especially for core games. Maybe not for casual, but for core and mid-core games, it’s vital.”

Submissions are already rolling in at ZeptoLab, but the publisher has so far stood by its promise to respond to every single developer. Lyalin says this is made possible by the number of people at the company willing to chip in and help to review the games, they receive. However, while a response is promised to all applicants, the CEO stresses that those who have put in the most effort can expect the more comprehensive feedback.

“Obviously, if the submission is at an early stage, the reply will be fairly short,” he says. “But if you submit a game that’s playable, we’ll give you a full review – regardless of whether we publish it or not.

He goes on to say that by offering feedback to all developers, ZeptoLab hopes to encourage those it rejects to come back in future: “If you hear just ‘no, the game doesn’t work for us’ or you don’t hear anything, the chances of going to this publisher [again are minimal]. If you establish lines of communication earlier, maybe next time you’ll come in and you’ll remember some of the things you were told, so the quality of submission will improve. That way, we pass some knowledge to the partner and hopefully that comes back to us later.”(source:games industry.biz )