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营销机构谈利用精益方法快速试错迭代开发游戏

发布时间:2017-09-04 15:31:24 Tags:,,

营销机构谈利用精益方法快速试错迭代开发游戏

原作者:Guest Author 译者:Willow Wu

Johannes Heinze是AppLovin欧洲、中东、非洲三地区的总裁。

我时常好奇在这样一个低进入壁垒、自由的全球分销市场背景下,所谓独立开发者的本质到底是什么。

我看到的主要特质就是独立开发者主要(有时候是只)聚焦在如何做出让人惊艳的游戏上,而经济和商务方面的因素是次要的。

别误会我,我非常尊敬,也很欣赏这种致力于创造伟大娱乐的激情。但很多人似乎忽略了一件事:为了塑造、保护文化,让开发者们更好地制作出独一无二的游戏体验,有些人要花大把时间在建立业务上,而那些最成功的游戏公司也通常是由这些人领导的。

最终,文化、人、当然还有畅销游戏的产出,这些逐渐演变成了机构投资者们的有趣财富。

the supercell model(from pocketgamer.biz)

the supercell model(from pocketgamer.biz)

Index Venture的合伙人Neil Rimer,他主导了Supercell的第二轮的投资,资金高达1.3亿美元。他曾写了一篇博文告诉我们为什么要投资这个公司:“Supercell是由一些名为‘细胞(cells)’小型独立团队组成,他们的工作任务就是开发新游戏或者给现有的游戏加上些深入的细节特色。”

针对团队和工作室构架的Supercell模式

这些细胞团队遵循着“开发-测试-优化-测试-淘汰”的循环流程来减少开发时间,持续反复地评估产品。在大多数情况下,几个月之后就会进行淘汰。

越来越多成功的游戏开发者发现应用精益原则(lean principles)可以更快速地完成游戏点子评估,最终可以通过数据驱动决策制定省去早期开发过程中的“垃圾时间”。

我会用实际例子来跟你解释这些原则,来看看Gram Games是如何通过遵循明确定制的流程来开发、测试、迭代,促使这些超休闲(hyper-casual)游戏在市场在获得成功。

精益框架对于这类游戏尤其有效,因为吸引力和扩展潜力在早期就可以评估了,同时也可以继续保持小额投入。

精益创业方法论

精益创业方法论是由Eric Ries提出的,在他的著作Lean Startup中有详细阐述。

这个理论“支持实验而非详细的计划,支持客户反馈而非直觉,支持迭代设计而非传统的‘设计先行’开发模式( Big Design Up Fron)”,它最终能够降低风险,提高数据驱动决策的可行性。(HBR)关于这个话题有很多书籍资料,但是在这一部分,我只想集中讨论其中2条核心原则:

开发-测量-认知(Build-Measure-Learn)循环:“把想法转化为产品,衡量客户对产品的反馈,然后决定到应该是坚守不移还是改弦更张。”(维基百科)

最小化的可行产品(Minimum-Viable-Product,MVP):“所谓MVP的产品可以让我们花最少的力气、最短的开发时间,经历一次完整的‘开发-测量-认知’循环。”(Eric Ries)

Gram Games

看它的名字你就明白了:Gram公司开发的是迷你、“轻型”超休闲游戏,完全符合所有特征。看看1010!、 Merged!或者Six!。你不用花费什么东西就可以马上开始玩游戏。

游戏的核心非常简单,但是并不会少了乐趣,盈利也基本是通过广告手段。Gram是广告赞助与超休闲纵向结合的先锋之一,这三个游戏的累计下载量迄今已经超过了1亿次。

公司创始人实践了精益创业方法论和数据驱动决策,让公司在市场中脱颖而出。这两种概念都在组织架构中制度化了:

开发

为了保证原始游戏概念的顺利实现,Gram每个周五都会用来开发核心游戏的最小化的可行产品。最小化的可行产品由一个游戏中心构思衍生的基础(但是可以用的)原型和一段重点突出游戏玩法的视频组成。

测量

在最小化的可行产品上架Google Play之前,在Gram为它预留了两个周五原型制作日来评估它的市场契合度。目的是为了衡量游戏的KPI,例如游戏的吸引力(点击率和转化率)还有通过付费用户获取、利用游戏视频得到的用户留存率(早期参与率)。

认知

如果已评估的KPI比之前设定的门槛还低,这个概念就会被淘汰,把注意力转移到下一个最小化的可行产品上。与之相反,如果早期参与率看起来是有发展空间的,视频的转化率降低了初始用户获取成本,开发者们就开始迭代产品,然后通过再次循环开发-测量-认知,提高指标。

重复

最优秀的最小化的可行产品会随着时间在游戏中进化,进入发行测试阶段,用来测试盈利状况和长期下来的不同地区的用户留存率。

广告盈利最重要的因素之一就是用户每天能够接触到的广告数量。在提高留存率之后,KPI就会增加,例如玩家平均每天完成的关卡数量,还有关卡花费的时间长度。

Gram原创

那些通过测试发行的游戏现在成为了“Gram原创”并且转移到Gram App Store中,这意味着正式全球发行。发行通常是始于其他产品的交叉推广。

Gram的游戏Six!

现阶段,严格的测试和发行前的数据收集能够让Gram详细规划生命周期总价值,志在必得地进行用户获取,快速达到理想的规模。Gram公司所有经历过上述程序的游戏帮助他们把团队扩大到了60人,两个工作室分别在伦敦和伊斯坦布尔。

少即是多

鉴于app stores每天都有成千上万个新产品上架,初期的数据驱动决策制定,市场契合度评估变得越来越重要。

显然,这个方法是有些局限性,而且meta游戏的核心越复杂,就越难精准评估,利用收集数据来预测游戏前景的难度也越大。

在最近写的系列文章中,我粗略讨论了一下这种新的游戏类型:超休闲,并且我认为它和精益方法论相得益彰。精益创业的定位就是意在摒弃大企业中利用流线型的开发、组织所带来的复杂性。

从另外一个方面来讲,减小难度,降低制作成本,回归到游戏本质,这样怎么能做出好游戏? 超休闲游戏给了你答案:那就制作一个有趣的游戏——不仅仅是为那一小撮能花得起钱的玩家,而是真正意义上的让每个人都乐在其中。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Johannes Heinze is Managing Director for EMEA at AppLovin.

Sometimes I wonder what really constitutes an indie developer in a market with free global distribution and low entry barriers.

The main distinction I see is that indies mainly (sometimes solely) focus on building cool games, while the financial and business considerations come second.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect and admire the passion for creating great entertainment. But many seem to ignore that most successful gaming companies are led by entrepreneurs who spend the majority of their time building businesses to shape and protect cultures that enable developers to thrive and produce unique experiences.

Ultimately, the culture, people, and, of course, the output of successful games evolve into an interesting asset for institutional investors.

Neil Rimer, the Index Venture Partner who led Supercell’s $130 million Series B round, wrote a great blog post on why they invested into the company: “Supercell is organised as a collection of small, independent teams, called cells, tasked with developing new games or building new deep features for existing games.”
The Supercell model for team and studio structure
These cells follow a “Build-Test-Refine-Test-Kill” cycle to reduce development time, evaluate and iterate on the product consistently, and in many cases, kill the result after a couple of months.

More and more successful game developers have discovered and implemented lean principles to evaluate game ideas faster and ultimately reduce “waste” in the development process early by making data-driven decisions.

I’ll illustrate these principles in practice by describing how Gram Games follows a clearly defined process to build, test, iterate and grow some of the most successful hyper-casual games on the market.

The lean framework is specifically useful for this genre of games, since the appeal as well as the scaling potential can be evaluated early on, while keeping the investment at a bare minimum.

The Lean Startup methodology

The Lean Startup methodology was coined by Eric Ries and laid out in detail in his book Lean Startup.

The methodology “favours experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional ‘big design up front’ development” to ultimately reduce risk and enable data-driven decisions. (HBR) There is a lot of literature available on the topic, but for this piece I’d like to focus on two key principles:

The Build-Measure-Learn loop: “A learning cycle of turning ideas into products, measuring customers’ reactions and behaviours against built products, and then deciding whether to persevere or pivot the idea.” (Wikipedia)
Minimum-Viable-Product (MVP): “The version of the product that enables a full turn of the Build-Measure-Learn loop with a minimum amount of effort and the least amount of development time.” (Eric Ries)
Gram Games

The name already says it all: Gram develops minimal and “lightweight” hyper-casual games that tick all characteristics. Have a look at 1010!, Merged!, or Six!. You can play the games instantly without any commitment.
The core game is simple but enjoyable and monetisation is primarily done through ads. Gram is one of the pioneers of the ad-funded hyper-casual vertical – combined, the three games have amassed more than 100 million downloads to date.

The company’s founders’ commitment to the Lean Startup methodology and data-driven decision making is what makes it unique. Both concepts have been institutionalised in the organisational framework:

BUILD

In order to ensure a constant flow of original game concepts, Gram dedicates every Friday to developing core game MVPs. The MVP consists of a very simple (but working) prototype of the core game idea as well as a video highlighting the gameplay.

MEASURE

Gram allows two of these Prototyping Fridays before the MVP needs to be uploaded to Google Play to evaluate product-market fit. The goal is to measure key performance indicators (KPIs), such as interest in the game (click and conversion rates) and retention (early engagement rates) of users by doing paid UA, utilising the gameplay video.

LEARN

If the measured KPIs are below a given threshold, the concept will be killed and the focus will shift to the next MVP. On the contrary, if the early engagement rates look promising and the conversion rates of the videos result in low initial user acquisition costs, the developers start iterating on the game and try to increase the metrics by starting another Build-Measure-Learn loop.

REPEAT

The very best MVPs evolve over time into real games and go into soft launch, which is mainly for testing the monetisation and long-term retention of the game in different geographic regions.

One of the most important factors for ad monetisation is the amount of ads that are being served to a user on a daily basis. On top of increasing the retention, additional KPIs are added, such as the amount of average daily sessions by users and the session lengths.

A Gram Original

The games that make it through the soft launch are now “Gram Originals” and are transitioned to the main Gram App Store account for global launch. This launch is usually kicked off with a cross-promotion from their other properties.
Gram Games’ Six!
At this point, the rigorous testing and data collection pre-launch enables them to map their LTV accurately and do aggressive user acquisition to reach scale quickly. All of Gram’s existing games went through this process and helped Gram to grow to 60 employees across two offices in London and Istanbul.

Less is more

Given the flood of new content popping up in app stores every day, it becomes increasingly important to start making data-driven decisions to evaluate product-market fit early on.

Obviously, there are limitations to this approach, and the more complex the core and the meta game get, the more difficult it is to accurately evaluate and collect data to properly forecast a game’s potential.

In my recent series, I outlined a new category – hyper-casual – and I’d argue that it and lean methodology compliment each other. The Lean Startup movement positions itself against the complexity of big corporations in streamlining development and organisation.

Hyper-casual, on the other hand, is the answer to the increasing complexity and production costs in stripping down the gameplay to what’s essential: having a game that’s fun to play – not only for a small niche of people that can afford to play it, but literally everyone.

(source:pocketgamer.biz


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