Timo Soininen谈《帝国与谜题》为何能从三消游戏中脱颖而出

原作者：James Batchelor 译者：Vivian Xue

攻破手游市场是一项艰巨的任务，尤其是当你进入竞争最为激烈的类型游戏市场中时。无数工作室试图复制King，Supercell，Rovio等的成功，但没有几家能够真正实现这个目标。

当然，也有例外。其中之一就是最近引发轰动的芬兰工作室Small Giant Games，热门游戏《帝国与谜题》（Empire & Puzzles）的开发商。虽然这款游戏看上去与其它三消游戏机制没什么不同，但游戏对RPG系统的重视以及Small Giant目标性的营销策略，使它在极具敌意的市场中发展起来。

当我们在伦敦的Casual Connect游戏大会上见面时，Small Giant的CEO兼联合创始人Timo Soininen告诉我们《帝国与谜题》拥有120万日活跃用户，300万的月活跃用户，下载量达到了1500万，此外它还在今年的Google I/O上获得最佳突破大奖。这一切成就不仅属于一个诞生14个月的游戏，也属于它背后的小团队。

“2016年制作《帝国与谜题》时，我们只是一个12人的团队，” Soininen告诉我们，“这么小的团队在11个月内从零开始创作出一部如此成功的游戏，可以说是一个记录了。我们受到了极大的鼓舞，做了一点外包，但这真是一个了不起的成就。”

“如今我们是一个大团队，按我们的标准来看的话。35个团队成员来自10个不同的国家，全都聚集在赫尔辛基。其中有年轻的人才，也有我们这种经验丰富的老人家。”

Soininen称Small Giant在2017年11月实现了盈利，并且玩家数量从未下滑。这在一定程度上归功于绩效营销，而今年他们计划在市场营销上投入8000万美元。

该公司的成功吸引了一些投资者的兴趣，最近一次是在2月初，他们获得了4 100万美元的融资。Soininen告诉我们，工作室在游戏发行后短短12个月内，收入已经达到1.3亿美元，并且他们仍觉得这只是皮毛而已。

“事实上，这笔(4100万美元)融资的很大一部分是投资者向Small Giant团队成员二次购买股票产生的，因此我们能够把我们的股份售卖给投资者，其中的一部分资金流入了我们的账户中。”CEO解释道。

Empire and Puzzles（from gamesindustry.biz）

“我们在去年年底已经盈利了，所以我们真的不需要那么多钱。那时投资方希望提高他们的股份，这对我们双方都有利，因此我们在未来许多年内能够专注于制作优秀的东西。”

那么为何《帝国与谜题》能够成功，而其它游戏却难以突破？三消游戏已屡见不鲜，而把三消机制和RPG系统或角色收集结合起来的游戏也并不少见。

Soininen指出了Small Giant为这一类型带来的一些新特色。其中最值得注意的是攻击方式：在大多数三消RPG游戏中，相同颜色的宝石被消除后会触发相关角色对某一固定目标或者所有敌方造成伤害。而在《帝国与谜题》中，宝石消除后将从该位置释放出士兵，这意味着只有该位置正上方的敌人才会受到伤害。

这款游戏还拥有一个与《战争游戏》（Game of War）类似的基地建设系统，以及战略游戏中的各种模式，比如团队作战、PvP和今年的《联盟战争》（Alliance Wars）模式。更重要的是，工作室高度重视游戏的玩家教程（onboarding process）。

“我们让游戏十分容易上手，”Soininen说，“大多数的中核RPG游戏都在争夺一个数量有限的玩家群体，事实上如果你推出一款新游戏，你将不得不把玩家从别的游戏那里吸引过来，这既困难又昂贵。”

“我们想要制作一个非常容易上手也非常受欢迎的游戏。我们的教程大概是有史以来最长的教程之一，根据所谓的行业专家的观点，这是非常违反常理的。但是我们对一切进行了大力测试，结果使我们相信这么做是正确的。”

“我认为《帝国与谜题》的整体吸引力在于它是一个入门级的RPG。我们把门槛放得很低，同时赋予它极有深度的meta元素和众多的玩法，能够让玩家深度探索幻想的世界。我们已经吸引了许多玩家，如今的RPG游戏粉丝们喜欢这个游戏，这归功于玩法的特殊性。

Small Giant希望将《帝国与谜题》打造成一款热门游戏，而偏长的教程展现了他们为实现这一目标所愿承担的风险。鉴于智能设备上吸引玩家的游戏实在太多了，开发者们的传统观念是让玩家尽早地正式开始游戏。而教程过多，特别是当玩家在其他游戏中遇到过类似的教程时，可能会让他们在几分钟后就卸载游戏。

“我们当然担心过这个，但是测试结果非常优秀，”Soininen解释道，“并且我认为这和叙述方式有关，即我们是如何设计流程并让它按顺序展开。它并不是那些无聊的教程之一。当然，有些人不会喜欢它，但我们游戏粘性非常强因此人们必须喜欢它。”

“你的脑子里可以有各种各样的理论，但你依赖的是数据和测试。有时候，对于不同的游戏你得采取不同的方法，重要的是保持开放的心态。作为开发者，我们有时会形成一种固定思维，哪些是有效的哪些是无效的，但你不应该这么做。尝试不同的方法，尤其是当数据显示你的固定方案不起作用时。”

他继续说道：“不过良好的营销也是必不可少的。如今即使你创造出了最好的游戏，它也不会自动成功。这就是为什么你得做好一切细节。对我们来说好消息是我们的市场渗透才刚刚开始。”

一个令人沮丧的事实是，特别是对于希望通过创造力和创新来弥补营销预算不足的小型工作室来说，并不是每一家手游创业公司都能像Small Giant那样吸引投资者，也不可能像他们一样建立一个资金库用于UA投资。

“额，我们没有营销预算，”Soininen说，“其实我们陷入了一个困境中，我们没有大量现金。我们迫切需要弄清楚这些数据是否是正确的。如果留存率和盈利上不去，我们必须赶快把这个方案扼杀在摇篮里，这样我们还能有机会。一切都必须建立在数据之上。”

Soininen鼓励工作室制定一个营销模式，并试图找出哪些策略和创意最有效。测试不同的渠道将会向你展示你能通过类似Facebook的渠道获得什么样的关注。这位CEO提醒大家，这的确需要花一点钱，但是制定这种模型是很关键的。

“你必须比对你的终身价值和获取成本（lifetime value vs acquisition cost）：如果你把一定数量的钱投入到用户获取中，那就看转化率，你需要知道你从那群用户中收回这笔成本需要多久——这是需要时间的，所以你必须有耐心，”他说，“但这就是我们建立模型的方法。”

“最困难的领域之一就是把握好创意，尝试掌握Facebook的算法以及让整个系统以最佳方式运作——我们花了相当长的时间才能达到一个相对较好的水平，这让我们坚信自己走上了正确的道路。我们可能花了六个月的时间才达到这个水平，那时，游戏也差不多完工了。”

在游戏还在开发时就着手制定营销模式是吸引投资者的关键。当Small Giant在早期的一轮融资中筹集到600万美元时，他们通过准备好的指标和商业模式来证明通过更多的投资，他们可以取得更好的表现。

“你必须要保持百分百地真诚，并且掌握这些投资者的心思，”Soininen提醒道，“你必须为他们描绘一幅清晰的蓝图。我们说，‘我们做了一款很棒的游戏，各项指标都很好，我们已经有了一个良好的开端，但是在这个领域我们需要资金或帮助。’当你这么说时，你的话会变得非常可信。千万不要把时间花在胡说八道上，把你的项目吹得天花乱坠。”

如今《帝国与谜题》已经获得成功，Small Giant也加紧进行第二部游戏的开发。虽然Soininen无法告知我们任何相关信息，但他透露该项目目前正处于前期的消费者测试阶段，并可能在今年晚些时候的进行测试发行。

然而，他强调公司90%的精力仍集中在他们的旗舰游戏上。例如，最近添加的《联盟战争》（Alliance Wars）模式‘展现了我们的KPI有了巨大的改进’并且工作室也渴望在这方面进一步探索。此外，新的关卡、新的英雄和新的游戏模式在同步研发中，以保持百万玩家的持续参与。

“我们会源源不断地推出新的事件、活动和任务来保持游戏的新鲜感，”他说，“这款游戏运营个五年到八年是没什么问题的。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Cracking the mobile market is a Herculean task, especially if you are entering one of the most crowded genres. Countless studios attempt to replicate the success of King, Supercell, Rovio et al, but very few come close to achieving this.

There are, of course, exceptions. One such studio that has been making waves is Finnish outfit Small Giant Games, the developer behind the increasingly popular Empires & Puzzles. While seemingly yet another take on the widely used match-three mechanic, the game’s focus on RPG systems and Small Giant’s determined approach to marketing has seen the title thrive in an extremely hostile market.

When we meet at Casual Connect London, CEO and co-founder Timo Soininen tells us Empire & Puzzles stands at 1.2 million daily active users, three million monthly active users and 15 million downloads – plus it won the Best Breakthrough Hit award at this year’s Google I/O. All solid accomplishments, not only for a 14-month-old game but also for such a small team.

“When we built Empire and Puzzles back in 2016, we were just a team of 12,” Soininen tells us. “It must be some sort of record that such a small team created such a big game like that in 11 months from scratch. We were really driven, and we did a little outsourcing, but it’s a really remarkable achievement.

“Since then we are now big, by our standards. 35 people, all in Helsinki with 10 nationalities. There’s a mixture of young talent, and then us veterans and dinosaurs.”

Soininen also reports Small Giant achieved profitability by November 2017, and has never made a loss on user acquisition. This is in part due to the effort poured into performance marketing, with plans to do $80 million in marketing this year.

The firm’s success has attracted the interest of several investors, most recently completing a $41 million round of funding at the beginning of February. Soininen tells us the studio has reached $130 million revenue run rate in just 12 months from launch and still feels “we’ve only just scratched the surface.”

“A large part of that [$41m] investment was actually secondary purchases from all Small Giant team members, so we were able to sell our shares to investors, and part of that money went into our warchest,” the CEO explains.

“We were already profitable at the end of last year so we didn’t really need that much money. There was a point in time where investors wanted to increase their share, it was good for them and good for us, so we’re now able to focus on building on great things for many years to come.”

So why is it Empires & Puzzles has succeeded where so many others have struggled? Match-three games are hardly rare, nor are titles that mix the mechanic with RPG systems or collectible characters.

Soininen points to a number of fresh twists Small Giant has brought to the genre. Most notably, the need for aiming; in most match-three RPGs, matching coloured gems triggers an attack from the relevant character that deals damage to a selected target or all enemies. In Empires & Puzzles, matching gems actually unleashes miniature troopers from that position, meaning only enemies directly above the match are harmed.

The game also boasts a base-building system similar to the likes of Game of War, as well as various modes you’d expect from a strategy game, such as alliances, PvP and this year’s Alliance Wars mode. More importantly, the studio has placed a great deal of emphasis on its onboarding process.

“We made the game extremely approachable,” Soininen says. “Most of the midcore RPGs are playing the zero sum game on a relatively limited audience – in fact, if you launch a new game you’re going to have to steal players from the other games, which is difficult and expensive.

“We wanted to make a game that is so accessible and welcoming. Our tutorial is probably one of the longest tutorials out there, which is very counter-intuitive according to so-called industry experts. But we tested everything vigourously, and it gave us the confidence that this was the right way to do it.

“I think the whole appeal of Empires & Puzzles is it’s an intro-level RPG. We’ve kept the threshold really low, while having the extremely deep meta and lots of gameplay modes if you do want to go deeper into our fantasy world. We’ve been able to convert a lot of players, existing RPG fans love it – it comes down to the differentiating aspect that is the gameplay.”

The longer tutorial alone shows the risks Small Giant has been willing to take to establish Empires & Puzzles as a hit. Given how much titles are vying for people’s attention on smart devices, conventional wisdom pushes for developers to bring them into the game as soon as possible. Too much instruction, particularly for systems players have likely encountered in other titles, is likely to encourage deletion within the first few minutes.

“Of course that was a worry, but we tested this so well,” Soininen explains. “And I think it’s all about storytelling, how we devise the flow and the fact it’s all done in sequences. It’s not one of those boring tutorials. Of course some people aren’t going to like it, but our stickiness ratio has been really good so people must like it.

“You can have all kinds of theories in your head, but you rely on the numbers and testing. Sometimes for different games, different approaches work and it’s important that you keep an open mind. As developers, we sometimes have this prefixed idea of what works and what doesn’t, but you shouldn’t have that. Try different things, especially if the numbers are telling you the prefixed approach is not working.

He continues: “But it’s also the combination of being really good at marketing. In today’s world, even if you create the best possible game out there, it’s not going to fly automatically. That’s why you have to get all the bits and pieces right. The good news for us is we’ve only scratched the surface in terms of market penetration.”

It’s a disheartening truth, particularly for smaller studios hoping that creativity and innovation will make up for a lack of marketing budget. Not every mobile start-up can hope to attract investors in the same way Small Giant has, not will they be able to build a ‘warchest’, as Soininen referred to it, in order to invest in user acquisition profitably.

“Well, we didn’t have that marketing budget,” Soininen observes. “We were literally in this predicament, we didn’t have huge amounts of cash. We pretty much had to know very quickly whether the numbers were correct. If the numbers didn’t add up in terms of retention and monetisation, we needed to kill this baby quickly so we still had one more shot. You have to be really on top of the numbers.”

Soininen encourages studios to essentially build a model for their marketing and try to find out which tactics and creatives work best. Testing different channels will show the sort of attention you can gain through things like Facebook. This, the CEO warns, does require spending a little money, but building this model is essential.

“You have to know your lifetime value vs acquisition cost: if you put a certain amount into user acquisition, this is the conversion rate, you need to know how quickly can you gain that amount from that cohort of users – there’s a lead time, so you have to be patient,” he says. “But this is what we did to build the model.

“One of the most difficult areas was getting the creatives right, trying to master the Facebook algorithm and getting the whole system to work in an optimal way – it took us quite a long time before we got to a relatively good level, and that gave us the confidence that we knew we were on the right track. It probably took us six months to get to that level, and by that time the game was pretty much ready.”

Preparing the marketing model while the game is still in development is also essential to getting investors on board. When Small Giant raised $6 million in an early funding round, it used metrics and the business model it had prepared to demonstrate how well it could perform with more investment.

“You have to be brutally honest about things, you need to recognise that they need to be mastered,” Soininen warns. “You have to paint a clear picture for investors. We said, ‘we’ve got a good game, good metrics, we’ve scratched the surface here but this is the area we need money or help with’. When you tell that story, it makes you really credible, rather than spending your life trying to bullshit your way through, painting too pretty a picture.”

With Empires & Puzzles now established, Small Giant is ramping up work on its second game. While Soininen can’t tell us anything about it, he does reveal the project is currently in early consumer testing and may be ready for a soft launch later this year.

However, he stresses that 90 per cent of the studio’s efforts are still focused on the roadmap for its flagship game. The recently added Alliance Wars, for example, “saw massive improvements in our KPIs” and the studio is keen to explore this further. Plus, new levels, new heroes and new gameplay modes are all in the works to keep those millions of players engaged as long as possible.

“We basically have a continuous flow of events, activities and quests to keep the game fresh,” he says. “There’s no reason why this game couldn’t have a lifespan of five to eight years.” （source ：gamesindustry.biz ）