发行五周年的War Robots（战争机器人）如何维系庞大的玩家群体

原作者：Matthew Forde 译者：Vivian Xue

人们经常说“没有事情能真正结束”，这句话也是近年来游戏行业的工作教条。

那些游戏发行后就高枕无忧的日子一去不复返了，游戏发行后还得对它进行修改、调整、提供补丁，开发者需要时时关注玩家的想法，根据玩家反馈更新游戏。

PocketGamer.biz希望报道一些保持长期热门，并拥有忠实粉丝的游戏。

本期“Live and Kicking”栏目邀请到了Pixonic工作室的制作人Oleg Poroshin，他们的第三人称射击游戏《战争机器人》刚迎来了发行五周年纪念日。

PocketGamer.biz：4月14日是《战争机器人》发行五周年纪念日，从发行到如今成熟完善，你怎么看待游戏一路走来的表现？

Oleg Poroshin：《战争机器人》从发行至今经历了很长一段时间。这些年来，我们对玩家、对游戏本身，以及游戏的潜力有了更加深入的认识。

我个人认为如今游戏无论是在指标上，还是应用商店排名上都达到了历史最佳。我们能取得如今的成功，归功于我们自游戏发行以来一直坚守的核心原则：

—与分析团队保持密切合作：我们总想尽可能了解游戏的所有指标。如今，我们每天会追踪游戏中一亿多场活动。我们的分析团队对游戏了如指掌，能从游戏设计师的角度分析它，而我们的设计师们总是很清楚他们加入的新功能会如何影响游戏指标。
—倾听玩家的意见：我们必须保证公司全员清楚了解游戏的最新情况。只有我们的玩家能诚恳地提出游戏更新或游戏活动的优缺点。每周我们都会在测试服务器上发布更新，获取初步的玩家反馈。每次测试后我们都会发现需要改进地方。

过去的两年内，我们邀请了很多玩家社区的KOL来公司与我们一同庆祝游戏发行纪念日，他们向团队提出了很多游戏存在的问题。在这之后，我们会开会正式讨论解决方案。这对我们来说是一个极为宝贵的经历，激励着我们前进。

最重要的是在分析情况时保持理智，密切关注可能出现的问题。这种态度，加上我们的分析团队以及玩家的反馈帮助我们在过去的五年内不断发展。

PocketGamer.biz：目前游戏团队有多少人？

Oleg Poroshin：截至目前，团队共有100名员工。我们把很大一部分工作外包出去了。现在游戏制作组有62名员工，运营组有38名员工。

PocketGamer.biz：你认为用户服务和更新有多重要？你们怎么对待这类工作？

War Robots(from apple.com)

Oleg Poroshin：过去五年里，《战争机器》一直以“游戏即服务”（game-as-a-service）模式运营，我们定期更新有趣的内容，并提供高质量的用户服务。

建立一个快速全面解答玩家问题的系统是至关重要的。没有用户的反馈，很多游戏功能都无法得到改进。

举个例子，匹配系统：搜寻对手需要一定时间，长短取决于用户的等级。但多久算过长呢？15秒、30秒还是60秒？玩家反馈中出现得越频繁的问题，就越应重视起来。

我们一年会发布11至12个更新——修复补丁不包含在内。通过更新我们推出了新的机器人、武器、功能和活动，改进了技术，修复了小问题。

PocketGamer.biz：游戏发行以来，你们在维持庞大的用户群和用户活跃度方面采取了哪些策略？

Oleg Poroshin：我们的每月活跃用户（MAUs）中有35万名两年以上的老玩家，我们为此感到尤为骄傲。在我们的营销团队一直以来的辛勤付出下，游戏实现了长期留存，我们的核心玩家数量仍在不断增长。

过去五年来，游戏的总下载量超过了1.3亿次，因此通过二次营销(retargeting)挽回曾经的玩家是一项重要工作。我们越来越重视玩家社区的建设，积极地和社交媒体上的玩家互动，因为这些是我们最活跃、最忠诚的玩家。

获取新玩家是我们的另一项重要任务。我们积极尝试各种形式的广告和平台，有些甚至还在测试研发阶段。每年都会诞生一些新的营销方式，我们不想错过。

PocketGamer.biz：过去五年你们根据市场变化对游戏做了哪些调整？

Oleg Poroshin：《战争机器人》的一大卖点是游戏的高度耐玩性。我们不断为玩家提供新的娱乐元素：地图、机器人、技能和其他功能。我们为武器设计了新的特效，使游戏焕然一新。

在过去五年里，游戏项目越来越庞大、复杂，因此我们在增加新元素时必须格外谨慎。我们在做决策前通常会先观察同行在做什么。

举个例子，我们对《堡垒之夜》的通行证(Battle Pass)很感兴趣，想过做一些类似的东西。很多手游开发商都效仿了这个盈利模式。我们会观察并选择一个最好的方案，把它应用到《战争机器人》里。

PocketGamer.biz：你认为《战争机器人》的长久吸引力源自哪里？你们是如何维持这种吸引力的？

Oleg Poroshin：自《战争机器人》发行以来，我们一直致力于优化游戏经济。我们的目标是为玩家提供他们想要的东西。很长一段时间里，游戏缺乏有趣的低价道具，当我们最终推出这些道具时，我们和玩家实现了双赢。

任何开发者的主要目标就是弄清玩家想要的是什么。在优秀的分析团队的协助下我们能够预测玩家需求，协调团队不断改良相关机制，在每一次发布更新时满足玩家的需求。

PocketGamer.biz：你愿意分享游戏目前的KPI吗？比如下载量、日活跃用户和留存率。

Oleg Poroshin：游戏目前的总下载量是1.3亿，拥有35万名2年以上的月活跃玩家。我们的社交媒体账号拥有150万名粉丝——如果加上我们的KOL的粉丝数那就更多了。

有意思的是，过去五年我们的开发团队在Jira（项目与事务跟踪工具）上完成了3万个任务。

PocketGamer.biz：从过去或目前的开发工作中，你得到了哪些经验教训？现在的你会对过去的哪些事情采取不同的做法？

Oleg Poroshin：每次更新发行都增进了我们对玩家的了解，提高了我们处理问题的能力。显然，一切不会永远按计划发展。

即便我们用上了所有分析方法，我们仍然会低估了玩家对新功能的反应。一个例子是我们最新的3v3竞技模式，每位玩家在游戏前要抵押，游戏结束后，所有的抵押物由胜方玩家分摊。

我们很担心玩家们无法接受它，产生负面评价。然而，玩家们似乎都很喜爱这个新模式，它成为了测试阶段最受欢迎的模式。我们最开始在游戏里加入视频广告时也有相似的忧虑。

PocketGamer.biz：最后，《战争机器人》的开发经历为你现在的工作带来了什么启发？

Oleg Poroshin：《战争机器人》拥有巨大的潜力，项目仍在火热开发中。我们已经制定了全新的内容计划。

我们最近的一次调查显示玩家想要更多的竞技模式，因此我们在考虑“single-entry”(一种锦标赛形式，选手只能参加一次比赛，游戏邦注)和团体锦标赛。

这里剧透一下，我们正在研发一个特色功能，它将对游戏历史产生重大影响。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源或咨询微信zhengjintiao

It is often said that nothing is truly finished and it’s a saying the games industry has taken to heart in recent times.

Long gone are the days of developing and publishing a game without the need to tweak, adjust and patch it after launch, with new titles requiring constant operation and updates to keep them at the forefront of consumer thought.

Here at PocketGamer.biz we want to take the opportunity to highlight games that have bucked the trend and found an audience that has kept them thriving long after launch.

In this entry of our Live and Kicking series, we caught up with Pixonic producer Oleg Poroshin following the fifth anniversary of its third-person shooter War Robots.

PocketGamer.Biz: With War Robots passing its five-year anniversary on April 14th, how do you reflect on its performance from launch to the mature title it is now?

Oleg Poroshin: War Robots had a long way to go since the day of its launch to today. As the years pass, we’re getting better at understanding the audience, the game itself and its potential.

Personally, I think that as of today, the project is in its best shape metrics-wise and our ratings in the app stores are at their highest. All of this is possible because since launch we stayed true to our core values:

-Attentive work with analytics: We always want to know as much as possible about all of the project’s metrics. As of today, we track more than 100 million in-game events daily. Our analytics team knows the game well enough to look at it with game designer optics and our game designers are always aware of how the features they introduce influence the metrics.

- Listening to our audience’s opinion: It’s important for us to be sure that the whole company is aware of what’s happening with the project. Only our players can be honest and open about any pros and cons of a recent update or in-game event. Every week we publish the updates to our test server where we gather the initial player feedback. There hasn’t been a time yet when we didn’t have anything to fix after a test.

For the past two years, we’ve been inviting community opinion leaders to our office for War Robots’ birthday. Our guests present to the team what issues they think are present in the game. After that, we informally discuss possible solutions. This is an extremely valuable and truly motivating experience for all of us.

The most important thing is to always be rational when evaluating the situation and always keep an open eye to spot possible issues. This together with analytics and player feedback has been helping us develop for the past five years.

How big is the team currently handling live ops at Pixonic?

As of today, 100 people are working on the project at the office. We also outsource a large chunk of our work. Currently, we have 62 employees in the production team and 38 employees in the operating team.

How important do you consider customer support and updates to be? What has been your approach to this?

During all five years of its existence, War Robots has been a games-as-a-service. That implies regular updates that add new interesting content and the best quality user support.

It’s critical to build a system for fast and thorough answers to the players’ questions. There’s a whole array of features that simply can’t be improved without user feedback.

For example, the matchmaking system: you can measure time finding a rival, a difference in user ranking, etcetera. But how much time finding a rival is too much time? Is it 15 seconds, or 30, or 60? The more frequently a problem appears in support threads, the more priority it gets.

We’re publishing 11 to 12 updates a year – excluding hotfixes. With said updates, we release new robots, weapons, features, technical improvements, bug fixes and entertaining in-game events.

What steps have you taken to ensure that War Robots maintains a sizable and active player base all this time after its launch?

One thing we’re exceptionally proud of is that 350,000 of our MAUs are the players who have been with us for more than two years. Thanks to good long-time retention metrics and constant work of our marketing team, our core audience is still growing.

For the past five years, we’ve had more than 130 million installs, so it’s important to work on retargeting campaigns to make sure they all return. With every year that passes, the community we build becomes even more important. We need to be active on social media because that’s where our most active and loyal players are.

Acquiring new users is also what we’re actively working on. We’re testing all of the advertising formats and platforms there are, even the ones still in beta-testing. Every year there’s a new trend in marketing and we don’t want to miss a thing.

How have you adapted War Robots through market changes during the five years that the game has been live?

One of War Robots’ USPs is high replayability of the core gameplay. We’re constantly adding something new to keep the players entertained: maps, robots, abilities and other features. Recently, we’ve added a variety of new effects for the weapons to refresh the game.

In the past five years, the project has truly become enormous and complicated and we have to be very careful when introducing something new. We never rush and usually look at what other companies in the industry are doing before implementing something.

A good example is the Battle Pass in Fortnite. This feature got us curious, and we’ve thought about making something similar. A lot of mobile games developers picked up this idea as well. We’re looking at the best ones and adapting them to fit War Robots.

To what do you attribute War Robots consistently impressive grossing performance and how do you sustain it?

We’ve been working on improving the in-game economics ever since War Robots was released. Our goal is to offer our players exactly what they want. For a long time, we lacked interesting low-priced goods. It was a win both for us and the players when we finally introduced them to the game.

The main objective of any developer is to find out what the user wants. Thanks to our advanced analytics we can plan the players demand. With every release we’re forming our supply and support it with different mechanics that are constantly under improvement by our team.

Any KPI’s such as downloads, DAU or retention you’re willing to share?

More than 130 million installs and more than 350,000 MAUs, all of whom have been with us for more than two years. Our social media following is now 1.5 million – even more if we count our influencers.

Fun fact: for the past five years our developer’s team closed 30,000 issues in Jira.

What lessons have you learned/are you still learning from War Robots? Is there anything about the game that, in hindsight, you’d now handle differently?

With every release we’re getting better at understanding our players and solving issues. Obviously, not everything goes according to plan.

Even with all the analytics, we can still underestimate the players’ reaction to a new feature. The latest example is the new competitive mode where six players have to make a bid to enter and then the whole bank is distributed between the three winners.

We were very worried that the idea won’t be accepted by our players and the feedback will be negative. However, everybody seems to love the new mode and it has become the most popular mode during its testing. We’ve had a similar situation when implementing video advertisements.

Finally, how has your experience with War Robots informed where you are/what you’re working on now?

War Robots has great potential as the project is actively developing. We’ve got plans for some drastically new content to make.

Our latest research shows that the players want more competitive modes, so we’re thinking about single-entry and team tournaments.

Spoiler alert: we’re working on a secret feature that will be a huge step in War Robots history.（source：PocketGamer.biz）