苹果的App Store的推荐# MobileDevelopment - 移动开发
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免费游戏模式束缚着开发者的双手
发布时间：2014-05-22 17:11:19 Tags：付费模式,免费游戏,市场,手机平台,玩家
作者：Barry Meade
在今年的三月初，Fireproof公开了一个好消息，即自从我们的手机游戏《The Room》
和《The Room 2》发行以来已经卖出了550万份了。
在Fireproof，我们总是能听到一款手机游戏必须是休闲的，且能够免费下载的说法，
作为一种服务的游戏将永久地出现在玩家面前。但因为我们的游戏都很短，既黑暗又残
忍，不存在社交或在线元素，且不包含应用内部购买或广告，所以这便是一大问题。
the room(from d.cn)
the room(from d.cn)
我们同样也缺少足够的钱去支付专业的市场营销或PR。但是依靠着苹果的App Store的
推荐，我们这款基于7万英镑预算的游戏获得了超乎预期的成功。
在对于我们所获得的成绩的评价时，我发了一条tweet表示，也许手机游戏在免费玩家
之间的盈利战导致开发社区更加依赖于“数据之谈”，同时渐渐忽视了一款优秀的游戏
会对玩家产生怎样的影响。关于开发者一味地追求娱乐而不是盈利到底有什么问题呢？
我们的成功与其它手机开发者的最大区别便在于我们选择以直接的费用去销售每一款游
戏，例如付费模式。
媒体选择了我们的故事，我们将其当成是一个引导成功的故事，但是手机产业中的一些
开发者采取的是完全不同的方式，将我们的成功当成是一种越轨（说得好听点是这样）
，甚至是一种危险的先例（说得难听点就是这样）。似乎我们的故事与手机游戏和免费
游戏间不断出现的传奇故事背道相驰。
Fireproof无意识地破坏了这一切，而上帝所制造的这一切让任何付费开发者连成了一
体。
我们需要谈谈虚拟的方向键
手机的确是由免费和休闲游戏所操控的一个领域。参加一场手机大会，你将会察觉到创
造或玩游戏的最有趣的的原因便是盈利。
如果你向发行商或投资者推广一款不是作为服务的游戏，他们可能会当着你的面摔门而
出。人们似乎已经达成了一致的看法：休闲和免费是“手机游戏想要的”，在这个要么
免费要么回家的世界中，Fireproof的坚持显得格外突兀。我们周边有许多创造了出色
作品的付费游戏开发者，Vlambeer和Capy等团队除外，但实际上却只有我们看到了这一
做法所带来的利益。
所以在今天，一款付费游戏是如何取得550万销量的好成绩已经不再是一个重要的问题
了，真正的问题是：在像手机一样巨大的市场中，Fireproof是如何在少数的付费游戏
创造者间看待这样的成功？
来自AAA级产业的Fireproof总是将手机看成是适合电子游戏的一个开放，可行且明主的
平台。当该平台最初来到开发领域时，它所许下的承诺是让游戏创造者能够以非常低的
开发成本和自由的能力直接面向公众销售游戏。
如此的好处让人目不暇接，AAA级游戏也想要来到这里，即想着它们那强大的视觉效果
和设计将战胜那些在手机平台上大受欢迎的“廉价的Facebook”类型游戏。
但事实上在前面几年时间里，AAA级游戏在手机平台上大多因为过于昂贵而遭遇了惨痛
的失败。我们的产业不能有效地战胜全新的平台，并发现全新的碰触界面其实是一种灾
难的降临，而非全新的机遇。
持续的亏损加上全球的财政紧缩大大缩减了全产业的预算，同时人们还将更多的视线转
向了具有较高投资回报率的软件领域。随着时间的发展，昂贵的沉浸式游戏作为一种选
择逐渐消失在人们的视线中，那些“廉价的Facebook”类型游戏才是最终的赢家。
尝试着将标准的控制模式强行带向触屏的虚拟方向键也只是更广泛的游戏产业不能认真
对待手机平台的表现。游戏产业是关于销售出色的互动体验给用户，我并不清楚那些喜
欢游戏的人们是否会正视手机排行榜。
从投资者到发行商到开发者再到媒体，手机领域对一些创造性要求，即迫切地想要寻找
想把游戏当成任何平台上一种有意义的文化空间的全新游戏领域充满敌意。
创造并破坏
免费游戏提倡将它们的模式当成一种主导性内容，因为“这是手机游戏玩家想要的”，
这解释了应用内部购买只是玩家传达他们所在乎的内容的方式。如果它们已经娱乐了某
一更加枯燥的理念，即免费游戏之所以受欢迎是因为某某原因，那么它们看起来会很假。
所以让我们深入研究无数乐于付费的手机玩家喜欢免费的休闲游戏的理念。
根据最近的数据，20%的手机游戏是属于玩家打开过一次便将其抛弃的内容。66%的手机
游戏体验不会维持到一天之后，而大多数购买也是出现在第一周。让人惊讶的是只有2%
至3%的玩家会为游戏花钱，更让人惊讶的还是游戏的50%收益是来自0.2%的玩家。
从统计上来看这只是一些关于玩家的微不足道的数字，不能为你搞清楚“人们想要什么
”提供一个基础。我认为这只是手机在流行趋势这条道路上的放纵，或者它们并不清楚
人们到底想要什么。
所以当听到游戏开发者在讨论休闲游戏是手机上的全新范式，很少有开发者真正喜欢这
样的游戏时，我真的很烦躁。免费游戏和休闲游戏应该成为更出色的游戏生态系统中的
一部分，但是现在它们的中心全在于手机平台。
不过有可能这些统计只是一种断章取义的表现，隐藏了市场自由且积极的动态性的真相
。好吧，畅销榜单前十名的游戏是不会同意的。
排行榜顶端被一些同样的游戏占据了好几年，少数大型游戏及其复制者非常缓慢地移动
着位置。充满好奇的游戏玩家在看待畅销游戏排行榜时会认为，这其实充斥着一些非常
普通的游戏体验但却获得了巨大的下载，从而导致高盈利游戏成为了如今我们的主流用
户唯一看得到的手机游戏。
自从我们在2012年发行了《The Room》以来，Fireproof已经赚得了500万美元以上的收
益，这对于我们这么一家小型工作室来说真的是一笔巨大的收益，能够帮助我们成为真
正的全职开发者。然而过几天便有报告表示《Candy Crush》和其它免费休闲游戏赚到
了更多收益。
如果地球上拥有最强大的支持，最高评级以及最幸运的付费游戏只能获得与某些休闲游
戏等量的销售，那么我们将面对的便是一个针头般大小的付费游戏市场—-这便意味着
手机用户缺少对于游戏的真正兴趣。
在2013年，手机游戏在全球范围内创造了100亿美元的收益。100亿虽然听起来是个巨大
的数字，但要知道单单《Candy Crush》的创造者便赚到了20亿美元。着眼于排行榜前
10名的游戏，那便是主导者游戏市场的内容；而这失款游戏大多都是彼此的复制品。来
自这些钱的剩余改变将分散到整个游戏产业区服务10亿台设备。
一个拥有2%“沉浸行为”的用户似乎不会为了致力于将玩家带进全新体验的创造性产业
做出贡献。在我们所生存的世界中，Netflix的内容能够让成人们感到兴奋，所以当98%
的玩家将更多钱花在卷笔刀而不是由我们的10亿美元领导者所创造的游戏时，它的手机
游戏是否也能做到这点？
一个富饶的生态系统既需要复苏的绿芽也需要古老的红杉，而如果免费游戏是一个伴随
着各种不同游戏的中立管道的话，所有这一切的影响力将变小。但是高盈利的财政模式
的必要阻碍和耐心本质将对沉浸感以及迷惑玩家的尝试产生阻碍。结果便是许多游戏设
计将不能把自己带向免费模式，因此不再那么愤世嫉俗的游戏世界将被迫切需要更棒的
内容的平台拒之门外。
我们的产业关于手机游戏的所有免费方法都不能将一个真正的游戏生态系统传达给手机
玩家或开发者，虽然我们已经耗费了好几年的世界，但是游戏世界的创造却仍停留在手
机领域。
免费模式自身为开发者和玩家的百万使用提供者服务，我已经投入了许多时间和金钱于
《坦克世界》，《战锤任务》等等游戏中—-这一模式并不是问题所在。
问题其实更加普通，即从整体来看，游戏产业正在创造没人真正关心并且适用于数百万
玩家的手机游戏。免费游戏的制作者同意质量水平是良好的，“如果它能够赚钱，它便
是好的，对吧？”其实并不是如此。在现实世界中，汉堡王并未拥有米其林三星的荣誉
。但是汉堡王却具有非常高的收益，这并不是因为它所获得的的评论，而我们的产业未
能意识到这种差别的事实将把我们逐渐带离创造性空间。
我们匆匆忙忙地创造一切免费的内容以确保能够榨尽整个手机市场的钱而作为我们努力
迎合少数人的喜好的补偿。在我们的手上，手机生态系统以盐进行播种，变成了灰尘，
并成为了游戏开发者的上帝的铁砧。
找不到关于未来的记录：我们需要现在开始写下来
最出色的的创造者会越过统计和市场假设而着眼于潜在的世界可能性。这也是为何真正
成功的游戏能够创造趋势，而普通的游戏会追随着它们的主要原因。真正的游戏粉丝清
楚这点；我们总是不断地寻找着新内容并追逐着任何能够变得更好的内容。但除了热情
的玩家外还有无数寻找着适合自己设备的内容的玩家。
手机将游戏呈现在无数几年前从未接触过这些内容的玩家面前。但是创造性业务是关于
迎合立基用户。从小说，电影和音乐中我们了解到必须创造各种内容才能匹配所有人的
口味，而强大的立基群体是带有强大的创造性中心的发达产业的标志。公平地来说，手
机游戏正在衰竭的一个原因是10亿名玩家想要玩不同的《Candy Clash Saga》1000次，
这真的太疯狂了。我们获得了统计数据，最佳比例是3%，所以我们便固定于此，然后开
始尝试其它内容。
与无数其它创造性市场所喜欢的内容相违背，我们的产业关于手机市场所勾勒的画面—
-“它们只是想要从休闲游戏上获得盈利”并不是全部的真相。实际上，考虑到这些游
戏较低的渗透率，这似乎就像在黑暗中吹口哨，并且更像是我们能够控制天气，然后抱
怨着何时下雨。没有用户会为无聊的游戏花钱，而极少数会这么做的用户将被随机记录
下来，就像任何设计亮点那样。
所以我们可以依赖什么，关于创造性市场我们到底知道些什么？人们将购买任何能够迎
合他们的内容，我们也特别喜欢被迷惑。人们想要看到热门的内容，他们希望自己的娱
乐内容足够大胆，自信且与众不同，他们想要拥有选择以及关于任何可能的心情的娱乐
。他们最终会将钱投资于那些呈现给自己之前从未看过的特别酷的内容上。
一旦游戏的乐趣元素足够多，像市场营销，PR，数据分析以及“提供给人们他们想要的
内容”等虚假的“成功之柱”将相继离去。我喜欢将《我的世界》作为这种情况的例子
，因为当我在玩游戏的时候特别享受于看到手机开发者眼中所流露出来的恐惧感。
手机游戏产业中的人喜欢将《我的世界》当成一种违反常规的事物。但对于我来说，他
们之所以这么做只是想将其带离让人不舒服的对话。
《我的世界》应该出现在任何关于手机成功的对话中，因为它是关于流程图和财政模式
如何传达我们所处的真正业务的典型例子。其巨大的规格并不是什么突变的内容，它真
的比手机或任何平台上的其它游戏出色多了。
我想这震慑到了大半个产业，但我真的很喜欢它。
《我的世界》并不是什么突变体，相反地它起着领导的作用。我们不应该忽视它，而是
应该专注于它：这是基于娱乐用户所获取的成功的表现。虽然我们很难像它那样获得2
亿美元的销售额，但前提是你需要2亿美元！相反地，对于像Fireproof这样的开发商来
说，200万美元已经是非常棒的成绩了，如果你拥有Notch 1%的能力，你便有可能赚到
《我的世界》1%的收益。
我认为这是我们在追逐手机游戏利润中所忘记的内容，即我们看不到数据树的创造性枝
干。对于我们的所有信息，我们已经收集了关于用户习惯和销售额等内容，但是提供乐
趣并激励用户的能力仍然是我们产业中富有创造性的人员的首要任务。我们交流，接触
并激励目标用户的能力也是任何艺术家或手艺人创造任何内容的基础。
手机作为一个平台去推动游戏发展的基本交流能力仍然保持着完整性。但是追逐巨大的
利益的逻辑性却开始自掘坟墓了。
在Fireproof，我们降低了对于资源的期待值，并且不去制定致胜计划，让自己能够自
由地创造可以引起同样作为玩家的我们的兴趣，正是如此我们的游戏才会引人注目。在
面对了几十年惊人的电子游戏，我们只有一个目标：尽所能创造出最棒且最让人感兴趣
的游戏。没有什么比这点更重要了，我们也忽视了任何并不支持这一目标的建议。
对于我们来说，去迎合一位用户的喜好太过疯狂了。我们所思考的是如何做才能创造出
任何优秀的游戏，而不只是手机游戏。良好的感觉控制，顺畅的画面，简单的互动，出
色的视觉效果都包含于吸引人的游戏世界中，并能够唤醒人们的意识。我们对于手机的
让步并不是对于任何事物的让步：我们尽可能地发挥触屏界面的功效，因为它实在是太
棒了。
所有的这些都未仔细考虑过能够影响深深着迷于免费模式的手机发行商的计划：我们的
数百万待销售的游戏将被扼杀在摇篮中。
那些依赖于数据的人将不再得到重视。大众将更想尝试一些特别的内容。这也是为何会
存在创造性市场的原因，统计对于受启发的创造行为没有任何说明。Henry Ford发行了
最早的生产线以及第一辆价格实惠的汽车，他说过：“如果我问人们他们想要的是什么
，他们的回答将会是跑得更快的马。”虽然这一引用是他虚构的，但却比无数真实的用
户数据更好地向我们创达了创造性工作的真相。
如果我们的用户不能事先告诉我们什么才是热门的内容，那么我们将承担艰难的构想工
作。我们可能会受到前辈的启发，但想出一些全新的内容才是真正迫在眉睫的工作，因
为这才是用户所追求的。像《The Room》，《Threes》，《Plague Inc.》，《Limbo》
，《我的世界》以及《新星足球》等游戏的成功告诉我们“那些了解市场的人的”智慧
永远不可能影响到无数玩家的生活。
讽刺的是，那些告诉你你的游戏不可能卖得好的人正是那些会在你的游戏取得成功之后
复制它的人。他们并不善于发挥想象力。看到他们依赖于数字的时候我们是否该感到惊
讶呢？
用户比我们中的任何人更加清楚事实，如果我们的手机公众通过购买发出了“我在乎”
的信号，那么我并不认为产业开始听从98%说着“我不在乎”的手机玩家的行为有多激
进。
（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：
游戏邦）
Mobile is burning, and free-to-play binds the hands of devs who want to help
by Barry Meade
In early March of this year Fireproof released the happy news that we’ve
collectively sold 5.5 million copies of our mobile games The Room and The
Room 2 since release.
At Fireproof we’d always heard a mobile game had to be a casual, free to
download, games-as-a-service title you can play for infinity. This was a
problem, as our game was short, dark and grim, had no social or online
aspect and contained no in-app purchases or adverts.
We also lacked any money to pay for professional Marketing or PR so upon its
release you could politely term our expectations as realistic. But backed
by a feature on Apple’s AppStore our wee game with a ￡70k budget went on
to see success we never could have expected.
Commenting on our surprising figures, I tweeted that maybe mobile gaming’s
war of total monetisation on free-to-play gamers has made the dev community
over reliant on “databollocks” while losing sight of how a good game can
affect its players. What’s wrong with a developer shooting for
entertainment instead of monetisation?
The biggest difference between our success and other mobile devs was that we
chose to sell each title for a straight fee, i.e. paid i.e. premium i.e. Ye
Olde Worlde Weirding Way.
The press picked up our story, which we imagined as a dashing and windswept
tale of bootstrap success against the odds, but some in the mobile industry
absorbed it differently, waving away our success as an aberration at best
and a dangerous precedent at worst. It seemed our story ran contrary to the
ongoing romance between mobile and free-to-play games.
Fireproof had drunkenly crashed this wedding, and what God has brought
together let no premium developer separate.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE VIRTUAL D-PAD
Mobile is truly a landscape dominated by free and casual games. Attend a
mobile conference and you’ll feel like clearly the most interesting reason
to make or play games is monetisation.
Pitch a title that isn’t games-as-a-service to publishers or investors and
they’ll practically install new doors to slam in your face. The narrative
has been agreed upon: casual and free is “what mobile gamers want” and in
this world of go-free-or-go-home, Fireproof stick out like a sore thumb. We
’re surrounded by other developers of premium games making excellent work
but, barring a few teams like Vlambeer and Capy, are practically alone in
seeing a decent profit.
So how a paid game happened to sell 5.5m in this day and age is not the
important question — the real question is the following: In a market as
huge as mobile how the fuck are Fireproof among the only makers of premium
games that saw this kind of success?
Coming from AAA, Fireproof always viewed mobile as open, accessible and
democratic, a bit of a playground for video game possibilities. When the
platform first came onto the dev scene its promise was insanely cheap
development costs and a liberating ability for game makers to sell direct to
the public.
The benefits were dizzying and AAA gaming wanted in, thinking its superior
visuals and design chops will crush the “cheap, Facebook-y” type games
that were becoming popular on mobile.
But the truth is that the first few years of AAA in mobile were dominated by
the catastrophic failure of expensive paid titles. Our industry completely
failed to grapple with the newness of the platform, seeing the great novelty
of the touch Interface as a pain instead of a new opportunity.
Ongoing deep losses coupled with worldwide austerity shrank budgets industry
-wide and the view shifted to software that showed high return on low
investment. Over time rich, immersive games faded away as an option and in
the right light those “cheap, Facebook-y” games looked pretty damn good
after all.
The virtual d-pad, the attempt to shove standard controls onto touch screens
, is merely symbolic of the historic failure of the wider games industry to
take mobile seriously and our hurried retreat from that market left behind a
negative space of ideas that festers like a black hole in mobile’s
ecosystem today. The games industry is about selling amazing interactive
experiences to people, and I don’t know how any person who loves games
could look at the mobile grossing charts and not despair.
From investment to publishing to developers to press, the mobile universe is
hostile to the creative urge, the high standards and the hunt to find new
gaming territory that is required to grow gaming as a meaningful cultural
space on any platform.
AS IT CREATES, SO IT DESTROYS
Free-to-play advocates naturally think their model is dominant because “
that’s what mobile gamers want,” explaining that in-app purchases are just
the players way of saying they care. If they’ve entertained the more dull
notion that free-to-play is popular because… well, it’s free? They seem
not to let on.
So lets drill into this idea of an ocean of spend-happy mobile gamers who
love free-to-play casual games and nothing else.
Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again
. 66 percent have never played beyond the first 24 hours and indeed most
purchases happen in the first week of play. Amazingly only around two to
three percent of gamers pay anything at all for games, and even more hair-
raising is the fact that 50 percent of all revenue comes from just 0.2
percent of players.
This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing
that gives you a basis to make claims about “what people want”. I think it
just as likely that mobile’s orgy of casual titles is due to simple
bandwagon-ism or, in other words, not knowing what people want.
So it bothers me to hear game developers talking as if casual games are the
new paradigm on mobile when so very few developers are actually happy with
the games as they are, and mobile gamers clearly seem to “care” least of
all. Free-to-play and casual titles should be a part of a greater gaming
ecosystem, but right now they are the entirety of it on mobile.
But perhaps those stats are out of context and hide a greater truth of
market freedom and energetic dynamism. Well, the Top Ten grossing charts beg
to differ.
The top slots are a vision of inaction, occupied by the same games for over
a year, a few big beasts and their clones politely shuffling positions in a
Galapagos-like existence. Curious gamers see the top grossing charts, assume
it’s the primo shit and very ordinary gaming experiences get a download
frenzy, ensuring highly monetized games are now the only vision of mobile
gaming visible to our mainstream audience.
Since we released The Room in 2012 Fireproof has made over $5 million, a
life-changing amount to our small studio that paid for us to become full-
time developers. However Candy Crush and other top free casual games have
been reported to be making that much in a couple of days.
If the best-supported, highest-rated and outright luckiest premium games on
the planet only achieve lifetime sales equal to a couple of day’s revenue
for some casual games, we are dealing with a pinhead-sized paid game market
– and that suggests a lack of interest in gaming across the mobile audience.
In 2013 mobile games made over $10 billion globally and allegedly this is
great. $10 billion sounds a lot, it is a lot, but the makers of Candy Crush
alone took almost $2 billion. Throw in the top ten and there’s most of your
games market gone; hoovered up by ten cute grinding games that are clones
of each other. Any remaining change from that money is scraped off the table
and scattered across a games industry trying to service a billion devices.
A 2 percent “engaged’ audience does not seem towering in achievement for a
creative industry that looks to draw its players into new experiences. We’
re living in a world where Netflix’s content inspires hysteria in grown
adults, so is mobile gaming really in the same league when 98 percent of its
gamers spend more on pencil sharpeners than games made by our billion-
dollar leaders?
A fertile ecosystem needs lots of green shoots as well as the old redwoods,
and all this would matter less if free-to-play was a neutral pipeline
carrying a wide range of games. But the necessarily interruptive and
patience-trying nature of a highly monetised financial model works against
immersion and the attempt to spellbind a player that the best games achieve.
Consequentially many game designs will not lend themselves to free-to-play,
and thus a less cynical world of gaming goodness is denied a platform that
’s in desperate need of something better.
Our industry’s all-free-to-play approach in mobile has failed to deliver a
real gaming ecosystem to either mobile players or developers, and many years
into our work a universe of games remains to be made on mobile.
The free-to-play model itself serves a million uses to developers and gamers
, I’ve chucked lots of time and money into World of Tanks, Warhammer Quest
and many others myself — the model is not the problem.
The problem is more general, that taken as a whole the games industry is
making mobile games that nobody cares about available to millions of players
for nothing. Free-to-play producers chime that quality levels are obviously
fine, “If it’s making money it’s objectively good, see?” Well no, not
quite, shit sells by the ton every day. In the real world Burger King doesn
’t get three Michelin stars. Burger King gets to be happy with its revenue
not its reviews, and our industry’s inability to see the difference will
only pull us further into our creative vacuum.
Our rush to make everything free ensured we have drained the entire mobile
market of money in return for the accomplishment of pleasing a statistically
insignificant amount of people. In our hands mobile’s ecosystem has been
sown with salt, turned to dust and become God’s Anvil for game developers.
THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN: WE NEED TO GET WRITING
The best creators look beyond statistics and market assumptions to look at
potential, the world of what’s possible. This is why truly successful games
create trends and why mediocre games follow them. Any true game fan knows
this intrinsically; we’re on a constant hunt for the new, and chase
anything that sticks out as being better. But beyond enthusiast gamers are
hundreds of millions out there looking for something, anything, that is cool
for their device.
Mobile has injected gaming into the eyeballs of people who never would have
touched a game a few years ago. But a creative business is all about
catering to niches. We know from novels, film, music that we have to produce
a variety to suit all tastes, that well supported niches are a sign of a
developed industry with a strong inventive center.It’s fair to say one
reason mobile gaming is dying on its arse for developers is because the idea
that one billion gamers want to play variations of Candy-Clash-Saga a
thousand times is fucking insane. We’ve got the stats. It’s 3 percent at
best. So we’ve nailed that, time to try something else.
Set against the galaxy of content other creative markets enjoy, the picture
our industry paints about the mobile market – “They only want monetised
casual games” just can’t be the whole truth. In fact given the extremely
low penetration of these games it seems a kind of whistling in the dark, and
its more likely we’re making the weather then complaining when it rains.
No audience will pay for boring me-too games, and those few that do are so
tiny in number they can be chalked up to random chance as much as any design
brilliance.
So what can we bank on, what do we know in our bones about creative markets?
People will buy anything that entertains them, and we especially like to be
dazzled. People want hits, they want their entertainment bold, loud,
confident and different, they want choice, entertainment for every possible
mood. They ultimately give their money to the people that show them
something cool that they can’t get from anyone else.
As soon as the joy factor of a game is high enough all the fake “pillars
for success” like marketing, PR, data analysis and “giving people what
they want” crumble away like the mere scaffolding they are. I love to bring
up Minecraft as an example of this and it’s only somewhat because I enjoy
the terror in mobile developers eyes when I do.
Mobile game folk just love to wave away Minecraft as an anomaly. But to me
they call it an “outlier” in an attempt to count it out of an otherwise
uncomfortable conversation.
Minecraft needs to be counted the fuck in to every conversation about mobile
success because it’s a spectacular example of how flow charts and
financial models tell you fuck all about the real business we are in. Its
colossal size is not some mutant tumor, it really is that much better than
any other game on mobile or any platform.
I think this terrifies half the industry and I love it.
Minecraft is not an outlier, it’s a leader. It’s not to be ignored but
gazed at: this is what success based on pleasing an audience looks like.
Hell yes its $200m sales are a hard act to follow – but only if you need $
200m! $2 million on the other hand is a bonanza for developers like
Fireproof, and if you can be 1 percent as good as Notch maybe you can make 1
percent of Minecraft’s revenue.
I am arguing that this is what we have forgotten in our chase for mobile
profit, that we can’t see the creative woods for the data trees. For all
our mountains of information we’ve collected about user habits and sales,
the gut-level ability to give joy and inspire our audience remains the job
of our industry’s creative people first and every other industry role
second. Our ability to communicate to, reach and inspire the people that we
make things for is the foundation for everything any artist or craftsperson
ever produced.
The fundamental communication power of mobile as a platform to push gaming
remains entirely intact. But the logic of chasing mountainous profit is self
-defeating.
At Fireproof we reduced our expectations to the level of our slim resources
and by not planning to win big we freed ourselves to make stuff that
intrigued us as gamers, and that allowed us to stand out. Raised on decades
of amazing video games we only have one gear: make the best and most
interesting game we can. Nothing else matters and we ignored any advice that
didn’t support that goal.
To us it seemed crazy to pander to an audience. We thought about what makes
any game good, not just a mobile game. Great feeling controls, a smooth
camera, easy interaction, cool visuals, all wrapped in an intriguing game
world that wakes up the player’s brain. Our one concession to mobile was
not a concession at all: we did all we could to make the touch interface
sing because the touch interface is fucking great.
None of these carefully thought out plans would have made a lick of
difference to the free-to-play obsessed mobile publishers: our multi-million
selling game game would have been strangled at birth. Black would have been
white, up would have been down.
These people who cling to data are not to be listened to. Mass audiences
have a passion to enjoy special things. It’s why creative markets exist,
and statistics have nothing whatsoever to say about the act of inspired
creation. Henry Ford invented the first production line and the first
affordable car, and once said “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they
would have said faster horses”. The quote is mythical, but delivers more
truth about creative work than a million pages of factual user data.
If our audience can’t tell us up front what a hit looks like, the hard job
of dreaming remains up to us. We can be inspired by the old but conjuring up
the new is actually the job at hand, because that is what the audience is
after. The success of The Room speaks to that, as does Threes, Plague Inc.,
Limbo, Minecraft, New Star Soccer and many other games which, left to the
wisdom of “those who know the market” would have never arrived to brighten
the days of millions of gamers.
The irony is that the very people who tell you your game won’t sell are
exactly the kind who will copy the shit out of it once it does. They don’t
deal in dreams, imagination is not their forte. Are we really surprised that
they cling to numbers?
The audience knows better than all of us and if our mobile public truly does
signal “I care” through purchasing, I don’t think its radical for the
industry to start listening to the 98 percent of mobile gamers out there
saying “I don’t care.”(source:polygon)
发布时间：2014-05-22 17:11:19 Tags：付费模式,免费游戏,市场,手机平台,玩家
作者：Barry Meade
在今年的三月初，Fireproof公开了一个好消息，即自从我们的手机游戏《The Room》
和《The Room 2》发行以来已经卖出了550万份了。
在Fireproof，我们总是能听到一款手机游戏必须是休闲的，且能够免费下载的说法，
作为一种服务的游戏将永久地出现在玩家面前。但因为我们的游戏都很短，既黑暗又残
忍，不存在社交或在线元素，且不包含应用内部购买或广告，所以这便是一大问题。
the room(from d.cn)
the room(from d.cn)
我们同样也缺少足够的钱去支付专业的市场营销或PR。但是依靠着苹果的App Store的
推荐，我们这款基于7万英镑预算的游戏获得了超乎预期的成功。
在对于我们所获得的成绩的评价时，我发了一条tweet表示，也许手机游戏在免费玩家
之间的盈利战导致开发社区更加依赖于“数据之谈”，同时渐渐忽视了一款优秀的游戏
会对玩家产生怎样的影响。关于开发者一味地追求娱乐而不是盈利到底有什么问题呢？
我们的成功与其它手机开发者的最大区别便在于我们选择以直接的费用去销售每一款游
戏，例如付费模式。
媒体选择了我们的故事，我们将其当成是一个引导成功的故事，但是手机产业中的一些
开发者采取的是完全不同的方式，将我们的成功当成是一种越轨（说得好听点是这样）
，甚至是一种危险的先例（说得难听点就是这样）。似乎我们的故事与手机游戏和免费
游戏间不断出现的传奇故事背道相驰。
Fireproof无意识地破坏了这一切，而上帝所制造的这一切让任何付费开发者连成了一
体。
我们需要谈谈虚拟的方向键
手机的确是由免费和休闲游戏所操控的一个领域。参加一场手机大会，你将会察觉到创
造或玩游戏的最有趣的的原因便是盈利。
如果你向发行商或投资者推广一款不是作为服务的游戏，他们可能会当着你的面摔门而
出。人们似乎已经达成了一致的看法：休闲和免费是“手机游戏想要的”，在这个要么
免费要么回家的世界中，Fireproof的坚持显得格外突兀。我们周边有许多创造了出色
作品的付费游戏开发者，Vlambeer和Capy等团队除外，但实际上却只有我们看到了这一
做法所带来的利益。
所以在今天，一款付费游戏是如何取得550万销量的好成绩已经不再是一个重要的问题
了，真正的问题是：在像手机一样巨大的市场中，Fireproof是如何在少数的付费游戏
创造者间看待这样的成功？
来自AAA级产业的Fireproof总是将手机看成是适合电子游戏的一个开放，可行且明主的
平台。当该平台最初来到开发领域时，它所许下的承诺是让游戏创造者能够以非常低的
开发成本和自由的能力直接面向公众销售游戏。
如此的好处让人目不暇接，AAA级游戏也想要来到这里，即想着它们那强大的视觉效果
和设计将战胜那些在手机平台上大受欢迎的“廉价的Facebook”类型游戏。
但事实上在前面几年时间里，AAA级游戏在手机平台上大多因为过于昂贵而遭遇了惨痛
的失败。我们的产业不能有效地战胜全新的平台，并发现全新的碰触界面其实是一种灾
难的降临，而非全新的机遇。
持续的亏损加上全球的财政紧缩大大缩减了全产业的预算，同时人们还将更多的视线转
向了具有较高投资回报率的软件领域。随着时间的发展，昂贵的沉浸式游戏作为一种选
择逐渐消失在人们的视线中，那些“廉价的Facebook”类型游戏才是最终的赢家。
尝试着将标准的控制模式强行带向触屏的虚拟方向键也只是更广泛的游戏产业不能认真
对待手机平台的表现。游戏产业是关于销售出色的互动体验给用户，我并不清楚那些喜
欢游戏的人们是否会正视手机排行榜。
从投资者到发行商到开发者再到媒体，手机领域对一些创造性要求，即迫切地想要寻找
想把游戏当成任何平台上一种有意义的文化空间的全新游戏领域充满敌意。
创造并破坏
免费游戏提倡将它们的模式当成一种主导性内容，因为“这是手机游戏玩家想要的”，
这解释了应用内部购买只是玩家传达他们所在乎的内容的方式。如果它们已经娱乐了某
一更加枯燥的理念，即免费游戏之所以受欢迎是因为某某原因，那么它们看起来会很假。
所以让我们深入研究无数乐于付费的手机玩家喜欢免费的休闲游戏的理念。
根据最近的数据，20%的手机游戏是属于玩家打开过一次便将其抛弃的内容。66%的手机
游戏体验不会维持到一天之后，而大多数购买也是出现在第一周。让人惊讶的是只有2%
至3%的玩家会为游戏花钱，更让人惊讶的还是游戏的50%收益是来自0.2%的玩家。
从统计上来看这只是一些关于玩家的微不足道的数字，不能为你搞清楚“人们想要什么
”提供一个基础。我认为这只是手机在流行趋势这条道路上的放纵，或者它们并不清楚
人们到底想要什么。
所以当听到游戏开发者在讨论休闲游戏是手机上的全新范式，很少有开发者真正喜欢这
样的游戏时，我真的很烦躁。免费游戏和休闲游戏应该成为更出色的游戏生态系统中的
一部分，但是现在它们的中心全在于手机平台。
不过有可能这些统计只是一种断章取义的表现，隐藏了市场自由且积极的动态性的真相
。好吧，畅销榜单前十名的游戏是不会同意的。
排行榜顶端被一些同样的游戏占据了好几年，少数大型游戏及其复制者非常缓慢地移动
着位置。充满好奇的游戏玩家在看待畅销游戏排行榜时会认为，这其实充斥着一些非常
普通的游戏体验但却获得了巨大的下载，从而导致高盈利游戏成为了如今我们的主流用
户唯一看得到的手机游戏。
自从我们在2012年发行了《The Room》以来，Fireproof已经赚得了500万美元以上的收
益，这对于我们这么一家小型工作室来说真的是一笔巨大的收益，能够帮助我们成为真
正的全职开发者。然而过几天便有报告表示《Candy Crush》和其它免费休闲游戏赚到
了更多收益。
如果地球上拥有最强大的支持，最高评级以及最幸运的付费游戏只能获得与某些休闲游
戏等量的销售，那么我们将面对的便是一个针头般大小的付费游戏市场—-这便意味着
手机用户缺少对于游戏的真正兴趣。
在2013年，手机游戏在全球范围内创造了100亿美元的收益。100亿虽然听起来是个巨大
的数字，但要知道单单《Candy Crush》的创造者便赚到了20亿美元。着眼于排行榜前
10名的游戏，那便是主导者游戏市场的内容；而这失款游戏大多都是彼此的复制品。来
自这些钱的剩余改变将分散到整个游戏产业区服务10亿台设备。
一个拥有2%“沉浸行为”的用户似乎不会为了致力于将玩家带进全新体验的创造性产业
做出贡献。在我们所生存的世界中，Netflix的内容能够让成人们感到兴奋，所以当98%
的玩家将更多钱花在卷笔刀而不是由我们的10亿美元领导者所创造的游戏时，它的手机
游戏是否也能做到这点？
一个富饶的生态系统既需要复苏的绿芽也需要古老的红杉，而如果免费游戏是一个伴随
着各种不同游戏的中立管道的话，所有这一切的影响力将变小。但是高盈利的财政模式
的必要阻碍和耐心本质将对沉浸感以及迷惑玩家的尝试产生阻碍。结果便是许多游戏设
计将不能把自己带向免费模式，因此不再那么愤世嫉俗的游戏世界将被迫切需要更棒的
内容的平台拒之门外。
我们的产业关于手机游戏的所有免费方法都不能将一个真正的游戏生态系统传达给手机
玩家或开发者，虽然我们已经耗费了好几年的世界，但是游戏世界的创造却仍停留在手
机领域。
免费模式自身为开发者和玩家的百万使用提供者服务，我已经投入了许多时间和金钱于
《坦克世界》，《战锤任务》等等游戏中—-这一模式并不是问题所在。
问题其实更加普通，即从整体来看，游戏产业正在创造没人真正关心并且适用于数百万
玩家的手机游戏。免费游戏的制作者同意质量水平是良好的，“如果它能够赚钱，它便
是好的，对吧？”其实并不是如此。在现实世界中，汉堡王并未拥有米其林三星的荣誉
。但是汉堡王却具有非常高的收益，这并不是因为它所获得的的评论，而我们的产业未
能意识到这种差别的事实将把我们逐渐带离创造性空间。
我们匆匆忙忙地创造一切免费的内容以确保能够榨尽整个手机市场的钱而作为我们努力
迎合少数人的喜好的补偿。在我们的手上，手机生态系统以盐进行播种，变成了灰尘，
并成为了游戏开发者的上帝的铁砧。
找不到关于未来的记录：我们需要现在开始写下来
最出色的的创造者会越过统计和市场假设而着眼于潜在的世界可能性。这也是为何真正
成功的游戏能够创造趋势，而普通的游戏会追随着它们的主要原因。真正的游戏粉丝清
楚这点；我们总是不断地寻找着新内容并追逐着任何能够变得更好的内容。但除了热情
的玩家外还有无数寻找着适合自己设备的内容的玩家。
手机将游戏呈现在无数几年前从未接触过这些内容的玩家面前。但是创造性业务是关于
迎合立基用户。从小说，电影和音乐中我们了解到必须创造各种内容才能匹配所有人的
口味，而强大的立基群体是带有强大的创造性中心的发达产业的标志。公平地来说，手
机游戏正在衰竭的一个原因是10亿名玩家想要玩不同的《Candy Clash Saga》1000次，
这真的太疯狂了。我们获得了统计数据，最佳比例是3%，所以我们便固定于此，然后开
始尝试其它内容。
与无数其它创造性市场所喜欢的内容相违背，我们的产业关于手机市场所勾勒的画面—
-“它们只是想要从休闲游戏上获得盈利”并不是全部的真相。实际上，考虑到这些游
戏较低的渗透率，这似乎就像在黑暗中吹口哨，并且更像是我们能够控制天气，然后抱
怨着何时下雨。没有用户会为无聊的游戏花钱，而极少数会这么做的用户将被随机记录
下来，就像任何设计亮点那样。
所以我们可以依赖什么，关于创造性市场我们到底知道些什么？人们将购买任何能够迎
合他们的内容，我们也特别喜欢被迷惑。人们想要看到热门的内容，他们希望自己的娱
乐内容足够大胆，自信且与众不同，他们想要拥有选择以及关于任何可能的心情的娱乐
。他们最终会将钱投资于那些呈现给自己之前从未看过的特别酷的内容上。
一旦游戏的乐趣元素足够多，像市场营销，PR，数据分析以及“提供给人们他们想要的
内容”等虚假的“成功之柱”将相继离去。我喜欢将《我的世界》作为这种情况的例子
，因为当我在玩游戏的时候特别享受于看到手机开发者眼中所流露出来的恐惧感。
手机游戏产业中的人喜欢将《我的世界》当成一种违反常规的事物。但对于我来说，他
们之所以这么做只是想将其带离让人不舒服的对话。
《我的世界》应该出现在任何关于手机成功的对话中，因为它是关于流程图和财政模式
如何传达我们所处的真正业务的典型例子。其巨大的规格并不是什么突变的内容，它真
的比手机或任何平台上的其它游戏出色多了。
我想这震慑到了大半个产业，但我真的很喜欢它。
《我的世界》并不是什么突变体，相反地它起着领导的作用。我们不应该忽视它，而是
应该专注于它：这是基于娱乐用户所获取的成功的表现。虽然我们很难像它那样获得2
亿美元的销售额，但前提是你需要2亿美元！相反地，对于像Fireproof这样的开发商来
说，200万美元已经是非常棒的成绩了，如果你拥有Notch 1%的能力，你便有可能赚到
《我的世界》1%的收益。
我认为这是我们在追逐手机游戏利润中所忘记的内容，即我们看不到数据树的创造性枝
干。对于我们的所有信息，我们已经收集了关于用户习惯和销售额等内容，但是提供乐
趣并激励用户的能力仍然是我们产业中富有创造性的人员的首要任务。我们交流，接触
并激励目标用户的能力也是任何艺术家或手艺人创造任何内容的基础。
手机作为一个平台去推动游戏发展的基本交流能力仍然保持着完整性。但是追逐巨大的
利益的逻辑性却开始自掘坟墓了。
在Fireproof，我们降低了对于资源的期待值，并且不去制定致胜计划，让自己能够自
由地创造可以引起同样作为玩家的我们的兴趣，正是如此我们的游戏才会引人注目。在
面对了几十年惊人的电子游戏，我们只有一个目标：尽所能创造出最棒且最让人感兴趣
的游戏。没有什么比这点更重要了，我们也忽视了任何并不支持这一目标的建议。
对于我们来说，去迎合一位用户的喜好太过疯狂了。我们所思考的是如何做才能创造出
任何优秀的游戏，而不只是手机游戏。良好的感觉控制，顺畅的画面，简单的互动，出
色的视觉效果都包含于吸引人的游戏世界中，并能够唤醒人们的意识。我们对于手机的
让步并不是对于任何事物的让步：我们尽可能地发挥触屏界面的功效，因为它实在是太
棒了。
所有的这些都未仔细考虑过能够影响深深着迷于免费模式的手机发行商的计划：我们的
数百万待销售的游戏将被扼杀在摇篮中。
那些依赖于数据的人将不再得到重视。大众将更想尝试一些特别的内容。这也是为何会
存在创造性市场的原因，统计对于受启发的创造行为没有任何说明。Henry Ford发行了
最早的生产线以及第一辆价格实惠的汽车，他说过：“如果我问人们他们想要的是什么
，他们的回答将会是跑得更快的马。”虽然这一引用是他虚构的，但却比无数真实的用
户数据更好地向我们创达了创造性工作的真相。
如果我们的用户不能事先告诉我们什么才是热门的内容，那么我们将承担艰难的构想工
作。我们可能会受到前辈的启发，但想出一些全新的内容才是真正迫在眉睫的工作，因
为这才是用户所追求的。像《The Room》，《Threes》，《Plague Inc.》，《Limbo》
，《我的世界》以及《新星足球》等游戏的成功告诉我们“那些了解市场的人的”智慧
永远不可能影响到无数玩家的生活。
讽刺的是，那些告诉你你的游戏不可能卖得好的人正是那些会在你的游戏取得成功之后
复制它的人。他们并不善于发挥想象力。看到他们依赖于数字的时候我们是否该感到惊
讶呢？
用户比我们中的任何人更加清楚事实，如果我们的手机公众通过购买发出了“我在乎”
的信号，那么我并不认为产业开始听从98%说着“我不在乎”的手机玩家的行为有多激
进。
（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：
游戏邦）
Mobile is burning, and free-to-play binds the hands of devs who want to help
by Barry Meade
In early March of this year Fireproof released the happy news that we’ve
collectively sold 5.5 million copies of our mobile games The Room and The
Room 2 since release.
At Fireproof we’d always heard a mobile game had to be a casual, free to
download, games-as-a-service title you can play for infinity. This was a
problem, as our game was short, dark and grim, had no social or online
aspect and contained no in-app purchases or adverts.
We also lacked any money to pay for professional Marketing or PR so upon its
release you could politely term our expectations as realistic. But backed
by a feature on Apple’s AppStore our wee game with a ￡70k budget went on
to see success we never could have expected.
Commenting on our surprising figures, I tweeted that maybe mobile gaming’s
war of total monetisation on free-to-play gamers has made the dev community
over reliant on “databollocks” while losing sight of how a good game can
affect its players. What’s wrong with a developer shooting for
entertainment instead of monetisation?
The biggest difference between our success and other mobile devs was that we
chose to sell each title for a straight fee, i.e. paid i.e. premium i.e. Ye
Olde Worlde Weirding Way.
The press picked up our story, which we imagined as a dashing and windswept
tale of bootstrap success against the odds, but some in the mobile industry
absorbed it differently, waving away our success as an aberration at best
and a dangerous precedent at worst. It seemed our story ran contrary to the
ongoing romance between mobile and free-to-play games.
Fireproof had drunkenly crashed this wedding, and what God has brought
together let no premium developer separate.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE VIRTUAL D-PAD
Mobile is truly a landscape dominated by free and casual games. Attend a
mobile conference and you’ll feel like clearly the most interesting reason
to make or play games is monetisation.
Pitch a title that isn’t games-as-a-service to publishers or investors and
they’ll practically install new doors to slam in your face. The narrative
has been agreed upon: casual and free is “what mobile gamers want” and in
this world of go-free-or-go-home, Fireproof stick out like a sore thumb. We
’re surrounded by other developers of premium games making excellent work
but, barring a few teams like Vlambeer and Capy, are practically alone in
seeing a decent profit.
So how a paid game happened to sell 5.5m in this day and age is not the
important question — the real question is the following: In a market as
huge as mobile how the fuck are Fireproof among the only makers of premium
games that saw this kind of success?
Coming from AAA, Fireproof always viewed mobile as open, accessible and
democratic, a bit of a playground for video game possibilities. When the
platform first came onto the dev scene its promise was insanely cheap
development costs and a liberating ability for game makers to sell direct to
the public.
The benefits were dizzying and AAA gaming wanted in, thinking its superior
visuals and design chops will crush the “cheap, Facebook-y” type games
that were becoming popular on mobile.
But the truth is that the first few years of AAA in mobile were dominated by
the catastrophic failure of expensive paid titles. Our industry completely
failed to grapple with the newness of the platform, seeing the great novelty
of the touch Interface as a pain instead of a new opportunity.
Ongoing deep losses coupled with worldwide austerity shrank budgets industry
-wide and the view shifted to software that showed high return on low
investment. Over time rich, immersive games faded away as an option and in
the right light those “cheap, Facebook-y” games looked pretty damn good
after all.
The virtual d-pad, the attempt to shove standard controls onto touch screens
, is merely symbolic of the historic failure of the wider games industry to
take mobile seriously and our hurried retreat from that market left behind a
negative space of ideas that festers like a black hole in mobile’s
ecosystem today. The games industry is about selling amazing interactive
experiences to people, and I don’t know how any person who loves games
could look at the mobile grossing charts and not despair.
From investment to publishing to developers to press, the mobile universe is
hostile to the creative urge, the high standards and the hunt to find new
gaming territory that is required to grow gaming as a meaningful cultural
space on any platform.
AS IT CREATES, SO IT DESTROYS
Free-to-play advocates naturally think their model is dominant because “
that’s what mobile gamers want,” explaining that in-app purchases are just
the players way of saying they care. If they’ve entertained the more dull
notion that free-to-play is popular because… well, it’s free? They seem
not to let on.
So lets drill into this idea of an ocean of spend-happy mobile gamers who
love free-to-play casual games and nothing else.
Recent data shows 20 percent of mobile games get opened once and never again
. 66 percent have never played beyond the first 24 hours and indeed most
purchases happen in the first week of play. Amazingly only around two to
three percent of gamers pay anything at all for games, and even more hair-
raising is the fact that 50 percent of all revenue comes from just 0.2
percent of players.
This is a statistically insignificant amount of happy gamers and nothing
that gives you a basis to make claims about “what people want”. I think it
just as likely that mobile’s orgy of casual titles is due to simple
bandwagon-ism or, in other words, not knowing what people want.
So it bothers me to hear game developers talking as if casual games are the
new paradigm on mobile when so very few developers are actually happy with
the games as they are, and mobile gamers clearly seem to “care” least of
all. Free-to-play and casual titles should be a part of a greater gaming
ecosystem, but right now they are the entirety of it on mobile.
But perhaps those stats are out of context and hide a greater truth of
market freedom and energetic dynamism. Well, the Top Ten grossing charts beg
to differ.
The top slots are a vision of inaction, occupied by the same games for over
a year, a few big beasts and their clones politely shuffling positions in a
Galapagos-like existence. Curious gamers see the top grossing charts, assume
it’s the primo shit and very ordinary gaming experiences get a download
frenzy, ensuring highly monetized games are now the only vision of mobile
gaming visible to our mainstream audience.
Since we released The Room in 2012 Fireproof has made over $5 million, a
life-changing amount to our small studio that paid for us to become full-
time developers. However Candy Crush and other top free casual games have
been reported to be making that much in a couple of days.
If the best-supported, highest-rated and outright luckiest premium games on
the planet only achieve lifetime sales equal to a couple of day’s revenue
for some casual games, we are dealing with a pinhead-sized paid game market
– and that suggests a lack of interest in gaming across the mobile audience.
In 2013 mobile games made over $10 billion globally and allegedly this is
great. $10 billion sounds a lot, it is a lot, but the makers of Candy Crush
alone took almost $2 billion. Throw in the top ten and there’s most of your
games market gone; hoovered up by ten cute grinding games that are clones
of each other. Any remaining change from that money is scraped off the table
and scattered across a games industry trying to service a billion devices.
A 2 percent “engaged’ audience does not seem towering in achievement for a
creative industry that looks to draw its players into new experiences. We’
re living in a world where Netflix’s content inspires hysteria in grown
adults, so is mobile gaming really in the same league when 98 percent of its
gamers spend more on pencil sharpeners than games made by our billion-
dollar leaders?
A fertile ecosystem needs lots of green shoots as well as the old redwoods,
and all this would matter less if free-to-play was a neutral pipeline
carrying a wide range of games. But the necessarily interruptive and
patience-trying nature of a highly monetised financial model works against
immersion and the attempt to spellbind a player that the best games achieve.
Consequentially many game designs will not lend themselves to free-to-play,
and thus a less cynical world of gaming goodness is denied a platform that
’s in desperate need of something better.
Our industry’s all-free-to-play approach in mobile has failed to deliver a
real gaming ecosystem to either mobile players or developers, and many years
into our work a universe of games remains to be made on mobile.
The free-to-play model itself serves a million uses to developers and gamers
, I’ve chucked lots of time and money into World of Tanks, Warhammer Quest
and many others myself — the model is not the problem.
The problem is more general, that taken as a whole the games industry is
making mobile games that nobody cares about available to millions of players
for nothing. Free-to-play producers chime that quality levels are obviously
fine, “If it’s making money it’s objectively good, see?” Well no, not
quite, shit sells by the ton every day. In the real world Burger King doesn
’t get three Michelin stars. Burger King gets to be happy with its revenue
not its reviews, and our industry’s inability to see the difference will
only pull us further into our creative vacuum.
Our rush to make everything free ensured we have drained the entire mobile
market of money in return for the accomplishment of pleasing a statistically
insignificant amount of people. In our hands mobile’s ecosystem has been
sown with salt, turned to dust and become God’s Anvil for game developers.
THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN: WE NEED TO GET WRITING
The best creators look beyond statistics and market assumptions to look at
potential, the world of what’s possible. This is why truly successful games
create trends and why mediocre games follow them. Any true game fan knows
this intrinsically; we’re on a constant hunt for the new, and chase
anything that sticks out as being better. But beyond enthusiast gamers are
hundreds of millions out there looking for something, anything, that is cool
for their device.
Mobile has injected gaming into the eyeballs of people who never would have
touched a game a few years ago. But a creative business is all about
catering to niches. We know from novels, film, music that we have to produce
a variety to suit all tastes, that well supported niches are a sign of a
developed industry with a strong inventive center.It’s fair to say one
reason mobile gaming is dying on its arse for developers is because the idea
that one billion gamers want to play variations of Candy-Clash-Saga a
thousand times is fucking insane. We’ve got the stats. It’s 3 percent at
best. So we’ve nailed that, time to try something else.
Set against the galaxy of content other creative markets enjoy, the picture
our industry paints about the mobile market – “They only want monetised
casual games” just can’t be the whole truth. In fact given the extremely
low penetration of these games it seems a kind of whistling in the dark, and
its more likely we’re making the weather then complaining when it rains.
No audience will pay for boring me-too games, and those few that do are so
tiny in number they can be chalked up to random chance as much as any design
brilliance.
So what can we bank on, what do we know in our bones about creative markets?
People will buy anything that entertains them, and we especially like to be
dazzled. People want hits, they want their entertainment bold, loud,
confident and different, they want choice, entertainment for every possible
mood. They ultimately give their money to the people that show them
something cool that they can’t get from anyone else.
As soon as the joy factor of a game is high enough all the fake “pillars
for success” like marketing, PR, data analysis and “giving people what
they want” crumble away like the mere scaffolding they are. I love to bring
up Minecraft as an example of this and it’s only somewhat because I enjoy
the terror in mobile developers eyes when I do.
Mobile game folk just love to wave away Minecraft as an anomaly. But to me
they call it an “outlier” in an attempt to count it out of an otherwise
uncomfortable conversation.
Minecraft needs to be counted the fuck in to every conversation about mobile
success because it’s a spectacular example of how flow charts and
financial models tell you fuck all about the real business we are in. Its
colossal size is not some mutant tumor, it really is that much better than
any other game on mobile or any platform.
I think this terrifies half the industry and I love it.
Minecraft is not an outlier, it’s a leader. It’s not to be ignored but
gazed at: this is what success based on pleasing an audience looks like.
Hell yes its $200m sales are a hard act to follow – but only if you need $
200m! $2 million on the other hand is a bonanza for developers like
Fireproof, and if you can be 1 percent as good as Notch maybe you can make 1
percent of Minecraft’s revenue.
I am arguing that this is what we have forgotten in our chase for mobile
profit, that we can’t see the creative woods for the data trees. For all
our mountains of information we’ve collected about user habits and sales,
the gut-level ability to give joy and inspire our audience remains the job
of our industry’s creative people first and every other industry role
second. Our ability to communicate to, reach and inspire the people that we
make things for is the foundation for everything any artist or craftsperson
ever produced.
The fundamental communication power of mobile as a platform to push gaming
remains entirely intact. But the logic of chasing mountainous profit is self
-defeating.
At Fireproof we reduced our expectations to the level of our slim resources
and by not planning to win big we freed ourselves to make stuff that
intrigued us as gamers, and that allowed us to stand out. Raised on decades
of amazing video games we only have one gear: make the best and most
interesting game we can. Nothing else matters and we ignored any advice that
didn’t support that goal.
To us it seemed crazy to pander to an audience. We thought about what makes
any game good, not just a mobile game. Great feeling controls, a smooth
camera, easy interaction, cool visuals, all wrapped in an intriguing game
world that wakes up the player’s brain. Our one concession to mobile was
not a concession at all: we did all we could to make the touch interface
sing because the touch interface is fucking great.
None of these carefully thought out plans would have made a lick of
difference to the free-to-play obsessed mobile publishers: our multi-million
selling game game would have been strangled at birth. Black would have been
white, up would have been down.
These people who cling to data are not to be listened to. Mass audiences
have a passion to enjoy special things. It’s why creative markets exist,
and statistics have nothing whatsoever to say about the act of inspired
creation. Henry Ford invented the first production line and the first
affordable car, and once said “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they
would have said faster horses”. The quote is mythical, but delivers more
truth about creative work than a million pages of factual user data.
If our audience can’t tell us up front what a hit looks like, the hard job
of dreaming remains up to us. We can be inspired by the old but conjuring up
the new is actually the job at hand, because that is what the audience is
after. The success of The Room speaks to that, as does Threes, Plague Inc.,
Limbo, Minecraft, New Star Soccer and many other games which, left to the
wisdom of “those who know the market” would have never arrived to brighten
the days of millions of gamers.
The irony is that the very people who tell you your game won’t sell are
exactly the kind who will copy the shit out of it once it does. They don’t
deal in dreams, imagination is not their forte. Are we really surprised that
they cling to numbers?
The audience knows better than all of us and if our mobile public truly does
signal “I care” through purchasing, I don’t think its radical for the
industry to start listening to the 98 percent of mobile gamers out there
saying “I don’t care.”(source:polygon)