GDC大会动态：Zynga高管谈社交游戏五个成功要点
GDC大会动态：Zynga高管谈社交游戏五个成功要点
在旧金山的游戏开发者大会（GDC）上，来自Zynga的顶级游戏开发者就FarmVille仓促且充满不确定性的开发过程发表了坦率的演讲。
Zynga的产品开发副总裁Mark Skaggs在演讲中解释了FarmVille团队是如何获取代码、大胆猜测、加速项目进程并最终创造出这款具有历史性意义的游戏。
Skaggs就如何创造最好的、最赚钱的社交游戏体验向与会开发者传授了一些成功经验。下文为游戏邦整理并编译的部分内容：
farmville
1.不能以数量取代质量
Skaggs向听众们解释道，所有的游戏、特别是社交游戏，必须优先考虑娱乐性。重要的是，给一个无聊的游戏增加再多额外内容也无法让它变得更好。“如果你买了一款60美元的游戏，并且在第一关就发现它很无趣，你不可能会跟自己说，‘好吧，至少还有999关可以玩’，你肯定会停止玩游戏。”
2.游戏不仅是游戏，更是一项服务
Skaggs告诉其他开发者必须把这个理念深深植入脑中，“你创建的是一个全天候的项目，一旦发布了一款游戏，就必须持续栽培它。”据游戏邦了解，“游戏是一种服务”这一精神近年来已被许多成功的电子游戏公司付诸实践。他认为，“实际上，我更愿意把Zynga视为一个平台开发商，而非游戏开发商。”他补充道，开发者可以在游戏发布前及时发现并修复许多问题，“因为在发布之后每一件事的难度都会加大，要修复漏洞，要考虑用户，还有更多事情要解决。”
3.不必介意男性玩家的看法
他坦言，“我太太曾经连续几天在空余时间玩单人纸牌、宝石迷阵等游戏，当你把这种特性与Facebook的社交元素相联系，就有可能让游戏获得爆炸式的发展。”他把这种情况称为“女系氏族网络”，认为实际上母亲和家庭主妇才是社交游戏的核心用户。
4.保证游戏的轻松、娱乐性和趣味性
Skaggs表示，社交游戏比传统游戏更应注重这一点，人们玩游戏的目的是为了获得轻松的娱乐体验。游戏邦获悉他认为，这是社交游戏最应该为用户提供的体验，并告知开发者要把他们的游戏当作一个网页，要让社交游戏的加载速度和打开网页一样快，从而保证用户留存率。
5.留存率是战役决胜点
在演讲结尾接受提问时，Skaggs告诉一名与会者，要把自己的社交游戏当做一个有漏洞的桶，要保证用户留存率就得堵住这些漏洞，“无论你往桶里倒多少水，如果无法留住那些水，桶里的水永远都不会再增加。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）
GDC11: Zynga’s five tips for social game success
Today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, a top game developer from Zynga spoke candidly of rushed and problematic development of FarmVille.
Mark Skaggs, Zynga VP of product development, explained in an hour-long lecture how his FarmVille team stole code, made guesses, sped through the project’s development and – in the end – make history.
Permeating this grand tale – which you can read here – Skaggs offered other developers in the room tips on how to make the best and most lucrative social experiences.
Develop has compiled and listed them, below:
1: “You can’t make up from boring with volume.”
Here, Skaggs is explaining to the audience that all games, especially social networking games, need to prioritise fun. Importantly, adding extra content to a boring game won’t make it better. “If you buy a sixty dollar game and, by the first level, you realise it’s not fun, you don’t say to yourself ‘well at least there are 999 more of these levels to play’. No, you just stop playing.”
2. “You’re no longer building games.”
Skaggs told other developers in the room to drill this idea into their heads. “You’re building a twenty-four-seven business. Once you launch a game, you have to grow it.” He is speaking from the famous games-as-a-service ethos well practiced in recent years by successful digital games companies. “In fact, I like to see Zynga as a developer of platforms, not games.” He added that much of battle can be won before a game ships: “After launch everything is much harder. There’s bugs to fix, users to look at, and lots more to do”.
3. Never mind the males
“I’ve seen my wife play solitaire, Bejeweled, and the rest, days on end in their spare time,” Skaggs said. “When you apply that to the social elements of Facebook, that’s when a game’s popularity can explode”. Here he spoke of what he calls “the matriarch network”, a suggestion that it is actually mothers and housewives that can provide your core audience.
4. “Keep it light, fun and happy”
Skaggs said that, even more so with social games than traditional, people join for a light entertainment experience.” He said it was paramount that this is what social games provided, and told developers to see their games as a webpage. He said social games needed to be fast to load and easy to move around in to retain audiences.
5. Retention is the battle
Taking questions at the end of his well-received speech, Skaggs told one attendee to think of his social game as a bucket with holes, and that retaining his audience’s attention was like plugging those holes. “It doesn’t matter how much water you pour into the bucket, if you don’t retain the water you’ll always end up with the same amount,” he said.(source:develop-online)