On Facebook Games Operating Experiences

At this moment, perhaps in some corner of the world, a certain player is playing a game developed by China through Facebook. Facebook, as a social networking site with 1 billion users worldwide, is constantly reaping revenue for domestic game developers.

Although the social networking giant, because domestic game developers are not familiar with the site, especially small and medium-sized, want to promote their own game developers on Facebook, will encounter a variety of problems.

As the first big game publisher on Facebook 6waves, its general manager of China, Tang Chen, recently gave some suggestions in Chengdu. 6waves has 14 million monthly active users and 2 million daily active users on Facebook, and is also one of the first game distribution companies to help domestic development teams successfully distribute games overseas, such as Happy Farm, Animal Paradise, etc. .

Tang Chen took out the product development Bible that the company summed up over the years to share with hand tour developers in Chengdu and gave suggestions on going to the sea. Salt science and technology correspondent based on the content of his summary of the following two points:

Use social media to reduce market launch costs

Tang Chen said, "We have a product evaluation reference, this is our accumulation and summary of 6 years of publishing and developing products on Facebook, we call the product development of the Bible. There are mainly novice guide, the game viscosity, social communication, pay Design these four aspects. "

1, novice guide

He said it should be clear and clearly stated that the goal of the game, the best story, in this way, players can more easily understand the game. Use burrows or clear arrows on the screen to quickly get players to master the game's main interface and core gameplay, including game flow, task content, where tasks appear, store locations, and more.

Consumables (such as energy, speeding props and other single-use items) are one of the major sources of revenue. Therefore, you should teach players when to use consumables, teaching the process of introducing the most revenue-generating props the most crucial. Of course, also introduce the location of the store and how to use the coin to spend in the store.

The arrow is necessary throughout the tutorial. It helps guide players to focus on where the tutorials want them to learn. In addition, streamlined text usage is preferred because players do not want to see complex text. There are also players who can enter the game for the first time to invite friends, which will increase the spread of the game.

2, the game viscosity

It is how to improve the retention rate. Tang Chen suggested that there are several features that the daily landing system, mission system, achievement system, App to user, in the game area page set fans button and scoring system.

Continuous landing reward system every day, is already the industry standard features, which will definitely help enhance the player's stickiness. Such as landing for 5 consecutive days can get game props, non-sale incentives and so on.

In the mission system, all the gameplay and all the functions on Facebook need to be completely integrated to improve the sociality and playability of the game. It is suggested that the game can tell a story through the mission system and increase the player's input level.

Tasks should include the following games: buying in-game items (such as urban construction games), making gifts to friends, visiting friends, adding friends as neighbors, and spending time with friends in places such as helping friends ), Through the Facebook post feature to collect the necessary props, through the Facebook invitation feature to collect the necessary props.

Invitations are a typical way for a player to interact. In addition to interaction between players, developers can give players an invitation as an App, which helps bring older players back into the game. If there are a lot of players, we have to use bulk applications to speed up the delivery.

The game page (fan page) is very important to improve player stickiness and promote the game, you need to set in the game frame "become a fan" button to get the player's attention. Button position can be above or below the game frame. Increase the rating function, which will give the game some good feedback.

3, social communication

Tang Chen mentioned that social media will greatly reduce the cost of marketing, game advertising is now very expensive, the use of social functions Facebook can get a lot of natural traffic.

After the game player to complete the task posting is essential game essential. Such as the completion of tasks, upgrades, the completion of the construction of buildings, achievements, etc., should allow players to post, let players feel proud of the sports-type postings can promote the positivity of the players posting.

He said it has been empirically proven that if a post is published to help a player complete certain tasks, its spread is extremely high. Another of the most contagious posts is to interact with your friends and earn rewards by clicking on each other's posts. After the completion of the task can also post to the specified friend.

To increase social interaction between friends, developers need to prepare enough gifts. Targeted to send, click probability will be high. Recommended consumables as the main gift, encourage players to spend money to buy gifts, and every day into the game pop-up page to remind players, but not too many pop-up within a day.

Developers in the design of the game, keep in mind the design of some can only get the material from other players, these materials can help players to complete the task or building, of course, can also be designed to buy in the store. A well-designed, well-designed list of friends improves the game's communication and social activities among players.

After the game uses the Facebook Achievement API, the achievement message that the player achieves in the game is automatically posted to the Facebook wall (remember to use the Facebook Open Graph publish_action first), preferably to allow the player to score a few 25 points Achieve 50 points to increase gameplay. As Achievement's total score of 1000 points, Tang Chen suggested reserving a few hundred points to the game after the update.

4, paid design

One way to encourage players to pay is to provide players with shortcuts, such as expediting time-consuming work, unlocking features and completing tasks.

Consumables are one of the main sources of revenue for the game. Consumables are best disposable items and should ensure that there is at least one core consumable in the game. Tang Chen also stressed that the purchase discount is also a very effective way of marketing, but the discount needs careful design, pay attention to the discount time not too long, but it is best to delete the original price.

You should continually optimize your recharge options, highlighting 1 to 2 options as "Best Buy Items," to alert players; providing more money for higher priced recharge options; and setting up a wide range of top-up options to meet low purchasing power And high purchasing power of players; if the game uses dual currency system, you should open two currencies for players to buy.

Set clear goals and prepare for long-term operation

What to do to go to sea, Tang Chen take the basketball game metaphor, the game is like shooting, be sure to have a clear goal:

1, what do you want to achieve? Here's a look at the game: type, gameplay, theme and market reaction, and your own research and development strengths. And you know who your target audience is, the general public or a niche, or something in between.

2, how to define success. Including more specific goals, he said it would be ambiguous to go ahead and follow the trend if you see a type of game that is successful.

The targets include the key indicators (such as the hope of retaining the first day or what to save the next day), the leaderboard position (such as in the Facebook application ranking, ranking in the Apple Store), the location of the type chart.

There are also defined time periods of success, whether more investment is needed, whether continuous development is needed, content of the game is continually updated, and game balance is adjusted to make additional investments. Including the definition of this is a commercial product, or self-affirmation of the development team.

Tang Chen pointed out the key points: the goal to formulate your game release plan and distribution strategy, if you always follow the trend may not catch up with the limelight; pay close attention to market trends and competitors products; innovation and rapid market opportunities to seize the first failure; It is unavoidable, but requires preparation in advance; focus on your goals.

The game is just the beginning, Tang Chen get Kobe Bryant joined the Lakers in 2007 to get the MVP in 2007, analogy game on-line need to go to long-term online operations. He said through these years of gaming experience, a good game, when the decline in the number of users is the highest revenue, which means that product operation is critical.

Tang Chen mentioned, "We have a game operation for 2 years, no advertising investment, and now the revenue is still very good, almost every week there will be a peak, the day the proceeds will reach tens of thousands of dollars .This is also effective Operate online, there will be some weekly stimulating spending activities, re-allow users to pay again.

More shots, Tang Chen mentioned the use of cross-platform technology, so there will be more cross-platform choice. That is, how to reduce risk when defining product development. Take advantage of cross-platform technologies such as Unity, Adobe Air, and more, to make the product even more risky for a single platform.

Product localization is very important. Tang Chen said, "In May this year, the world's best-selling Apple game list, the top five games are basically the same, the first are mostly" tribal war ", as well as" Candy Crush "and so on, but One exception is Japan. "

Japan is completely different from the market. They all play their own games and can not see any foreign countries. Therefore, developers need to know more about the local market and local partners. The style must be transformed into the style of Japan and South Korea. To do globalization, not just language translation, more to do is culture.

Teamwork. To be better at doing something better. If it is CP, to do overseas distribution, Tang Chen gave a few suggestions you have to think about:

1, whether there is sufficient resources. Such as team size, product manager's understanding of overseas markets, customer service, stable server providers, server maintenance and more.

2, whether there is sufficient budget. For the market, advertising purchases, product promotion and import users.

3, whether to achieve global deployment.

4, able to market data and game data analysis, and know at the right time to market.

Tang Chen said that if these are lacking, is the need to find partners to play games together, because experienced distributors have a professional market-oriented operation, more accurate and scientific market launch and user import strategy, but also to give you more Product profitability and financial advice and so on.