《密教模拟器》手游移植两三事

因为一些原因，最近又刷了刷 gamasutra 。看到了这篇挺有趣的文章。内容是《密教模拟器》作者分享的一些数据和感想，主题是移动版的成绩。

其实里面的数据和图表对于主流受众应该是挺无聊的。但这个作者的描述很有趣，加上我也觉得没必要任何文字都只为主流服务。所以就抓了蛮有意思的几句过来。如有错误，欢迎指正。

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localising into simplified Chinese was a great idea

这是作者在开头总结里的一句话。（我把这句话和相关内容放第一句不是为了迎合时下的爱国情绪。事实上，这篇文章有没有人看都是未知数。只是这句话在作者的嘴中确实很有分量）这句话我一开始没有理解到位。直到我后面看了这么几个数据：

（1）美区营收占比和国区营收占比分别为总占比的 32% 和 31% 。第三是英国，占比 11% ，第四开始就是个位数了。（截止到成文时，2019 年 6 月 20 日。）

（2）游戏在 App Store 的几个峰值都和中国区推荐有关。

（3）当开发者从 steam 上看到中俄玩家的购买力后敲定移动版首发本地化了。但因为发行商打算在伦敦游戏节上线，所以把发售时间提前了 2~4 周。因此，俄语本地化没有在发售时完成。

（4）游戏在中国没有大规模宣传，是因为游戏名里“密教（cult）”这个词。之所以这么办是因为听了发行商的建议。还有，游戏在美国没有拿到 App Store 的推荐。作者给出的论断是“在美国，‘邪教’是个严肃话题。”

（5）虽然国区在营收区中占第二位。但中国是在 Google Play 上缺席的。（缺席原因是个人都懂。我其实蛮好奇，如果当时开放了国区 Google Play，营收有多少？我觉得应该不会太多。因为即便有正版渠道，大多数人应该还是会选盗版。）

（6）虽说没有大规模推广，但基本的宣传在中国还是有的。这中间，发行商联系了indienova。巧的是，一部分本地化也是 indienova 承包的。


I wasn’t in charge of our marketing campaign like I was for the PC launch, but from what I saw, it seems (ironically) a lot harder to mobilise a mobile audience than a PC one. Everything seems more ephemeral: there are fewer mobile press outlets, much less interest in open development, and almost no mobile-specific communities you can tap on the road to release. I guess this is what you get from a much more casual audience who wouldn’t describe themselves as ‘gamers’ as much as your traditional PC player. There’ll be a way to nab ’em, I’m sure – but I haven’t figured out how yet!

围观了发行流程后，作者感慨移动端的发行其实要比 PC 难。主要是相关媒体的稀罕，移动端受众对社区交流不在意，以及开发者和受众直接交流的社区缺位。最后作者来了句感叹，这就是为什么移动端受众不会像传统 PC 端玩家一样，疯狂以‘玩家’自居。


Featuring is much more of a thing on the App Store, where they have multiple games editors selecting Games of the Day, ‘Games we’re playing now’, top genre lists, top indie picks, top ten games around a particular theme…
The Google Play Store is much more algorithmically driven. As far as I understand, Google Play wants its algorithm to recommend particular games to particular users based on their previous purchase habits. If you’ve played any premium narrative games in the past few weeks, you may see Cultist Simulator appear in your store. But if all you play is Candy Crush, maybe you won’t. Correct me below if I’m wrong!

App Store 和 Google Play 的推荐方式完全不一样。前者倾向于编辑选荐，后者倾向于机器分发。销售图表上，前者的销售高峰分为几次，后者是一次。


Playdigious recommended focusing only on Google Play pre-registrations, as Apple’s pre-order system discounts pre-orders from your launch numbers and so undermines your app’s performance at launch (like the problems moving from Early Access to full launch on Steam). They also recommended pricing Cultist much higher than I’d expected – $6.99 / £6.99 – but offering a 30% discount (ish) for early adopters. This meant anyone pre-registering would get Cultist for $4.99 / £4.99, and to be fair to App Store users, we’d offer the same price point for one week at launch across both stores.

游戏发售前搞了预约。预约用户可以享受 30% 的折扣。从 7 美元降到 5 美元。一开始折扣只提供给 Google Play 预约用户，这是因为App Store 预约系统会把预约玩家在销售人数里去掉。换句话说，这会让销售数据很难看。但为了公平，游戏在 App Store 上线的一周内也提供了 30% off 。


premium mobile ports are a good strategy for extra £ if you’re a small indie studio (this was a moderate success, so we’ll probably do this again)
but if you actually want to make revenue comparable to PC, F2P / subscription models are better bets (shocking, I know).

作者认为，相较于买断制，订阅制的收入可能会更高。但即使是买断制收入对小型独游工作室来说也算横财了。


we signed a 50/50 rev split with Playdigious, a great porting house/publisher
We signed a 50% rev share deal where Playdigious covered the cost of porting and took responsibility for the project, leaving us to stick our noses in as much or as little as we liked. We were free to focus on Cultist‘s PC development and other Weather Factory projects (like, say, BOOK OF HOURS).
Playdigious doing a great job of the port, and coming up with an excellent touch-screen evolution of our original UI

开发商和发行商的分成是一半一半。发行商落实了移植的主要工作，并弄出了不错的触屏交互界面。这为开发商有精力搞 PC 端维护和新作开发提供了很大帮助。


原文： Cultist Simulator mobile: The all-singing, all-dancing data dump