Why the time has come for real browser-based 3D games!
Today we have a lot of opportunities to create incredible projects that players can see without closing their browser. This is not just a beautiful “farm” (they have been made for a long time and successfully, I will not tell the revelations in this area). It's about projects of a completely different kind.
Full-fledged shooter in full 3D? Easy.
MMORPG in the next from the "Habra" tab? Not a problem either.
The question arises - why have thousands of such projects not already been created? There are two answers and both of them are trivial: technology and audience readiness. The technological base, capable of providing all the necessary conditions, appeared not so long ago, a year and a half, maybe two years ago. The audience, in turn, over the same period of time matured and became much more demanding of the entertainment offered by, say, a social network. We combine these two factors and get almost a new trend, where there is money, the audience, viral growth and scope for creativity.
')
This statement caught your attention? Then let's try to understand everything in stages, starting with the general situation in the market of browser games.
Note: the material was prepared on the basis of a report at the last DevGAMM 2014 conference. Under the cat there are a few pictures, but a lot of text, some calculated numbers on the design and a number of useful metrics.
If you think about it, browser games are a rare guest on any venue, be it a conference or a game portal. The information field is divided between retail AAA projects, mobile games and client MOs. The news about the browser will be associated more with its closure. As with the Lord of Ultima, a strategy published by EA. Even developers have the feeling that the market is more dead than alive. In fact, among the browsers of our usual formation, there are interesting examples, earning from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a month.
Here is a partial list of browser games successfully presented on the domestic market: “ Tanks Online ” (Alternativa), “ Dragons ” (Game Insight), “ Rules of War ” (Plarium), “ Botva Online ” (Destiny), “ Heaven ” (2RealLife) , Technomage (GD-Team) and others
If we briefly recall the history of browsers, it turns out that despite the rapid start and very impressive examples of income (one “Fight Club” is worth something) - the direction did not attract hundreds of followers. There was no incredible “boom” when everyone either wanted, tried, or made his own browser project. Many colleagues attribute this to the fact that for their time, browsers were fairly large and technologically complex. There were no ready-made engines and frameworks; everyone developed the server infrastructure from scratch and to his own taste, stuffing cones on live players. Developing them turned out to be long, expensive, and with an incomprehensible result. Client MMORPG is a little simpler, but to this day they are developed by units in the territory of the CIS (offhand, except for Allods Team / Mail.ru, no one remembers). In other words, the browser at one time rested on the ceiling, above which they jumped only after many years.
What happened in these few years. The social market has rapidly developed. At first everyone could enter it, the requirements for the gameplay were frankly low. Technical difficulties were encountered, but they were solved much easier. The opportunity for $ 15-30,000 to “collect” your own simple social project, which at least will return the money spent - has attracted a lot of both beginners and experienced developers.
In fact, a completely new and fresh audience was opened for browser games at that time, but many decided to work directly on the networks, rather than attracting players to their stand-alone projects. Social authorizations have evolved somewhat later.
Gradually, the market grew, it appeared more or more large projects. “ Rules of War ”, “ Zombie Farm ”, “ Tyuryaga ”, “ Mysterious House ”. All these games raised the bar for quality for social programs, brought new experience and greatly changed the landscape in the market. The development of this level requires tens of people, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. To a certain extent, thanks to them, the once-overlooked stand-alone browsers were made up for: a visual row, mechanics, and many-sided core-gameplay.
If we look at the same “ Rules of War ”, then they, being heirs to hardcore browser strategies, quickly mastered the audience of social networks and went beyond their borders. “PV” are launched as a separate browser project with social authorizations and on a number of browser platforms (for example, Games.Mail). The quality of the project has significantly outgrown some kind of template idea of the “sshal”. And the audience has long been ready to take this high quality.
Now we have two options: to fight with the leaders of the market, or to look out for a new trend. To be with the leaders is always a difficult task. A task that requires huge budgets, experienced professionals and much more that is not available to everyone. On the other hand, trends do not open every day. What is even sadder is that most of them see them only when a good dozen colleagues declare their success in the new arena. On the one hand, we want to risk everything and firmly grab onto luck. On the other hand, subconsciously we are afraid of failure, we are waiting for the confirmation of our hypotheses. I will reveal the secret - when you heard several enthusiastic reports about a trend, it is no longer there. There is only a niche explored by other players, which they also began to occupy. Yes, it is possible to be in time - the sooner you realize it, the better, but this is already a catch-up game. But we want not to catch up, but to run far ahead ...
A couple of years ago, 3D games on Unity began to appear in VK. The first were ugly, unpretentious and generally attracted little attention. Partly due to poor quality, partly due to large thresholds due to the unfamiliar Unity Player. It was too early to judge something promising. Maybe the projects were bad, maybe the platform they are simply not needed, maybe their time has not come yet.
The situation changed dramatically after the release of Contract Wars - a full-fledged F2P 3D shooter on Unity. The project famously passed through several stages of evolution and immediately raised the bar for quality. We must pay tribute - the project still holds it at a very high level, although it is already several years old.
After such a push, things got off the ground and on the “vKontakte” open spaces several more successful 3D projects appeared. Not all have survived to this day, but new, not less interesting games have appeared. All of them are essentially MOBA-shooters or "survivors":
To clearly understand the picture of what is happening and to be able to compare with projects of another kind, it is worth considering a number of indicators. Here are some interesting metrics averaged on the basis of discussions with colleagues (including from the number of projects above):
If you look closely, it turns out to be a very interesting niche. With indicators at the level of good social projects and a tendency to growth. In order to more precisely understand “where are we getting involved”, let's consider and analyze several myths that are persistently related to 3D games in the browser, in particular on social networks.
It would seem - 3D, real-time server, content distributors (CDN), etc. - must form a very high cost of development. In fact, everything is completely different. To implement core-gameplay, all you need is just two people - a client-programmer on Unity and a server programmer, let's say in Java (for working with SmartFox). A GUI is a complex block of work, but with the proper desire it can be outsourced. 3D art is similar. Moreover, there is the Asset Store, where there are very professional (unlike many other resources) “semi-finished products” for games - effects, models, animations. From the heap of spare parts one beautiful game can not be collected, but you can significantly reduce the cost of outsourcing. If we strive for a certain ideal, then the team would not be prevented by the 3rd participant - an art lead, who knows how to work with hands and interact with external performers. EVERYTHING! This is really EVERYTHING you need to start a project. On average, a good level 3D project is done from 4 to 8 months. Elementary mathematics tells us the next burn rate of a team that is 100% capable of doing something worthwhile and interesting:
per month **: 190,000
for the whole development : from 760 tr. up to 1,500 tr.
In the above examples of completed 3D projects, there are games made by both 1 and 2 people. Hence the conclusion - you can rely on this experience in your projects. Of course, some undertakings may be much larger, requiring 5-10-15 people only for the preparation of the MBT, but we are considering the possibility of easy entry. A lot of people, large RFP, a long development period - this is an automatic threshold for entering the market.
Closer to the launch will add the cost of the server and, possibly, CDN. A couple of servers rented at Selectel or Hetzner will cost you 300-500 dollars. CDN, if you need it before the start of really serious workloads, from $ 400 a month. In total, a little bit of iron support will cost you $ 1,000 more. By the time you start spending this amount on iron, you should clearly understand that if a game is not able to pay for such expenses, then you have done something wrong.
Forget about buying your piece of iron for 100-200-300 tr. etc. It is not “once 300 instead of 10 times 30”. NOT! Having bought your servers, you will also pay rent for their installation in an equipped room, diagnostics, and possibly also a separate sysadmin in the team. For basic work with machines rented from a good host, you are likely to have enough knowledge of a server programmer.
Calculations do not claim to be “accounting accurate.” They are only intended to show orders and scales. At the same time, I (the author of the report and this article) are ready to help privately with the calculations for your projects: to estimate the options for grouping a team (outsourcing, remote, office), RFP forks, rebate, etc. Write in PM, comments, skype and help than I can
* speech, of course, about the remote developer and the option of adequate money saving. If we consider the plug of the Moscow RFP to an office and experienced Unity-developer, then it probably only begins with 70 and reaches 130-150 tr. but such a developer you can attract in essence only in the presence of direct investment. According to the server Java-developer: 80 000 - 160 000 rub., According to the artist: 60 000 - 110 000 rub.
** calculated without office, etc., the argument in “*”.
Installing Unity Player (more on this below), unfamiliar gameplay, quite high (compared to most flash-games) hardware requirements. The factors seem to inevitably lead to great difficulties in attracting an audience. But here there is an interesting feature! Most of these projects do not spend money on advertising. And not because it cannot (the income is quietly estimated at millions of rubles per month), but because they simply do not need more installations per day on the same “vKontakte” than virality does. Yes, yes, that same virality, about whose death all the developers of social games are likely to have their ears buzzed (for the big ones, everything is fine with her now).
This virality is not even in posts, notifications and alerts. A word of mouth radio. I go to the project, I see really beautiful, high-quality 3D, I play a couple of fights and ... I want to call my friend here. To boast a boon, to share emotions, yes trite “PvP or zassal.” Using this distribution channel, you can attract from 3 to 10,000 users a day to the game (minus the natural outflow).
Moreover, the social networks themselves give you the opportunity to reach a critical mass of the audience. And she, in turn, is very supportive of well-submitted 3D. For example, being new to Odnoklassniki with a cool icon - you can attract up to 80,000 users to the game per day. You will occupy a noticeable place in the catalog of fresh games for about a week. Given the attenuation of installations every day, done for free, you can get up to 500,000 installations. If you have a bad icon, then this volume can be easily divided by 5. Such is the perception feature of the UEC audience that motivates you to position the quality of the game right away, starting with its icon.
It is noteworthy that non-3D projects of such indicators to attract an audience are rarely reached. Especially the tendency of “burning” in 3D is manifested in “VK”, where even amateur projects quietly recruit hundreds of thousands of installations after approval by moderators (there is still no place in the catalog of new products).
Let's try to see the growth of the 3D project the first month of its existence, since the approval by the moderators on the basis of our “Steel Wars”:
The graph is presented on the basis of internal VC-statistics for 31 days from the moment of approval. On this graph, the project grows simply from the catalog of the latest games added to the network. During the first month we did not submit an application for a catalog of new products, which makes it possible to nail the game’s banner to the top of the catalog for 7 days. Thus, growth is seen in the picture, which is called on the pure “wow effect” and viral. A catalog of new products later brought another 300,000 installations.
The description of the growth rate of the application was made with one simple goal - to show the audience’s reaction to a 3D project. In turn, a positive reaction and growth without advertising means a free market with a growing demand. More and more like a trend is not it?
The most common and dangerous myth about 3D, originating from the birth of the Unity Web Player. It is not a secret for anyone that the user is passive - he doesn’t want to decide anything, he wants nicely, 3D, and so that he doesn’t have to do anything for it. And a few years ago for 3D it was just the same that I had to do, and a lot of things. To begin with, the pioneer was asked to download a player unfamiliar to him. Say, it's like a Flash Player, only Unity Player and without it you can’t play our wonderful game.
What did the majority do? That's right - the player and the game are wonderful too.
What did the developer get? Also true - a huge threshold for entering the game. There were reports that even for high-quality (for those times) games, the threshold could reach 60% percent. Unthinkable losses that are difficult to justify by any beauty within the application.
Today, the picture has completely changed. The player, thanks to the proliferation of the Unity engine, has gained a huge audience of tens, if not hundreds of millions of users. According to our estimates (based on “Steel Wars”) - Unity Player is in 50-55% of users coming into the game. The remaining 50% and must be convinced. Agree, the task is greatly simplified.
In addition to the installation, a brand has been created. This is an intangible, but very important characteristic that shows the recognition of your logo, names and products. Players are already much more willing to install the player. In our experience - for the first time after the start of the project, the failures on the standard installation page of the player were from 28 to 33%. Not fatal against the background of rapid growth, but still unpleasant.
Remembering our experience with the Metal War shooter (and the workshop is the WEB version of the Metal War client shooter) - we decided to approach the player installation process more “marketing”. The fact is that when you bring the registration to the site of your client project, you need to convince the player not just to download the player in a couple of hundred kilobytes, but to register, verify by mail, download the launcher and update the client to a couple of gigabytes. In this case, the player who fell away at any stage is a big problem. For persuasion, a good landing-page is most often used, or else a promotional page with a brief description, screenshots and a trailer.
We also built the original Landing-page to install the player in the social network. It looks like this:
The state of affairs before and after entering is graphically represented below:
On average, the number of "failures" fell to 15%. Of course, we all would like 0%, but this does not happen even among Flash games. We add here the “wow effect”, a good growth rate and we get a profit.
The market for 3D browsers could start its development somewhat earlier. But the trouble is that we have for a long time incorrectly considered this opportunity. Having acquired the progressive technology in their hands, many (including the author of these lines) tried to transfer the classical social mechanics into three-dimensional space.
If we were talking about racing, then it certainly turned out to be a maybroot with a stupid AI and quit-style quests. About the shooter - a shooting gallery with ugly models of enemies and a hero standing in one place. It was worth thinking much more widely - when a player is ready for a new technology, he is ready for a new scale of confrontation, for PvP. Racing - drift against his friend in the streets of a fictional city. Shooter - a hurricane desmatch with Quake tilt or thoughtful battles like CS. The audience was waiting for this. As soon as such projects appeared, “fun technology” turned into a trend, which is already bringing millions of rubles to its followers. Not far off and millions of dollars. We talk a lot about growing up mechanics, browser development and multiplatform. Now is the time to stop idle discussions and just start developing!
Note : if the material is of interest to readers, then its continuation will certainly follow. Here is a set of theses that can still be covered:
Full-fledged shooter in full 3D? Easy.
MMORPG in the next from the "Habra" tab? Not a problem either.
The question arises - why have thousands of such projects not already been created? There are two answers and both of them are trivial: technology and audience readiness. The technological base, capable of providing all the necessary conditions, appeared not so long ago, a year and a half, maybe two years ago. The audience, in turn, over the same period of time matured and became much more demanding of the entertainment offered by, say, a social network. We combine these two factors and get almost a new trend, where there is money, the audience, viral growth and scope for creativity.
')
This statement caught your attention? Then let's try to understand everything in stages, starting with the general situation in the market of browser games.
Note: the material was prepared on the basis of a report at the last DevGAMM 2014 conference. Under the cat there are a few pictures, but a lot of text, some calculated numbers on the design and a number of useful metrics.
Stage 1: the formation and attenuation of the browser market
If you think about it, browser games are a rare guest on any venue, be it a conference or a game portal. The information field is divided between retail AAA projects, mobile games and client MOs. The news about the browser will be associated more with its closure. As with the Lord of Ultima, a strategy published by EA. Even developers have the feeling that the market is more dead than alive. In fact, among the browsers of our usual formation, there are interesting examples, earning from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a month.
Here is a partial list of browser games successfully presented on the domestic market: “ Tanks Online ” (Alternativa), “ Dragons ” (Game Insight), “ Rules of War ” (Plarium), “ Botva Online ” (Destiny), “ Heaven ” (2RealLife) , Technomage (GD-Team) and others
If we briefly recall the history of browsers, it turns out that despite the rapid start and very impressive examples of income (one “Fight Club” is worth something) - the direction did not attract hundreds of followers. There was no incredible “boom” when everyone either wanted, tried, or made his own browser project. Many colleagues attribute this to the fact that for their time, browsers were fairly large and technologically complex. There were no ready-made engines and frameworks; everyone developed the server infrastructure from scratch and to his own taste, stuffing cones on live players. Developing them turned out to be long, expensive, and with an incomprehensible result. Client MMORPG is a little simpler, but to this day they are developed by units in the territory of the CIS (offhand, except for Allods Team / Mail.ru, no one remembers). In other words, the browser at one time rested on the ceiling, above which they jumped only after many years.
What happened in these few years. The social market has rapidly developed. At first everyone could enter it, the requirements for the gameplay were frankly low. Technical difficulties were encountered, but they were solved much easier. The opportunity for $ 15-30,000 to “collect” your own simple social project, which at least will return the money spent - has attracted a lot of both beginners and experienced developers.
In fact, a completely new and fresh audience was opened for browser games at that time, but many decided to work directly on the networks, rather than attracting players to their stand-alone projects. Social authorizations have evolved somewhat later.
Stage 2: the development of the mechanic of social games
Gradually, the market grew, it appeared more or more large projects. “ Rules of War ”, “ Zombie Farm ”, “ Tyuryaga ”, “ Mysterious House ”. All these games raised the bar for quality for social programs, brought new experience and greatly changed the landscape in the market. The development of this level requires tens of people, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. To a certain extent, thanks to them, the once-overlooked stand-alone browsers were made up for: a visual row, mechanics, and many-sided core-gameplay.
If we look at the same “ Rules of War ”, then they, being heirs to hardcore browser strategies, quickly mastered the audience of social networks and went beyond their borders. “PV” are launched as a separate browser project with social authorizations and on a number of browser platforms (for example, Games.Mail). The quality of the project has significantly outgrown some kind of template idea of the “sshal”. And the audience has long been ready to take this high quality.
Stage 3: the emergence of a new trend
Now we have two options: to fight with the leaders of the market, or to look out for a new trend. To be with the leaders is always a difficult task. A task that requires huge budgets, experienced professionals and much more that is not available to everyone. On the other hand, trends do not open every day. What is even sadder is that most of them see them only when a good dozen colleagues declare their success in the new arena. On the one hand, we want to risk everything and firmly grab onto luck. On the other hand, subconsciously we are afraid of failure, we are waiting for the confirmation of our hypotheses. I will reveal the secret - when you heard several enthusiastic reports about a trend, it is no longer there. There is only a niche explored by other players, which they also began to occupy. Yes, it is possible to be in time - the sooner you realize it, the better, but this is already a catch-up game. But we want not to catch up, but to run far ahead ...
It is possible that one undistracted trend is looming in front of us right now.
A couple of years ago, 3D games on Unity began to appear in VK. The first were ugly, unpretentious and generally attracted little attention. Partly due to poor quality, partly due to large thresholds due to the unfamiliar Unity Player. It was too early to judge something promising. Maybe the projects were bad, maybe the platform they are simply not needed, maybe their time has not come yet.
The situation changed dramatically after the release of Contract Wars - a full-fledged F2P 3D shooter on Unity. The project famously passed through several stages of evolution and immediately raised the bar for quality. We must pay tribute - the project still holds it at a very high level, although it is already several years old.
After such a push, things got off the ground and on the “vKontakte” open spaces several more successful 3D projects appeared. Not all have survived to this day, but new, not less interesting games have appeared. All of them are essentially MOBA-shooters or "survivors":
To clearly understand the picture of what is happening and to be able to compare with projects of another kind, it is worth considering a number of indicators. Here are some interesting metrics averaged on the basis of discussions with colleagues (including from the number of projects above):
If you look closely, it turns out to be a very interesting niche. With indicators at the level of good social projects and a tendency to growth. In order to more precisely understand “where are we getting involved”, let's consider and analyze several myths that are persistently related to 3D games in the browser, in particular on social networks.
Myth number 1: huge expenses on the team
It would seem - 3D, real-time server, content distributors (CDN), etc. - must form a very high cost of development. In fact, everything is completely different. To implement core-gameplay, all you need is just two people - a client-programmer on Unity and a server programmer, let's say in Java (for working with SmartFox). A GUI is a complex block of work, but with the proper desire it can be outsourced. 3D art is similar. Moreover, there is the Asset Store, where there are very professional (unlike many other resources) “semi-finished products” for games - effects, models, animations. From the heap of spare parts one beautiful game can not be collected, but you can significantly reduce the cost of outsourcing. If we strive for a certain ideal, then the team would not be prevented by the 3rd participant - an art lead, who knows how to work with hands and interact with external performers. EVERYTHING! This is really EVERYTHING you need to start a project. On average, a good level 3D project is done from 4 to 8 months. Elementary mathematics tells us the next burn rate of a team that is 100% capable of doing something worthwhile and interesting:
- Client programmer - 1 pc - 60 000 *
- Server programmer - 1 pc - 60 000
- Leading Artist - 1 piece - 70 000
Costs:
per month **: 190,000
for the whole development : from 760 tr. up to 1,500 tr.
In the above examples of completed 3D projects, there are games made by both 1 and 2 people. Hence the conclusion - you can rely on this experience in your projects. Of course, some undertakings may be much larger, requiring 5-10-15 people only for the preparation of the MBT, but we are considering the possibility of easy entry. A lot of people, large RFP, a long development period - this is an automatic threshold for entering the market.
Closer to the launch will add the cost of the server and, possibly, CDN. A couple of servers rented at Selectel or Hetzner will cost you 300-500 dollars. CDN, if you need it before the start of really serious workloads, from $ 400 a month. In total, a little bit of iron support will cost you $ 1,000 more. By the time you start spending this amount on iron, you should clearly understand that if a game is not able to pay for such expenses, then you have done something wrong.
Forget about buying your piece of iron for 100-200-300 tr. etc. It is not “once 300 instead of 10 times 30”. NOT! Having bought your servers, you will also pay rent for their installation in an equipped room, diagnostics, and possibly also a separate sysadmin in the team. For basic work with machines rented from a good host, you are likely to have enough knowledge of a server programmer.
Calculations do not claim to be “accounting accurate.” They are only intended to show orders and scales. At the same time, I (the author of the report and this article) are ready to help privately with the calculations for your projects: to estimate the options for grouping a team (outsourcing, remote, office), RFP forks, rebate, etc. Write in PM, comments, skype and help than I can
Total:
it seems everything is clear with orders of spending - hundreds of thousands of rubles, maybe a couple of millions. Does this look like a huge budget? By no means. Myth is not confirmed!* speech, of course, about the remote developer and the option of adequate money saving. If we consider the plug of the Moscow RFP to an office and experienced Unity-developer, then it probably only begins with 70 and reaches 130-150 tr. but such a developer you can attract in essence only in the presence of direct investment. According to the server Java-developer: 80 000 - 160 000 rub., According to the artist: 60 000 - 110 000 rub.
** calculated without office, etc., the argument in “*”.
Myth number 2 - the ultimate marketing budget
Installing Unity Player (more on this below), unfamiliar gameplay, quite high (compared to most flash-games) hardware requirements. The factors seem to inevitably lead to great difficulties in attracting an audience. But here there is an interesting feature! Most of these projects do not spend money on advertising. And not because it cannot (the income is quietly estimated at millions of rubles per month), but because they simply do not need more installations per day on the same “vKontakte” than virality does. Yes, yes, that same virality, about whose death all the developers of social games are likely to have their ears buzzed (for the big ones, everything is fine with her now).
This virality is not even in posts, notifications and alerts. A word of mouth radio. I go to the project, I see really beautiful, high-quality 3D, I play a couple of fights and ... I want to call my friend here. To boast a boon, to share emotions, yes trite “PvP or zassal.” Using this distribution channel, you can attract from 3 to 10,000 users a day to the game (minus the natural outflow).
Moreover, the social networks themselves give you the opportunity to reach a critical mass of the audience. And she, in turn, is very supportive of well-submitted 3D. For example, being new to Odnoklassniki with a cool icon - you can attract up to 80,000 users to the game per day. You will occupy a noticeable place in the catalog of fresh games for about a week. Given the attenuation of installations every day, done for free, you can get up to 500,000 installations. If you have a bad icon, then this volume can be easily divided by 5. Such is the perception feature of the UEC audience that motivates you to position the quality of the game right away, starting with its icon.
It is noteworthy that non-3D projects of such indicators to attract an audience are rarely reached. Especially the tendency of “burning” in 3D is manifested in “VK”, where even amateur projects quietly recruit hundreds of thousands of installations after approval by moderators (there is still no place in the catalog of new products).
Let's try to see the growth of the 3D project the first month of its existence, since the approval by the moderators on the basis of our “Steel Wars”:
The graph is presented on the basis of internal VC-statistics for 31 days from the moment of approval. On this graph, the project grows simply from the catalog of the latest games added to the network. During the first month we did not submit an application for a catalog of new products, which makes it possible to nail the game’s banner to the top of the catalog for 7 days. Thus, growth is seen in the picture, which is called on the pure “wow effect” and viral. A catalog of new products later brought another 300,000 installations.
The description of the growth rate of the application was made with one simple goal - to show the audience’s reaction to a 3D project. In turn, a positive reaction and growth without advertising means a free market with a growing demand. More and more like a trend is not it?
Total:
starting advertising budget - 0 rubles. Hundreds of thousands of installations “from the network” and a good “viral residue” of 3-8,000 installations per day. The myth of the huge investments in marketing - not confirmed!Myth number 3 - thresholds and dropouts users
The most common and dangerous myth about 3D, originating from the birth of the Unity Web Player. It is not a secret for anyone that the user is passive - he doesn’t want to decide anything, he wants nicely, 3D, and so that he doesn’t have to do anything for it. And a few years ago for 3D it was just the same that I had to do, and a lot of things. To begin with, the pioneer was asked to download a player unfamiliar to him. Say, it's like a Flash Player, only Unity Player and without it you can’t play our wonderful game.
What did the majority do? That's right - the player and the game are wonderful too.
What did the developer get? Also true - a huge threshold for entering the game. There were reports that even for high-quality (for those times) games, the threshold could reach 60% percent. Unthinkable losses that are difficult to justify by any beauty within the application.
Today, the picture has completely changed. The player, thanks to the proliferation of the Unity engine, has gained a huge audience of tens, if not hundreds of millions of users. According to our estimates (based on “Steel Wars”) - Unity Player is in 50-55% of users coming into the game. The remaining 50% and must be convinced. Agree, the task is greatly simplified.
In addition to the installation, a brand has been created. This is an intangible, but very important characteristic that shows the recognition of your logo, names and products. Players are already much more willing to install the player. In our experience - for the first time after the start of the project, the failures on the standard installation page of the player were from 28 to 33%. Not fatal against the background of rapid growth, but still unpleasant.
Remembering our experience with the Metal War shooter (and the workshop is the WEB version of the Metal War client shooter) - we decided to approach the player installation process more “marketing”. The fact is that when you bring the registration to the site of your client project, you need to convince the player not just to download the player in a couple of hundred kilobytes, but to register, verify by mail, download the launcher and update the client to a couple of gigabytes. In this case, the player who fell away at any stage is a big problem. For persuasion, a good landing-page is most often used, or else a promotional page with a brief description, screenshots and a trailer.
We also built the original Landing-page to install the player in the social network. It looks like this:
The state of affairs before and after entering is graphically represented below:
On average, the number of "failures" fell to 15%. Of course, we all would like 0%, but this does not happen even among Flash games. We add here the “wow effect”, a good growth rate and we get a profit.
Total:
the myth that with Web Player it is impossible to get a lot of active audience destroyed. Although in general it collapses by the very fact of the existence of such projects with millions of installations and hundreds of thousands of DAUs like Contract Wars , Blockade , Contra City , etc.Coming to a conclusion
The market for 3D browsers could start its development somewhat earlier. But the trouble is that we have for a long time incorrectly considered this opportunity. Having acquired the progressive technology in their hands, many (including the author of these lines) tried to transfer the classical social mechanics into three-dimensional space.
If we were talking about racing, then it certainly turned out to be a maybroot with a stupid AI and quit-style quests. About the shooter - a shooting gallery with ugly models of enemies and a hero standing in one place. It was worth thinking much more widely - when a player is ready for a new technology, he is ready for a new scale of confrontation, for PvP. Racing - drift against his friend in the streets of a fictional city. Shooter - a hurricane desmatch with Quake tilt or thoughtful battles like CS. The audience was waiting for this. As soon as such projects appeared, “fun technology” turned into a trend, which is already bringing millions of rubles to its followers. Not far off and millions of dollars. We talk a lot about growing up mechanics, browser development and multiplatform. Now is the time to stop idle discussions and just start developing!
Note : if the material is of interest to readers, then its continuation will certainly follow. Here is a set of theses that can still be covered:
- Transition from social networks to stand-alone web - changing project indicators, marketing budget for project development outside social networks, etc .;
- Porting the project to WEB (in our case, the client shooter is sported to WEB while preserving a single world for users);
- What to expect from a single world with different entry points;
- The cost and timing of porting.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/223317/
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