Zynga在Facebook平台的长期统治可能快要结束了，这家一度炙手可热的社交游戏开发商正因竞争对手的迅速崛起而黯然失色，该竞争对手有一个应景的名字——King.com。

    市场研究公司AppDate的数据显示，King.com的热门游戏《糖果粉碎传奇》（Candy Crush Saga）已经取代Zynga的《农场小镇2》（Farmville 2）成为Facebook平台最受欢迎的游戏。前者的日活跃玩家为970万，后者的数字是880万。总部设在欧洲的King.com目前拥有365名员工，该公司在伦敦、旧金山和欧洲各地都设有办事处。

    尽管《糖果粉碎传奇》可能在日活跃玩家这项指标上取得领先，但《农场小镇2》仍然位居月活跃玩家数量的首位，两款游戏的这项数据分别为2,580万和4,180万。不过，考虑到King.com直到2011年4月才在Facebook平台推出第一款游戏——尽管King.com创立于2003年——该公司的增长非常引人注目。《糖果粉碎传奇》出现的时间则更晚，直到去年4月才在Facebook上线。

    “在不到18个月时间里，King.com已经凭借7,000万月活跃玩家成为Facebook平台的第二大游戏开发商，”Facebook欧洲市场游戏合作负责人朱利安•科多尼尔在一份新闻稿中称。“全球只有少数几家科技公司能够如此迅速地获得这么多的用户。”

    King.com的联合创始人兼首席执行官里卡尔多•扎科尼表示，大部分增长来自于游戏日益强大的跨平台能力以及同步功能，即玩家可以在一款设备上（比如平板电脑）开始游戏，然后在另一款设备上（比如智能手机或传统的台式电脑）结束游戏。“我们将广受欢迎的游戏移植到移动平台，并让游戏实现跨平台的无缝对接和同步，这种转变立刻激发了休闲游戏玩家的兴趣，”扎科尼在一份声明中称。“我们在社交游戏和移动游戏两个领域都取得巨大的增长。”

    跟《农场小镇》相比，《糖果粉碎传奇》的游戏理念简单至极，它被归入“瓷块匹配”游戏的大类：用户只要将3块颜色相同、位置相邻的糖果排成一线，就能使之消失并得分。King.com开发的大多数游戏都被归入这一类，人们都说这类休闲游戏容易上手、不占用大量时间，但要成为高手并不容易。

    尽管传统游戏玩家长久以来一直看不上瓷块匹配游戏——因为太简单，而且谈不上益智——但这类游戏随着智能手机和平板电脑的崛起已经卷土重来。“英国有80%的人会经常在手机上玩游戏，他们寻求的是便捷，”King.com的首席营销官亚历克斯•戴尔说。“他们想要的是在工作休息时间、回家的列车上或是在沙发上休息时能够玩的游戏。”

    Zynga's long reign over Facebook may be coming to an end. The once-hot social game maker risks being eclipsed by the dramatic rise of a competitor, the aptly named King.com.

    Figures from AppData show that King.com's hit game Candy Crush Sagahas overtaken Zynga's (ZNGA)Farmville 2 to become the top game on Facebook (FB), with 9.7 million daily players compared to Farmville's 8.8 million. The Europe-based King.com currently has 365 employees with offices in London, San Francisco and across Europe.

    While Candy Crush Saga might lead the daily user figures, Farmville 2 is still ahead when it comes to monthly active users, with 41.8 million to Candy Crush Saga's 25.8 million. Still, the growth has been remarkable considering King.com only launched its first game on Facebook in April 2011, even though the company has been around since 2003. Candy Crush Saga is even more recent, launching on Facebook in April last year.

    "In less than 18 months King.com has become the second largest game developer on the Facebook platform with 70 million monthly active users," said Julien Codorniou, head of European gaming partnerships at Facebook in a press release. "Only a few technology companies in the world have reached so many people so quickly."

    King.com CEO and co-founder Riccardo Zacconi says much of the growth came from the games' growing availability across multiple platforms and the synchronization feature, where a game may be started on one device such as a tablet and finished on another, like a smartphone or traditional desktop. "The transition to moving our popular games to mobile and making the playability both seamless and synchronized across multiple platforms has generated immediate interest from casual games players," said Zacconi in a statement. "We've seen tremendous growth across both social and mobile games charts."

    Compared to Farmville, Candy Crush Saga is based on an extremely simple concept. It falls under the "tile-matching" game category: users win points for lining up three candies of the same color next to each other so that they disappear. Most of King.com's games fall into this category of casual games, described as titles that are easy to learn, don't take a lot of time to complete but can be difficult to master.

    While traditional gamers have long looked down on tile-matching games for being too simple and not intellectually stimulating, the category is making a comeback along with the rise of smartphones and tablets. "Eighty percent of people in the U.K. play games on their phone regularly, what they're looking for is convenience," says Alex Dale, chief marketing officer at King.com. "They want something they can play in between breaks at work, coming home on the train or while relaxing on a sofa."

    市场研究公司IDC公司的游戏行业分析师刘易斯•沃德称，Zynga的《农场小镇》、《城市小镇》（Cityville）和《黑帮战争》（Mafia Wars）这类资源管理类游戏并不总能非常好地移植到手机平台，因为它们是针对桌面电脑开发的。而且最初是以奥多比公司（Adobe）的Flash格式编写而成，而iPhone并不支持Flash。“为了让游戏在手机上运行，它的尺寸必须更小一些，时间要更短一些，而用户界面必须更加直观，”沃德说道。鉴于Facebook的10亿用户有60%会通过手机进行访问，没有哪家开发商会愿意错失这块蛋糕。

    King.com的另一部分增长是源自该公司在多个不同平台上对流行游戏的成功移植。在King.com的游戏网络，用户每月玩游戏的次数已经从一年前的10亿次增长到50亿次。该公司网站运营着150多款游戏，但只有表现最好的游戏才会移植到Facebook平台，在Facebook受到欢迎的游戏会经过改编移植到移动设备。King.com目前在Facebook平台发布了13款游戏，其中只有表现最出色的《糖果粉碎传奇》和《泡泡女巫传说》（Bubble Witch Sagas）被移植到了苹果（Apple）的iOS平台以及谷歌（Google）的安卓平台。

    戴尔称，这套做法让开发人员赋予一款游戏在各个平台成为热门焦点的最大机会。他说：“它让我们能够了解哪些可行，同时也让我们在重新开发时能够减少商业上的风险。”面向Facebook平台成功移植游戏的另一个关键要素在于“对其进行社会化包装”。它意味着让用户能够跟好友一起玩游戏——不管是组队合作还是相互竞争——同时让用户分享自己的统计数据和分数。

    King.com是一家私人公司，至今已经融得4,300万美元的风险资金，投资者包括安佰深公司（Apax partners）和指数创投（Index Ventures）。King.com从2005年开始一直保持盈利，目前拥有三种不同的营收来源。在显示广告之外，King.com的游戏还通过“微交易”赚钱，即玩家可以支付一小笔钱进入游戏的下一级，或购买“魅力值”让他们在游戏中获得额外的生命或能力。另外，针对那些付费进行相互对抗以赢取现金大奖的高阶玩家，King.com也会收取比赛费用。

    最有利可图的广告战略可能要属King.com的“激励式视频广告”，即要想在游戏中获得额外的生命或进入游戏的下一级，玩家既可以选择付费，也可以选择耐着性子把赞助商的视频广告看完。“比之横幅广告，任何一家能够做到这些的公司可能都更喜欢视频广告，”沃德说。“这类广告的每次广告展现营收要高很多。”MediaMind最近发布报告称，比之一般的横幅广告，消费者点进在线视频广告的几率要高27倍。

    高德纳公司（Gartner）的游戏行业分析师布莱恩•布劳表示，King.com崛起迅速，但仍然存在小心谨慎的理由。“游戏流行时，它们往往会很快起飞，”布劳说。“King.com拥有人才和资源，但考虑到游戏行业诡谲多变的特性，它是否会继续取得成功还很难说。”（财富中文网）

    译者：王灿均

    IDC gaming analyst Lewis Ward says typical resource management games like Zynga's Farmville, Cityville and Mafia Wars don't always translate well to a mobile format, since they were developed for the PC and initially written in Adobe's (ADBE) Flash, which isn't supported on the iPhone. "For games to work on mobile, they have to be smaller, the length of play has to be shorter and the user interface has to be more intuitive," says Ward. Given that about 60% of Facebook's 1 billion users access it through mobile, it's not a boat any developer would want to miss.

    Another part of King.com's growth has been its successful adaptation of popular games across different platforms. The total number of gameplays across King.com's network has increased to 5 billion a month, up from 1 billion a year ago. The King.com website hosts over 150 games but only the best performing ones are developed for Facebook. From there, the most popular are developed for mobile devices. King.com currently has 13 games on Facebook, out of which only the top performing Candy Crush and Bubble Witch Sagas have made it to Apple's (AAPL) iOS and Google's (GOOG) Android.

    Dale says the approach allows developers to give the game the best chance to become a hit on every platform. "It enables us to understand what works and also allows us to mitigate the risk of business when re-developing," he says. Another key component of successfully translating a game for Facebook is to "put it in a social wrapper." This means enabling users to play with friends, either collaborating or competing against one another while sharing their stats and scores.

    The privately held King.com has to date received $43 million in venture funding. Investors include Apax partners and Index Ventures. The company has been profitable since 2005 and currently has three different revenue streams. Along with display advertising, the games make money on "micro transactions" where players can pay small amounts of money to advance to the next level of a game or purchase a "charm" that gives them an extra life or bonus ability for a game. There are also tournament fees for more advanced gamers who pay to play against each other and win cash prizes.

    The most lucrative advertising strategy might just be King.com's "incentivized video ads" where players have the option of either making a purchase for an extra life or access to a new level or they can sit through a video ad for a sponsor. "Any company that can do it would probably prefer it to a banner ad," says Ward. "The revenue per impressions for these kinds of ads is far better." MediaMind recently reported that consumers are 27 times more likely to click-through online video ads than standard banners.

    The rise of King.com has been rapid but there's still reason to be circumspect, says Brian Blau, gaming analyst at Gartner. "When games become popular, they tend to take off very quickly," says Blau. "King.com has the talent and the resources but it's very hard to say whether they'll continue to be successful given the fickle nature of the gaming industry."