????總部位于舊金山的移動游戲公司Kabam乍一看去怎么都不像一家能成功的游戲公司。

????這家公司的CEO凱文?周今年只有33歲，既不是志得意滿的天才畢業(yè)生，也沒在哪個知名大公司當(dāng)過高管。這家公司的核心客戶是游戲玩家，而不是家庭主婦，因此一向不是很出名。而且它的業(yè)務(wù)也不依賴于Facebook等任何一個社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)平臺，也就意味著媒體不會把它當(dāng)成哪個行業(yè)興衰的風(fēng)向標(biāo)來炒作。

????它的背景雖然簡單，但成就卻讓人刮目相看。

????Kabam公司所有的游戲一開始都是免費(fèi)對用戶開放的，但它的收入正在呈均衡的、爆炸式的增長，而且已經(jīng)成為移動游戲領(lǐng)域的重磅選手之一。凱文?周介紹說：“四年前，我們公司還在一家點(diǎn)心鋪的樓上，公司只有25個人。今天，我們在全球已經(jīng)有700多名員工，其中一半在舊金山，其他人分布在奧斯汀、北京、首爾、溫哥華、柏林等地的辦公室?！?/p>

????地域化差異對于游戲業(yè)來說非常重要，盡管所有的所謂“電子游戲”本質(zhì)上都差不多，但玩家對他們的青睞卻呈現(xiàn)絕對的地域化傾向。因此kabam公司在它的柏林辦事處對旗下的所有游戲進(jìn)行了“本土化”，把這些游戲翻譯成16種不同的語言，而且針對各國文化和“國情”對游戲做出適當(dāng)?shù)男薷?，其中只有韓國是個例外。凱文?周表示，韓國雖然只有6000萬人口，但它的移動游戲玩家的人數(shù)基本上和美國持平，因此這家公司特地在韓國建立了專門的本土化工作室。

????Kabam是一家風(fēng)投注資的私營公司，主要有三大業(yè)務(wù)。其一是制作自家品牌的游戲，比如《亞瑟王國》（ Kingdoms of Camelot）等。其二是與好萊塢的大電影公司合作，比如該公司與華納兄弟公司（Warner Bros.）合作制作的《霍比特人》（The Hobbit）系列游戲【華納兄弟公司同時也是電影《霍比特人》和《指環(huán)王》（Lord of the Rings ）系列的制片方。華納兄弟的負(fù)責(zé)人凱文?蘇吉哈拉最近加入了Kabam的董事會，華納兄弟公司還對Kabam進(jìn)行了一筆不小的投資。華納兄弟和《財富》雜志的母公司時代公司（Time Inc.）一樣，也是時代華納集團(tuán)（Time Warner）的一家子公司】。算上獨(dú)立開發(fā)和合作制作，Kabam一共已經(jīng)開發(fā)了11款游戲，平均每款游戲的制作成本大約在500萬美元左右，其中大量的設(shè)計、編程、動畫和制作都是在北京的工作室完成的，Kabam的北京工作室目前有250名員工。

????Kabam的第三項(xiàng)業(yè)務(wù)則充分顯示了它的聰明和頭腦。它專門在美國設(shè)立了一個部門，幫助美國以外（尤其是中國）的游戲開發(fā)商開發(fā)、發(fā)行游戲。然后，Kabam再把這些游戲針對美國市場進(jìn)行翻譯和本土化，也就是像凱文?周說的那樣：“我們把這些游戲和我們自己的游戲互相推向?qū)Ψ降氖袌??！?/p>

????如今的游戲業(yè)已經(jīng)發(fā)展得非常復(fù)雜，有些大廠商推出了專門的游戲機(jī)，有些游戲公司專門主打面向Facebook用戶的簡單游戲。相比之下，Kabam的戰(zhàn)略可謂獨(dú)樹一幟。Kabam的游戲都是免費(fèi)下載，賺錢主要靠銷售游戲道具，比如寶劍、盔甲等道具以及各種“消耗品”（比如補(bǔ)紅、補(bǔ)藍(lán)的“功能飲料” ）。Kabam把營收重點(diǎn)放在了所謂的“核心”游戲上，也就是那些敘事龐大、難度越來越高的復(fù)雜游戲。幾乎所有的Kabam游戲都能在智能手機(jī)或平板電腦上操作。這一點(diǎn)與主打“休閑游戲”的Zynga公司形成了鮮明對比，因?yàn)槟欠N休閑游戲主要是為臺式機(jī)時代設(shè)計的。另外凱文?周還說：“我們的用戶平均每天會在線玩兩個小時?！币虼耍@家公司的一些熱門游戲的收入一直相當(dāng)可觀，尤其是已經(jīng)上線了整整四年的《亞瑟王國》。

????Kabam, the San Francisco mobile gaming company, has all the wrong things going for it.

????Its 33-year-old founder and CEO, Kevin Chou, is neither an arrogant new college graduate nor a high-profile former big-company executive. The company's core customers are gamers, not housewives, giving Kabam a certain dog-bites-man quality about it. And its fortunes aren't tied to any one social media platform, such as Facebook, which means that members of the press do not use Kabam an example of any single goliath's rise, fall, or re-birth.

????The narrative's simplicity is rather refreshing.

????Still, the "free-to-play" gaming company -- all of whose games are initially free to users -- is ringing up explosive, balanced growth in a new field where it is one of the major players. "Four years ago, we were 25 people above a dim sum restaurant," Chou says. "Today we have 700 people worldwide." Half of them are in San Francisco. The others are spread out in offices in Austin, Beijing, Seoul, Vancouver, and Berlin.

????This geographic diversity is key, because while the ethos of what used to quaintly be called "videogames" is universal, the adoption of them is overwhelmingly local. From Kabam's Berlin office, the company "localizes" all its games (save for the Korean market) by translating them into 16 different languages and making cultural adjustments that please local users. (South Korea, with a population of 60 million, has an equal number of mobile gamers as the U.S., Chou says, which is why it gets its own localization studio.)

????Privately held and venture-capital backed Kabam has three distinct businesses. One is to create its own games, like Kingdoms of Camelot. The second is to co-produce with big Hollywood studios. It is responsible for The Hobbit game, which Kabam developed for and financed with Warner Bros., producer of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films. (Warner Bros. head Kevin Tsujihara recently joined the Kabam board, and the film studio invested in the company -- an investment that sits on the balance sheet of Warner Bros., Chou says, as opposed Time Warner. Fortune's publisher, Time Inc., is a subsidiary of Time Warner (TWX).) Between its own games and co-productions, Kabam has developed 11 games. Production costs average about $5 million, and much of the designing, coding, animation, and engineering takes place at its 250-person studio in Beijing.

????The company's third of line business shows its dexterity. It has started a unit to develop and publish games in the U.S. for non-U.S. game developers, especially in China. "We cross-market those games with ours," after translating and localizing them for the U.S. market, Chou says.

????Kabam's take on mobile games is distinct in a complex gaming world that includes major releases for dedicated gaming consoles to simple games targeted at Facebook (FB) users. Kabam's games cost nothing to download, but the company makes money by selling users in-game tools like swords and armor and "consumables" like food and drink. Kabam identifies its area of focus as "core" games -- that is, relatively complex games with narratives and increasing levels of difficulty. Nearly all of the action happens on smartphones and tablets. The approach contrasts with Zynga's (ZNGA) focus on "casual" games that were designed to be popular in the desktop web era. "Our average player plays for two hours a day," Chou says. As a result, he says, some of the company's top-performing games remain at peak revenue, particularly Kingdoms of Camelot, a four-year-old franchise.