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育碧多伦多工作室总经理称有信心进军社交领域

婕德·雷蒙德(Jade Raymond)曾是《刺客信条》(Assassin’s Creed)的制作人,现担任育碧多伦多工作室的总经理,目前正带领该工作室制作新的项目。但这绝不会是另一款《刺客信条》游戏,因为该工作室目前也正积极向社交领域进军。

游戏邦获悉,在拉斯维加斯2011年DICE峰会上,Jade Raymond在访谈中表示开发商不需要对社交游戏心存恐惧。虽然这一行业与传统游戏有所不同,但她觉得社交游戏与传统游戏的开发体验大同小异,开发商只需换个角度看问题即可。

jade-raymond-assassins-creed

jade-raymond-assassins-creed

她认为,这一领域有两个值得关注的要素是“社会认同”(social proof)和“社交许可”(social permission)。“社会认同”是指玩家的游戏成果、奖章以及其他可以向朋友炫耀的东西,让朋友知道你所取得的成就。

“社交许可”是指在空间中和朋友交流的权利——通过一些小互动来维持友谊。她表示,“人们有时候需要以游戏为纽带,与朋友互相交流,显然大型多人模式游戏在这方面已经领先了一步”。

雷蒙德十分赞同这样一个观点:万变不离其宗。粉丝团依旧占据重要地位,举个例子,“《星际迷航》(Star Trek)项目多次差点被取消,还不是粉丝把它救回来的”, 她说道。

据游戏邦了解,Raymond在负责开发《模拟人生》(the Sims)的时候发现,“制作者愿意花大把的时间倾听粉丝的心声,观察他们的举动”,因为从中可以选择一些内容来填充游戏,她说道。

那么这些经历对新工作室的成立有何积极影响?虽然AAA游戏就用户粘性和吸引性方面,可能不尽如人意,但她坦言自己很喜欢行业中可以改变路线的观念。虽然时间可能很紧迫,“但从零开始,感觉真的很棒”,她说道,“还得思考如何适应这些新变化”。

“在制作《刺客信条》时,我们花了一年的时间进行制作前的构思,尽量开发出一款很棒的游戏”,仔细考虑了游戏的剧情和画面架构,“我同时也认识到推出新作品的机会真的很难得”。这也正是她对新工作室的游戏进军社交领域的信心所在。她表示,《刺客信条》的团队花了不少功夫考虑“如何制造沙盒,好让将来接手这个项目的团队和公司更容易测试和推出创新”。

她认为维持游戏生命力的最好方式,为玩家创造自我发展和探索的空间,并强调停滞不前对游戏百害而无一利。要成功获得丰富的故事情节,得重视粉丝的意见。

雷蒙德表示如果粉丝真的喜欢这个游戏,他们就会创造新的内容。但更重要的是,“如果他们真心喜欢一个游戏,真的想体验它,他们就会和朋友一起分享”。

据游戏邦了解,制作了《刺客信条》后,该公司还试图开发可以转交给其他专业人士的游戏。针对他们在多伦多工作室制作的新项目,雷蒙德表示“我真的想创作一些可以转交到粉丝手上的东西”。

回想起在育碧蒙特利尔工作室的日子,雷蒙德表示她花了许多时间思考游戏的沟通策略。“为了让游戏受热捧,就得让游戏像电影或其他新作品,成为具有娱乐性的事件”。

她认为,玩家如果想保持游戏体验,就不会排斥付费购买游戏,“玩家并不想错过新游戏,或者新品牌”。

但是育碧多伦多工作室有自己的理念,就如她说言,“游戏本身就是一种超越…我希望我们的下个游戏可以击败其他竞争者”。

雷蒙德认为,游戏不仅是人们的谈资,更是一种交流的平台。“游戏不仅仅是一个娱乐事件,我希望我的下个游戏可以是用户广泛分享的休闲体验”。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

DICE 2011: Ubisoft’s Raymond Says Games Are ‘Becoming The Water Cooler’

Jade Raymond, onetime producer on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, is now leading Ubisoft Toronto as managing director, guiding the studio to a new IP. But this won’t just be another Assassin’s per-se, as the studio is also looking into the social space.

Social game elements don’t have to be scary to developers, she said in her brief Gamasutra-attended talk at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas. Though things may appear to have changed about the industry, she feels they’re ultimately similar to the experiences developers have already been making. You just have to think about them in a somewhat different light.

Two of the biggest things to focus on have been “social proof” and “social permission.” Social proof represents things like achievements, badges, and things you can show off to your friends that let them know of your success.

Social permission is about the permission to talk to your friends in this space – keeping friendships going through small interactions. Sometimes, she says, “we need games as a way or excuse to talk to each other. Obviously the massively multiplayer games have gotten this for a while.”

She reminded the audience that these concepts aren’t coming from nowhere. “It might seem new,” she said, “but it’s been around for a while.”

Raymond was very much a proponent of the idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Fans are still important, for instance. “Star Trek got nearly canceled a lot of times, and got brought back from the brink by the fans,” she said.

When Raymond was working on the Sims franchise, she noted that “Will [Wright] would spend hours and hours looking at the fan stories, and what fans were doing,” and he would choose what to make an expansion about based on that, she said.

So how does all this stuff impact building a new studio? While triple-A games are having a bit of a bleed in terms of gamer retention and interest, “I like idea of our industry being able to correct course,” said Raymond. Even though times are tough, “it’s a great time to start with a blank slate,” she said, “and think about how you’re going to adapt to these new changes.”

“On Assassin’s Creed, we spent a year of pre-production thinking not just about how to make a great game,” but also how to build that franchise’s metastory and meta arch, she said. “I also realized how rare it is to get the opportunity to create a new property from scratch.” So this is why she’s making sure the studio’s new games can expand naturally into the social space.

With Assassin’s, the team spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to potentially build the franchise out further – “How to create sandboxes so each future team and future media [working on the series] would be able to experiment and come up with new ideas,” in her words.

“The best way to maintain your franchise is to make sure that people have their own area to develop and explore,” she said, asserting that stagnation does no franchise any good. And in order to successfully have a lot of story arcs, you have to rely on fans, she says.

Raymond says that when fans really love the franchise they’ll create great content. On top of that, “if they really want a franchise for themselves, and they really want to own it, they will share it with their friends.”

With Assassin’s Creed, the company was trying to create a franchise that could be handed over to other professionals. With the new IP they’re making in Toronto, “I really hope we’re creating something that we can hand over to the fans,” she says.

Back in the Ubi Montreal days, Raymond says she dedicated a lot of time to thinking about the communication strategy. “A launch of a game, in order to be a hit, has to be an entertainment event, like a film or other new IP.”

Players will buy games if they feel they need to buy them to stay relevant, she feels. “You don’t want to be that guy that doesn’t know the newest game, or new indie band.”

But Ubisoft Toronto wants to take that cooler, as she says that “games aren’t just what you talk about around the water color, they’re becoming the water cooler itself … I would hope our next new IP would become the neighborhood bar.”

Raymond says the sweet spot is if the game is not just the topic of discussion, but also the venue for it. To conclude, she summed up by saying, “instead of a game just being the next entertainment event, I’d like our next IP to be the next widely-shared pastime.”(Source:Gamasutra)


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