在本周二于纽约举办的Engage数字游戏大会上，Zynga首席游戏设计师布莱恩·雷诺兹（Brian Reynolds）透露了该公司的成功法门。Zynga的社交游戏大获成功，在很大程度上是因为它们可以让人们在轻松游戏的同时，和之前并无深交的朋友保持联系。

Brian Reynolds

雷诺兹表示，“这些游戏可以让人们和自己在乎的友人保持联系。”许多好友会在Zynga游戏中相互合作，但一般用户也会在《FarmVille》或《MafiaWars》等游戏中与更多“通常没有交流”的点头之交进行互动。

自从2007年成立以来，Zynga获得了巨大的成功，该公司旗下的《FarmVille》、《Mafia Wars》以及《CityVille》等游戏的每月用户超过3.6亿。

硬核玩家或许会嘲笑Zynga游戏的易玩性，但雷诺兹则宣称Zynga代表游戏产业的未来，游戏是为大众设计的，“不再仅以极客为目标受众。”

这个观点似乎并非无稽之谈，据《华尔街日报》报道，投资公司估计Zynga的身价可能高达90亿美元。如果数据可靠，这个轻量级的社交游戏开发商将比传统数字游戏巨头EA更具价值，后者目前的市场估值约为61.8亿美元。

雷诺兹表示，Zynga致力于开发“每个人都能玩”的游戏，而不是诸如《魔兽世界》之类以硬核玩家为目标的游戏。他认为这是游戏的发展趋势，城市或农场运营等更为休闲的游戏可以吸引更广泛的受众。雷诺兹说，这类游戏最强大的地方在于，它们为人们提供了与他人、特别是与原本无话可谈的泛泛之交进行沟通和交流的途径。

他还指出，在大多数人的Facebook朋友列表中，Zynga游戏玩伴占有很大的比例。密友在人们的好友名单中仅占一小部分，其余大多数都是普通朋友，例如以前的同事、远房亲戚、高中或大学同学等。人们同样在意这些朋友，但尚不足以和他们进行日常交谈。他说，通过共同完成一个任务，社交游戏为点头之交们提供了良好的互动方式。

社交游戏的异步性也是Zynga获得成功的重要因素。游戏邦了解到，《魔兽世界》这种角色扮演类游戏要求并肩作战的朋友们必须在同一时段登陆服务器，而Zynga游戏则允许朋友们在任何时间体验乐趣，而且仍然不失彼此合作的感觉。它的游戏特别适合填补日常活动之间的空隙，玩家们可以在午夜候机时或者工作之余玩个几分钟就行。

雷诺兹开玩笑道，“在你看着我的时候，你的员工或许正在玩我们的游戏。”他指出，Zynga拥有一些传统游戏公司不具备的优势。因为它的游戏更为简单，因此游戏开发也比传统游戏长达三年的开发周期要快得多，每款游戏设计的人员需求也更少。假设发布的游戏无法吸引大众关注，也不会面临太大的风险。除此之外，由于受到网络带宽的限制，设计师们必须专注于游戏玩法设置，而非游戏的视觉效果。

他还强调，Zynga获得成功的另一个重要因素是它的游戏允许人们展现自我。游戏应当具备足够的开放性和创新元素，这样当玩家完成目标或任务时，它便可以成为他们表达个性的平台。Zynga的部分游戏允许玩家的角色与虚拟配偶结婚，这就是表现性的例证。据游戏邦了解，这些虚拟婚姻中有64.6万例都是同性婚姻，而全美的合法同性婚姻只有15万例。

游戏同样应当建立起创意共享机制。雷诺兹坦言，Zynga用羞怯而具有煽动性的方式在Facebook上发布共享的状态信息，例如“玛格丽特需要一些好螺丝”或者“斯科特刚刚搞到了木头”等，希望用户和点头之交们分享这些信息。

他最后表示，“和其他人开愚蠢的玩笑，这就是我们做的事情，人们需要和他人进行对话的途径。”（本文为游戏邦 /gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Zynga’s Secret to Success: Connecting Casual Friends

While enjoyable to play for many, the runaway success of the online games from Zynga can largely be attributed to how they bring together acquaintances who otherwise wouldn’t have much to say to one another, the company’s chief game designer said on Tuesday.

“The games are about keeping in touch with people you care about,” said Brian Reynolds, who spoke at the Engage digital gaming conference being held this week New York, in conjunction with Toy Fair 2011.

And while close friends certainly play Zynga games with one another, the average user interacts more on FarmVille or MafiaWars with acquaintances “they wouldn’t normally have conversations with,” Reynolds said, in a talk promising to reveal Zynga’s secrets to success.

Since it was founded in 2007, Zynga has been a runaway success, garnering over 360 million monthly users of games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars and CityVille.

Hardcore gamers may scoff at the easy playability of Zynga’s games, but Reynolds asserted that Zynga represents the future of the gaming industry, one in which games are created for a mass audience. “Games are no longer just for geeks,” Reynolds said.

The idea seems have some backing: The Wall Street Journal reported that investment firms have estimated that the company could be worth as much as $9 billion. If true, this service provider of lightweight social games would be worth more than what is traditionally thought of as the largest digital gaming company, Electronic Arts, which currently enjoys a market cap of around $6.18 billion.

Zynga has focused on developing games that “everyone can play,” Reynolds said, dismissing games like World of Warcraft as being targeted for “hardcore gamers.” He said the trend is toward game concepts, such as running a city or a farm, that can be enjoyed by a wider, if more casual, audience.

The most powerful aspect of such games, he said, is that they provide a way for people to communicate with one another, especially those who might not otherwise have a lot to say.

Reynolds points to the composition of most people’s friends list on Facebook, where a considerable number of Zynga games are played. While a few people on any person’s friends list are close friends, most are more distant acquaintances, such as ex-coworkers, far-flung relatives, college or high school friends. These are people that a person presumably cares about, though not enough to engage in day-to-day conversation with.

Social games allows such casual acquaintances a way to interact, by working on a common project, Reynolds said.

Also important to Zynga’s success is the asynchronous nature of the games. Role playing games such as World of Warcraft requires that a group of friends all meet on the service at the same time should they want to play together, Reynolds said.

In contrast, friends can play Zynga games at any time, while still feel like they are collaborating. Zynga games are particularly well-suited for filling up the random stretches of time in between daily activities. Users can play for a minute or two in the middle of the night, while waiting for a plane, or between tasks at work.

“While you’re watching me, your employees are playing our games,” Reynolds joked.

Reynolds noted that Zynga enjoyed some advantages over traditional gaming companies. Because its games are lighter, they can be developed more rapidly than the three-year cycle that is the norm of the gaming industry. Fewer designers are needed per game, and the stakes are lower for each release, should a game fail to capture the public’s imagination.

In addition, because the graphics are constrained by the limitations of online bandwidth, designers must focus on the elements of gameplay rather than the look-and-feel of the game.

Another crucial element of Zynga’s success is that its games allow people to express themselves, Reynolds asserted. The game should be both open ended enough and include enough creative elements so that when users complete some goal or create something, it becomes an expression of their personality.

As an example of expressiveness, Reynolds notes that some Zynga games allow their players’ characters to marry fictional spouses. As a result over 646,000 of these unions are same-sex marriages. By way of comparison, he noted that there are only about 150,000 legally recognized same-sex unions in the U.S.

The games should also allow a mechanism to share their creative works. He admitted that the Zynga seeds its status messages that get shared on Facebook with coyly provocative assertions, such as “Margaret needs a few good screws,” or “Scott just got the wood,” in hopes that users will share these with a knowing wink-and-a-nod.

“Yeah this is what we do, make stupid jokes with one another,” he said. “People want ways to start conversations with one another.”（source:pcworld）