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Chair Entertainment高层分享《无尽之剑》开发经验

发布时间:2011-03-04 08:58:28 Tags:,,,

“人们不希望自己最爱的零售游戏只是个廉价品,他们想要独一无二的游戏体验。”

这是Chair Entertainment创意总监唐纳德·穆斯塔(Donald Mustard)在GDC智能手机峰会发表的演说中提到的第一准则。

在题为《无尽之剑:我们的成功经验》(Infinity Blade: How we made a hit, what we learned, and why you can do it)的演说中,穆斯塔表示尽管在智能手机上安装《战争机器》(Gears of War)看起来可能很拉风,但从预算、用户体验、操控方式等方面来看,这并没有太大的意义。

他认为,应该去找小游戏可以做,而高预算零售游戏不会去做的东西,然后再由此找到市场切入点。

Infinity-Blade

Infinity-Blade

了解限制性条件

《无尽之剑》的起源来自总公司Epic的一通电话,电话中称他们为iOS平台开发了虚幻引擎3,询问Chair是否愿意在五个月内用那种技术做一款游戏出来。

在第一次讨论中,团队着重探讨人们一般会在哪里玩iOS游戏——电视机前、购物时以及在马桶上。

基本上,这些都是人们无法在整段时间内集中精力玩游戏的情况。另一个关键问题是,你不能确定人们会开着音效玩游戏。

据游戏邦了解,该团队同样观察了在App Store已经很流行的游戏类型——物理益智游戏、塔防游戏、棋牌游戏等,他们希望做点不同寻常的东西。

Mustard把得出的结论称为“口袋支柱”(Pocket Pillars),这意味着它的游戏只需用一个手指操作;核心游戏设置需包括约为两分钟的超短回合;它应该具有原创且独一无二的特性,而且专门针对移动设备特点而设计;并且应当以技巧为基础——易于掌握但难以精通。

分工完成

“游戏归根结底是你拥有多少人手、多长时间来开发的问题。”Mustard如是说,12名核心人员参与了《无尽之剑》的开发,耗时100余个工作日。

接到Epic电话的时间是星期五,但在下周一的时候,Chair就已经敲定想要做一款刀战类游戏,这是之前设计方案中的30个具体化理念之一。

该游戏的玩法主要是基于用户的手势,所以,他们最初几周的时间和精力主要放在创造刀战动态效果上。在十天内,这个核心机制的趣味性就已经十分明显了。

游戏吸引力

Mustard同样谈到了“吸引力”,就是一种能够让玩家再次光顾游戏的特点。

“我们的‘吸引力’就是图像效果,所以我们知道必须在这方面投入大量资源。”他表示,“我们采用创造《战争机器》的方法来处理《无尽之剑》中的人物角色。”

显然,这意味着游戏中的角色数量将受到限制,也将在情节循环、物品收集、角色升级等方面对游戏进程产生很大影响。Mustard把这些称为创建“完全整合的体验”,因此游戏中的每个特性都可以强化整体游戏理念。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

GDC 2011: Chair’s Donald Mustard on the 100 day limitation that made Infinity Blade great

“People don’t want a cheap version of their favourite retail title. They want a unique game experience.”

That was the first rule from Donald Mustard, creative director of Chair Entertainment in his talk at the GDC Smartphone Summit.

Entitled ‘Infinity Blade: How we made a hit, what we learned, and why you can do it’, Mustard said while it might seem cool to have Gears of War on a smartphone, for many reasons – budget, experience, controls – it just doesn’t make sense.

“Find out what a small game can do that a big budget retail game won’t do,” he commented. “Identify or create a hole in the market and fill it.”

Know your limits

Still, the spark for Infinity Blade was a call from its parent company Epic, saying it had Unreal Engine 3 working for iOS, and did Chair want to make a game using the technology – in five months.

The first discussion the team had concerned where people were playing iOS games – in front of the TV, shopping and on the toilet.

Basically, these were all situations where you couldn’t rely on the undivided attention of the player for a period of time. Another key issue was that you couldn’t assume people would be playing the game with sound.

The team also looked at genres that were already popular on the App Store – physics puzzlers, tower defence, card and board games – and looked to do something different.

The result was what Mustard called Pocket Pillars.

This meant its game would: only be played with one finger; would involve super short sessions of around two minutes of core gameplay; have original, unique and device-specific design; and would be skill-based – easy to grasp but hard to master.

Cut your cloth

“Games always come down to how many people and how long you have,” Mustard said. Infinity Blade was developed over 100 work days by a core of 12 people.

Taking Epic’s call on a Friday, by the following Monday Chair knew it wanted to make a sword-fighting game: one of 30 previously fleshed out concepts it had sitting in its design vault.

Hence the first few weeks of production were spent focusing on the sword fighting dynamic in terms of gesture-based parry gameplay. Within 10 days, it was clear this core mechanic was fun.

Attention grabber

Mustard also spoke about the hook – a feature that would make someone look twice at your game.

“Our hook was graphics so we knew we had to invest a lot of resources in this,” he said. “We approached Infinity Blade characters in the same way we produced them for Gears of War.”

Obviously, this meant the number of in-game characters would be limited, and it also heavily influenced the game’s progression in terms of looping plot, item collection, character update and camera placement.

This is something Mustard called creating a “fully integrated experience” so that every feature in the game reinforces the overall concept. (source:pocketgamer)


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