最近几年，游戏行业出现了掌机游戏开发者纷纷转战手机及社交游戏市场的现象 ，英国游戏工作室Paw Print Games就是这种典型。游戏邦获悉，该工作室通过韩国游戏发行商Gamevil的渠道，推出了手机游戏《Kami Retro》，该游戏曾跻身iPhone游戏前50强行列。

pocketgamer日前采访了该工作室主管Antony White，了解了这个三人团队的独立开发商的相关发展计划。以下为游戏邦编译的访谈内容：

Kami Retro

Paw Print Games成立的背景是什么？

Paw Print Games成立于今年1月份，创始人就是Steven Craft、Matthew Maggs和我自己三个人。我们工作室位于曼彻斯特。

我们曾就职于索尼、Travellers Tales等公司，总共在游戏和动画领域工作过25年，因为不满足于只能在晚上和周末时间开发自己爱好的项目，所以我们就决定辞掉工作，创立了Paw Print Games，全身心投入自己喜欢的项目。

为什么首选iOS平台？

我们是在两年半前决定选择iOS平台，那时候App Store还处于初级发展阶段。

我们在2008年12月推出了《KamiCrazy》这款游戏，虽然它并没有让我们获得经济丰收，但却让我们看到了App Store的发展潜力。这个简化版的游戏进入了排行榜的前10强，每天的下载量高达5万次，发行不久后就超过了100万次下载量。

从那时候开始，我们就一直构思不同的游戏创意，改良我们的跨平台开发引擎，以便创建可运行于PC、iOS、Android、bada和Palm等一系列平台的游戏。

对Android平台有何看法？

我们目前还没有涉足Android市场，但会考虑尽快推出《Kami Retro》的Android版本。

Android手机游戏的市场竞争不像iOS那么激烈，我们希望《Kami Retro》可以从中脱颖而出。相信随着Android移动设备数量的增长，Android手机游戏市场也将日益强大。

可有计划进军Windows Phone 7平台？

我们目前正在调查《Kami Retro》在WP7平台的发展前景。如果条件成熟的话，我们也很乐意将这款游戏推向WP7平台。

《Kami Retro》在iOS平台的市场表现如何？

它的表现正如我们的预期。我们目前还有一个更新版本已经提交App Store审核，它添加了一些有趣的新内容，我们还计划推出更多更新版本。

对App Store的运营环境有什么看法？

从开发者的角度来看，App Store是一个很复杂的市场。如果要在这个平台上成功创收，光靠一个响亮的名字是远远不够的。除非你拥有足够的曝光率，不然你的应用或游戏就很难受到关注。

我们一直在想法通过在线媒体报道、广播采访、报纸采访、YouTube动画短片等渠道，以便《Kami Retro》获得更多用户的关注。

我们的努力得到引起了苹果的关注，所以美国App Store在上周推荐了《Kami Retro》这款游戏，并在本周向多个国家进行推荐。

有评论认为，iOS对独立开发者的吸引力正逐渐消失，这个平台已成为大型公司主导的市场。你认为这种说法对吗？

大型工作室一般都会动用所有的资源和工具，将自己的游戏推向iOS平台，但目前为止，多数公司只是将掌机游戏简单移植到手机平台。

我认为这并不是多数iOS用户所希望看到的局面，我会做此判断，是因为在App Store付费游戏榜单前列，基本上是休闲游戏唱主角。

我并不是批判大型发行商在iOS市场的运营策略，毕竟每家公司都得赚钱。许多大型工作室都加入战局，涉足多个市场领域，这对整个行业来说其实是有利无弊的。

如果说只有成长为大型公司才能在这一市场上立足，那么我们也会想法扩大自己的规模。

复古游戏市场在智能手机平台获得了巨大的成功，请问你认为这其中的原因是什么？

部分原因是手机用户规模：智能手机在那些小时候曾经玩过复古游戏的玩家中很受欢迎，而这其中有些玩家有可能再也没时间玩掌机游戏，只能在外出途中或者其他闲暇时间把玩片刻的手机游戏。

当复古游戏还不算“复古”的时候，开发者经常要在游戏的视觉效果上投入大量时间和精力，所以当时真正的好游戏其实主要体现在玩法设置上。

当前游戏的玩法设置有时候并不像富有真实感的画面或环境那么突出，但只要用户挖掘到这些游戏的最大亮点，他们就会发现自己很喜欢重新体验复古游戏。

你们总共就三名成员，开发新游戏的时候要怎么安排进度呢？

多喝咖啡，少睡觉！好吧，言归正传，可以说我们投入了相当多的时间，创建不同平台或项目可共享的框架系统。

我们从过去多年的游戏工作经历中获得了不少知识，所以很清楚怎样才能让游戏项目迅速而成功地扭亏为盈，知道什么做法对我们没有好处。

我们在动手做事前都会展开严格的成本分析，只有确信自己很有胜算的时候，才会全身心地投入开发该项目。只要我们的销售额足够买咖啡，我们就可以持续推出新作品。

未来可有其他发行计划？

我们希望向Android、iPad、Palm和bada平台推出《Kami Retro》。

我们还有一些项目已投入开发过程，也正和不同的工作室、发行公司商谈合作事宜，希望能找到将下一款游戏推向市场的最佳解决方案。

你们在手机游戏领域的未来发展方向是什么？

如果要开发长期项目，我们就需要一个更大的团队。但目前来看，我们还有一些工具和程序，足以支撑我们继续以小团队规模开发高质量的游戏。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Kami Retro developer Antony White on why console publishers don’t understand iOS

Recent years has seen a fundamental shift from game developers with hundreds of staff working on console games to small start ups working on mobile and social games.

One such example is UK studio Paw Print Games. It’s just had a US top 50 iPhone game with Kami Retro, which was released by Korean publisher Gamevil.

We caught up with director Antony White to find out what it’s like being a three-man indie and what the company’s future plans are.

Pocket Gamer: What’s the story behind Paw Print?

Antony White: Paw Print Games was founded in January this year by Steven Craft, Matthew Maggs and myself. We’re based in Manchester.

After a combined twenty five years in the games and animation industries with companies such as Sony and Travellers Tales, we decided we wanted to be able to devote more than just evenings and weekends to our hobby projects. So we made the decision to resign from our jobs, form Paw Print Games, and work full time on our own projects.

Why have you initially chosen to iOS?

iOS was something we started to work on two and a half years ago when the App Store was in its relative infancy.

We released a game called KamiCrazy in December 2008. The project may not have been a substantial success financially, but it did open our eyes to the potential of the App Store. The lite version of the game made the top ten charts, getting up to fifty thousand downloads per day, and over a million downloads shortly after release.

Since then we’ve continued to work on various game ideas and have improved our cross-platform engine so that it supports a range of platforms including PC, iOS, Android, bada, and Palm.

What’s your view of Android?

We have no experience of the Android market to date, although we aim to have Kami Retro released on Android soon enough.

The Android market is less crowded than iOS, and we hope Kami Retro will stand out as something unique and appealing. With the number of Android devices increasing by the day, the Android market can only get stronger.

Do you have any plans for Windows Phone 7?

We are currently investigating the prospect of bringing Kami Retro to Windows Phone 7. Given the right circumstance we would love to see Kami Retro there.

How is Kami Retro performing on iOS?

It’s performing as expected. We have an update currently in submission that adds some interesting new content and further updates planned.

How are you finding the App Store?

From a developers point of view, it’s quite a complicated marketplace. Creating and publishing a good game is not enough to be a commercial success. Unless you can achieve market visibility it can be hard for an app or game to gain traction.

We have been trying to make Kami Retro visible to as many users as possibility through online press coverage, radio interviews, newspaper interviews, YouTube animation shorts, etc.

Our hard work has also been noticed by Apple which featured Kami Retro as App Store game of the week in the US last week, and has featured us in many countries across the world this week.

There’s an argument iOS is losing its appeal for indies and bigger companies are starting to dominate. Do you think there’s any truth in this?

The bigger studios generally have all of the tools to put their titles onto iOS, but so far it’s rare for them to employ their tools or facilities into much more than a console port of their latest game.

I’m not convinced this is what the majority of iOS users desire. I base this on the games that generally appear at the top of the paid games list on the App Store, which are generally those aimed directly at the casual market.

That said, I am not criticising the bigger companies for monetising their products via the iOS market. Every company has to make money. With the number of large studios going under, it can only be good for the industry as a whole for the large studios to dip into as many markets as possible.

If it ever gets to the stage where you have to be a big company to survive, we’ll just make sure we have grown by then.

The retro market has enjoyed a lot of success on smartphones. Why do you think that’s the case?

Partly the install base: smartphones are popular with an age group that played retro games as children, some of them may no longer find time to play console games, but being able to play a couple of minutes here and there on their phone can be more appealing.

Back when retro games weren’t retro, there was only so much you could do from a graphical point of view in any game, so what really defined a great game was the gameplay.

With current games, gameplay can sometimes be lost behind realistic environments and graphics, but once the user has taken in the ‘wow factor’ of some games, they often find themselves then drawn back to the basic building blocks of retro titles.

With three people on staff, what process do you employ when developing new titles?

Coffee, more coffee and no sleep! Joking aside, we have spent considerable amount of time thus far ensuring we create structured systems that can be shared between platforms and projects as much as possible.

We have learnt a lot from our years in the games industry in terms of what is beneficial for getting games turned around quickly and successfully, and also what is not so beneficial.

We perform a rigorous cost analysis before embarking on anything, and only take on work we believe has a good chance of performing well. Providing we are able to make enough sales to pay our coffee bill, we will be able to continue working on more titles.

What releases do you have planned for the future?

Keep a look out for the Android, iPad, Palm, and bada releases of Kami Retro.

We have a few projects in mid-development and are negotiating with various studios and publishers to work out our best option to bring our next titles to market.

Where do you see the company going on mobile?

For the longer term projects we have in mind we would need a larger team. However for the titles in the immediate future we have tools and procedures in place to allow us to continue delivering high quality titles with a minimal staff size.（source:pocketgamer）