Loot Drop是刚成立不久的社交游戏工作室，汇集了掌机和传统电脑游戏领域的5大重要人物：约翰·罗梅洛（John Romero）、布伦达·布瑞斯韦特（Brenda Brathwaite）、Tom Hall、Rob Sirotek和Laralyn McWilliams，其中只有46岁的McWilliams和43岁的布瑞斯韦特能够代表社交游戏锁定的核心用户（中年妇女）。Inside Social Games日前采访了布瑞斯韦特，主要谈论社交游戏领域及其和罗梅洛还在LOLapps任职时开发的《Ravenwood Fair》，同时还探讨了社交游戏和电子游戏之间融会贯通的理念。游戏邦根据采访稿编译如下内容。

Loot Drop

游戏开发趣味至上

她表示，“趣味第一位。如果开发者关注游戏趣味性，为玩家提供很棒的游戏体验，那么就会获得相应的收入回报。”

这是社交游戏开发者过去1年一直遵循的理念，那时他们刚加入电子游戏开发者的游戏开发队伍。虽然Brian Reynolds帮助Zynga成功推出了《FrontierVille》，而John Yoo制作的《CityVille》更是大放光彩，但是他们很少能够不断推陈出新。例如，大名鼎鼎的游戏开发者Sid Meier的首款Facebook游戏《Civilization World》，已经开发了1年多，但仍未问世，而这对Facebook游戏的开发周期来说是史无前例的。

Brenda Brathwaite

布瑞斯韦特表示，“游戏开发的投资资金越少，我们所需承担的风险就越小。挑战之处在于时间，而最先战胜这些挑战的是我们这些80年代的开发者。我们很适应短期开发过程。”

游戏邦获悉，布瑞斯韦特在随后的邮件中补充表示，“我的意思是说，我们有更多自由尝试新东西，因为我们不会面临2500万美元投资资金打水漂的风险。所以我们不需要表现得一样古板。”

游戏邦发现电子游戏开发者转战社交游戏领域后，开发周期是他们需要调整的一样方面。而布瑞斯韦特认为，过分追求视觉效果更是他们需要改变的方面。

布瑞斯韦特表示，“社交游戏领域不存在视觉效果的较量，而是注重画面质量，但也不存在开发者争相提供更大、更好、更多画面的现象。用户可以利用午休时间在没有管理权限的办公电脑上体验游戏，也就是说用户无需借助那些无聊的插件，也不需要做重复的事情。”

即使开发者能够重新制作社交游戏的当前布局，避免好友栏一直出现在屏幕底部，布瑞斯韦特认为这并非一个明智的选择，因为社交游戏玩家对于游戏布局画面内心早有模式。

布瑞斯韦特认为，“改变需要循序渐进，这样用户才不会只是在游戏中露过面，就去玩其他的‘Ew’游戏。”

游戏邦认为电子游戏开发者需做另一大调整是虚拟交易模式。许多开发者都很熟悉微交易，但布瑞斯韦特认为，他们很多都不知道如何把微交易植入游戏的核心机制。

monetization

布瑞斯韦特表示，“他们的虚拟交易设置并不恰当的。他们只会额外收费，但实际上还有其他更好的营收方式，如计时收费。”

传统游戏开发者所犯的另一营收失误是炮制其他Facebook游戏的营收方式，完全不考虑该方式是否适合自己的游戏。游戏邦发现许多传统游戏开发者都默认使用Zynga的钱币-游戏币模式，而从未思考过这样的问题：“如何在不牺牲趣味的前提下实现创收？”

布瑞斯韦特表示，“这是个很难的问题，但答案很明显，很难用语言来表达，完全是一种感觉。我不知道如何描述这种感觉。如果你希望游戏有趣，那么就采用传统的营收方式。玩家如果希望体验更大、更好、更快的游戏，那么就得为此掏钱，但要如何顾全二者，同时又不损害到游戏的有趣性呢？”

布瑞斯韦特借用了一个比喻来说明Loot Drop的营收方式：一个墨西哥流浪艺人在路边卖唱，而对面有一个乞丐。她表示自己愿意为墨西哥艺人掏钱，甚至会主动付钱听另外一首，因为他很欣赏这种经历。但是不会掏钱给马路对面的乞讨者。

布瑞斯韦特表示，“我们希望成为墨西哥艺人，因为我们并不希望用户觉得我们是在游戏中乞讨。”

发行商-开发商模式

我们很好奇开发商还会把何种电子游戏的想法带到社交游戏来。过去几年，我们见证了发行商-开发商模式的兴起，像6waves之类的公司开始为开发商提供运营和营收服务。游戏邦获悉Loot Drop已经和RockYou签署协议，委托其今年夏天为公司发行首款游戏。

RockYou

布瑞斯韦特表示，“如果你现在在开发社交游戏，那么你得找个发行商帮你发行游戏。但是传统的发行商-开发商模式还没有得到广泛采用。这一模式目前主要面向大型开发商、独立开发商和外包开发商。”

许多传统游戏开发商刻意回避Facebook的发行商-开发商合作观念，因为这会使得开发商在掌机游戏市场处于不利地位。但布瑞斯韦特认为，该模式在掌机游戏领域的缺陷不会出现在社交游戏领域，因为发行商和开发商无需担心巨额的成本费用。

布瑞斯韦特表示，“在这种情况下，该模式更适用外包开发商。在多数社交游戏中，外包开发并非额外支出。”

设计主导的开发团队是推动传统游戏行业发展的另一因素。掌机游戏很少采用这种模式，但掌机游戏的团队更为精炼，成员关系更为融洽，且游戏制作人通常为某个设计师独自担任。Loot Drop目前的开发团队只有10-12人，随着公司规模的扩大，他们将依旧保持原有团队规模。

这一团队规模更便于交流，布瑞斯韦特在谈到Loot Drop的创始成员时，特别谈到了这一点。布瑞斯韦特、罗梅洛、Hall、Sirotek和McWilliams都有丰富的生活阅历，彼此的沟通多为心灵层面。但是即便是彼此之间都已非常熟悉，他们还是能够不断想出新点子，让对方大吃一惊。布瑞斯韦特表示她和罗梅洛的《Ravenwood Fair》合作经历是笔宝贵的财富，这让她学会如何合作开发社交游戏。

布瑞斯韦特表示，“在《Ravenwood Fair》的开发过程中，我进步很大，最特别的是我明白了设计头头的重要性。”

为了具体说明这点，她谈到了其再《Ravenwood Fair》开发过程学到的一课，布瑞斯韦特曾告诉罗梅洛，她觉得玩游戏结束后让游戏角色孤身处在可怕的森林很不妥。总感觉没有完全走出游戏，因为自己没有做足安排工作，放心留它们独处森林。罗梅洛对此没有发表自己的感受，但并没有对此置之不理，游戏邦发现他随后和布瑞斯韦特一起开发了Protector角色，玩家可以通过购买该角色来抵御森林的邪恶之物，即便是在玩家退出游戏的时候。

布瑞斯韦特表示，“我从中学到的重要一点是合作。传统游戏开发商总是专注某一类型的游戏，而这一类型的游戏总是有固定的开发模式。在这种情况下，社交游戏可以带来大量的新用户，包括我这个43岁的妇女在内。所以从《Ravenwood Fair》学到的重要经验是合作。这个独特的经验尤为宝贵。”

社交游戏负面评价

最后采访布瑞斯韦特的内容是有关进来日益增多的社交游戏负面评价。由于Facebokk限制游戏的病毒式传播渠道，且众多开发商转向开发社交游戏，进而导致大量以盈利为目的的劣质游戏纷纷涌入市场，以致市场最终被冲垮，继而出现乞丐满街，却无行人的现象。

面对这一暗淡的前景，布瑞斯韦特表示，“我想应该是1982年，1982年人们开始接触游戏，这些疯狂的电脑游戏开发商因此赚得了大笔收入。游戏行业1983年开始崩溃，许多公司纷纷破产，因为他们加入这个行业只是为了赚钱，而不是为了开发游戏。而那些热爱游戏，深谙游戏开发之道的开发商却依然屹立其中。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Interview: Brenda Brathwaite on Loot Drop — Finding Love and Money in Social Gaming

Loot Drop is a newly-formed social game development studio featuring five heavy-hitters from the console and classic computer game industry. Of these veterans — John Romero, Brenda Brathwaite, Tom Hall, Rob Sirotek, and Laralyn McWilliams — only two represent the core demographic that social games cater towards: 46-year-old McWilliams and 44-year-old Brathwaite. We picked Brathwaite’s brains about the social games industry as well as her work on Ravenwood Fair while still at LOLapps with Romero and discovered some of what the social games industry has to teach video game developers and vice-versa.

First Comes Fun

“Put fun first,” she tells us. “You can market the hell out of a sh**** game. But if you focus on fun and make a great experience for the players, it will be profitable.”

That seems to be the idea many social game developers adopted in the last 12 months as they staffed up with video game developers. But while Brian Reynolds worked out well for Zynga with FrontierVille and John Yoo did even better by CityVille, not all of them hit the ground running. For example, renowned developer Sid Meier’s first Facebook game, Civilization World, has been in development for over a year, which is an eternity in Facebook time — and it has yet to launch publicly.

“The less money that we have to spend on the development of these games, the more risks we can take on the development of them,” Brathwaite says. “It’s the time that’s the challenge. The first [developers] you see jumping over are those of us from the 80s. We’re used to short dev cycles.”

ETA: Brathwaite clarified in a follow-up email, “What I mean here is that we have more freedom to try new things because we’re not risking $25 million in development. So, we don’t need to be as formulaic.”

Development cycles are only one of the many old habits video game developers struggle to adapt or break as they move into social games. The graphics arms race, Brathwaite says, is one of the bigger ones that needs to be left at the door.

“There’s not a graphic arms race here,” Brathwaite says. “There’s an art quality arms race, but nobody is racing to bigger, better, more polygons. People are playing these games on their lunch break at office computers with no administrative access. That means don’t give me stupid plugins. That means not radically reinventing the wheel.”

Even if a developer could rework the current layout of a social game so that the friends tray didn’t appear on the bottom of the screen at all times, Brathwaite says it’d be a mistake to do so because social gamers have a mental model of how their games are supposed to look.

“Change needs to happen in very small increments,” she says, “so that people don’t show up to your game and go ‘Ew’.”

A much bigger adjustment video game developers need to make is monetization. Many developers are familiar with microtransactions, but, Brathwaite says, many of them don’t know how to build it into the core game experience.

“They put monetization where it’s not the strongest,” Brathwaite says. “They’ll charge for premium [decorations], when there are better ways to do that — like paying money for time.”

Another monetization mistake traditional game developer make is modeling other Facebook games’ methods without considering whether it works with their own game. Many traditional game developers default to Zynga’s coins-and-bucks model without answering the key question, “How can I monetize my game without sacrificing fun?”

“It’s a really difficult question with a really obvious answer,” Brathwaite says, “but the answer isn’t in words, it’s in feel. And I don’t know how to communicate the feel. You want the game to be fun, and there are classic monetization hooks. Like you want bigger, better, faster, more, you pay me for bigger, better, faster, more. But how do you integrate that without sacrificing the fun?”

Brathwaite explains Loot Drop’s approach to monetization with a metaphor: A lone mariachi playing a song on one side of the street and someone asking for money on the opposite side of the street. She’d stop and pay the mariachi money, maybe even pay him to hear another without him ever asking her for anything because she appreciates the experience. But she wouldn’t feel good about giving money to the beggar on the other side of the same street.

“We’re going for the mariachi’s side of the street,” she says. “We don’t want you to feel there’s a panhandler begging you for money in the middle of the game.”

Then Comes Marriage

We wonder what other video game habits or ideas will migrate to social games via developers. We’ve already seen the growth in past years of the publisher-developer model with companies like 6waves offering themselves to developers as a distribution and monetization service. Loot Drop is signed with RockYou to publish their first game when it launches this summer.

“If you’re developing a social game now, you’re going to go to a publisher to get your game out there,” Brathwaite says. “But the traditional [publisher-developer] model hasn’t fully come over yet. A lot of it right now is big developer, in-house development, work-for-hire.”

Some traditional game developers may balk at the idea of publisher-developer relationships on Facebook because the model could leave developers with the short end of the stick in the console market. But Brathwaite says what went wrong with the model in console games market probably won’t happen in social games because there’s not a massive recoupment of costs for publishers and developers to worry about.

“In this case, it’s much more work-for-hire,” she says. “In most cases in the social game space [that I know of] the work-for-hire is not an earnout.”

Another traditional games industry trait that’s making the move is the design-led developer team. Not many games in the console space use this model, but the ones that do tend to have smaller, intimate teams with a single designer serving as the game’s producer. Loot Drop’s current development team only has about 10 to 12 people and as the developer expands, they’ll keep the teams about the same size.

The size lends itself to communication, which Brathwaite highlights when talking about Loot Drop’s founding members. Herself, Romero, Hall, Sirotek, and McWilliams have long personal histories with each other that border on a psychic connection. But even with all that familiarity between them, they can still surprise each other with new ideas. Her work with Romero on Ravenwood Fair served as a valuable lesson for how collaboration ought to work in social game development.

“The super unique thing about working on Ravenwood Fair specifically that I’m absolutely taking forward is the incredible importance of the male/female design head,” Brathwaite says.

To characterize what that is, she describes a point in Ravenwood Fair’s development where Brathwaite told Romero she didn’t feel comfortable leaving her characters alone in a scary forest when she stopped playing the game. There was no sense of closure, of being “done” enough that she could leave them alone and not worry about them. Romero didn’t share her feelings, but instead of dismissing them, he worked with her to develop the Protector characters that players can buy to ward off bad things in the forest even when the player is logged out.

“The big thing that came from that is this idea of working together,” Brathwaite says. “In the traditional games industry, you’re usually there around the genre and the genre usually dictates things. In this case, there’s this gigantic audience that’s so incredibly new to games and so overwhelmingly me — the 43-year-old woman. So the big takeaway from Ravenwood Fair is this partnership… this diversity that’s more valuable than it’s ever been.”

Then Comes….

One of our last questions to Brathwaite had to do with an emerging negative view of the social games industry — that with Facebook restricting viral communication channels for games and so many people trying to make social games, that the market would collapse under the weight of badly made games all clamoring for money like so many panhandlers on a street with no pedestrians.

To that gloomy outlook, Brathwaite says, “I think it’s 1982. In 1982, people realized ‘Holy sh**, there’s a ton of money being made by these crazy computer games. We can slap any old shit in a bag and sell it!’ And the games industry crashed in 1983. And a great many people went out of business because they came into games to make money, not to make games. Those who loved games, and those who knew how to make them, stuck around.”

Look for Loot Drop’s first game through RockYou when it launches this summer. And check out John Romero’s postmortem of Ravenwood Fair on his blog.（Source：Inside Social Games）