游戏邦注：本文是Playfish工作室技术总监Steve Shipton在2010年6月接受媒体采访的相关内容：

Meera：Playfish伦敦工作室技术总监Steve Shipton将在此为我们解读社交游戏及其制作方法。

Steve：社交游戏是某种你可以与好友一起玩的游戏。好友将成为完成游戏中某些进程的必要条件。你可以同好友分享游戏中的特色内容，如果单人玩最后通常只能黯然离开。

Meera：为何此类游戏在网络上如此流行？

Steve：部分原因在于玩家可以花很短的时间来玩游戏，并可以与好友共享游戏内容。你在玩游戏之时就像向外界展示自己的成就，朋友看到后也会想玩，游戏就这样传播开来。人们玩的游戏带有某些病毒传播的特征。

Meera：你觉得该领域的游戏有多流行？全球共有多少玩家？

Steve：全球每天玩社交游戏的人约为1亿（游戏邦注：这是2010年6月左右的数据）。

Meera：纯粹通过Facebook之类的网站？

Steve：是的。这只是Facebook上的统计数据，Playfish游戏的玩家有1000万左右。

Meera：那玩家真得很多。通常都是哪些玩家在玩社交游戏？

Steve：统计数据很有趣。该领域与传统游戏不同，男女比例基本相当。玩家年龄段介于15至55岁之间，但主要是18至34岁的玩家。

Restaurant City

Meera：Playfish有各种各样的游戏，玩家在《Pet Society》中可以创建和拥有宠物，在《Restaurant City》可以管理餐厅，让其他玩家或朋友来餐厅享用或工作。设计此类游戏有什么技巧吗？

Steve：每款游戏都必须含有社交元素。我们采用的另一种方法是在游戏中设置只能通过好友帮助来获得的道具。而且，我们需要设计得让人们花少量时间便可玩游戏。多数情况下，人们在工作期间或在家放松时刻玩游戏，他们不希望在游戏中花半个多小时的时间。在社交游戏典型的1分钟游戏时间中尝试开发出同样吸引玩家的玩法，这对我们来说是个难点。我们还需要考虑如何通过游戏盈利。我们所有的游戏都是免费的，但我们需要在游戏中设计金币系统和现金系统，这样玩家就可以在愿意时花上些许金钱让游戏继续进展下去。

Meera：关键点在于这些游戏都是免费游戏，而这往往成为引导人们开始玩游戏的因素。但是你要如何保持他们的兴趣，让玩家留在游戏中呢？

Steve：对我们来说，让现有玩家保持对游戏的新鲜感是个很大的挑战。他们对我们很重要，我们想尽量让他们留在游戏中，这样才能让游戏的价值达到最大化。将游戏作为服务来运营，这便是我们的运营法则。因而与传统游戏的不同之处在于，他们会花上数年的时间来制作游戏，而我们的游戏每周都会更新。这样每周玩家都会看到新内容和新特色。

Meera：许多此类游戏看起来纯粹出于娱乐目的而制作，它们能否为提高公众意识或教育做贡献？

Steve：我们有款称为《Geo Challenge》的游戏，玩家需要回答各国的国旗、国土形状、首都位置之类的问题。这款游戏带有教育性质，但由于游戏玩法本身只能吸引玩家花两到三分钟的时间来做个测试，因而看起来似乎不如管理类游戏那样流行。我们时常尝试在游戏中融入些许教育主题。就像在《Pet Society》中，你可以购买各种看起来很像名作的绘画作品。在我们的新游戏《My Empire》中，你可以建造世界7大奇迹。

geo_challenge

Meera：EA公司出资购买了Playfish，很显然，此类游戏已经成为全球游戏业的重要组成部分。

Steve：这对此类游戏来说确实是个很好的事情。这说明像EA这样的大型游戏公司也意识到了这片领域的巨大潜力并投入大量资金。这意味着我们现在可以将更多品牌授权游戏投放到Facebook，近期我们发布了《FIFA Superstars》，你可以管理并训练队伍、购买球员来与好友比赛，努力在朋友圈中位列榜首。

Meera：现在正值世界杯期间（游戏邦注：采访时间是2010年6月），我想这是发布游戏的最佳时机。

Steve：游戏中也会设置独特的世界杯挑战赛，随后还有许多其他足球竞赛，任何与FIFA有关的事物都会出现在游戏中。正如你所看到的，社交游戏未来将逐渐与各社交平台整合，人们所钟爱的社交平台会有巨作浮现。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Online social gaming – what’s all the fuss about?

Meera: This week, I’ve come along to the offices of Playfish in London who develop social games to see what all the fuss is about, and what goes into creating them. With me is Steve Shipton, Technical Director of Studios here at Playfish.

Steve: So a social game is a game that you play with friends. Friends will be necessary to complete certain aspects of the game. You’ll be sharing features of the game with your friends, just generally moving away from playing alone.

Meera: What makes these types of games so popular online?

Steve: Part of that is that you can play the game in very short bursts and what you do, you share with your friends. So, you know, you’re kind of showing off a little bit when you’re playing the game and then your friend sees that, and then they want to get in on the action, and so on, and so on. There’s kind of a viral cascade of people playing.

Meera: How popular would you say this field of gaming is? So how many players are there worldwide?

Steve: There’s approximately 100 million people playing per day, playing social games.

Meera: Purely through sites such as Facebook?

Steve: Yes. In fact, that’s just on Facebook and the Playfish games account for about 10 million of that.

Meera: So that’s a lot of people. What do we know about the average player?

Steve: That’s quite interesting. It’s very different to traditional gaming and the split is pretty much 50/50, male/female. The actual age range can go anywhere between 15 to 55, but there is a core group in the 18 to 34 range.

Meera: Here at Playfish, you’ve created a variety of games varying from Pet Society where you create and own a pet, to Restaurant City where you manage a restaurant and have players or friends come and eat at the restaurant or work at the restaurant. What goes into developing these types of games?

Steve: Each game must factor in some social aspect. Another thing that we use is to have items in the game that you can only collect with the help of your friends. Also, we need to allow people to play these games in very short bursts. A lot of times, people are playing at work or just relaxing at home, and they don’t want to be spending half an hour in the solid session with that game. It’s difficult for us to try and get the same sort of rewarding game play into that one minute play which is typical. We also need to think about how can we monetize the game. All of our games are free to play, but we need to have a coin economy in there and a cash economy so that if players want to, then they have the option of spending some money, and so keeping the game running.

Meera: A key point is that these games are free to play. So that’s always an incentive for people to come on and start playing. But how do you keep them interested and keep your players there?

Steve: One of the big challenges for us is to keep the game fresh for existing players. They’re very important to us and we want to keep them playing for as long as possible so they can get the maximum value out of the game. We have this whole philosophy where we run games as a service. So one of the differences with traditional gaming is that, whereas they will spend years and years making a game, our games are updated every single week. So each week, there’s a new content, new features.

Meera: A lot of these types of games do seem to be purely for entertainment purposes, but could they be taken advantage of in terms of public awareness, or to create some educational initiatives.

Steve: We’ve actually got a game out called Geo Challenge in which you must identify a country’s flags, the shapes of countries, locate capitals, things like that. That one is educational, but then due to the active game play nature of that where it just demands your attention for two or three minutes to do the quiz, it doesn’t seem to be as popular as the management based games. Within games themselves, we always try to have a slight educational theme. So in Pet Society, you can buy various paintings that look a bit like the famous works and in our new game My Empire, you can build the 7 Wonders of the World.

Meera: Clearly, this field of gaming, is a big player in the world of gaming as a whole because recently, just a few months ago, Electronic Arts, that’s EA games bought Playfish.

Steve: This is really great for the platform. Big games companies like EA finally taking notice and investing a significant amount of money. It means that we can now put game licenses on Facebook, and recently, we launched FIFA Superstars where you can manage your team to train them up to buy new players, and to play against your friends, and try to be number one amongst your friends.

Meera: And I imagine with the World Cup, this is excellent timing.

Steve: It’ll be out to take part in a unique World Cup challenge within the game, and going forwards, lots of other football contests. Anything to do with FIFA basically will be in the game. So as you can see, the future for social gaming is going to be more integration with social platforms and bringing bigger brands to these social platforms that people recognise.

Helen: So, anyone who wants to can now manage their own football teams to see if they can do better than Fabio Capello, and perhaps England will get their hands on that cup, well, online anyway. That was Steve Shipton, Technical Director of Studios at Playfish. (Source: The Naked Scientists)