游戏邦注：本文作者为Colin Campbell，他日前采访了Loot Drop运营总监Karen Clark,主要谈论社交游戏招聘市场发展现状和未来趋势，及其如何影响传统游戏开发公司雇员。

clark karen from gamasutra.com

有时，我觉得行业就像步入末日。过去固有模式已不复存在，业内重要人士开始奋力适应新形势。雄心勃勃的新型公司开始浮出水面，并取得相应发展。

曾经掌机领域的小群体在游戏行业一手遮天，如今初创公司开始涉猎数字、手机和社交各个领域。

大型公司将员工视作“常规业务活动”的一部分。此外，初创公司争相吸引业内精英人士的眼球（游戏邦注：通常是那些具有技术和管理才能，但未受大公司重用的杰出人士）。

我日前有幸拜访了Karen Clark，她最近刚刚担任Loot Drop运营总监。是的，就是这家聚集约翰·罗梅洛、布瑞斯韦特、威廉姆斯和汤姆·霍尔等众多大腕的社交游戏初创公司。

Clark拥有不为媒体所知的有趣一面。她目前负责“大小事项，从招聘渠道，到管理员工需求，协调供应商，外包工作……囊括所有游戏之外的事务。”

如果你考虑进军社交游戏领域，那么Clark的谈话颇值得一读。（游戏邦注：她曾任职于Playdom、EA和Linden Labs，积累丰富经验）。

Loot Drop目前只有18名员工，除1人之外，所以成员都驻扎在加利福尼亚圣马特奥市，汤姆·霍尔计划成立奥斯汀工作室。公司规模未来数月有望翻一倍。

RockYou from insidefacebook.com

公司刚完成其首款作品《Cloudforest Expedition》，游戏今年夏天将由RockYou发行，而另一款尚未揭晓的作品也在筹划当中。公司核心成员之前都曾参与制作LOLapps的社交游戏《Ravenwood Fair》，据悉，该游戏目前的DAU（日活跃用户）已突破100万。

Ravenwood Fair from mmogamesite.com

Clark表示，就业市场如今出现奇怪情况。发行商成本缩减，市场呈现疲软状态，这意味着“市场如今拥有众多闲置人员。”但社交游戏领域受众多风投资本青睐的现状又表明，“各大公司都在招贤纳士。”

她补充表示，“社交游戏行业人士都在不断成长之中。招聘启示满天飞的同时，大量来自各地的应聘人员也纷纷涌入市场当中。就业市场竞争异常激烈。”

Loot Drop表示公司无需求助招聘机构。“我们的员工大多是慕名而来。我们处在优势地位。很多杰出人才都纷纷投递简历，同我们面谈。”

有趣的是，几年前炙手可热的职位随着市场的变化如今开始销声匿迹。“很多人员之前都是从事AAA游戏行业，玩家口味的转变使得他们失去饭碗。不幸的是，不是所有人员都能够胜任社交游戏工作。例如，市场有很多闲置贴图艺术家，但这些人员难以胜任Facebook游戏的相关工作。Flash动画和传统插图制作都远比3D工作重要得多。如今的硬核Flash编码员堪比5年前的3D贴图绘制员。”

就业市场充斥的不仅是掌机游戏从业人员，还包括温饱成问题的年轻杰出人士（游戏邦注：这些人希望寻找更多挑战，获得更大发展机会）。

“有些业内人士更富有企业家精神。他们如今希望转投社交游戏领域是因为这里营收丰厚，具有截然不同的创意挑战。不妨看看约翰和布伦达，他们置身社交游戏领域并非出于利润目的，而是因为他们深深为这个行业着迷。”

Clark承认，农场创建游戏确实很难吸引那些富有创造性的玩家，而《Cloudforest Expedition》的问世将证明，社交游戏也能够把叙事、深度、角色和探索元素融为一体。

“我们有望看到更多故事驱动的富有情节的作品。游戏不再仅是建造大量建筑。我们将使游戏融入更多情感依附，这会吸引众多社交网络用户的眼球，特别是就社交游戏领域女性玩家居多的实况而言。”

商业模式土崩瓦解（游戏邦注：因此要求新技能）也是许多人转投社交领域的原因之一。这是个学习机会。游戏需能够迅速掳获玩家芳心，能够获得玩家几分钟、几小时、几天甚至更长时间的关注，能够促使玩家不断开展虚拟交易活动。

她表示，“玩社交游戏不是简单花掉50美元。玩家对游戏应该具有一定忠诚度。游戏准入门槛很低，这能够促使玩家挖掘更多内容。这对游戏设计而言意味着什么呢？”

她补充表示，“目前最大的挑战是学会如何应对用户行为反馈参数。游戏设计并不仅仅包括单纯的设计师工作；设计师还要懂得如何收集和应对反馈参数。我们需要把玩家放在第一位，但我们希望设计师不是单纯追踪数据。”

“这个模式深受那些熟知自身设计工作，喜欢获得定期反馈，习惯快速推出更胜一筹续作的业内人士的青睐。这堪称一石三鸟，是吧？”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Interview: Inside The Social Recruitment Boom

by Colin Campbell

[In this interview with Loot Drop's Karen Clark, the studio operations director talks with Gamasutra about the processes and trends in the social gaming recruitment market and how they affect employees at traditional developers.]

Sometimes, it feels like the last days of Rome. The rigid structures of the past are crumbling, their leading lights struggling to adapt. Aggressive new tribes are on the move and gaining ground.

Where once the games industry had consolidated into a small group of publishing clusters dedicated to feeding the console market, it is now also a chaos of start-ups serving digital, mobile, social et al.

Large companies shed employees as a part of “normal business practice” (in their own, vile words). Meanwhile, start-ups compete to attract the best-talent swirling around the market, often people with technical and entrepreneurial skills that were not highly valued by the big employers.

I visited with someone at the center of this morass, Karen Clark, recently appointed director of studio operations at Loot Drop. Yeah, that’s the social start-up headed up by big names like John Romero, Brenda Brathwaite, Laralyn McWilliams and Tom Hall.

Clark is interesting in ways not often highlighted by the media. She’s in charge of “everything from the recruiting pipeline to managing employee needs, vendors, outsourcing…everything that is not the actual game itself.”

If you’re thinking of a move into social, she’s worth a listen. She has bags of experience at Playdom, EA and Linden Labs.

Loot Drop is just 18 people right now, all but one in San Mateo, CA, with Tom Hall the beginning of a planned Austin studio. The company is looking to double-up in the next few months.

It is finishing its first game, Cloudforest Expedition, which will be published by RockYou this summer, with a second unannounced title further down the line. Core team members previously worked on the social game Ravenwood Fair for LOLapps, currently bringing in over a million DAUs.

Clark says the jobs market is in a weird place. Cost-cutting publishers and the weak economy mean there are “a lot of people on the market right now.” But a VC boom in social gaming also means “everybody is hiring.” (Loot Drop is boot-strapped.)

She adds, “Everybody in the social space is growing. You can look at job postings and you’ll see a large volume of candidates being hired from places up and down the [Bay Area] peninsula, the south bay and in San Francisco. There’s a lot of competition for this particular market segment.”

Loot Drop says it isn’t working with recruiters. “Everybody is coming to us. We’re in a good position. We have a lot of talented people applying and talking to us.”

Interesting that the hot roles of a few years back have been superseded as the market has shifted. “There are a lot of people coming from triple-A who have been displaced due to changes in consumer appetites. Unfortunately, not all of those jobs map well. For example, there are a lot of 3D texture artists, but it’s hard to map that role to a Facebook game. Flash animation, traditional illustration are more important than making 3D levels. A really hardcore Flash coder is at the same kind of premium that those 3D texture mappers were five years ago.”

It’s not just refugees from the console games sector. Hungry young talent is out there, looking for a challenge and for their big chance.

“Some people in the industry are more entrepreneurial than others. They want to shift into social right now because that’s where the money is, but also because it’s a very different sort of creative challenge. If you look at John and Brenda, they aren’t doing this to chase a buck, they are doing this because they’re pursuing something that fascinates them.”

Clark concedes that farm-building games won’t attract the big creative thinkers, adding that Cloudforest Expedition will show that social games can be built that include narrative, depth, characters and a sense of exploration.

“We’re going to see more story-driven games with plot structure. It’s not just going to be about ‘let’s build a bunch of buildings…hooray…what now?’ We’re making games with a higher level of emotional engagement and that’s attractive for a lot of the players on social networks, especially given the female bias in that sector.”

The massive disruption in business models – and therefore required skills – is also a reason why many are looking to social. This is an opportunity to learn. Games must be built that can grab players instantly, that can lure them in over a period of minutes, hours, days and more, that can be monetized incrementally.

“Playing games [on Facebook] isn’t about laying down $50,” she says. “The player makes a tiny commitment with a minimum of exertion. There’s an extremely low barrier for entry, and that makes people explore more. What does that mean for game design?”

She adds, “The biggest trend right now is being able to react to the metrics, to consumer behavior. Game design isn’t just about the designer; it’s about how the designer collects and reacts to the metrics. We need to put the user first, but we need designers who aren’t just following the numbers.”

“This approach appeals to people who really know what they’re doing in design, who enjoy the constant feedback and love to iterate quickly and come up with something that is even better than what was originally made. That’s the trifecta, right?” （Source：gamasutra）