作者：Alexander Bruce

有人数年孜孜不倦，终于完成并发行一款游戏，但令他困惑的是，财富滚滚而来的局面他却没有看到。我相信这个故事大家并不陌生。游戏的核心理念很扎实，游戏本身也找不到bug，测试过的朋友也认可了。到底哪出错了？难道是因为游戏发行时正好赶上石油危机？难道他们应该在周四而不是周三发行游戏？难道是因为他们太熟悉这个游戏，以致于看不到其实它存在着相当大的问题？

当你把所有时间花在游戏制作上，你的游戏玩法往往会形成一种特定的风格，同时会对游戏当前所有“错误”浑然不觉。当人们首次玩某款游戏时，他们发现的最大的问题，通常和你看到的是相当不同的。发现问题的方法有很多。

games players in conventions (from gamespot.com)

有人会借用所馈参数确保不出错，我曾经做过大量的市场测试，如游戏比赛和定期发送新内容给新老玩家等。但是，对我来说，最有用的方法莫过于参加游戏展会，因为这是一种在很短的时间内同时将游戏展示给许多人的主要方法。其突出优势在于，当游戏受到许多其他因素的干扰时，这种展会可以测试出游戏对玩家的吸引力。

整个周末，我都奔驰在前往AVCon展会的路上。在集会上，我的新作《Antichamber》一经亮相，同往常一样，反响激烈。虽然仍有一些不足之处需要改进。这不是十全十美，这是真相。我的展示目的只是为了让人玩到足够长的时间，这样我在测试许多游戏后续内容的同时也能继续测试设想，并在PAX10展会以前找出最需要关注的地方。

当人们起身离开时， 问他们估计自己玩了多久，不过他们的猜想总是与现实大相径庭。有人认为自己玩了20分钟，事实上是50分钟；有人称玩了半小时，实际上早超过1小时了。有个家伙连续玩了2个小时，直到最后我中断游戏让他们当中的一个人靠拢过来玩。这一切都表明，这游戏总体上是不错的。

不用说，我最关心的是PAX Prime展会前作一番小改良。我很早就知道这是怎么一回事，因为去年E3游戏展以前，我自认为“几近完工”，事实上，当我看到E3上的一群人玩过游戏之后，我才意识到自己离大功告成还有好一段路要走。我参加的每一次展会都是测试的机会。虽然参加展会可能会延迟游戏的发行，但这意味着游戏最终完成时，人们可以获得更高品质的游戏。尤其重要的是，一些错误的设想可能极大地影响玩家在游戏中获得或忽略的信息，从而影响玩家对游戏的整体感觉。

在展会上，相当多人用各种各样的问题为难我，有些问题与Steam平台有关。这种事以前也发生过，第一个问题是总如出一辙——与当下的其他游戏的平均水准相比，你的游戏质量怎么样？如果你对这个问题的第一个反应是“我想还不够好吧”，那么你的首要目标就是继续努力、解决问题。

慎重地退回一步，分析其他游戏（当它们还在出售时）做得“好”的原因，而你的游戏有何不足。如果画面看起来太廉价太恶劣，要么找个新美工，要么找个看起来更精细一点的风格，但不要超出你的预算。如果你的游戏画面看起来确实精美，但操作不稳定，那就继续改进。

如果你不可能一下子明确游戏中的缺陷所在，那就把游戏展示在众人面前吧。不要局限于朋友、家人和那些早就对游戏的一点两点感兴趣的人，还要请一些除非游戏就在眼前，否则就不玩游戏的人来尝试。如果你的游戏问题真的很大，那些还有其他事要忙活的随机人群断然不会在它上面多花几分钟。展会上多的就是这类人。

除了把游戏放到人们面前，还要观察他们的操作情况。如果别人玩游戏时，你本人却不知所踪，那你岂不是浪费了一个理解游戏接受度的机会？这就是为什么我不遗余力地参加几乎每一种展会活动的原因。代价是昂贵的，但考虑到另一种选择，即发行一款不够完善的游戏，我宁可把参展当成一种有效投资。

当人们在展会上玩《Antichamber》时，我经常会盯着他们的脸，而不是观察游戏。我早就清楚游戏是怎么回事，偶尔瞄一眼屏幕我就知道玩家在看什么了。但只有面部神情才能告诉我他们在想什么。这之所以重要，是因为当你提问时，玩家所说的和在游戏中所做的往往存在相当明显的脱节。

在展会上要牢记的另一个重点是倾听所有的反馈和批评。我的意思不是说所有反馈和批评都中肯、都要采纳或者要抛弃其中的90%，而是，在你认真分析全部反馈和批评、理解他人的言下之意后，再决定采纳还是抛弃。如果有人说“这个游戏太棒了，但我对操作有点晕”，别只听前半句，漏了后半句。

与此类似，如果有人问你的游戏如何瞄准4岁的幼儿，你只需感激他们的提问，好好考虑过后就可以把这个问题抛开了。最差的情况是，你只听得进与自己共鸣的赞美褒扬，或是对所有事情都不予理会。虽然我已经知道问题的答案，但为了备案，我还是坚持让几个小孩子在AVCon展会上玩《Antichamber》，只是为了确认自己的想法。我可以通过这些证据，断言这款游戏确实不适合太小的孩子。

我不得不指出的是，这个建议总难免有例外。是的，有些游戏确实很难在展会上作测试。如果你在开发一款 iOS或Flash游戏，发行游戏然后再逐步更新会更划算。但就算只是iOS或Flash游戏，你也得充分意识到展会不值得你浪费时间的原因，然后找到其他更有效的方法来测试你的设想，千万不要用“环境不合适”这样的言论麻痹自己。从技术上说，展会对几乎任何游戏（包括我的游戏）都不是理想的测试环境，但仍然非常有价值。

本文的总体要点是：你最近一次错买了一款平庸的游戏，然后向你的朋友大吐不快是什么时候？无论你的游戏值1块还是100块，坚持把游戏展示给那些对游戏一无所知但实事求事看问题的人，这样可以避免做出一些没人看得上的东西。我知道这点，是因为我本可以在一年半以前就发行游戏，不过那样的话，它必定不会像现在这么有价值了。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Using Conventions as a Reality Check

by Alexander Bruce

I’m sure everyone has heard stories about people who spent ages working on a game, released it, and then wondered why the sales didn’t come rolling in. The core idea seemed solid, they couldn’t find any more bugs, and friends they’d tested the game on had said it was fun. What went wrong? Maybe the game didn’t sell because of the oil crisis that happened shortly before they launched. Maybe they should have released on Thursday instead of Wednesday. Or maybe, the game had some pretty major issues that they weren’t able to see as a result of being too close to it.

When you’re working on a game 24/7, you’re used to playing in a particular way and will build up a mental map of all of the things that are currently “wrong” with the game. These are likely to be pretty different to what are actually the biggest issues that people have when playing the game for the first time. There are many ways to test against this.

Some people will swear by metrics as a means for making sure this doesn’t happen (which I will argue against another time, when creating games such as mine), and I’ve done a whole lot of testing the waters through competitions and periodically sending new builds to old and new players alike. But one of the most useful things to me has been to continuously show the game off at conferences / conventions, because they’re basically a way to put the game in front of a lot of people in a very short space of time. Conferences are especially good at testing how well the game is able to hold peoples interest, when they’re surrounded by a significant number of other distractions.

Over the weekend, I traveled interstate to a convention called AVCon to show off the latest build of Antichamber. As per usual at these things, the response was very strong, though there are still some areas that need further work. This isn’t perfectionism, this is reality. My intention with this show in particular was to just leave people playing until they’d had enough, mainly so that I could be testing a bunch of later game content, but also to continue testing assumptions and find which areas needed the most attention before I show it off for the PAX10.

When people got up to leave, I’d ask them how long they thought they had been playing for, and their guesses were always way off. People who thought they’d been playing for 20 minutes had actually been there for 50. People who said half an hour were there for more than an hour, etc. In one instance, a person had been playing for 2 hours before I finally kicked them off to let one of the people crowding around play. These are all pretty good signs that things are working well in general.

Needless to say, the priority for what needed the most attention leading up to PAX Prime next month changed a bit, for the better. I’ve known how this happens for quite a long time, because what I thought was “almost finished” prior to E3 last year was actually “quite a while away from being done” after seeing waves of people play it at E3. Every conference I’ve been to has been a way to test for this kind of thing, and though it can delay the release of the game, it means that people are getting something of a much higher quality when the game is finally done. It is especially important for the kind of game that I’m creating, where a few false assumptions can dramatically impact what information people are learning / ignoring in the game, which affects how it feels.

Whilst at this conference, I had quite a number of people picking my brain about various things, some of which related to getting their game on Steam. This is something that has come up before, and my first question has always been the same. How does the quality of your game compare to the average quality of other games on the service? When your response to this question is “yeah it’s not as good I guess”, your first point of call would probably be to go off and resolve that.

Take a serious step back from your work and analyse what other games are doing “right” (as they’re on the service already) that your game is currently missing. If the art clearly looks cheap and dirty, either hire an artist or find a style that looks refined without costing more than you can afford. If your game looks really nice in screenshots, but has wonky controls, go off and work on that.

If you can’t spot any immediately obvious flaws such as these, though, start putting the game in front of people. Not just friends and family, or people who were already interested in the game for one reason or another, but people who have no reason to play your game other than the fact that it is in front of them. Random people who have better things to do with their time, and won’t continue playing for more than a few minutes if there are some pretty major issues with it. Conferences are full of these kinds of people.

Moreso than just putting the game in front of people, though, actually watch them as they play. If your game is being showcased at an event, but you’re not there as it happens, you’re wasting a pretty massive opportunity to understand how people are actually receiving the game. This is why I’ve made the effort to attend almost everything that has had the game on display around the world. It’s expensive, but when the alternative is releasing something that doesn’t actually work as it should, I’d just consider it an investment.

When people are playing Antichamber at an event, I spend more time watching their face than I spend watching the game. I already know how the game works, and an occasional glance at the screen will tell me what the player is looking at. But their face tells me what they’re thinking. This is important, because there’s generally a pretty obvious disconnect between what people say if you’re asking them questions, and how they were responding whilst playing the game.

Doing this can make it easy to work out why players are having trouble with something at one stage in the game, because you were able to see that at another stage, they completely ignored something important. They may have run past it, or briefly looked at what you wanted them to see, but didn’t take the time to actually understand it.

The other important thing to keep in mind at conferences (but also applies to any feedback that you get, even from just sending builds of the game around) is to listen to 100% of feedback and criticism. This isn’t suggesting that it is all relevant or that you should apply it all, and you may end up throwing away 90% of it, but you should only do so after you’ve seriously processed it all and have worked out what people meant underneath what they said. If someone says “this game is great but I was a bit confused about the controls”, don’t just hear “this game is great” and brush off the other comments.

Likewise, if someone asks how your game is going to target 4 year olds, appreciate what they’re asking, process it, and then be content throwing away that question, having at least thought about it seriously. The worst thing you can do is to only listen to comments that line up with your preconceived assumptions, or hear nothing at all. For the record, I already knew the answer to this, but still got a few young children to play Antichamber at AVCon, just to be sure. The game definitely isn’t for young children, for reasons I can clearly identify.

I shouldn’t really have to point out that there are always going to be exceptions to this advice. Yes, some games may genuinely be more difficult to test at a conference / convention. If you’re developing an iOS or Flash game (which I’m not), it may be cheaper to just release the game and update it as you go. But even in those instances, make sure you’re well aware of the specific reasons why a conference may not be worth your time, and are finding other ways of effectively testing against assumptions, rather than just throwing around statements about how “it’s not the right environment”. Technically, conferences are the wrong environment for almost any game, mine included. They’re still incredibly valuable.

The overall point of this post is this: When was the last time you bought a mediocre game and then raved to all of your friends about it? Whether your game costs $1 or $100, constantly putting it in front of people who know nothing about it and being realistic with what the issues are and how to fix them will avoid creating something that no one actually wants. I know this, because I could have released the game over a year and a half ago, and it certainly wouldn’t have been as worthwhile as an experience as it is today.（source:gamasutra）