作者：Paul Hyman

虽然很多开发商梦想成立独立工作室，但对很多人来说，梦想依旧还只是梦想。据成功转型人士透露，这是因为融资和后续运作是个很大挑战。

但日前3位独立开发者（游戏邦注：他们各自处在不同转型阶段）接受媒体采访，纷纷表示自己不后悔谋求独立发展。

例如，Randy Smith 2年前成立Tiger Style Games，其曾在洛杉矶EA工作2年半，其最后一项工作是担任与著名导演斯皮尔伯格签约合作项目（代号LMNO）的创意总监/首席设计师，但作品最终未能问世。

他之前曾在EA担任咨询顾问，更早前还在蒙特利尔的育碧和法国里昂的Arkane Studios任过职。他最早是在马萨诸塞州坎布里奇的Looking Glass任职，担任《Thief》系列设计师，后来转到Ion Storm，继续担任《Thief》系列的项目总监。他总共在大型工作室工作14年。

但2008年底，经济萧条迫使EA进行裁员，Smith因此丢了饭碗，于是他决定充分利用当前情形。

3年后回顾那段时光，他表示，“独立开发想法很早就出现在我的脑海中。这似乎是我瞄准iPhone制作内容的绝佳时机，当时苹果刚于App Store推出几款早期应用。对我来说这是个新奇而有趣的领域，由于制作成本不高，我觉得这是实现梦想的可行平台。”

虽然他之前主要涉足PC和掌机游戏领域，但Smith还是决定制作规模更小的iOS游戏，这只需小规模团队和较短开发周期。

Smith表示，转移iPhone领域的一大优势是制作成本低。

他解释表示，“我们无需说服发行商达成发行协议，或在某开发工具中投入大量资金。事实上，我们当时着手开发时，iPhone领域尚没有发行商（游戏邦注：如今已出现Chillingo和Gameloft之类的公司）。我们只需支付SDK的平价授权使用费，以及坚持不懈的毅力。”

但Smith很快发现，运作新公司不仅仅是创造优秀产品。首先就要进行系列决策。是否能够请到员工？是否有投资者？是否有办公场所，或者是否能够成为合格的实体公司？

Smith表示，“其实并没有那么困难。整个过程出奇顺利。某天我失业了，然后第二天我就自立门户。我需要组建团队，但我在行业内有众多伙伴，他们都愿意同我一起奋斗，有兼职的，也有全职的。”

Tiger Style Games采用合作模式，只有等到游戏推出和创收，大家才有收入。弊端是团队成员包括Smith，在很长一段时间内都没有收入。优势是团队能够建立起与所付出劳动相对应的“终身忠诚度”。

他表示，“这是旨在让所有成员致富的公司，但若是某家付你薪水的大型上市公司，其管理目标显然不是让员工变得富有。”

Smith表示，“我们模式中最令我欣赏的一点是，它以大公司所没有的方式奖励员工。大家同舟共济，试图最大限度优化游戏。所以大家都尽力付出更多努力，更好进行配合，进一步完善作品，因为这样游戏才能够大受欢迎，共享所得收益，收益不是仅为高管所有。这同时也意味着大家需要共同承担风险。”

Smith团队冒险制作的首款作品是《Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor》（游戏邦注：其于2009年8月发行）。好消息是，这是个相当成功的商业作品，荣登畅销游戏榜单，成为奖项得主，且大受媒体好评。

如今Tiger Style团队开始着手第二款作品，游戏尚未命名，据Smith表示，这是款“动作/冒险/探索/即时iOS游戏，其中玩家将扮演宇航员，探索存有生命的火星洞穴”。若一切进展顺利，他希望今天底就能推出游戏。此项目出自12-17个成员之手，大多是兼职人员，至今耗时15个月。

Smith表示，“待到游戏推出，我大约在这个项目花费两年时间。这对iOS游戏而言是个很长的周期。但我们进行大量优化工作，设置众多功能，更重要的是，我们在制作前期投入大量时间，因为我们需要进行大量创新和试验工作，以确保在制作前充分把握游戏内容。”

Smith策略及其给予其他独立初创公司的最佳建议是，坚持自付经费，通过首款作品赚取足够储备金，然后资助第二个和第三个项目。

他表示，“就是引导自己通过低成本项目支撑下个更庞大的项目，就像我们的下个作品。这好过投靠风险投资者，他们的目标是帮你发展公司，然后转手卖掉。这或许对他们有益，但绝对不利于你的职业目标。”

虽然Smith表示很难明确说明初创公司需投入多少资金才能制作首款作品，但其估计不会超过2万美元，“这包括购买工作所需的MacBooks，以及聘请律师注册商标。但这不包括投入8个月制作一款或许不会成功作品所付出的代价（游戏邦注：包括期间的房租和日常饮食）。”

就在Smith团队致力于工作室第二款作品时，Haunted Temple Studios独立工作室的成员们正忙于其首款游戏，作品“马上步入测试阶段”。

工作室创始人、总监及美术总监Jake Kazdal的背景同Smith类似，其实双方曾在洛杉矶EA一起合作过不幸的LMNO项目，其中Kazdal担任概念美术师。他曾负责Wii游戏《Boom Blox》的界面设计，随后又在《Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight》担任18个月的高级环境概念美术师。转战西雅图后，他加入独立工作室Zombie Studios，担任《Blacklight: Tango Down》美术总监，作品瞄准XBLA、PC和PSN平台，但期间他还利用晚上和周末时间制作业余项目，一款简单iPhone游戏。

Kazdal承认他原本没有打算成立自己的工作室，“但很多朋友都鼓动我自立门户。坦白讲，我觉得我尚未准备就绪。说到‘工作室’，我就想到20个成员，位于市中心的大办公室，巨额开支等。这个想法一点儿也不吸引我。”

“但我的‘业余项目’很快大受欢迎，我和朋友都意识到这或许不再是最初的简单iPhone游戏，或许作为硬核掌机玩家，我们能够把它变成一款Xbox游戏。”

“不久后我们意识到需辞掉工作（游戏邦注：我们于2010年3月正式离开公司），全职制作这款游戏。因此，我便成立Haunted Temple Games，这由我们团队3个成员的名字组成。”

他解释表示，“Haunted Temple确实是个3人小型团队。其他2个人都在洛杉矶的家里办公，而我则在西雅图。我们没有统一的工作地点，没有购买医疗保险，没有你眼中真正公司所应具备的一切。”

但Kazdal在《Skulls of the Shogun》融资方面确有自己的一套，这是工作室的首款作品，也就其口中的‘业余项目’，作品计划今年秋天发行。这款叙述不死武士之间战斗的回合策略游戏将由微软在Xbox Live Arcade发行。

虽然Kazdal表示不会透露过多细节，但他表示，“我们最初从我父亲那获得些许天使投资，他是个投资者，然后就开始着手，如今我们已从微软那筹得更多资金。这是个巨大转变，我之前是美术总监和高级概念美术师，现在是自己投资创业。过去我每周都会从EA那领到薪水，而如今我已很长时间没有余款，大家压力都很大，我妻子也不例外。这一情况很快将发生转变，我们将继续生活。”

除资金问题外，Kazdal的多数压力源自承担过多任务。他表示，除游戏开发外他们还有很多工作需要完成，包括采访、法律事务和商业决策。

他表示，“这些事情几乎耗尽我一整天时间。到了深夜，当电话逐渐减少，周围恢复平静，我才能坐下来处理有关游戏的工作。”

但虽然Kazdal觉得压力始终伴其左右，但他还是因为获得创造自由而感到非常高兴，他能够制作自己想要制作的内容，没有人会要求其进行更改。

他表示，“要我回到从前，我会非常痛苦。”

Kazdal获得微软融资，而且微软还愿意帮其发行游戏，他意识到团队需要“更多配合他们。但总体而言，这还是相当不错的”。

Kazdal回忆起同微软达成的发行合约，这几乎使他精力耗尽。虽然他和团队成员已成为开发者，但他们依旧是个靠自身力量做事的新团队，所以必然要经历漫长的谈判过程。

“我们在GDC及其他展会投入大量精力，积极同发行商碰面，展示我们致力的内容，同媒体沟通，树立自己的名气。我终于在E3取得突出表现，获得两个‘最佳策略游戏’奖项，于是我们开始同微软沟通。大量正面媒体曝光和开发者评价促使我们说服微软达成协议。”

他给想要成立自己工作室开发者的建议是不要轻易辞去现有工作，直到出现可行模型，“令你自豪且能够像发行商展示的内容。它能够帮助你筹得最初运作资金，然后再离开现有工作，寻找资金雄厚的最初发行商伙伴。”

Kazdal希望通过首款作品赚取足够资金，投资下个作品，无需再依靠其他发行商。

他表示，“我希望工作室继续维持小规模，自付资本，而不是同其他发行商分成营收。我的意思是说，我希望工作室2-3年后继续保持原样，同时创造丰厚营收！若不依靠发行商，这更容易实现。”

同Tiger Style Games和Haunted Temple相比，澳大利亚工作室Uppercut Games还处在初级阶段，其6个月前才刚刚诞生。相比前面两家美国工作室，它不存在融资问题，主要是因为澳大利亚政府的扶持政策。

虽然工作室的两位联合创始人认为Uppercut自付资本，但其确有从新南威尔士州政府的数字媒体基金获得帮助。

Uppercut联合创始人Ed Orman表示，“新南威尔士州（游戏邦注：这是澳大利亚人口最稠密的州）极力鼓励数字媒体发展，特别是游戏行业。我觉得他们之所以对我们偏爱有加是因为我们呈现完美计划，还有我们背景。”

截至1月份，他已在澳大利亚Irrational Games/2K担任9年首席设计师，而联合创始人Andrew James也在同个工作室担任8年美术总监。他们合起来共有28年游戏开发经验，曾参与《Fallout: Tactics》、《BioShock》、《Tribes》及即将问世的《XCOM》更新内容。

虽然Orman不愿透露其所获得的融资，但他清楚表示，“我们未来将投入更多个人积蓄。任职2K之类的大公司，应对紧迫截止日期带来的最大优点是我们没有很多假期，所以我们都存有相当丰厚的积蓄，因此能够将此投入项目。所以政府投资无疑是个很好的机会。”

当他们双双于1月份离开2K，Orman表示，他们的动机是“希望未来很长一段时间都能呆在同个地方。虽然大公司存在无限机会，但我们想要尝试不同的内容，自立门户。”

两个开发者都长期致力PC和掌机游戏领域，他们的首个Uppercut作品是《Epoch》，这是款以后启示录时代为背景的iOS战斗动作游戏，游戏借助Unreal Development Kit工具。作品计划在今年第4季度发行。

Orman表示，“我有iPod Touch，A.J.有iPhone 3GS。我们刚刚开始体验两个平台的游戏，发现我们不仅喜欢其简单风格，而且其画面效果也开始赶上其他设备。”

Orman表示，他们并不希望在《Epoch》发行前就耗尽所有资金，“我们分析具体数据，发现公司能够维持到首款作品发行。我们制作大型高质量作品的原因是希望其能够支撑我们下款作品的开发。是的，这更具风险性，但我们觉得作品最终会取得成功。”

此外，我们第二款作品《Plunder》也在准备中（游戏邦注：作品也获得政府投资）。此他们还聘请若干编程外包人员和合同美工着手此项目，所以一旦《Epoch》完成后，他们就能够快速投入新项目。

Orman表示，“我们的策略是同时运作若干项目，这样我们就能在完成当前项目后立即投入新内容。”

James补充表示，“我们从Irrational学到的经验是不要孤注一掷。保持多个项目同时运作，这样若某项目未能顺利进展，还有备用方案。我觉得这是个好策略。”

在上述3家独立工作室中，Tiger Style的Smith在独立开发方面经验最丰富，最适合给另外两家尾随其后的公司提供建议。

出乎意料的是，虽然他本身经验丰富，但他却告诫其他开发者要待到一切准备就绪，才转走独立路线。若他们尚未具备足够信心，没有成功把握，他建议他们还是继续留在原来的公司，积累经验，直到觉得自己能够进行冒险。

他表示，“寻求独立是种创业表现。这非常激动人心，它给予你更多自由，但风险很高，只适合某些人。我有足够的积蓄，而且愿意投资。若你不够坚定，还是不要轻易行动，原本自信满满，最终却惨遭失败的案例很多。你要谨慎行事，不要成为其中一员。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Opportunities And Dangers Of Going Indie

by Paul Hyman

[Three indie developers in different stages in their evolution -- Tiger Style Games (Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor), Haunted Temple Studios (Skulls of the Shogun), and Uppercut Games (Epoch) discuss the pros and cons of the move from big studio to indie.]

While many developers harbor dreams of going indie, for many, it remains just a dream. That’s because financing a business — and then keeping its doors open — can be quite the challenge, say those who have actually made the transition.

But, of the three who Gamasutra interviewed recently — each one at a different stage in that transition — not one regretted making the move.

For instance, Randy Smith opened Tiger Style Games two years ago, having been at Electronic Arts in Los Angeles for two and a half years, most recently as creative director/lead designer on the Steven Spielberg project — code named LMNO — that never shipped.

Prior to that, he had been a consultant at EA, and previously did stints at Ubisoft in Montreal and at Lyon, France-based Arkane Studios. His first two jobs were at Cambridge, MA-based Looking Glass where he was a designer on the Thief series and then he shifted over to Ion Storm where he continued on the Thief series as project director. All told, he worked 14 years at major studios.

But, in year-end 2008, as the weak economy convinced EA to downsize, Smith found himself jobless, and he decided to take advantage of the situation.

“Becoming an indie was something that had been in my head for some time,” he recalls three years later. “And it seemed to me the perfect time to do something with the iPhone given the fact that Apple had just fired up the App Store with some very early games. It felt like a new, exciting frontier to me and, given the low overhead needed to get involved, I decided it would be an easy place to get started and fulfill my dream.”

Although all his experience had been in PC and console games, Smith looked forward to creating the simpler iOS titles which required smaller teams and shorter development cycles.

One of the biggest advantages of moving into the iPhone space was the minimal funding it required, Smith says.

“There was no need to romance publishers to make a publishing deal or to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a development kit,” he explains.”In fact, when we started, there weren’t even any publishers in existence for the iPhone, while now you have companies like Chillingo and Gameloft. All we needed was a cheap license, the SDK, and we were ready to start plugging away.”

But keeping a new company running is more than just creating good product, as Smith quickly discovered. First off, there are decisions to be made. Will he have employees? Will there be investors? Will there be an office — or will a virtual company suffice?

“It wasn’t all that difficult,” says Smith. “In fact, it was surprisingly easy — one day I was unemployed, the next I was working for myself. I needed to assemble a team, but I had plenty of contacts in the industry who were interested in pursuing this endeavor with me, both part time and fulltime.”

Tiger Style Games functions as a co-op — no one earns a penny until the game ships and makes money. The downside is that everyone, including Smith, works for a long time without being paid. The upside is that the team gets “lifetime royalties” in proportion to the effort they put into the project.

“This is a business where people do get rich, but if you’re in a salaried position working at a large, publicly traded corporation, it’s very unlikely management has any intention of making you rich,” he says.

“What I really love about our model is that it helps reward everybody in a way you wouldn’t see in a large studio,” says Smith. “It also puts everyone in the same boat, trying to make the game as good as possible. So everybody is motivated to put in just a little bit more effort, to collaborate more, and to make the game better because then it will sell better and the money earned goes to them, not just the executives. It also means that everyone takes a piece of the risk.”

Smith’s team took the risk on its first game — Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor — released in August, 2009. The good news is that it was a critical and a reasonable commercial success, up at the top of the sales charts and the winner of awards and high scores from the press.

Now the Tiger Style team is on its second still-unnamed title –an “action/adventure/exploration/emergent behaviors iOS game in which you play an astronaut exploring a cave on Mars where life has been discovered,” according to Smith. He hopes to ship later this year if all goes well. He has between 12 and 17 mostly part-time people on the project which, so far, has taken 15 months.

“When we ship, we will have worked just shy of two years on the game,” says Smith, “which is a very long time for an iOS game. But we’ve got a lot of polish, a lot of features, and, most importantly, we spent a very long time in pre-production because there’s a fair amount of innovative, experimental stuff going on and we really wanted to make sure we understood them well before we went into production.”

Smith’s strategy — and his best recommendation to other indie startups — is to remain self-funded by earning enough from the first project to build up enough of a nest egg to fund the second and third projects.

“The idea is to bootstrap yourself using lower overhead projects to pay for subsequent, more ambitious projects — like our next one,” he says. “That’s a better idea than turning to, say, a venture capitalist whose goal is to have you grow your company and then sell it off. That may be good for them, but is rarely good for your own career goals.”

While Smith says it’s difficult to measure how much money a startup needs to build its first game, he estimates less than $20,000 “if you add in every little expense like buying new MacBooks so we could work, and paying lawyers to get you a trademark. But that doesn’t include spending eight months of your life — paying your rent and feeding yourself — doing something that may or may not pay off in the end.”

Meanwhile, as Smith’s team is working on its second game, the folks at indie Haunted Temple Studios are busy on their first, which is “rapidly approaching alpha.”

Founder, director, and art director Jake Kazdal has a background similar to Smith’s — in fact, the two developers worked together at EA Los Angles on the ill-fated LMNO project where Kazdal was a concept artist. There he did some interface design for Boom Blox for Wii, followed by 18 months as senior environment concept artist for Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. After moving to Seattle, he joined indie Zombie Studios as art director on Blacklight: Tango Down for XBLA, PC, and PSN, but spent his nights and weekends working on a hobby project — a simple iPhone game.

Kazdal admits that he really had no interest in opening his own studio, “but I got a lot of pressure from friends to do my own thing. Frankly, I didn’t think I was ready. When I thought of a ‘studio,’ I thought 20 guys, big office downtown, big expenses, and so on. It didn’t appeal to me.

“But my ‘hobby project’ was picking up steam pretty quickly, and my friend and I noticed that maybe it shouldn’t be the simple iPhone game it had started as — maybe, as hardcore console gamers, we could turn it into an Xbox game.

“It wasn’t long before we realized we needed to quit our jobs — which we did in March, 2010 — and take on the project full-time. And so, my launching Haunted Temple Games, which is really just the name of my team of three, just sort of happened.

“Haunted Temple is really just a tiny microstudio of three guys,” he explains. “I mean, the other two are both in LA working from home, and I work here in Seattle. We don’t have a centralized space, we don’t have health insurance, we don’t have anything you’d think of as belonging to a real company.”

But Kazdal did have his own strategy for generating funds for his first title, Skulls of the Shogun, the so-called “hobby project” that is now scheduled for release this fall. The turn-based strategy game featuring combat between undead samurai will be published by Microsoft for Xbox Live Arcade.

“We started with some angel funding from my father — who is an investor — just to get going and now we’re getting more money from Microsoft,” says Kazdal, although he says he’s not permitted to discuss the details. “It’s quite a difference, having been art director and a senior concept artist, making really good money. I was used to getting a paycheck every week from EA, and now I haven’t had spare cash for a long time — which has been stressful for everybody, my wife included. Hopefully that will end sooner than later and we can start moving on with our lives.”

In addition to his financial concerns, much of the stress comes from wearing as many hats as he does. There is always something to do over and above game development, he says, including interviews, legal matters, and business decisions.

“All of those things takes almost my whole day,” he says, “and then, late at night, when all the phone calls taper off, that’s when it’s quiet and I can sit down and actually do the work on our game.”

But, while Kazdal says the stress really takes its toll, he is delighted by the creative freedom he has, and being able to plan the game he wants to build without anyone telling him to make changes.

“It would be really hard for me to consider going back to the way things were,” he admits.

However, now that Kazdal is being funded by Microsoft and there is suddenly a publisher on the scene, he recognizes the fact that he will have to “start answering to them a bit more. But, for the most part,” he says, “it’s been pretty awesome.”

Kazdal recalls that getting his first contract — with Microsoft — took a lot out of him. Even though he and his team had cred as developers, they were a new unit doing something completely on their own, and so there was a long negotiation process.

“We had put a lot of effort in places like GDC and the other shows, getting meetings with publishers, showing them what we were doing, and talking to the press to make a name for ourselves. We finally had a good E3 where we won two ‘best strategy game’ awards and we started talking to Microsoft. A lot of good press and good comments by other developers helped convince Microsoft to seal the deal.”

His best advice to developers who want to set up their own shop is not to quit their day job until they have a playable prototype up and running, “something you’re proud of and can show off to publishers. It helps to get some initial money to start off with to enable you to leave full-time employment to give you the opportunity to go out and find that first publisher with deep pockets.”

Beyond Skulls of the Shogun, Kazdal hopes to make enough cash off of that first title to fund the second, and not have to depend on another publisher.

“I’d really rather keep it small and self-funded rather than share the income with a publisher,” he admits. “I mean, my goal two or three years down the road is for things to be just the way they are — and to be rich! That’s a much easier thing to achieve if you can do it without a publisher.”

Compared to Tiger Style Games and Haunted Temple, Australia-based Uppercut Games is just an infant, having been born less than six months ago. But it has fewer funding concerns than the two U.S.-based indies, mainly because of Australia’s government support policies.

Even though its two co-founders consider Uppercut to be self-funded, they’ve received help from the New South Wales government’s Digital Media Fund.

“New South Wales [Australia's most populous state] is trying to encourage digital media and is very specific about being interested in games,” explains Uppercut co-founder Ed Orman. “I think one of the reasons they liked us was the pretty decent plan we put together to show them what we intended to do… and also because of our pedigree.”

Until January, he had been at Irrational Games/2K Australia for nine years as a lead designer, and co-founder Andrew James had been at the same studio eight years as an art director. Together, they have 28 years of experience in games and have worked on such titles as Fallout: Tactics, BioShock, Tribes, and the upcoming XCOM reboot.

While Orman wasn’t able to discuss what funding they received, he made it clear that “we will be spending a lot more of our own personal savings in the long run than what we’ve been given. The great advantage of having worked the hard deadlines at a big studio like 2K is that we hadn’t taken many holidays, and so we both walked away with a fair nest egg to spend, and we’ve been churning through that. So the government money will definitely come as a great shot to that.”

When the pair left 2K in January, their motivation was “having been in one place for a very long time,” says Orman. “While the opportunities there were fantastic, we just wanted to try and do something different and to be our own bosses.”

Both developers had spent all their time in PC and console games, but their first Uppercut title will be Epoch, an iOS combat action game set in a post-apocalyptic world powered by the Unreal Development Kit. It’s scheduled to be released this fourth quarter.

“I had an iPod Touch and A.J. had an iPhone 3GS,” recalls Orman. “We just started playing games on them, and found that we really liked not only the simplicity of them, but also the fact that the graphical power was starting to catch up with other devices.”

Orman says their intention is not to have eaten through their funds before Epoch is shipped. “We did the numbers,” he says, “and figure we can survive long enough to knock our first game out of the park. The reason we’re going with a big, quality game is that we hope that whatever it makes will be enough to fund our second game. Yes, it’s riskier, but we think it’s going to pay off in the end.”

Meanwhile, there’s a second game in the works — tentatively named Plunder — which is also receiving government funding. The duo has several programming contractors and contract artists spending time on it so they can turn their attention to it as soon as Epoch is complete.

“Our strategy is to have multiple projects on the go so that we can roll off completing one and immediately roll into the next one,” says Orman.

“Something we learned at Irrational was that you can’t throw all your eggs in one basket,” adds James. “There were always several projects in the works so that, if something fell through or a build didn’t happen, there was always a fallback plan. I think that’s a good strategy to maintain.”

Of the three indies, Tiger Style’s Smith has the most experience under his belt as an independent developer, and is perhaps in the best position to offer his advice to others who are considering following suit.

Surprisingly, despite his exuberance, he cautions others to make the move only when they are good and ready. If they aren’t at a point where they feel confident, if they don’t have a great idea that they believe can succeed, he suggests they stay inside the studios, building their experience, until they feel they are ready to take the risk.

“Being an indie is a very entrepreneurial move,” he says. “It’s exciting, it affords you a lot more freedom, but it’s high risk and it’s only the right thing for certain people. I had enough money saved up and I was willing to spend it all. If you’re not committed, well, there are plenty of horror stories out there about people who thought they could make it and died trying. You need to be very cautious not to become one of them.”（Source：gamasutra）