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独立开发者看Game Connection发展机遇

发布时间:2011-08-31 18:08:33 Tags:,,

作者:Alistair Doulin

我参加了今年的GDC,并花了一天半时间参加Game Connection展会。我将Bane Games下款作品的原型展示给发行商,看能够获得资金支持或与他们达成发行协议。本文是我对Game Connection以及其他独立开发者明年是否应该参展的一些想法。

Game Connection Hall(from flickr.com)

Game Connection Hall(from flickr.com)

高效约会

Game Connection被描述成是与发行商的“高效约会”。我们在30分钟的时间里尽量与更多发行商会面。在3天的Game Connection中,我们有1天半的时间,因为我们和Last Level Games合租一个展位。最终证实,这对我们算是足够长的时间,因为在此期间我们会见了22个发行商和某些公共关系和营销人员。我们的目标是向人们展示两个以iOS、Android和网页为平台的游戏原型。

这种“高效约会”是我们接触发行商的绝妙方式,否则我们根本没有机会与他们面对面交谈。因为我们的公司位于澳大利亚,对许多发行商(尤其是大型发行商)来说我们是在这个世界的另一端。而且,在此期间推广游戏的开发商很多,所以这种短时间的会面对我们来说甚是完美。

我曾听说在这种场合,发行商一般不会轻易拒绝小型发行商,这对我们这样的小团队来说确实很有利。事实证明,这种说法是正确的。我提出的几乎所有会面请求都被接受了,我们成功地见到了所有我们希望与之会面的发行商,包括那些最大的发行商和许多较小且不甚出名的发行商。

过程

会面的过程相当简单。在展会前数周的时间里系统就会开放,你可以要求与尽可能多的人会面。一段时间后系统关闭,然后会自动将双方配对并开放双方会面的房间。多数情况下,我们待在长宽各3米的展位上,发行商过来与我们洽谈。任何空余的展位上都会安排上其他的发行商。展会的系统很智能,会让你知道双方是否同时有空。

我对这个系统仅有的不满就是时间安排得太紧,第一天我在8个小时的时间里与发行商会面16次。我甚至连吃午饭的时间都没有,更不用说停下来休息一会儿了。幸亏某些会面被延迟了(游戏邦注:而且有个发行商放弃了与作者的会面安排),这让我有时间赶去吃个午饭然后休息片刻。

结果

我们的两个游戏原型有着较为丰富的内容。我花了数天的时间为它们编程,我们的艺术师也花了数个小时的时间润色了粗糙的画面。

尽管试用版还很简单,但是每个发行商都可以看到游戏的核心内容,根据其标准做出判断。发行商的反应令我感到震惊,除去4个之外,所有发行商都对我们的作品表示称赞。每个人都很喜欢我们的想法,许多人看过游戏数分钟之后就给出了肯定性的反馈。在与某些发行商的会面中,我们甚至开始讨论合作的具体细节问题。

其中有个游戏的试行版本非常出众,根据我们得到的反馈我们已经决定要开发下个版本,并从与我们会面的发行商中寻求赞助和合作。不幸的是,这里我不能透露交易的更多细节,但是我们对这些发行商的反应都感到非常愉快。

成本

我们特别幸运,昆士兰州政府帮助我们支付了部分参加Game Connection的费用。有了这项扶持政策,在加上我们与其他人共享展位,甚至连像我们这样的小型独立游戏开发商都可以负担得起参加此类展会的费用。否则2700到4700欧元的成本对我们来说确实比较高。

这个成本对许多独立开发商来说可能仍然很高。这使得我很难将这个展会推荐给某些小型开发商,因为这笔费用可能占整个游戏开发预算的很大比例。但是,你在展会中获得的收获完全值得你花上这些钱。参加展会后,我们得以同世界各地的许多大小发行商交谈。如果你计划到国外去会见发行商,那么这个价格就相当合理了,因为你在展会上可以见到更多发行商。

我强烈推荐任何想要参加明年的Game Connection的小型独立开发商了解下今年参展的竞争情况。

是否应参加明年的展会?

我向那些想要发行游戏的开发商推荐Game Connection。这是个可以面见大量发行商的绝妙场所。我们见到了某些从未听说过的发行商,他们似乎很适合我们这样的小型独立团队。面对面交谈至关重要,而这正是实现这个目标的绝佳方式。

最后要说的依然是成本问题。如果你能够负担2000-4000欧元的费用,我强烈推荐参加这个展会。如若不然,我推荐你向政府当局申请看是否能够得到像我们这样的援助。我也很希望Game Connection展会能够为“独立开发者”提供类似于时间更短,成本更小的参展服务。

游戏邦注:本文发稿于2011年3月11日,所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Game Connection Thoughts

Alistair Doulin

I spent last week at GDC and 1.5 days of that in Game Connection. I was taking prototypes Bane Games’ next games to show publishers to see if we could get a funding or publishing deal for them. Today’s article is my thoughts about Game Connection and whether other Indie’s should go next year.

Speed Dating

Game Connection is described as “speed dating” with publishers. We had 30 minute meetings with as many publishers as we could cram into our time. We had 1.5 of the 3 days Game Connection runs for as we shared a booth with the guys from Last Level Games. This ended up being ample time for us as we met 22 publishers and a few PR/marketing people. Our goal was to form contacts and show off our two prototypes we are developing for iOS, Android and web.

This “speed dating” style was a great way to get in front of publishers we would otherwise never have a chance of meeting face to face. Being from Australia, we are on the other side of the world to many of the publishers, particularly the larger ones. Also, there are a lot of developers pitching their games and having this condensed period for us to briefly meet was perfect.

I had heard from a few people that it is frowned upon for publishers to turn down a meeting with you no matter how small you are, which is perfect for a small team like ourselves. Thankfully, this was true. Nearly every meeting I proposed was accepted and we managed to meet all the publishers we were hoping, from the largest to many small unknowns.

The Process

The process for setting up meetings is fairly simple. A few weeks before the event, the system opens up and you can request meetings with as many people as you have space for. After a set period this shuts down and the system automatically matches you together and sets up a room for the two parties to meet. For the most part, we stayed in our booth (about 3x3m) and publishers came to us. Any spots that are free after this time can then manually be filled in with other publishers. The system does a good job of letting you know whether you both have a free spot at the same time.

My only complaint about this system is it’s a little harsh as I ended up having 16 meetings in 8 hours on my first day. This left me no time for grabbing lunch, let alone a break to use the amenities. Thankfully some of the meetings ran under time (and I had a single no-show) which gave me time to dash off for food and a comfort stop.

Response

Our two prototypes were very much in the prototype stage. I had spent a couple of days coding them and our artist had put a few hours into turning my primary coloured abomination into a nice looking tech demo.

Despite the simplicity of the demos every publisher could see the core of the game and judged it upon its merits. I was blown away by the response from the publishers with all but four giving us amazing responses. Everyone loved the ideas with a number of people giving amazing feedback within only minutes of seeing the games. We even begin discussing specifics of deals with a number of publishers during our short meeting.

One of our demo’s particularly shined and based on the feedback we received we have decided to pursue it next and look at our options for funding and publishing with the people we’ve met. Unfortunately I can’t give any more details as we move forward with our dealings, suffice to say we are extremely happy with the response.

Cost

We were extremely fortunate that the Queensland Government helped pay a large percentage of the usual cost of taking part in Game Connection. This support combined with sharing a booth made it affordable even for a small indie developer such as ourselves. If it weren’t for this, we likely would not have been able to justify the full price of 2,700 to 4,700 Euro’s for the event.

This cost will also likely be restrictive to many indie developers. It makes it hard for me to recommend the event to smaller developers where this amount of money makes up a substantial amount of their entire game budget. It really comes down to what you want to get out of the event. We managed to talk to many of the big publishers and a lot of smaller publishers from around the world that we would simply never be able to meet. If you factor in flying overseas to meet with a publisher this price point quickly becomes reasonable for the sheer volume of people you can meet.

I highly recommend any smaller indie thinking of taking part in Game Connection next year to check out the competitions on offer such as this years.

Should You Participate Next Year?

I highly recommend Game Connection to anyone looking to get their game published. It’s the perfect place to meet with a multitude of publishers to cast out the widest next possible. We found a few publishers we’d never heard of that seem like almost a perfect match for our small indie team. Meeting face to face is vitally important and this was a great way of achieving this.

In the end, it really comes down to the money. If you can afford $2-4k Euro’s then I highly recommend, however if you can’t I’d recommend petitioning your government to see if you can get assistance as we did. I would love to see an “Indie” pass or similar offered by Game Connection for a shorter time at a lower cost.

Conclusion

Have you been to Game Connection or do you plan to go next year? Or is this cost simply too prohibitive? (Source: Doolwind’s Game Coding Blog)


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