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GDC:Kapalka谈论宝石迷阵起源,称社交游戏有点“小邪恶”

发布时间:2010-08-19 13:46:33 Tags:,,

Popcap旗下的宝石迷阵Bejeweled Blitz是Facebook上排名前20的游戏。在他们做一些病毒式的信息通告之前其实该款游戏的用户并不太多,Popcap的创意总监Jason Kapalka表示该款游戏在最初设置的时候并没有设想到虚拟交易以及病毒式通告这样类似的方式。

Bejeweled Blitz

Bejeweled Blitz

很早之前,PopCap便有开发一款Facebook游戏的念头,但“不幸的是当时我们公司并没有任何flash开发人员。”Kapalka说,“而另一个问题是当时并没有人喜欢Facebook游戏。”当我们在2008年开发这款游戏时,大部分运营中的游戏还在以狼与吸血鬼为伍。

因此他们的团队就开始评估他们的市场决策,那时候他们从一家已经宣布破产的公司那里接手了宝石迷阵2的半成品以及一位业余教授flash的工程师。

Facebook游戏的早期开发

“一开始,我们便决定以开发小游戏为主。”Kapalka说。最初,开发者将游戏时间限制在5分钟。“实际上,那是相当的冗长、无聊。”接下来,开发者们分别试验了4分钟,3分钟,2分钟等不同版本。然而在某次开发者因尝试寻找程序漏洞而将游戏时间限制在1分钟时,他们惊奇地发现:比起2分钟游戏,人们更加喜欢10秒小游戏——因此,游戏时间最终限制在最恰当的1分钟。

然而,这样一来,玩家的操作水平变得至关重要。熟手总是比业余玩家得分高。为了弥补这个缺陷,开发小组在游戏中添加了一些随随机元素,如随机出现的增效宝石。但一,与此同时,开发小组也注重奖励玩家的熟练操作,于是也为速度快的玩家设计了速度奖励。

除此之外,开发小组还设计了每周一更的玩家排行榜。“我们发现有部分玩家在获得一个好成绩后便不经常光顾该游戏,这时排行榜的存在显得至关重要。我们发现每逢周二(排行榜更新日),玩家更是致力于在游戏中刷新自己的记录,这时便会涌现一股游戏狂潮。”

同时,开发小组还提出了团体得分以吸引玩家和朋友们共同奋战,团体得分可以在各种比赛中得到额外奖品。不过在当时该游戏还没有盈利的环境下,许多玩家对PopCap能否兑现这一承诺持怀疑态度。

Kapalka承认:“我们并不清楚这一措施是否真的吸引了更多玩家。”PopCap开始携手马自达推出类似的汽车奖励举措,希望可由此吸引玩家。令人惊奇的是,玩家数量并没有增加。“有些人认为这一方法对游戏的成功至关重要,然而事实上我们并没有支持这一说法的证据。”

2008年12月发行的这款游戏当时并没有货币化,此后Popcap在游戏中添加了购买神奇力量的选项。“你可以在游戏中获得金币,但它们永远不能满足玩家的购物欲。”如今该公司仍然致力于研究货币化方式,“但是在这方面,我们不如其他公司投资巨大。”Kapalka说。

转战其他游戏平台

Iphone平台的Bejeweled 2备受玩家喜欢,但于2009年开始呈现衰弱之势。因此,开发小组认为在其他平台上试行Bejeweled Biltz有利于 revitalize the brand。他们决定在原版游戏的基础上添加Blitz模式,而不是一个崭新、独立的iphone游戏Bejeweled。但问题是他们是否应该将该游戏与Facebook的版本同步起来?

mafia Wars在iphone平台上并没有取得成功,因为技术上很难实现游戏特征的嵌入。尽管如此,Kapalka认为他们至少需要实现游戏积分榜单的效果出来。

这是有一个新问题,即玩家在不同的界面取得相同的得分时,如何对该得分进行调整。“我们做了很多试验以测试哪种平台更为简单,实际上iphone会稍显简单一点。”他们对此进行了调整,但仍无法做到完全一致。

由于新采用的Blitz模式,Bejeweled重新进入了Top 10,并创下了400万美金的销量。此后,该公司决定进军PC平台。这个一体化进程更加艰难。Facebook无法与Win32 API相连,这便意味着开发小组不得不开发一个在Chromium的基础上的网页浏览器以同步某些功能和排行榜。“只要Facebook系统发生了任何变动,该进程便将出现错误。

万恶的社交游戏

“社交游戏与普通游戏有所不同,现在有些人认为社交游戏是邪恶的。这些人的抱怨也有其确切的依据。病毒式传播也确实是现在很让用户诟病的一种方式。

“如果你经常向所有的手机联系人发送关于你的Mafia或者你的Cow,那么你的朋友将急速减少。”“社交游戏总是想方设法地让你在你的墙上贴一些你或你的朋友都不感兴趣的邮件。”

“有很大一部分的社交游戏产业都旨在寻找系统漏洞,而不是真正的开发趣味性的游戏。”Kapalka说。这令Popcap坐立不安。“我们发现这种状况实在烦人,我们公司致力于开发真正有趣的游戏,所以我们不等不客服这一困境。”

Kapalka认为Popcap虽无法摆脱邪恶一说,但他们奉行着某些铁律:

1,让游戏更有趣。“这是显而易见的。然而,社交游戏则将常基于一些其他的出发点,如货币化伎俩。”

2,你觉得好玩的,别人才有可能喜欢。“如果自己都不认为有趣,那还为什么设计这个游戏呢?”Kapalka问。

3,如果人们能从游戏中得到乐趣,病毒式传播仅仅只是一个附属物。“我会允许这样的事情出现在我的通告墙吗?如果我把它到处推广,用户是不是会删除对我的关注?”

4,如果人们喜欢某个游戏,我们便可能从中盈利。“我们的经验便是证明。”(译者:dora)

Bejeweled Blitz is one of two top-20 Facebook games that didn’t take a huge dive after the much-discussed “nerfing”  of some of the viral aspects of wall posts for the service. This is primarily because the game was developed without monetization and viral aspects in mind, PopCap creative director Jason Kapalka explains.

In the beginning, PopCap knew it wanted to make a Facebook game, but “Unfortunately there was not a single flash developer in the entire company,” PopCap creative director Jason Kapalka said, addressing a crowd at GDC Europe. “The second problem was that at that time nobody actually liked Facebook games.” When the game was being created, in 2008, most games on the service were still of the vampires or werewolf “biting” variety.

So the team took stock of what they had. They had a half-finished Bejeweled 2 port from an external company that went bankrupt, and one guy in customer support who had taught himself Flash in his spare time. They also knew they didn’t want to do a straight port of Bejeweled. Other casual companies at the time had done straight demo ports, which would lead the user to buy a product elsewhere, and didn’t really take advantage of Facebook in any way.

Building An Early Facebook Game

“The first thing was the realization that it had to be a short game,” said Kapalka. Initially they put a five minute timer on the game, allowing you to score points within that time limit. “That turned out to be quite long, and pretty boring,” he admitted. They tried 4 minutes, then 3, then two. Then at one point when searching for bugs, they turned the limit down to 10 seconds, and discovered people liked playing a 10 second game more than a 2 minute game – so they went with 1 minute, which seemed to be the perfect match.

But it was too skill-based at the time, and good players could always beat more casual ones. To fix that, the team added some randomizing elements, such as multiplier gems, which randomly show up and increase a player’s score dramatically. But they wanted to reward skill as well, so they put in a speed bonus for those who could compete faster.

Additionally, the team made it so their tournament boards reset every week. “We found that having a single leaderboard was an important thing, he said, and as far as resetting, in two weeks players would not play again if they got a good score. Once per week works much better. “We tend to see a huge surge in players on those Tuesdays [when the game resets] when people come in and try to set their scores for the week,” he said.

The team also implemented a team score, to invite their friends to compete in a group. Team scorers could win a prize in various competitions, but many players were skeptical that PopCap could be giving something away for free when the game wasn’t even monetized yet.

“It’s actually unclear whether this has increased the popularity,” admitted Kapalka. For example, PopCap did a competition with Mazda to win a car, and expected an increase in players due to that.

Curiously, numbers remained the same. “There are people who say this was critical to the success of the project, but honestly we don’t have the data to support that idea.”

The game was released in December 2008, but with no monetization plans at launch. PopCap later implemented the ability to buy special powers in-game. “You can earn the coins by playing,” he says, “but you’ll never really earn enough to get as many boosts as you want.” While the company is continuing to consider its monetization options, “to be honest our efforts to do that are pretty minimal compared to other companies,” said Kapalka.

Other Platforms

Bejeweled 2 was popular on the iPhone, but started to falter by 2009. So the team figured they should work Bejeweled Blitz in somewhere to revitalize the brand on that platform. They decided to add a Blitz mode to the original game, rather than making a new stand-alone Bejeweled game for the iPhone, so as not to fracture the audience. But the question became, should they, and could they sync the game with the Facebook version?

De-synced Mafia Wars wasn’t successful on the iPhone because you couldn’t bring your character over, so “we figured we had to sync up the leaderboards, at least,” concluded Kapalka. Because of Apple’s approvals process, you can’t sync other elements too easily, because you can’t predict when it’s going to launch, so they kept features separate.

One issue that cropped up was the adjustment of scoring across platforms, when players are competing for the same scores using different interfaces. “We did a lot of tests to see if one was easier, and it turned out that the iPhone one was a little easier.” They tweaked this, but it’s still not totally the same.

With the addition of the Blitz mode, Bejeweled 2 went back into top 10, and now boasts total sales in the 4 million range. After this they decided to add a third platform, making a PC downloadable version. This was even tougher to integrate, as Facebook has no integrated Win32 API, meaning the team had to build a custom web browser in the client, based on Chromium, in order to integrate features and leaderboards. This approach “has some minor drawbacks if Facebook makes some changes to their systems,” he says, since that makes the whole thing completely break.

Standard portals were reluctant to carry the PC version, he says. “They didn’t like the idea of a connected game where players were able to connect to not only Facebook, but also PopCap. There’s some truth to that concern, but I think it’s inevitable,” he added. “Portals are going to have to get used to the idea or get left behind.”

Social Games Are Evil

“We learned that social games are quite different from standard games,” he says. “Social games are kind of evil right now. People that are complaining have a valid point. Viral feeds that are really kind of critical, are a big generator of noise. There’s no way around it.”

“If you were doing something on your mobile phone, and you had a thing where you sent a text message to everyone in your phonebook about your mafia or your cow, you’d very quickly have fewer friends,” he says, saying that viral feeds are a perversion of the intended use of the channel. “They’re trying to find any way to trick you into posting something on your wall that’s not really even of interest to you, let alone your friends.”

“A large part of the social game industry is about finding loopholes in the system,” rather than making fun games, says Kapalka. This made PopCap really uncomfortable. “We found that was quite disturbing, and we had to kind of get over that as we were making it.”

Kapalka says PopCap can’t claim to be completely non-evil, but they came up with some golden rules:

1. Make games that are fun to play. “It seems obvious, but often social games are starting from another point, like a monetization trick.” Their games have to not be excuses for spam, not be built around monetization, not designed to irritate or shame people (a la the idea of FarmVille’s crops withering), and not simple copies of others’ hits.

2. If you find a game fun, other people will too (probably). “If you don’t think it’s fun, why are you even making games in the first place?” Kapalka poses.

3. If people have fun with a game, viral mechanics are a natural outgrowth. As a subrule regarding feeds, the team asks itself: “Would I post this to my own wall? If I did, would people unfriend me? Is it just a way to spam my pals?”

4. Of people enjoy a game, you will probably find a way to make money from it. “In our case, it’s definitely worked,” he said. (source:gamasutra)


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