作者：John Gaudiosi

Chair Entertainment曾因推出Xbox 360可下载游戏《Undertow》和《暗影帝国》而得名，去年该工作室发布的iOS动作冒险游戏《无尽之剑》也一炮打响，迅速成为热门大作，其销量已超过500万份，营收突破2000万美元。

该公司在今年12月初宣布推出游戏续集《无尽之剑2》，Chair创意总监及联合创始人Donald Mustard在游戏发布前夕向媒体介绍了他们对平板电脑游戏市场的看法，以及开发这两款游戏所收获的经验。

无尽之剑(from tabtimes)

你对苹果iPad和iPad 2的技术发展有什么看法？

从iPad到iPad 2，或者iPhone 3GS到iPhone 4S之间的过渡时间非常短，但这些设备之间的技术发展速度却十分惊人，而且毫无减缓的迹象。我认为平板电脑在未来几年的性能将达到目前掌机设备的水平。

《无尽之剑》到《无尽之剑 2》历时不足一年，但移动设备硬件的发展却能够让我们的游戏呈现更高的纹理分辨率，包括动态人物阴影在内的高端渲染技术，以及更优质的屏幕颗粒特效（例如巨大的魔法特效、风中飘舞的微粒）。

平板电脑的内存甚至超过了掌机设备，而且其技术的发展还将为我们创造更高的运行性能和可用的内存空间。

《无尽之剑 2》这类游戏一般需要多少开发成本？

游戏开发成本大部分取决于开发者的薪水和项目开发时间，《无尽之剑 2》开发成本远低于《战争机器 3》的原因就在于，这个项目的开发者数量更少。

《战争机器 3》需要68-70人历时三年才能开发完成，而《无尽之剑》只用12-18名开发者花6个月就完工了，这极大降低了我们的开发成本。如果平板电脑游戏的复杂度不断增加（我认为这种情况极有可能），将来也会需要更多开发者耗费更长时间才能制作出好游戏，开发预算也会随之攀升。

在当前市场充斥大量免费增值游戏的情况下，你们开发《无尽之剑》这类需要用户预选付费才能体验的游戏遇到了什么挑战？

用户其实很看重游戏的质量、趣味性和独特的体验等要素。不管是60美元、6美元，还是免费游戏，他们都会优先考虑游戏的质量。我们在《无尽之剑 1》中为用户创造了物有所值的游戏体验，《无尽之剑 2》的游戏价值比前者还要多四五倍，但价钱却仍然是6.99美元。我也玩过一些很棒的免费增值游戏，我也曾为其中的一些游戏花钱购买虚拟商品，但有些游戏我玩过后就不了了之。总之这两者是不同类型的游戏。

《无尽之剑》的平板电脑游戏用户有何特点？

我们认为，针对平板电脑设计游戏需考虑用户玩游戏的地点和游戏习惯。目前《战争机器 3》的用户一般都是坐在昏暗的房间，打开环绕立体声，连续数个小时体验游戏的玩家。

至于平板电脑用户，我们认为这类玩家最多每次只会玩三五分钟。我们设计游戏时总会考虑如何让游戏每隔两分钟给玩家创造极有意义而富有进展的游戏体验。这两种游戏时间长度设置存在很大差异。

苹果iOS 5对《无尽之剑 2》有何影响？

iOS 5用户可以直接下载更新版本的游戏。通过iOS 5，我们可以在更新版本中添加更多新鲜内容，不断调整游戏的平衡性，修复漏洞，为所有玩家带来更浏、有趣的体验。作为游戏设计师，我们希望与玩家共同参与优化游戏的过程，根据他们的意见调整游戏，而不是发布游戏后就直接转向下一个项目。

《无尽之剑》用户的哪些反应最让你们意外？

我们原先发布《无尽之剑 1》时以为，一般玩家都会在吃透游戏，打败敌人，获得奖励之后就转向其他游戏，但没想到居然还有这么多人长时间逗留于这款游戏之中，潜心研究其中的剑术，不断挑战强大的游戏角色。他们就在进行真正的击剑一样，投入大量时间攻克难关。

现在有许多玩家成了击剑高手，他们可以灵活地躲避任何方向的攻击。我们还有一个庞大的《无尽之剑》铁杆粉丝群体，我想他们应该也会喜欢《无尽之剑 2》中的内容。

无尽之剑 2(from tabtimes)

你认为平板电脑游戏领域的成功标准是什么？这款续集游戏要取得什么成绩才能算是成功？

我们推出首款《无尽之剑》时，根本就不知道这个市场对成功的定义是什么。我们对成功的定义就是人们是否真的喜欢玩你的游戏。我们确实很在乎游戏能否取悦用户。对我来说，《无尽之剑 2》能否成功，要取决于它能否吸引除了《无尽之剑》玩家之外的新用户。除此之外，我们乐见这款游戏取得的其他成就。

是否认为平板电脑是向准传统视频游戏用户推荐游戏品牌的一个划算途径？

我认为《无尽之剑》已向我们证明了这一点。平板电脑和智能手机为《无尽之剑》系列的品牌传播创造了更多机会，用户可以通过这两个强大的媒介听iTunes的原声音乐，下载由Brandon Sanderson（游戏邦注：纽约时报畅销作家）撰写的《无尽之剑：觉醒》这篇小说。这确实是让用户认知游戏品牌的有效途径。现在我们就很容易向传统视频游戏或其他领域引进这款游戏。例如，我们不久前刚向美国的Dave & Buster’s餐厅推出无尽之剑FX街机设备。这种街机设备将超过一万台，让玩家在46英寸的超大屏幕上体验《无尽之剑》。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2011年12月1日，所涉事件及数据以当时为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Infinity Blade II developer: “Within the next few years, tablets will reach the power of current gaming consoles”

by John Gaudiosi

The secret to Infinity Blade’s success? Designing for two-minute experiences and embracing the iPad’s internal power, for starters

Chair Entertainment made a name for itself with award-winning downloadable Xbox 360 games like Undertow and Shadow Complex. Last year, the game developer, which is wholly owned by Epic Games, released Infinity Blade, an action-adventure title developed exclusively for iOS that became a blockbuster hit.

The game sold over 5 million copies, generated over $20 million, and impressed Apple execs enough that the company chose to use its iPhone 4S announcement event to publicly announce the December 1 release of the sequel, Infinity Blade II.

On the eve of the game’s release, Donald Mustard, creative director and co-founder of Chair Entertainment, spoke with TabTimes about the booming tablet market, the unique challenges of designing for this platform, and the lessons the developer has learned from its first two iOS games.

TabTimes: How far have you seen the Apple tablet technology progress across the first two iterations?

Donald Mustard: If you just look at an iPad to an iPad2 or an iPhone 3GS to an iPhone 4S then we’re talking about a very short number of years. But the leap in technology between these devices is significant and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Things are accelerating quickly, and I would expect within the next few years that the tablets will reach the power of current consoles.

Looking from Infinity Blade to Infinity Blade II just in one year, the hardware has gotten fast enough that we’re able to push a lot more texture resolution, a lot more of the high-end rendering techniques like dynamic character shadows and more particle effects from the screen, whether that’s big magical effects, or particles blowing in the wind.

The tablets typically have even more memory than consoles and that will continue to become even more of a reality as the they get even faster and have more dedicated memory inside of them that we can use.

What are the development costs involved for creating a game like Infinity Blade II?

The majority of costs for game development come from the people that you employ working on it and how long that staff is working on a project. The reason why the development budget for Infinity Blade II is far less than say Gears of War 3 is because we have far less people working on it.

We have about a dozen people working on Infinity Blade, and we do it in less time, six months. Let’s say Gears of War is 68 or 70 people for three years, and Infinity Blade is 12 to 16 people for six months—it just greatly reduces the cost that way. If these tablet games continue to become more complex, which I’m sure they will, they will require more people and more time, and the budgets will increase accordingly.

What are the challenges of creating a game like an Infinity Blade I or II that actually requires an up-front cost to the consumer amidst the flood of free-to-play game experiences?

Consumers are driven to quality, and to really fun, unique game experiences. Whether that’s a $60 game, a $6 game, or a free game, they’re going to gravitate towards quality. With Infinity Blade I, we really felt like we gave you a lot of value for your dollar. Infinity Blade II is four to five times longer and bigger than Infinity Blade I, and it’s the same price as the first game, $6.99. There are lots of free-to-play games that I play and really enjoy. Some I pay micro-transactions for because they are good games that I want to continue playing, and some I don’t. It’s just a different type of game.

What have you learned about the audience that’s playing Infinity Blade on tablets since the original launched?

One of the main things that we think about when we’re designing a game for a tablet is where and how you’re playing these games. This might change in the future, but right now if you’re sitting down to play Gears of War 3 we know that you’re son a couch, probably in a room with the lights turned off and your surround sound on. You’re sitting down for a lengthy gameplay session of at least an hour.

With tablet gaming currently, we think that the average play time is five minutes or less at best. One of the things that we’re always considering in our design of these games is how can we give you a meaningful, progressive gameplay experience every two minutes. We’re balancing it more in two-minute increments than half-an-hour or even two-hour chunks from a pacing standpoint and a reward structure. That’s a big difference.

How has Apple’s iOS 5 impacted Infinity Blade II?

With iOS 5, you can just download the update. If the update is 50 megabytes, that’s it. There’s so much more we can do with that and we can continue to keep the game fresh and exciting for our players. We can have more content, we can continue to tweak the balancing of things and fix bugs, and make it a smoother, more fun experience for everyone involved. As game designers we love the ability to participate and shape the game with the people playing, as opposed to just putting it out there and moving on to the next thing.

What has surprised you about the gaming audience that bought Infinity Blade?

One of the things that surprised me the most is when we put out the first Infinity Blade we thought the average player would play through the game, beat the god king, get that awesome reward of finally killing him, and move on to playing another game. What we didn’t expect was how many people would be playing the game for so long, really getting into the depth of the swordplay and really playing it over and over again to fight these very high-level characters. They spend so much time fighting just like a real sword fight and pulling out these very difficult moves.

We now have hundreds of thousands of gamers who are sword fighting experts who can parry anything from any direction. We have a huge dedicated hardcore Infinity Blade fan base out there and I think they’re going to love some of the stuff that we’ve put into Infinity Blade II just for them.

How do you measure success in this still-new tablet space and what would you consider a success when it comes to this sequel?

When the first Infinity Blade came out we had no idea how you define success in the market. I looked around the office and I knew we’d sell at least a dozen copies because we had a dozen employees. We were surprised and thrilled with what happened. The way we define success is if people genuinely enjoy playing our game. We really are trying to make games that entertain people and make them happy. Success for Infinity Blade II, to me, would mean that we’ve not only made a game that all the people that played Infinity Blade I love playing even more than the first game, but that lots of new people enjoy it as well. Beyond that, we’re happy with whatever success comes from that.

Do you see tablets as a new cost effective way to introduce a brand to that consumer before bringing it to the traditional console gamer?

I think Infinity Blade has proven that to us. Tablets and smartphones are these incredible media devices that open up possibilities like playing Infinity Blade I and II, listening to the soundtrack from iTunes, and even downloading the book by Brandon Sanderson, Infinity Blade: Awakening. That’s a great way to introduce people to the larger brand. It would be very easy for us now to take the success of Infinity Blade to a traditional console or other avenues. For example, we just put out Infinity Blade FX arcade machines in every Dave & Buster’s in the United States. There are going to be over 10,000 of these huge arcade units, where you can play Infinity Blade on big 46-inch touch screens.（source:tabtimes）