作者：Mike Snider

在新年来临之际，社交游戏巨头Zynga在Facebook上推出了一款新的寻物解谜游戏《Hidden Chronicles》，其首席执行官Mark Pincus在最近媒体采访中介绍了该款游戏的相关内容以及Zynga对这类游戏发展前景的看法。

Mark Pincus(from usatoday)

为什么Zynga会尝试寻物解谜游戏题材？

这个想法是来自我们的创意总监Cara。我们瞄准西雅图众多优秀的游戏开发者而在此设立工作室。有一次会议Cara坐在我旁边。那时候我问她她在做些什么，她的兴趣是什么，而她也跟我阐述了自己对于隐藏物体游戏的热爱，并称她一直致力于针对PC平台创造这类游戏。我记得Cara跟我说道“为什么你不创造这类社交游戏？”而我回答道“因为我们缺少足够的契机”，如此看来，我们确实是该开发这类游戏了。

Cara表示非常愿意加入我们的团队，而我们也很兴奋能够遇到如此既有激情又有创造性的人才指引我们挑战寻物解谜游戏。所以她在去年6月份加入了Zynga，并聚集了一些对这类游戏感兴趣的成员组成了工作室并开始创造游戏。

发行这款游戏是否符合Zynga的发展策略？

从宏观角度来看，这确是符合我们的一大策略，因为我们正处于开发者大规模地转向免费游戏这个时代的开端。

多年来寻物解谜游戏一直都是最受欢迎的付费下载游戏，并且拥有大量的潜在用户。这种类型的游戏很简单，并且拥有掌机游戏般精致的图像画面，而且这些游戏都很有趣，也拥有许多益智元素和吸引人的故事情节。当然我们也可以在游戏中添加一些社交元素。

寻物解谜游戏与Zynga其它游戏有何不同？

不同之处就在于去年Zynga开始进一步迈向我所谓的更加休闲的市场。以《Words With Friends》和《Hanging With Friends》来说吧，这两款游戏都已经在手机平台上获得了巨大的关注，而现在这些游戏却开始瞄准更广泛的用户群体，即那些从未玩过游戏也没时间玩游戏的用户。

我的侄子们，也就是我们所说的硬核游戏玩家，他们不仅会玩社交游戏，也会玩《魔兽世界》这类型游戏。而还有一些人，就像我的姐夫那样，他们现在虽然每天都会玩《Words With Friends》，但是这却是他们成年来玩过的第一款游戏。紧跟着这一趋势，我们开始规划一些更加轻松，外观精致且内容有趣的游戏，且不需要玩家具有游戏经验。这种游戏通常都较短，就像是街机游戏，益智游戏或者一些文字类游戏。玩家能够随时开始游戏，玩个5至15分钟，然后退出游戏。

我们在2012年的一大目标就是让游戏真正融入到人们的日常生活中。我们相信游戏将会越加普及，并逐渐占领大众市场。所以我们的策略是创造更容易消费，免费由且具有社交性的游戏。

hidden-chronicles(from businessinsider.com)

《Hidden Chronicles》也仍然具有社交元素吧？

我们用一些Ville游戏的外壳去包装这款游戏。这么做对于寻物解谜游戏有两大益处。首先，它能让游戏依靠于一个更加紧凑的故事主线，即当玩家在解决益智问题时能够始终围绕着游戏故事而进行。其次，将游戏设定在Ville游戏情境中，玩家便能够与好友合作完成游戏。

与Zynga其它游戏一样，这是否也是一款免费游戏，支持玩家通过购买虚拟货币加速进程？

当然。我们的所有游戏都采用免费模式，我们的设计初衷就是让玩家总是能够免费玩游戏。但是对于那些想要尝试所有游戏内容或者想要获得更多特别道具的玩家来说，他们便需要花钱了。我们也一直在努力让这种花钱购买的游戏体验吸引更多玩家的注意。

《Hidden Chronicles》这类游戏是否能为Zynga带来一些不同类型的玩家？

是的。就像《Words With Friends》以及《Hanging With Friends》一样，我们将这种游戏当成是社交游戏的桥头堡，不只是对Zynga本身如此，对整个志在吸引更广泛用户群体的社交游戏行业来说也不例外。（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）

Interview: Zynga CEO Mark Pincus

By Mike Snider

To kick off the new year, social game giant Zynga dropped its new hidden object game Hidden Chronicles onto Facebook, and company CEO Mark Pincus chatted with Game Hunters about the game and Zynga’s ongoing strategy.

Much of our discussion with him appears in this Q & A piece, which accompanies a feature on Hidden Chronicle’s launch. But Pincus had some other interesting comments that didn’t make the print edition.

What led Zynga to look into the hidden-object genre?

Mainly it came from (creative director) Cara (Ely). We launched an office in Seattle because we thought there was a great community of game developers there. And we had a (launch event) … and she ended up sitting next to me. It was kind of random. I asked her what she did and what she was interested in, and she talked about how passionate she was about hidden object games and she had been working on them in the PC download world and she said, “Why haven’t you done those category of games as social games?” And I said, “There wasn’t any good reason,” and it sounded like we should.

She followed up and she was really passionate about coming here and we were excited that she had the passion and creative chops to come in and be a leader. So she joined us last June and teamed up with a whole studio here that was also excited about this and started building the game.

How does this game fit into Zynga’s strategy?

From the macro strategy side, this was exactly on strategy for us because if you step back and think about what we are doing in a broader context, we think that we are at the beginning of this massive shift to free gaming.

Hidden object games had been the most popular category of paid download games for years and we thought had a lot of potential for mass market appeal. They are simple, but beautiful with art on the level of a console game and had enough fun and puzzle and storyline to develop interesting games. And we thought we could add some social twists, too.

How are hidden object games different from Zynga’s other games?

What is different is you have seen Zynga in the last year make a real push into what I would call the more casual market. If you look at Words With Friends and Hanging With Friends that are very popular on mobile, those are games that are starting to penetrate a broader mass-market audience of people who have definitely never played games and don’t have the time for games.

There’s people like my nephews who are what I call hard-core gamers and they consume everything from social games to World of Warcraft. And then there are people like my brother-in-law who plays Words With Friends every day, and really that was the first game that he ever really started playing as an adult. This is really following that trend line of us bringing out some games that are lighter touch and, while the content is beautiful and engaging, the experience doesn’t have to be. It can be very short-session, more in the genre of arcade games and puzzle games and word games. Things that people can pick up, play for five, 10 or 15 minutes and put down.

The big theme that you will see us pushing on in 2012 is we really want people to put play in their day. We believe that play is ready to go pop culture and mass market. This game fits within that strategy for us in making play something that is more easily consumable, free and social.

And Hidden Chronicles still has social elements, right?

What we have done is we have put this game in a wrapper like our Ville games. That does two things for hidden object puzzle games. Number one it gives you long (story) arcs you can work against. While you are solving puzzles you are working against a larger arc of building out your home game board. And then the second thing is, putting it in the context of a Ville game, it gives you more ways to collaborate with your friends around the game.

And, as with other Zynga games, you can play for free or buy virtual currency in the game to progress more quickly in the game?

Exactly. The way all of our games are set up, they are designed so you can play them for free and have it always be free. But for people who want to get through all the content now or want to get more unique items, they can spend money. We are trying to make that buying and spending experience appeal to a broader audience, as well.

Can a game like Hidden Chronicles bring a new type of gamer to Zynga?

Yeah, in a similar way that we have seen Words With Friends and Hanging With Friends. We look at games like this as beachheads for social gaming, not just for Zynga but for social gaming to start to convince a broader audience to play.（source:usatoday）