作者：Leigh Alexander

GDC的Indie Soapbox聚会理论上是个“抱怨聚会”，但主办者Matthew Wegner认为这是某些人对此次聚会的误解。他让10个独立开发者分享自己的想法和担心的问题。

结果，此次聚会成了节奏快但内容令人惊叹的聚会，与会者分享了独立开发者作为创造者、创新者和社区成员所需具备的突破当前局限以及处理常见问题的想法。10个发言者充满激情地分享了10条建议。

创新是更好的做法

Lazy 8的Rob Jagnow制作了《Extrasolar》这款游戏，他说道：“我们制作出了这个盒子，它是属于我们的。如果我们愿意的话，可以让思维跃出这个盒子，我们可以重新构建盒子，我们也可以完全摧毁抛弃这个盒子。这就是我们的观点。”

这并不是说游戏领域中已毫无创新，只是它们没有被放在正确的地方。游戏推广过程中确实出现了创新，但是其关注的是如何在游戏质量被人忽视的形势下让应用登上前10大游戏榜单。克隆成功游戏是众人普遍采用的战略，然后各公司付费进行游戏推广。

他说道：“如果你创新的话，你的产品会被他人克隆。如果你创新失败的话，你的产品就会被人们所忽视。”

那么，独立开发者应当要怎么做呢？他们可以在形式上进行创新，在版权保护上进行创新，让游戏远离竞争者的干扰。美术、故事和角色并非可窃取之物，这些元素可以让游戏显得标新立异。还有个解决方案便是冒巨大的风险，高风险设计行为可以使产品免遭创意剽窃者觊觎。

Jagnow断言，限制是种能够有效催生创新的方法。比如，在游戏流行采用众多主机按键的时代里，制作单键游戏的想法便有可能获得成功。

像网页开发者那样思考

《Eliss and Faraway》制作者Steph Thirion只有近3年的游戏开发经验，他原先从事的是网页开发。他分享了Ruby on Rails语言开发商37signals的故事，它创造这种语言的目标是不仅要让其具有创造力，还要让开发者享受编程过程。换句话说，这些联合创始人只是出于自身的乐趣将他们的职业未来寄托在抽象语言上，这看起来似乎是种“自杀性”做法，但现在Ruby on Rails已经被数千家公司接受和使用。

Thirion说道：“小工作室有重新定义行业工具的能力，因为他们仍然具有跳出局限思维的灵活性。”小工作室研发的工具最终会改变网页开发的环境，为什么这种事情不能在游戏开发中发生呢？比如，许多游戏使用Flash游戏库Flixel，但Thirion提出的问题是：“有谁致力于优化Flixel呢？”

如果独立社区能够跳出“在遇到问题时寻找短期解决方案”的思维方式，将目标定位创造更好的工具，那么长此以往就会出现更多更简单的工具和脚本。他认为，像网页开发者那样思考，创造和提升工具，形成更积极和开源的社区，这样便能够复兴独立社区并使之更加强大。

他总结道：“我们应当拥有让自己的工作更加高效的工具。这些工具应当能让我们更快乐地工作，让我们能够有更强的控制力，让我们可以改进行业现状，而我们正是最了解这些工具应有的发展方向的人。这样的运动必须由我们这样的人发起，坐在这件屋子里的这些人。”

抛弃自负心理

Time Donkey和《Blurst》开发者Ben Ruiz表示，独立社区中的改革或许需要从诚实的自我评估开始。Ben Ruiz督促整个独立游戏社区抛开自负心理，他认为现在这种情况已过于泛滥。

他指出了目前行业的趋势，他说道：“我们已经开始无法容忍那些与我们对立的事物了……但如果这样的话，独立游戏还能够快速地成长吗？”他认为这将给主流游戏行业带来巨大的灾难。

抱怨Zynga游戏乏味无趣和EA的懒惰，但忽视独立开发者间的个性冲突，这都是极具破坏性和鼠目寸光的看法。“看看每年IGF召开时进行的那些讨论……话题总是不断重复，仅仅因为存在多种不同观点，这是很愚蠢的行为。”

Ruiz补充道：“当我们同其他人处在相同的领域和空间时，我们已经表现得过于个人化了，这种行为做法显然冒犯了他人。”独立开发者有着共同的哲学和核心价值，如果能够移除这些本不该存在的隔阂，大家势必能够从中受益。

IGF不能保证你获得成功

Mikengreg的Mike Boxleiter提到了一个相似的主题，他谈到了IGF的某些“戏剧性”循环，他对IGF能够“造就”明星的普遍想法提出质疑。独立游戏节可以让独立开发者的生活变得完美，这种想法只是个神话而已。他坚持声称：“《Fez》之所以能够通过独立游戏节获得成功，唯一的原因就是其项目成员已经在项目上花费了5年的精力，而且从未放弃。这才是能够让你成为超级明星的做法。你每天付出的每份精力都能够获得补偿。”

对Boxleiter来说，他之前在IGF上获奖的作品《Solipskier》并没有让他的职业生涯发生很大的改变。他开玩笑地说道：“我在过道上将自己的推广文件递给Shigeru Miyamoto，他只是给了个签名，礼貌地鞠了个躬，随后就转身离开了。”

他断言：“IGF不应当受到如此高的重视，它确实能够使你的作品获得大量的报道，获IGF提名也是件很棒的事情，因为这表明你的游戏中确实有亮点。但是它只是个颁奖活动。许多人都说IGF能够让小型独立工作室获得巨大的成功，但事实并非如此。”

之前，他觉得Jon Blow的建议“只需要专注于制作优秀游戏即可”并没有多大用处，但是他现在同意了这个《Braid》制作者的观点。Boxleiter总结道：“如果你想要向其他人展示自己的作品，就要努力把它做好。”

以简单的方法说明游戏

《Gunpoint》开发者Tom Francis原先从事的是写作行业，他认为解释游戏内容是件很难做到恰到好处的事情。他说道：“努力解释其他人的游戏，这样的工作我已经做了8年之久。”他开玩笑道：“开发者不能将读者当成英明睿智的人，而应当考虑到最糟糕的情况，你的读者理解力可能相当低下，就像我这样。”

许多开发者错误地认为玩家自然会理解他们的游戏内容，因而只发布简单的截屏和预告视频。有些开发者认为，只需要描述美术含义就足够了。然而，这些内容与游戏玩法及其趣味元素并无关联。同样，仅仅解释游戏情节是不够的。开发者用“创新”来描述他们的游戏，但玩家并不会因此而认为游戏具有创新性。Francis说道：“他们会想‘这些词看起来就像是用来描述游戏的工具而已’。”

在游戏描述起始部分要开门见山地阐述游戏类型，然后对游戏进行深入性的总结，陈述游戏中最棒最独特的内容。提供游戏的相关背景，比如适合的玩家群体以及玩家在游戏中的目标。具体描述玩家能够在游戏中体验到的独特之处。Francis说道：“多数阅读游戏描述的人并非理解力低下……但是正常情况下，人们对容易理解的内容都会更有好感……描述者呈现简单内容会让读者更加满意。”

别担心出风头

《Antichamber》制作者Alex Bruce分享了自己在日本涉谷的故事，那天他突然决定要寻找一位陌生人并向他介绍自己。他在TGS上展示自己的《虚拟竞技场》mod，在围观人群中他认出了IGF主席Simon Carless。

犹豫片刻后，Bruce走向Carless，向他做了自我介绍，讨论Sense of Wonder Night并提到了在澳大利亚之外的工作。Carless建议他去面见同样参加盛会的The Behemoth和Q Games的Dylan Cuthbert。在盛会中，他注意到Epic总裁Mike Capps正在发表演讲，于是他决定冒险尝试同Capps交谈，尽管这样做会使他无法参加半场讨论会。

Bruce说道：“我知道，如果我不尝试与他交谈的话，我会为自己的这个决定而后悔。”于是，他同Capps讨论了当时还未发布的Unreal Development Kit，随后Capps承诺将介绍他认识销售副总裁Mark Rein。当时，他便认识到，每个人都是很普通的人。随后，他面见了Steve Swink及其同事，他们都鼓励他坚持独立开发之路。

他说道：“虽然澳大利亚的很多人都认为我是在浪费时间，但在日本我碰到了许多告诉我继续坚持的人。”因此，他决定参加GDC，在Make Something Unreal获奖之后，他最终决定坚持自己的独立开发事业。

他说道：“我的愿望是在自己所处的环境和情境中实现最大的成果，在不做出努力前不轻易放弃任何机遇……这就是我今天到这里来的原因。”他的成功来源并不是幸运地去过日本，而是抓住每个时刻，乐意承担大小风险。

技术不只是工具

Metanet的Raigan Burns表示，工具使用者总是喜欢选择阻力最小的做法。比如，如果只有弹珠和凿子，那么永远也无法实现绘画创作。游戏也是如此，美学的局限性来源于开发者所使用的技术。

他说道：“目前行业的趋势是将电脑视为一般工具。”但是，如果我们换个想法，比如将电脑视为乐器，那么其技术就能够被整合到整个创作过程中。事实上，呈现形状可采用的方法比多数开发者使用的要多得多。Burns说道：“如果每个音乐家都只会演奏吉他的话，那么最终谱出的只会是完全相同的音乐。”

寻找能够激发灵感的材料

Maquette的Hanford Lemoore表示，目前电子游戏中鲜有能让他喜欢上的艺术作品。比如，我们避免在游戏中设置怪异的山谷，但是Royal De Luxe剧院公司的木质玩偶很漂亮，可算是令人惊叹的艺术作品。专注于呈现合理构造，同时又呈现怪诞环境的游戏看起来极具吸引力。

他说道：“我并不是说只有在艺术风格中才能汲取视觉灵感，现实生活中很多东西都能够带来视觉灵感。”Lemoore保存了各种他觉得富有创意的图片，但是它们只有在你找到恰当的呈现方式时才能够发挥作用。

他表示，做起来其实相当简单。他解释了自己如何制作主屏幕保存工具以保持这些图片的可视性和新鲜感，并通过dropbox有效保留所有的灵感。他不使用笔记本来做记录，而是将便签和图片直接粘在墙上，这样他随时都可以看到。

他的好友和同事也从这种方法中受益，这进一步激励他从周围的环境中寻找更多的灵感来源和素材。积极寻找能够带来灵感的视觉材料，这是个简单却有效的方法。

每个人都可以开发游戏

Mike Meyer是IGF Pirate Kart的组织者，那里有大量游戏开发者，而继续容纳其他开发者是件很重要的事情。这便是Meyer最想要做的事情，他觉得虽然许多独立开发者看似难以亲近和合作，但是他同样希望这些人能够加入社区。

他建议称，独立开发者应当做更多的工作，来吸引更多人加入这个行业。“Pirate Rant”是Kart的宣言，他希望每个人都能够摆脱对趣味性的恐惧，完成他们手中的游戏，移除任何挡在开发过程中的障碍。他总结道：“不要只是呆坐在那里，要努力帮助或鼓励其他人开始制作游戏。”

放宽思维尺度

《Fez》的开发者Phil Fish近期同漫画美术师James Harvey有过一次交谈，从这次交谈中他学到了有关漫画的一个特别有趣的想法：Harvey表示在页面中呈现多种结果可能性，能够让观看者对动作产生奇妙的感觉。

他说道：“我觉得这是个很有趣的做法。”受此启发，他考虑将漫画的这种超自然方法运用到游戏中。

从逻辑上来说，电子游戏是个3D媒体对象，根据不同的输入产生多种不同的结果。Fish说道：“在游戏中，玩家参与到媒介中可能会使媒介发生改变，不同时间会发生不同的事情。你对自己的行动做出即时规划……你会在瞬间同时考虑不同的结局。”

Fish说道：“媒体本身带有这种不规则性，你在相同的媒体片段中考虑所有不同的愿景。结果有诸多可能性，但是你只能将其中一小部分实体化，也就是将其实现。”（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）

GDC 2012: 10 indies, 10 ways to think outside the box

Leigh Alexander

The Indie Soapbox session at GDC is theoretically a “rant session,” but “rant” is generally a misleading prompt for some, says host Matthew Wegner (pictured). Instead, he asked 10 indies to share what’s on their mind and what their anxieties are.

The result was a fast-paced but fascinating session of condensed ideas on what indies need – as creators, innovators and as a community – to transcend current limitations and address common problems. From 10 speakers came 10 pieces of passionate advice.

Innovate Better

Lazy 8′s Rob Jagnow made Extrasolar, a game about land rovers – and is fatigued of being asked about “how rovers kill each other.” We’ve built up assumptions about games over years that tend to box us in, constrain our thoughts and limit our ideas, he says: “We made this box; it’s ours. So if we want to, we can think outside this box, we can reshape this box, we can destroy this box. That is our option.”

That’s not to say there’s no innovation going on in the game space: they just aren’t quite in the right spots. Innovations occur in promotion, but it focuses on putting applications into top ten lists in a fashion where quality becomes irrelevant. Cloning what works is a rampant strategy, and companies pay to out-promote one another.

“You innovate and you get cloned; you fail to innovate and you get ignored,” he says.

So what can indies do? They can innovate in form, in ways that will be protected by copyright and set the games apart from competitors. Aesthetic, story and characters aren’t steal-able and make games stand out. Another solution is to take giant risks – high risk design behaviors tend to set products far apart from the idea-stealers and static market leaders.

Constraint is one way to help engender innovation, Jagnow asserts; for example, in an era with more console buttons than ever, the idea that you can make a game with one button created a hit like Canabalt. Even the idea that there must be a screen is an assumption that, when discarded, results in fascinatingly innovative games, such as IGF nominee Johann Sebastian Joust.

Think Like A Web Developer

Eliss and Faraway creator Steph Thirion has only been in game development for about three years; his background is in web development. He shared the story of 37signals, developer of the Ruby on Rails language whose roots were in the goal not only of productivity, but “to be happy and to enjoy programming.” In other words, the co-founders placed their professional future in an obscure language for the sake of their own happiness – which might seem like a “suicidal” move, but now Ruby on Rails is used by thousands of companies.

“Small shops have the ability to redefine the tools of their industry, because they still have the flexibility to think outside of the box,” says Thirion. Tools from small houses have ended up remaking the landscape of web development – why is this not happening in game development? Dozens of games use the Flash game library Flixel, for example, but Thirion wonders. “who’s working on making Flixel better?”

If the indie community got out of the mindset of “solving our short term problems as they come” and instead toward the goal of creating better abstractions in tools, a wider array of simpler toolsets and scripts for the long term. Thinking like web developers – creating and improving toolsets and generating a more active and open-source community – can actually reinvigorate and empower the indie community, he argues.

“We should have tools that make us more productive; that make us happier… that we have control on, that we improve, and no one else knows better what these tools should look like than us. A movement like that must come from us, the people in this room,” he concluded.

Can The Ego

Although he admits he might be liked less for speaking up, Time Donkey and Blurst developer Ben Ruiz says evolution in the indie community may need to come from honest self-evaluations of some of its personalities. Stressing that he doesn’t intend to identify particular individuals – rather “the independent games community as a whole” – he urged everyone to “quit being so fucking egocentric. It’s completely out of control,” says Ben Ruiz.

“We end up not being able to metabolize the essence of others that contrast with us… how fast can we grow when we behave like this?” He pointed out the tendency to speak in absolutes, as well as the virulent distaste for the mainstream game industry.

The low-hanging fruit, like popular complaints about Zynga’s soullessness or EA’s laziness, is destructive and short-sighted, to say nothing of the personality conflicts among indies. “Look at the discussions that happen every time IGF happen each year… over and over and over again just because there are contrasting viewpoints, and it’s so silly.”

Adds Ruiz: “It becomes so much personal when we’re all in the same space with one another… it’s almost like an affront on one’s very being.” Indies have philosophies and core values in common, and can benefit from the removal of “walls that don’t need to be there.”

The IGF Is Not Going To Make You

On a similar theme, Mikengreg’s Mike Boxleiter spoke up about some of the “drama” circulating the IGF – he disputes the common idea that the IGF “makes” stars, in the wake of the narrative arc presented by Indie Game: The Movie. The idea that the festival makes an indie’s life perfect is a myth, he insists: “The only reason that Fez is anything is because the [people on that project]… didn’t give up for five fucking years. That is what makes you a superstar. It’s giving everything that you have, every day.”

For Boxleiter, his previous IGF win with Solipskier was hardly a blip on the radar of his career. “I gave my pitch document to Shigeru Miyamoto in the hallway; he signed it and politely bowed and walked away,” he joked.

“The IGF shouldn’t be as big a deal as it is… it gets you a lot of press, and it’s cool to have your announcement be with the IGF because it shows you’ve got some big balls,” he asserts. “But it’s just an award show. And a lot of people are saying we have to preserve how the IGF ‘brings up’ small indies, but it totally doesn’t do that.”

He thought Jon Blow’s simple advice – “just make a great game” – was elitist and exclusive, but he now agrees with the Braid creator. “If you have something you want to show other people, you’re just going to have to work your ass off,” Boxleiter concludes.

Explain Games In A Way That Even An Asshole Can Understand

Gunpoint developer Tom Francis comes from a writing background, and advises that explaining games is very difficult to get right. “I’ve been explaining other people’s games for eight years,” he says. One can’t assume the reader is a “reasonable, intelligent human being,” he jokes. “In the worst case scenario, your reader might be me, and I’m an asshole.”

Many creators mistakenly assume that their games speak for themselves, and simply release screenshots and trailers. Or they assume that the description of artistic intent is enough – but those elements don’t have anything to do with how to play the game or what makes it interesting. Explaining the plot won’t do, either, and nor will hyperbolic adjectives. Developers that describe their games as “innovative” don’t sound innovative – “they think, ‘oh wow, they sound like a tool,’” says Francis.

Start instead with the type of game – “summarize drastically,” and get to the coolest unique thing about it. Provide context of who the player is and what he or she is trying to do. Describe a moment the player can experience that’s typical of the game. “Most of your readers aren’t assholes… but reasonable people still respond better to writing that doesn’t waste their time… to gratify the writer’s pretensions,” says Francis.

Don’t Be Afraid To Stick Your Neck Out

Antichamber creator Alex Bruce shared the story of a random day in Shibuya where he suddenly decided to chase a stranger down and introduce himself. He had bailed on his university work to go and speak at TGS about his Unreal Tournament mod, and recognized then – IGF chairman Simon Carless in a crowd.

After some hesitance, Bruce ran up to Carless and introduced himself, discussed Sense of Wonder Night and mentioned working outside of Australia; Carless advised him to meet The Behemoth and Q Games’ Dylan Cuthbert at the event. In the event program, he noticed Epic president Mike Capps was speaking, and despite missing half the session, he decided to take a risk and try to talk to the man.

“I knew that if I didn’t at least try to talk to him, I would regret that decision,” says Bruce. Expecting to be brushed off, he instead got to talk to Capps about the then-unannounced Unreal Development Kit, and Capps promised to put him in touch with sales VP Mark Rein. He realized at that moment that “everyone is just another person;” he went on to meet Steve Swink and a number of other colleagues that encouraged him to go independent.

“Despite people in Australia telling me that I was wasting my time, in Japan I’d met someone… who was telling me I was onto something,” he says, deciding to attend GDC and subsequently – after winning Make Something Unreal – deciding to make the leap into an indie career.

“The desire to always make the most of whatever situation I’m in and not talk myself out of whatever opportunities before I’ve even tried… is the reason I’m here today,” he says. His success wasn’t about lucky enough to have been in Japan – it was about seizing and chasing down minor moments, and being willing to take risks big and small.

Your Tech Is More Than A Tool

Tool users tend to take the path of least resistance, says Metanet’s Raigan Burns. For example, one only had a marble and a chisel, one would never make a painting – games are heavily bound aesthetically by the limitations of their technology.

“There’s a tendency to consider the computer to be a generic tool,” he says. But thinking differently about it – like a musical instrument – helps tech become an integral part of the entire creative work. There are more ways to represent shapes than most developers use. “What if every musician only played guitar… ultimately you’re all in the same parameter space,” Burns says.

Seek Inspirational Visuals

Maquette’s Hanford Lemoore says there isn’t much in video games that looks like his favorite works of art. We avoid the uncanny valley in games, for example, but the Royal De Luxe theater company’s eerie-eyed puppet dolls are beautiful and fascinating art objects because they embrace it. And games focus on rational architecture, but absurd, textured places are extremely compelling.

“I’m not just talking about visual inspiration for your art style… there’s all sorts of things in real life that can do that for you,” he says. Lemoore saves all kinds of Images that he finds creatively stimulating, but they only help if you find a way to proactively expose yourself to things that inspire you.

This is fairly simple to do, he says, explaining how he made a primitive screen saver tool that kept the images visible and fresh, and a dropbox account that could house all of his inspirations. Instead of using sketchbooks and tucking them away, he pins notecards and pictures to his wall so that they’re always in his view.

It influences not only him, but his friends and coworkers, and has the effect of encouraging him to seek out further inspiration and things he can keep from his environment. Proactively seeking out inspirational visuals is a simple but potent creative tool.

Game Development Is For Everyone

Mike Meyer is the organizer of the all-inclusive IGF Pirate Kart talked about GloriousTrainwreck.com, founded in the philosophy of old-school train wrecks orchestrated simply so they could be compelling spaces to people. There are communities of people who make games, and it’s important to continue including others. That was what Meyer most wanted to enforce – that while many indies might seem like “unapproachable nerds… we’d love to have you.”

Indies should do more to encourage new voices, he suggests. The “Pirate Rant” – the manifesto of the Kart’s contributors – plead for everyone to stop fearing fun, to finish their games, and remove anything that’s in the way of their development, among other nuggets of advice. “Don’t just fucking sit there – help or encourage someone to make a game,” he concluded.

Think In Endless Dimensions

Fez developer Phil Fish recently had a conversation with comic book artist James Harvey, from which he took away a particularly interesting idea about comics: that they allow the viewer to see across time all at once – what Harvey meant by that, says Fish, was that by breaking down a series of moments across a page, the viewer gets an almost godlike view of the action.

“I thought that was really interesting,” he says, inspired to think about how this metaphysical take on comics applied to games.

Video games, by logic, is a 3D media object with many possible outcomes depending on inputs. “In games, engaging with the medium changes the medium – different things happen in different times,” Fish says. “You project yourself in time… you consider many different outcomes all at once.”

“The media itself… becomes this fractal, and you consider all these different versions of that same piece of media,” says Fish. “It’s like a giant cloud of possibilities, of which you can only ever materialize a small slice.” (Source: Gamasutra)