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关于电子游戏未来发展模式的思考

作者:Michael Thomsen

15年前,电子游戏经历了一次范式转移,从2D模式转移到3D模式。自那以后,没有人知道行业未来将转变成什么模式。是动作控制装置?在线多人模式?还是3D显示器?它是否会融入手机游戏的简单性?或是能够覆盖广泛潜在用户的社交网络?对此我们没有明确答案——真实情况是,所有这些变革领域将汇聚成尚无法加以定义的内容。

行业的大型发行商尚未投身于体感控制装置中,他们更是对3D显示器持怀疑态度,但在过去几年里,投资社交网络游戏已引起越来越多人的关注。这并不只是制作能够用于推广大型掌机作品的迷你交叉游戏。相反,这是对游戏整体构思的重新定位,将其视作一种社交网络平台,一种供玩家共同体验游戏、结交新朋友及互相分享创意内容的媒介。

动视基于《使命召唤》推出Elite,EA也针对《极品飞车》和《战地风云》分别推出Autolog和Battlelog,这些作品都搭载EA运用于其所有在线游戏(游戏邦注:各个平台的游戏作品)的广泛伞状网络。

微软创建Waypoint,作为Xbox Live控制面板《光晕》粉丝的永久归属地,任天堂甚至还尝试给其《马里奥赛车》和《Wii健身》游戏创建自定义渠道。

育碧非常欣赏“AAA游戏的社交化”构思,公司积极通过Uplay朝此目标迈进。公司最近收购《Trials》开发商RedLynx的举措及即将推出《Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online》标志着其新社交时代的到来。

将游戏视作独立的社交网络平台有什么优点?这只是个转瞬即逝的阶段,还是为电子游戏下个范式转移的建立基础?

漫长的过程

DICE Battlelog制作人Fredrik Löving表示,“我们已持续制作《战地风云》游戏10多年,我们觉得这要归功于工作室及社区积极创建游戏的社交网络平台,在此我们处于控制地位,会持续更新内容。”

在《战地风云》之类长期运行的游戏中添加社交网络是开发者跟进玩家操作动态的重要渠道。Battleog去年同《战地风云3》同时发行,充当能够让玩家建立个人资料、联系对手玩伴、追踪数据、观察伙伴其他游戏消息动态及跟进排行榜情况的浏览器社交网络。EA和DICE没有将Battlelog打造成Facebook的一个应用,而是认为将其视作独立社交网络效果会更好。

Löving表示,“我觉得用户在Facebook的好友和Battlelog并不相同。就我自己来说,我在Battlelog拥有许多每天共同玩游戏的好友,我觉得我们在《战地风云3》中是真正的朋友。但我们在Facebook并不是朋友,因为对我来说,Facebook包含的更多是我每天会碰面而不是只局限于游戏空间中的朋友。”

将Battlelog设计成独立平台(游戏邦注:没有同Facebook、PlayStation Network或Xbox Live绑定)的决定奠定了整个体验的基调,将其变成独立内容,而不是围绕于晚餐图片、Spotify播放列表或Netflix通知。对PC玩家来说,Battlelog是游戏的发行平台,有点像是会过滤掉同游戏体验无关内容的“门廊”。

“进行民意调查后我们发现,约有12%的Battlelog用户甚至在自己的浏览器中将Battlelog设置成初始页面。这令我非常高兴,因为这个比例高过谷歌、Facebook和其他热门初始页面。”

对于很多玩家来说,发生于游戏之中的社交互动和Facebook或Twitter截然不同。但也有人将《战地风云3》视作Facebook的子集,一个独立但相似的变体,将用户同发布消息、照片及发出聚会邀请之类的活动联系起来。

围绕《战地风云3》的社交互动可以看作是跳脱原先简单传统互动模式的一种方式;在Battlelog这一个社交网络中,最丰富的社交互动主要发生在平台界限之外。

Call of Duty Elite from gamasutra.com

Call of Duty Elite from gamasutra.com

动视数字业务副总裁Jamie Berger去年在采访中表示,“我觉得这就是它的有趣之处——这是能够让你真正同他人一起参加某活动的社交网络。”和EA Battlelog一样,动视推出独立社交平台Elite,旨在支撑《使命召唤》。这一服务有免费和付费订阅两种选择模式,是个基于浏览器的独立社交网络,平台同玩家投入《使命召唤》的游戏时间存在直接的联系。

Berger表示,“在我看来,最有趣的地方在于,用户在这一平台非常活跃。而最令我兴奋的是,用户在平台中非常配合;他们彼此保持沟通。”

“他们很高兴自己能够变成社区的一员,而不是置身留言板之中。他们希望进行社交互动,从中收获乐趣,而不是进行相互攻击。”

《使命召唤》和《战地风云》之类的多人射击游戏向来以漠视新手玩家著称,但融入能够量化用户活动及让玩家相互查看操作内容的独立社交网络将社区变成更具合作性,在某些情况下,它们甚至热情对待那些想要更多了解游戏,不希望每隔10秒就会看到游戏结束画面的新手玩家。

Berger表示,“这创造了一个社交公约。我们如何像居住于同个社区的邻居那样进行社交互动?你要怀着尊敬之情对待你的邻居。在我看来,真正的社区存在‘社交游戏’和社区之差。”

“看到这点我非常激动。这开始打破很多有关射击游戏的糟糕假设。这摧毁那些匿名的消息墙面,将其变成供玩家互相了解彼此的平台。”

平台的可访问性主要源自于其清楚呈现如何更好体验采用被动消费模式的游戏,这里玩家可以从其他玩家的见解中受益,无需同其进行直接竞争。

Löving表示,“通过Battlelog,我们让作品得以覆盖更多非《战地风云》的玩家。通过添加社交元素,采用在线模式及允许玩家分享游戏体验,游戏让玩家更清楚地把握其所涉及的内容。”

“我们可以清楚看到的是,对所有玩家来说(游戏邦注:无论其采用什么游戏形式),统计数据都发挥着至关重要的作用。用户不仅喜欢跟进自己的前进情况,也关心其好友和对手的发展状况。”

游戏空间的定位器

诸如Elite和Battlelog之类的服务依然紧追Waypoint的步伐,这是微软《光晕》系列(发行于2009年)的汇集中心,是个独立平台。相比Elite,《光晕》运用社交网络的方式更像是建立多人、单人和跨平台推广之间的平衡关系。

343 Industries Waypoint主管C.J. Saretto表示,“我觉得Waypoint就像是拥有多重性格的电视频道:这1分钟它是SyFy Network,下一分钟它就变成ESPN。《光晕》粉丝不仅融入光晕宇宙中,也沉浸于游戏之中。Waypoint试图将自己变成建立粉丝和光晕宇宙联系的聚集点,在游戏中庆祝他们的成就,促使他们同其他《光晕》粉丝建立联系。”

Halo Waypoint from gamasutra.com

Halo Waypoint from gamasutra.com

虽然其固有归属地依然是Xbox Live,但此网络平台还有网页浏览器、iOS、Windows Phone和Android版本,令《光晕》粉丝得以随处链接到游戏中(游戏邦注:接触的内容从各《光晕》系列的玩家汇总数据到光晕玩具的幕后制作花絮)。Waypoint还利用自己同更大型网络Xbox Live的共生关系,这是其所有门户网站的链接反馈地址。

Saretto表示,“《光晕》玩家都是Xbox Live玩家,所以Waypoint通过它们的Xbox Live玩家标签辨别粉丝。Waypoint Mobile还让玩家能够同其Xbox Live好友列表中的玩家进行沟通,因为我们知道这些是同你一起玩《光晕》的伙伴。”

同和Xbox Live合作的一个优点是,能够将玩家同各系列的游戏作品起来,这样玩家就会持续感受到前进和连续感觉,即便他们放弃前1年的作品,转而体验新出现的内容。

343制作人Humberto Castaneda表示,“我们拥有忠实的《光晕》粉丝,他们经常提到自己非常高兴,其Career Milestone能够清楚呈现出他们为获得成就在各游戏系列投入的‘所有辛苦工作’。”追踪玩家在各作品系列中的成就(游戏邦注:这在传统Xbox Live Player Card中表现为系列破碎的列表)在Waypoint中汇集成成绩清单。不妨将其看作能够让玩家随时在Xbox Live界面中过滤掉所有同《光晕》无关的内容过滤器。

任天堂试图通过推出简单网页版《马里奥赛车》将这款游戏社交化,尽管所推出内容不是非常全面。《马里奥赛车》的Wii和3DS版本都提供独立渠道,让玩家能够通过掌机的引导菜单查看自己的数据、排行榜及即将呈现的竞赛,无需真正启动游戏。

此方案给下述实况带来一个理想的折中方案:即便是最具沉浸性的游戏也没有像Facebook或Twitter那样频繁给予日常奖励。同样,玩家无法单靠《光晕》或《使命召唤》为生,瞄准忠实玩家创建机制-关卡聚集中心,方便他们在操作其他内容时同社区保持联系,这是个非常强大的用户留存工具,能够及时向玩家呈现最新更新内容、竞赛或高分榜单(游戏邦注:即便他们在体验其他游戏)。

给其他玩家创造有趣内容

初期将大型热门作品连接到自己的社交网络就获得显著成功属于例外情况,不是普遍现象。虽然可供选择的只有少数渠道、应用和小工具,但社交功能似乎是不错选择。设想下这样的未来:各大型作品都推出自己的独立iPhone应用、浏览器数据追踪器,渠道能够快速将整个社交活动变成运用过度的宣传媒介——空荡的“门廊”剧烈闪烁,以引起关注。

不是所有游戏都应该采用Waypoint。即使如此,许多游戏还是能够通过借鉴社交网络的经验而获得完善,进而在吵杂的市场中脱颖而出。

《极限滑雪》创意总监Todd Batty表示,“当我们考虑在《极限滑雪》中植入社交网络功能时,我们曾这样问自己:我们要如何让玩家在游戏中给其他玩家创造有趣的内容。最丰富的社交网络通常主要依靠平台用户瞄准其他用户制作有趣而有意义的内容。”

《极限滑雪》并没有推出社交网络或机制-关卡渠道,但利用玩家创造性和竞争性促使其他玩家持续返回的构思在此扮演着重要的角色。借鉴在EA在《极品飞车》系列中创建的Autolog功能,《极限滑雪》通过Ridernet将玩家异步连接至其他好友玩家的成就中。

Batty表示,“我们在游戏中创建虚拟角色机制,所以若我经常玩这款游戏,在游戏空间中发布许多我的影子,那么我就创造出能让好友进行较量的内容,这让游戏变成更丰富的体验。”

“我们还设置名为地理标签的功能,这是个在线捉迷藏,我可以随意走到空间的各个地方,在3D空间中将标签隐藏在我认为其他人无法找到的地点,然后看看其他玩家能否将其找出。所以我给其他玩家创建有趣的内容,同时我又自己尽情享受于游戏之中。”

隐藏于功能之下的是竞争性的博弈机制,玩家可以通过游戏积分机制互相挑战对方。例如,若你发布一个地理标签,你可以投下大量积分作为赌注,坚持不会有玩家找到此标签。若有人立即找到次标签,他们将得到所有积分,但若这花费他们很长的时间,你将获得多数的积分。

Batty表示,“这就是造就杰出社交网络的元素:所有人都积极创造某些内容,这些内容丰富其他玩家的游戏体验。任何社交网络(游戏邦注:无论是Facebook、Twitter,还是电子游戏)都是基于此模式。”

“有些游戏有融入社交功能,设有会见好友及进行竞争性体验的渠道,但它们没有植入类似的创造和消费元素,所以整个社交网络最终还是分崩离析。若你没有呈现有趣及持续创新的内容,整个项目最终将以失败告终。”

育碧推崇异步社交体验模式,倾向重新创建新的社交网络,以此支撑自己的大型作品。

育碧CEO Yves Guillemot去年在采访中表示,“我们的观点是,AAA游戏将从当前的变革中受益匪浅。在育碧,我们正在制作充分利用异步玩法的游戏作品,如今大家时刻都处于连网状态,追踪系统能够带来更好配合玩家及其好友的体验。所以我们让玩家既能够单独进行体验,也可以在必要时候同好友一同体验。”

社交网络构思能够落实到全局目标中,这不会打断游戏各时刻的玩法,但会影响玩家在游戏中的更大目标。

Guillemot表示,“设想自己正在解密一种语言。你置身某个世界中,它有独特的语言,所以这也许是个已被专家解密的语言,也许是我们自己创造的有待解密的语言,要进行解密需要若干特定专业技能。若你顺利解密语言,你将能够在这片领域中发现新空间,发现新财富及不同文明。”

“假如团队能够解密此语言(游戏邦注:你也可以选择独自完成,也可以选择同能够解密此语言的好友合作),那么他们就可以利用此同其他团队进行抗衡。我们就可以因此避免在体验时落单,同能够协助你获得成功的好友共同体验。然后胜出的团队就能够与拥有其他优势和影响力的团队进行竞争。这样游戏就包含无穷尽的操作内容。”

也许提高游戏社交联系的最大优势在于,这能够强化玩家和开发者间的联系,让开发者更好地知晓玩家如何体验他们的游戏。Löving表示,“到目前为止,这算是个非常有趣的旅程,由于Battlelog,我们每天都学到新东西。”

“我们从未像现在这样如此贴近自己的用户。”

最后,这是使得在AAA游戏中植入社交功能和社交思维变得意义非凡。这不仅只是将此功能添加到列表的渠道,或者只是赋予商业开发新流行词汇,以便在会议上进行讨论,这令游戏开发者和游戏爱好者建立起更密切的联系。他们间的关系越密切,未来的行业形势就越乐观。(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

How Triple-A Games Went Social and Why They’re Not Going Back

by Michael Thomsen

Fifteen years ago, video games underwent a paradigm shift, migrating from 2D to 3D. In the years since, it’s been unclear what the next major paradigm shift would be. Might it be motion controls? Online multiplayer? 3D displays? Could it have something to do with the simplicity of mobile games? Or the social networks that make them available to hundreds of millions of potential players? There is no clear answer to this search — the truth may be all of these areas of transformation will cohere into something as yet undefined.

The industry’s biggest publishers were slow to invest in motion controls and have been even more skeptical about 3D displays, but in the last few years investing in social network games has drawn more and more attention. This isn’t just about creating mini-game crossovers that can be used to promote an upcoming blockbuster console release. Instead, it’s about rethinking the overall design of a game as a kind of social network of its own, a medium through which people can play with each other, become friends, and share their creativity.

Activision has launched Elite for its Call of Duty franchise, EA has built similar services with Autolog and Battlelog for its Need for Speed and Battlefield franchises, each of which plug into the wider umbrella network that EA uses for all of its online games, regardless of platform.

Microsoft built Waypoint as a permanent home for Halo fans in the Xbox Live dashboard, and Nintendo has even experimented with custom channels for its Mario Kart and Wii Fit games.

Ubisoft has has praised the “socialization of triple-A games” and is approaching it via its Uplay service. The company’s recent purchase of Trials-developer RedLynx, as well as its upcoming Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online could mark the beginning of the company’s new social era.

What are some of the benefits of treating a game as if it were its own social network? Is this a passing phase, or an essential foundation on which the next major paradigm shift in video games will be built?

A Long Time Coming

“We have been creating Battlefield games for more than a decade now, and we felt that we owe it to both ourselves and the community to build a social network around our games that we are in control of and that we can update frequently,” Fredrik Löving, Battlelog Producer at DICE, said.

The addition of a social network to long-running game franchises like Battlefield is many ways a matter of developers catching up to what players had been doing on their own. The Battleog launched alongside last year’s Battlefield 3 as a browser-based social network that allows players to build profiles, connect with people they’ve played against, track stats, watch feeds from other people’s games, and keep track of leaderboards. Rather than build the service as an app for Facebook, EA and DICE decided Battlelog would work best as a network that stood on its own.

“I believe that people don’t have the same friends on Facebook as they have on Battlelog,” Löving said. “Personally, I have lots of friends on Battlelog that I play with every day, and I feel that we are truly friends in the realm of Battlefield 3. However, we are not friends on Facebook, as Facebook to me is more about people I would actually meet face-to-face and not only in the gaming realm.”

The decision to make Battlelog its own separate entity — neither tethered to Facebook, the PlayStation Network, nor Xbox Live — sets the tone for the whole experience, something that self-contained and isn’t set against a background of dinner photos, Spotify playlists, or Netflix notifications. For PC players, Battlelog works as the game’s launch pad, a sort of vestibule that filters out everything unrelated to the coming session of play.

“We did a poll and found out that roughly 12 percent of Battlelog users even have Battlelog as their start page in the browser,” L?ving said. “That made me very happy, since it’s even stronger numbers than the equivalent for Google, Facebook, and other popular start pages.”

For many players, the kinds of socializing that happens around and within a game are nothing like the sorts of socializing that happens in Facebook or Twitter. There would be something disjunctive about treating their Battlefield 3 sessions as a subset of Facebook, a separate but equivalent variation on tagging people with notes, posting photos, and making party invitations.

The socializing that happens around Battlefield 3 can be seen as a way of escaping those simpler and more traditional forms of interacting; Battlelog is a social network whose richest interactions ultimately takes place outside of its borders.

“I think that’s where it gets pretty exciting — where a social network becomes a network that actually lets you go out and participate in something together,” Jamie Berger, Activision’s vice president of digital, told Gamasutra in an interview last year. Like EA’s Battlelog, Activision launched Elite as a self-contained social network in support of its Call of Duty franchise. The service, which has free and fee-based subscription options, is a stand-alone browser-based social network that directly connects to players’ time spent in Call of Duty games.

“One of the most interesting things to me is how positive people are in the service,” Berger said. “I’m most excited that within it, people are being supportive; they’re actually talking to each other, and amongst each other.”

“They’re so happy to actually have a place to be part of a community, not a message board… they’re actually behaving very much like people who just want to be social and have fun, not people who want to flame each other.”

Multiplayer shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield have also been places notoriously inhospitable to newer players, but the addition of a stand-along social network where player behavior can be quantified and viewed by others in the community appears to have made the communities more cooperative and, in some cases, more hospitable to new players hoping to learn about the game without having to suffer through a game-over screen every 10 seconds.

“It creates a social contract,” Berger said. “How can we start behaving as if we live in a neighborhood? You try to treat your neighbors with respect. When you create a true community, that, to me, is the difference between ‘social gaming’ and a community.”

“I’m really excited about that aspect. It starts breaking a lot of the bad assumptions about what a shooter is. It breaks down those anonymous walls and turns it into something where you start knowing each other.”

A large part of this accessibility comes from making salient facts about how to best play the game available in a format of passive consumption, where players can benefit from another player’s insights without having to compete directly against him or her.

“With Battlelog, we make the product a lot more accessible to non-Battlefield players,” Löving said. “By adding a social layer, being on the web and allowing sharing of your gaming experience, it gives everyone a greater insight to what Battlefield is all about.”

“What we can clearly see is that for all users, no matter game format, stats are of the utmost importance. People love following not only their own progression, but also their friends and foes.”

Not the Center of the Universe, but a Placeholder in It

Services like Elite and Battlelog are still catching up with Waypoint, Microsoft’s hub for “all things Halo” launched in 2009 as a stand-alone service for its signature franchise. Compared to Elite, Halo’s approach to social networking is more a balance between multiplayer, single player, and crossmedia promotions.

“I actually think of Waypoint like a TV Channel with multiple personalities: one minute it’s the SyFy Network and the next it’s ESPN,” said C.J. Saretto, Waypoint Lead at 343 Industries. “Halo fans are just as into the games as they are the Halo Universe. Waypoint tries to be a rallying point that connects fans to the Halo Universe, celebrates their achievements in the Halo games, and connects them to other Halo fans.”

Though its natural home remains Xbox Live, the network also has web browser, iOS, Windows Phone, and Android versions, making it possible for Halo fans to have a connection to the franchise from almost anywhere — everything from aggregated player stats across multiple Halo games to behind-the-scenes specials about the making of Halo toys. Waypoint also takes advantage of its symbiosis with the larger network of Xbox Live, which all its portals point back to.

“Halo players are all Xbox Live players, so Waypoint identifies fans by their Xbox Live Gamertag,” Saretto said. “Waypoint Mobile also lets you communicate with your Xbox Live Friends List, because we know those are the people you play Halo with.”

One of the benefits of working in concert with Xbox Live is the ability to connect fans with the franchise over the course of multiple games so that they can retain a sense of progression and continuity even when putting aside a previous year’s title for a newer one.

“We have longtime fans of Halo who often mention how they appreciate that their Career Milestone reflects ‘all that hard work’ they put in to getting Halo achievements from game to game,” Humberto Castaneda, a producer at 343, said. This tracking of achievements from all the different Halo games, which appear as a series of fragmented lists in the traditional Xbox Live Player Cards, get collated into a centralized career list in Waypoint. Think of it as a kind of filter that lets players momentarily strip out everything not related to Halo from their Xbox Live interface.

Though nowhere near as comprehensive an offering, Nintendo has attempted to socialize its Mario Kart games with a simplified version of the network within a network idea. Both the Wii and 3DS versions of Mario Kart have been given discrete channels that allow players to check in on their stats, leaderboards, and upcoming tournaments from the console’s boot menu without having to actually launch a game.

This approach offers an ideal compromise for the fact that even the most compulsive games don’t reward daily use as consistently as Facebook or Twitter do. In the same way that players cannot live by Halo or Call of Duty alone, creating system-level hubs for longtime players to stay connected to the community while on their way to doing something else is a powerful retention tool, keeping the game’s newest updates, tournaments, or high scores fresh in players minds even while having another game disc in the machine.

Critical Mass vs. Massive Chaos

The early success in connecting hugely popular game franchises to social networks of their own will inevitably prove to be the exception and not the rule. When there are only a handful of channels, apps, and widgets to sort through, social features seem like a great idea. Imagining a future where every major game launches with its own stand-alone iPhone app, browser-based stat tracker, and channel would quickly transform the whole socialization movement into an overexploited clatter of empty vestibules blinking loudly for attention.

Not every game (or even franchise) deserves a Waypoint. Even still, many games might be improved by incorporating some of the lessons learned from social networks to help them cut through the chaos of the market.

“When we looked at integrating social networking into SSX we asked ourselves how we could enable players to create interesting content for other players in our game,” Todd Batty, creative director on SSX, said. “The richest social networks tend to be the most dependent on the people who belong to them to make interesting and meaningful content for other people on the network.”

SSX did not launch with a social network or system-level channel, but the idea of using player creativity and competitiveness to keep others returning to the game plays a central role. Borrowing from the Autolog feature EA has built up with the last two entries in the Need for Speed series, SSX uses Ridernet to asynchronously link players to the achievements of others in their friends list.

“We have a ghost system in the game, so if I play the game a lot and post a lot of my ghosts around the world then I’ve created something for a lot of my friends to compete against, which, by virtue of being there, make the game a richer experience,” Batty said.

“We also have a feature called geo-tagging, an online kind of hide-and-go-seek where I can go anywhere in the world I want, hide the tag somewhere in the 3D space where I don’t think anyone will be able to find it, and then see if other people can go find it. So I’m creating interesting content for people while I’m playing the game and having a good time on my own.”

Underneath these features is a competitive wagering system where players can challenge each other using an in-game credits system. If you post a geo-tag, for instance, you can bet a sum of credits that no one will be able to find it. If some finds it immediately, they’ll get all of the credits, but if it takes them a long time you’ll get most of the credits.

“That right there is what makes a great social network: everyone is motivated to do something, and that thing makes the whole experience richer for everyone else,” Batty said. “Any social network — whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or a video game — every single one of those relies on that formula.”

“Some games talk about social features and have ways to meet up with friends and play against them, but they don’t have that same means of creation and consumption in that loop, and so the entire social network falls apart. If you don’t have interesting and constantly new creative content, the whole thing will fizzle out and die.”

Ubisoft has embraced the idea of asynchronous social play in favor of building new social networks from scratch to support their major franchises.

“The idea is that triple-A games can really benefit a lot from the revolution that’s happening around us,” Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, said in an interview last year. “At Ubisoft, we already have games on the way that take advantage of asynchronous gameplay, the fact that you are connected all the time, and the tracking system that can actually give an experience that is more adaptive to each player, and also to his friends. So we can give the gamers the possibility to play alone, but also with his friends if needed.”

The benefit of social networking ideas can be best implemented in overarching goals that don’t necessarily interrupt the moment-to-moment gameplay, but rather affects the larger purpose players are trying to achieve through it.

“Imagine you have to decrypt a language,” Guillemot said. “You’re in a world, there’s a language, so it’s either a language that has been decrypted by specialists, or it’s a new language that we’ve created that’s to be decrypted that needs a certain number of competencies. If you decrypt the language, you will be able to discover a place in the world, and discover treasures and different civilizations.”

“If the group is capable of decrypting that — you can still play normally [alone] — but you can do it with friends who can help decrypt it. And then they can take advantage of this, to go and fight other groups. We can stop being alone when we play, and play with friends who prepare something to help you succeed. And then that group who wins can be against other groups that will have other advantages and influences. The potential is just infinite of what can be done.”

Perhaps the biggest benefit of increasing social ties in games come from the heightened connection between player and developer, offering a way for developers to better understand how their game is being played. “It has been a very interesting journey so far, and we learn new things every single day thanks to Battlelog,” Löving said.

“We have never been so close to our consumers as we are now.”

And that, finally, is what makes the addition of social features and social thinking into triple-A games so valuable. It is not just a means of adding a feature to a list or giving business development a new buzz word to bat around the conference room. It is about forming an even closer bond between people who love making games and people who love playing games. The closer that relationship, the brighter the future will be.(Source:gamasutra


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