作者：Rondal

Mat，感谢你从伦敦远道而来。有些人并不是很了解你们公司，能否谈谈Nitrome的相关情况及其创建过程？

Nitrome最初由两位成员创办，他们之前在另一家公司共事，主要负责开发客户端游戏和网站。我们并没有一开始就制作原创作品，我们头一年替委托客户制作了很多游戏，其中包括教育类型的游戏。我们原本打算制作其他版本的游戏，基于我们制作的委托项目进行创收，但我们开始觉得公司也许可以尝试通过熟悉的格式制作原生游戏，从中赚取收益。

起初，我们主要通过游戏授权赚取收益，但这很快就变得微不足道，因为随着公司网站的发展，广告收入变成我们的主要来源。这并非完全靠运气，因为我们付出很多努力，进行众多尝试，但现在回过头来看，有时我会觉得我们非常幸运，重要事情都进展很顺利。如果我们在某些方面采取不同策略，如今的Nitrome将是另一番光景。

nitrome from startfrag.com

我很高兴工作室最终取得成功。你是否一直都对电子游戏很感兴趣？

我想很多独立游戏开发领域的人士都和我一样，从小就对游戏很感兴趣。我生长在Megadrive和SNES年代，或者至少这是我着迷于游戏的时期。我喜欢《炸弹人》、《Micromachines》和《马里奥赛车》。其实现在我很少玩非单人游戏，但我知道我年轻时对它很着迷，因此我尽量在游戏中融入相关元素。

在过去几个月里，Nitrome几乎每2个礼拜就推出1款新游戏。这听起来有些疯狂！你们的平均开发周期是多久？

游戏的开发时长约是1-3个月，我们积极制作各种不同规模的游戏，以避免产生这样的预期：当前作品应比上个项目规模更大，更优秀，这将超出我们的控制范围。由于我们的多数游戏规模有所扩大，因此项目当前的平均开发时长约是10周。

你们即将推出公司的第100款游戏《Nitrome Must Die》——这富有里程碑意义！回过头看，哪些是你最喜欢的作品（游戏邦注：包括美术和技术方面）？

《Megamash》、《Faultline》、《Knuckleheads》、《Twang》和《Skywire》都立即浮现在我脑中，因为它们完美诠释新构思。

《Megamash》无疑也是我的最爱之一，游戏巧妙结合各种玩法机制。

就个人而言，我更注重构思的创意性，因此我觉得它们都非常特别。

megamash nitrome from startfrag.com

你们在这款游戏的发行上采取不同举措。能否谈谈这次的发行和之前有什么不同？

我们希望这第100款游戏能够有所不同，要让玩家大吃一惊非常有难度，因为我们至今已推出99款游戏，他们很清楚我们多半会创造出什么样的作品。我们决定开展一场假装诋毁自己的活动，这既配合第100款游戏的构思，又给游戏的发行做铺垫。我们以若干虚构角色名称开设两个新账号，一开始，这两个账号会在评论栏里大肆批评我们在Facebook发表的文章。

这里的主要想法是，让粉丝慢慢习惯这个两人变成我们Facebook社区的常客。待到他们逐步习惯后，我们就加足马力，让两个角色推出Nitrome Must Die网站，二者将再次在我们的Facebook页面发表内容，鼓励玩家到此签名呼吁Nitrome停止开发游戏。这是个非常冒险的策略，一不小心就会事与愿违，但幸运的是，我们的粉丝都非常忠诚，他们反复攻击活动，替我们辩护。我们随后采取更进一步的举措，突出博客所发生的情况，此愤怒情绪进一步被激化。

nitrome ice temple from startfrag.com

我们获得大力支持，我必须承认，粉丝在此给予的支持让我们有点心生愧疚，因为这完全就是个恶作剧。有些粉丝开始猜测，这些有可能是假的，这让我们收到更多评论和邮件。最终，我们发布新作品的预告片，宣布这些角色就是玩家将在游戏中将扮演的角色，“Nitrome must Die”活动其实就是第100款游戏的名称。游戏构思是，你扮演两个厌倦我们游戏的愤怒粉丝，你们决定到我们的办公室，将我们整垮。你需要穿越100个楼层，其中包含10个Boss，还有众多敌人陷阱和武器。这是款竞技场射击游戏，但包含很多美妙且富有创新性的附加内容。我们在此投入众多时间，希望玩家能够喜欢。

这听起来非常不错。你们的游戏似乎都有鲜明的像素风格，但各自呈现截然不同的外观和感觉。美术指导元素如何渗透至游戏开发过程中？

我们先从核心机制入手，然后再配合相应风格。如果机制非常抽象，那么美术内容通常也会变得很抽象。我并不认为应该先从主题入手，因为主题会限制适合游戏的内容。虽然我们在动画上花费很长时间，但这些时间主要耗费在抽象游戏内容的若干细节画面上，因为要将其同我们创建的游戏空间相匹配很困难。

作为一个玩家，要将游戏变成有所收获的体验，什么核心要素必不可少？

我觉得就Flash游戏来说，留下良好的第一印象非常重要。确保用户能够尽量把握机制，能够从一开始就享受于游戏当中。虽然游戏无需付费，但如果他们不喜欢你的游戏，他们还有更多作品可以选择。

nitrome chisel from startfrag.com

你们的很多游戏似乎都有意避开暴力玩法的成人主题。你们是否刻意保持游戏的通俗性？

尽量扩宽潜在用户覆盖面是明智之举，我们的一款游戏碰巧没有融入血腥元素，适合家庭共同体验，所以当我们决定将主题变得更多元化，尝试融入些许阴暗主题时，我们决定要制作不损及既有作品的游戏内容。一款有欠妥当的游戏就足以让我们失去全部用户，所以这至关重要。我们采取“辛普森一家”策略，在此孩子享受于我们制作的内容，但其中依然存在些许内容只有年长玩家才懂得欣赏的元素（游戏邦注：这些内容远超乎孩子的掌握范围）。

《Nitrome Must Die》算是例外之一。这是否是你们首款真正意义上的成人主题游戏？

游戏的确存在黑色基调，尤其是就我们发布的预告片而言，但它不会打破我们的规则。我们觉得这是个有趣的主题，将迎合我们对于第100款游戏的期望。看过完整作品后，你会发现，游戏的黑色外观旨在同我们之前许多作品的有趣鲜明画面形成反差效果，它甚至还融入我们先前作品的游戏元素。

你们是否计划涉足掌机游戏领域？

我们一直都计划涉足Flash之外的领域。Nitrome刚成立时是想要开发手机游戏，我们的Flash游戏《Chick Flick》原本是款基于J2ME的游戏，游戏最终没有发行。当最终放弃发行计划时，我们基于Flash技术将其重新制作，J2ME领域当时主要以移植及利用知名IP为主。整个过程曾促使我们产生抵触情绪，因为我们才刚开始基于Flash技术制作游戏，随后公司的发展完全基于这一平台。

我们多次尝试制作其他格式的内容，最典型的要数我们未发行的iPhone游戏《superfeedme》。我们发现，如今我们已发展至这样的阶段：我们很难既瞄准Flash游戏，又投身其他新开发项目。Flash内容给我们带来众多收益，因此总是处于优先位置，但目前我们已就公司进行重组，开始着手其他格式的新项目。

nitrome steamland from startfrag.com

除Flash技术外，你们还利用什么其他工具/程序开发游戏？

没有什么特别的工具。美术内容主要结合Photoshop和Promotion，这主要取决于美工的偏好及具体制作内容，这更多涉及技术，而非包装。如果有必要，我们完全能够基于MS Paint制作美术内容，因为这主要就是利用铅笔工具。我们主要基于Flash制作游戏，游戏基于Flash Develop进行编写。我们在Physics内容上主要利用Box 2D，但多数工具都是我们自己逐步创建的，所以例如我们拥有自己的自定义关卡编辑器。配乐内容主要通过Logic Pro完成。

目前是否有什么功能是你基于FLash无法实现，但很想进行尝试的？

我希望我们的游戏能够支持Joypad，我想这应该是我们目前最想进行尝试但Flash技术无法实现的东西。此外，我们还想将双人游戏变成四人模式，但要在一个键盘上融入这么多玩家有些不切实际！要是能够在双人游戏中运用两个鼠标那就太好了，这样右侧鼠标按键将得到有效利用。我想你的问题更多是着眼于技术限制方面，显然我们会遇到这一限制因素，但这绝非决定游戏制作的关键。我们所呈现出来的性能就足以说明这点。

nitrome world from startfrag.com

的确如此。在你看来，目前是否有其他独立开发商正积极突破游戏设计的界限？

就掌机而言，我是2D Boy的忠实粉丝。我觉得他们的《粘粘世界》游戏完美极了。我觉得Konjak的作品也总是让人印象深刻。但我觉得真正持续突破游戏设计界限的是在线游戏，这里是新构思的来源之处。许多新iOS游戏或掌机下载游戏都是基于早先的Flash作品。如果没有《城堡粉碎战》，那就没有《愤怒的小鸟》。其实所有Physics谜题游戏题材及其他塔防游戏都根源于Flash作品。如果要具体指明，那就是Farbs的《Captain Forever》游戏，Nekogames也有很多很棒的小构思。（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 with Matthew Annal, Managing Director at Nitrome

By Rondal

It’s great to have you here all the way from London, Mat. For those that don’t know can you tell us a bit about who Nitrome is and how it was formed?

Nitrome was formed by just two people originally after having worked together at another company producing client based games and websites. We didn’t make an original game right away… we made a lot of games for clients for the first year including a lot of educational work. We intended to make games for other formats and fund it through the client work we were doing and just kind of stumbled on the idea that we might be able to make the money we needed from making original games in a format we were already very familiar with.

Originally it was all funded through selling licenses of our games but that got overtaken as our site grew and with it the ad revenue became our biggest source of income. I wouldn’t say it was entirely luck as we did try to push ourselves further and try things but looking back I think we were very fortunate at times that key things worked out for us. It could be very a very different Nitrome now had a few small things went a little differently.

Well I for one am glad they turned out like they did. So have you always been interested in video games?

I think anyone who is in indie games development must have been like me interested in games when they were younger. I was a Megadrive (or Genesis in the US) and SNES era kid or at least that is the period I most fondly remember being so into games. I loved Bomberman, Micromachines and Mario Kart… I actually rarely play non single player games nowadays but because I know it was so important to me when I was younger I try to get us to add it to games where we can.

Speaking of which, Nitrome has released a new game almost every two weeks in the past few months. That’s crazy! What’s the average development time frame you try to maintain?

A game can take anywhere from 1 to 3 months to develop and we try now to make games of varying sizes to try and sidestep the expectation that every game should be bigger and better than the last which at our pace becomes pretty unmanageable. As more of our games seem to be bigger now on average I would say most games take around 10 weeks to complete.

You are currently about to release your 100th game, Nitrome Must Die – that’s a huge milestone! Looking back, what are a few of your favourite games (either artistically or technologically)?

Megamash, Faultline, Knuckleheads, Twang and Skywire all spring to mind as they managed quite new ideas that I think we also executed well.

Megamash is definitely one of my favorites too, it’s a very unique mix of gameplay mechanics.

Personally, I am all about originality in concepts so they are the ones I personally find the most special.

You’re doing something special to promote this new game. Can you explain how it’s a bit different than previous releases?

For the 100th game we wanted to do something a little differently and manage to surplus our fans which is quite difficult now that we have 99 games under our belt and people think they know what to expect from us. We decided to start a fake hate campaign against ourselves that would both tie in with the idea behind the hundredth game and lead up to the reveal of it. We made up two new Facebook accounts under some fictional character names and to start with we just had the two accounts start slagging off any posts we made on Facebook within the comments.

The idea was to get the fans used to these two people as trolls in our Facebook community. Once we felt they had settled in we ramped things up and had the characters launch the official Nitrome Must Die site and we started having them post about it again on our Facebook page encouraging people to go there and sign a petition to get Nitrome to stop making games. It was a pretty risky strategy that could have easily backfired but luckily our fans are mostly loyal and they repeatedly attacked the campaign and stuck up for us. We pushed it further by highlighting what was happening on our blog and the outrage grew.

The support we got was great and I have to admit the effort some fans were going to was making us feel a little guilty knowing it was all a hoax. Some fans started to guess that it might be fake and that made us get a lot more comments still and a lot of email. Eventually we showed the trailer for the new game (see above) and revealed that the characters were actually going to be who you play as in the game and the campaign ‘Nitrome must Die’ was actually the name of the 100th game. The concept is that you play as two annoyed fans who sick of what we are doing decide to come to our office and take us down. You will have to work your way through 100 floors with 10 bosses and literally tons of enemies traps and weapons… it’s an arena shooter but with lots of nice and sometimes original additions. It is something we have put a lot of time into and we hope people will enjoy it!

It sounds pretty epic. Your games all seem to share a signature pixel style, but each still has a vastly different look and feel. How does art direction factor into the game development process?

We definitely start with the core mechanic and fit the style to fit with that. If the mechanic is quite abstract then it usually makes the art more abstract too. I don’t believe you should ever start with a theme first as any theme will limit what seems natural to fit within the game. Although we spend a long time on our animation it is usually some small graphic for some abstract part of the game that usually takes the most time simply because it is hard to make it fit the world we have created.

As a gamer yourself, what’s that one key element a game must have to make playing it a rewarding experience?

I think for Flash games it is really important to make a good first impression. Make sure that the user understands the mechanic as soon as possible and can start enjoying the game right from the beginning. Although the games are free there are many more games out there that they can play instead if they don’t like yours.

Most of your games seem to steer clear of mature themes of overly violent gameplay. Is this an intentional decision to keep your games accessible?

Really it makes sense to keep your potential audience as wide as possible and it just happened that our first games had no blood and were very family friendly so when we diversified a little with our themes with some being a little darker we tried not to do anything that was going to spoil what we had already made… it would only take one game that was not appropriate to lose a whole audience so it is very important. I like to think now that we take an approach like The Simpsons where kids enjoy what we do but there are a few things in there that maybe only the older players will appreciate that go over the kids heads.

Nitrome Must Die seems to be one of those expectations. Will it be your first true mature-themed game?

It does have a dark tone especially in the trailer we put out, but it’s not suddenly going to break our rules. We thought it was an interesting idea for a theme and one that would sync up with what we wanted to accomplish with our 100th game. When you see the finished game you will find that it has a very purposeful clash between this darker look and the fun bright stuff from a lot of our games… it may even feature things from our earlier work (wink wink)!

Have there ever been any plans to crossover into console games?

We have always had plans and aspirations to make games outside the realms of Flash. When Nitrome was started the idea was to make games for mobile and our flash game Chick Flick was originally a game in J2ME (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition) that never came out. We remade it in Flash when we gave up on being able to make it in that market, which at the time became too much about porting and using well known I.P. I think the whole process there put us off for a while as making games in Flash really started to work for us and we grew the company off the back of that.

We have tried a few times to start developing for other formats most notably with our unreleased game superfeedme for iPhone. What we found is that we grew to a size where is becomes hard to focus both on the Flash games that are going on and on other new developments. With the Flash side of things bringing in the money it has always taken priority but we have reorganised ourselves now and have some new projects on the go for other formats… watch this space [laughs].

Aside from Flash, what other tools/programs do you use to create your games?

Nothing particularly special really. The art is handled either in a combination of Photoshop and Promotion depending on the artists preference and what he is doing, it’s more about technique than the package and it would be fully possible to do much or our art in MS Paint if we wanted as it is mostly just the pencil tool that is used! We use Flash to make the games obviously and the games get written using Flash Develop. We use Box 2D quite a bit for Physics but most tools we have built up ourselves over time so we have our own custom level editors for example. The music is made using Logic Pro.

Are there any features you’ve wanted to try for a game that you have been unable to program in Flash as of yet?

We would love to have our games with Joypad support so I guess that’s the big thing we can’t program in there that we would love too. Also, we would like to have made a lot of the 2 player games 4 player but trying to fit so many people on one keyboard is just not practical! It would be lovely to be able to use two mice for two player based games and that right mouse button could be put to good use if we could use it. I guess your question was more aimed at technical limitations and sure they are there but that has never been a make and break element of making a game. We can get the idea across in the performance we have had available.

That makes complete sense. So, are there any other indie developers that you feel are pushing the boundaries of game design at the moment?

On consoles I’m a huge fan of 2D Boy and I think their World of Goo games was pretty perfect. I also think the Konjak never fails to impress with his catalogue of games. Online games I think constantly push the boundaries of game design though and I think it is here where increasingly most new game ideas come from. I think it is quite showing that most new iOS games or console download games that are held up as being original are usually based on some Flash game that came before it. There would be no Angry Birds without Crush the Castle… in fact the whole Physics based puzzle games genre as well as others like Tower Defense really have their origins in Flash. If I had to point to some developers I admire in the space I would point you towards Farbs‘ Captain Forever games and I think Nekogames contains a lot of great smaller ideas.

Before I let you go there’s one last thing I gotta know. If you could frag any video game villain who would it be and how would you do it?

I think by far the most evil video game villain has to be… the blue shell in Mario Kart and I think the way I would kill it would be to make an option to turn it off [laughs].

Thanks again for speaking with us, Mat, and to all our readers – be sure to check out Nitrome’s 100th game release (tentatively) scheduled for next week!（Source：startfrag）