作者：Eric Caoili

有这么一代游戏玩家被开发商和发行商遗忘了。距他们第一次拿起游戏机时已经过去二三十年了，而现在，他们却再也没有时间或耐心享受像史诗一样冗长的RPG或甚至长达10小时的电影大片，但是，他们仍然对互动的、有故事的体验感兴趣。

至少，游戏和音乐制作公司ovosonico创始人Massimo Guarini（游戏邦注：Massimo Guarini是有14年从业经验的前Grasshopper公司创意总监，代表作有《暗影诅咒》和《火影忍者——一个忍者的崛起》）指出，整整一代的玩家没有得到游戏业的充分重视，因为游戏业把关注放在“努力吸引特定的人群，即15到20岁的玩家。”

他认为：“20年前玩《马里奥》或30年前玩《大金刚》的玩家再也没有和以前一样多的时间了。他们要带小孩，忙工作。他们早出晚归，他们疲惫，他们过着与15到20岁的孩子们完全不同的生活。”

“当你处于那种状态时，当你饭后和家人一起坐在沙发上时，如果给你两种选择，一部你知道会在两个小时内结束并且看过就作罢的电影，或你不知道要花多少时间付出多少努力才能完成的游戏，你要如何选择？基本上是因为太累了，所以，你会选择电影。”

社交和手机游戏开发商给玩家们的另一个选择是，玩那种一次只需短短几分钟的游戏。但Guarini认为，对于想拥有介于两者的体验的人，想要一款不错的叙事型游戏来消磨午后时光的人来说，他们几乎没有选择。

这就是为什么Guarini离开与之合作过《暗影诅咒》的Grasshopper公司，并在米兰建立新工作室后，想要制作一款类似于电影的游戏。他的打算是为那被遗忘的一代人、为没有多少闲暇时间的玩家和偏好不是“太空陆战队这类琐碎题材”的玩家做点什么。

故事型短篇游戏这个缺口，之后被越来越多独立的游戏开发者所填补，如Thatgamecompany出品的大作《旅程》和Plastic的迷幻网络实验《曼陀罗》，但玩家们真的想要这些浓缩版的游戏吗？

适量且易消化的游戏

尽管最近还有更多简短的游戏发布了，但在许多用户心目中，这类游戏仍然有污点，即游戏必须达到一定的时间限额才能挣到钱。如果游戏没有达到RPG或剧情游戏的某个长度要求，不见得玩家和甚至最狂热的媒体就会同情这个严重的缺陷。

Dan Pinchbeck是Thechineseroom创意总监，该公司最近发布了颇受好评的电脑游戏《Dear Esther》。他声称：“有些玩家欣然表态，他们不关心游戏的品质，一小时花多少钱才决定了游戏的价值。这个想法仍然让我感到吃惊。”

“我觉得这是完全不正常的。这就好比，吃饭时只关心能吃到多少食物而不理会食物是否美味。我不认为因份量大而为一堆垃圾花钱是值得的。”

Dear Esther(from plughead.net)

说到游戏长度，在这场质与量的较量中，Pinchbeck并不是唯一心存不满的人。Gary Whitta是电影编剧（游戏邦注：Gary Whitta代表作是《The Book of Eli》）和Telltale的优秀插话游戏《行尸走肉》）的剧情顾问，他也抱怨大多数大型游戏的内容都是无意义的填料。

他还主张制作简短的“易消化的”游戏，不要把时间有限的玩家吓跑。Whitta拿食物作比：“如果你把一大盘子食物摆在我面前，就像让我玩《Skyrim》。我会说‘喔天呐，我怎么吃得完啊？’我想要的只是一盘美味的食物。适量就好。”

“可以这么说，适量的游戏就像吃一盘份量刚好的食物，觉得自己吃得很满足，刚好饱。你不会说，‘啊天啊，只因为我得把盘子弄干净，我就吃了这么多，真恶心。’”

改变期望和零售价

虽然是否存在一批渴望短篇游戏的玩家尚不明确，但玩家越来越欢迎和接受通过主机、电脑和智能手机等进行数字推广的游戏，这可以帮助开发商洗雪短篇游戏多年以来遭受的耻辱。

可下载的游戏往往是小游戏——因为预算紧张、平台对下载文件的大小设限，或各种其他原因——所以，许多玩家对短篇游戏有不同的期待，可能更易接受紧凑的游戏体验。

Guarini认为在这些下载平台上的游戏定价也经历了很长的时间，才让玩家接受了更简短但更便宜的游戏。他评论道：“你其实可以降低价格，因为你的产品没有多大成本，而当你搞零售时，使价格上涨的主要是成本。如果你将一款两个小时的游戏定价为60美元，这显然行不通。”

“你得和形式相似的娱乐方式竞争，比如蓝光碟的电影。要花多少钱，15美元还是20美元？我认为，那就是两小时游戏的价格区间。”（跟《旅程》一个价，有点小贵，而《Dear Esther》的售价是10美元，《行尸走肉》才5美元。）

要求玩家为一个短篇游戏花那么多钱，对开发商的压力更大了。Pinchbeck解释道：“我认为可能对有些人来说，花更少的钱买更短的游戏更冒险。如果你花60美元购买40小时的游戏，很有可能，至少在这40小时当中总有一些东西是不错的。如果你花10美元购买3小时的游戏，3个小时都得是精华才行。”

与此同时，只因游戏更短就降价那么多，这也很危险，因为玩家会认为游戏很贬值，他们在游戏上花的时间只值每小时1美元——结果，你可能会只投入每小时1美元的精力来做游戏。”

Pinchbeck还提道：“像《Dear Esther》这样的游戏需要大量的资金投入，才能提高制作品质。如果我们的游戏只标应用商店的价格，那我们绝对不会给它次世代的视觉效果。这是正常的契约——我们希望玩家支持创新，而我们也回报玩家创新的游戏体验。如果玩家只肯投入一点点，那也别怪开发商按那点预算设计游戏。”

大发行商没有信心

短篇游戏是否存在潜在受众，是否存在合适的系统让玩家玩上这类游戏，为什么没有更多大发行商尝试这种游戏？发行电影风格游戏的EA，和敢用游戏挑战夏季电影大片的动视，都不敢尝试这种游戏吗？

Guarini认为许多游戏制作商只是害怕尝试新事物，不敢制作比一般游戏更精炼的游戏，为玩家提供一种电影般的体验，而剧情又不只是射死坏蛋那么简单的游戏。

“我们确实对自己做的事没什么信心。特别是发行商，他们不相信能够在电子游戏中产生不同的类型。现在，这是一个比较新的行业。与电影的商业性和成熟度相比，我们还什么也不是。”

“所以，我们被迫认命，‘好吧，目前也只能达到这种程度了。我们只能做到这份上了，因为售价就是这样。’”

Pinchbeck指出，大型公司开发新的或还没成功的游戏类型成本较高，还要考虑到工具成本受限制。“如果你要大量投资这类游戏，你必须平衡开发投入和销售价值，而为了做到这点，你必须增加游戏的规模，才能达到那个销售价值。”

短篇游戏只讲节奏

对于那些决定开发电影长度的剧情游戏的开发商来说，他们要考虑的变数很多，很明显的一个就是，生产周期和开发时间会比传统的游戏短很多。

设计这类游戏时，更加强调节奏和密度。必须让玩家感到他们花在游戏上的每分每秒都很有趣很吸引人。再者，当玩家在短篇游戏上花的时间比在60美元40小时的游戏上多一小时，游戏中就不应存在任何可填塞内容的空间。

电影编剧Whitta认为，电影业在很早以前就学到，不要担心长度，只要把握节奏就好。尽管人们看似对两种媒体持有相反的期待，但他们往往推掉3个小时的电影，转而寻找那些要他们花上一周才能完成的游戏。当说到玩家是否能不顾长度地享受电影，节奏和密度起了很大作用。”

walking dead(from gamasutra)

能够成功地把握电影游戏节奏，同时让玩家从头到尾全身心投入，这样的游戏制作人得到的回报是现在大多数AAA游戏总监都得不到的：知道玩家更可能全程体验他们的游戏且不被打断时，游戏制作人会产生满足感，并欣赏他们的努力成果。

自由实验

因为开发预算少，生产周期短，开发商有更多机会实验他们的电影剧情游戏。不仅可以引入原创题材，还可以尝试新的叙述方式和完全不同于他们已经制作了多年的内容。

Guarini等着在年底展示Ovosonico的首款电影游戏。因为短篇电影游戏，他的工作室采用了非传统的团队组织方式——除了制作电影风格的游戏，他还像电影工作室那样，根据特定的项目雇用团队成员，而不是永远保持相同的员工。

“我认为拥有这个创意核心的秘密，主要是总监、制作人等内部人员。特别是，对于那些针对特定目标群体的短篇游戏。这意味着，如果你喜欢，你可以让游戏更个人化一点，更小众一点。”

Guarini表示，说这个实验什么时候结束，为时尚早。但他预言将来会有更多独立团队制作类似于短篇剧情的游戏。（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）

The case for movie-length, narrative video games

by Eric Caoili

There’s a generation of gamers that many developers and publishers have forgotten — those players who first picked up their controllers 20 to 30 years ago, who no longer have the time or patience for today’s epic, protracted RPGs or even 10-hour blockbusters, but who would still be interested in interactive, story-driven experiences.

At least that’s the case argued by Ovosonico founder Massimo Guarini, who believes an entire generation of gamers has gone underserved by an industry that’s stuck “trying to appeal to a specific demographic, the immortal 15 to 20-years-old demographic.”

“[The gamers who were playing] Mario 20 years ago or Donkey Kong 30 years ago, they don’t have the same amount of time anymore,” he tells Gamasutra. “They have kids. They have jobs. They come home in the evening, they’re tired, and they have to manage their lives in a totally different way than a 15 to 20-year-old kid.

“When you are in that situation, and when you sit down on the couch after dinner with your family, if you’re given the choice between a movie and you know that’s going to be over in two hours and that’s it, or a game and you never know when the game is going to be finished and how much effort is going to be required from you, it’s obvious. We’re basically lazy, right, so you’re going to choose the movie.”

Social and mobile game developers offer an alternative with games that can be played for just minutes at a time, but Guarini says there are few options for those who want something in between those disparate experiences, who want a satisfying story-driven game they can consume in an afternoon.

That’s why, after leaving Grasshopper Manufacture where he directed cult shooter Shadows of the Damned, he wants to now create a movie-length game at his new studio in Milan. His hope is to make something for that forgotten generation, for players with little free time and a preference for games about more than “trivial subjects like space marines.”

This void of short narrative-focused titles is one we’ve seen filled by more and more independent developers lately, like Thatgamecompany’s powerful Journey and Plastic’s psychedelic PSN experiment Datura, but are gamers really clamoring for these condensed releases?
Portion control with digestible games

Though more short-format titles have released recently, there’s still a stigma among many consumers that games need to hit a quota of hours to earn their money. And when a release fails to reach that arbitrary length requirement for an RPG or a narrative-based game, it’s not common to see consumers and even the enthusiast press bemoan that perceived weakness.

“It still amazes me that some gamers are happy to explicitly say they don’t care about the quality of a game, it’s only the dollar-per-hour cost that defines value for them,” says Dan Pinchbeck, who was the creative director on Thechineseroom’s critically acclaimed two-hour-long PC title Dear Esther.

“I find that completely extraordinary. It’s like going for a meal and basing whether it’s any good on how much food you get served rather than whether it tastes nice. I don’t see shoveling crap into myself as good value on the basis that there’s a lot of it.”

Trailer for Dear Esther

Pinchbeck isn’t alone in the quantity versus quality debate when it comes to game length — Gary Whitta, movie screenwriter (The Book of Eli) and story consultant on Telltale’s excellent episodic game The Walking Dead, complains that most of the content in mega-sized games is filler.

He also champions the idea of creating short “digestible” experiences that won’t scare away gamers with limited leisure time. “If you put a kind of massive, massive man versus food plate in front of me, that to me like is Skyrim,” says Whitta, continuing the food analogy. “I’m like, ‘Oh my god. How am I going to get all the way through this?’ What I’m looking for is just a nice plate of food. Just the right portion.”

“That’s a nice way to look at it, kind of portion control in gaming — just finding that right amount of food on your plate where you feel like you’ve had just enough, where you feel full, you feel satisfied. You don’t have that experience where you’re like, ‘Oh my god. Just because I needed to clear that plate, I ended up feeling kind of sick with how much I ate.’”
Changing expectations and price points

While it’s unclear yet if a class of gamers waiting for short format titles actually exists, the growing popularity and acceptance by consumers of digital distribution across consoles, PCs, and smartphones could help developers overcome this stigma short games have suffered over the years.

Because downloadable titles tend to be smaller games — due to tighter budgets, a platform’s file size limitation for downloads versus discs, or various other factors — many users have different expectations for those releases, and can be more receptive to compact experiences.

Ovosonico’s Massimo GuariniGuarini thinks the pricing for games on these download platforms is also going a long way in acclimating users to shorter but cheaper games. He comments, “You can actually lower the price since you don’t have the cost of goods, which is basically what brings the price up when you go retail. If you sell a two-hour game for $60, it’s not going to work obviously.”

“You need to be competitive with similar forms of entertainment,” the Ovosonico head adds. “Like movies on Blu-ray, it’s like, what, $15, $20? So, that’s about the price range that it’s worth, I think, for a two-hour game format.” (That’s a bit more expensive than Dear Esther, which sells for $10, or the $5 episodes of Walking Dead, though it’s in line with Journey’s pricing.)

Asking consumers to pay that much for a short game, though, can put more pressure on developers to deliver a game that’s engaging all the way through. “I think maybe for some people it feels like more of a risk to pay less for a shorter game,” notes Pinchbeck. “If you pay $60 for a 40-hour game, it’s likely that at least some of those 40 hours will be good. If you are paying $10 for three hours, all three hours have got to be brilliant.”

At the same time, there’s a danger in discounting games too much just because they’re shorter, devaluing them to the point where consumers believe that their time in a game is only worth $1 an hour — you might end up with games that only put in $1 per hour’s worth of effort.

“Games like Dear Esther require a heavy investment in assets to get the production quality up,” says Pinchbeck. “If we were limited to an App Store price-point for the game, there’s no way we’d have invested in next-gen visuals. It’s the normal contract – we want you to invest in our innovation, and we have to supply an experience that supports that investment. If you only want to invest peanuts, you can’t complain if developers design to that budget.”
Big publishers lacking confidence

If there’s a potential audience for short story-driven games, and if there’s a system in place that makes it possible for those kind of titles to reach consumers, why aren’t more major publishers trying out this format? Where are the movie-style game releases from companies like Electronic Arts and Activision that offer an interactive alternative to blockbuster summer films?

Guarini believes many game makers are just too scared to try anything new, to make games that are more condensed than the titles they typically create, and offer a cinematic experience with a narrative that’s more than just shooting bad guys within that framework.

“We actually don’t have much confidence in what we do,” he says. “Especially publishers, they don’t have much confidence in being able to come up with different subjects in video games. We’re a relatively young industry at this point. We’re nothing like movies at this point in terms of business and in terms of like, I would say, level of maturity in that sense.

“So, there’s a sense of resignation that we’re all constrained with [thinking] basically, ‘Okay, that’s what has worked up to this point. That’s what we’re going to do because that’s what sells.”

Pinchbeck points out that it’s also expensive for bigger companies to develop new and unproven IPs, and there’s the prohibitive cost of tools to consider, too. “If you are going to invest a lot in that, you need to justify that development with a price-point, and to achieve that, you need to increase the scale of the game to justify that price-point.”
Short-format games are all about pacing

For those developers that decide to create story-driven, movie-length games, there are a number of changes with this different approach they must take into consideration, the obvious being that the production cycle and development time will be much shorter compared to working on traditional projects.

There’s also a greater emphasis on pacing and density when designing these titles — players must feel like every minute they spend with these games offers something fun or interesting or engaging for them to experience. Again, there’s little room for filler when players are spending more per hour on a short-format game than they would on a $60 40-hour title.

Screenwriter Whitta says that the film industry learned a long time ago to not worry about length and just focus on the pacing of the experience. Though people seem to have opposite expectations with the two mediums, where they tend to be put off by three-hour films but look for games that can take them weeks to finish, pacing and density make all the difference when it comes to whether they enjoy movies regardless of their length.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead

Game makers that manage to master pacing in a film-style title, keeping players absorbed all the way to the end, can also enjoy a reward most directors behind today’s triple-A releases don’t get: the satisfaction of knowing their audience is more likely to experience their entire production as it was intended (without interruptions) and appreciate what they tried to accomplish with their story.
Freedom to experiment

With their smaller budgets and shortened production cycles, narrative-focused, movie-length games can offer developers more opportunities to experiment with their titles. It’s not only a chance to introduce an original IP, they can try new ways of telling interactive stories, and find excuses to produce content completely different from the usual stuff they’ve likely grown used to making for many, many years.

For Guarini, who’s waiting until later this year to reveal what Ovosonico’s first cinematic game will be, short-format games also allows his studio to try out an unconventional way of structuring his team — along with making film-style games, he’s trying out the movie studio approach of having a small creative team, and hiring around that group for specific projects instead of keeping a complete crew around permanently.

“I think the secret will be having this creative core that is basically the director, the producer, [etcetera] in-house,” he explains. “That’s particularly for these kind of short games that are a little bit more targeted to specific audiences. That means that you can be a little more personal in what you say in the game, a little more niche if you want of course.”

Guarini says it’s still too early to tell how this experiment will play out, but like story-driven, short-format games, it’s a model he predicts we’ll see a lot more of in the future from indie teams.(source:gamasutra)