作为《EVE Online》资深制作人，CCP成员Jon Lander主要负责这款问世9年的MMO游戏的发展方向。Lander表示，“我负责设定前进方向，决定制作内容及制作方式。基本来说，《EVE》的所有东西都归结到我身上。”

Screenshot from gamasutra.com

从某种意义上来说，这是坦诚自己的罪行，因为Lander自2009年来就投身于《EVE》中。CCP去年遭遇困境，因游戏和公司发展方向管理不当而大幅裁员。

事实上，由于其中某些决策，《EVE》粉丝在游戏中发生暴动；有些玩家最终取消订阅游戏，以示抗议。游戏广泛引入虚拟商品，玩家开始对游戏的Incarna扩展内容心生不满。Incarna随后退出游戏内容，以满足既有社区的游戏调整要求。

事实上，他表示，公司在2011年收获的最大经验是，狂妄自大于事无补。“我们需要避免将所获成功视作理所当然的事情，这是导致我们去年遭遇困境的主要原因。我们随心所欲地做事；完全不思考具体举措。认为所有举措都具有可行性。我认为公司所有成员都学到若干宝贵经验。现在我们不会将所有事情都视作理所当然。”

在此情况中，改变你对玩家所做事情的心态非常重要。Lander有个巧妙的诠释方式：他表示，若制作《EVE》就其根本来说涉及“玩家所制作的故事”，那么这就“需要我充当虚拟世界的袖手旁观守卫。”

eve online 01 from gamasutra.com

Lander表示，虽然多数MMO游戏都有团队专门制作手工内容供玩家进行消费，但《EVE》只有4位内容开发者。

Lander表示，“但与此同时，我们有许多游戏设计师。我们有许多程序员。我们有很多负责制作工具的工程师，这样玩家就能够制作内容，内容就会根植于彼此的互动中。”

Lander补充表示，制作《EVE》的关键是，“这不是游戏，《EVE》是个社交引擎。”

“《EVE》的突出之处在于，同他人共同体验是最佳选择。这不是世界上最优秀的单人游戏，但你可以在此进行众多操作。”

听取构成社交引擎的用户基础，及熟悉空间各细节元素的设计师的意见，这比至上而下推进发展目标更加重要。

Lander表示，“我们所采取的举措是，将众多决策权利和责任转移至权威人士身上，他们是经验丰富的实战开发人员。”

他表示，“我们有若干杰出游戏设计师，他们非常清楚如何制作出迎合用户口味的适当游戏类型。”

Inferno内容

Lander如今在《EVE》所坚持的理念是，采用自下而上的模式。例如，他最近在游戏中的创新，“Inferno扩展内容”旨在推动大规模战争——会推动游戏玩家和资源的移动，即便是对那些没有参加PvP战斗的用户而言。

这些高级内容如何整合进游戏中？“我的回答是：‘我们有一个主题，有若干商业目标。’这些被分配至项目相关人员中；这是个庞大项目。”

“他们提出众多反映链条的构思，然后项目管理人员和我坐下来商讨，‘我们怎么看待这是最适合公司的构思的说法？这些都是来自经验丰富人士的观点。’”

Lander表示，虽然有些玩家批评Inferno内容，但“其参与率日益提高，因为这并非着眼于给予玩家贯穿游戏的功能；而是给予他们创建自身故事的工具。”

“尚没有人能够看穿人类心理，制作所有内容，所以我们在此已经非常幸运。”

eve online 02 from gamasutra.com

制作《EVE》的自下而上理念的关键也体现在，用户管理、CSM或星际议会，这些和开发团队保持紧密联系。

没有其他MMO游戏能够带给用户这类完整的声音。若CCP没有这些用户是否也能够存活下去？Lander表示，“我觉得我们可以做到，但会更困难；我觉得放弃他们是愚蠢之举。”

他表示，“这是个庞大世界，他们赋予我们外部视角，我们可以开放及诚实地看待他们。反馈信息非常重要。你无法通过其他地方获得。”

在Lander看来，多数开发者没有采取此方案的原因是，他们在游戏上线后就抱有“这不再是我们的游戏”这种想法。

Lander表示，但通过汇聚用户要求、CSM建议和基础设计团队的构思及期望，着眼于创建稳固的社交机制，而非内容，所获回馈将非常突出。

“我觉得这就是为什么《EVE》出现稳步发展。因为越多人参与其中，内容就变得越受欢迎，越有趣。这对我们来说是个绝佳模式。”

他表示，“我们制作促使用户相互欣赏、厌恶、轻视及支持的社交引擎，扮演乐善好施人士。用户熟悉彼此，有相关经历陈述。他们同此建立情感依附，这促使他们持续返回。”

当用户基础是你的游戏内容时，这就是真正的自下而上命题。（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 secret to EVE Online’s success: It’s all bottom-up

As the senior producer of EVE Online, CCP’s Jon Lander is ultimately in charge of the direction of the nine year old MMO. “I’m the guy who sets where we’re going, what we’re doing, and how we’re going about doing it,” Lander tells Gamasutra. “Ultimately, whatever happens in EVE comes down to me.”

That’s an admission of guilt, in a sense, as Lander has been working on EVE since 2009. CCP ran into problems last year when it laid off staff in the wake of poor management calls about the direction of both the game and the company.

In fact, thanks to some of these decisions, EVE fans went so far as to riot in-game; some ultimately unsubscribed from the title in protest. The introduction of virtual goods into the game world bombed, and dissatisfaction with its Incarna expansion rose. Incarna was later sidelined in favor of changes to the game requested by the existing community.

“We kind of fixated on a direction which we needed to take a step back from,” says Lander. “We didn’t really get the validation that we wanted to.”

In fact, he says, the big lesson of 2011 for the company was that hubris doesn’t pay. “We’ve just got to make sure that we don’t take our success for granted, which I think is where we ended up as we were going through last year. We could do anything; it didn’t matter what it was. It would work. I think everyone in the company has learned some really, really valuable lessons about that. Now, it’s very much that we don’t take anything for granted.”

So it’s probably important to change your mindset about what you do for your players, in that case. Lander has a clever way of putting it: If creating EVE is at its core, “about player-created stories,” as he says, then working on it is “about us being relatively hands-off janitors of the virtual world.”

Notes Lander, while most MMOs have teams churning out handcrafted content for players to consume — increasingly more quickly, these days — EVE only has four content developers.

“But at the same time, we’ve got a lot of game designers,” says Lander. “We’ve got a lot of programmers. We’ve got a lot of engineers who are building tools so that players can make the content, and that content is firmly rooted in interactions with each other,” says Lander.

The key to working on EVE is that it “isn’t a game,” adds Lander. “EVE is a social engine.”

“If you look at what makes EVE great, it’s that it’s brilliant to play with other people. It’s not the best solo-player game in the world, but you can do so much more with it.”

Listening to the player base that forms that social engine, and to the designers who are familiar with the different nooks and the crannies of the world itself, is more important than driving direction from the top.

“What we’ve done is we’ve devolved an awful lot of the power of the decision-making and the accountability for what we do in the games to the people who know best, which are the developers on the ground who’ve been doing this for a long time,” says Lander.

“We’ve got some very talented game designers who understand how to make the right kind of game for our players to enjoy,” he says.

Towering Inferno

Lander’s philosophy toward EVE these days is bottom-up in general. For example, his latest initiative in the game, the Inferno expansion, was to start a massive war — one that will drive the movement of players and resources in the game, even those who don’t engage in PvP combat.

How does this high concept boil down to the game? “I really sort of say: ‘We’ve got a theme. We’ve got some business goals.’ Those get broken down amongst everybody throughout the project; it’s a big project.”

“They come back with a whole raft of ideas which feed back up the chain, and then myself and the project management group sit down and go, ‘Okay. How do we think this is best going to fit into the company? These are the ideas from the people who really know.’”

And even though some players have criticized aspects of Inferno, says Lander, “participation goes up, because it’s not about giving players a feature to play through; it’s about giving them tools to do their own stories.”

“No one’s yet been able to run through the human psyche and do all of that content, so we’re very lucky in that.”

Key to the bottom-up philosophy of developing EVE has also been its player government, the CSM, or Council of Stellar Management, which is in constant contact with the development team.

No other MMO has such an integrated voice for its player base. Could CCP live without them? “I think we could,” says Lander, “but I think it would make it harder; and I think we would be foolish to not have them.”

“It’s such a big world there,” he says. “They give us that external viewpoint in an environment where they’re NDA’d, and we can be very open and honest with them. … The feedback is just incredibly important. You don’t really get it from anywhere else.”

The reason Lander thinks more developers don’t take this approach is because “it’s not our game anymore.”

But when bringing together the requests of players, the recommendations of the CSM, and the thoughts and desires of the ground-level design team, and focus on building a robust social system rather than content, the rewards are great, says Lander.

“I think this is why you see a steady growth on EVE. Because the more people who are doing it, the more popular and actually the more fun it becomes. It’s proven a good model for us.”

“We build a social engine that people actually love, hate, despise each other, love each other, backstab each other, and play the good Samaritan. People know each other, and there is this history. They feel a big emotional attachment to that, and that keeps them coming,” he says.

When the player base is your game’s content, then it’s truly a bottom-up proposition.（Source：gamasutra）