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设计师需把握主导权 不应唯玩家是从

发布时间:2012-08-21 14:45:26 Tags:,,

作者:Brian Howe

这是一封来自未来的邮件,警示我们当大量玩家开始主导游戏开发时,开发者将面临哪些情况。

2012年的游戏玩家,你们好。我是9384号游戏设计师,而我之前也拥有一个妈妈,她叫我Bobby。我是在“尊贵的玩家大人”Melvin Fauntleroy的一个潮湿阴暗的营房中秘密地写下这封信件。今年是2020年,已经出现了能够跨越时间的电子邮件,所以你们才能接收到这样的信件。你们那个时代的原始垃圾邮件过滤器已经不能用了。我希望这份信件能在谷歌添加阻止未来邮件按钮之前到达你们那。因为身在一个由用户主导游戏设计师命运的文明时代,我迫切希望告诉你们这一情况。

High Lord Gamer(from edge-online)

High Lord Gamer(from edge-online)

但是为什么会出现这种情况呢?等等,我好像听到脚步声了,我想我得抓紧时间了。这一切的到来让我们措手不及。因为网络的盛行,来自世界各地的玩家可以基于相同的原因而聚集在一起,做一些无用但却要求满满的事。而当我们(游戏开发者)发现这些玩家对于我们的作品,甚至是那些我们已经遗忘的游戏非常感兴趣时,我们真的由衷地被感动了。如果这种在线活动能够取得成功,也许能够改变一款原本不知名的游戏的命运——那时的我们并未感到任何危机。相反的是,有哪家公司会拒绝重复销售同一样产品的请求?

但是也是在这时候开始出现了势力平衡的问题,天秤在逐渐朝着另一边倒去。引爆点是在2012年,当时大量玩家要求修改《质量效应》三部曲中的结局。似乎玩家只是在做着一些细小而无用的反抗行为,如与一些慈善团体合作,发布一些讽刺性言论,向徒有其表的联邦贸易委员会投诉等。但是似乎这些行动都奏效了。

不管怎样,我们只能对BioWare报以同情。如果是早前来自温和的游戏粉丝的请求,设计师都会微笑地答应或予以考虑,但是现在这种请求却变成了威胁恐吓,甚至享有最高特权的玩家还会在《质量效应3》发行当天因为它销售可下载游戏内容而大声斥责。从中我们也能够理解BioWare为何会没落了。即使如此我们当时也仍觉得是设计师还是主导着大局。但现在看来,我们的这一想法却过于天真了!

突然间,好像我们的所有赌注都输光了。似乎那些我们原本以为再自然不过的事情都来了个大转弯。这些玩家们将所有小势力汇聚在一起而形成一股强大的新势力,并用请求和抗议将我们重重包围,直至我们最终修改了新结局和功能。此时已经到了没有人愿意购买未经游戏玩家委员会审查过的游戏这种境地。

因为不知所谓的6千多份电子签名,《银河战士》的最终结果被修改为玩家脱下头盔而展露出Seamus Aaron这一身份,这个不戴拳击手套的爱尔兰拳击手将在未来陷入困境中。《塞尔达传说》的结局并且呈现传统的“谢幕”画面反而突出了一个色情场景,而这都是因为一个变态团体在一个小时内筹集到足够多的钱,并“烘培”和发送了300个极具侮辱性的“饼干”。到2014年,人们所残留的最后一丝理智情感也都消失殆尽了,他们甚至在《愤怒的小鸟4》发行前提出各种苛刻要求,导致这款游戏大大超出预算并演变成与《战争机器》近乎相同的产品。

到2016年,当这些玩家越加坚信自己对于开发者的控制权,以及在经历了对《质量效应3》的可下载内容的斥责后,他们甚至要求我们能够在每次游戏发行时为硬盘驱动器的所有内容创建一个程序包。以此确保我们在销售游戏时不可能隐藏任何内容。更夸张的是《光晕7》磁盘数达到了38张,其中还包含了设计师的税收文件,私密照片以及他们自己所从事的独立项目等内容(是的,直到2020年我们也仍然在使用磁盘——云服务还是不够靠谱)。当然了,当一个17岁的玩家带着一个笔记板站在你身后,并强迫性地对你提出各种要求时,你根本不可能好好完成独立项目,你只能重新使用Flopper引擎(游戏邦注:这是作者在此杜撰的一个游戏引擎)去创造原型。

到了2018年我们便不再需要税务表格了,因为我们已经不再赚取任何收入。大多数设计师都被移送到各种请求大师,或者说是“尊贵的玩家大人”(他们自封的)的营房中,在一种类似血汗工厂的环境下不断地为《Harvest Moon》编写炼炮机制。到2020年,这些玩家几乎完全征服了所有设计师。现在我好像再次感受到“玩家大人”Melvin Fauntleroy的呼吸声,听到他迅速翻动77页长的签名诉求的声音。束缚在腿和手上的镣铐让我的工作变得更加辛苦,但是我却不敢怠慢,因为玩家会强烈谴责我们的行为。我没有时间作总结了,我必须赶紧按压发送按钮——但是我真心恳求你们,过去的玩家和设计师们,一定要想办法避免这种情况的发生!(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

Videogame designers: ignore entitled fans

Brian Howe

A missive arrives from the future, warning us of what development will look like when mobs of gamers get their way.

Greetings, gamers of 2012. My name is Game Designer #9384, although I once had a mother and she called me Bobby. I write to you in secret from the dank, lightless barracks of the High Lord Gamer Melvin Fauntleroy. The year is 2020. Trans-temporal email has just been invented, so you can expect a lot more messages like this, mostly about cybernetic erectile augmentation and desperate princes in the Sovereign Republic Of Texas. Your primitive spam filters will be useless. I pray this message reaches you before Google adds the Block Future Email button. For a civilisation of game designers subjugated by an elite cadre of consumer overlords, it may be our only hope.

But how could this have come to pass? Wait, I hear the dreaded rustle of a clipboard approaching – quickly then. It all began so innocently. With the Internet, gamers around the world had the ability to band together around niche causes, making futile yet heartfelt demands for this or that. We game creators found it touching that they cared so much about our work, even half-arsed old work we could barely remember doing. If these online campaigns were occasionally successful, perhaps resulting in the translation of an obscure Japanese title, we saw no danger in it. To the contrary, what company would deny a petition to sell a product twice?

But this is where the balance of power began, imperceptibly, to shift. The tipping point – so obvious in hindsight – arrived in the year 2012, when a large group of very vocal gamers demanded a revised ending for space opera trilogy Mass Effect. The fan protest seemed like a total boondoggle, sweeping up an unwillingly partnered charity, hundreds of ironic cupcakes, and a specious Federal Trade Commission complaint in its tide of insanity. But somehow it worked.

Despite everything, it’s hard not to sympathise with BioWare. The tender fanboy petitions of yore – the sorts of things game designers could smilingly condescend to and teasingly bat around – had given way to furious organised hectoring, and the most entitled fans were already pissed at the company for selling DLC on Mass Effect 3’s release date. You can understand why BioWare caved, though it wound up being the crack that triggered the collapse. Even then we thought were still in control. Oh, hubris!

Suddenly, it was like all bets were off. Being able to hoard an English translation of Mother for years – which we had all taken for granted – seemed like a fabulous luxury in hindsight. Drunk with their new power, small militias of players rallied around their particular axes-to-grind and set about petitioning and protesting us into oblivion, until we had remade virtually the entire classic canon with new endings and features. It got to the point where no one would buy a game that hadn’t been vetted by a vigilante gamer committee.

Now at the end of Metroid you take off your helmet to reveal Seamus Aaron, an Irish bare-knuckle boxer trapped in the future, thanks to some misogynists with 6,000 digital signatures of dubious provenance. Instead of just saying ‘Thank you,’ the end of The Legend Of Zelda now features a sex scene that would make a Game Of Thrones fan blush, all because a pervy splinter group raised enough money in an hour to bake and send 300 insulting scones. Any vestige of sanity had gone out of the window by 2014, when Angry Birds 4 was petitioned so brutally leading up to its release that it went millions over budget and came out identical to Gears Of War.

Increasingly assured of their stranglehold on developers, and apparently still smarting over the Mass Effect 3 day one DLC flap, players were demanding that we package the entire contents of our hard drives with every game release by 2016. This would ensure that we weren’t holding back anything to which their purchase entitled them. Halo 7 ran to a massive 38 discs and included its designers’ tax documents, intimate photos, and indie projects they were working on. (Yes, we’re still using discs in 2020 – suck it, cloud.) Of course, you couldn’t get much work done on an indie project in those days before a 17-year-old with a clipboard came up behind you and menacingly cleared his throat, and you quickly went back to work on the prototype Flopper engine, which was dedicated exclusively to breast-jiggle physics.

By 2018, we had no need for tax spreadsheets, because we were no longer earning income. Most designers had by then been moved into the barracks of various petition masters – or High Lord Gamers as they dubbed themselves – and spent their days furiously coding chainguns into Harvest Moon under sweatshop-like conditions. By 2020, our subjugation was complete. And now I feel the breath of the High Lord Gamer Melvin Fauntleroy on my neck once again, hear the ruffle of 77 pages of signatures demanding that I file down his cuticles. The leg and wrist irons make it heavy work, but the fans have spoken. No time for graceful conclusions, I must press Send – but I plead of you, gamers and designers of the past, turn back from this path!(source:EDGE)


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