Anna Marsh已在电子游戏行业工作13年之久，她曾为索尼、世嘉、Edios和Crystal Dynamics等公司效力。她是《古墓丽影》的前创意设计师，曾参与《Hitman》和《Alien》等项目。她就是个传奇人物！

Marsh在这一行业有过许多惊人的成果，目前她是Lady Shotgun Games的项目经理兼游戏设计师。本次访谈中，Marsh将分享移动平台上的游戏开发、独立游戏的重要性及她对AAA游戏的看法。

分享下目前你们项目的状况。

我们正在制作一款名为《Buddha Finger》的iOS游戏。这是Lady Shotgun的首个项目，我们正在进行最后的beta测试，我们正在经历“有90%的精力用于游戏最后10%的内容”这种过程。

Buddha-Finger(from layzgamer)

《Buddha Finger》是一款快速有趣的动作游戏——它将格斗游戏与节奏动作结合起来。游戏一开始，擅长古代武术Buddha Finger的大师Shifu，告知你的同胞兄弟Logan（国际刑警组织特工），正在追捕影子敌人“The Man”，他需要你的支援。Shifu会在敌人展开快速全面的攻击时，及时向玩家传授他的绝密武功！

我想制作出任何人都会玩的游戏，所以基本上如果你能从1数到9，你就会玩这款游戏。这款游戏趣味无穷，我们改造了计分系统，所以更熟练的玩家能获取更高分数，我们多才多节的故事写手及音效设计师Katharine Neil还将特别有趣的叙事情节融合在计分系统内。

我们相信，一个强大的项目应该是所有游戏设置、叙事情节、图像、音频的“合体”，这些元素与核心“种子”紧密相连，而在我们的游戏中这个“种子”就相当于80年代的功夫动作电影。

为什么你们会就移动设备开发游戏呢？

对于我们这种小型的独立开发者来说，移动平台的门槛较低——我们不需昂贵的开发硬件，不需历经长久的批准流程，我们只需要继续制作游戏。另一方面，这也给玩家带来了方便！他们不需浪费时间——有了智能手机和平板电脑，无论你到哪里，如果你有几分钟的时间，你只要找到一款新游戏，不用一英镑的价格你就可以下载这款游戏，30秒后你就可以体验游戏了！对于那些从小就需要到商店购买游戏的用户而言，我发现这种方式非常神奇，而且非常了不起！

我必须承认，我现在已经完全习惯于在触屏界面上玩游戏了。如果你拿捏得准确，那么游戏就会如此自然且直观——我想如果自己再重新为控制器制作游戏，那就会十分繁琐！

你认为，移动/社交游戏同硬核游戏之间有何区别？许多人认为AAA和硬核游戏是游戏行业的根基，你认为移动和社交游戏会取代它们的地位吗？能否详细阐述你的观点。

实话讲，我估计“硬核”这词已无多大意义。大多数所谓的“硬核”游戏实际上只是“新瓶装旧酒”，所以它们实际上的玩法非常简单。谁能说每天在Facebook上耗费数小时玩社交游戏的用户，不如那些每个新款《使命召唤》一问世，才重新拾起主机的玩家专注？当前任何平台和题材都扩散着一些有趣的元素，它们之间的界限变得极其模糊。

在我看来，凡我喜欢玩的游戏就是优秀的游戏。如果它注重游戏设计及同玩家的对话机制，那这款游戏就堪称完美，谁会在意它的格式或风格呢。有些移动和社交游戏确实是太强调盈利性，但我不认为这是抹黑所有这类游戏的理由——难道这种盈利方式会比不断推出大量续作（这也是硬核游戏的做法）更糟糕吗？

对于某些认为硬核游戏才是“真正的游戏”的玩家和开发者而言，他们那些自命不凡的言论在我看来只是无稽之谈。AAA只能代表产品的价值——只是因为它看起来比较精致，并非意味着它是一款更加出色，或“更有价值的”游戏。我认为这有点酸葡萄心理——几十年来，主机游戏行业为了模仿人们喜爱的好莱坞电影效果，他们投入了大量的预算和精力制作大型游戏体验，而休闲/社交游戏公司无需提供类似好莱坞电影般的高质量游戏，纯粹是因为有许多人想玩有趣的游戏，所以它们就能够取得这般成就。

当然，我并不排斥所谓的“硬核”游戏，因为我仍然崇尚体验一些由杰出工作室开发的优质游戏——然而，同时我发现，我那些侄女、侄子和堂弟堂妹们更多的是在玩《Minecraft》及移动/社交游戏，而不是传统的主机或PC游戏。我怀疑，硬核游戏的未来不会太光明。

2012年无疑是独立游戏年。你对独立游戏/工作室及其在行业中的重要性有什么看法？

对我们而言，独立性为我们工作提供了灵活性，而不是标准的办公时间制，我们真心相信可以自由地从事项目工作，我想就是这两方面的原因造就了独立工作室的活力与灵活。你不必“墨守成规”，或者将盈利定为项目首位，因为你无需每月的大笔开销。如果你喜爱你做的事情，并且打算自给自足，那么其它任何事情都是额外价值！我想，发自内心地喜爱自己从事的工作，这会传染给游戏记者，他们会强有力地支持独立游戏。

我想，目前独立工作室是行业中的关键。老式PC和主机市场似乎注重修改一些已确定可行的旧题材游戏，而不是创新游戏，大型工作室难以转型并赶上行为的变化速度。独立开发者为新用户和新平台带来了游戏，保持它们的趣味性！

Sarah van Rompaey，Gabriella Pavan和你都要照顾孩子，身为父母及照顾孩子如何影响你的工作，它又为你们带来了什么？

实际上，我们的孩子是创立Lady Shotgun灵感的一部分——我们需要灵活的工作，那样我们才能同孩子相处，但是我们很难找到这样的工作，所以我们决定自己成立工作室。这确实是个挑战，另一方面，我们却学到了组织性和效率性——我们必须利用每一时刻。在着手开始前，我们会进行周密的计划。

我们也清楚传统开发者低效率的情况，有时必须坚持整个团队都在一起，为他们指明一个粗略的玩法导向，希望他们在游戏正式发售前可以制作出一些有趣的内容。那时我得老实地坐在会议室内，听发行高管驳斥游戏设计中的问题。所以我们不会再沿袭这种方式，我们会认真考虑自己想要获得什么目标，在做出行动前先在纸上进行详细规划。

这并非意味着我们从不做出任何改变，目前我们对游戏做出许多微小调整，让游戏更加精良，但是我们的前期制作尽可能缩小了那些变化及变化带来的影响。

我想，母亲这一身份让我成为了一位更加出色的设计师，因为它开拓了我的眼界，让我发现大多数潜在用户的生活方式。当你成为“玩家”，你很容易忽略只有少数用户有空闲时间可以全神贯注地在单个游戏上耗上数小时这个事实。从事传统开发者数十年来，我认为“易用性”等同于让游戏更加简单，但现在我认为这种看法基本上是错误的。易用性意味着你可以在游戏中短时体验、沉浸然后离开，不用下载大量指南，你可以清楚地看到自己进步的成果。

如果你可以掌握这个要领，即使游戏玩法中的挑战超级有难度，游戏也仍然不会丧失易用性。我喜欢学习所有新颖游戏设计之道的挑战！（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）

Anna Marsh talks mobile dev, indie and AAA games

The lovely Anna Marsh has 13 years of experience in the videogames industry and has a most impressive gameography. This lady has worked for Sony, Creative Assembly/Sega and Eidos as well as Crystal Dynamics. She is the former Creative Designer of the Tomb Raider franchise and has worked on brands such as Hitman and Alien. Needless to say she is legendary! I had the tremendous honour of being able to do an interview with her.

Marsh has done a whole bunch of other incredible work in the industry and is currently the Project Manager/Game Designer at Lady Shotgun Games. In this interview I asked Marsh about developing for the mobile platform, the importance of indie games and her views on AAA games.

Enjoy the read and give this amazing woman some love!

Tell me about your current project.

We’re working on an iOS game called Buddha Finger.  It’s our first project as Lady Shotgun and we’re just in the final Beta to Gold stage, so we’re appreciating that whole “90% of the effort goes on the last 10% of the game” thing, ha ha

It’s a fast fun action game – a mix between beat ‘em up and rhythm action. At the start of the game Shifu, a master of ancient martial art technique Buddha Finger, reveals your separated-at-birth twin brother Logan, an Interpol agent tracking down shadowy nemesis “The Man”, needs saving. Shifu teaches the player his secret technique just in time as the enemies start attacking thick and fast!

I wanted to make something that anyone could play, so basically if you can count up to 9 you can play this game. Its lots of fun, we’ve put depth into the scoring system so more skilled players will get better scores and fused it together with an excellently funny narrative written by our multi-talented writer and audio designer Katharine Neil.

One thing we all believe in is that a strong project is one that’s “joined up” – all the gameplay, narrative, graphics and audio link to a central core “seed” which in our case is cheesy 1980’s kung fu action movies!

Why develop for mobile devices?

The barriers to entry are very low for a small indie dev like ourselves – we don’t need expensive dev hardware, we don’t need to go through a long approval process, we can just get cracking on making the game.  And on the flip side it’s easy for players!  No messing about – with your Smartphone or tablet wherever you are, if you have a couple of minutes to kill you can just go browse for a new game, download it for less than a quid and 30 seconds later you’re playing a game!  As someone who grew up going to buy games in shops on physical media, I find this pretty magical and awesome!

I have to say, I’m a total convert to the touch screen as an interface for controlling a game too.  If you nail that bit just right, it feels so natural and intuitive – I reckon going back to designing for a controller would seem pretty clunky!

What is your take on mobile and social gaming versus hardcore gaming? Many people view AAA and hardcore games as the foundation of the gaming industry, do you think that mobile and social gaming will replace it? Elaborate on your answer.

I reckon the term “Hardcore” has become a bit meaningless to be honest. Most so called “hardcore” games use all kinds of tweaks “under the bonnet” so they’re actually very easy to play.  And who’s to say that someone who plays hours of social games on Facebook every day isn’t just as dedicated a gamer as someone who only dusts off their console each time a new Call of Duty comes out?  There’s such a proliferation of interesting stuff on all platforms and genres these days the lines have become very blurry- I mean, where would you put Hotline Miami?

To me a great game is one that I enjoy playing. If it’s got focused game design and excellent communication with the player, perfect – who cares what format or genre it is.  Some mobile and social games have been fairly ruthless about how they extract money from their players but I don’t think that’s a reason to tar them all with the same brush – besides, is that monetisation really worse than churning out sequel after sequel as some “hardcore” franchises might be accused of doing?

There can be this snobbery amongst certain gamers and developers who consider core games as “real gaming” but I personally think that’s a load of crap.  Triple A really just refers to production values – just because it looks glossy doesn’t mean it’s a better or more “worthy” game.  I think there’s an element of sour grapes there – for years the console industry has been ploughing huge budgets and effort into making games into big experiences aping Hollywood films in the belief that that’s what players want, and suddenly all these casual and social game companies become hugely successful with games that couldn’t give two hoots about being like Hollywood films because apparently there are whole swathes of people that simply like playing fun games without all that gubbins – who knew?

Which is certainly not to say I’m writing off so-called “hardcore” games, because there are some brilliant studios doing excellent titles that I adore playing – but at the same time I see my young teenage nieces, nephews and cousins playing more Minecraft and mobile/social games than traditional console or PC games. I do wonder if the core games as we know them have had their time in the sun.

2012 has definitely been the year of the indie. What is your take on indie games/studios and the importance thereof in the industry today?

For ourselves, being independent gives us freedom to work flexibly, rather than standard office hours, and the freedom to work on projects we genuinely believe in, and I think these two aspects are what makes indie studios so vibrant and agile.  You don’t have to be “risk adverse” or put monetisation first in your projects if you don’t want to, because you don’t have big overheads to cover each month. If you’re loving what you’re doing and managing to feed yourself, any else is a bonus! And I think that natural passion for working on stuff you believe in shines through to game journalists who are brilliant in being extremely supportive of Indies.

I think indie studios are essential to the industry right now.  The old school PC and console market seem to be concentrating on polishing a few tried and tested old genres rather than innovating new ways to play, and big studios can struggle to change their ways and keep up with the pace of change. Indiesare bringing games to new audiences and new platforms and keeping it interesting!

You, Sarah van Rompaey and Gabriella Pavan all work around childcare, how does this: being a parent and working around childcare influence your work and what does it add to you as developers?

In fact, our children are part of the inspiration for staring Lady Shotgun – we wanted flexible jobs that would let us work around part time childcare and that’s so difficult to find we decided to set up ourselves as indie devs. It’s certainly a challenge, but the flip side is that it makes us very organised and efficient – we have to make every moment we get count. We plan out quite precisely what we’re going to do before we go ahead and do it.

We’ve all seen how inefficient traditional development can be, sometimes the attitude is to stick a team of people together, give them a vague gameplay direction and hope they work out something fun by the time the game ships.

I’ve honestly sat in a meeting where the publishing exec dismissed the game design of a project as “just putting a bit of shooting in”.  So we don’t tackle things that way, we have a good think about what we’re trying to achieve and work out a lot on paper before we dive in.

That’s not to say we never make changes, we’re doing that right now in making lots of little tweaks to the game to add polish, but our pre-production sure minimises the changes we need to make and the impact of those changes.

I think being a parent has also made me a better designer because it’s opened my eyes to the lifestyle of the majority of my potential audience. When you’ve been a “gamer” all your life you can lose sight of the fact that there’s only minority of people with the leisure time to sit engrossed in a single game for hours on end. For years in traditional dev I considered the term “accessible” to be synonymous with making a game easier but I now think that approach is fundamentally wrong.  Accessible is a game which you can play in short bursts, dip in and out of without having a great load of stuff to learn first, and where you can see very clearly the fruits of your progression.

Even a game that’s bonkers nuts hard in its game play challenges can be accessible if you make it that way.  I’m loving the challenge of learning all these new ways to design games! (source:lazygamer)