作者：Paul Quinones

Insomniac Games是以提供各种各样主机游戏体验著称的工作室，其中由它开发的游戏包括《Spyro》、《Ratchet & Clank》和《Resistance》。当Insomniac宣布将涉足社交游戏领域时，许多人并不确定他们如何将自己的题材引入Facebook这类平台。不久，大家都清楚，Insomniac对待Facebook游戏开发的态度如同在主机平台上一样认真。

最近，《Outernauts》的助理设计师Rowan Belden-Clifford在采访中透露了Insomniac Games的游戏开发过程，以及如何制作出独具特色的社交游戏。

Outernauts(from dualshockers.com)

这是Insomniac在开发多款主机游戏后，首次进军Facebook游戏领域，你们在设计Facebook游戏时面临了哪些挑战？能否谈谈社交游戏区别于主机游戏的一些优势？

我先谈谈游戏设计中面临的挑战。从技术上说，制作主机游戏与Facebook游戏是两种截然不同的方式。我们团队必须从头开始，学习新的代码库，构造全新工具，这让我们既担心又兴奋！就设计而言，Facebook的社交结合性也是我们需要解决的一大挑战，因为我们必须找出适合我们游戏的社交机制，以及不会削减游戏进程的常用特性。我十分满意我们使用的那些社交机制（地牢内的合作、全球PvP、治愈好友的野兽），但目前我们还处在起步阶段，我们仍会听到玩家对某种社交机制的抱怨声。

制作《Outernauts》十分适合我们团队大多数成员，这归结于小型的团队规模以及我们很快就适应了从事2D游戏开发的舒适状态！这也加快了迭代时间，从而让《Outernauts》这款Insomniac最大型的游戏之一，制作成为有趣且好玩的公开测试版本只需花制作主机项目的一半时间！

制作这类游戏对开发者来说，肯定是一次完全不同的经历。在游戏开发过程中，你们遇到过哪些有趣事件？你从这次经历中获得什么，并打算将其运用在主机游戏上？

作为游戏设计师，我认为制作《Outernauts》最有趣的地方在于创造了一个充满活力与乐趣的科幻宇宙。我们制作《Outernauts》的重点在于设置真实的故事，以及玩家关心的真实角色。Insomniac之前的所有游戏都包含这种品质，而且我们还发现可以把创造场景和编写故事情节引入并未深入涉及这些领域的Facebook平台。我不清楚《Outernauts》将走哪种风格，但是有了制作深度经济体系的类似经历，我们将有趣的社交机制融合在传统游戏内，或者不断优化游戏教程，使教程更加清晰明了，我想主机游戏可以从这种经历中受益匪浅。

《Outernauts》非常类似怪兽宠物游戏——你是否在制作此游戏时从这种类型的游戏中吸取灵感？同时，你是否担心人们会对《Outernauts》和《口袋妖怪》进行比较？

我们团队中的许多成员都是《最终幻想》这类老式RPG游戏和《口袋妖怪》这类怪兽宠物游戏的忠实粉丝，所以我们想在设计《Outernauts》时，采用这些题材，并进行扩展（由于没有更好的术语可以形容此种题材）！说真的，我想将怪兽抓捕题材同全新机制和元素融合，开发出全新风格；我们想在题材上引入一些元素，比如全世界玩家的对抗、异步合作区域、充满先进比赛的竞技场、摆脱随机战斗以及独特且有趣的背景和故事。只要人们正面对比《口袋妖怪》和《Outernauts》，我们更高兴看到自己的游戏能同《口袋妖怪》相提并论。

Outernauts (from dualshockers)

什么原因促使你们进军社交领域？你们在体现社交因素影响游戏设计方面上下了多少功夫？

我们Insomniac总是努力制作出能够感染用户的游戏，所以当我们看到有机会在全新平台上接触新用户群时，我们就向Facebook进军。

由于针对社交方面，所以我们首先注重制作一款有趣的游戏。游戏还未引入所有元素之前，我们构造了一个功能作战系统。在考虑所有社交元素之前，我们建立了任务系统和故事情节。据说，登上Facebook平台意味着我们有机会同朋友合作体验《Outernauts》，这是我们在主机游戏上从未有过的体验。我们可以拜访好友，帮助他们脱离困境，或者可以同世界上的任何玩家作战，这些都是我们一开始就想做的事情。

通常，社交游戏更多关注游戏的度量和数据。在设计游戏时，你们是否在游戏获利或达到一定用户数量上存在压力？这种想法如何影响你们的游戏设计呢？

我们的做法是：“制作有趣的游戏，用户就会体验”。然而，我们不得不以某种方式获取收益来支持《Outernauts》的内容开发，所以我们必须保持微交易模式与制作有趣游戏之间的良好平衡。我十分满意我们所达到的那种平衡感，但时至今日，我们仍旧不断地调节这种平衡。比如，我们上周刚刚发而的Timed Quests功能就是统计数据对《Outernauts》产生积极影响的典型，这是由于我们想要增加重复体验游戏的玩家数量。Timed Quests是项十分出色的功能，因为它们挑战玩家在一定时间内执行一项大型的任务，如果玩家能够完成这项任务，他们就可以获得针对家园的一项独特奖励。当然，这种方式会吸引我投入更多时间体验游戏，而且它为游戏增添了有趣的内容！

在游戏故事方面，《Outernauts》的风格类似于《Ratchet & Clank》。每项任务的角色创造与编写过程是怎样的？你最先关注角色创造，还是整体设计？

首先，你一针见血地指出这一问题，《Outernauts》的团队领导实际上就是Insomniac的高级创意总监Brian Hastings，他也是《Ratchet & Clank》的创作者。我和Brian均认为要创造一个像充满许多传奇历史故事的科幻宇宙，同时保持Insomniac一贯可爱、有趣的吸引力。《Outernauts》的故事以创造者和破坏者（游戏邦注：Sludge Co，Pirates，Lunakins和其它Outernauts）为中心，所以我们决定把游戏中的角色分成两派，分别为帮助者和阻碍者，然后，我们基于这些派系制作出代表它们独具特色的角色（Axel，Round Roger 或者Bones，Lily 或者Fiora，Major Stache或者 Electra）。这些熟悉的面孔有利于玩家透过它们看清某个派系及它的动机。

任务编写过程实际上是一项繁重的工作，我、Brian和设计师Daniel Bang和Jack Burton经历了一月份繁忙的两周，我们坐下来，根据松散的故事梗概不停地编写游戏中的每个任务链。在此之前，我们已经创造了执行任务的派系，以及分派任务的角色，所以我们剩下的事情就是编写每个任务分配者的故事，并将他们的故事分解成个人任务。一张巨大的电子表格，外加几个月的努力，以及过后的改善，我们制作出一款包含完整故事情节和任务系统的游戏，它同Ratchet游戏一样，具有异想天开及有趣的本质。

要想出游戏中所有那些不同的外星怪兽形象，并且保持它们的独特性和新颖性，这存在多大的难度？

十分困难。Brian Hastings想出了许多外星怪兽的创意，美工Tony Mora和David Coffman也进行设想并完成创作。当你考虑到前后视图、懒散行走的动画、以及所有动画技能，那你就可以制作出一只完整的怪兽，制作一只新怪兽是一项浩大的工程。为了保持它们的独特性，我们发现自己最喜欢的怪兽外表融合了多种真实世界的动物或者植物形象。这提醒我们可以进行多种结合，所以，不久你就会看到一些带有疯狂外表的一些全新怪兽的出现。

在创作这款游戏的故事时，你需要考虑或者面对哪些挑战？编写社交游戏故事存在多大难度？

我们最该考虑的实际问题是，如果玩家感觉游戏有点烦闷或者让人困惑，那么他们就没有兴趣继续体验游戏。而由于你已在主机游戏上投入资金，所以至少你会尽可能继续坚持游戏创作，获取回报。而在Facebook免费游戏中，玩家可以任意点击游戏，我们必须特别小心在特定时间里向玩家呈现的文本数量，因此我们过虑了大量不合适的信息。同时，我们必须向玩家呈现关键的故事信息，保持他们的注意力，为此我们制作了过场动画系统呈现在故事的关键时刻。

另外，我们知道要创作出迷人且神奇的故事，同时要带有趣味性。由于大多数玩家只能够消化小故事，所以我们想用这些小故事激发他们的问题和执意，并希望他们能够开怀大笑。

Outernauts(from dualshockers)

你是否考虑针对iOS、Android、PS Vita或者Windows Phone这些平台制作一款单独应用？

我想，制作《Outernauts》的手机版本显然是个不错的想法，但是目前我们只关注Facebook平台。这是我们公司首次进军社交媒介平台，我们想在这一平台上顺利发展。

社交游戏需要进行不断维护，随着时间的发展不断地发生变化。随着时间的推移，你是否打算在扩展游戏规模，增添更多的怪兽、星球和任务吗？你会就此机会增添内容吗？

我认为，我们已更新了游戏。每周我们都会推出《Outernauts》的全新内容——可能包括新怪兽、新性能、新的故事内容、新任务等，除非玩家停止游戏，否则会有层出不穷的新内容。我们有许多关于《Outernauts》的创意，我们不可能在进行公开Beta测试前将这些内容塞满这款游戏，所以别担心，《Outernauts》的宇宙会不断扩大。（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: A Look Behind the Development of Outernauts

by Paul Quinones

Insomniac Games is a studio that is well known for providing a variety of console game experiences from Spyro to Ratchet & Clank to Resistance. When announced that Insomniac would be working on social games, many were not sure how they would be able to bring their style over to platforms such as Facebook. After spending time with the game though, it becomes clear that Insomniac takes the development of games on Facebook just as seriously as it does for home consoles.

I recently had a chance to pick the brain of Rowan Belden-Clifford an Associate Designer on Outernauts. Rowan provides a look behind the development process at Insomniac Games and how it varies for games on social networks.

Paul Q: This is Insomniac’s first time working on a Facebook game after working on so many console games, what were some of the challenges faced when designing a game for Facebook? Can you talk about some of the benefits that comes from not working on a console game?

Rowan: Let’s start with challenges. Technically, making a game for console and making a game on Facebook are almost completely different. Our team had to learn new codebases and build new tools from the ground up, which has been both frustrating and exhilarating! Design-wise, the social interconnectivity of Facebook was also a big challenge to tackle, because we had to figure out what sort of social mechanics would work for the game we wanted to make, and what commonly-used features just weren’t going to cut it. I’m really happy with many of the social mechanics we used  (co-op dungeons, worldwide PvP, healing a friend’s beast), but it’s still a struggle we are having to this day, and players’ frustrations about certain social mechanics are certainly being heard.

Making Outernauts has been perfect for a lot of us on the team, because the small team size and ease of working on a 2D game means every team member can make changes quickly and autonomously! This makes the iteration time much faster and allowed us to get Outernauts, one of the biggest games Insomniac has ever made, to a fun and playable Open Beta in around half the time of a console project!

P: A game like this must have been a different experience for everyone working on it. What were some of the enjoyable aspects of developing this game? What would you take from this experience and translate into a console game?

R: Being a designer, the most enjoyable aspect of making Outernauts for me was creating a vibrant and fun sci-fi universe. One of our focuses with Outernauts was to make a game on Facebook that had real story, with real characters that players care about. All of Insomniac’s previous games have had this quality, and we saw the opportunity to bring that love of world creation and storytelling to a platform that didn’t have much to speak of in those areas. I can’t speak as to what form Outernauts will take with regard to projects from Insomniac, but having experiences like creating an in-depth economy system, incorporating fun social mechanics into a traditional-style game, or tuning our tutorial over and over again to make it the clearest it could be are experiences that I think many console games could learn from.

P: The game is very similar to other monster catching games – did you use those type of games as inspiration for Outernauts? Also, do you worry about the comparisons between Outernauts and Pokemon?

R: Many of us on the team are huge fans of both old-school RPGs like Final Fantasy and of monster-catching games like Pokemon, so with Outernauts we wanted to take those genres and, for lack of a better term, evolve them! (Sorry, I had to.) Seriously though, we wanted to see the monster-catching genre incorporate new mechanics and elements that the genre hadn’t done yet: things like worldwide PvP, asynchronous co-op areas, arenas with progressive tournaments, getting rid of random battles, and a unique and interesting setting and story were elements we wanted to bring to the genre. And as long as the comparisons between Pokemon and Outernauts stay positive, we’re more than happy to be mentioned in the same sentence.

P: What interested you in creating a game for the social space? How much did trying to incorporate social aspects affect the design of the game?

R: At Insomniac, we’re always striving to make games that affect our audience, so when we saw the opportunity to reach a whole new audience on a whole new platform, we took it.

As far as the social aspects go, we were absolutely focused on making a fun game first. Before almost anything else was in the game, we had a functional battle system. Before any social elements were considered, we had a quests system and a story written. That being said, being on Facebook meant we had an opportunity to do things in Outernauts with friends that we hadn’t in any console game before it. Being able to visit friends and help them out, or being able to duel anyone in the world were things that we wanted to do from the start.

P: Social games usually focus much on metrics and numbers. When creating the game was there any pressure in generating profits for the game or how you would reach a certain user count? How do considerations like this affect game design?

R: Again, our modus operandi was, “Make a fun game, and people will play.” However, we do have to make money somehow in order to keep making content for Outernauts, so we really had to strike a fine balance between incorporating micro-transactions and creating a fun game. I’m pretty happy with the balance we struck, but we are constantly tuning that balance, even today. One example of a way that statistics have positively affected Outernauts are the Timed Quests that we just released last week: these were a result of us wanting to increase the amount of players that came back for many days in a row. Timed Quests are a pretty cool feature because they challenge players to do a big task in a certain period of time, and if they do, they get a unique reward for their Homeworld. Certainly makes me want to play more often and it added fun content to the game!

P: In terms of writing, the game gives off that Ratchet & Clank feel. What goes into the process of writing and creating characters for each mission? Did you focus on creating characters first, or the world?

R: Well first off, you hit the nail on the head because our lead for Outernauts is actually Insomniac’s Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings, the creator of Ratchet & Clank.  For Brian and I, it was really about creating a sci-fi universe that felt like it had a lot of mysterious history, while keeping that likeable, funny charm that Insomniac is so well known for. The story of Outernauts revolves around creators and destructors, so we came up with factions for each side that would help you or hinder you (Sludge Co, Pirates, Lunakins, other Outernauts) and then from those factions, we created a few unique characters that would represent who those faction were at heart (Axel, Round Roger or Bones, Lily or Fiora, Major Stache or Electra). This gives the player familiar faces that are their windows into a faction and its motivations.

The process of writing quests was essentially a hectic and packed two-week period in January where I, Brian, and designers Daniel Bang and Jack Burton sat down and just wrote every quest chain in the game, based on a loose story overview. Before that point, we had created the factions you were doing quests for and the characters that would give you the quests, so all that was left was to write the individual stories for each of these quest givers, and break each of those stories down into individual quests. One massive excel sheet and many months of implementing and refining later, we had a game with a full story and quest system that captures that whimsical and funny nature that the Ratchet games do.

P: How difficult is it to come up with ideas for all the different beasts in the game and keep them unique and original?

R: Pretty difficult. Brian Hastings comes up with the ideas for a lot of them, with artists Tony Mora and David Coffman concepting and bringing them to fruition. When you factor in front and back views, idle and walking animations, and all of the ability animations that go into making one full beast, there’s a huge amount of work that goes into making a set of two or three for a new beast and its evolutions. As far as keeping them unique, we’ve found that our favorite-looking beasts have been beasts that are amalgams of multiple real-world animals or plants. That gives us a lot of combinations to work from, so you’ll be seeing some crazy looking new beasts coming out soon.

P: What were some of the challenges faced or taken into consideration when working on the story for this game, and how difficult was it to make a story for a social game?

R: One of the biggest considerations was the fact that most players have no invested interest in continuing to play your game if they are even slightly annoyed or confused. With a console game, you’ve already paid money for it, so you’re at least going to stick with it as much as possible to get your money’s worth. But in a free game on Facebook where players have the whole internet just a click away, we had to be incredibly careful with how much text we presented to the player at any given moment, which meant many brutal editing passes. We also had to present that crucial story info to players in a way that would keep their attention, which led to us creating the cut scene system you see at work at vital story moments.

Furthermore, we knew we had to make a story that was both intriguing and mysterious, but was also funny. Of the little story that most players would absorb, we wanted it to cause them to ask questions, wonder, and hopefully to laugh.

P: Would you consider making the game available as a stand-alone app on various platforms such as iOS, Android, PS Vita, or Windows Phone?

R: Making a mobile version of Outernauts would certainly be awesome, but right now we’re just focused on Facebook. It’s our first time as a company on a social media platform, and we want to get it right.

P: Social games require constant maintenance to evolve over time. As time progresses do you plan on expanding the game with more beasts, planets, and missions? Will you use it as a chance to add content that you may have not been able to add initially?

R: We are already expanding the game, as I type. We’re pushing out new content for Outernauts every week – that could include new beasts, new features, new story content, new quests, etc –  pretty much until people stop playing the game. We have so many ideas for this game that we couldn’t have possibly crammed in before we hit Open Beta, so fear not, the Outernauts universe will be ever-expanding.

P: Will we ever get a Captain Qwark Outernaut Outfit?

R: Oh man, I wish! As amazing as it would be to cavort around in Qwark’s spandex, Sony actually owns the Ratchet & Clack intellectual property, not Insomniac, meaning you probably won’t see one anytime soon. Sign those petitions!

There you have it folks, for more on Outernauts you can check out the page for the game at  Insomniac’s site or check out the game on Facebook. Also don’t forget to start writing in those letters to Sony so we can get our Qwark spandex on.(source:dualshocker)