作者：Ben Maxwell

在Evolve会议前的Edge Presents: Changing The Game演讲上，电子游戏设计师，也是Edge的专栏作家Tadhg Kelly号召开发者们更广泛的媒体世界中重新找回自己的立场。通常情况下，开发者门总是受制于像文学和电视等主流媒体，Kelly警告道，如果开发者也期望着能够进入媒体结构中，那么游戏便永远不可能独自成熟起来。

Tadhg Kelly（source：edge-online）

Kelly勾勒了一张媒体地图，一开始便是能够给予有效灵感的内容，如小说，然后便是电视，以及用于激发用户想象力的搭配玩具和其它产品。而游戏一般都被放在最后的利用阶段，但是Kelly相信游戏应归属于小说和其它具有生产力的媒体。

他解释道：“许多电影都被转变成了游戏。就像读过《哈利波特》或看过该电影的用户一般都会想玩游戏版的《哈利波特》。但是将游戏转变成电影就很可怕了。像电影版的《英雄本色》，《古墓丽影》和《超级马里奥》便都很糟糕。”

Kelly表示，之所以不能基于游戏制作出优秀的电影是因为，大多数成功的游戏都是围绕着事件和体验建立起来，而不是故事。在游戏过程中我们所经历的一切也有可能变成故事，但是如果开发者想创造一款符合任何格式的游戏，这便意味着他们未能真正理解游戏中的基本元素。

Kelly继续说道：“其实游戏是非常棒的设计例子。它们并不存在于其它框架中，我们不需要融入一个并不合适的标准中。”

Kelly之所以会发表这些讲话是因为他发现每年最具影响力的前100位媒体人物中很少出现电子游戏开发者的名字，尽管在他看来，游戏才是“现代文化中最具影响力的媒体形式。”

他说道，现在的游戏已经超越了传统媒体结构，并担心电子游戏电视节目的缺失越来越不如多人游戏体验来得重要了，YouTube，eSports和手机链接创造了一种可替代的内容传播文化。开发者们基于互动体验创造了一种全新的语言，并将其它市场远远甩在后面。

Kelly继续说道：“Medialand只能销售‘文件’，如MP3或MP4等，并只能用于记录和修改对象。但是因为对象数目不可计数，所以它们最终只会遭遇贬值，并通过阻止行业全球化来缓解这一结果。”

比起创造文件，开发者更希望创造出能够生成自身价值并带来长远利益的产品，做得好的话，便能够吸引大量忠实用户——Kelly将高付费用户称为“鲸鱼”用户。而在早前基于文件的经济中，开发者如果希望游戏能够继续存活下去的话便需要具有销售经验的专家，所以游戏才能成为今天的文化主流。

他说道：“我们应该逐渐摆脱一种理念，即游戏必须成为某一结构中的组成部分。这一结构不一定了解游戏，它只会要求我们去遵循种种条款。如此游戏便不再是游戏了。其实从很多方面看来，游戏才是现代文化中的主流。也许在不久后，最具影响力的前100位媒体人物的评选将不再具有任何意义。”

（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）

Tadhg Kelly on why games don’t need traditional media: “Games are beautiful as they are”

By Ben Maxwell

Speaking today at Edge Presents: Changing The Game ahead of the Evolve conference inLondon, videogame designer and Edge columnist Tadhg Kelly called on developers to reassert their position in the wider media world. Too often, developers are beholden to the standards of mainstream media such as literature and TV but, he warned, this desire to become part of the media institution means that games will never mature on their own terms.

Kelly set out a media map, beginning with what is widely accepted as legitimate inspiration, such as novels, moving through to television then what he termed exploitation – the tie-in toys and products that attempt to capture the imagination of audiences. Games are commonly perceived as part of the final exploitation stage, but, Kelly believes, actually belong alongside novels and other generative media.

“Lots of movies are turned into games,” he explained. “And fair enough – who doesn’t want to play Harry Potter, having read the books or seen the films? But game to film conversions are usually terrible. The Max Payne movie was terrible, the Tomb Raider movies were terrible, Super Mario Bros: terrible. This leads to some bad conclusions.”

The reason that games rarely make good films, Kelly suggests, is that the most successful games are built around events and experiences, not the narrative. The things that take place while you play may well become narratives – even just exchanged water-cooler moments – but trying to make a game conform to any other format is a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes them work.

“Games are beautiful as they are – in many cases they’re wonderful examples of design,” Kelly continued. “Games don’t have to exist within another framework, we don’t have to be part of a scale that doesn’t really sit well.”

Kelly’s talk built on his recent Edge column in which he set out his frustration at the absence of videogame developers from almost every level in the annual Media Power 100 list, despite games being, in his opinion, “among the most influential forms of modern culture.”

Games have now moved beyond the institution of traditional media, he said, and worrying about the lack of a good videogame TV show is increasingly irrelevant as massively multiplayer experiences, YouTube, eSports and mobile connectivity create an alternative culture of content distribution. Developers, through the creation of interactive experiences, have created a whole new language that has left other markets behind.

“Medialand can only sell ‘files’ – MP3s, MP4s etc, which are just recordings and fixed objects,” he said. “As there are so many of these objects, they become devalued as a result and they try to prevent globalisation of their industries to prevent that.”

Developers, rather than creating files, create products that generate their own value and can be built upon over time, and if done right, attract extremely loyal customers – Kelly described the high-paying users as “whales”. The file-based economy of old, he argued, will need the experience-selling expertise of the videogame industry in order to survive in the future, and for that reason, games are already the cultural mainstream.

“We need to unhook slowly from the idea that we need to be part of the institution,” he said. “The institution doesn’t really understand games, and expects us to engage on their terms… Games are no longer the red-headed step child. In many ways, we’re more in touch, and more mainstream in modern culture. The Power 100 might soon become an obiturary.”(source:edge-online)