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Unity联合创始人谈进军平板电脑游戏市场的看法

发布时间:2013-04-20 14:48:59 Tags:,,,,

作者:Christian Nutt

在与别人共同创建了Unity并投入了10年时间致力于著名游戏引擎的创造后,Nicholas Francis选择在今年2月份离开Unity而开始创建自己的游戏工作室。据他透露,这家位于哥本哈根的游戏开发商名为Framebunker,其第一款游戏《Static Sky》是一款面向平板电脑并“混合了《暗黑破坏神》,《X-Com》以及《银翼杀手》”的网络朋克主题游戏—-据该公司描述也就是“网络朋克实时第三人称战术战斗游戏”,将于2014年初正式发行。

Francis以及Framebunker的另外一位创始人Charles Hinshaw(游戏邦注:前Unity创意总监)与Gamasutra阐述了他们为何选择离开之前的公司,他们希望达到何种成就,为什么他们选择致力于创造特殊的游戏等等。

现在是否是创建一家新公司的绝佳时刻?

Nicholas Francis:我想没有什么时候比现在更合适了。老实说,待在Unity时我的不安感一直在上升着。秋天的时候我给自己放了几个月的假,想去寻找原因所在。当然了,我在Unity感受到了许多乐趣。所以我花了一段时间去劝说自己去做真正想做的事,然后又花了更长时间去落实行动。

是什么吸引你去开发游戏?

NF:不管是从故事还是技术来看,游戏都非常有趣。我总是会在这两个元素之间穿梭着—-在创造Unity之前我曾导演过几部短片。而对于我来说,游戏便是一种能够结合这两种元素的绝佳媒体。同样地,游戏也非常吸引人。在与老朋友见面的时候我们可以一起讨论并玩游戏,同时还能分享自己在游戏中所感受到的乐趣。这真的是个非常棒的东西。

Static Sky(from gamasutra)

Static Sky(from gamasutra)

一开始Unity是作为一家游戏公司,但是之后我们转向了中间件的开发。不过对于我来说,“创造游戏”总是比Unity来得重要。

让人惊讶的是,如今市场上的游戏似乎都是基于已有的主题并受到其它游戏的影响。能否跟我说说你对此的看法?

Nicholas:这是我在作为工程师时想要创造的游戏—-有趣的是,在高中时,我和David Helagason(Unity的首席执行官)便是因为想要制作一款网络朋克游戏而走到了一起。当然了,随着时间的发展这一理念也发生了改变并逐渐成熟。

我认为我们可以从两种角度去看待这一情况:我们可以闭上眼睛并只专注于自己想要创造的游戏。我跟Charles说了自己的想法,而我们也仔细思考了游戏理念,并最终注意到一些细节,即”为什么之前从未有人实践过这一理念?“

不过接下来我们必须与发行商和投资者进行协商,我们必须短短的5秒钟内向他们传达这个粗糙的游戏理念。你有可能只是说”这就是XXX结合YYY和一些ZZZ“。但是这并不能完全传达出你想创造的东西,只是能让谈话快速集中。

从发行来看,你的目标似乎是逐步完善现有的风格和机制。这么说是否准确?为什么?

Charles Hinshaw:的确是这样的,或者至少从某种程度上来看是这样的。我们愿意接受任何能够带来灵感的内容,我们也不愿意在第一次发行时便彻底重新创造游戏。但是即便如此我们也不打算将PC机制移植到平板电脑上,或者重新包装现有的游戏。当着眼于像《X-Com》或《Syndicate Wars》等游戏时,我们便会问自己,它们是如何吸引我们的注意,并如何将我们塑造成游戏的玩家—-而在今天,游戏体验将基于不同环境而具有不同的意义。

我们现在所创造的《Static Sky》也在某种程度上塑造着我们自己。我不知道这是否意味着它是对于某些游戏的完善,但不可否认的是它是受到那些游戏的影响。

NF:说实话,其它游戏身上有很多吸引我的元素。我非常欣赏《Syndicate》以及游戏中的一些内容。我花了很多时间去玩《雷射战队》,它也拥有许多很棒的元素。我还投入了4个月的时间去玩《暗黑破坏神》,并感受到游戏中很棒的理念。所以我们的游戏便成为了一款结合过去15年各种游戏理念的“大杂烩”。而这就意味着它受到各种元素的影响—-所以这并不是我们待在象牙塔里所设计的游戏。

你说过想要创造一款值得玩家反复玩20年也不会腻的游戏。而对你来说这代表着怎样的游戏?

NF:这真的很有趣,因为当我们说到重玩价值时,我们所说的是更加直接的重玩价值—-即作为不同类别或选择不同故事再次开始游戏。我们总是很难去明确重玩价值的历史性概念,但是如果要选择一个明确的影响要素的话,我会说是“集中力。”

关于“集中力”,我并不是说那些能够迎合所有人的理念,或者说是为了失去玩家而不敢冒任何风险。这种想法虽然很安全,但同样也非常无趣。我认为我们必须专注于游戏本身—-维持一个具有凝聚力的设计,并支持所有游戏元素。也就是从根本上来说“这是一款我们所创造的游戏,并将坚持着游戏理念走下去。”

当然了一开始拥有优秀的理念很重要,但却不只如此。

是什么元素在阻碍平板电脑领域吸收更多游戏?

NF:3年前,第一台iPad出现了,但却不具有多厉害的功能,所以只能说这是一个全新的平台。并且平板电脑最初也遭遇了中间形式元素的打击。即因为我们可以在此运行手机游戏,所以很多人会选择直接移植手机游戏。并且因为其屏幕类似于小型笔记本电脑,所以开发者们也会选择快速移植现有的PC游戏。可以说开发者们花了许多时间才搞清楚如何利用这一设备。

CH:我认为不只开发者需要熟悉这个新平台,连玩家也需要去适应平板电脑。似乎我们经历了很长时间才摆脱了这些设备上的游戏都是废弃型体验的理念。

你们是否明确了游戏业务模式,如果有的话,能否跟我们详细解释下?

NF:制作游戏,赚钱,舍弃并反复这一过程。

CH:似乎现在去设定期望值还太早了。

在Unity,我们花了很多时间去讨论业务模式,收益等等。所以我们从中吸取了许多经验教训,并得出了相关结论。我们想要选择一些适合游戏的方法,但是我们又不希望游戏变成既定业务模式的执行者。所以到目前为止我们所专注的仍是创造一款优秀的游戏。

Static Sky(from gamasutra)

Static Sky(from gamasutra)

NF:因为市场发展速度不断改变着,所以我们也必须保持足够的灵活。如果你拥有有限的货架空间并想要将游戏大规模地推向商店,那么选择(较高)稳定的定价便最合适。如果你选择了零成本的分配,这便也会改变你的业务模式。我认为关于这一点还存在着巨大的创造性空间。

你们的新工作室中共有多少人,并且这种情况是否会发生改变?

CH:现在只有我们两个人。我们将会继续发展,但也一定会更加谨慎。招聘是我们现在最迫切的任务,因为这将很大且持续影响着我们的公司。

NF:我们所做出的第一个决定便是避免创建一家巨大的工作室——我们想要组建包含一些能够互相挑战且鼓励的人才的小型团队。可以说我们是在寻找共谋人而非员工。

为什么选择平板电脑而不是其它平台?

Nicholas:我认为如果想要创造出一款真正出色的游戏,你就需要按照人们的游戏习惯进行设计。你可以创造一款让人印象深刻的手机游戏或主机游戏,但这却不同于一款平板电脑游戏。

对于我来说,手机的屏幕真的太小了(但是人们却时时刻刻都在使用它)。而主机则像在要求你组建一个巨大的团队,并创造出犹如好莱坞巨作般的游戏。这都不适合我们。

另一方面,平板电脑是一个很棒的混合型平台:它拥有较大的屏幕,并且iPad也拥有Xbox 360一半的GPU能力,真是光想想都让人激动。你可以在此创造一个高质量的世界,但是如果你是待在一个拥有100个人的团队中,你便不可能创造出这样的内容。所以请大胆地尝试更多设计风险,因为你并不需要为了达到收支相抵而卖出上百万份游戏。

对于平板电脑,不管是尺寸还是触屏控制,它还能让我感受到强烈的桌面游戏感。因为我们所创造的是一款基于团队的战术射击游戏,所以它真的非常适合。我们也因此不断地尝试着,并努力探索如何将平板电脑与游戏设计更好地结合在一起。

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

Unity’s co-founder has a brand new studio

By Christian Nutt

After co-founding the company and spending a decade working on the popular game engine, Nicholas Francis left Unity in February to boot up his own game studio. Today, he’s revealed to Gamasutra that this Copenhagen-based developer is called Framebunker, and its first game, Static Sky, is a cyberpunk-themed title that “mixes Diablo, X-Com, and Blade Runner,” on tablets — a “cyberpunk real-time third person tactical combat game” according to the company, due to be released in early 2014.

Gamasutra spoke to Francis and Framebunker’s other co-founder, Charles Hinshaw — who was formerly Unity’s creative director — about why they left the company, what they hope to achieve, and why they’re making the specific game they’ve settled on.

How did you decide now was the right time to start your new company?

Nicholas Francis: There’s no time like the present… Seriously though, for the past year or so I had been feeling a growing restlessness at Unity. I went away for a couple of months in the late autumn trying to nail down what it was. I couldn’t — but towards the end of my sabbatical I sat down and spent some time using Unity. And I was having so much fun. So it took awhile to work up the courage to go “fuck it, let’s do it,” and then some more time to actually execute.

What attracted you to actually developing games?

NF: Games are a very interesting cross between storytelling and technology. I’ve always been jumping back and forth between the two — before Unity I directed short films. To me, games are the medium where the two can meet. Also, games can be super engrossing. I meet old friends and we talk about the games we played together and share that experience again. It’s a really powerful thing.

Unity started out as a games company, but then we turned into this middleware powerhouse over the years. So for me, the “let’s make games” actually precedes Unity.

Surprisingly, the game seems to be grounded in established themes and influenced by other titles on the market. Or maybe that’s not surprising! Tell me about why.

Nicholas: This is a game I’ve wanted to make since I was a teenager — actually, a funny anecdote is that when David Helagason (Unity’s CEO) and I met in high school it was basically sitting down to make a cyberpunk game that really brought us together. Of course, the idea has changed and matured over the years.

To me, there are two ways of looking at this: I can close my eyes and pretty much see the game I want us to make. I talk with Charles about it, and we bounce ideas back and forth and get excited about some tiny detail where we realize, “Why hasn’t anyone done this before?”

But the next day, we need to speak with publishers and investors, and we have to communicate the rough idea of the game in five seconds flat. That makes you go “well, it’s kinda XXX meets YYY with a dose of ZZZ”. It doesn’t really capture what you’re making, but it does get the conversation very focused very quickly.

From the release, incremental refinement of existing styles and mechanics seems to be your goal. Is that a fair statement? Why or why not?

Charles Hinshaw: That is probably fair, at least to a degree. We’re being very open about what has inspired us and we aren’t setting out to reinvent gaming with our first release. That said, we also aren’t setting out to port PC mechanics to tablets or repackage existing games. When looking at games like X-Com or Syndicate Wars, we’re asking ourselves what about them stuck with us and shaped us as a gamers — and what that experience would mean today in a very different context.

I guess that Static Sky, as something we’re producing, is also a product of the games that shaped us. I don’t know if that means it is an incremental refinement of those games, but it is certainly informed by them.

NF: Really, there’s a lot of the stuff I loved in other games. I adored Syndicate, and there’s some of that in it. I spent ages with Laser Squad, and it has elements of that. Like everyone else I know, I lost four months of my life to Diablo, and there are some ideas from that as well. So it does become a kind of a potpourri of various ideas that have been accumulating over the past 15 years. I guess that means that there’s a lot of other stuff influencing it — it’s not something that we’ve designed in an ivory tower.

You talk about the desire to make a game that will be worth replaying in 20 years. What defines that for you?

NF: It is interesting because when we talk about replayability, we’re usually talking about a more immediate replayability — playing again as a different class or choosing different story options. That longer-term more historic notion of replayability is a lot harder to nail down, but if I had to pick any one factor that contributes to it, I guess I would say “focus.”

By “focus,” I mean not trying to make something that will please everybody or being so scared of losing a player along the way that you’re afraid to take risks or really make the game hard at points. This sort of thinking almost always results in a virtual Disneyland that’s very safe and utterly, utterly dull. Probably more importantly, I mean focusing on the game itself — maintaining the sense that there’s a cohesive design underpinning every aspect of the game. Basically, somebody has to say “this is the game we’re making” and then stick to their guns.

Of course, the idea has to be good in the first place, but that’s another story…

What’s been holding back the tablet space from GETTING more games like that?

NF: The first iPad launched 3 years ago, and didn’t really have any power worth speaking of, so it’s a very new platform. Also, tablets initially suffered for being a kind of an in-between form factor. You can run phone games on them, so it’s very tempting to just do a quick and dirty port of a phone game. The screen is kinda like a small laptop, so it’s also tempting to do a quick port of an existing PC game. It has taken developers awhile to really understand how to make the most of the device.

CH: And it isn’t just developers trying to understand a new platform — I think gamers have also been coming to terms with where tablets fit into their lives. It has taken a while to fully shake off the notion that games on these devices are just throwaway experiences.

Have you decided on the game’s business model, and if so, can you explain it and why?

NF: Make Game, Make Money, Rinse & Repeat.

CH: It probably is too early to set expectations much beyond that.

At Unity, we spent lots of time discussing business models, revenue, etc. So there are a ton of lessons we’ve learned about that, and we have quite a few ideas. We’re interested in eventually settling on something that feels right for the game, but we don’t want to get caught up in this trend where a game is simply a means for executing a prescribed business model. So far, we’ve mainly been focusing on actually making an awesome game.

NF: Also, at the speed the market is changing, we want to keep nimble. Having a (high) fixed price made sense when you had limited shelf space and you had to drive your game into stores in big trucks. These days you have effectively zero-cost distribution and that changes the business models you can do. I think there’s tons of room for creativity in this regard as well.

How many people are in your new studio, and will that change?

CH: It’s the two of us. We will have to address growth, but it is something that we’re approaching very carefully. Hiring is something that we really want to get right since it has such a huge and lasting impact on a company.

NF: One of the first decisions that we made was that we weren’t going to push towards building a massive studio — we want to focus on bringing together a small team of super-talented people who can challenge and inspire each other. We’re looking for co-conspirators rather than employees.

Why aim at tablets and not other platforms?

Nicholas: I think that for a game to truly be awesome, you need to design it for how people will be playing it. You can make a memorable phone or a memorable console game, but that will probably be quite different from a tablet game.

To me, phones have really small screens (but you have them with you all the time). Consoles are a joke — they kind of require you to have so large production teams that you have to make the gaming equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster. And that’s not working out that well for those guys.

Tablets, on the other hand, are this nice hybrid: You have a decently large screen, and an iPad has about half the GPU power of an Xbox 360 — which is just completely crazy once you think about it. So you can do high-quality worlds, but there’s not this expectation that you’re gonna have a 100-person team cranking out content, so that enables you to take more design risks because you don’t have to sell 3 million copies just to break even.

One thing I like about tablets is that at their size and with touch controls, they almost have a boardgamey feel to them. Since we’re designing a team-based tactical shooter, that really, really fits it — so we’re playing around with that and exploring how to make the tablet and game design really work together. (source:gamasutra)


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