作者：Giancarlo Valdes

独立开发是件让人提心吊胆的事。你没有大型公司那样的庞大的财政支持。有时候，你甚至不知道游戏何时才能推出，即使有人购买了游戏，你也不可能立刻就得到回报。尽管具有种种的不确定性，但却仍有许多人选择作为全职独立开发者，所以我决定为此找出具体原因。（请点击此处阅读本文下篇）

回到五月份，许多当地开发者在旧金山举办的Indie Press Day上炫耀着自己开发中的游戏。那是一个下着雨的夜晚，Indie Press Day共汇聚了16个独立开发者。那里没有闪光灯或其它让人分心的事物，有的只是游戏和友善的开发者。尽管会上呈现的每一款游戏都具有其自身的魅力和独创性，但是真正让我印象深刻的还是这些开发者在展开独立开发业务前大多都致力于知名的大型公司。

我所交谈的所有开发者都有其抛弃全职工作的理由，而贯穿着他们的一道共同主线则是，他们都是自愿离开的，尽管现在的游戏产业中每周都会出现大量的裁员。我也询问了一些有关他们即将发行的游戏的问题，转向独立开发所遇到的任何挑战，以及他们对于独立游戏的蓬勃发展及其背后贡献者的看法。

为什么他离开了

在长达10年的游戏产业职业生涯中，Ethan Levy曾为Pandemic Studios和艺电等公司工作过，并且他也扮演过各种角色：实习生，首席测试者，程序员，游戏设计师，制作人以及咨询者。而对于Quarter Spiral的最直接影响还是来自Levy在BioWare Soial的工作经历，在那里他曾致力于浏览器游戏《龙腾世纪传奇》，《龙腾世纪旅程》以及《龙腾世纪传奇：外传01》的创造。

Levy说道：“BioWare Social所吸引我的便是其创业家精神。它就像是艺电中的一家初创企业。在此我拥有许多发展空间，能够尝试许多新内容。我也因此遇到了Quarter Spiral的其中一个联合创始人，Alex。”

在团队的主要成员（包括Levy，Kohlhofer以及另一个关键成员）相继离开BioWare而共同创造自己的初创企业后，Levy也开始对这份全职工作失去兴趣。

他说道：“在6至7个月时间里，我觉得自己越来越不像创业家。更像是待在别人所想象中的艺电那样的公司工作。我觉得这种情况需要做出改变。我想要重新找回最初的BioWare Social所具有的自由，愉快且具有挑战的氛围，而不是无尽地开会，社交和管理。我想要再次感受到游戏创造的乐趣。”

Kohlhofer和Levy是差不多时间离开BioWare。很快地，他们又拉拢了Thorben Schrdde作为后端开发人员而组建了Quarter Spiral。

Quarter Spiral的第一款游戏《Enhanced Wars》

《Enhanced Wars》受到了任天堂的《Advanced Wars》（一系列专注于回合制策略战斗的掌上游戏）很大的影响。但是比起基于《Advanced Wars》开发一款单人玩家游戏，Levy表示他们希望传达的是“一款基于回合制的多人策略游戏，即克服了《Advanced Wars》类游戏所具有的设计缺点。”

Levy说道：“许多回合制策略游戏和实时策略游戏都是关于从敌人身上获取小小的资源优势，然后慢慢地制服对方。这对于处于短时间建造阶段的玩家来说非常有趣。但很快地，一名玩家将获得绝对性的优势。然后便会出现一个较长但却很无聊的收尾阶段。”

为了避免最后一部分，Quarter Spiral计划为《Enhanced Wars》的玩家添加许多“情绪波动”，从而创造出“快速且具有侵略性的”战斗。但是他们却还未真正完成游戏的创造——呈现在Indie Press Day上的版本还只有1个月大。在今年秋天，该公司计划在Kickstarter为《Enhanced Wars》开展集资活动。而其当前的目标平台分别是PC，Mac和Linux。

《Indie Press Day》上的《Enhanced Wars》还缺少声音或动画。但是其基本回合制机制已经呈现出来了。

不可预知的挑战

Levy说道：“我不知道是否能够赚到足够的钱去支付房租（笑）。在艺电，即使你的项目被取消了，你也仍能够获得工资。但是在这里，最现实的可能性是我们的公司会遭遇破产，然后我们便不得不再次寻找全职工作。处理这种不确定性真的是件很难的事。”

“再跟你们分享下我的生活吧：我刚刚订婚。我和未婚妻正计划着搬到北卡罗来州，但是她想要出去工作，但是我们却做不了长期的计划，因为我不清楚3个月或6个月后，我是否会开始寻找自己的下一份工作。不管Quarter Spiral是否能够实现自营，我们都有可能搬到北卡罗来州。”

独立开发者的增加

Levy表示：“我认为在下一个主机时代里，独立开发者将扮演着越来越重要的角色。而市场动态便是主要原因。当《古墓丽影》获得巨大的投资，而上百万销量却只能带来少量利益时，这些大型发行商的业务模式便面临着一种情况，即基于巨大的团队和大型游戏，他们很难谋取利益。如此便导致许多公司的停业以及裁员趋势的加剧。不管是关闭还是裁员都不能推动着人们像过去那样加入更多全新工作室中。反而会刺激着他们开始创建自己的工作室。”

“我认为对于那些选择离开游戏开发公司，或者被迫离开的人来说，走向独立开发便是最大的吸引力。就像《The Banner Saga》的开发者便通过华丽的图像，优秀的团队成员以及充满远见的决策中赚取了巨大的利益。现在他们也在开发着自己喜欢的游戏，而不是坐在会议室开着漫长又无聊的会议，或者只是传递着上头分配的开发任务的相关文件。”

为什么他离开了

Pete Angstadt在Maxis工作室（艺电旗下）的游戏开发中遭受了很大的打击。在那里，他是作为《孢子》的扩展包的程序员——在这款游戏中玩家将创造并培育自己的外星生命。尽管该项目已经完成了，但是却未真正问世。

Angstadt说道：“我认为自己的时间被浪费掉了。作为一个想要创造游戏的人，你也会希望别人能够玩你的游戏。如果你花费了1年半时间却创造出了没人能够看到的内容，那还有什么乐趣可言呢。”

在负责的项目被删除后，Angstadt已经不确定自己是否还想要创造游戏了。所以他来到了Havok（游戏邦注：专门创造游戏开发商们广泛使用的物理引擎）。

他说道：“在开发项目的同时，我也会利用业余时间制作游戏，并带着这些游戏参加各种比赛。其中便包括2011年动视所举办的第一届独立游戏竞赛。但是之后我便忘了这回事了。直到几个月后，他们给我写信说道，‘嘿，你获得了一等奖，我们将奖励你17.5万美元。并且不带任何附加条件。’所以那时我就想，‘好吧，是时候放弃现在的工作而尝试自己创造游戏了。’”

意识到自己需要一些图像上的帮助，他便邀请早前Maxis中的同事Theresa Duringer一起创建了Turtle Sandbox。

（Turtle Sandbox的第一款游戏《Cannon Brawl》）

当Angstadt最初提交游戏原型去参加竞赛时，《Cannon Brawl》仍只是一款面向PC的2D行动策略游戏。Angstadt将其描述为“炮兵类型的下一场改革”，即效仿着着像《百战天虫》和《坦克宝贝》那样的游戏。当你创造了地雷，大炮和盾牌去保护并支持自己的基地（即城堡）同时还对敌人发动攻击时，便会爆发实时战斗。

甚至在我玩的早期版本中也具有许多乐趣。竞赛是让人兴奋的，特别是当你的武器能够破坏地图的某些部分，留给你一些宝贵的空间去创建更多宝塔和建筑。当《Cannon Brawl》在今年夏天正式面向PC发行时将同时出现单人玩家比赛和多人玩家选择。

不可预知的挑战

Angstadt说道：“一方面，当你在一家大公司上班并且有人说‘做这些事！’时，你会想‘这真是一个糟糕的理念，为什么我要这么做？’但是因为这是你的工作，你别无选择。最后，当你所创造的内容未取得预期效果时，你便会想办法去维护自己的尊严，如说‘我知道这是一个糟糕的决策。如果我能够做决定的话便不会这么做。’”

“如今我作为独立开发者最担心的一点便是我需要对一切内容负责。如果我的决策非常糟糕，那么我就只能责怪自己。”

独立开发者的增加

Angstadt说道：“我认为如今的游戏玩家越来越厌倦那些标准的AAA级游戏。他们不再愿意为其它体育模拟游戏或射击模拟游戏支付60美元的费用。也许他们更希望花同样的钱去尝试5款全新且有趣的游戏。同时，许多AAA级游戏公司虽然拥有大量的人才，但却不能有效利用他们。最终便会导致这些人才逐渐离去而开始建立自己的企业。”

为什么他离开了

有将近10年时间里，Ian Stocker一直作为自由音乐者而负责一些游戏的承包工作：编写原声带，声音设计，为客户做音频指导等等。除了接受过钢琴课程，他从未接受过专业的音乐训练—-他是从青少年时期便开始使用计算机制作音乐。

即使在早期他便创造过许多独立项目（都未发行），但是只有一款游戏真正带给他的事业巨大的帮助。他为Game Boy Color的角色扮演游戏《Mythri》创造了30多首歌，但是这款游戏却在完成前遭遇了崩塌。之后这款游戏的程序员转向了Amaze Entertainment，并将Mythri（带有Stocker的音乐）收录在自己的游戏组合中。而那时候Amaze刚好在寻找擅长掌机开发的人，所以其制作总监便向Stocker伸出了橄榄枝，从此Stocker结束了承包工作而开启了自己一人的公司——Ian Stocker Soundesign。

尽管他很喜欢自己的工作，Stocker却未错失在2009年去创造自己游戏的机会。

他说道：“我本应该启动的一些项目都被取消了。所以我才拥有几个月的时间可以做这些事，而我也还有许多需要掌握的内容。所以我便到咖啡店去学习XNA，并开始致力于一个全新的游戏项目。5个月后，我完成了自己的第一款游戏，并将其发行在Xbox Live Indie Games。这便是我的行动RPG《Soulcaster》。”

现在在MagicalTimeBean旗下做事，Stocker又创造了2款游戏，即《Soulcaster 2》和《山羊逃脱》（游戏邦注：一款益智平台游戏）。

Stocker说道：“我认为自己从承包工作中受益良多。这也是我决定创造自己的游戏的主要原因：我开始创造游戏理念，观看着游戏从生产到完成的全过程，着眼于哪些内容可行哪些内容不可行等等。所有的这一切都推动着我去开发属于自己的游戏。所以我认为曾经见证过外部30或40个游戏项目的发展便是自己所具有的最大优势。”

MagicalTimeBean的最新游戏《山羊逃脱2》

Stocker决定致力于《山羊逃脱》的续集部分原因是源于最初《山羊逃脱》的早派风格，它就像是来自Nintendo Entertainment System那个时代的游戏。Stocker认为游戏的外观对于某些玩家来说可能太过时了，而他也不能通过Greenlight社区编程将其带到Steam平台上，所以他才决定参与《山羊逃脱2》的制作。

Stocker说道：“如果我采取同样的游戏理念去创造一款全新游戏，并添加了高清图像，结果会怎样？因为《山羊逃脱》拥有非常高的玩家认可度，所以我认为可以从最初的游戏中汲取一些必要的元素，而不是让它们完全消失。”

在《山羊逃脱2》中，你必须使用商业的能力及其伙伴的力量去解决一系列巧妙的谜题房间（总共有100个）。在机制平台，火球以及其它游戏挑战中移动着需要玩家花费一定的时间去适应，但是当你掌握了《山羊逃脱2》的基本逻辑后，你便能更轻松地前进了。

该款游戏将在今年夏天面向PC发行。

你必须在进入下个房间前收集到钥匙。

不可预知的挑战

除了报酬会频繁出现改变外，Stocker认为游戏的市场营销工作是最大的挑战之一（这是他之前从未接触过的领域）。

Stocker说道：“我不知道推广自己的作品需要投入多少工作。就像创造一款高质量游戏只是等式中的一侧。我还需要投入大量时间于网页，Twitter，媒体内容，访问等等——这都具有很大的帮助。因为我之前只知道与用户进行面对面交谈，所以我不懂得如何处理这些事宜。而这便是我现在需要学习的事。”

独立开发者的增加

Stocker说道：“这种情况似乎一直都会出现——许多人因为种种原因（可能是自己的选择或者遭到残酷的解雇）离开了AAA级工作，并开始创建自己的独立公司或组建一个全新团队。因为分销成本很低，并且如今也存在许多不同的分销方法，你不再需要受到任何发行合同的制约。在某些情况下你也不需要使用昂贵的开发工具；甚至主机就能够帮助你轻松地创造出游戏。”

（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）

Going indie: Why 5 devs left their day jobs for creative independence (part one)

By Giancarlo Valdes

Independent development is a scary thing. You don’t have the financial cushion of a large company to fall back on. Sometimes, you don’t even know when your game is coming out, and, assuming if anyone buys it, you’re not getting paid until it does. Yet despite all the uncertainty, many people still choose to go indie full-time … so I decided to find out why.

Back in May, a few local developers showed off their work-in-progress games at the first Indie Press Day in San Francisco. Held during a rainy evening, Indie Press Day organized 16 indies and as many plastic tables into a narrow row at a small coworking space. Nothing flashy or distracting was there, just the games and their very approachable developers. While each title on display had its own charm and ingenuity, what impressed me the most was just how many of the folks there used to work at large, well-known companies before taking the indie-game plunge.

The individuals I spoke with all had their own reasons for leaving their day jobs, but one common thread among them is that they all left voluntarily, an interesting (and fortunate) circumstance given the amount of layoffs that hit the industry seemingly every week. I also asked them a bit about their upcoming games, any unexpected challenges they’re facing from switching to indie development, and what they think about the thriving sector of indie games and the people behind them.

Ethan Levy, Quarter Spiral

Why he left

In his decade-long career in the games industry at companies like Pandemic Studios and Electronic Arts, Ethan Levy has occupied a variety of roles: intern, lead tester, programmer, game designer, producer, and consultant. But the most direct influence for Quarter Spiral came from Levy’s time at BioWare Social where he worked on the browser-based games Dragon Age Legends, Dragon Age Journeys, and Dragon Age Legends: Remix 01.

“What appealed to me about [BioWare Social] was that it was very entrepreneurial,” Levy said. “It was sort of like being in a startup within EA. I had a lot of room for growth and to try new things — to do experimental things. That’s how I met Alex [Kohlhofer], one of my two co-founders at Quarter Spiral.”

After key members of the team left BioWare to co-found their own startups — leaving Levy, Kohlhofer, and another employee in charge — Levy began to lose interest.

“Over the course of six to nine months, I started to feel a lot less like I was an entrepreneur,” Levy said. “I started to feel a lot more like I worked at the EA that people imagine EA is like. It just felt like it was time for a change, I guess. I wanted the freedom and exhilaration and all the challenges that were part of the early days of BioWare Social and not to feel like I was endlessly going to meetings and politicking and managing. … I just wanted to feel like I was making games again.”

Both Kohlhofer and Levy left BioWare around the same time. Shortly after that, they picked up Thorben Schrdde as a back-end developer and formed Quarter Spiral.

Quarter Spiral’s first game: Enhanced Wars

Enhanced Wars owes a lot to Nintendo’s Advanced Wars, a series of handheld games that focuses on turn-based tactical combat. But instead of trying to develop a robust single-player campaign in the vein of Advance Wars, Levy says they want to deliver a “a multiplayer focused, turn-based strategy game that really overcomes some of the design foibles of your Advance Wars-style games.”

“A lot of turn-based strategy games and even real-time strategy games — if you have the reflexes to play them, which I don’t — are about kind of getting a small resource advantage over your opponent and then overwhelming them slowly with forces,” Levy said. “It’s really fun for both players for a short build-up phase. But then relatively quickly, one player gains an advantage that can’t be overcome. And then there’s kind of a long, boring mop-up phase.”

In order to avoid that last part, Quarter Spiral plans to design Enhanced Wars for “fast and aggressive” battles with a lot of “emotional volatility” for players. But it’s still far from being complete — the version shown at Indie Press Day was only a month old. Later this fall, the company will launch a crowdfunding campaign for Enhanced Wars on Kickstarter. For now, the target platforms are PC, Mac, and Linux.

At Indie Press Day, Enhanced Wars lacked any sort of sound or animation. But the basic turn-based mechanics were there.

Unexpected challenges

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay my rent [laughs],” Levy said. “At EA, your project might get canceled, but you’d still get your paycheck. Whereas here, there’s a very real possibility that our company will go bankrupt and then we’ll have to get real jobs. Dealing with that level of uncertainty is really hard.

“Just to give you some perspective on where my life is: I just got engaged. My fiancé and I are thinking of moving to North Carolina, but she wants to stay out here for work, and trying to do long-term planning is impossible for us right now because I literally have no idea whether three months from now [or] six months from now I’ll be at GDC [editor's note: Game Developer's Conference] trying to hunt down that next job. Or whether Quarter Spiral will be self-supporting, and we’ll be able to move to North Carolina whenever we want to.”

On the rise of indie developers

“I think indie games will play a bigger role in the next generation of consoles,” Levy said. “And the reason I think that is almost purely market dynamics. Like when a huge investment in Tomb Raider and millions of sales are only barely making a profit, the business models of those large publishers are — it’s really tough for them to make a profit with these giant teams and these giant games. That leads to studio closures and layoffs. Studio closures and layoffs don’t turn into people joining as many new studios as it used to. It turns to people founding their own studios … .

“I think that [for] a lot of people who are either choosing to leave corporate game development, like I did, or being forced to leave, going indie is a huge draw. Just look at how much money the guys making The Banner Saga raised with beautiful art, great team pedigree, and great vision. And now they’re developing the game they want to make instead of sitting in meetings or being handed design documents about the game they have to make.”

Why he left

Pete Angstadt became discouraged from game development after his last studio job at the Electronic Arts-owned Maxis. While he was there, he worked as a programmer on an expansion pack to Spore, a game where players create and raise their own alien lifeforms. Though the project was complete, it never saw the light of day.

“[I] was just like, ‘My time is not being used very well here,’” Angstadt said. “As a person who wants to make games, you also want to have people play the games. If you spend a year and a half on something and nobody ever plays it, it’s kind of stinky.”

After the cancellation, Angstadt wasn’t even sure he wanted to make games anymore. So he took up a job at Havok, the company behind the titular physics engine widely used by game developers.

“While I was doing that, I was also making games on the side and entering them into as many contests as possible,” he said. “And one of those contests was Activision’s first independent games competition back in 2011. I entered that and forgot about it. Then months and months later, they wrote back to me and said, ‘Hey, you won first prize and you get $175,000, no strings attached.’ So I was like, ‘Alright, it’s time to quit and try and make this game.”

Realizing that he needed some help with the art, he joined up with his old Maxis coworker Theresa Duringer to form Turtle Sandbox.

Turtle Sandbox’s first game: Cannon Brawl

Known as Dstroyd back when Angstadt first submitted his prototype for the competition, Cannon Brawl is a 2D action strategy game for the PC. Angstadt describes it as the “next evolution of the artillery genre” that follows in the footsteps of games like Worms and Gunbound. Battles take place in real-time as you build mines, cannons, and shields to protect and fund your base (the castles) while attacking the enemy’s compound.

Even in the early version I played, it’s a lot of fun. Matches are hectic, especially as your weapons destroy portions of the map, leaving you with precious little room to build more towers and buildings. Cannon Brawl will have a single-player campaign as well as multiplayer options (online and local) when it launches some time this summer for PC.

Unexpected challenges

“On one hand, when you’re at a big company and someone says, ‘Do this thing!’ You think, ‘Oh, that’s a terrible idea, why would I do that?’” Angstadt said. “But you have to do it anyway because it’s your job. And then at the end of the day, when maybe it didn’t work out, you kind of have like a way to protect your ego, like, ‘Oh I knew that was a bad decision. If I was in charge, I would have never done that.’

“And one of the scary parts of being indie is now I am in charge. And if my decisions are terrible, then it’s only me I have to blame.”

On the rise of indie developers

“I feel like the audience for games is getting a little bit tired of your standard triple-A game,” Angstadt said. “They also don’t want to pay $60 for another sports simulator or shooting simulator. Maybe they want to try five new interesting games for the same price. And at the same time, you have these triple-A companies with a lot of talent that they’re maybe not utilizing as well as they could. Those talented people are going to try and strike off on their own, basically.”

Why he left

For nearly a decade, Ian Stocker was a self-employed musician doing contract work for games: composing soundtracks, sound design, and audio direction for his clients. Aside from taking a few piano lessons, he doesn’t have any formal music training — he just started making music with computers when he was a teenager.

Though he contributed to a bunch of indie projects early on (none of which came out), one game in particular helped get his career off the ground. He made 30 songs for a Game Boy Color role-playing game called Mythri, which was close to being done before development fell apart. A programmer on that game went on to work for Amaze Entertainment, and he used Mythri (complete with Stocker’s music) as his portfolio. Amaze was looking for someone who specialized in handheld console development, so an executive producer reached out to Stocker, and that kicked off his contract work and the start of his one-man company, Ian Stocker Soundesign.

While he loved what he did, Stocker just couldn’t pass up the chance to make his own games when the opportunity arose in 2009.

“A couple of projects I was supposed to get started on actually got canceled,” he said. “So I had set aside several months to work on these, and suddenly I had a vacuum that I needed to fill. So I just went to the coffee shop and started to learn XNA and started a new game project. Five months later, I finished my first game and launched it on Xbox Live Indie Games. That was [the action RPG] Soulcaster.”

Now working under the name MagicalTimeBean, Stocker made two more games: Soulcaster 2 and Escape Goat (a puzzle platformer).

“I think I learned a lot doing the contracting thing,” Stocker said. “That’s part of why I set out to make my own games: I started to develop opinions on game production, watching a bunch of games being made from start to finish, seeing what stuff worked and what stuff didn’t work in my opinion. That kind of gave me a jumping off point for how to develop games on my own. So I definitely think it was a huge advantage for me to have witnessed these 30 or 40 game projects as an outsider and then go in and try my hand at it.”

MagicalTimeBean’s newest game: Escape Goat 2

Stocker’s decision to work on an Escape Goat sequel was partly due to the old-school appeal of the first Escape Goat, which looks like it came from the Nintendo Entertainment System era. Stocker brings up the game’s aesthetic as proof that maybe it was too old-fashioned for some players, as he still hasn’t been able to get it on Steam (Valve’s popular digital platform on PC) via the Greenlight community program. So instead, he set out to make Escape Goat 2.

“What if I took the same game concept, made a new game, had HD graphics for it, and try it again?” Stocker said. “Because Escape Goat had a really good critical and fan reception, and I felt like there was a little bit momentum I could spring off of from the first game, rather than let that die out over a year or something and try and resurrect it later.”

In Escape Goat 2, you have to solve a series of clever puzzle rooms (100 in all) by using the goat’s abilities and the powers of his magical rodent companion. Navigating the mechanical platforms, fire balls, and the other challenges the game throws at you takes some time getting used to, but you’ll feel that much smarter once you figure out Escape Goat 2′s internal logic.

It’s set for release on PC this summer.

You have to collect the keys before you can enter the next room.

Unexpected challenges

In addition to the abrupt change in the frequency and size of his paychecks — Stocker hopes to reach “a similar amount” to what he was making as a contractor in the next couple of years — he found it challenging to promote and market his games, something that he never had to do before.

“I didn’t realize how much work you need to put into promotion of your stuff,” Stocker said. “Like making a quality game is an important part of the equation, but it’s one of like five things. Just the amount of time spent on the website, Twitter, media stuff, interviews like this one — it all helps tremendously. I didn’t know that going in because I was used to just dealing with customers who came to me through word-of-mouth. I didn’t have to do a ton of sales-pitch-type stuff. So that was a huge learning curve.”

On the rise of indie developers

“That seems to be happening all the time — a lot of people are leaving their triple-A jobs either of their own volition or, in less fortunate cases, not — and starting their indie company or trying to get a new team,” Stocker said. “Because the cost to distribute is so low and there’s so many different ways to distribute your game now, you don’t necessarily need a publishing contract. You don’t need an expensive dev kit in some cases; even console [manufacturers] are willing to work with you a bit more.”(source:venturebeat)