作者：Adam Hunt

本文将详尽地介绍我的第一款游戏从模糊的想法到闯进苹果应用商店前25名的过程。

前言

在2011年到2012年之间，我学会了编程，并成功发布了一款相当流行的iOS游戏《Pumped: BMX》。那真是疯狂的一年，我学习了那么多东西，从解决程序问题到与媒体打交道，规避诱惑，以及处理财务等。但愿读者能从本文中学习到有趣的或甚至有用的东西，但我先提个醒：你从阅读中得到的任何见解都是危险的，因为我的成功有可能只是误打误撞的运气。读不读你自己看着办吧！

地方

在2011年夏天，我住在印度洋的Reunion岛上。我是几个月前搬来的，为了试试教英语。

不幸的是，那里没什么就业机会，所以我又捡回自己那些基本的网络技术，以自由职业者的身份做起了网页开发。这工作虽然让我吃得上法国面包，可惜不能维持我的激情，我很快就厌烦了。

想法

很久以前，我一直在玩由一个叫作Brad Quick的家伙制作的游戏《Dirt Bike》——你仍然可以找到它的Android版。游戏中有一个基本的编辑器和一个强大的自行车编辑器，所以作为一个BMX（极限自行车）玩家，我当然要用它制作BMX的跳跃和BMX自行车。我沉迷于那款游戏至少一年，至少是直到女朋友和啤酒出现。我发邮件给Brad相当多次，请求他用BMX代替越野摩托车，但他一直没有回复我。不久，我放弃了，也忘了那件事。

（我的游戏主角的早期原型）

快进十年到现在的我，我住在一座荒岛上，有大把的闲暇时间，几乎不受干扰：为什么不制作游戏？

引擎

甚至想支Xcode都会把我吓个半死，所以当我偶然发现Corona SDK时，我大喜过望。在后来的约两个月里，我研究教程，学习用Lua语言制作非常简单的泡泡类游戏，但带有下落的箱子。真是一段伟大的学习历程（特别是Peach Pellen提供的教程），我迫不及待地开始制作我的BMX游戏。

（我对这个图标有难以置信的恐惧感。）

不久之后我回到英国，决定正式启动项目。不幸的是，我刚迈出第一步就被绊倒了：我制作自行车必须的引擎关节运作得不太好，且又在Corona引发了严重的问题。我感到非常烦恼。

好在我并非束手无策。做了大量网络研究和咨询朋友后，我放弃Corona转向Cocos2D……所以我必须学习Objective-C和使用Xcode。该死！

学习

此时对于其他项目（如延时摄影、学习吉他），我已经失去兴趣（放弃了）并转移到下一个项目中，但这一次我做了一个严肃的决定——坚持到底。我购买了两本书：《Programming in Objective-C》和《Learning Cocos2D》，开始阅读。

好吧，我其实读得很少。两本书我都只读了几章（因此“学习Cocos2D”这个项目也很短命）就迫不及待地开始做自己的东西了。我很快发现网络搜索是解决问题的最快方法，Cocos2D论坛、Stack Exchange和Ray Wenderlich很快成为我经常浏览的网站。我想我制作《Pumped: BMX》的这一年，我动用了大概3种求助办法，其中两种之后我自己要回答一下。有那么多人在做同样的事，可能有些人早就遇到你的问题了。提问前总是先搜索。

分解问题

我花了很多时间担心从哪里开始——我隐约知道自己想做什么，但对从哪入手毫无头绪。我继续钻研，希望发现精华的游戏创意，最终找到“画线”。现在看起来相当荒唐，但确实迫使我好好想想游戏如何运作。

（这之后我的自我感觉格外良好。）

这种技术——把理想的结果分解成小碎片，使我信心大增，这也是我制作项目实体的办法。如果我卡在某物上，那当然是因为我正在尝试解决一个其实包含了若干更小问题的问题。

所以我想到线条的创意后，我花了一整天的时间写代码，使我自己能够用手指在我的iPhone上画画。第二周是重画线条，然后是编辑线条，再然后是删除点，拖动屏幕，缩放等。几周之后，我发现自己已经入门关卡编辑器了。

这就够了！

时光飞逝

我喜欢听关于开发过程的奇闻轶事，但事实上，绝大部分时候并不会发生什么趣事。基本上我经常卡壳，我读很多书，我的工作计划表排得很松，我不再标记事情，而是开始新项目。于是，我的Evernote（游戏邦注：这是一种笔记管理应用）简直成了计划表的坟墓。

我有全职工作，结束白天的工作回家又扑到《Pumped》的制做上，就这样持续了8个月？真是扼杀生命啊。如果你想制作游戏，那么你应该做好大把花时间的准备，这时间是按几百个小时，而不是几十个小时来计算的。

（关卡编辑器的开头）

有那么一阵子，我觉得自己毫无进展，动力开始消退——这时候，写开发日志就非常必要了。没有什么比看/读自己的进度记录更能刺激自己回到正轨的事了。你在本文中看到的所有图片都来自我的开发日志。

（玩法——这样保持了很久。）

慢慢地，游戏接近完工了，我开始考虑花钱请人做些专业的美术设计。因这它其实是一个爱好项目，所以决定花钱（显然得由我自己掏钱）外包美术改变了我对这款游戏的看法。不算是一笔大钱，但足够让我更加严肃地做事。我试了很多次寻找合适的美工，而且我还要分解角色和制作所有动画，但漂亮的美术设计确实能让游戏更加“体面”。

游戏测试

在开发早期，我就说服了一些好友帮我测试《Pumped》。这么早就让他们帮忙，确实对游戏的玩法影响深远——包括关于游戏机制的重大决定。

（测试，测试再测试）

例如，在早期的原型中，我的计划基本上是使用与《Tiny Wings》相同的机制——玩家下山时按住“pump”，上山时松开。我很努力，所以变得相当精通起来，但在测试时，其他人都无法掌握其中的窍门。其中一名测试者建议我尝试更加经典的“按下走”的操作方式，我很怀疑，但在下一个测试环节时，我很快发现它显然就是一条出路。最后的机制是二者的奇异混合体，但要不是经过测试，我可能不会继续保留一种不管用的操纵系统长达数月。

（早期的美术设计，不过关的取巧设计。）

我的好友们在游戏的开发过程中一直很给力，绝对是这个世界上玩《Pumped》最多次的人。除了几瓶免费的啤酒，他们的帮忙确实是出于好心。然而，鉴于他们实在太卖力了，我觉得最好给他们买些东西以表达我的谢意！

营销

（我使用的初期美术设计。我不太喜欢。）

在开发时，有那么一阵子能在Twitter上看到关于《Pumped》的聊天内容——我认为是因为Lima Eltham（一名专业极限自行车手）给别人看了测试版，所以一石激起千层浪。我非常兴奋，做了一个糟糕的原型视频放在Reddit上，并把它发送给Twitter上的许多人。我收到另一名专业极限自行车手Mike Aitken的回复，我觉得自己简直成了超级巨星！

（第二版美术设计——相当成功！）

那是距离《Pumped》完工前几个月的事了，但放出视频让我意识到，我必须完成游戏。我现在给别人看过了，它就是个“事儿”了，我开始感到压力了！在那之后，除了更新Facebook页面和发表截图，我就不怎么开口了。

提交

经过无数个日夜的编程和测试，游戏终于出炉了。我修改了我的应用的描述，准备好截图，提交游戏。开始喝听啤酒庆祝。

等待（继续营销）

这是我生命中最漫长的11天。

我把大部分时间花在制作和修改预告片（等待发布日）、每5分钟查看一次邮箱。我通常不会失眠，但凌晨4点就爬起来看邮件。我太紧张了！幸好它第一次就通过了，我可以继续工作了。游戏审核通过时正好是奥林匹克的BMX决赛，我有5天时间推广预告片，放出促销码，以及把自己收拾得人模人样。

我整理了一份游戏网站的列表，向它们一一发送促销码，但基本上没得到回应。我本可以做得更好——我写模板，然后附上截图发送给所有人。感觉有些粗糙，下次我会努力做得更好。

然而，我在主要目标上——BMX行业完成得不错。我的采访稿发表在两个大BMX网站（(Ride UK和Props BMX）上。我在Twitter 和Facebook上也积累了人气。一天下午，我发了太多信息给极限自行车爱好者，以至于Facebook认定我在滥发邮件：我必须通过好友验证来证明我是谁！

我也在我能想到的论坛上做工作，如在Reddit上多发文，尽量在Facebook和Twitter上表现活跃。

发布前一天，我再次检查了游戏。我做得不错——我不知怎么地，竟忘记设置发布日期！如果我没有再次检查细节，这款应用就会在2013年12月31号发布。

大灾难避免了，营销工作完成了，剩下的只有等待了。

发布日

我收到一些来自澳大利亚的、关于《Pumped》的安装和运营情况的早期报告，所以那成了我的一个担忧。

正好在发布日那天，我离开去看奥林匹克赛艇了，所以到5点前我都不在电脑前。我成功的消息首先是一个朋友发短信告诉我的——“你排名97了！”。我太高兴了！我进前100名了！

30分钟以后，“第70名了！太牛了！”

又过了30分钟，“57名！”

再30分钟，“进前50名了！”

我的心跳得很快，我坐回电脑前。我花了一整天刷新iTunes，评论我的游戏的照片分享和回复Twitter。

在英国的排行榜上，我的游戏第一天排到第27名，在澳大利亚是第21名，在拉脱维亚是第20名（奥林匹克BMX竞赛的冠军）。我的游戏还被澳大利亚的应用商店推荐为“新的，值得关注的”。真是太不可思议了。

（我吹嘘“打败《愤怒的小鸟”，但其实是《愤怒的小鸟节日版》。但差不多了。）

定价

我的游戏定价为1.47英镑/1.99美元。我这么定价的原因是，它是一款小众游戏，所以想玩它的人不会介意多花一点点钱（老实说，这个价已经很低了），我希望把花在美术设计上的钱赚回来（大约是400英镑/600美元）。

另外，我认为甚至不太高的提价0.69英镑/0.99美元也会让许多人打消冲动购买的念头，这也毫无疑问会大大增加“太困难了！”和“我不理解”的评论数量——毕竟这是一款做给越野自行车爱好者玩的游戏。

现在

玩家对游戏的接受度很高，事实上，它在非常多玩家当中流行开来了。游戏在苹果应用商店上得到的评分有许多是5星的。我看到许多人玩我的游戏的照片。最棒的是，我可以去滑板运动场夸耀我就是那个制作了《Pumped》的家伙！

我确实经历了短暂的“游戏发布后抑郁症”——我已经完成了游戏，接下来要做什么？幸好那种状态持续得不久，大多数时候我还是沉浸在游戏成功的喜悦中。

我努力保持在Twitter、Facebook和Instagram（我喜欢看上面的照片）上的活跃度，我想我已经基本上成功了。我通常被叫作“你这家伙”，有大量商业企划书，还收集了可观的专业BMX玩家玩我的游戏的照片。

（《Pumped: BMX》出现在The Come Up上的一篇文章中。）

工作还没结束——游戏中有大量漏洞，且出现得飞快，我决定在免费升级版中添加一些新关卡。之后我在应用商店里发布了两个新关卡包。

收益

我不想说得太具体，所以我只能说：挣了一部新车的钱，但还买不起一套新房，所有钱都将用于下一个项目上。下图显示了我看了无数次的收益曲线——第一天达到峰值，随后是漫长的下降期。这是为期一个月的收益数据——此后一直很稳定。

总结

所以，我做了一款游戏。真是艰苦卓绝的过程，我觉得自己要学的东西太多了，不只是编程，还要学习处理很多东西，如外包、设计、营销、社交网络、资金等，还要表现得像个专业人士。在专业上我还在努力。

（Matt Priest在奥林匹克运动会后台玩《Pumped: BMX》。）

这绝对是艰苦的工作，但也是我有史以来最让我感到满意的事情。正如前面所提到的，我为自己总是在一个项目上半途而废感到羞愧，而这个项目我坚持下来了，我为自己感到自豪。

我的游戏制作之旅还没结束——这只是开始！我希望我能再花一年时间做一款游戏，但现在，我很满足于做两件工作，慢慢积累着来年的开发资金。我不着急。（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）

From Idea to App Store: An Adventure in Game Dev

by Adam Hunt

What follows is a reasonably lengthy account of how my first ever game went from a vague idea to breaking the top 25 apps in the App Store.

Introduction

Over 2011-2012 I learnt to program and successfully released a reasonably popular iOS game, Pumped: BMX. It was a crazy year and I learnt so many lessons, from solving programming problems to communicating with press, avoiding pitfalls, and dealing with money. Hopefully you’ll read something interesting, or even useful, but be warned: any insight you gain from reading this may be dangerous, it could all just be blind luck. Read on at your own risk!

The Place

In the Summer of 2011 I was living on Reunion Island in the middle of the Indian Ocean where I’d moved a few months earlier to try my hand at teaching English.

Unfortunately there wasn’t much work available, so I fell back on my basic web skills and did some freelance web development. It kept me in baguettes, but unfortunately it didn’t rush me off my feet… I got bored fast.

The Idea

A long time ago I used to play ‘Dirt Bike’, a game made by a guy called Brad Quick – you can still get a (less than stellar) version of it for Android. There was a basic level editor and an awesome bike editor, so being a BMXer I obviously used it to make BMX jumps and BMX bikes. It was a bit of an obsession for at least a year, at least until girlfriends and beer came along. I emailed Brad a fair number of times begging him to put a BMX sprite in place of the motocross rider, but he never got back to me. I soon gave up and forgot all about it.

An early prototype of my main character

Fast forward ten years and there I was, loads of time on my hands, on a desert island with almost zero distractions: why not make a game?

Engine

Even the thought of Xcode scared me half to death, so when I stumbled across Corona SDK I was thrilled. For the next two months or so I did tutorials, learnt what I could of Lua and made myself a very simple ‘pop the bubble’ type game, but with falling boxes. It was a great learning experience (especially the tutorials by Peach Pellen), and I was keen to start working on my BMX game.

I had an incredible fear of this icon.

I returned to the UK shortly after, and decided to get down to business. Unfortunately I stumbled at the first block: the physics joints I needed to make my bike refused to work properly, which turned out to be a serious issue with Corona. I was screwed!

Except I wasn’t, not entirely anyway. After a lot of internet research and speaking with friends I ditched Corona and switched to Cocos2D… so I had to learn Objective-C and use Xcode. Shit.

Learning Materials

At this point in other projects (e.g. time lapse photography, learning guitar) I’ve been known to lose interest (i.e. give up) and move on to the next thing, but this time I made a conscious decision to push through. I bought a couple of books – “Programming in Objective-C” and “Learning Cocos2D” – and started reading.

Learning Cocos2D – the Viking game!

Well, I read for a bit. I got a few chapters into both of them (and therefore a short way into the “Learning Cocos2D” project) before I got itchy feet and started doing my own thing. I quickly learnt that hitting the internet was the quickest way to solve problems, and the Cocos2D forums, Stack Exchange and Ray Wenderlich’s website quickly became my top visited sites. I think in the year I was  working on Pumped I’ve started maybe 3 threads asking for help, 2 of which I’ve then gone on to answer (and post the answer to) myself. There are so many people out there doing the same thing, the chances are that several people have already encountered your problem. Always search before you ask!

Splitting Problems

I spent a lot of time worrying about where to start – I vaguely knew what I wanted to do, but had no idea where to begin. I kept drilling down through the game idea to find what was essential, until I finally got to ‘drawing lines’. It seems ridiculously obvious now, but to get there actually required me to think a lot about how the game would function.

I was insanely pleased with myself after this.

That technique – splitting the desired result up into tiny, tiny pieces – gave me a lot of confidence, and was how I worked for the entirety of the project. If I was stuck on something it was normally because I was trying to solve one problem that was actually several smaller problems.

So once I’d got to the idea of lines, I spent a whole day writing some code to allow myself to draw a line on my iPhone with my finger. The next week it was redrawing lines, then editing lines, then deleting points, then dragging the screen around, then zooming, etc. A few weeks later and I realised I had the beginnings of a level editor.

That was it, I was off!

Months Fly By

I’d love to have some great anecdotes about what happened during the development process, but the truth is that a whole lot of not very much happened for the majority of the time. Mostly I got stuck a lot, I read a lot, I kept a very loose “to do” list that would get massive, I’d stop ticking things off it and start a new one. My Evernote is like a “to do” list graveyard.

I was working full time, getting home from my day job and doing another full days work on Pumped for… oooh, 8 months? It was knackering. If you want to make a game you have be prepared to put the time in, and that time is measured in hundreds, not tens, of hours.

The beginnings of the level editor.

There were several periods where I felt like I was getting nowhere and started losing motivation – this is where having a development blog really comes into its own. There’s nothing like seeing / reading how far you’ve come to kick yourself back into gear. All of the images you see here are from my development blog, which is hidden somewhere deep in the interwebs.

Gameplay – it looked like this for a long time.

Slowly but surely the game got closer to completion, and as it started to shape up I decided to invest some money in some professional artwork. As it was really just a hobby project I’d been doing all of the artwork myself, so the decision to pay (out of my own pocket obviously) for some art changed how I saw the game. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but it was enough for me to take things a bit more seriously. It took a couple of tries to find the right artist, and I still had to slice the character up and do all of the animations, but having awesome artwork really helped make the game feel ‘proper’.

Game Testing

I roped in some good friends to help test Pumped very early on in the development process. Having their input early on really helped shape the way the game plays – including some big decisions on game mechanics.

Testing, testing and more testing.

For example, during very early prototyping my plan was to essentially use the same mechanic as Tiny Wings where you hold ‘pump’ on the downhills and let go on the uphills. I tried hard to get it working and I got reasonably good at it, but during testing no-one else could get the hang of it. One of the testers suggested trying a more classic “hold to go” control scheme, which I was dubious of, but it was immediately apparent during the next testing session that it was the way to go. The final mechanism ended up being a weird hybrid blend of the two (for that “authentic BMX feel”), but had it not been for play testing I probably would’ve persevered for months with a control system that wasn’t going to work.

Early art, and a ‘grizz air’, a trick that didn’t make the cut.

The guys were great throughout the development of the game, and have definitely played Pumped more than anyone else in the world. Aside from a few free beers they did it out of the goodness of their hearts too. However, they’ve been so useful I decided it’s a probably a good idea to keep them sweet, so I bought them stuff to say thanks!

Marketing Begins

Some initial art I commissioned. I was not a fan.

At some point during development there was a brief flash of chat about Pumped on Twitter – I think Lima Eltham (a professional BMXer) showed a test version to someone else and it sparked a brief bit of buzz. I got very over-excited and created a terrible prototype video, posted it on Reddit and sent it to a gazillion people on Twitter. I got a retweet from another pro BMXer called Mike Aitken – a bit of a legend – and I felt like a superstar!

The second attempt at commissioning a character – jackpot!

That was months before Pumped was finished, but putting the video made me realise I had to finish the game. I’d showed people now, it was a ‘thing’, and I started feeling the pressure! I went quiet after that, aside from setting up a Facebook page and posting the occasional screenshot.

Submission

After endless weeknights of coding and endless weekends of testing the latest level tweaks, the game was finally finished. I tweaked my app description, readied my screenshots and submitted the game, and had several thousand beers to celebrate.

The Waiting Game (or, Marketing Continues)

The longest 11 days of my life.

I spent most of this time creating and tweaking the release trailer (waiting for a release date), and checking my emails every 5 minutes. I’m not normally one to lose sleep, but I was waking up at 4am and checking my emails on a nightly basis. I was tense! Thankfully it was accepted first time, and I could really get to work. It had been accepted just in time to hit my target of the Olympic BMX finals, giving me 5 days to get people to watch the trailer, get out promo codes, and generally whore myself out as much as humanly possible.

I’d collated a list of game websites that I emailed with promo codes, very few of which got back to me. I definitely could’ve handled the games industry side of things a lot better – I wrote a template and emailed the same thing to everyone, with a few lacklustre screenshots. It felt a bit shoddy, and I’ll be making a big effort to do better next time (I could have done with this great Gamasutra article back then).

However, I did OK with my main target, the BMX industry. I secured interviews on two big BMX websites (Ride UK and Props BMX). I also hit up Twitter and Facebook with a passion. One afternoon I sent so many messages to BMXers that Facebook decided I was a spammer: I had to prove who I was by identifying friends!

I hit every forum I could think of, went cross-post crazy on Reddit, and tried to be as active as possible on Facebook and Twitter.

The day before release, I double checked everything. Good job I did too – I’d somehow forgotten to set the release date! If I hadn’t double checked the details the app would be releasing on 31st December 2013.

Oops.

Absolute disaster averted, marketing done, there was nothing left to do but wait.

Release Day

I had some early reports from Australia that Pumped installed and ran, so that was one worry out of the way.

It just so happened that on release day I was off to watch some Olympic rowing, so I was up and away from my computer by 5am. The first I knew of any success was a friend who texted me something along the lines of “You’re at no. 97!”. I was thrilled! Top 100!

About 30 minutes later, “70! Bastard!”

Another 30 minutes, “57!”

And another, “Top 50!”

My heart going at a thousand miles an hour, I got back to Oxford and I got in front of a computer. I spent most of that day refreshing iTunes, commenting on instagram photos of my game and responding to tweets.

I ended the first day at no. 27 in the UK charts, no. 21 in Australia and no. 20 in Latvia (the winners of the Olympic BMX racing). I was also featured as “New and Noteworthy” in Australia. It was surreal.

I boasted about “beating Angry Birds”, but really it was “Angry Birds: Seasons”. Almost.

Pricing

I released the game at ￡1.49 / $1.99. My rationale behind the pricing was that it was a niche game, and therefore anyone who wanted to play it wouldn’t mind paying the slightly higher (but let’s be honest, still very low) cost, and I wanted to make back the money I spent on art (around ￡400/$600).

Secondly I think even the modest increase from ￡0.69/$.99 rules out a lot of impulse purchases, which would have no doubt increased the number of “it’s too hard!” and “I don’t understand!” reviews no end – this was a game made for BMXers after all.

However, had I believed for a second that I would get as high up the charts as I did I may well have released at ￡0.69/$.99 – who knows how high I would have climbed?

The Present

So, that brings us up to now, sort of. The reception has been awesome, it’s actually turned out to be popular with a wide variety of people, and I have hundreds of 5 stars reviews on App Stores around the world. I’ve seen countless photos of people playing my game rather than actually riding their bikes, and best of all I can go to skateparks and boast about being the guy who made Pumped!

I did have a brief period of ‘post game depression’ – I’d finished the game, what was I supposed to do next? Thankfully that didn’t last too long, and for the most part I massively enjoyed the success of the game.

I’ve tried to stay very active on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (I love checking out Instagram photos) and I think I’ve mostly succeeded. I often get called ‘you guys’, have had a bizarre number of business proposals, and have built up a nice collection of photos of professional BMXers playing the game.

Pumped: BMX features in an Etnies roadtrip article on The Come Up.

Work hasn’t stopped though – there were a number of bugs in the game that came out pretty quickly, and I decided that I’d add some extra levels in a free update. I’ve since released two extra level packs as In App Purchases.

Money

I don’t want to go into specifics, so I’ll just say this: it’s ‘new car’ money, not ‘new house’ money, and it’s all going straight back into my next project. The graph below shows what I’ve read and seen countless times – a day one spike followed by a long decline. That’s one month of sales figures – it’s been pretty consistent since.

Final words

So. I made a game. It’s been insanely hard work, I feel like I’ve had to learn so much, not just about programming but a whole host of things including dealing with outsourcing, design, marketing, social networking, finances and generally acting like a professional. I’m still trying on the professional part.

Matt Priest plays Pumped: BMX backstage at the Olympics

It’s definitely hard work, but also the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done. As mentioned a long way up the page, I’ve been guilty of jumping from project to project in the past, and I’m so proud of myself for seeing this one through to end.

I’m by no means done with games – this is just the beginning! Eventually I’d like to be able to dedicate a year to making a game, but for now I’m happy working two jobs, slowly building up the war chest that will finance that year. I’m in no rush.(source:gamasutra)