作者：Pascal Bestebroer

2005年，我建立了Orangepixel这家只有1个人的公司，而在历经8年之后，它依然如此。我利用了自由音乐师Gavin Harrison的技能去创造所有游戏的音乐，我的女朋友会帮忙“过滤”各种电子邮件并处理一些社交媒体事宜，但在Orangepixel中99%的工作还是由我自己承担。

这便意味着当我一早醒来，将笔记本电脑放在餐桌上，我便开始连续8至9个小时的工作，通常我会给自己做晚餐，当成休息时间，而在晚餐过后我会继续回到电脑前工作，并观看一些电视节目，而这一切都是因为我是一名独立游戏开发者！

在此我需要强调的一点是，我从来就不觉得自己是在工作，做这些事总是能够让我感到满满的乐趣，就好似我的兴趣爱好一样。

但是我的工作并不只是单一的工作，我的工作包含各种内容，有时候当创造性与业务发生冲突时，我可能还会分裂出不同的人格。

创造性

每一款游戏都是伴随着我的创造性开始，我尝试着想出一个新的游戏理念，图像风格，和游戏玩法。我常会创造许多与众不同的小游戏原型，并添加各种图像去观察它是否可行。我们很少会在第一个原型中便获取最棒的理念，所以我通常都需要花几周的时间去实验这些理念。

Schermafbeelding（from gamasutra）

我的新游戏《侠盗英雄》便经历了多次尝试（游戏邦注：实际算来历时8年多时间），并最终明确了我所喜欢的“地牢游戏”理念。之后我又花了4个月的时间去创造第一个版本，让我能够将其呈献给其他人并进行公开“测试”。

而问题也是从那时开始出现，那些尝试着进行测试的人都对自己的游戏理念持肯定态度，但是我的创造性却并未对此感到满意。游戏不再专注于游戏玩法，这并不是我真正想要创造的游戏，它需要做出巨大的改变和完善。

这一过程又花费了我4个月的时间。在那一时期，我的心态也是起起落落。有时候我会有想要放弃并开始创造新内容的想法，有时候我也认为游戏并不是我的朋友，而是我的最大敌人，我必须通过完成游戏而将其打败。有几周的时间我真的难受极了，整个人完全出于抑郁状态，低落得不行。

当坐在电脑前时我开始觉得无力，感觉自己是“被迫”致力于《侠盗英雄》这款游戏。

商业性

我在这款游戏中所付出的努力很大一部分是源于我的商业性变得越来越明显。

通常情况下我在一款游戏上所投入的时间是2个月。一些大型游戏甚至只需要几周时间便能编写出来，因为我一天会工作好几个小时，如果女朋友允许的话我甚至会在周末继续工作，而与此同时我的创造性的发展也只能维持几周的时间。

需要注意的是，我的上一款游戏《Gunslugs》虽然是我到目前为止创造过最棒的游戏，但是它却花费了我8个多月的创造时间。它是在2013年1月发行，并且从那以来我便一直致力于《侠盗英雄》创造。在这期间我也做了一些小事，如在手机上发行一款小型游戏（《Sketchbook Squad》）——即作为我每年都会推出的一款“免费”游戏，而不是具有显著商业利益的大型内容。

问题在于，当一款游戏越来越“老”，它的光芒便会逐渐退却。销量也会逐渐降至0。这便是所谓的“长尾效应”，我的所有游戏的长尾效应都能够保持利润的流动，但却是持下坡路线。

我的商业性呈现出低落的状态，一款新游戏必须问世，而《侠盗英雄》却只是候补。所以我的商业性盘旋在之前几个月开发的创造性中。

谁赢得了战斗

创造性和商业间的斗争可能会彻底搞垮一个开发者。问题在于：你要听谁的？商业性通常是两者间最聪明的，也是最值得听取的聪明解决方法。

heroes of loot（from gamasutra）

不过我最终选择了创造性。我知道自己的游戏在基于其他开发者和玩家的反馈后做出了各种改变，并朝着正确的方向发展着。我为自己设定了各种截止期限，希望游戏能够在这些日期内完成。但是我却错过了所有的这些时间。

最后我将发行日期定在9月12日，游戏也在这个时间前完成了，这款游戏所花费的时间长于之前的预期。《侠盗英雄》最终是基于我喜欢的地牢/rogue式主题，并让我想起了最初《Spectrum》和《C64》中的“Gauntlet”。

商业性因为游戏的完成兴奋不已，并希望能够将其推向全世界。

创造性仍然很担心其他人的看法。我邀请一些人一起在Ouya上玩游戏。最终他们都表示很喜欢这款游戏。我完成了桌面版本并让一些人可以在PC/Mac上尝试它，最终他们也都表示喜欢。

虽然我仍然很担心，但是商业性已经开始“加班”了。给媒体发邮件，接触社交媒体，告知人们游戏的诞生等等。

一位新闻记者在编写游戏预览和评价时问我“这是否是你的代表作”，我回答不是，因为我并不是这么认为，但这绝对是我需要攀越的高山。

《侠盗英雄》于2013年9月12日正式面向iOS，Android，Ouya，PC和Mace发行了，我也在计划着PS Vita版本。

（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）

Clash of creativity and business

by Pascal Bestebroer

Back in 2005 I started Orangepixel as a one-man company, and 8 years later it is still basically just that. I do use the skills of freelancer musician Gavin Harrison (http://gavinharrisonsounds.com/) to create all the music for my games, and my girlfriend “filters” the various email inboxes and takes care of some of the social media thingies alongside me, but 99% of the time Orangepixel is just me.

What this means is that I get up in the morning, put my laptop on the kitchen table, and start working for 8 – 9 hours, usually I then make dinner as a great break and relaxing moment, then after dinner I move the laptop to the couch and continue working while watching some tv… this of course only if I feel like working, cause hey, I’m indie !

The important information to have here is that my work never, ever, feels like work.. it’s always extremely fun and feels more like my hobby.

But my work is not just one single job, my work is a lot of jobs that sometimes require an almost split-personality when creativity clashes with business.

Creativity

Every game starts with my creativity cap on, I try to come up with a new game concept, graphical style, and gameplay. I usually create a lot of different little bare-bone game prototypes, adding some graphics to the mix and see if it “works”. It’s very rare to hit a great idea on the first prototype, so this often takes a couple of weeks experimenting with ideas.

My new game, Heroes of Loot, took a lot of attempts, actually spread over 8 years, to finally come up with a “dungeon game” that I was happy with. It then took about four months to get a first version that I could show to other people and actually made publicly available in “beta” form.

That’s where the problems begin, people who tried the beta loved it and were very positive about it.. but my creative-cap wasn’t pleased with it. The game was losing it’s focus on gameplay, it was not the game I set out to make, and it needed drastic changes and improvements to get it back on track.

This process took over 4 months of extra work on the game. During that period I had ups and downs concerning the game. At some points I just wanted to quit and start something new.. the game was not my friend, it was my biggest enemy that had to be defeated by completing it.  I had weeks of feeling sick, depressed and generally not happy at all.

I started feeling paralyzed when sitting at my computer, “having” to work on Heroes of Loot.. having to complete it before doing other stuff..

Business

A large part of the struggle I had with the game was my business-cap becoming more and more vocal.

On average I work about 2 months on a game, and for all those years that is what really works for me. Some of my biggest games were actually written in only a few weeks, obviously working many hours a day and, if the girlfriend allows, also in weekends, gives you a lot of time to work on your game, but still just a few weeks where my creativity was soaring.

The thing was, my last game was Gunslugs and it did amazing, easily my best game so far, but it was also a game which took me about 8 months to create. It was released in January 2013, and since then I have been working on Heroes of Loot. I did some small things in between, like releasing a small game on mobile (Sketchbook Squad) as a “freebie” release I do each year, but nothing big or worth mentioning business wise.

The problem is, that as a game becomes older, it slowly fades out from people’s view. Sales slowly dwindle down to 0.  This is called the “long-tail”, and the long-tail on all my games was keeping money flowing in, but it was a downhill graph.

My business-cap wasn’t happy, a new game HAD to be released and Heroes of Loot was the only candidate. So my business-cap was hovering over my creativity-cap for the last few months of development.

Who wins the battle

This struggle between creativity and business can really tear apart a developer. The problem is: who do you listen to?  The business cap is usually the wisest of the two, and the smartest solution to listen to.

So I listened to the creative-cap. I knew my game was moving in the right directions after doing various changes to the gameplay based on feedback from various other developers and gamers. I set various deadlines for myself to have the game completed by those dates.. I missed all of them, which never happened before in all those years.

Finally I put the release date on September 12th, I was done, the game was done, it was playable and enjoyable and every game session I had took much longer then I originally planned on.  Heroes of Loot was finally the dungeon/rogue-like I wanted to make for so many years,  it was the dungeon game the way I wanted to play it, reminding me of the original Gauntlet on the Spectrum and C64…

The business-cap was happy that the game was finally done, and wanted to push it out in the world.

The creative cap was terrified (and still is) about other people’s opinions.. I invited some people to come and play it with me on the Ouya.  They loved it.  I completed the desktop version and asked some people to give it a try on their PC  / Mac..  they loved it.

Still I’m terrified.. but the business-cap has started working overtime.  Mailing press, doing social-media, letting people know the game is coming, a rogue-like in Orangepixel style.

One journalist, in writing a preview and interview of the game, asked me “is this your magnum opus” .. I said no, I don’t think it is..  but it sure was a huge mountain that I had to climb.

Heroes of Loot is released on September 12th, 2013
for iOS, Android, Ouya, PC and Mac.. with a PS Vita planned ..(source:gamasutra)