作者：Patrick Miller

作为Signia Venture Partners风投组织的合伙人，Dan Fiden的工作是尽可能预测游戏行业的未来——所以，自然而然地，他是最有资格谈论游戏的未来的人。在以下采访中，他解释了免费模式和“游戏即服务”模式正在促成一场振荡整个行业的巨变。

Patrick Miller（以下简称P）：过去几年，我们看到许多游戏开发工作室成为“软件即服务”的榜样，免费模式被这个技术行业广泛采用。作为一名资深的游戏人，你认为这种转变将如何改变游戏的制作和销售？

Dan-Fiden(from socialcasinointelligence)

Daniel Fiden（以下简称D）：到目前为止，几乎所有人都发现，早在2000年，数字经销最先振荡的是音乐行业。那场巨变直接导致了音乐行业的某些从事发行（贴牌）、分销和零售的巨头公司的消失，而幸存下来的公司的实力也被大大削弱。同时，像Apple这样的公司此前完全不涉足音乐商业，却一跃成为音乐行业的新掌门。有时候，你会听到人们把游戏行业中发生的事与音乐行业的作比较。但我认为，这种比较只是看到了冰山一角，并且是最不重要的一角。

音乐制作的技艺——录音技术、歌曲创作等并没改变。当然，工具和技术进步了，但并没有比2000年的商业模式的剧变来得明显。基本的技艺——歌曲创作、表演和录制、歌曲推广还是一样的。游戏-服务的转变是对“制作游戏意味着什么”的一次彻底反思。生产过程、团队组建、可交付产品是什么、产品发布后如何改进——这些都是欧美公司正在思考的根本性变化。将音乐领域的比喻作个延伸，也就是从基于计划的方法向完全即兴的方法的转变。

所以，是的，我认为这是一个大问题。

P：放弃一次性付费的模式，你认为会产生什么结果？

D：结果取决于我们自己。付费墙的移除迫使我们依靠玩法赢利，而不是预告片。我认为那是件好事。但我们只是刚开始理解免费模式的机制。不幸的是，有许多天才的游戏制作者，他们对这种模式的反应似乎不太友好。他们拒绝尝试它。对我而言，这有点相当于，因为《生活大爆炸》太蠢了，所以就不做电视剧了。正是那些伟大的、不迷信权威的、有创意的人才能让这种模式向新的更有意义的方向发展。

P：在游戏如何制作和销售方面，你认为下一个重大改变会是什么？

D：我认为接下来十年，我们将学习如何经营游戏服务。我希望看到游戏运营方面发生有意义的进步；特别是，要关注事件是什么。有些公司知道事件会对商业和玩家基础造成重大影响。但我还没看到这样的事件。我等不及要玩使用这种事件节奏驱动剧情的游戏，这会鼓励玩家传播游戏剧情。Kixeye的创始人之一，Paul Preece说得非常令人信服：《星战前夜》和它的史诗在虚拟世界中存在着且发展着。游戏运营商可以通过事件引导剧情，就像事件可以反映玩家创造的剧情一样。

P：如果我说错了，请纠正我。但在我的印象中，风险投资对游戏行业的影响比20年前更大了，且游戏领域的最新的技术兴起总是与风险有关。作为一名资深游戏开发者，你认为风投在长期内将如何改变游戏制作和销售？

D：今年关于游戏和风投的争议很大，特别是在Benchmark投资公司的合伙人Mitch Lasky等的推动下。确实，在过去五年游戏行业的风投活动非常活跃，但可能主要是受到投资Facebook和手机应用的驱动，而不是对游戏本身的见解和兴趣。今年这个局面发生逆转了，可能是因为Zynga在大众市场上遇到麻烦了。我确实认为这个行业正处于我所谓的大过渡期——与Facebook和手机没有太大关系，但与“游戏即服务”大有关系。

在我看来，那比休闲游戏在任何一个平台上的机遇来得都大。是一个彻底改造欧美游戏商业的机会。这个转变是有利可图的，并非巧合，亚洲的公司最了解那些模式的力量——比如Nexon和腾讯，现在是最活跃的投资者。

有一个独立但相关的问题，即在未来，游戏投资的格局会是怎么样的？但我的经验告诉我的答案却非常不同，取决于你的游戏的投资规模。对于成本低于100万美元的游戏，选择有很多：众筹、天使投资、电影式的赞助、发行商投资和一些风险投资。如果你的游戏成本超过100万美元，那么你的选择就要少很多了，与2008年以前差不多——发行商与开发者合作。

然而，我个人的看法是，事实是相反的。对于制作100万美元以下游戏的小公司，你面临的市场竞争是很激烈的，你还要与那些并不关心挣钱的业余开发者们较量。竞争的方面既有经济上的也有技术上的。这现在确实是一个机遇，特别是对于平板。

P：在我看来，风投的成功或失败部分取决于你预测未来的能力，所以：你认为什么趋势和潮流让你产生怀疑？什么你认为是胡说的东西确实成真了？

D：对于游戏，可能是“快速跟进”。它使用得并没有那么广泛，但反映了它对大部分从事比Facebook更麻烦的平台的公司是多么有效。

P：最近在看什么好书了吗？

D：最近没在看了，但我最近看完了《A Dance with Dragons》。

P：你认为主流游戏玩家对电子游戏的期待以后是否会发生变化？与纯粹“娱乐”我们的游戏相比，人们会更加接受那些让我们产生复杂情绪的游戏吗？如果是，你认为工作室或发行商应该做什么准备？

D：这是游戏行业当前的重大课题——增加游戏艺术的深度。发行商应该如何准备？我想到了好莱坞的垂直一体化工作室系统的衰弱。在上世纪初，创意人才与工作室签合同，受雇于工作室。但到50年代，这个系统崩溃了。创意人才现在大多是自由身。

当你看看今天的发行巨头，仍然采用这种大工作室的系统，也就是游戏制作者是雇员。但随着大众化开发和商业模式的崛起以及经销模式瓦解，我认为发行商基本上也受到重创了。我认为这将催生一个新时代：游戏开发者和工作室的名称出现在游戏制作名单上。

P：在我看来，游戏行业的下一波技术革新大多是关于减少准入障碍的。你认为在未来5-10年，什么技术障碍将被克服，什么仍然牢牢掌握在AAA游戏手中？

D：老实说，我不认为技术障碍把AAA游戏和独立游戏区分开了。而是内容。我很喜欢的游戏如《刺客信条3》与独立游戏的差别在于，它的内容量太大了——那么多游戏模式、那么多场景、那么多角色。

《屋顶狂奔》开发者Adam Saltsman引文指出《刺客信条3》耗费了大量时间和人力。可惜我不记得数字了，但看到那张反映制作这样一款游戏需要的人力的表格，我确实震惊了。这是埃及造金字塔吗？独立游戏和AAA游戏的区别纯粹是资金成本和风险承受力。在未来五年，我认为这个差距会显著缩小，因为我认为“独立”预算会上涨，而AAA预算会下降。

P：对于技术和游戏行业，这似乎是一个好兆头，虽然现在还没看到苗头。你认为当时机成熟时，会不会有什么想法重新流行起来（可能是精神上继承）？

D：我参加技术企业家会议的经验很有限，到目前为止没有发现什么不好的想法——时机未到吧。我认为时间会证明想法的正确性的。我习惯于认为新想法是建立在旧想法之上的。这不算回答吧？（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）

What’s Next? How games-as-a-service is changing everything

By Patrick Miller

As a general partner at Signia Venture Partners, Dan Fiden’s job is to figure out the future of the games industry as best he can — so, naturally, he was a perfect pick to talk about the future of games. Read on to find out why he thinks freemium and games-as-a-service models are only beginning to catalyze changes that will reverberate through the entire industry.

Patrick Miller: Over the last few years, we’ve seen many game dev studios mirror the software-as-a-service and freemium models adopted widely by devs in the broader tech industry. As a longtime games veteran, how do you see that shift changing the way games are made and sold?

Daniel Fiden: By now, pretty much everyone recognizes what an upheaval the shift to digital distribution that began in about 2000 was for the music industry. Some of the most powerful incumbents on the publishing (labels), distribution, and retail sides of that business disappeared, others shrank substantially. Meanwhile, a company like Apple, previously a complete non-factor in the music business, became almost hegemonic. Sometimes you hear people compare what’s happening in the game business to that change. But I think that only captures part of the story, and the least interesting part at that.

The craft of making music — recording techniques, how songs are written — hasn’t changed. Sure, the tools and techniques have evolved, but not more than in any decade prior to the business model shift in 2000. And the basic act — write a song, perform and record the song, distribute the song — is the same. The shift to game-services is a complete rethink of what it means to make a game. Production processes, the composition of teams, what a shippable product is, how products evolve once they’re live — these are all fundamental changes that Western companies are just figuring out. To extend the music metaphor, it’s a shift from a composition-based approach to a completely improvisational approach.

So, yeah, I think it’s kind of a big deal.

PM: What future consequences do you see result from moving away from the pay-once model?

DF: The consequences are up to us. The removal of the payment barrier forces us to to rely on gameplay to make a business, not trailers. I think that’s a good thing. But we’re just beginning to understand the mechanics of the free-to-play model. Unfortunately, there are a lot of talented game makers out there who seem to have an emotional reaction to the model as its sometimes implemented today. They refuse to entertain trying it out. To me, that’s a bit like refusing to make television because The Big Bang Theory is stupid. It’s those great, skeptical, creative people who will push the model in interesting new directions.

PM: What’s the next major change you see coming up in terms of how games are made and sold?

DF: I think we’ll be learning how to run game services for the next decade. I hope to see interesting evolutions in what it means to operate a game live; specifically, what an event means. There are a few companies out there that understand how impactful events can be for your business and as a catalyst for your community. But I haven’t seen much in terms of pushing events creatively. I can’t wait to play a game that uses the events cadence to drive lore and storyline, and that leverages the community to help tell those stories. Paul Preece, one of the founders of Kixeye, talks convincingly about EVE and the epic storylines that exist and evolve in that world. Live game operators could guide those stories through events, just as events could reflect the stories that users create.

PM: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that VC has a bigger presence in games than it did, say, 20 years ago, and that the latest tech boom has kind of brought games along with it. As a longtime game dev, how do you see the presence of VC changing the way games are made and sold in the long term?

DF: There’s been a great debate about VC and games this year, driven by smart folks like [general partner at Benchmark Capital] Mitch Lasky. It’s true there has been a good deal of VC activity in games over the past five years, but perhaps that was driven more by VCs trying to invest in Facebook and mobile than it was by their interest or insight in games specifically. This year there’s been a reversal in that interest, probably driven by Zynga’s struggles on the public market. I do believe that the broader industry is in the middle of what I think is a massive transition — one that doesn’t have much to do with Facebook and mobile, but has everything to do with games-as-services.

In my opinion, that’s a bigger opportunity than casual games on any one platform or another. It’s about a reinvention of the Western game business overall. There’s money to be made in that transition, and not coincidentally the Asian companies most familiar with the power of those models — like Nexon and Tencent — are the most active investors right now.

There’s a separate but related question, and that’s what game financing will look like in the future. But my experience is that the answer is very different depending on the scope of your game. For games costing less than $1 million, there are tons of options: crowdfunding, angels, film-style financing deals, publishing deals, and to some extent VC. If your game costs more than $1 million, your options narrow substantially and look much more like your options prior to 2008 — pub/dev deals.

However, my personal opinion is that the opposite should be true. For a small company making sub-$1 million games, there’s no barrier to entry to limit your competition. You’re also competing with hobbyist developers who don’t care about making money at all. The barrier to entry exists in the $5 million range, financially and technically. This is the real opportunity right now, especially on tablets.

PM: Seems to me like your success or failure in VC is in part dependent on your ability to predict the future, so: What’s the one trend or buzzword you see around games that makes you skeptical when you hear it? What sets off your bullshit alert these days?

DF: I’ve probably used 50 in the last few sentences! For games, probably “fast follow.” It’s a not used all that much anymore, which is a reflection of how effective it’s been for most companies on platforms that are more frictionful than Facebook.

PM: Read any good books lately?

DF: Not particularly apropos this interview, but I did recently finish “A Dance with Dragons.”

PM: How do you think the mainstream game audience’s expectations of a video game will change in the future? Will people be more receptive to games that make us feel more complicated emotions than simply “entertained”? If so, how do you think a studio or a publisher ought to prepare for that future?

DF: This is one of the great things about the industry today — the increasing depth to the art of games. How should publishers prepare? I’d take a look at the decline and fall of the vertically integrated studio system in Hollywood. In the early part of the last century, the studios had all creative talent under contract. They were employees of the studios. But by the 1950s, this system had broken up. Creative talent were now largely free agents.

When you look at the big publishers today, it’s still a big studio system in which game makers are employees. But with the rise of democratized development and business model and distribution disruption, I think the publishers are effectively being broken up. I think it will lead to a new era of game makers’ and studios’ names appearing “above the title.”

PM: It seems to me that much of the next wave of tech innovation in games is about reducing barriers to entry. Which tech barriers do you think will be coming down in the next 5-10 years, and which do you think will remain strictly in the hands of triple-A?

DF: To be honest, I don’t think technical barriers are what differentiates triple-A from indie development anymore. It’s content. Games like Assassin’s Creed 3, which I liked quite a bit, are differentiated primarily because there’s just so much stuff in them — so many game modes, so many locations and characters.

[Canabalt creator] Adam Saltsman quoted an article saying how many hours of work went in to AS3. I don’t remember the number, unfortunately, but it was stunning enough that we had a chat about what other human endeavors required as many hours to build. The Pyramids? The differentiation is purely a matter of access to capital and appetite for risk. In the next five years, I see that chasm reduced primarily because I believe that “indie” budgets will increase and triple-A budgets will decrease.

PM: It seems like the best ideas in tech and games simply didn’t happen at the right time. Is there anything you think we’ll see come back (perhaps a spiritual successor) once the time is right?

DF: In my very limited experience meeting with tech entrepreneurs, nothing was ever a bad idea — it was just ahead of its time. I think the timing is a fundamental part of the validity of the idea. I also tend to believe that every idea builds on some previous idea. So how’s that for a non-answer?(source:gamasutra)