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分享《Charlie Murder》背后美好的开发故事

发布时间:2013-12-13 15:49:50 Tags:,,,,

作者:Nathan Meunier

很少有人能够为一款有关分尸的游戏注入浪漫元素。但是James Silva却做到了这点——在2011年的PAX的展台上当着许多观众的面,他利用游戏其女朋友,同时也是游戏开发合作伙伴的Michelle Juett求婚,并让对方大吃一惊。

这便是《Charlie Murder》的演示版本,我想没有一名Ska Studios成员会忘记这一刻。

oncept art for a Charlie Murder pirate gal enemy(from polygon)

oncept art for a Charlie Murder pirate gal enemy(from polygon)

Silva回想到:“我制作了一个小小的过场动画,在那里我向游戏中的Michelle求婚,而所有的游戏角色都在旁边注视着我们。”他偷偷地告知了许多好友,并让他们在周六下午3点聚集在游戏的展示台前。他表示:“这是我所做过最兴奋也是最大胆的事。”

Juett其实有点注意到了他在暗中进行的小计划。她说道:“我以为惊喜便是会出现许多观众。不过因为他在整个周末都表现得很古怪,这让我有点怀疑他应该在规划着什么。”

当求婚时刻到来时,Silva启动了游戏的特别版本,并开始游戏,到达了最重要的过场动画,按压A按键,单膝下跪并掏出一枚戒指。

在接受我们的电话访问时他笑着对妻子说道:“当你接受时我会按压A键去播放动画。不过我可没制作被你拒绝的动画。”

在血腥的阴霾以及怪异的动作下,《Charlie Murder》竟然还有温柔的一面,甚至让它的创造者能在代码与创造性的辅助下走向婚姻的殿堂。

James Silva proposes to Michelle Juett (from polygon)

James Silva proposes to Michelle Juett (from polygon)

还没有工作室

当Silva最初开始探索小时候的游戏创造梦时,游戏世界中还未出现“独立游戏”这一内容—-至少是基于与今天同样的意义。他以一种半玩笑式口吻说道:“那时候它被称为共享软件,几乎没有人会想要拥有它。”

Silva继续说道:“我记得当我还是青少年时,我基于HyperCard(游戏邦注:一个苹果电脑的应用程式,也是一套简单的编程环境)创造了《Mortal Wombat 2》。我将其加载到AOL,并发现有400个人下载了它。我喜欢‘这很棒!’的评价。”

大学为我提供一个很棒的机会去体验各种游戏设计。Silve作为一名业余的开发者并在业余时间不断编写各种代码,甚至找到某些独特的方式去提交一些完整的游戏,而不只是将其作为学校的作业。在完成课堂作业后他也为自己安排了额外的开发时间。但是当毕业逐渐逼近时,他不得不面对现实。必须找份工作去养活自己了。

他说道:“我找到了一份应用开发的工作,这看起来真的是一份‘实在的工作’,但是在短短两个月内我的身心就被折磨到不行。我发现每天晚上回到家里,我便没有额外的时间和精力去创造自己的游戏了。”

2007年是一个艰苦的开始。因为几乎没多少时间致力于自己的游戏项目并且精神状态也受到了影响,他有点想要说服自己放弃游戏创造了。这是一个令人沮丧的想法。他说道:“那时候我几乎就觉得这已经不可能成为自己生活中的一部分了。”不过之后他听到了一个足以改变一切的消息。

凭借着《洗碗工:死亡武士》(Silva在过去几年不断修修改改的一款游戏,并用了4个月的时间进行修补后参加了比赛),Silva赢得了微软的Dream.Build.Play Challenge。该项目推动了他与Xbox Live Arcade签订了发行合同,而所获得的启动资金再次将他的心带回了游戏创造领域。但也许更重要的是,这促成了Silva与老婆的认识。

PAX上的一场比赛

Michelle Juett在游戏产业中的第一份工作是游戏测试者,即测试Xbox Live Arcade的游戏。这大概是在2008年的时候,她注意到了一款游戏,即《洗碗工:死亡武士》。

Juett回想到:“我记得那是在游戏实验室中少有的激动时刻,因为我们通常看到的都是一些较无聊的内容。但这款游戏却是那么与众不同,它不只是一款简单的行动游戏,这是我们都想要尝试的内容。”

住在两岸的Juett和Silva第一次见面是在西雅图,也就是2009年Penny Arcade Expo期间。那之后他们一直保持着联系,并开始联机玩游戏。一年后他们正式开始约会了。不久以后,Juett就搬到纽约的斯克内克塔迪与Silva同居,然后以美术人员和市场营销主管的身份加入了Ska Studios。

成为情侣是一回事,而共同创造游戏对于这对情侣来说则是一场持续进行的变革。Juett说道:“这让整个过程更具迭代性。”Silva负责所有的编程工作,他们现在一起分担图像创造,反复尝试各种想法,并将自己的技能利用在每个项目中。

在说到他们的合作关系时她表示:“现在一切都在变好,但说实话,一开始的时候我们真的面临了巨大的挑战。我们必须尝试着不去伤害彼此的感受,因为我们每天都是一起工作,一起生活。”

致力于《Charlie Murder》,Juett花了许多时间去调整并优化图像,同时还设计了许多游戏中的可怕怪兽以及所有角色可以穿搭的滑稽服装。她甚至还参与了游戏配音,即作为游戏早期的一个boss的声音。所以这是她非常引以为傲的一部作品。

有时候她也会担心自己的创造性会对工作室的日常工作产生消极影响,并削减了Silva通过自己之前的游戏所聚集的用户基础。这种想法总是会时不时出现在她的脑子里,即使她的老公就在旁边与之奋战着。

当然了,Silva并不会这么想,他说道:“我只是希望她能大胆地传达自己的创造性,而不要担心那些影响。”Silva承认图像创造并不是自己的强项,并表示这是能让Juett发光发亮的一个领域。

尽管他们坦诚地谈论了工作关系中的种种挑战,但是这对夫妇却不会让这种困难呈现在自己的创造性工作上,在他们的作品中只有疯狂且夸张的滑稽动作。

僵尸,啤酒和刺青

当你砍断僵尸的臂膀并将其杀死时,你将会从它那腐败的尸体上得到酿造一品脱印度淡啤酒的材料。还有,如果你是来自后末世的朋克乐队,跳着舞穿越一群可怕的人,并煮了一些有意义的神奇液体。

在解释《Charlie Murder》的混乱的配方,包括讲着莫霍克语的巨大的机器人,电锯师,渗透魔法的刺青以及迷幻的嬉皮士所烹煮的一大锅血腥“食物”时,Silva笑着说道:“许多理念是来自各个地方,整个创造性过程就像基于游戏的朋克摇滚般。”

的确,凭感觉做决定似乎是Ska Studio最近所运行的一个主题。Juett补充道:“我们总是有很多突然而来的想法,就像‘我想要将这个放到游戏中,’然后就将其添加进去了。”

“为什么不呢”这一欢乐的游戏设计方法在AAA级游戏开发中并不常见,但这却是这对富有创造性的夫妇的独立精神的标志。

就拿游戏中特别的酿酒系统来说吧,这便是受到一个酿造啤酒的好友以及这对夫妇对于精酿啤酒的喜好之情的启发。Silva说道:“这似乎是你能够做到的最具朋克摇滚形式的炼金术。”实际上你必须从敌人腐烂的身体中提炼出所需要的关键元素。这多么特别啊。

炸毁你所捏造的虚拟酿酒厂去提高战斗能力是《Charlie Murder》的特殊机制之一,这也是受到创造者个人兴趣的启发。在游戏中拜访刺青店让粗暴的摇滚角色纹上刺青是Silva对于自己年轻时期沉迷刺青的回顾。

《Charlie Murder》可以说是《Zombie Samshers X》的续集,后者是他在2001年所创造的一款《热血物语》风格的游戏。虽然《Zombie Samshers X》在设计上更加简单,但同样沐浴在血腥与布满僵尸的氛围中,此外游戏也突出了同样的刺青系统。Silva感受到了这一理念的魅力,并决定让它复活。

他说道:“我喜欢角色从赤裸到布满刺青的变化,这也是我为何让T恤显得无形的原因。”

他思考了片刻并补充道:“但是我不知道自己现在的年龄是否还适合做这些事。”

声音和精神中的朋克

朋克摇滚的无政府主义风气那坚毅的外观和疾风乱舞就像一股电流般贯穿着《Charlie Murder》。这有点让人惊讶,但是这对夫妇对于摇滚的热爱可不是只有一两天。

early sketch of a Charlie Murder enemy(from polygon)

early sketch of a Charlie Murder enemy(from polygon)

Silva过去可以说是一名彻头彻尾的音乐分子,中学的时候他甚至在一个名为One Screw Loose的斯卡朋克乐队(游戏邦注:这也是他们现在工作室名字的由来)中打过架子鼓。他承认:“尽管听起来像是在装腔作势,但说实话,与大多数朋克摇滚乐手一样,我也是在郊区长大。我真的很喜欢那些人的装扮与态度。而现在我却是个脾气暴躁的30岁老男人。”

Juett在绘制他们的生活与《Charlie Murder》的背后故事间的联系时说道:“我们都是资深网虫。这些角色在过去都是《龙与地下城》的网虫,但现在他们是朋克摇滚乐队成员,因为他们想要创造那样的音乐。不过他们并不需要扎根于这样的文化中。”

Silva在年龄的增长中未遗失的一件东西便是他的摇滚精神。

在过去几年里他为自己的游戏创造了所有音乐,《Charlie Murder》也让他有机会能够将年轻时候的疯狂能量注入游戏中。他说道:“我想要创造音乐,我想要让人们听到我的音乐。而实现这一目标的最佳方法便是制作游戏。如果你只是将音乐放在网络上,你便很难让人们去听这些音乐。”

虚拟乐队的录音(他通过自己重叠所有的乐器并用麦克风演奏出了不同的声音)是其游戏内部任务角色的主要构成要素之一。他说道:“我认为这能够有效地描述这些角色,我也为最终呈现出的效果感到自豪。”

Silva将往事带进游戏中的另外一个表现便是《Charlie Murder》的过场动画,即角色执行了来自《I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1》(游戏邦注:这是一款非常单纯的俯视视点全方位射击游戏)的主题。

Silva说道:“这具有很强的象征意义,因为《I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1》让我觉得自己创造了一些足以带给人们巨大影响的内容,这是一个最高点。在那之后我开始觉得自己越来越不行了,这种想法也成为《Charlie Murder》的一部分。”

独立生活

随着新主机时代的到来,Ska Studios继续向这一新领域拓展着。Silva说道:“我们一直做得不错。为了继续创造更多游戏,我们都在尝试着更加节约地生活着。”

在《Charlie Murder》成功后,这对夫妇开始为未来进行规划,并处理他们所面对的种种挑战。Silva承认,在这几个月间他们真的是忙疯了,除了修改发行后所出现的种种漏洞,参加各种活动去展现游戏,同时还要准备将《洗碗机:吸血鬼的微笑》推向PC平台。所以他们没有太多时间去进行下一个游戏项目。

Silva说道:“我的想法只是创造游戏谋生—-这将让一切变得有价值。我们只是需要创造一个世界,并看着它活跃起来便可。这真的非常有趣。”

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

Charlie Murder: The love story?

By Nathan Meunier

Precious few people could manage to turn a gruesome, ultraviolent game about dismembering undead hordes with their own severed limbs into a grand romantic gesture. James Silva pulled it off, though — surprising his girlfriend and game development partner Michelle Juett with an in-game wedding proposal right on the PAX 2011 show floor in front of a bustling crowd of onlookers.

It was a Charlie Murder demo session neither member of Ska Studios will forget.

“I made a little cutscene where in-game me proposed to in-game Michelle and all of our characters were in the game crowded around watching,” he recalls, adding that he covertly notified a bunch of their friends, telling them to gather at the game’s demo booth at 3 p.m. that Saturday. “It was one of the most exciting yet terrifying things I’ve ever done,” he says.

Juett suspected some kind of sneakery was afoot. “I think the surprise was that there were so many people around us,” she says. “I sort of had a hint he was doing something suspicious because he was acting super weird all weekend.”

When the time came to pop the question, Silva booted up the special version of the game, started playing, got to the critical cutscene, hit the A button, dropped to one knee and produced the ring.

“I had to press A for the animation for when you accepted,” he chuckles slyly to his wife of just over a year during our phone interview. “I didn’t make an animation for if you shot me down.”

Beneath the crazy blood-soaked haze and outlandish antics, there’s a surprisingly tender side to the tale of Charlie Murder that binds its creators together beyond coding and creativity.

The studio that almost wasn’t

When Silva first began exploring his childhood dream of making games for a living over a decade ago, there was no such thing as “indie” in the gaming world — at least not in the same sense as it exists today. “Back then it was called shareware and nobody wanted it,” he quips in a not-quite-joking tone.

“I remember when I was a teenager I made a thing on [Macintosh application-programming tool] HyperCard … called Mortal Wombat 2,” Silva says. “I uploaded it to AOL, and I had 400 people download it. I was like ‘this is awesome!’” He was hooked.

College proved to be a perfect opportunity to play around with a broad range of game design experiments. Silva crafted code as a hobbyist developer in his spare time, even finding inventive ways to occasionally submit completed games instead of dull reports for his final class projects. He carved out additional blocks of development time whenever he could afford to blow off class work. But when graduation rolled around, his bubble burst. It was time to hunker down and try to earn a living.

“I got a job doing applications development, which would have been a just fine ‘real job,’ but within the first two months it became this soul-crushing thing,” he says. “What I realized was that when I got home every night I didn’t have enough time or energy to work on games for fun.”

That year — 2007 — was off to a rough start. With zero time to work on his game projects and a waning spirit, he begrudgingly convinced himself to give up on making games. It was a depressing prospect. “I basically had accepted at that point that it wasn’t going to be a part of my life,” he says. Then he got the news that would change everything.

Silva had just won Microsoft’s Dream.Build.Play Challenge with The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai — a game he had tinkered away at over the years and then revamped over the course of four months entirely for the competition. The project scored him an Xbox Live Arcade publishing contract and the start-up cash needed to steer his aspirations back on course. But perhaps more importantly, it set the stage for an eventual chance encounter with his future wife.

A match made at PAX

In her first game industry job, Michelle Juett worked as a game tester putting Xbox Live Arcade titles through their paces. It was around 2008, and one of the games that came through the lab was The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. She was impressed.

“It was a really exciting time in the labs, because usually we’d get [less thrilling] games that’d come through,” Juett recalls, noting she also thought it was cool that the game was made by only one guy. “There’s a lot of just … stuff … on there, and this was more of an action game, which is kind of what we liked to play.”

Living on opposite coasts, Juett and Silva met in person for the first time in Seattle during the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo. They kept in touch, started playing games together online, and officially began dating about a year later. Before long, Juett moved to Schenectady, N.Y. to be with Silva, later joining Ska Studios in an official capacity as an artist and marketing manager.

“We had to try not to hurt each other’s feelings because we do work with each other and live with each other all day.”

Being a couple is one thing, but settling into making games together has been an ongoing evolution for the pair. “It makes it more iterative of a process,” Juett says. While Silva does all of the programming, they now share in the art duties, bounce ideas back and forth, and add their own personal touches to each project in other ways.

“It’s getting better, but it was more challenging at first,” she says, of their collaborative working relationship. “We had to try not to hurt each other’s feelings because we do work with each other and live with each other all day.”

Working on Charlie Murder, Juett spent a lot of time fine-tuning and polishing the art, while also designing many of the game’s gruesome monsters and all of the zany costumes characters can wear. She even contributed vocals to the game’s soundtrack and supplies the voice of one of the earlier bosses — a psychotic dude in a giant cheeseburger suit. It’s a performance she’s particularly proud of.

Occasionally, however, she worries that her creative influences will negatively affect the studio’s established routine and turn off the fan base Silva built on the back of his previous solo games. It’s something that sits in the back of her mind at times, as she’s working alongside her husband.

Of course, he doesn’t see it that way at all, saying, “I just want her to be creative and not worry about the impact.” Silva readily admits that art isn’t his strong suit, and says that’s one area in particular where Juett’s creative touch really shines.

Despite their openness about the insecurities and challenges that come from easing into a work relationship alongside their personal one, the couple doesn’t let these difficulties show in their creative work, which is woven with crazy, over-the-top antics.

Zombies, brews and tattoos

When you rip off a zombie’s arm and club it back to death, the last thing you expect to see drop out of its rotting corpse are the ingredients for brewing a pint of India Pale Ale. Then again, if you’re a post-apocalyptic punk band slam dancing your way through hellish hordes, taking a pit-stop to boil up a little stat-building liquid courage makes perfect sense, right?

“A lot of the ideas just came from wherever,” laughs Silva when explaining the chaotic recipe for Charlie Murder, which throws everything from giant mohawk-adorned robots and chainsaw fu to magic-imbuing tattoos and psychedelic hippy massacres into a bizarre and bloody melting pot. “The creative process was probably as punk rock as the game [itself].”

Indeed, seat-of-your-pants decision making seems to be a running theme with Ska Studios’ latest effort. “There was a lot of waking up, being like ‘I want to put this in the game,’ and then putting it in,” adds Juett.

A lighthearted “sure, why the hell not” approach to game design isn’t something you see very often in the stuffy world of AAA development, but it’s a hallmark of this creative couple’s indie spirit.

Take the game’s unusual brewing system, for example, which was inspired by a homebrewer pal and the couple’s love of craft beer. “It seemed like the most punk rock form of alchemy you could do,” says Silva. The fact you have to bludgeon the key ingredients from your foes’ decaying bodies? A nice touch.

“I love how the characters look as they metamorphose from bare to inked-up, and that’s why I made it so you can make your shirt invisible.”

Chugging virtual brews you’ve concocted to boost your battle prowess is only one of Charlie Murder’s peculiar mechanics loosely inspired by personal interests. The ability to drop by the in-game tattoo shop to give rowdy rocker characters fresh ink to power special attacks is a hefty nod to Silva’s own youthful obsession with tattoos and one of the first full games he made.

Charlie Murder is actually a spiritual successor to a River City Ransom-style beat-’em-up he made back in 2001 called Zombie Smashers X. More primitive in design but bathed in similar levels of blood and zombie-bashing, that game featured a similar tattoo system. Silva decided it was too sweet of an idea to leave buried and resurrected it.

“I love how the characters look as they metamorphose from bare to inked-up, and that’s why I made it so you can make your shirt invisible,” he says. “I still want to get sleeves.”

He takes a moment to reconsider, adding, “I don’t know if I’m too old for that.”

Punk in sound and spirit

The gritty aesthetics and sonic assault of punk rock’s anarchistic ethos flow through Charlie Murder’s horror-strewn underpinnings like an electric current. It’s a little surprising to hear, however, that the couple’s punk rocker days are largely behind them.

Silva used to be really into the music, even playing drums as a high schooler in a ska punk band called One Screw Loose — which is partially where the studio’s name came from. “I’m such a poser though,” he admits, chuckling. “I grew up in the suburbs, like most punk rockers. But yeah, the way people dressed and the attitude, I really liked that. Now I’m just kind of a grumpy old man in my 30s.”

“We’re both big nerds,” Juett adds, drawing loose parallels between their own lives and the back story of Charlie Murder’s. “All of these characters used to be huge D&D nerds, but now they’re a punk rock band because they want to make that kind of music. They weren’t necessarily ingrained with the culture.”

“It was kind of symbolic, because I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1 was such a high point for feeling like I made something amazing that impacted people.”

One thing Silva hasn’t lost in his “old age” is his rocking edge.

He’s created all of the music for his own games over the years, and Charlie Murder gave him an opportunity to channel that frenetic energy of his youth in a more personal way than past projects did. “I want to make music, and I want people to hear my music,” he says. “It just works out that the best way of doing that is making a game. If you just put music on the internet, it’s hard to get people to listen to it.”

The virtual band’s recorded sound — something he concocted by overlaying all of the instrumental parts by himself and howling into the mic with different voices — is a crucial aspect of its in-game persona. “I think it really portrays them well, and I’m proud of how it came out,” he says.

Another important reference to Silva’s past comes later in the game during a cutscene where Charlie Murder the character performs the theme from I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1.

“It was kind of symbolic, because I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1 was such a high point for feeling like I made something amazing that impacted people, even if it’s just for being silly,” says Silva. “I think I’ve been left with this sort of fear of becoming washed-up, and that’s kind of a part of Charlie Murder. It’s a pinnacle moment.”

The indie life

Far from being washed-up, Ska Studios continues to push onward into new territory as the next console generation gears up for launch. “We’ve been doing OK,” says Silva. “We basically try to live as frugally as possible just in case our games tank.”

“For me the idea of just being able to make games for a living — that just makes everything worth it.”

Following Charlie Murder’s success, the couple is settling into a comfortable routine, planning for the future, and tackling challenges as they come. Between rounds of post-release bug-stomping, traveling to conventions to showcase the game, and preparing to port The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile to PC, it’s been a crazy few months, Silva admits. Still, they’ve had a little free time to start tinkering with their next game project.

“For me the idea of just being able to make games for a living — that just makes everything worth it,” Silva says. “It’s really neat to create a world and watch it come to life. It’s so much fun.” (source:polygon)


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