如果要说2010年游戏领域发生什么大事的话，那非社交游戏的重大转变莫属。在今年上半年，社交游戏主要集中在Facebook等社交网站。最近，发行商们纷纷开发手机平台社交游戏。今天，我们有机会联线手机游戏领域最大的社交游戏开发公司TeamLava。该公司开发了Farm Story, City Story, Restaurant Story和Empire Story等多款手机社交游戏。今天我们邀请该公司合作创办者Perry Tam和商业开发部总裁Johnny Coghlan为我们讲述些TeamLava的背后故事。

Restaurant Story

与开发其他平台的游戏相比，在手机设备上开发社交游戏是否一度十分艰难？

Perry Tam：我们公司专门开发手机平台游戏，因此没有其他平台的开发数据可以进行比较。 但我们公司的角色扮演或虚拟世界游戏都受到了玩家的热烈欢迎。我们会继续努力开发更有趣的游戏体验。

您是否认为有必要扩展到iPhone以外的游戏平台呢？我们有没有机会在Android手机平台或Facebook社交网站上体验TeamLava的游戏呢？

我们的确考虑过开发针对这些平台的游戏，但目前我们对自己在iOS平台上的地位十分满意。我觉得TeamLava旗下的高品质社交游戏在其他平台或设备上的发展前景是十分可观的。

贵公司开发的游戏可以在iPhone和iPad平台上运行，但两个平台上的同款游戏却无法同步。这样一来，如果玩家同时拥有这两款设备，他就得分别进行同样的游戏进程。这种情况以后会有所改善吗？

我们的开发团队也经常收到用户的类似反馈，我们会尽量开发游戏更新，满足玩家的请求。

TeamLava开发的所有游戏都是免费的，主要收入都来自于玩家在游戏中的购物情况。您对这种商业模式的看法是？

我们的目标是尽量让全世界更多的人享受我们的免费游戏。而游戏内置道具购物主要是为了照顾那些想要加快进度或没有时间游戏的玩家。在我们的论坛和App Store中，很多玩家都表示TeamLava的游戏无需付费也很有趣。因此，免费游戏仍是我们目前最好的商业模式。

在过去的几个月中，日本DeNA公司收购了多家美国iPhone社交游戏开发公司。您认为这是否会引起App Store中的独立社交游戏公司发生改变？

我最近不再担任Chillingo公司的发行总监，而之前我也曾在Ubisoft和SEGA公司任职了近10年，我经历过游戏行业很多的风云变幻。与TeamLava的众多员工一样，我们致力于开发高品质的游戏体验。以满足和取悦我们的游戏玩家。同时，我们还为玩家准备了很多新的免费游戏内容，确保他们在与朋友进行每日社交互动的同时享受新的游戏体验。

TeamLava的多款游戏都十分类似Facebook上的热门游戏。 到现在为止，我们见过的有种植类，城市建设类、旅馆经营类和帝国建设类。TeamLava的下一步计划是？

并非如此，我们旗下的很多游戏都是TeamLava原创——我相信在我们发布的新游戏将会令Gamezebo耳目一新。

鉴于TeamLave目前开发的游戏题材，我们可以假设TeamLava的亿员工都十分热衷于Facebook游戏。如果您可以说服iPhone迷们暂时收起手机体验一款Facebook游戏的话，您会推荐那一款游戏？

只要是能吸引人，让人想再次体验的游戏都值得一试。因此只要是玩家喜欢的，TeamLave都会努力地去发觉和开发。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

If 2010 is going to be remembered for anything in the gaming world, it’s going to be the overwhelming shift to social. In the first half of the year that focus was on Facebook. More recently, however, publishers have been exploring the opportunities to be had in mobile social games. We recently had the opportunity to pick the minds behind one of mobile gaming’s biggest social players, TeamLava.

Responsible for Farm Story, City Story, Restaurant Story and Empire Story, we were lucky enough to hear a little about TeamLava’s own story from VP of Business Development Johnny Coghlan.

Are you finding that social games are having a harder time gaining traction on mobile devices than they did on desktops?

TeamLava has always created games exclusively for mobile devices. So we do not have the data from the other side to compare. Our role-playing and virtual world titles have focused on addictive, compelling gameplay that rewards and excites our fans. The community and support we receive for the games is phenomenal, and we really feel an obligation to ensure we reward that loyalty with regular free new content updates to maintain interest.

Do you see any value in spreading your wings beyond the iPhone? What are the chances we’ll see TeamLava’s games on competing platforms like Android, or even on a social network like Facebook?

These are certainly platforms we are considering but for the time being we’re very happy with our position on the iOS platform. The future is very bright for TeamLava on every platform and device that we support with our top-quality games.

While all of your games natively run on both iPhone and iPad thanks to universal support, player’s aren’t able to sync their games, forcing them two run two completely different farms/cities/restaurants if they happen to use both devices. Any chance we may see that change in the future?

One thing that you can be sure of is that the team constantly reads the feedback from our users and factors their requests into our updates and product development.

TeamLava offers all of their games for free, preferring to draw their profits from in-app purchases. How effective are you finding this business model? Is “freemium” everything it’s cracked up to be?

Our key objective is to get as many people as possible globally playing and enjoying our free games. The in-app purchases are primarily there for players that want to progress faster, make up for lost time or get premium items. Every TeamLava game can be enjoyed fully when played free, as you can see by the really positive player reactions we get on our forums and on the App Store. Right now freemium is the best model for us.

Over the past few months, Japan-based DeNA has been buying up a variety of American iPhone developers with a penchant for social gaming. How is this changing the App Store landscape for independent social game developers such as yourself?

I recently left my position as Head of Publishing at Chillingo and prior to that I spent around 10 years at Ubisoft and SEGA, so I’ve seen a lot of change in the games industry. Like everyone else at TeamLava, we strive to making games with high quality gameplay that surprises and delights users. We also supply a lot of free new content to players, ensuring that they can still discover and enjoy new experiences as they play and socialize with friends every day.

Each of your games so far seems to mimic a successful genre that can normally be found on Facebook. So far we’ve seen farming, city-building, restaurant management, and empire-building. What’s next for TeamLava?

That would be telling! There’s a lot of exciting new games coming from both TeamLava – we’ll make sure Gamezebo hears about it first when we announce new developments!

Judging by the influence they’ve had on your titles, it seems safe to assume that the TeamLava crew are big fans of Facebook games. If you could tell your iPhone fans to tuck their mobile devices away for a moment and play a game on Facebook, what game would you recommend?

Anything that’s exciting and makes you want to come back. The future is definitely on mobile devices though, so whatever you like there are plenty more TeamLava games to discover and dive into! （Source：Gamezebo）