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《Spaceteam》开发者谈创造免费游戏的原因

发布时间:2014-07-01 11:32:59 Tags:,,,,

作者:Henry Smith

我是Henry,我创造了游戏《Spaceteam》。我想要继续创造免费游戏,以下便是原因:

如今你可以在自己的手机上买到的大多数游戏只需要99美分。似乎PC游戏业开始向这条路走来。

价格并不能真正反映开发者在制作一款游戏时所投入的时间与努力。有些游戏是由一个人花费几周时间所完成的,但也有些游戏是由一支团队花费数个月甚至是好几年的时间创造而成。

为了在市场中存活下来,你必须拥有巨大的广告预算,或者你可以期待着自己的游戏能够通过病毒性推广而大受欢迎。我们不能预见任何结果,你当然也不能依赖于它。这一系统被破坏了。

然后我们拥有了所谓的“免费”游戏。许多游戏声明是免费的,但实际上却要求你花钱购买能量或货币才能继续游戏,有时候在这个过程中还会以牺牲真正的游戏设计为代价。它们经常使用探索性技巧,而这往往会引起让人上瘾的问题。这一系统被破坏了。

你可以尝试着使用广告存活下来,但广告却会让你从游戏中分心,它们占据着屏幕的某些部分,你可能会偶然点到它们,而它们与游戏的体验是毫无关系的。为了赚钱你需要让很多人去看到它们,这些钱便是来自与游戏创造者或玩家无关的第三方。这一系统被破坏了。

现在让我们假设我很幸运,成功销售出了足够的游戏能够养活自己。有些人会购买我的游戏,玩一次游戏后便将其删除,不再碰它。但我仍然拥有他们的钱,不过就此我们将不再有任何联系,他们不知道我是谁,或者我在用那些钱做什么,他们可能根本就不在乎。即使它是可行的,我也觉得系统可以变得更好。

所以有什么替代选择吗?

存在许多潜在的解决方法,但我现在所尝试的是集资。

首先,这是一种“付你能付”的模式,这对于我来说很有意义。有些人很乐意支付比1美元价格标签还多的钱。每个人的境况都是不同的。

这也不只是一种冲动购买。你在面向真正的人进行投资,因为你相信他们所做的一切。

最终,如果游戏本身是免费的,你就不需要担心复制或复制保护或盗版行为。实际上,尽可能广泛地分析游戏很有意义,即去鼓励别人复制并分享你的游戏。毕竟如果数字游戏是免费发行的,那么我们所创造的所有限制条件便有可能在未来继续引起任何问题。

我并不是想利用自己的广告活动去销售一件产品,我想销售的其实是个愿景。

在这个愿景中,创造者和美术师将能够自由地进行试验,创新并与所有人分享他们的创造,同时不用担心支付租金等等。

产品是重要的,但却不如人们重要。我们需要彼此帮助并通过写作而创造一些优秀的新内容。

这也是我为何想要创造免费游戏的原因。

如果你觉得这个理念具有吸引力,那就尽情地去分析广告活动。这些被破坏的系统影响着我们所有人,我不能独自改变它们。我需要你们的帮助。我想要听到你们对此的看法,所以加入论坛或Twitter,让我们在此进行讨论。

Ridiculous Fishing(from vipcn)

Ridiculous Fishing(from vipcn)

附录1:有些人提到这并不能处理版权和复制的问题,这并没错,复制问题仍存在着。然而区别就在于如果你的游戏是免费的,你便不会输掉任何钱。最近最显著的两个复制故事(《Threes》和《搞笑钓鱼》)便是两款遭遇免费复制的付费游戏。在这两个例子中,初始作者仍保留着其诚实与声誉。

如果有人未征得你的同意便复制你的理念,这便仍是一种糟糕的行为,这会让你大大受挫。但如果你允许别人复制并转换你的理念,并且他们认真地对待这样的复制,那么最终便能够创造出一些有趣的新内容。

我认为理念的所有权变得不再那么重要的,越来越多的事物被复制/混合/重塑,我想最初的理念也只是文化/环境/教育等等的产物。我们需要开始支持人们而不再是产品。

附录2:就像之前所提到的,这一模式与免费游戏并没有区别:免费发行游戏并获得大量粉丝的支持。问题就在于免费游戏设计是充满能够引出上瘾行为的心理操控和系统。花最多钱于免费游戏的人并不一定就能负担得起它,更不可能的是你将“偶然”贡献大量的钱于赞助广告活动中。

附录3:因为这是一个经常被问起的问题:是的,我知道Patreon(游戏邦注:一个众筹网站)!我喜欢Patreon,我已经支持了一些创造者,我正计划为了长期的持续发展将其用于自己身上。我选择孤注一掷的Kickstarter方法开始是因为我需要确保自己是否能够在更深入前创造这些免费游戏。否则我将会被置于一种尴尬的局面,并且这对于支持者来说也并不公平。

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

Why I Want To Make Free Games

by Henry Smith

Hi, I’m Henry. I made the game Spaceteam. I want to keep making free games, and this is why:

Most of the games you can buy on your phone these days cost only 99 cents. And it looks like PC games are starting to head that way too.

This price does not in any way reflect the actual time and effort it takes to make a game. Some of these games are made by one person in a few weeks, but others take a team of people months or years to build.

In order to survive you either have to a huge advertising budget, or, you have to hope that somehow your game becomes a viral mega-hit. You can’t predict it, and you certainly can’t rely on it. This system is broken.

Then we have so-called “free-to-play” games. Many of these claim to be free but actually require you to spend money on energy or coins to keep playing, sometimes sacrificing the actual game design in the process. They often use exploitative techniques and this brings up troubling questions of addiction. This system is broken.

You can try to survive using advertising, but ads distract you from the game, they take up part of the screen, you click on them by accident, and they’re not related to the experience of the game. You need thousands of people to see them in order to make money at all, and that money is coming from a third-party with no connection to the creator or the player. This system is broken.

Now let’s say I get lucky, and manage to sell enough games to support myself. Some people will buy my game, play it once, and then delete it, never touching it again. I still have their money, but there’s no connection there, they don’t know who I am, or what I’m doing with that money, and they probably don’t care. Even when it works, I think the system could be better.

So what’s the alternative?

Well, there are many potential solutions, but the one I’m trying now is crowd-funding.

First, it’s a pay-what-you-can model, which makes a lot more sense to me. Some people are happy to pay more than that ubiquitous $1 price-tag. Everyone’s situation is different.

It’s also more than just an impulse purchase. You’re making an investment, in a real person, because you believe in what they’re doing.

And finally, if the games themselves are free there’s no need to worry about clones or copy-protection or piracy. In fact it makes sense to share the games as widely as possible and to encourage others to copy them and share them as well. After all, digital games are essentially free to distribute anyway so all these artificial restrictions we’ve built up will continue to cause problems in the future.

I’m not trying to sell a product with my campaign, I’m trying to sell a vision.

In this vision, creators & artists are free to experiment, to innovate, and to share their creations with everyone, without worrying about how to pay rent.

Products are great, but they’re not as important as people. We need to help each other and create amazing new things by working together… as a spaceteam.

That’s why I want my games to be free.

If this philosophy sounds intriguing to you, then please share the campaign as widely as you can. These broken systems affect all of us, and I can’t change them by myself. I need your help. And I’d love to hear what you think about all of this, so please join me in the forum or on Twitter and let’s talk about how we can make it happen.

Space out!

- Henry Smith (aka Captain Spaceteam)

Addendum #1: Someone mentioned that this doesn’t address the problem of copyright and clones, and of course this is correct, clones will still get made. The difference is that you won’t be losing any money if your game is free to start with. The two most notable recent cloning stories (Threes and Ridiculous Fishing) were both paid games that got hijacked by free clones. And in both these cases, the truth came out and the original authors kept their integrity and reputation.

If someone copies your idea without crediting you then that’s still very uncool and it can be extremely frustrating. But if you let people copy and transform your idea and they’re not jerks about it then it can lead to some wonderful new things.

I think ownership of ideas is becoming less important as more and more things are copied/hacked/remixed/repurposed, and I believe even the most original ideas are very much a product of culture/circumstance/upbringing/etc.? We need to start supporting people instead of products.

Addendum #2: It’s also been mentioned that this model isn’t that different from F2P: give the game away for free and get supported by your biggest fans. The problem is that F2P design is full of psychological manipulation and systems that enable addictive behaviours. The people spending the most on F2P games can’t necessarily afford it (see the many troubling articles on “whales”), whereas it’s much more unlikely that you’ll “accidentally” contribute large sums of money to a patronage campaign.

Addendum #3: Because it’s a frequently asked question: yes, I do know about Patreon! I love Patreon, I already support several creators, and I’m planning to use it myself for longer-term sustainability. The reason I chose the all-or-nothing Kickstarter approach to start with is that I need to be sure that I can afford to make these games for free before committing to them. Otherwise it will put me in an awkward situation and won’t be fair to the backers.(source:gamasutra)

 


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