作者：Alex Johansson

我第一次参与游戏设计是在大学的时候。尽管为游戏设计角色和图像是非常有趣的体验，但是依赖于其他人意味着项目并未真正完成。这种情况每年都会发生，直到有一天我决定开发属于自己的游戏。在之前的每一个项目中我都承担着图像和编程工作，结果便是我真正开始制作自己的游戏，而不再是为每一年的项目创造“一些好看的图像和一些有问题的原型”。在去年9月份的时候，我开始了自己的业务，并作为专营商继续专注于开发项目中，扮演着自己的游戏中除音乐师外的所有角色。

indie vs twindie(from gamasutra)

以下是我从中获得的一些好处：

1.能够获得100%的利润—-独自工作意味着如果你创造所有的内容，你便能够获得所有的结果。

2.完全的创造性自由—-不管你的脑子里蹦出多么疯狂的理念，我都可以不用受到别人的打击而果断创造出来。

3.独自完成一切意味着你不需要依赖于其他人，并且你知道一定能够完成工作。

4.你必须做更多工作，从而你能够学到各种技巧。

5.只要你可以承担一切，你便不需要任何人的支持，如此你便可以自己安排时间去完成项目。

6.你不需要付薪资给任何员工！

7.独自完成一个项目是一个巨大的成就。

尽管创造自己的作品具有这些好处，但也存在各种缺陷和坏处：

1.所有一切都落在你的肩上：尽管学到新技能是件好事，但是在游戏开发中真的有很多事要做。你可能会因为各种突发事件而承受巨大的压力。

2.独自工作：独自一人致力于一个项目中意味着你将不能与其他人分享创造游戏的各个部分。

3.独自完成所有工作意味着你不能依靠其他人去减轻工作量。

4.尽管你自己一个人可以，但是缺少劳动力意味着开发时间会变长，从而抵消了另一个人所花费的费用。就像虽然《Narcissus》这款游戏到现在还广受好评，但是该项目却花费了我3年的时间才完成。

5.拥有彻底的创造性自由意味着我可能会致力于脑子里突然蹦出的一个新理念，而未能专注于当前的项目。

6.你一个人可能很难向人们证明你所创造的作品足够优秀。

在写这一列表的时候我突然想到，独自工作也有可能是因为以自我为中心和贪婪的性格所导致。我真的很认真在思考独自工作的正面原因，但能想到的真的不多。最近我听到一个关于投资别人能够比投资自己拥有更大的满足感的TED演讲。于是我便好奇这是否同样适用于游戏开发中。

今年夏天，我再次前往美国并与旧识Tyler Giordano见面。我们一起讨论过去一年里各自都做了什么以及创造了什么主题的电子游戏。过去我们曾共同致力于多个项目中，在喝了几杯后我们都同意共同创造一款电子游戏。《CHIGUN》便是我们想到的理念；即一款较短但却带有5个阶段的战斗竞技游戏，玩家将在游戏中收集子弹并用手中的枪进行发射。

在与Tyler的合作过程中，我想出了一些与其他人合作的理由：

争吵是好事

与另外一个可能会否定你的创造性理念的人合作，与对方讨论你的观点意味着你需要辩证你所拥有的每一个理念。这听起来可能像缺点，但这却意味着只有最棒的理念才能用于创造最终作品，并能够提高你的协商技巧。我和Tyler几乎每天都会为一些功能而展开讨论，但正是Tyler开放的创造性思维以及我基于技术上的现实思维的结合才能创造出疯狂的内容以及理智的技术内容的平衡。

你的队友看起来很瘦

与其他人共事将推动着你更努力，因为你知道其他人也要赚钱吃饭。虽然在与Tyler的合作中我们拥有备办食物，但是如果《CHIGUN》失败了，我们便很难去证明能够创造另一款成功的游戏（游戏包注：因为对于我们来说如果要继续创造电子游戏，Tyler便需要来到英国，如此我们才能在同一间办公室继续共事）。

分享很棒的内容

伴随着财政上的推动力量外还有其他人的热情。我们将设定每个人的目标，然后再次集中在一起以明确我们创造了什么—-通常我们会互相鼓励彼此的看法。只是为了看到别人的反应而创造一些很酷的内容真的是一种享受—-你将从他们的鼓励中获得动力，并有可能在接下来的时间里带着满足的笑容更用心地工作。

“转变负罪感技巧”

此外，在办公室环境中，如果你是独自工作，你便可以随时离开，但如果你是在一支团队里工作，没有人会愿意看到任何人早退，所以你便会花更长时间在工作室，可能每天都从下午6点到凌晨2点。尽管这意味着你的工作时间增加了，但这却能够更快地完成工作。

分享知识，技能和文化

与其他人一起工作让你能够拥有全新的技能和兴趣。

1.在项目开始前，Tyler从未致力于游戏产业中，并且对现代电子游戏业不是很了解。通过致力于《CHIGUN》，他真正掌握了创造电子游戏的种种技术限制。通常情况下他是致力于传统绘画和雕塑工作，所以他必须学习游戏产业中的用户是如何消费以及如何与媒体进行互动。在艺术世界中，艺术品的优化并不是问题所在，但在游戏产业中却非常重要。并且给予他对电影艺术的理解，他还需要学习如何区分电子游戏的动态结构与电影的线性结构。所以致力于《CHIGUN》也让他有机会能够看到带有其它艺术风格的游戏。

2.在致力于《CHIGUN》之前，我一直专注于使用像素图像去创造游戏。最初《Narcissus》突出了手绘图像，但是当重新设计的图像阻碍了关卡设计的迭代过程时，我抛弃了传统的方法并开始使用简单的占位符图像。当我和Tyler开始共事时，回到高度风格化的图像的前景让人畏惧，但是这么做却能够赋予游戏开发过程活力。我同样也从Tyler身上学到了传统的绘画，作曲和颜色理论等等内容，并认识了许多出色的艺术家/音乐家。通过位体和字符创造所有的《CHIGUN》资产并将其带进许多不同的媒体中给我带来了许多全新的挑战。如果未与Tyler合作，我可能很难击退这些挑战，并且最终的作品也不会像你们现在所看到的这样。

合作的结果

上述内容意味着我们在2个半月便完成了《CHIGUN》（而不是像《Narcissus》那样花了3年的时间）。与别人一起开发项目能够如此快速地完成任务真的出乎我的意料，特别是我们能够同时记录下开发过程并为游戏创造一个预告片。

总之，如果你与其他人组成团队，你可能只能获得一半的派，但是这却会是一块更美味的派。尽管与别人共事的话你不得不放弃一大部分的游戏利润，但是游戏最终的质量便能够抵消掉你多付出的钱。与经济价值一样的是，和别人一起创造电子游戏自身就带有很大的价值，因为这可能为你创造一份不可多得的友谊。

当Tyler完成硕士学位时，我们计划继续一起创造电子游戏，并结合我们不同的思维继续做一支多功能的团队。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转功，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Indie vs Twindie – Why working on a game with another person is awesome

by Alex Johansson

My first involvement in designing a game was at University.
Whilst it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience designing characters and artwork for the game, relying on others meant that the project didn’t get done. This was consistent each year until I had enough and decided to just develop my own games instead. I produced all the artwork and programming for each project and the result was I actually started getting games pumped out, instead of “some nice artwork and a couple of dodgy prototypes” for a years work. As of September last year, I started up my own business and continued development on projects as a sole trader, doing all roles myself with the exception of outsourcing the music for my games.

Here are some of the benefits that came from doing this:

1. 100% of the profits – working alone means if you build everything, you get everything.

2. Full creative freedom – Whatever crazy idea for a project popped into my head e.g. Sword swallowing sword fight, I could develop without being shot down by others.

3. Doing everything yourself means you don’t have to rely on others and you know the work will get done.

4. You have to do many more jobs, so you learn a plethora of skills.

5. You don’t have anyone to support so as long as you can sustain yourself, you can take all the time you need with your projects.

6. You don’t have to pay any staff!

7. Completing a project all by yourself is a massive achievement.

Despite the benefits of building my own products, there came a variety of drawbacks and counter arguments for the above:

1. All on you: whilst learning new skills is great, there is a lot to do in games development. There is a often a feeling of being overwhelmed with the variety and urgency of things to do.

2. Working alone: being the only one working on a project means you miss out on a large quantity of the best part- sharing the experience of building a game with someone else.

3. Doing everything yourself means that you can’t rely on others to lighten the workload.

4. Although there is just you to sustain, the lack of workforce means that projects take longer to develop, offsetting the living costs of having another person. Although Narcissus so far has been well received, the project has taken 3 years to finish.

5. Having full creative freedom meant I would work on other projects that popped into my head instead of maintaining the discipline to focus on current ones.

6. It’s a lot harder to justify to people that the work you are doing is genuine if it’s just you (Just a unsociable nerd in his room).

One thing that came to mind whilst writing this list was the reasons for working alone are mostly down to selfishness and greed. I really had to think hard to try and think of positive reasons to work on projects alone, but there really isn’t many. There was a wonderful TED talk I watched recently about how investing in others provided a greater satisfaction than the option of a selfish investment. I wonder if the same applies for games development…

This summer, I went to the states again and was reunited with an old friend, Tyler Giordano. During a night out to catch up on what either of us had been up to in the last year, the subject of video games came up. We’d worked on projects together before in the past (A 60ft festival poster made up from sheets of standard office paper) and after several more drinks we agreed it’d be a smart idea to build a video game together (essentially dooming the pair of us to a cold windowless room for the rest of the summer). CHIGUN was the idea that we went with; a short but sweet 5 stage battle arena game in which you are a chicken who pecks up bullets and launches them from the pistol that you hold in your genetically modified comb hand.

Having been through the process of working with Tyler on the project, coming up with reasons to collaborate with another individual was easy to do:

Arguing is good

Whilst working with another may deny you total creative control, having to discuss and argue your vision with another individual means you actually have to fight and justify each idea you have. This sounds like a disadvantage, but it means only the best ideas make it into the final product and it improves your negotiation skills. Tyler and I arguing over features was a day to day routine, but the blend of Tyler’s unchained creative mind and my technically realistic mind got just the right balance of insane stuff (that I probably would have thought impossible in the software) and sane technical stuff (that still allowed the game to run smoothly).

Your Teamate Sure Looks Thin…

Working with another person drives you forward since you’re aware that the other person has to eat. In the situation that me and Tyler were working together we had catering included, but if CHIGUN flopped it would be much harder to justify building another game (since for us to continue building video games, we want to move Tyler to the UK so we can work in the same office space).

Sharing Awesome Stuff

To accompany the financial drives, there’s also the enthusiasm of the other individual. We would set each other objectives and then re-convene to see what we had created – usually mutually blowing each others minds with the likes of painted dancing chickens and programmed hologram effects. It’d be a treat to create cool stuff just to see the reaction of the other person – you’d see a little motivation bar above their head fill back up to the top and you’d spend the rest of the evening hammering on with work with big stupid grins on your faces.

The Old “Shift Guilt Trip Trick”

Additionally, working in an office environment, if you’re working alone you can leave whenever you want, but if you’re in a team, nobody wants to be that guy that leaves early so you tend to work for longer hours together e.g. 6pm till 2am every night. Whilst this means your hours go up, so much gets done!

Sharing of Knowledge, Skills and Culture

Working with another person gives you entirely new skills and interests.

a. Before the project, Tyler had never worked in the games industry before and had very little knowledge of modern video games. From working on CHIGUN, he gained a greater understanding for technical constraints of building video games. Normally he works in traditional painting and sculpture, so he had to learn how the audience in the games industry consume and interact with media compared to in the art world e.g. Optimization of artwork isn’t an issue in the art world, but is essential in the games industry. Also with his understanding of cinematography, having to learn how the dynamic structure of video games differed from the linear structure of film. Working on CHIGUN also got the chance to show him other games with other artistic styles that appealed to him.

b. Before working on CHIGUN, I had focused my games (like many game developers) towards using pixel art. Originally Narcissus featured hand painted visuals, but when redesigning artwork hindered the level design iteration process, I moved away from traditional methods and used simple placeholder artwork. When me and Tyler started working together, the prospect of moving back to highly stylized artwork was daunting, but by doing so breathed new life into the games development process. I also learnt about traditional painting, composition and colour theory from Tyler along with finding out about lots of amazing artists/musicians. Constructing all of the assets for CHIGUN out of bits and bobs from around the place and working in a bunch of different mediums introduced new challenges for me to tackle. Without making the decision to work with Tyler, I wouldn’t have taken that step out of the comfort zone and the game would likely not be a 10th as visually insane as what you see today.

The Outcome of Collaboration

The result of the above meant CHIGUN was built in two and a half months, compared to Narcissus plodding on in development for 3 years. It blew my mind how quickly the project came together, especially since we were able to document the development process simultaneously and to produce a live action trailer for the game.

In short, if you team up with another person, you get 50% of the pie, but it’s a much tastier pie. Even though you have to give up a decent share of the game profits for working with another person, the difference that makes to the quality of the game offsets the money you would lose. Not to mention that the reason you give up that money is so you can keep working with that person on projects! Along with financial value, the shared experience of building a video game together holds enough value in itself for enriching a friendship.

When Tyler is finished with his masters, we plan to continue building games together and with the blend of our very different minds should continue to operate as a far more functional team than I alone.(source:gamasutra)