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关于游戏信息可发现性的5大经验教训

发布时间:2015-01-06 10:38:34 Tags:,,,,

作者:Simon Carless

现在我打算写一篇关于使用Games We Care About这个Twitter账号所获取的500多款独立游戏的信息的文章。

gameswecare(from gamasutra)

gameswecare(from gamasutra)

我想先向那些不知道Games We Care About的人做出解释:“当我在6月份开始使用它时我便非常喜欢这个理念,它也非常有效。这个每天发现我所‘在乎’的可玩游戏的Twitter账号已经拥有了将近3500个粉丝,并且几乎每一款游戏都拥有至少10个转发或喜欢。”

所以在开发者/其他推荐人提供给我一款独立游戏的名字和URL后,我便需要编译剩下的内容去完成一篇Twitter文章。这包含了以下步骤:“它是付费还是免费?”“它将面向哪个平台发行?”“哪个链接URL最适合?”以及“我该从哪里获得最清晰的截图并与tweet一起发布?”简单吧?

但是因为很多内容都不好找,所以我便得出了以下“5大”结论。独立游戏开发者(游戏邦注:或者任何在网上推广内容的人)在呈现关于自己产品的信息时都应该好好思考这些内容。这些内容与你所拥有的任何“官方游戏网站”都有关系,你可能同时拥有一个Steam页面和一个App Store页面,而它们在内部都是相关的,你需要制定一个策略去更新它们。

1.确保官方截图和YouTube视频容易被截取。

你可能会认为这是再明显不过的事,但我却发现了一些陷阱。首先,有些人设置了花俏的截图集合,从而让你很难点击你要的图片并进行保存。如果出现这种情况,我会先点击几秒然后直接转向谷歌图像搜索(这可能是你不愿意看到的结果)。

其次,有些人在他们的视频部分设置了定制视频或各种其它突变内容。有时候它们并不是出现在YouTube上。你总是希望能够获得一个官方预告片从而快速呈现游戏玩法的画面,并清楚地解释游戏中必要的理念和功能。能够播放视频,点击YouTube链接并获取URL才是今天最简单的嵌入/转换方式。简单通常都是优势。

2.留心你的游戏资产的年龄!游戏总是快速变化着,特别是在不断进化的“预览版”中。有时候如果在“Games We Care About”的tweet中出现早前的截图,开发者便会非常尴尬。所以你应该事先在谷歌图像搜索中检查游戏的名字,明确是否出现了新的内容。

你应该确保在你的官网或Steam网页上能够呈现出最新的截图。我经常会看到一些官方独立游戏网站上还放着3,4年前的游戏截图。如果你正在创造一款快速更新的游戏,并且你想要呈现出游戏的发展,你就应该及时更新截图内容。

3.包含文本/功能的iOS截图问题

当在iOS游戏中获取信息和截图时,我发现的一个主要问题便是苹果允许你插入一些额外的信息到你在App Store的官方截图上。这对于游戏的市场营销是好事,你能够添加文本,游戏功能等等内容。

但如果你只是在寻找清晰截图的第三方,这便有点麻烦。因为很多只基于iOS的游戏并未拥有官方独立网站,App Store的公共URL已经做得很好了。所以在这方面你要足够谨慎。(如果你能接受谷歌图像搜索中弹出的任何内容,这便没什么大碍。但再一次的,这既可能是好处也可能是坏处。)

4.新平台—-更新你的核心信息库!

我发现的一个最棘手的领域应该是当游戏开始于1个平台,并逐渐扩展到3个或4个(甚至更多!)平台上时。我的第一个问题是—-当你添加新平台时,你是否记得更新官方网站?我经常发现一些未及时更新的网站,甚至是在新版本出现后好几个月都未更新。

如果你想要一个URL同时包含游戏的所有PC,iOS和Android版本的话,这便有点困难,当你的游戏出现在更多平台上时,你可能会希望你的官方网站成为人们的首要选择。所以你就需要及时更新并清理内容以确保玩家能够发现你的更新。

5.总是拥有“URL去解释一切”的后端支持

我最后的建议便是为上述的所有内容做好准备,因为聪明的独立开发者可能已经思考这些问题很长时间了。你可能想要你那花俏的官方网站带有闪光效果。但不管怎样你都需要在网站的中上方清楚地呈现游戏presskit()的链接。

presskit()是来自Vlambeer的Rami Ismail所创造的“以媒体为中心的关于你的电子游戏的信息”的免费网站工具包,并且就像介绍中所说的:“开发者只需要花费1个多小时便能够创造出包含任何媒体需要了解的内容的新闻页面。”

我真的非常推荐presskit(),它每次都能够帮助我快速且轻松地获得所需要的信息。

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

Game Info Discoverability – Top 5 Lessons From ‘Games We Care About’

by Simon Carless

There’s one blog post I’ve been meaning to write for a while now (talking of ‘regular newsletter forcing me to write things!) It’s about the things I’ve learned while grabbing info on 500+ indie games for the Games We Care About Twitter account.

For anyone who’s unaware of Games We Care About, as I explain in a recent blog post: “I was very excited about this concept when I launched it back in June, and it’s actually worked out fairly well. The Twitter account for daily discovery of playable games that I (and others!) ‘care about’ has almost 3,500 followers, and most individual game picks have a total of at least 10 Retweets or Favorites. And c’mon, ‘The Illogical Journey Of The Zambonis’? Yesss.”

So, after devs/other recommenders give me a name and a URL for a indie game, I have to compile the rest to complete/schedule a Twitter post. This is generally comprised of the following steps: ‘Is it paid or free?’, ‘What platforms is it released for?’, ‘What’s the best URL to link for it?’, and finally ‘Where do I get a clean screenshot to upload alongside the Tweet?’ Simples?

But looking for these things – and not always finding them easily (?!) has led me to the following ‘Top 5!’ conclusions. Independent game developers – and anyone promoting things online, actually – should probably think about these when displaying info about their product. Most of these relate to any ‘official game website’ you have, but you probably also have a Steam page, an App Store page. So they all inter-related, and you need to have a strategy for updating all of them – please extrapolate from there!

So, here goes:

1. Make official screenshots and YouTube videos easily grabbable.

You’d think this would be fairly obvious, but I’ve found a couple of gotchas. Firstly, a number of people have fancy screenshot galleries where you can’t easily right click on the picture and ‘Save As’. If this happens, I tend to ‘tsk, tsk’ for a couple of seconds and then go straight to Google Image Search (where you may or may not like the results :P )

Secondly, some people seem to have custom videos or walkthroughs or various other mutant things in their videos section. Sometimes they’re not even hosted on YouTube. You always want (imho!) an official trailer that gets to the gameplay footage quickly, and explains the essential idea and features simply. Being able to play the video, click on the YouTube link and then grab the URL is just the easiest way to embed/rehost nowadays. Easy is good. (Feel free to have alternative, non-YouTube versions as well if you desire.)

2. Watch the (old) age of your game assets!Games change quickly, especially in always-evolving ‘Early Access’ versions. Sometimes developers can be embarrassed when an ancient screenshot turns up, for example, on a ‘Games We Care About’ Tweet. On that front, you should probably check out Google Image Search for your game’s name, just to see what’s coming up and if any of it is, shall we say, ‘unfortunate’.

If it is, make _sure_ you have brand new screenshots you’re happy with prominently on your official site or Steam page. (How many people update their Steam page screenshots regularly through Early Access, I wonder?) I’ve also seen official indie game websites with screenshots that are as much as 3 or 4 years old (!). If you’re making a fast-evolving game, you might want to include dated captions on your screenshots if you want to show evolution – or just nix the old ones.

3. Issues with iOS screenshots with text/features included in them

When grabbing info and screenshots on iOS games, one major issue I’ve found is that Apple allows you to insert a bunch of extra info into your ‘official’ screenshots on the App Store. This is good for marketing the game on the store – you can add text, game features, calls to action and so on.

But if you’re a third party looking for a clean screenshot, it’s tricky. This is true not least because a lot of iOS-only games don’t have official standalone websites, cos the App Store public URL does a good (enough) job of it. So be careful. (If you’re fine with whatever pops up on Google Image Search, maybe it’s all good. But again, that can be your friend _or_ your foe.)

4. New platforms – updating your central info repository!

Probably one of the trickiest areas I’ve found is when a game starts on one platform, and gradually expands to three or four (or more!) My first question to you – when you added that new platform, did you remember to update the official website _fully_? I’ve often found non-updated sites, months after the new version debuted.

This is particularly difficult if you want one URL to sum up all the PC, iOS, _and_ Android (Google and Amazon store!) versions of the game – and when you get on enough platforms, you probably want your official website, which links to all of them, being people’s first port of call. So make sure you go back and clean things up for maximum discoverability.

5. Always have a backup ‘one URL to explain it all’

My final tip is sorta a fix for ALL of the above, since smart independent developers have already been thinking about these issues for a long time. You may want to keep your fancy official website with arty Flash effects. If so, fair enough, but for Klingon’s sake have a link to a presskit() for your game in the top corner of the site, then.

For those who’ve missed out on it, presskit() is a free ‘press-centric info about your video game’ website toolkit created by Rami Ismail of Vlambeer, and as the intro explains: “Developers only have to spend an hour or so creating well-laid out press pages with everything the press needs to write to their hearts desire. Everybody wins.”

I can’t recommend this enough – almost every time I’ve been to a presskit() page it’s got me the info I’m looking for quickly and easily. It’s well organized and easy to find the relevant info. And everyone should be running one, even if just as a header or footer link.(source:gamasutra)

 


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