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成为独立游戏开发者并不是件简单的事

发布时间:2016-03-21 11:33:04 Tags:,,,,

作者:Sergiu Craitoiu

成为一名独立游戏开发者并不是一件轻松的事,我便是一名独立游戏开发者,我也有一些独立游戏开发者朋友(包括美术师,程序员,音乐师等),我们也一直为发行一款成功的游戏而努力着。

sad_developer(from gamasutra)

sad_developer(from gamasutra)

说实话,大多数游戏都因为各种原因而不能与玩家见面。这些原因包括:

开发一款游戏是超级消耗时间的,并且如果你还有一份全职工作,一个家庭,甚至还有其它业余爱好的话,你便很难在业余时间去完成这些工作。这可能会让你感到受挫并因此失去游戏开发兴趣而选择完全退出这一领域。

开发一款游戏还需要足够的资金。如果你需要长时间致力于一款游戏中,那么除非你真的很幸运并有足够的能力,否则你便可能遭遇各种金钱问题。如果你拥有一家公司,那么你可能从一开始便会遭遇这样的问题,而如果你是独自工作或与朋友合作,你便可能需要花钱使用某些服务。当然了,这一点也与上一点相关,即如果你是自由职业者而非专职于游戏制作的话。

如今的商店里充斥着各种游戏,特别是手机商店。这是所有人都知道的事,当然也包括独立游戏开发者。如果一款游戏并不能在此有所突出的话,它便很难获得成功。这有可能彻底打击一个人的动力并导致他选择退出。

大多数独立游戏开发者都不想承认市场营销是这一过程中非常重要的一部分。就像我一个朋友曾经说过,如果你想在此获得成功,理念占据5%,执行力占据30%,而剩下的65%便是市场营销。几天前一个朋友跟我说他希望赶紧完成自己的游戏创造,到那时候他就能看到游戏是否能够获得成功了。而我在过去也曾犯过这样的错误,我也不想再犯这样的错误了。于是我告诉他应该尽早对游戏进行市场营销,否则他的游戏便不可能在Google Play Store获得好成绩。明确项目愿景很重要,在开始前制定一份市场营销计划也很重要。即使你是与发行商合作,你也需要凭借自己的能力进行游戏推广,因为并非所有发行商都强大到能够接触到所有玩家。

在此我想谈谈Kickstarter或Indiegogo等活动,即你可能认为它们便会帮助你解决上述的问题。当你的项目获得支持时,你便能够获得来自媒体的新闻报道,游戏玩家也能找到你,你的游戏也将获得更多关注,等等。当你在这类型活动中获得成功后,你便能够更灵活地使用资金(游戏邦注:当然不是花在买酒上了)。你可以参加世界各地的游戏大会,将你的游戏带向更多用户,参加一些创业推动项目,并做各种各样有利于你的项目的尝试

但是为什么在Kickstarter和Indiegogo等活动上获得成功却如此困难呢,即使你的游戏非常出色?

这里主要存在一些问题:

为了运行一个成功的活动,你便需要制定一份强大的市场营销计划,因为你必须让人们能够发现你和你的活动。遗憾的是,对于独立游戏开发者来说实在有太多游戏工作室都在使用这样的活动。Gagame-devme工作室和发行商可以投入许多钱去营销他们的活动并主导这些拥挤的平台。在大多数情况下他们的投入都是为了帮游戏吸引更多用户,当然了在一个活动结束后他们的投入总是能够得到回报。你可以问问自己,为什么一家正致力于开发一款复杂游戏的游戏工作室只要求2万美元的资金?因为在递交了各种税收后,他们可以用这些钱去支付雇员4或5个月的工资,并且游戏也将在20个月后发行。我并不是说这种做法缺少内涵,这只是一种市场营销计划。

在Kickstarter/Indiegogo上还有许多基于不同领域的活动。所以你不可能只是让Kickstarter的员工完全致力于推广你的游戏。

除了电子游戏外还有很多桌面游戏。Kickstarter应该对此进行分类。

一个朋友曾经告诉过我一个只专注于电子游戏,名为GameKicker的新项目。根据我的了解,他们只接受独立游戏开发者去创造活动,即其它游戏开发工作室将不能参与。他们还会提供活动管理者去培训开发团队以帮助他们成功运行活动。这将能够帮助独立开发者筹集到所需资金并创造出他们想创造的游戏。

gamekicker(from gamasutra)

gamekicker(from gamasutra)

不幸的是,他们使用的是Stripe这一支付网关,而当下这一支付方式在很多地方还不可行。例如我便不能再罗马尼亚使用这一平台。但谁知道未来会变成怎样呢。也许这一项目便能够解决我在上述所提到的各种问题。让我们对此报以期待。

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

It’s not an easy life to be an indie game developer

by Sergiu Craitoiu

It’s not an easy life to be an indie game developer. I am an indie game developer, I have a few friends (artists, programmers, musicians) which are indie game developers and we all struggle to succeed in launching our games.

Let’s be honest, most games don’t even get to see daylight for a couple of reasons. Most notably:

Developing a game is super time consuming and it’s really hard to do it in your free time if you have a full time job, a family and even other hobbies. This can lead to frustration and you will lose interest and eventually quit.

Developing a game requires money. If you are working on a game for a longer period of time, unless you are lucky and multitalented, you will encounter money issues. If you have a company you will have this problem from the start, but if you are working alone or with some friends at some point in time you have to pay for some services. And of course this problem is related to the first one because you could do freelancing in your time instead of working on your game.

The stores are flooded with games, especially mobile stores. Everyone knows this, every indie game developer. If the game doesn’t stand out somehow, there are huge chances that the game will not succeed. This can demotivate people and eventually quit.

Most indie game developers don’t want to understand that marketing is a huge part of the process. As a friend said the idea is 5%, the execution is 30% and the rest is marketing. Just a few days ago a friend told me that he wants to see his game finished and after that he will see what happens. I made that mistake in the past (wrote an article here), I don’t want to do this mistake again. I told him that you should quickly market it somehow otherwise the game is not going to do so well on Google Play Store. It’s important to have a vision over your project, to have a marketing plan right from the beginning. Even if you work with a publisher, you still have to promote yourself. Consider that not all publishers are big enough to reach thousands of gamers.

I would like to speak here about Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns, which you might think that they can solve the problems mentioned above. After your project is backed: you will have press coverage, gamers will contact about you, the game will receive attention, etc. After you had a successful campaign you should spend the money wisely, not on beer and strippers :) . Go to gaming conferences around the world, present your game to large audiences, enter some startup accelerators, there are tons of things you can do.

But, why is hard to run a successful campaign on Kickstarter and Indiegogo even if your game is awesome?

Because there are a few problems:

To run a successful campaign, you need a strong marketing plan because people have to find about you and your campaign somehow. Sadly, for indie games developers there are some game studios that take advantage of that. Gagame-devme studios and publishers (even smaller ones) can invest money to market their campaign and dominate these crowdfunding platforms. In most of cases they invest just to gain popularity for their game and of course they win their money back after the campaign is over. Ask yourself, why a game studio which is developing a complex game ask only for 20000$ for example? After all taxes, they can pay their employees for 4 or 5 months and the game is going to be released after 20 months. I’m not saying that this is done with bad intension, this is just a marketing plan. A good one if you ask me.

There are too many campaigns on Kickstarter/Indiegogo from different areas and fields. It’s impossible for Kickstarter staff, for example, to get involved with your game and promote it somehow.

There are so many board games near video games. Kickstarter should do a separate category for this. Don’t even want to know what happened to projects that ran the campaign in the same period with Exploding Kittens a year ago.

A friend told me about a new project called GameKicker focusing only on video games. From what I understand, they will accept only independent game developers to create campaigns so hopefully game studios will stay out of this. Also they will provide a campaign manager to coach the teams in order to run a successfully campaign. This can really help indie developers to raise money and bring their games to life.

Unfortunately, they will use Stripe as payment gateway which for the moment is not available in all countries. For example, I can’t use this platform from Romania. But who know what is going to happen in the future. This project will solve some of the problems mentioned above. Can’t wait to see their impact.(source:gamasutr0a)

 


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