作者：Christian Mosbo

衡量游戏成功的标准到底是什么呢？或者说，衡量失败的标准是什么？

最近我和一群老朋友一起吃了顿饭。我们像所有聚会那样聊了彼此的工作和家庭生活。而当聊到我时，我惊讶地发现朋友们都认为我最最近一次的尝试是失败的。我所有的这些朋友都有一份“真正的”工作，不过我还是需要为此进行一些说明。

在过去20年里我很幸运地创造出了一些独立游戏。在这期间我也经历了许多起起落落。我很幸运能够交到一些既是同职开发者也是我的作品的粉丝的朋友。我同样也见证了一些人因为压力太大且缺少时间去陪伴家人而遭遇了离婚且生活破裂。但幸好没有什么比创造出一款全新游戏更让我们开心了。

在2015年初我与一个长期产业合作伙伴（他同时也是我大学时的舍友）共同创建了一家全新独立公司Fair Weather Studios。而我们使用了Unreal最终创造了一个悲剧的项目。这一次的经历也让我们打算开始寻求一些全新的尝试。

我们最终决定转向Unity引擎。该引擎得到了广泛的好评我们也希望看看自己到底能够从中创造出什么。我们就之前曾想过但却未执行的几个项目进行了商讨。最终我们决定创造一款垂直空间射击游戏。这种类型的游戏需要我们最快创造出具有最小可行性的产品，但是我们却不清楚在全新引擎中我们需要投入多少工作。太空战舰并不需要太多动画，如此我们便可以避开动画“兔子洞”而专注于游戏引擎的核心部分。所以《Bladestar》便这么诞生了。

bladestar(from gamasutra)

对于《Bladestar》，我们想要创造一款虽然使用了现代游戏机制但仍让人觉得像早前射击游戏，即像《Galaga》或《太空入侵者》那样的游戏。即比起基于记忆，这是一款基于技能的游戏。同样地，尽管我们是一间独立游戏开发工作室，我们也希望最大程度地优化这个项目。我们想要了解自己的内存管理局限性。我们希望游戏整体既大气又不失乐趣。

我们的首要关注点便是确保控制的顺畅。在任何一款游戏中优秀的控制都很重要，而在一个反射导向型游戏环境中，每一个成功与死亡都需要让玩家真正感受到。我们在早期开发中投入了许多时间去测试控制方案直至所有测试者都对其感到满意并且它们能够有效作用于游戏控制器或键盘中为止。对于那些喜欢控制感的玩家你更需要提供给他们优秀的控制方案。而自从游戏发行以来我们所获得的控制反馈大多都是正面的，这就说明我们所付出的一切辛苦都是值得的。

我们的第二个目标是多样性。我们希望确保游戏并不是你闭上眼睛也能玩的记忆活动。这意味着我们需要一系列特殊的程序生成系统去创造不同关卡中的敌人。除此之外我们也希望每个世界都是与众不同的。我们希望玩家能够在前进过程中不断了解敌人模式，如此我们便能够确保之后的世界将结合一些全新敌人以及来自早前关卡的一些单位。这让我们能够提供给每个世界或者10个关卡不同的角色，同时也能在玩家每次游戏时带给他们与众不同的体验。结合上面所提到的有效控制，玩家不仅能够获得技能奖励，同时也能始终感受到全新的挑战。

最终我们想要创造的是一种戏剧感。虽然作为一家小型工作室这会是一项非常艰巨的任务。在游戏中我们添加了三个CGI影像（游戏邦注：预告片以及2个不同的结局），而这都是我们自己完成的内容。我们的美术师不断去优化影像效果并呈现给玩家自己就是太空中的一名战士的感觉。我们还投入了很大的一笔钱去邀请专业的配音演员去讲述游戏故事。

我真的很高兴我们实现了所有的这些目标。游戏获得了玩家和评论者们的好评，并获得70%至80%的评级。我们成功创造出了自己的第一款Unity游戏，并完成了事先所列出的所有目标。

不过等下，为什么游戏却被说是一个巨大的失败。

所以现在让我们再回到我与老朋友之间的交谈中。正如你所看到的，游戏赔钱了。实际上它赔了很多钱。当我在写这篇文章的时候我们的游戏已经发发行了6个月，但是在这期间它却只帮我们赚回声音成本的一半费用。任何参与这个项目的人都可以告诉你，除了声音成本外我们还有很多其它债款。

但是当你着眼于我上面的描述时你便会发现，我们所陈述的任何一个目标都未曾包含“赚到许多钱。”我们并未制定任何经济上的目标。相反地我们只是专注于创造一些全新内容而最终忽视了我们是一个以营利为目的的公司。

我们并未遵循一个严格的时间表。我们尝试着去学习Unity，而这的确是一个漫长的过程。我们希望创造出一种大气感，所以我们在CGI影像，声音等等内容中投入了巨大的预算。当我们在创造游戏时我们会不断去学习并发展自己，所以我们便慢慢掉进一个功能蔓延陷阱中。而因为我过度专注于项目目标从而导致自己不能纵观更大的经济目标。

现在我已经身处这一产业很久了。所以我非常了解一款游戏的爆炸可能会永久地摧毁你的职业。我也意识到自己非常幸运拥有足够的经济保障去开发这款游戏。但并非所有人都跟我们一样幸运。这也让我开始思考：到底该如何去定义我们的作品是否成功？

一款成功的游戏是由开发者的开发进行衡量的吗？就像我们的生活是关于旅程而非目的地？另一面，如果一款游戏赚到了许多钱但却破坏了创造者的生活，它还算成功吗？从内在看来游戏设计并非一种唯我论工作，毕竟你总是希望别人能够玩你的游戏。

一款成功的游戏是由玩家的体验进行衡量的吗？如果大多数玩家喜欢你的游戏它便算是成功的吗？但是让玩家感到满足的成本是多少？如果一款游戏让玩家感到满意但却因此让开发者遭遇破产，这算是成功吗？如此产业和投资者将只会对其敬而远之，这样还会有游戏诞生吗。

一款成功的游戏是由它所赚到的钱进行衡量的吗？如果一款游戏很难创造且玩起来也毫无乐趣，但却能够创造巨大的收益，那这算是成功吗？另一方面，如果游戏创造能够推动开发团队的技能和想象力的发展，并深受玩家喜欢，但却赔钱了，那么这算是游戏的失败吗？我是否该停止这反问？人生的意义到底是什么？

最终结果便是我创造了一款赔钱的游戏而我那些并不属于这个产业的朋友都认为这是失败的尝试。的确，我有一些身处这一产业的朋友也认为这款游戏是失败的。我并不知道自己是否该同意这一说法，虽然我不得不承认这是他们共同的看法。

我并非那种相信天上会掉馅饼的唯心主义论者。实际上在第一款游戏中赔这么多钱意味着我们是依赖于梦想过活的，而现在我们的梦想却被现实所吞噬了。现在我们必须去考虑怎样的游戏优化能够赚到更多钱。我们必须与功能蔓延陷阱作斗争。我们还需要仔细考虑独立公司的所有业务方面事宜。是的我们还需要承担各种预算和税收。而我只希望我们的最终产品不会因此受影响。

现在的我正在创造另一款游戏。我们的团队也对这一新项目充满热情。而我所想的却是，如果这款游戏遭遇了失败，那这一失败的衡量标准到底是什么呢？

（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）

Indie Games: Is Money the Measure of Success?

by Christian Mosbo

What is the measure of success for a game? Or, perhaps more importantly, what is the measure for failure?

I was recently having lunch with a group of old friends of mine. We were catching up on each others careers and families as one does at such gatherings. And when it came to me I was shocked to learn that my friends considered my latest venture a failure. And all of them of course had “real” jobs and careers…. but I should probably back up and give some context.

I have been fortunate to have been creating indie games off and on for the last 20 years or so. In that time there have been as many ups as there have been downs. I have been lucky to make several friends of both fellow developers as well as fans of my work. I have also seen other people’s lives ruined and marriages ended over the stress and time constraints involved. And yet at its best, there is nothing better than creating that new game.

Early in 2015 I created a new indie company, Fair Weather Studios, with one of my long time industry partners who had also at one time been my roommate in college. We had both come off of a tragic vaporware project using Unreal that had taken up years only to get scrapped half way through. The experience had left a bad taste in both our mouths, and we were looking to start fresh.

We decided that to make our fresh start we were going to switch over to and learn the Unity engine. It had been getting a lot of good buzz and we wanted to see what a couple old hands could do with it. We debated over a half dozen projects we had talked about in the past and never made. In the end we decided to make vertical space shooter. Games of that style are some of the quickest to create a minimally viable product and we didn’t know how much work this was going to take in a new engine. Also, space ships require minimal animations which meant that we could bypass going too far down the animation rabbit hole and focus on the core aspects of the game engine. And with that Bladestar was born.

With Bladestar we wanted to make a game that used modern game mechanics but still had the feel of really old school shooters, more like Galaga or Space Invaders than anything bullet hell. To be skill based rather than memorization based. Also, even though we were an indie development studio, we wanted the project to feel as polished as possible. We wanted to learn our memory management limitations. And we wanted the whole thing to feel epic and be lots of fun.

Our number one priority was to ensure smooth controls. While good control is important in almost every game, in a reflex oriented game environment every success and death needs to feel earned. We spent a large portion of the early development cycle testing and retesting the control scheme until we got it so it felt right to all of our testers, and worked equally well with a gamepad or with the keyboard. For a player to feel in control you need to give them a good control scheme. On the bright side, our feedback since launch has been overwhelmingly positive regarding the controls, so all the hard work perfecting this paid off.

Our second goal was variety. We wanted to be sure that the game was not an exercise in memorization that you could play with your eyes closed. This meant a series of unique procedural generation systems to dynamically create the enemies on every level. In addition we wanted each overall world to feel unique. We wanted the player to learn enemy patterns as they progressed, so we made sure that later worlds had a mix of new enemies as well as units from earlier levels that would be more familiar. This allowed us to give each world, or set of 10 levels a unique character, while still allowing us to generate a unique experience on each play through. Combined with the solid controls above, the player is really rewarded for their skill as they play as the challenges stay fresh.

Finally, we wanted to create a cinematic feel. As a small studio this was probably the most difficult task. There are three CGI movies in the game (the trailer and two different endings) which were all done in house. Our artists worked very hard to ensure that the effects were bombastic and polished, that the whole thing felt like you were a fighter in a space opera. We spent a considerable amount of money to get professional voice actors to fully voice the story portion of the game.

And I’m happy to report that overall we mostly met all of our goals. The game was well received by both players and reviewers, earning an average rating of 70% to 80%. We had successfully created our first Unity game and everything on our list was done.

Oh wait, but the game was a huge failure.

And so now is a good time to rejoin the conversation I was having with my old friends. You see, the game lost money. In fact, it lost a LOT of money. At the time of this writing the game has been released for six months, and in all that time has only made back HALF of the money on just the voice acting bill. And as anyone who works in game design can tell you, there are a lot more bills than just paying the voice actors.

But, looking at my long-winded description above, you will see that for our first project we had made an important omission. One of our stated goals was not “make lots of cash”. And not having ever set a financial goal our monetary fate was predictable. We were so focused on creating something new that we neglected that we were a for-profit enterprise.

We did not operate on strict timelines. We were trying to learn Unity, and that was going to take as long as it needed to. We wanted an epic feel, but there is a reason budget shooters do not come with CGI movies, voice acting and lots of bells and whistles. As we created the game we were always learning more and pushing ourselves, and so fell into a feature creep trap. I was so focused on what the goals for the project were that I became myopic in seeing the larger economic picture.

Now I have been in this business a long time. I know that one title that bombs can ruin your career in the industry forever. And I recognize that I am very fortunate that we went into this game with financial safeguards in place. Not all of my peers have always been so lucky. Still, this got me to thinking: how does one define the success of our creations?

Is a successful game measured by the development of the developers? Is life really about the journey and not the destination? And on the flip side, if a game makes money but ruins the lives of its creators, is that a success? Still, game design is inherently not a solipsistic affair… you want someone to play your games after all. So maybe…

Is a successful game measured by the player experience? If the majority of your players really enjoy their time with your game is that success? And yet, at what cost does player satisfaction come? Does a game that players overwhelmingly enjoy but that bankrupts a company a success? Run that kind of industry and the investors are going to stay far away, and then no games get made. So maybe…

Is a successful game measured, really, by how much money it makes. Is the bottom line the only line? Is a game that is a chore to make and no fun to play but turns a profit a success? On the flip side if the creation of a game pushes the skills and imaginations of a development team, and then that game is well loved by players, but the game loses money…. is that really a failure? Am I ever going to stop asking rhetorical questions? And what IS the meaning of life?

In the end I created a game that lost money that my friends who are not in the industry are sure makes it an objective failure. Indeed, I created a game that some of my friends IN the industry are sure is a failure. I don’t know that I agree, although I concede it is a common point of view. And having my creations judged primarily (solely?) on the ability for them to make lots of dollars isn’t going to go anywhere.

Now, I am no pie in the sky idealist. The fact of the matter of losing so much money on the first game means that the dream lives on, but that now the dream is caged by realities. We have to be much more careful with what polish is worth the money to include on our current game. We constantly have to fight against feature creep to stay on our timelines. Top to bottom on the business side of our indie company we have had to incorporate discipline. There are budgets and taxes and bears, oh my! I just hope the final product isn’t impacted too much.

Even with all of the above lessons learned I am chastised for not really learning my lesson. I am, after all, making yet another game. And our team jumped in feet first enthusiastically on this next project (Ancient Frontier, due to be released first half of 2017). And in the back of my mind I wonder, will it fail, and by what measure?（source：Gamasutra）