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经历游戏发行失败后的一些感悟

发布时间:2016-11-11 15:59:59 Tags:,,,,

作者:Ryan Sumo

《政坛野兽》已经在Steam/GoG/Humble上出售一周左右。对我们来说好似经历了一次情感过山车。而我想要花一周时间来吸收所有的这些情感并与玩家和游戏开发者进行分享。不过我所拥有的数据并不多。虽然我希望在本文中与你们分享一些有趣的信息,但是因为我不能说得太过具体,所以我可能不能展示出非常有趣的内容。

Political Animals(from appszoom)

Political Animals(from appszoom)

发行期待

因为我们不能分享具体的Steam数据,所以我们能做的便只是比较发行期待与真正的结果。我们都期待能够成功发行游戏内容。我们的发行商Positech Games拥有很不错的经验以及对政治游戏感兴趣的粉丝基础。在PAX和EGC我们都获得了来自玩家的积极反馈。在游戏发行前我们分给了媒体和一些Youtuber游戏密钥,并获得了来自它们的许多正面反馈。在我发布了新闻稿后Total Biscuit甚至马上回复了一个密钥请求。我们也会在美国大选前发行游戏了—-这也是我们一直以来的目标。

虽然如此我们还是看到了一些警示标识。即我们游戏发行前刚好赶上万圣节大促销,通常那对于游戏发行来说都是最糟糕的时间。虽然这期间的促销不如夏日促销那么大,但是在消费者掏空自己的钱包后再发行游戏绝不是个好主意。同时我们也很难获得传统媒体的宣传,这也成为我们之后所面对的一个大问题。同时Positech之前也曾发行过一些不尽人意的游戏,就像《Democracy : Africa and Gratuitous Space Battle 2》便是最让人失望的典例。

发行结果

因为我们团队成员是住在大马尼拉的不同地方(每周见一次),所以比起一起等待结果我们是在游戏发行后才聚在一起的。我个人是选择和几个亲近的好友一起等待游戏发行。

注:因为我们住在菲律宾,所以美国早上10点发行意味着在菲律宾是凌晨1点。

在经过一晚上并不宁静的睡眠后,我一醒来便马上去查看我们到目前为止第一天的销量。因为之前我们便知道获得了首页推荐,所以我还是很兴奋的。我努力在回想看到数据时的自己到底是怎样的感受。是震惊?难过?或许只是无语。怎么可能如此之低。之后我又刷新了几次,并最终确定了这并未存在任何漏洞。而我们也最终意识到自己的游戏成为了Positech所发行的最糟糕的游戏。我对自己当时的反应有点惊讶。因为我只是坐在那里并想着“好吧,我们失败了。”我投入了2年半的时间在等待着今天,但是我们却失败了。那时候我有点担心自己的反应。因为难道我不应该嚎啕大哭或充满震惊才算正常码?

随后我站了起来并告诉妻子这个消息。她不断安慰我。但因为那天是工作日所以她很快便需要出门工作,而我茫然第回到计算机前再次开始刷新页面。然后我只能做一件事,即尝试着去搞清楚为什么我们会遭遇如此的惨败。

为什么人们不买我们的游戏?

或许万圣节大促销的影响力比我们想象的更严重。即当玩家刚刚花许多钱买了游戏后我们很难再去向他们要钱了。Double Fine同时也以低价去出售一些开发包。虽然那时候也出现了其它一些游戏,但我认为我们的确选错了发行时间。

“看起来真的很可爱感觉也很有趣。但是作为一名美国人,现在的我并不想将有趣和选举混为一谈。”

上面是来自我们在GoG上的一条评论。我并不会过分纠结于一条评论,但说实话美国大选实在经历太长时间了,我认为那时候的人们都希望选举赶紧结束吧。或许在我们游戏发行前1个多月时间这种情况还不是那么严重。

在发现一些人在我们的游戏讨论页面说游戏1)拥有很棒的图像,2)“看起来像一跨手机游戏”,3)缺少策略深度(游戏邦注:尽管他们并未真正玩游戏),我决定去看看我们在Steam商店中的页面。那时候的我真的很难过。因为商店页面是大多数玩家看到游戏的第一扇门,所以必须给他们留下深刻影响。你必须通过预告片,截图,描述和评价去说服所有潜在玩家这是值得购买的内容。但是我们的商店页面的描述却并不完整,甚至没有评论链接。也就难怪人们会对我们的游戏产生怀疑。如果我们不能有效呈现一个吸引人的Steam商店页面,我们又怎么可能创造出一款优秀的游戏呢?

最后我还想说的是,有可能游戏让玩家觉得太贵了,而或许只是因为游戏本身并不是很出色。我们曾收到过许多心愿清单,如果我们在促销时改变其中的内容,我们便能够看到人们是如何评估我们的游戏。并且我们当时也很高兴在PAX和EGX中收到许多有关游戏的反馈,所以我们才会相信自己能够创造出一款优秀的游戏。

参与社区

现在我已经发现了一些发行的问题,而我们唯一能够做的便是尽可能去纠正这些问题。首先这便意味着我们需要去修改Steam商店页面所存在的问题。其次我们将深入社区讨论并尽可能去回复人们所提问的问题。但其实从某种程度看来这是一种危险的行为。因为开发者总是会想办法去维护自己的作品,所以很容易演变成是与玩家间的争吵。任何想要进入社区讨论的开发者都必须带着谦卑的态度去执行这件事。将任何抱怨当成是合理的问题,即使对方的态度并不是很好。我的岳父便曾说过,消费者的抱怨总是非常有价值的,因为其实他们本可以径直走过而不告诉你任何原因。如果他们发出抱怨,你就必须想办法去说服他们再次尝试。我便是如此面对一个保持中立的玩家。我询问了他是什么让他保持中立态度,他的回答是这样的:

“因为Steam拥有2个小时的退款窗口,所以我便决定试看看这款游戏。”

而我是如何做的呢?我从未想要去纠正他认为游戏缺少策略性的直觉。我只是告诉了他我们在一些大会上看到许多人愉快地体验了游戏的策略元素,并提到了一篇来自Eurogamer有关游戏的文章。我认为这便足以说服他们再去尝试游戏了。

除此之外我们还记录下了人们表示想从游戏中看到什么。有人认为游戏是不平衡的。我们将进一步研究这个问题。很多人表示希望看到多人玩家元素,于是我们便打算在更新时添加该元素。还有一些有关Linux的问题。如果一切进展顺利的话很快便能与大家见面了。但最重要的还是我们必须深入社区将玩家带到游戏中。我们希望玩家觉得我们并不是发行了游戏后便不再进行更新。我们同样也希望媒体能够帮助宣传游戏从而让更多人知道它。

我们还联系了中国,俄罗斯等地的本土化合作伙伴,因为盗版以及不讲英文,我们的游戏在这些地区卖的并不好。虽然进行本土化很辛苦,但从更广的角度来看这对游戏未来的发展更有帮助。

结论

我们还是对自己创造的游戏充满自信。我们也对Steam上的菲律宾游戏数量做出了属于自己的贡献。或许这并不是多大的贡献,但是对我们来说却很有意义。因为对我们来说将游戏带到Steam上仍是很不容易的事。

关于我们的团队,我们在看到游戏销量后的第一次会面真的是笼罩在阴郁中,但我们通过去K歌而重拾了士气。我们将继续努力去完善游戏,并希望有机会能够再次创造一款新游戏。

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

What Does it Feel Like to Launch a Game?

by Ryan Sumo

It’s been almost a week that Political Animals has been on sale on Steam/GoG/Humble. It’s been quite the emotional roller coaster. I wanted to take a week to absorb all the emotions and share it with gamers and gamedevs alike. My apologies for a lack of stats. I was hoping to share some in this post, but given I can’t be too specific with them as per Steam’s rules, there’s nothing super interesting to show you right now. I may do a more stats heavy blog in the future once we have a bigger sample size.

Launch Expectations

Given we’re not allowed to share actual Steam data, the best we can do is compare out expectations of launch versus how things actually turned out. We had reasonable expectations for a good launch. Our publisher, Positech Games, has a good track record and fanbase fond of political games to draw from. We had positive experiences from players at PAX and EGX. We gave out keys to press and Youtubers (This is the funniest LP by far) a week prior to launch and we were getting a lot of positive feedback. Total Biscuit even responded with a Steam key request right after I blasted my press release, which was quite exciting. And we were able to launch right before the US elections, which was our target all along.

There were some warning signs though. The Halloween Sale happened right before launch, and that’s always a terrible time to launch a game. It was not quite as big as a summer sale, but it’s always bad to chase after customers after their wallets have just been emptied. We were also having a hard time getting traditional press coverage, which would be an issue later on. And Positech has had games do poorly before, with Democracy : Africa and Gratuitous Space Battle 2 being the biggest disappointments.

Launch Results

Given we worked virtually (we all live in different parts of Metro Manila and meet once a week) We’d made a team decision to get together after the launch instead of waiting for it together. I personally went to watch Dr. Strange (entertaining movie, if you can get past Cumberbatch’s strained American accent) and waited up for the launch with some close friends before calling it a night.

Note: because we live in the Philippines, the 10am launch in the US was actually 1am in the Philippines.

After a less than restful sleep, I woke up to immediately check on our first day sales so far. We’d previously been informed that we’d be featured on the front page so I was a little bit excited. I’m struggling to remember what I felt when I finally saw the numbers. Shock? Sadness? Probably a stunned silence. Surely they couldn’t be so low. I impotently clicked refresh a few times until I was satisfied that this wasn’t some error. When it finally sank in that we were probably Positech’s poorest performing game, I was a little surprised at how I felt. I just sat there for what felt like ages thinking “well, we flopped.” I sank two and a half years of my life chasing this day and we flopped. I was a little worried about how numb I was feeling. Shouldn’t I be crying or something? Is this what shock feels like?

I stood up and told my wife the bad news. We sat for a bit while she comforted me. But it was a weekday, so she soon left for work while I drifted back to stare blankly at the computer screen to click on refresh yet again. Then I did only thing that I could do, which was try to figure why exactly we’d flopped so badly.

Why Didn’t People Buy our Game?

The Halloween sale probably had a bigger impact than we thought. It’s hard to ask players for more money when they’ve just shelled out for games. Double Fine also had their day of the devs bundle out at the same time, providing incredible value for just a few dollars. While there will always be other games out when you launch, I think we picked a particularly poor time to do it.

“Looks really cute and could be a lot of fun. But as an American I really don’t associate fun with elections right now. Dread, yes.”

The above quote was from a comment on GoG. I’m not putting too much stock in just the one comment, but the electino cycle in the US takes an obscenely long amount of time, and my sense is that at this point most people just want it to be over already. Had we launched a month or more ago this might have been less of an issue.

After noticing some people on our game’s discussion page opine that the game A) had great art but B) “looked like a mobile game” and C) lacked strategic depth (despite their not having played the game), I decided to take a look at our Steam store page. I got really upset at myself at that point. The store page is the first thing most players will see of your game, so it’s important to make a good impression. Your trailer, screenshots, descriptions and reviews all have to work together to convince the prospective player that your game is worth buying. Our store page had an incomplete description and no links to reviews. It’s no wonder people were making these assumptions about our game. If we couldn’t even put together a proper Steam store page, how could we make a good game? Sadly, the biggest thing that might have affected our sales was something that was very much in our control, and I dropped the ball.

Lastly, I should say it is entirely possible that the game just feels too expensive for what it is, and that maybe the game just isn’t good. As for the first, I suppose we’ll find out in a few months. We’ve got a surprising amount of wishlists, and if a bunch of those convert during a sale, then we’ll know how much people actually value the game. As for whether or not it’s good, we’re happy with the feedback the game got at PAX and EGX so we’re pretty confident saying we’ve made a good game.

Engaging the Community

Now that I’d identified some of the launch day issues, the only thing left to do was to try to rectify them as best as we could. First, that meant fixing the issues with the Steam store page. Next, we dived deep into the Community discussions and responded as best as we could to people’s concerns. In some ways, this is a dangerous move. Developers can get very defensive about their work, and it’s very easy to get into an argument with a player and become labeled an angry dev. Any devs who want to wade into community discussions need to approach it with an air of humility. Always assume that any complaint is a valid concern, even if it seems dismissive. My father in law once told me that a customer that complains is valuable, because they could just as easily have walked away without letting you know why. If they’re complaining, take that as opportunity to convince them to give you another chance. Which is exactly what I did with one guy who was on the fence. I asked what was keeping him on the fence, then we had a short back and forth which ended up with him saying :

“Well, with Steam offering a 2-hour refund window, I decided that I’ll go ahead and grab the game and give it a whirl.”

How did I do it? It’s not magic. I never once tried to “correct” his intuition that the game was lacking in strategy. I merely explained that based on our experience at conventions people were happy with the level of strategy, and also linked to a Eurogamer article about it. That was enough to persuade them to try out the game, which is all I really wanted.

Aside from that, we took note of what people are saying they want from the game. They say the game feels a bit unbalanced. We’ll look into that. A lot of people are asking for multiplayer, so we’ve penciled that in as an update. There were a few questions about Linux. Assuming all goes well that will be coming soon. More than anything it’s the fact that we’re engaging with the community that makes people commit to the game. They feel like we’re not just gonna drop the game and never update it again. We’re also still actively looking for press to cover the game to try to keep it in people’s minds and give the game some more legitimacy.

We’ve also been approached by localizers in China, Russia, etc. places where games don’t traditionally do very well due to piracy and a lack of English speaking players. Localization is definitely a pain, but maybe taking a broader outlook is the way we can keep the game relevant in the coming months and years.

Conclusion

We’re proud of the game we’ve made. We’re also proud to contribute to the number of Philippine made games on Steam. That may not seem like a big deal to countries with a wealth of developers and games, but it certainly means a lot to us. It still seems almost impossible that we managed to put the game out on Steam.

We regret being such a poor investment for Positech in the short term, but they’ll make their money back over the long haul, and hopefully even sooner if we manage to play our cards right.

As for the team, it was definitely pretty rough. Our first meeting after seeing the sales numbers was pretty somber, but we ended it with a rousing karaoke session that lifted our spirits, if not our sales. We’ll keep working hard to make sure that this game is the best it can be, and hopefully we’ll have a chance to make another one.(source:gamasutra)

 


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