本文原作者：Benjamin Rivers 译者ciel chen

7月1日是《家home》发行五周年纪念日——这款“独特的恐怖冒险”类游戏我在2012年一开始发行的时候收到期待值为零，但后来却取得了惊人的成绩。而现在，距离完成并运作它的续作《与你读出Alone With You》几个月过去了，我想回顾一下这款游戏并提出我们工作室五年来沿用至今的5点经验之谈：

要天真（以正确的方式）

对于《家》这款游戏，我当时赌我可以通过音效和非常具体的游戏机制——游戏中的故事会随着玩家的行动被重复地讲述——以达到其他恐怖游戏所无法达到的效果，来创作出一款低保真图像的恐怖游戏。但是这并不是什么一些什么由几十年经验形成的非凡假说；这只是我能想到的最好创意，毕竟我那时候的技能水平有限。

就是那种纯净天真的观念让我能集中注意力在那些建议明了概念上去理解——这也反过来让游戏变得既有趣又有市场，记者和玩家开始谈论它。如今，随着我处理的事情越来越多，我发现越来越难做到这点了——我把这种情况叫做经验的诅咒。

Home Screen（from gamasutra.com）

经验要点：缺乏经验这点对避免常见的担忧和陷阱来说非常有用，而且这点还能让人看到别人难以看到的机会。（想了解更多有关这个经验的内容，我推荐你们去看Liz Wisman的《Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work》。）

充分利用手头现有的资源

对于开发者来说，在还没写游戏设计文档的第一句话之前，能拥有一个符合预先构想的乌托邦式环境是非常有诱惑力的——很多人觉得：作为开发者你需要良好的工作场地、特定的电脑、谈好的交易、开发用套件以及提前定下的整套软件来开启项目是说得通的。

而在制作《Home》的会后，我只有一台装Windows virtualizer系统的老旧MacBook Pro来运行Game Maker 8.1(一开始的时候)，以及我之前用来为客户工作用的Adobe套件。这些就是我当时用的所有工具，我就是用着它们创作成的游戏初始版本。

利用现有工具不仅可以降低财政风险，这样情况下产生的限制还能有助于激发我们想出解决各种问题的创新对策。不仅如此，这样还消除了我的忧虑与害怕；由于我“不知道我不知道的是什么”，所以我就可以尽我最大所能地专注于创作游戏。

经验要点：别自欺欺人地有“如果我有X，我就可以做我自己的游戏了”这种想法。如果你有一台PC或者类似设备，你就可以马上开始开发自己的游戏——而且你甚至可能开发得比别人更快更省钱更灵巧。你要让这些现有资源的成为你的优势！

不要孤注一掷

很多独立游戏开发者都拿自己的时间（和健康）作为赌注只为了开发出一款游戏来。然而当他们做好游戏发行之时，整个游戏产业和市场已经今非昔比了，也因此他们游戏能成功的概率也就大不一样了。《Home》的开发时间短得不行——大概只用了六个月，但是之后的一年多里我都用业余的时间扩展它（因为我那个时候大多数时间还在为客户工作）。

这种用夜晚和周末时间来开发游戏的方式做起来是有其优势的：我被迫要保持游戏规模在可掌控范围内；这样让我每天都有喘息的时间所以不至于一发火毁了它；还有关键的一点就是——这样意味着我不是孤注一掷倾其所有地在它一个产品身上。

在我的工作室，我们所做的每件事都会围绕着“预期风险”——也就是说我们做的每一个行动或项目都不是“不成功便成仁”类型的。我们希望在这方面做长期的努力，所以我们不会孤注一掷把自己弄得覆水难收。

经验要点：在游戏开发中，要点不在于你能造成多大的冲击，而是你能接受多大的打击。不要只为了一个项目就拿自己整个人（尤其是健康！）去冒险。在Peter Sims的书《Little Bets》中有很棒的相关资源。

让游戏跳脱出游戏行业来

《Home》能作为一款游戏能诞生主要是因为我从没看到过我想要的那种游戏，所以我决定自己开发出来。《Home》不是什么“《我的世界》混《生化奇兵》版游戏”也不是什么“《糖果粉碎》混《刺猬索尼克》版游戏”——事实上它的诞生灵感来源不是来自于游戏产业内部的，它也不是为了成为在mixer party上吹嘘的话题而生的。我相信，它之所以能如此热卖并持续热销这么久（有5年！）的原因之一就是它没有去依附游戏市场里任何可下定义的游戏趋势。

而《Home》最让我惊讶的地方在于它的覆盖面扩散之广——从世界各大报刊和像《Rue Morgue》这类的恐怖刊物再到电视节目，你知道在哪里看不到《Home》的身影吗？——在GDC、the IGF或者其他任何游戏会展活动上你是看不到它的。游戏开发社区从来没有真正对《Home》感兴趣过（尽管它在各个网站和杂志上都被大肆报道过），不过终究他们都献上了虚伪的祝福——我是从开始收到那些和孩子们一起玩这个游戏母亲们和家庭的email后才深谙这个事实的——他们都觉得一家人在屋子里一起享受这个游戏是件很令人毛骨悚然的事。

经验要点：不要拘泥于你当即的设想，为你的游戏走一条让人意想不到的道路。

起步于小

你可能跟朋友们聊到《Home》的时候会觉得它是一种一次性体验游戏，不过并非如此！

当《Home》2012年在PC上发行的时候，有些事情还是很让人惊讶的，包括：

你没法保存

这里没有训练场所

第一层的一些房间是不存在的

只有Windows系统才能跑得动这个游戏

现在，《Home》在Windows、Mac（通过Steam、the Humble Store以及其他平台）、IOS（支持几乎从iphone 4s开始之后的所有设备）、PlayStation 4还有PlayStation Vita这些系统都可以玩了。现在它有自动保存系统了；它在Steam和IOS平台上有社交媒体hooks了；它支持21:9显示屏了；它在发行后几个月添加新场所了；它改写了几个主要代码；它几年来经历了好几次bug修复、脚本重写、应用修正。我觉得我在《Home》上做的更新比George Lucas在《星际争霸》做的改变还要多。

谁会知道这个小小的恐怖游戏会五年来持续地进行更新和内容添加呢？ 但是随着游戏越来越受欢迎、随着我把游戏带向更多的平台，我把我所学会的新知识都运用到它身上——所有这些都在快速、低价而有必要的做法下完成了，我做出的努力最后没有让我失望。尽管现在技术已经发生了改变，但游戏始终保持着持续可行性和易获性。

经验要点：很少有游戏是“一劳永逸”型的。但是发行一款可控范围规模的游戏意味着：即便它只是一个单机，而且故事长度总共也就1小时左右的游戏，你也可以对修改内容、添加人们想要的特色、以及让它能符合新玩家群体喜好方面做出反应。
总结

在五年前《Home》的首次发行中，我学到了很多——一路上犯过新错，不过也有新发现。我希望这篇文章能帮助你们解决一些自己在开发过程中碰到的问题。如果你还想了解更多，可以在评论中让我知道！我很乐意跟你们分享更多内容。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

June 1st marks the fifth anniversary of Home — the “unique horror adventure” game that I initially launched with zero expectations in 2012 to surprising success. And now, a few months after completing and shipping its follow-up, Alone With You, I wanted to look back on the game and present five important lessons that continue to drive what my studio does, even five years later:

1. Be naive (in all the right ways)

With Home, I bet that I could create a lo-fi horror game that used sound and one very specific gameplay mechanic — that the game’s story is being retold based on the player’s actions — to do things that other horror games couldn’t. But this wasn’t some brilliant hypothesis formed after decades of experience; it was literally the best idea I could come up with, given my skill set at the time.

That pure, naive vision is what allowed me to focus on a concept that was simple and easy to understand — which in turn allowed the game to also be marketable and interesting for press and players to talk about. Nowadays, with a lot more at my disposal, I find this increasingly difficult — call it the curse of experience.

The lesson: inexperience can be a wonderful tool for avoiding common worries and pitfalls, and seeing opportunity where others don’t. (For more on this, I highly recommend Liz Wiseman’s book, Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work.)

2. Use what you have

There’s a temptation for devs to want to have some utopian, pre-conceived environment set up and ready before they even write the first sentence of their game design document — it’s easy to think that you need the right office space, specific computers, deals in place, dev kits, and predetermined suite of software to even get started.

With Home, I had an aging MacBook Pro running Game Maker 8.1 (initially) via a Windows virtualizer, and the same Adobe suite I was using for my client work at the time. Those were the tools I had, and so those were the ones I used to create and finish the initial version of the game.

Not only did this keep the game’s financial risk down, but those constraints helped fuel creative solutions to all sorts of problems. And it also kept me from freaking out and worrying all the time; I “didn’t know what I didn’t know,” and so I could just focus on creating the game to the best of my ability.

The lesson: don’t trick yourself into thinking, “If only I had X, I could make my game.” If you have a PC of any kind, you can make a game, right now. And you can probably do it more quickly, cheaply and cleverly than someone else. Use that to your advantage!

3. Don’t bet the farm

Many indie devs bet years of their life (and their health) to make a single game. By the time they release, the industry and the market might not even be the same anymore, and their game’s chance of success could be wildly different. Home’s development was unusually short — perhaps six months, but stretched out over more than a year on a part-time basis (because I was still working for clients most of the time).

The evenings-and-weekends approach to the game’s development actually worked to its advantage: it forced me to keep the scope manageable; it allowed for daily breaks so I didn’t burn out on it; and — crucially — it meant that I wasn’t risking everything on a single product.

In my studio, everything we do revolves around “calculated risk” — meaning that no single action or project is do-or-die. We want to be in this for the long haul, so we never make a bet from which we can’t recover.

The lesson: In game development, it’s not how hard you can hit; it’s how hard you can get hit. Don’t risk everything (especially your health!) on a single project. A great resource on this is the book Little Bets by Peter Sims.

4. Step outside the industry

The major reason for Home to even exist was that I didn’t see the game I wanted, so I decided to make it. Home isn’t “Minecraft meets Bioshock” or “Candy Crush meets Sonic the Hedgehog” — it wasn’t born of looking from within the games industry at all, in fact, or as a pitch line to use at mixer parties. And I believe one of the reasons the game sold well, and continues to do so (five years later!) is that it wasn’t based on a definable trend.

What surprised me the most about Home was that it got extended coverage — from newspapers worldwide, from horror publications such as Rue Morgue, and on television. You know where you’ve never heard about Home, though? At GDC, the IGF, or any other industry event. The game development community was never really interested in it (though it got coverage on every website and in several magazines, extensively), but this ended up being a blessing in disguise — a fact that I realized so deeply when I started receiving emails from mothers playing the game with their teenage children and from families who thought it was a creepy thing to enjoy at the cottage together.

The lesson: Reach beyond your immediate assumptions to find unexpected avenues for your game.

5. Start small and grow

Home was intended as a one-and-done experience that you’d talk about with your friends, but that’s not how things turned out at all!

When Home launched on PC in 2012, there were some surprising things about it, including:

you couldn’t save

there was no train yard area

there were rooms in the first level that didn’t exist

it only ran on Windows

Now, Home exists on Windows and Mac (via Steam, the Humble Store, and others) iOS (with support for pretty much every device from the iPhone 4s onward ), PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation Vita. It has an auto-save system, it got social media hooks on Steam and iOS, it supports 21:9 monitors, it had new areas added to it months after launch, it got a major code rewrite, and it has had several passes of bug fixes, script rewrites and corrections applied to it throughout the years. I think I’ve updated Home more than George Lucas has changed Star Wars.

Who knew this tiny horror game would continue to get updates and content additions for five years? But as the game grew in popularity, and as I dealt with bringing it to new platforms, I applied all the new things I learned to improve it — all quickly, cheaply, and as-needed, without bogging me down. It’s kept the game continuously viable and accessible, even as technology has changed.

The lesson: Few games are “set and forget” anymore. But releasing a manageable game means you can respond to changes, add features people actually want, and keep it relevant to new audiences — even when it’s a single-player, story-driven title that lasts just over an hour.

Conclusion

I’ve learned a whole lot since first launching Home five years ago — and have made plenty of new mistakes and discoveries along the way as well. I hope this article helps you tackle some issues you might be having in your own development. If you’d like to know anything else, hop in the comments and let me know! I’ll be happy to share more.（source：gamasutra.com）