本文原作者：Sean Clearver 译者ciel chen

在《文明6》的发行后，Sean Cleaver和Sarah Darney（Firaxis公司的副制作人）进行了一次座谈，聊了聊她在QA的相关背景是如何对她在游戏行业工作产生根本性影响的。

《文明》系列游戏已经有悠久的历史了。一个有着25年历史的老品牌系列游戏——至今发行了6款系列游戏，还有另外至少四款周边产品游戏，如果没有一个坚实的基础是无法做出这般成绩的。如今，这只策略型游戏巨兽翻开了该系列历史转折的第六篇章，我们可以公道地说——随着游戏的发展，游戏团队也在进步。

对《文明6》的发行我们已经等了太久。还记得上一款游戏《文明5》的发行是在6年前——它可以说是游戏史上的崭新力作，它为游戏提供了新的设计方向——将传统的方形板换成了六边形。这一大胆的举措让地图、行动和军事冲突上升到了新的层次。“勇敢新世界”补丁包引进了了一个巨大全新的子系统——该系统是基础是一种所有旧的社会政策和宗教树都被不同奖励制度和技能树所替代的意识形态。而且所有这些添加的内容都有一个相同效果——它们极大地改变了游戏的平衡和感觉。

这次，Firaxis公司在整个游戏中引入了意识形态系统。但是最大的改变是在城市的形式上以及你建造这些城市的方式上。现在，当你拥有一座城市，你需要对特定的场地范围进行制定，这样才能限制你在该范围内所能建造的东西并且限制你所拥有的空间。

比如说，像一座剧院这样的文化建筑就不得不建在指定的瓷砖材料上，如果你没有建或者制定指定的瓷砖材料，你就建不了剧院。这种限制对奇迹建筑也生效，这让游戏从本质上把屏幕中的城市变成了一个迷你城市建筑游戏。由此可见进化即是《文明》的一部分，也是历史的起源。

可以说，Firaxis已经在策略引导上有所成长——该工作室公司不仅满足于对《文明》的制作，他们还重新启动了XCOM系列游戏，并取得了巨大的成功。

CivilizationVI Building Madrasa Arabia（from develop online）

工作室现在已经发展起来了，并且团队在很多其他产品上也越来越专业了。我们要和Sarah Darney谈谈，他是游戏的副制作人。

Darney的工作历程非常有趣——她有着关于在QA（质量保证）的工作背景，这听起来让人觉得简直是做游戏制作人的完美资质。但是你要让一个大型系列游戏在游戏性上做一个如此巨大的转变，这时QA和游戏测试就变成了一个大难题了。

“我觉得有QA的背景对开发者来说很重要，这让开发者至少能明白程序的运作原理，而对于我来说，我觉得这点对我现在的工作很有帮助”Darney这样告诉我。“尤其我曾经还是QA经理，工作内容和QA部门的制作人很相似。”

经验保证

Darney在XCOM《未知敌人》和《内部敌人》两个系列游戏的重新启动，以及《文明：太空（Beyond Earth）》“潮起（Rising Tide）”DLC制作中都有参与，但是《文明》系列游戏带来了全新的挑战。“那很让人害怕，”Darney说道。“这是一份巨大的遗产——《文明》系列游戏已经有25年的历史了，要想做出令人满意的成果将会是非常艰巨的任务。”

在对游戏做出改变的同时，Darney始终希望能确保游戏不失去其本色。“当你一款系列游戏中创作下一个迭代时，你会希望能保存同系列游戏的相似性，你会想让粉丝感觉到‘嗯，我在玩的是《文明》系列游戏没错。’”

“不再堆叠建筑物的城市建设是的一大改变——这就像在你城市的每个中心都出了个谜题，”Darney继续道。“这个巨大的改变甚至影响了游戏中全部的其他功能。那么同时我们还保持了那种‘感觉’，那种‘属于《文明》系列游戏的感觉’，那种《文明》粉都懂得的感觉——这种感觉变得更加奇妙了，因为我们确确实实做出了很大的改变，但这种改变让人依旧保留有属于《文明》的游戏感，却在此基础上做到了对常规的突破。”

《文明》里令人上瘾的游戏特质多年来一直受到人们的嘲讽：你已经可以看到在清晨的早上已经有PO到网上抱怨这是‘又一轮’陷阱的推文了——当一个新的特性出现在游戏中是，它可以打破这个魔咒，这时Darney在QA方面的经验就成为无价之宝了。

“即使有来自QA的背景，但我无论何时听到游戏会有巨大的系统更改我还是会有怯意。”Darney开玩笑道，“因为这会让我立马想到我要写出所有的测试计划。但是我认为这对我来说是很有帮助的，因为我工作的很重要一部分内容就是试玩游戏然后给开发者提出反馈。我可以把存档发过去然后说：‘这里似乎感觉不对劲，你可以看看吗？’我说的感觉是确切的，因为我仍然有着QA的思维模式，这让我有了优势可以通过不同的方法来处理事情。”

平衡的历史

《文明》系列游戏对很多电子游戏类型进行了延展——举几个例子，有策略类型、城市建设类型、架空历史类型和科幻小说类型。尤其是当需要平衡游戏中这些新特色和新功能的时候，Darney在QA方面的经验在游戏中的运用帮助确保了这些游戏类型的结合是行得通的。

“这是QA中的一大部分内容。我们在Firaxis内侧就是让《文明》游戏系列的狂热粉丝来进行对游戏的测试，”Darney解释道。“他们要做的就是寻找漏洞，同时他们也会专注于游戏是否有趣，然后就是每天都认真地玩它。总有些时候我们会错过系统的一些最佳位点。”
“知道这点对于平衡和数值来说尤其重要，”Darney继续举例道：“比如这里放大100——好像太过了，那就50倍吧——好像还是不太对，那就调到75倍好了——然后发现行得通了。”

“这种事情真的太重要了因为我们的有很多种独特的单位建筑，”Darney补充道。“我们要有基础的单位建筑建设、每个领导人的独特能力、整个宗教体系的奖励、政府系统，我们还要保证所有的数值都要正确才能让所有游戏内容共同运转起来——这非常地有挑战性。”

QA大概是游戏开发中最重要的一部分了——因为除了修复漏洞之外，你还有机会消除工作室泡沫。你会看到游戏是如何运作、如何操作、以及最根本的问题：游戏是不是真的有趣——这也是在一天的结尾，每个人（从玩家到游戏的副制作人）都想从《文明》系列游戏中得到的乐趣。

“我喜欢开发过程的这个部分，因为我们做的游戏就是为了让它好玩有趣的，”Darney说道。“如果我见到游戏的粉丝，然后如果他们愿意跟我击掌，如果他们能告诉我他们有多爱这个游戏以及这个游戏让她们有多开心，那将会是对我来说非常温暖的安慰和鼓励——而这也是我工作的动力源泉以及我热爱这份工作的原因。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Following the release of Civilization VI, Sean Cleaver sat down with Sarah Darney, associate producer at Firaxis, to talk about how her background in QA has been essential for her role on the game

Civilization has a long-standing history of quality. You don’t become a 25 year old franchise that has released six games, and at least another four spin offs without having a great foundation behind you. Now in its sixth entry of the historical turn based strategy behemoth and it’s fair to say that as the game has evolved, so have the team making it.

It’s been a long time coming for Civilization VI. The previous entry, which came out six years ago, was a new and successful direction for the game. Changing its traditional square based board for hexagons was a bold move that opened up the map, the movement and military conflict to new levels. The add-on pack Brave New World introduced a huge new subsystem based on ideology with different bonuses and skill trees that replaced all of the old social policy and religion trees. All of these additions do one thing – they drastically alter the balance and feel of a game.

This time around, Firaxis has included the ideology system in the full game. But the biggest change comes in the form of cities and how you build them. Now, when you have a city, you have to designate a tile to a certain speciality which limits what you can build inside it and the space you have.

I think it’s so important to developers to have an understand of how the process works.

For example, culture buildings like a theatre have to be built on a specialised tile and if you haven’t build or assigned that specialisation then you can’t build it. That restriction also carries over to wonders, essentially turning the city screen in to a mini city cuilding game. Evolution is as much a part of Civilization as it is the history it sources.

Firaxis have grown in to their strategy boots, so to speak. Not content with just Civilization, the studio has produced the reboot of the XCOM franchise as well, to great success. The studio has grown and the team has become well versed in many of its wares. We got to speak to Sarah Darney, who is an associate producer for Firaxis on the game.

Darney’s job history is very interesting in that her background is in quality assurance, which when you say it out loud sounds like the perfect qualification to be a game producer. But when you have a big game franchise that implements such a drastic change in gameplay, QA and testing becomes a huge piece of the puzzle.

“Coming from QA, I think it’s so important for developers to at least have an understanding of how the process works but I feel like that very much prepared me for what I’m doing now,” Darney tells me. “Especially as I was the QA manager, which is very much like being a producer for the QA department.”

EXPERIENCE ASSURED

Darney has worked on both of the XCOM reboots, Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within, as well as the Beyond Earth DLC, Rising Tide. But Civilization presents a new challenge. “It is quite frightening,” says Darney. “It’s a huge legacy. Civilization has been around for 25 years, those are very big shoes to fill.” With the changes in the game, Darney is keen to make sure it doesn’t lose its identity. “When you’re creating the next iteration in a franchise, you want there to be a similarity. You want the fans to feel like ‘Ok, I’m playing a Civ game’.

“Unstacking the cities was a huge change – just creating this puzzle game around all of your cities centres,” Darney continues. “It’s a big change and it affects every other function in the game. So whilst we still have that ‘thing’, that ‘civ thing’, that everyone knows – the one more turn magic, we did change it a lot. It’s something to get used to but it breaks up that routine.”

The identity of what makes Civilization such an addictive game has been affectionately mocked for many years. You can already see tweets of those lamenting the ‘one more turn’ trap as they post in the early hours of a morning. When a new feature comes in to the game that can break that magic, Darney’s experience in QA is invaluable.

“Coming from QA, whenever I hear that there’s going to be a giant systematic change to the game, I’m still terrified,” Darney jokes, “because I immediately have flashbacks to all of the test plans that I’d have to write. But I do think that helps me as I’m approaching it now, because an important part of my job is to play the game and give feedback to the developers. I can send saves and say, ‘this isn’t quite feeling right, can you take a look?’ I definitely feel, because I still have that QA mind set, it gives me an advantage in doing that and I can approach things differently.”

BALANCING HISTORY

Civilization stretches over a number of video game genres – strategy, city building, alternate history and science fiction to name a few. Darney’s experience in QA across these genres has helped in making sure that marriage of them works, especially when it comes to balancing the new features and additions to the game.

“That’s a big part of QA. How we approach it at Firaxis, internally especially, [is that the testers are] big Civ fans,” Darney explains. “They’re looking for bugs but they’re focused on whether this game is fun and just playing it every day. There are times a system goes in and maybe we pass the sweet spot.

“Finding that is especially important with balancing and with numbers,” Darney continues. “Amplifying this by 100 – that’s too overpowered. Let’s go back to 50 – still not quite right, and then swinging up to 75 and finding out where things are working.

“That’s so important because we have so many unique units,” Darney adds. “We have base units, every leader has they’re unique ability and all these bonuses throughout the religion system, the government system and making sure all those numbers are right and working together. It is very challenging.”

QA is possibly one of the most important parts of game development as you have the opportunity, outside of bug fixing, to leave the bubble of the studio. You get to see how the game works, how it plays, and fundamentally if it is any fun. At the end of day it is what everyone, all the way from the fan playing to the associate producer of the game, wants from a Civilization title.

“I love that part of the process as – we make games and they’re supposed to be fun,” Darney says. “If I see a fan and I get a high five them and they tell me how much they love this game and how happy it made them, it gives me the warm fuzzies. It’s why I go to work and it’s why I love my job.” （source：develop online）