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中西方工作室合作面临的风险:成品毫无吸引力

发布时间:2017-12-27 09:10:06 Tags:,

原文作者:Brendan Sinclair 译者:Megan Shieh

Red Accent工作室的Greg Gobbi说,西方和中国的开发者可以合作创造出具有全球吸引力的游戏,但它需要的是协同合作,而不是妥协。

90年代末,Greg Gobbi是育碧公司的一名制作人,作品是《雷曼2:胜利大逃亡》。该作原先是针对PC平台开发的,后来移植到了各种平台上,其中包括最初的PlayStation。而这个移植项目也是育碧上海分公司的首个项目,Greg告诉GamesIndustry.biz,那是他第一次与中国团队合作。

Greg说:“当时会受到业内各方的关注不仅仅因为这是个移植项目,同时也是中国游戏行业的开端,因此那个团队里只有部分成员是来自中国的,我认为应该有30-40%的成员是从国外请回来培训和管理这个中国团队的。当时中国开发团队的优势实力主要集中在工程学方面。但是我们可以看到,年复一年,团队中的外国开发者越来越少,中国开发者却变得越来越多,而且中国的专业知识从工程技术逐渐延伸到了美术和游戏设计。”

Greg说,随着时间的推移,中国的开发领域在很大程度上解决了可能存在的任何技术差距。在盈利模式等领域,中国设计师拥有的专业知识超越了许多西方开发中心。如今,Greg不再将中国视为一个提供廉价劳动力的地方,而是一个与西方开发商合作的理想型创作中心。
这就是Red Accent工作室背后的想法,Greg于2014年与同事Julien Bares在上海和旧金山共同创建了该工作室。

Galaxy Trucker(from itunes.apple.com)

Galaxy Trucker(from itunes.apple.com)

Greg说:“我们的目标是实现真正的合作,将西方和中国的影响力结合起来,带入到我们的游戏设计中,从而吸引全球玩家。我们的模式真的不是‘在加州设计,在中国开发’,而是“在两个地方设计”,可以说是思想的融合,然后把游戏开发出来,最终向全球受众推广。

“大多数的公司都选择在西方设计游戏,然后再在中国开发游戏中的某些部分,因为从历史的角度上来说,在中国开发游戏相对比较便宜。现在也还是比较便宜,但成本也是越来越高了,尤其是在上海开发的话。另一方面,中国本土的大公司会在中国设计游戏,但在向国外输出产品方面却面临挑战。因此我们向投资者提出的承诺是,在中国创作适合全球受众的游戏,这些游戏可以出口到世界各地。”

刚刚成立的工作室从一开始就采取中西方合作的方式,这种做法并不常见,而Greg也明白Red Accent的战略优势可能成为它的弱点。

Greg说:“我们的目标是设计具有全球性吸引力的游戏,而这么做的风险在于成品可能会太过中立,没有足够的个性,因而不存在任何吸引力。”

“防止这种情况发生的最好方法是:弄清楚谁在游戏的最初设计上拥有领导地位。这是两个团队之间的合作努力,但它不应该是一个妥协。如果这是一种妥协,那么你做出来的东西真的会卡在中间,既无趣又没有个性,因为人们会接受将自己不喜欢的东西加到游戏里去,然后不把自己喜欢的东西加进去。如果清楚谁有领导能力,领导能力强的团队就会做出正确的判断,而其他团队则会强化这些内容。每个人都应该有发言权,但不是每个人都有投票权。”

幸运的是,Greg和Julien在国际开发方面有着丰富的经验。20年前,他们俩在育碧的巴黎分公司首次见面,当时Greg在育碧的蒙特利尔分公司担任编辑部门的执行副总裁,而Julien则在育碧的上海分公司担任制作人。2005年,Greg跳槽到了Take-Two Interactive,在那里他加入了2K游戏品牌的创立执行团队。不久之后Julien也加入了Take-Two,担任2K中国工作室的总经理,负责与西方的2K工作室合作制作各种项目,比如《生化奇兵2》、《特殊行动:一线生机》、《幽浮:未知敌人》。八年后,他们渴望做些新的事情。

Greg解释说:“我们俩都已经40岁了,在这个年纪你会遇到所谓的“中年危机”,开始对未来感到迷茫,然后问自己“我们现在该怎么办?”。有些人会选择更换他们的人生伴侣,但是我们仍然深爱着我们的妻子,所以这个方法行不通。我们已经在大公司工作了快20年了,因此我们要么是选择再在大公司里做个10年,要么就是尝试一些不同的东西。这时,自主创业的想法吸引了我们。”

他补充说:“我住在硅谷,周围全都是自己开公司的人。如果你不这样做的话,感觉就像是小区里的一个怪人,因此社交压力也是我选择创业的原因之一。”

Greg说,当时他和Julien在移动游戏领域看到了一个创造性的契机。游戏机业务似乎越来越多地被续集所主宰,因此他们认为,跳入移动领域将是一项更有趣的创新活动。大概一年多以前,他们将业务范围扩展到了虚拟现实(VR)游戏。

Greg说:“我们做的是3D即时手游,开发的流程、使用的工具和专业知识与VR游戏都是一样的,因此我知道我们可以做VR游戏。我们想要先尝试一个小项目,然后从那里开始。”

是不是一个“小型”项目很难说,Red Accent的第一个VR项目改编自同名儿童读物《小王子》。他们正在以章节的形式开发这款游戏,该工作室目前已经自己筹集到了第一个章节的资金,现在正在为剩下的五个章节寻求资金。目前玩家可以在世界各地的少数VR体验馆里体验到这款游戏。一旦六个章节全部开发完毕,该工作室计划将其在PC和VR游戏机商店中上线。Greg说,《小王子VR》也有可能在移动VR平台上线,但是目前该领域过于碎片化,所以暂时还不能板上钉钉。

虽然《小王子VR》是Red Accent工作室迄今为止最受关注的项目,但该工作室的焦点并没有完全转向VR。去年,该工作室测试发行了一款F2P手游,除了盈利模式之外,它的各个方面都得到了良好的评价并且达到了不错的指标。Red Accent最终选择放弃这款游戏,但它会把从这个项目中学习到的经验教训带入到下一款F2P手游中,新作有望在明年年初推出,从而给该工作室的作品目录增添一些多样性。

Greg指出:“去年有很多的中国公司都在做VR游戏,他们中的很多人都失败了。”

我们问Greg:“你认为这些人失败的原因是否和公司的成立方式,或VR市场的健康程度有关?”他表示,两者都起到了一定的影响。

接着解释道:“两年前,VR市场非常令人兴奋,投资者也很多。在中国出现了很多私人投资的小型VR游戏公司。结果VR市场的扩张没有预期的那么快,对于内容创作者来说,这是一个非常具有挑战性的市场。但是你必须想办法克服这些困难,而我认为,这涉及到了上述小公司可能缺乏的管理技能。”

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In the late ’90s, Greg Gobbi was a producer with Ubisoft working on Rayman 2: The Great Escape. The game was created for PC, and then ported to various platforms, among them the original PlayStation. That particular adaptation would be the first project to come out of Ubisoft Shanghai, and as Gobbi told GamesIndustry.biz, it was his first co-production with a Chinese team.

“What was striking at the time was not only it was a port, but it was really the beginning of the industry in China,” Gobbi said. “So the team there was only partially made of Chinese developers. I believe the ratio was maybe 30-40% people coming from abroad to train and manage a reduced Chinese team. The strength of the Chinese team at the time was mostly in engineering.

And what we saw was that year after year, the ratio of foreign developers to Chinese developers leaned more and more to Chinese people on the team, but the expertise in China extended from mostly engineering to art to game design, and then on that team, in my opinion, creative direction and storytelling.”

As the years have gone by, the Chinese development scene has largely addressed whatever skills gaps it might have had, Gobbi said. And in areas like monetization, there’s more expertise among Chinese designers than you could expect to find in many Western development hubs. These days, Gobbi sees China not as a place to have inexpensive employees handling the grunt work, but as a creative hub ideal for collaboration with Western developers.

That’s the idea behind Red Accent Studios, which Gobbi co-founded in Shanghai and San Francisco with long-time colleague Julien Bares in 2014.

“In our case, the promise was to really work together, mixing Western influence and Chinese influence in the design of our games in order to be appealing to a global audience,” Gobbi said.

“It’s really not ‘Designed in California and developed in China.’ That’s not the model. The model is ‘Designed in both locations,’ with a melding of minds so to speak, and then developed, and then marketed to a global audience.

“Most companies design in the West, and have some development power in China, because historically it was cheaper to develop in China. It’s still cheaper, but it’s getting more and more expensive, especially when you develop in Shanghai. On the other hand, there are a number of big game companies in China that design games in China, but have challenges exporting their creations outside of China. So the promise we pitched to our investors was to have global games that originate from China, that can export around the world.”

It’s not an especially common approach to start a development studio with Western and Chinese studios collaborating from the get-go, and Gobbi understands Red Accent’s strategic strength could also wind up being its weakness.

“The opportunity is to have a game with a global appeal, and the risk is to have no appeal at all, to be in the middle of everything and not have a strong enough personality,” Gobbi said.

“The biggest tool to prevent that from happening is to be clear on who has the leadership over the initial design of the game. It’s a collaborative effort between the two teams, but it should not be a compromise. If it is a compromise, you really get into this middle, uninteresting thing where people compromise on what they don’t like and don’t put in what they like. If it’s clear who has the leadership, the team who has the leadership makes the correct call, and those are enriched by the other teams. Everybody has a voice, but not everybody has a vote.”

Fortunately, Gobbi and Bares have plenty of prior experience with international development. Gobbi and Bares first met at Ubisoft in Paris 20 years ago, with Gobbi finding his way to an executive VP of editorial position at Ubisoft Montreal while Bares settled in as a producer at Ubisoft Shanghai. In 2005, Gobbi jumped to Take-Two Interactive, where he joined the executive team starting up the 2K Games label. Soon after, Bares joined Take-Two to be general manager of the 2K China studio, working with a variety of Western 2K Games studios on projects like BioShock 2, Spec Ops: The Line, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Eight years later, they got the itch to do something new.

“We both turned 40,” Gobbi explained, “and you have this kind of mid-life crisis, saying, ‘What should I do now with my life?’ Some people change their life companions, but I believe we were still both in love with our wives, so that was not an option. We had been with big companies for nearly 20 years and two cycles of game platforms. The options were to either do another cycle at a big company, or to try something different. The appeal of entrepreneurship got us.”

He added, “I also live in Silicon Valley, and you’re surrounded by people who start companies. And at some point, if you don’t do it, you’re kind of like an oddity within the community, so there was a social pressure to start working for myself as well.”

At the time, Gobbi said he and Bares saw a creative opportunity in mobile games. The console business seemed increasingly dominated by sequels, so they figured a jump into mobile would be a more interesting venture, creatively. A little over a year ago, that focus expanded to include virtual reality.

“In our case, the games we are making in mobile are in real-time 3D, and using the exact same pipeline and tools and expertise as you need to do a VR game,” Gobbi said. “So we knew our team could do it, and we wanted to try a small project to start and go from there.”

While its status as “small” is debatable, Red Accent’s first VR project is an adaptation of the cherished children’s book The Little Prince. The studio is developing it in episodic fashion, having already self-funded the first episode and now in pursuit of funding for the remaining five planned episodes. At the moment, it’s available exclusively in a handful of VR arcades around the world, with plans to release it on PC and console VR storefronts once all six chapters are complete. Gobbi said mobile VR platforms are also a possibility, but right now the field is too fragmented for that to be a slam dunk decision.

While The Little Prince is Red Accent’s highest profile project to date, it hasn’t shifted gears entirely to VR. It had a free-to-play mobile game in soft launch last year that drew good reviews and promising metrics on every front but monetization. The studio scrapped that game, but is putting some of the lessons from it toward a new free-to-play mobile game it expects to launch early next year, lending some welcome diversity to its catalog of games.

“There were tons of game companies doing VR last year [in China],” Gobbi noted. “A lot of them failed.”

When asked if that says more about how those companies were set up or the health of the VR market, Gobbi suggested it’s a bit of both.

“There was huge excitement in the VR market two years ago, and lots of investors,” he said. “There are a lot of private investors in small companies in China. And then the market expansion didn’t happen as fast or as much as what was anticipated, and it’s a very challenging market for content creators to make money in at the moment. But you have to find a way to make it work, and that does involve some management skills that maybe some of those small companies lacked.” (Source: gamesindustry.biz  )


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