原文作者：Brendan Sinclair 译者：Megan Shieh

过去十年里，Chris McQuinn在DrinkBox工作室所承担的主要职责是：“设计并销售游戏。”作为《墨西哥英雄大混战（Guacamelee）》和《外星粒子觅食传说（Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack）》背后工作室的设计师和营销者，Chris McQuinn在创作和销售独立游戏方面，有着非同寻常的一手经验。

我们问他：“在今天的游戏产业中，营销和设计相比，哪个更重要？”

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他回答说：“一个蹩脚的回答是：你必须把两个部分都做好。尽管这是事实，但是我会给你一个更明确、更有说服力的答案：你的首要任务是把设计做好。这年头，营销做得好的人多了去了。小型团队啊，应届毕业生之类的，他们中的许多人都很擅长做游戏的市场营销。”

“在我看来，人们似乎渐渐忘记了游戏设计的重要性。没错，他们在其他方面做得越来越好了，比如：联系网站做推广，给游戏主播发邮件等等，这些都不成问题，但是最终，如果游戏未能达到预期的效果，而且人们在游戏公测/公布的时候发现了这一点，那么情况就有些棘手了。”

这并不是说，McQuinn先是以设计师的角度来制作游戏，游戏做完了以后再化身成为营销者。当他在开发游戏的时候，也会时刻考虑着市场营销方面的问题，他经常会把自己觉得有趣的东西截图下来，然后立即发布到网上，或者在他需要用游戏图像来突出游戏的某个方面的时候，再使用这些截屏图像。

尽管有句谚语说：“一仆难侍二主。” 但是McQuinn的设计师和营销者身份从未产生过真正意义上的矛盾。

他说：“我们想要创造出最好的体验。我认为，如果你试图从设计的角度上构建出最好的体验，那么就会产生许多既有趣又适合营销的材料。从理论上讲，如果设计做得好，那么它在市场营销方面就会表现得更好。”

当然，无论游戏的设计有多好，营销方面的工作也是不容忽视的。每款游戏都需要有一个基本健全的营销策略，而在这方面，McQuinn只有一个主要建议。

他说：“你需要找到游戏的卖点，然后将它以简洁、精炼的方式介绍给人们。人们的空闲时间并不多，这就意味着你只能得到他们1-2秒钟的注意力，因此你需要想办法将你的卖点塞进这个微小的空隙中。”

McQuinn已经在DrinkBox工作室考验过了他的这些想法，但是如果将这些想法放到不同的环境下，又会产生什么效果？McQuinn仍在协助《墨西哥英雄大混战2》的项目制作，但他已经不是DrinkBox的全职员工了。他和他的同事Mayuran Thurairatnam联手创建了一家名为WashBear的工作室，该工作由他们两人组成，目前致力于模拟经营类游戏《恐龙公园（Parkasaurus）》的制作。

乍一看，人们可能会认为《恐龙公园》的卖点是显而易见的：《侏罗纪公园》与《主题公园》的结合。然而，McQuinn否认了这一假设。虽然他承认该作在某种程度上受到了模拟经营类游戏的影响，参考了《动物园大亨（Zoo Tycoon）》和《模拟城市 2000（Sim City 2000）》，但是和牛蛙工作室开发的《主题公园》却没有什么联系。至于《侏罗纪公园》…

McQuinn说：“我不知道我的搭档Mayuran是怎么想的，但是我个人没有很喜欢《侏罗纪公园》。我小时候非常喜欢恐龙，特别想成为一名古生物学家，可是《侏罗纪公园》并没有引起太多共鸣。”

“因为《侏罗纪公园》中的恐龙总是以敌对的方式呈现，而且它们永远是玩家的‘敌人’。我知道像霸王龙和迅猛龙这样的可能会凶一点，可是当你想到《侏罗纪公园》的时候，你不会想到有爱的雷龙或者剑龙，脑子里想的就只是‘可怕的恐龙’。我从来都不觉得恐龙是很凶残的，我想要和超级酷炫的恐龙当好朋友，和他们一起玩。因此，我们不想把‘可怕的恐龙’带入到《恐龙公园》中。”

尽管如此，这是一款主题公园模拟经营类游戏，构建一个错综复杂的平衡系统网络，其中一半的乐趣是看着它陷入混乱。也就是说，这些恐龙不时会逃离他们的展位，并且造成大面积的破坏，这时玩家就需要转换到第一人称射击模式。

但是McQuinn强调：“玩家永远都不会杀死自己的恐龙。你只是用飞镖把它们麻醉，然后再把它们放回展位。场面肯定是会很混乱的，然而这就像是你的狗跑到了街上一样。你会想‘哎呀，小黄又跑到外面胡闹去了！’但是，你还是会充满爱意地追着它们满大街跑。在《恐龙公园》里，恐龙的存在更像是玩家的宠物/朋友，而不是‘可怕的怪兽’。”

当被问及游戏的灵感来源时，McQuinn并未谈及任何游戏或电影大片，而是兴高采烈地谈论了动物园。

McQuinn说道：“我和Mayuran都很喜欢去动物园。特别是在过去的5-10年里，新建的动物园在建筑设计方面，以一种复兴的手法展现了动物的魅力。这些动物园的建筑图纸真的很赞，实在是太酷了，它们就像是设计师的一个美梦。而我们发现，《动物园大亨（Zoo Tycoon）》风格的模拟经营类游戏往往忽略了这一点，展位的形状、使用的材料、生态、植物、海拔和湿度，这些都是非常重要的。我们想要抓住这一点，并且将它变成一款游戏。”

对McQuinn而言，这就是营销策略的主旨。

McQuinn指出：“在《恐龙公园》中，展位的设计和摆放方式会起到关键性的作用，而这就是我们的卖点。我们在游戏中加入了许多有趣的方方面面：公园的生物圈、各种恐龙的匹配等等，你对这些东西作出的改变也会直接影响到恐龙们的舒适程度。”

他把这比喻成我们小时候饲养小动物所用的玻璃容器。

“你在外面的花园里挖出了几只小虫子，然后把他们放到玻璃容器里，这时候你就会想‘不知道我这样分配玻璃容器里的空间，小虫子们会不会喜欢？’转眼一想‘他们当然会很喜欢啦！’而这，就是《恐龙公园》的设计意义。每个展位都是一个独立的生物圈，独立的玻璃容器，里面的所有设置和摆设都会影响到‘小虫子’们的舒适程度。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Chris McQuinn’s LinkedIn page lists a simple set of responsibilities he has had at DrinkBox Studios for the better part of the last decade: “Design & Sell those games.”

As a designer and marketer at the studio behind Guacamelee and Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, he has an uncommon combination of first-hand-experience in both the creation and commodification of critically and commercially successful indie games. And when asked which discipline–marketing or design–he considers more crucial in the industry today, he takes a moment to answer.

“A lame answer is ‘You have to do both parts right,’” he told GamesIndustry.biz, “but I’ll give you a more committal, less lame answer–even though I think you do have to do both parts right. You have to get design right, first and foremost. These days, people have gotten really good at marketing their games. Smaller scope teams are really good at marketing their games. Lots of kids out of school are really good about marketing their games.

“In my opinion, it almost seems as if people are forgetting about the game and getting really good about everything else, like getting up the websites, emailing YouTubers, and this and that… Then at the end of the day, the game comes up a bit short, and people realize that as soon as the game comes out of Early Access or is released, and then there are some troubles there.”

That’s not to say McQuinn wears the designer hat to make the game and then switches to the marketer hat once it’s finished. When he’s working on the game, he’s always considering the marketing, often taking screenshots of what he finds interesting to either post online immediately or to hold for later when he needs just the right image to highlight just the right aspect of the game.

Despite the adage that “No man can serve two masters,” McQuinn said his needs as a designer and his needs as a marketer have never really been at odds.

“We just want to make the best experience, and I feel if you’re making the best experience design-wise, there’s going to be a ton of material that’s interesting and marketable,” McQuinn said. “And in theory, if you make the design good, it should work out on the marketing side with regards to it getting pick-up.”

Of course, it’s not enough to just make a good game and assume the marketing will take care of itself. A game needs to have a fundamentally sound marketing strategy, and McQuinn had one key piece of advice for generating that.

“You need to know your schtick,” McQuinn said. “It has to be tight. When you approach people, it has to be very tight. Know what your schtick is, and deliver it in a very tight manner. People have very little time, and you’re going to get their attention for one or two seconds. You just need to try to slip into that crack.”

McQuinn put these ideas to the test at DrinkBox, but he’s about to find out how well they translate in a different setting. McQuinn is still lending DrinkBox a hand on Guacamelee 2, but he’s no longer a full-time employee. He and fellow DrinkBoxer Mayuran Thurairatnam have formed WashBear, a two-person team working on Parkasaurus, a dinosaur theme park management game.

At first glance, one might think the schtick for Parkasaurus is readily apparent: Jurassic Park meets Theme Park. We suggested as much to McQuinn, but were quickly corrected. While he acknowledged the influence of management sim titles, he name checked Zoo Tycoon and Sim City 2000 rather than Bullfrog’s first crack at the genre. As for Jurassic Park…

“I can’t speak for Mayuran, but I don’t particularly care for Jurassic Park,” McQuinn said. “I mean, I was a crazy dino kid when I was younger. I totally wanted to be a paleontologist. But Jurassic Park didn’t really resonate a whole lot.

“I didn’t like why the dinosaurs were always so antagonistic and were always ‘the enemy.’ And I know that was just the case with the aggressive ones like the T-rexes and Velociraptors, but when you think of Jurassic Park, you don’t think of the loving Brontosaurus or the Steg or whatever. You always think of scary dinosaurs. And for me, I’ve never had that vision of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are these amazing cool things I want as pets and to be my best friend. That’s why we don’t want to bring that sort of view of dinosaurs to Parkasaurus.”

That said, this is a theme park management sim, “life finds a way,” and half the fun of building an intricately balanced web of systems is watching how quickly it can fall into chaos. So naturally, from time to time these dinosaurs will escape their exhibits and wreak havoc, which is when players need to jump into first-person-shooter mode.

“You’re never going to kill your dino,” McQuinn emphasized. “You’re just going to dart them to sleep and put them back in their exhibit. There’s going to be chaos, for sure. But it’s more like when your dog gets out in the street. You’re like, ‘Aw shit, Rosie got outside again’ and you have to lovingly go after them. That’s the take we have on it.”

But when first asked about inspirations for the game, McQuinn didn’t turn to previous video games or cinematic blockbusters. He excitedly and enthusiastically talked about zoos.

“Me and Mayuran love zoos,” McQuinn said. “Especially new zoos in the last 5-10 years, there has been an architectural renaissance in how the exhibits are designed with regards to exhibit flow. If you look at architectural drawings of zoos these days, they’re amazing. They’re so cool. They’re like a designer’s wet dream. And we find that’s often lacking in Zoo Tycoon-style or simulation games, that real importance on how you design the exhibit, its shape, and how you flow people through a park. We want to take that and make it into a game.”

And for McQuinn, that’s the thrust of the marketing strategy.

“The schtick is that it’s a dino tycoon game where how you make your exhibit matters,” McQuinn said. “We’re putting in a lot of interesting aspects on the flow of your park, the biosphere of your park, how it matches your dino, how your changes to it will change how much the dinos like living in it.”

He likened it to playing with terrariums as a kid.

“You get some shitty bugs from outside and you put them inside and you’d be like, ‘I wonder if my bug would like this stick, angled like this? Ofcourse my bug would!’ So that’s kind of how we see Parkasaurus,” McQuinn said. “Every exhibit is its own biosphere, its own terrarium where everything matters. Where you place stuff matters.”

McQuinn will find out how well that schtick works when Parkasaurus debuts in Steam’s Early Access program next spring. （Source：gamesindustry.biz  ）