Richard Rouse III为什么在20年后重返独立游戏

原作者：VB STAFF 译者：Willow Wu

大家都知道Richard Rouse III的预测能力很糟糕。尽管他有20多年的开发经历，他从来都不会去推测独立游戏的前景是怎样的。

“现在的人明白独立游戏是什么。你买一个3A游戏心里是有底的，大概知道它是怎么样的——就跟你玩的上一个3A游戏水平差不多，但是会多一些不一样的东西，” Rouse说。“然而大家搜寻独立游戏是为了得到特殊的游戏体验，想试试之前他们没有见过的东西。

“实际上，游戏市场的发展还是非常喜人的。如果20年前我有做什么预测的话，也肯定料不到现在这样。”

Rouse在90年代开始他的游戏职业生涯，还在大学念书的他就创立了Paranoid Productions。他跟几个朋友一起合作发行了2款游戏：受Ultima启发的RPG游戏Odyssey:The Legend of Nemesis和战略射击游戏Damage Incorporated。之后，他放下了自己的工作室，转而去Midway（在这里他制作了恐怖生存游戏系列The Suffering）、 Ubisoft、和微软公司工作。

随着时间的推移，Rouse身居高职，他的生活不再是没日没夜地写代码，但是他怀念那种全身心投入的日子。

indie dev（from venturebeat.com）

“在刚过去的五年多中，独立游戏大爆发，制作独立游戏逐渐变成一个可行的任务，人们对它的印象不再是高风险。我在微软担任过设计咨询师，我花了点时间观察这些提交上来的独立游戏，评估这些形形色色的产品有没有成功的可能性，” Rouse说。“我怀念20年前做的事，还想再来一次。”

所以在2014年，这位经验丰富的开发者回到了最开始的地方，擦了擦Paranoid Productions的门牌，让这个工作室重生。回来之后，Rouse呈献给玩家的首款游戏就是The Church in the Darkness——这是一款自上而下式的潜伏游戏，你的目标就是打入南美地区的某个异教徒组织内部，找到失踪的侄子。他在别的地方是没办法实现这个游戏的。

“在大型公司工作，久了之后你就知道什么样的玩法、主题才能得到他们的pass。除此之外的东西你想都别想，他们不会让你做下去的，就比如The Church in the Darkness，”Rouse说。

“我喜欢沉浸式的模拟游戏，但我想在剧情和主题上冒点险，做出改变，游戏的重点不一定是击败多少人。”

回归本职

Paranoid Productions重启之后的情况跟以前差不多。Rouse在家工作，他做设计、写剧本、编程序，游戏的大部分内容都是他在处理。他通过远程方式跟其他的八位成员分工合作，这些人都住在不同的地区。但差不多的地方也就到此为止了。

现在有越来越多的人选择线上销售，还有免费的游戏引擎供开发者们选择，比如Unreal和Unity（Paranoid现在用的就是这个），制作独立游戏在如今没有那么艰难。

“在以前，大家都知道独立游戏很便宜，赚不了多少钱，但所有的产品还是必须通过实体商店才能销售出去。你不得不跟发行商交涉，”他说。“独立游戏制作人在那时候不是什么受人敬仰的角色，也挣不了多少钱，除非你是某个大公司的一员。”

但是这些人并没有因此退缩，他们还是跟发行商合作，对Rouse来说，他必须要保证Church in the Darkness能按计划进行。他不想中途加入个什么人，迫使游戏做出更改，这也是为什么项目没有寻求投资人。

还有一点，Church in the Darkness弱化了战斗机制，这也是大公司看不上它的原因。主角是不会自带武器的，需要武器的时候你可以在异教徒的大本营里找到。如果你的身份暴露了，教徒们立刻就会蜂拥而上。理论上来说，你的目标就是在不被怀疑的情况下完成潜伏任务，收集相关信息。

The Church in the Darkness带有程序性元素——每次你重开一个存档都会是新的游戏体验：关卡设置不一样，异教徒组织也不一样，甚至连领头人的个性也不一样。你所选择的行动也会影响到游戏结局，比如说你要不要杀死某个人。

“独立游戏领域中的roguelike以及其衍生类游戏越来越受欢迎，于是我就想‘如果roguelike游戏不只是玩法不一样，叙事方式也不一样呢？’”Rouse给出了他的答案。“我觉得这种设计很契合异教徒主题，因为我们一般无法确定某个异教徒团体是真的很危险还是仅仅是行为古怪（他们不会伤害任何人或者是自残）。

“你要在游戏中探索，确定他们是哪种组织，做出选择。”

像Paranoid这么小的团队之所以能扛下这么繁重的任务还要归功于网络上丰富的开发资源。举个例子，以前Rouse在制作Damage Inc的时候，他用的游戏引擎跟Bungie制作Mac射击游戏《马拉松2》所用的是一样的（这时候距离《命运》以及《光环》的问世还有很久），这种引擎的相关资料很少，如果Rouse遇到问题，他只能去叨扰在Bungie忙碌工作的朋友了。但如果是Unity这种广泛使用、标准化的引擎，Rouse很快就能查到答案，或者是通过求助社区解决问题。

“那时候我从失败中学到了很多，然而现在我还是会失败。如果你都没失败过，那说明你的努力还不够，你没有尝试去突破，”他说。“市面上有很多大热门游戏，我们有时会发现某种设计刚好我们的游戏中也有，所以我们要做得更好。”

一切就绪，然后就是希望

现如今，对于独立游戏来说还有一点是不能忽视的——口碑营销，有效途径之一就是去参加各种游戏展会。Rouse会定期参加PAX、PlayStation Experience以及其它类似的活动来增加游戏的曝光率。你需要在时间和资源之间进行权衡：有趣的demo确实能让人们记住这个游戏，但这一小部分的内容就需要花很多时间来确保它能够顺利运行。

就算你可以管理好一支小型团队、有一个切实的目标、游戏也卖得很好，但是当一个独立游戏开发者还是跟20年前一样，并不是个铁饭碗。当Rouse回到Paranoid Productions时，他有很多朋友也在尝试做他们自己的项目，到现在，只有一半的人还在继续，另一半有的回到了3A公司，有的直接离开了游戏行业。

他很享受和团队一起制作The Church in the Darkness，但如果碰上了合适的机会，Rouse也不会拒绝加入大公司。就跟其他的独立工作室一样，Paranoid Productions的未来命运会怎么样取决于游戏卖得好不好。

“我们希望喜欢这类游戏的玩家能经常光顾独立游戏。到第二个项目的时候我们可能就会尝试更多不一样的东西，”Rouse说。“很多人看到The Suffering在网上商店再次上架，他们就说我们应该再做一个恐怖游戏，就是恐怖射击类的游戏。我一直都想做些规模比较小的游戏，也许会做成这种类型的吧。”

“我肯定是想继续做更多的小型独立游戏，但究竟会多小还有待商榷。”

The Church in the Darkness将会在2018年登陆XboxOne、PS4以及PC平台。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Richard Rouse III is an admitted lousy psychic. Even though he’s been a developer for more than two decades, he never would’ve guessed just how big the indie scene would become.

“People understand what an indie game is now. When you buy certain triple-A games you basically know what you’re getting — it’s going to be like the last one, but with a few more things,” said Rouse. “Whereas people who go out searching for indie games are looking for things that they can’t get anywhere else, that they haven’t seen before.

“The fact that that market has emerged is very encouraging. And not something I would have predicted 20 years ago.”

Rouse kicked off his gaming career in the mid-‘90s when he founded Paranoid Productions while he was still in college. Together with a few friends, Paranoid put out two titles: the Ultima-inspired role-playing game Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis and the tactical military shooter Damage Incorporated. Afterward, he put his company aside to work at places like Midway (where he created the action horror series The Suffering), Ubisoft, and Microsoft.

But as time went on, Rouse found himself in senior positions that removed him from the trenches of day-to-day development. He missed going in and writing his own code.

“As the indie space exploded in the last five-plus years, it seemed like an increasingly viable endeavor. I spent a little time at Microsoft as a design consultant looking at different indie games that would come in. … Just seeing if that option was possible,” said Rouse. “Knowing I had done it 20 years ago, I wanted to do some of it again.”

So in 2014, the veteran developer dusted off the metaphorical cobwebs from Paranoid Productions. The first game from this new era of the company is The Church in the Darkness, a top-down stealth game where your goal is to infiltrate a religious cult in South America to find your missing nephew. It was an idea that he couldn’t pitch anywhere else.

“When you’re at those big studios, you eventually learn what’s gonna be accepted and what’s not in terms of gameplay types, subject matter, and what you end up making. And as a result, you don’t even pitch things that are way outside of that box, like The Church in the Darkness is,” said Rouse.

“This is me liking immersive sim-style games, but wanting to do something riskier with the narrative and the subject matter, trying to make it not all about body counts as much as other games are.”

Returning to his roots

The second chapter of Paranoid Productions is similar to the first: Rouse works from home, and handles a lot of the designing, writing, and programming. He remotely collaborates with Paranoid’s eight other employees, who all live in different states. But that’s mostly where the similarities end.

With the popularity of digital distribution and free game engines like Unreal and Unity (which Paranoid is using), being independent is much more sustainable these days.

“Back then, there was always a value-ware market of really cheap games, but everything still had to come out in stores. You had to deal with publishers,” he said. “It wasn’t a time where you could do work that was respected or was going to make money, necessarily, unless you went on to these bigger teams.”

While some indie devs still partner with publishers, it was important for Rouse to maintain his vision for The Church in the Darkness. He didn’t want anyone to come in and potentially change it, which is why it’s a self-funded project.

One aspect of the game that would make bigger companies back away is its de-emphasis of combat. If need be, you can find weapons throughout the cult’s compound. But if its members find out you’re not one of them, they’ll quickly overwhelm you. Ideally, your goal is to sneak through and gather information without being detected.

Since The Church in the Darkness has procedural elements — every time you start a new game, the layout of the levels, the type of cult you’re dealing with, and even the personalities of the cult’s leaders, will change — no two playthroughs will be the same. And your actions, like choosing whether to kill someone or not, will determine what kind of ending you’ll get.

“Seeing the rise in popularity of roguelikes and their derivatives in the indie space, I said, ‘What if you did a roguelike where not only the gameplay was different, but also the narrative was changing as well?’” Rouse revealed. “And I thought that suited the subject matter of cult groups, because so often you don’t know if a cult group is actually dangerous and apocalyptic, or if they’re just really eccentric and weird, but ultimately not going to hurt anyone or hurt themselves.

“You get to explore both sides of that. ‘Which type of group am I dealing with, and how do I change my choices accordingly?’”

Small teams like Paranoid can tackle these ambitious ideas because of the wealth of development knowledge that’s available online. Back when Rouse was making Damage Inc, for example, he was using the same engine that Bungie (long before it created Halo and Destiny) made for its Macintosh shooter, Marathon 2.

The Marathon engine didn’t have a lot of documentation, so if Rouse needed help, he’d have to bug his busy friends at Bungie. But with something as widespread and standardized as Unity, Rouse can quickly find answers to his questions or reach out to its robust community.

“There was a lot of learning through failure back then, and there’s still failure now. If you’re not failing somewhat you’re not trying hard enough,” he said. “But there’s more known quantities. There’s more, ‘Oh, we did that on this project, let’s bring this idea over.’ That’s nice.”

You do everything right… and hope

Another modern-day reality for indies is the importance of word-of-mouth marketing, and part of that comes from attending different gaming conventions. Rouse regularly travels to shows like PAX and PlayStation Experience to help spread awareness of his game. It’s a careful balancing act of time and resources: You want to impress the attendees with a fun demo, but you need to spend a lot of time to get that small slice of the game in a stable condition.

Even if you do everything right — managing a small team, staying true to a realistic vision, and successfully marketing your game — being an indie can still be just as volatile as it was 20 years ago. When Rouse restarted Paranoid Productions, he had a lot of friends who also tried doing their own projects; now, only half of them remain, with the other half going back to triple-A companies or leaving the industry entirely.

While Rouse is open to joining a big studio again if the right opportunity presented itself, he’s been having a lot of fun making The Church in the Darkness with his team. But like so many others in his position, the future of his company will depend on how well the game sells.

“If people want more games like this, hopefully they’ll buy it early and often. But there’s a lot of different things we might do as a second project,” said Rouse. “A lot of people, with The Suffering coming out again on digital stores, are saying we should do another horror game, another horror shooter. And there are smaller games that I have rattling around in my head, that could be done in a similar sort of method again.

“I would definitely love to keep making smaller, more personal projects — but just how small remains to be seen.”

The Church in the Darkness is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2018.（source：venturebeat.com ）