社交游戏通过推出全新的游戏类型为这一行业带来了更多玩家。社交游戏开发商CrowdStar的产品经理Taleen Alexander虽然是铁杆游戏粉丝，但她之前从未想过进入社交游戏领域，是一次偶然的聚会改变了她的人生方向。她本身热爱写作，而且获得了法律专业的学位。

但她当初为何不选择与游戏有关的专业呢？这完全是因为游戏行业在当时并不是很受欢迎——所以尽管身为《模拟人生》、《文明IV》等游戏的粉丝，但Taleen Alexander从没想过自己会成为游戏领域的一员。以下是游戏邦编译的Taleen Alexander最近相关访谈内容：

你的教育背景是？

游戏？不是的，事实上我毕业于法学院。大学期间，我就开始做社交游戏的承包商。

所以，那是我第一次涉足社交游戏领域。我们的团队一开始大概有5个人，这对我来说太刺激了。我一路看它发展到今天的规模（游戏邦注：CrowdStar如今已有100名左右的专职员工）。我在2010年4月，也就是我大学的最后一个学期时开始成为公司的专职员工。（笑）

这么说你从学校毕业后就直接到CrowdStar工作。

是的。

你在校期间就开始从事游戏行业的工作。

是的。完全没错。

那么你有取得法学博士学位吗？

有，我把证书挂在墙上，这对我一点儿用处也没有。（笑）我不打算参加法律考试了。

我觉得你并没有因此而特别失望。

是的！我觉得我的选择是对的。我现在无法和你形容我有多高兴。（笑）

你一开始并没有打算进入这个行业，你是怎么对这个行业产生兴趣，最后加入其中的？

我3岁开始就特别喜欢玩游戏，尤其是电脑游戏。我还记得我玩过只有红绿两个颜色的游戏，忘了那是什么来着。我玩这类游戏确实有一段时间了，我加入这个行业纯粹是个巧合。

有一次彼得·瑞朗（Peter Relan）参加了一个乔迁庆宴，而我正好也在那。我写过很多的文章，而他正好需要一个写作能手，所以我就到他的公司工作，我做了很多琐碎的事情。但是，你知道我也玩过很多的游戏，主要是电脑游戏，也有一些掌机游戏，我是任天堂游戏的忠实粉丝。

我觉得这很有趣，因为休闲社交游戏的主要用户是女性，所以你可以亲眼目睹很多男性努力为女性开发游戏。

笑。

让男性开发女性游戏，这似乎不太行得通？

我觉得游戏的开发需要男女混合搭配。特别是像我参与的这款游戏《It Girl》，这绝对是一款100%的女性游戏。游戏里面没有男性角色。如果男性用户想玩的话，他在游戏里面就得扮演女性角色。所以我觉得如果没有以女性的角度来开发游戏的话，恐怕就行不通。但两种角度对游戏来说都是很重要的。

《It Girl》是一款女性游戏，里面有很多时尚元素。而许多传统游戏用来吸引女性用户的元素，则更显得盛气凌人……我认为如果开发者没有亲身体验游戏，《It Girl》之类的游戏很快就会充满这种高傲的气势。

是的。我明白你的意思。让我想想。可能会这样……如果开发者不懂得享受购物之类的乐趣，和女性朋友相处的时光，在游戏中拥有一群“姐妹淘”，可能就会让游戏看起来有点讽刺。但我认为《It Girl》不存在这种情况。

这些游戏十分依赖玩家社区，同时和社交元素紧密相连，你得尊重用户，但你们在这些方面有没有犯过错误？

是的，当然有。我是产品经理，但我也做过很多与玩家社区有关的工作，所以我经常和用户互动。在其他的游戏中，这种互动持续了大概1年时间。所以我很了解用户，我知道他们来自哪里，什么时候会需要新功能或者会抱怨。很多时候用户的这些行为都是合情合理的，你得仔细倾听并体谅他们，我认为这些我们都有做到。CrowdStar非常重视玩家群体的反应，我认为在关注用户方面，我们在业内还是小有名气的。

作为一个产品经理，你的职责有哪些？

有很多个方面。对于像《It Girl》这样的新游戏，我有幸能够为其中的功能设置提供帮助。这需要和开发者、创始人进行沟通，包括我们希望游戏体现什么，游戏有趣之处在哪里，用户的偏好等方面。所以，整个过程很有趣。

但通常我还得管理游戏的营收事宜。我认为这是产品经理的首要职责，所以我们每天都得看数据，决定产品的销售渠道，观察用户的购买意向。所以，如果玩家在游戏中花钱，我们就会尽力为他们提供更好的游戏体验。对我们来说，确保玩家付费后获得更有趣的游戏体验，这一点十分重要。

你们希望为付费用户提供有趣体验，但同时又不希望不肯花钱的用户抱怨“哦，这些道具太贵了，如果我不花钱，就没什么好玩的。”你们如何兼顾这两者的需求？

是的，这是个很困难的任务。我希望我们的游戏不存在任何欺骗性，比如让用户只为了试试新鲜玩意，而花光帐户上的钱。我们的游戏本身就很有趣（笑）。虽然我参与了《It Girl》的开发，但我还是对这款游戏很上瘾，直到现在还是很喜欢。所以我认为……我能够判断游戏本身是否仍然具有吸引力。这款游戏的很多功能都是免费的。这样才更方便用户参与作战。

作战？

玩家在游戏中得作战，也就是一较高下。（笑）其实不应该这样说，但我们内部都称之为“作战”。有时我们会粗心大意，“作战”这个词语就会时不时地在我们文本中出现，其实应该是“一较高下”。

（笑）这是一场时尚PK？

是的，完全没错，这就是一场时尚竞赛，这是一场玩家之间的对战。这实际上和作战没两样，只不过游戏中玩家比较的是谁最会摆姿势，谁更有自信，这其实和作战类似。

有趣的是，我在之前的采访中谈到，游戏设计理念只要经得住时间的考验，就可以一直出现在用户的视野中，这一点丝毫不假。你们似乎也快达到这种高度……

是的。我觉得《It Girl》的构思来自于那些原始的游戏理念，但它以全新、有趣方式展现……我想这款游戏会是全新的有趣体验。玩家穿上最好的服饰，在其他玩家面前展示自我，它真的很有趣。

所以，游戏和现实生活一样，只是有些夸张。

是的（笑）。夸张很多，特别是当玩家掴了别人一耳光后转身离开的场景，整个游戏充满生气。

某种程度上看，这显然是过分夸张和空想的画面。传统游戏的情节和现实一点儿关系也没有，但是《It Girl》是现实的夸张版本。

没错。玩家购物，参加舞会，希望成为舞会王后，这些在现实生活中也会发生。（笑）

就像你说的，这款游戏的机制和其他游戏很像，你认为游戏是靠这点来吸引用户的吗？

是的，我认为是这样。人们可能希望整天购物、参加舞会，但是又无法实现，因为大家都太忙了，有的有孩子，有的要工作，总有各种各样的事情要忙。所以他们只好通过玩游戏来实现，以自己喜欢的方式来打扮自己，成为舞会的焦点。这真的很有趣。

你谈到要观察数据，和用户相关的数据是非常多的。

是的。

你是逐一观察这些数据，还是侧重某一方面？

主要是从营收方面考虑。我有时也与观察病毒式传播相关的数据，但《It Girl》背后有一个很大的团队，这里说的“大”是相对于CrowdStar的其他团队而言，并不是和我们的竞争对手相比较，因为他们的团队比我们大很多。我们有许多成员都在观察数据，而我通常负责处理和营收有关的数据。

从数据中筛选有效信息困难吗？

不会，这对我来说一点也不成问题。我很喜欢和数据打交道。

你们由此得出的信息准确吗？或者说你们由此得出的信息通常都是正确的吗？

是的，这个过程很棒。你得推理，“我觉得包包和鞋子应该会更受欢迎”，或者诸如此类的判断。我们的推理大部分情况下都是正确的，比如什么颜色比较收欢迎，什么布料销量最好，我们都在揣摩这些事情。这真的很棒，一段时间过后，你就可以准确预测了。

我认为游戏可能不会长期存在，但就和现实生活中的时尚一样，它有一个生命周期。

对。

你们得紧跟时尚潮流，搜集他们每一季、每一年的流行元素，因为现在看起来很酷的东西，到后来总会淡出人们的视线。

是的。我们有考虑过这点。我们的游戏有很丰富的内容，也在不断加入新内容，我们一直在访问各种各样的网站，看到受欢迎的东西，我们都会把它们加入到游戏中，尤其是那些限量版的东西或者奢侈品，我们可能只会推出5天。这些都是时下的抢手货，用户都会想买它。

你说从小到大都喜欢玩游戏。有没有什么时候曾经放弃过？

应该是在大学的时候，仅仅是因为当时刺激好玩的东西太多了。除那时之外，我一毕业就恢复原状了……不，应该说我大学时也没放弃玩游戏，记得那时《模拟人生》刚出来时，我整个暑假都泡在这款游戏上了。《文明IV》问世的时候，我也为它贡献出了好几个月的时间。

在进入游戏行业之前，你完全没有想过以后会干这行？

我不知道为什么从来没这样想过。我的意思是说，我的家人基本上都是工程师出身，而我相对比较有文艺气质。我喜欢写有创意的东西，我现在也一直在写文章。所以我猜我当时可能是想，“哦，那么以后应会干写作这行”，所以我就去读法学院。我不知道为什么从没有想过干游戏这行，虽然其实我很喜欢玩游戏。写作其实是我现在的主要工作，几乎所有的对话都是我写的。出现在《It Girl》中的文字，大部分都是我写的。

游戏行业大多是男性，而参加GDC大会的都是清一色的男士。

哈哈。

像《光晕》之类的大型游戏主要瞄准男性用户群。

是的。

社交游戏拓展了游戏的概念，拥有更多富有创意的内容，所以我很有兴趣了解一些关于女性从业者进入这一行的经过。

我不知道什么类型的游戏会吸引女性玩家，也许是社交游戏，就像我说从没有想过进入游戏行业一样。没有人和我说，“加入游戏行业吧”。这一切对我来说都是偶然的。之后我才开始和所有人说我有多么热爱我的工作，我所有的朋友都知道我很爱自己的工作。所以我想就像进入这个行业一样，一切都是自然发展的，但这个行业真的很棒。

你知道，人们普遍认为女孩子不喜欢游戏之类的东西，我认为应该说游戏内容需要有特别的针对性。

是的。

我甚至认为男性喜欢玩游戏说法也不对，游戏通常只针对少数的男性玩家而设计。

恩，是的。我有玩过一点《光晕》，但当时我周围都是男性，他们反应都一样，“哼，女孩子也玩《光晕》”，他们并不是太能接受我的行为。但如果是现在的工作场合的话，情况就截然不同了，我明显觉得放松很多。所以我想这应该就是文化差异。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Interview: CrowdStar’s Taleen Alexander

Social gaming — primarily on Facebook in English speaking countries — has opened up the industry to new audiences with entirely new types of games. In this interview, CrowdStar content manager Taleen Alexander explains how she got into the game industry — though a big fan of games, it never occurred to her until a chance meeting at a party. Instead, she had pursued a law degree thanks to her love of writing.

Why was this? It’s thanks to the unwelcoming atmosphere of the industry — it never occurred to her, despite being a fan of games like The Sims and Civilization IV that there was a place for her to contribute. She also discusses how the team makes decisions about how to develop the audience-reactive social title — which has a primarily female audience.

Was your background in…

Taleen Alexander: Gaming? No. Actually, I went to law school, and I graduated from law school as well, but halfway through, I started up as a contractor here.

So, that was my first [exposure]… And there were like five people here basically half the time, which was so crazy for me. I’ve seen it grow to this. [CrowdStar is now around 100 full time employees.] And then I became full time in April of 2010. During finals season at school. [laughs]

Wow, so you just sort of came really straight from school.

TA: Yeah.

You started before you even left school.

TA: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So, did you get your J.D.?

TA: I did! I have it on my wall. It’s completely useless. [laughs] I’m not going to take the bar.

I don’t think you seem particularly disappointed.

TA: No. I think I made the right choice. I can’t even tell you how thrilled I am. [laughs]

So, how did you get interested then and get involved in the industry if that was not what your original direction was?

TA: I mean, I’ve always really enjoyed playing games, especially computer games, since I was three. I remember playing games in only, what was it, green and red. So, I’ve been playing them for a while, and I just happened to luck into this actually.

[Chairman] Peter Relan was at a housewarming party where I was, and I write a lot as well, so he needed a writer. And so I joined as that position, and I just did kind of a lot of hodge podge things. But, you know, I’ve played many, many games in my time, mostly PCs, some console, especially Nintendo games. I’ve been a Nintendo person. Nintendo loyalty.

I find this interesting, because of course the casual social audience is primarily women, and you see a lot of men trying to make games for women.

TA: [laughs]

It seems like that isn’t going to work, you know?

TA: You definitely need a mix, I would say. Especially for games like It Girl, the one I’m on, I mean, it is a hundred percent geared towards women. There are no male characters. If you’re a man playing it, you have to be a woman in the game basically. So, it doesn’t quite work without a female perspective, I think. Both is good, though.

It Girl is a girly game. It’s about fashion stuff. You find that a lot of the stuff the traditional gaming industry has done to appeal to female audiences has been more patronizing… I think something like It Girl could get really patronizing really fast if people handling it weren’t plugged into that.

TA: Right. Yeah, I see what you mean. Let me think. Yeah, it could be… If someone who doesn’t understand, you know [laughs], the joy of shopping, for example, or having your girlfriends around, your “clique” as they say in our game, I don’t know, it might come off as sarcastic, but I don’t think it does in It Girl.

With these games being so community-driven and so plugged into the social aspect, I mean, you have to have a respect for your audience, which I think a game like this could again… There are opportunities to misstep there, I would say.

TA: Right. It also… So, I’m content manager, but I also used to do a lot of community, so I interacted with the users a lot for a while, for about a year in other games. So, I know who they are. I understand where they’re coming from when they want certain features or they complain about things. It’s pretty legitimate a lot of the time, and you have to, you know, listen to them and understand them, and I think we do. We’re pretty focused on community at CrowdStar as a whole actually. I think we may even be kind of known for it [laughs], our attention to our users.

In your role as a content manager, what does that actually entail?

TA: It’s several things. For a new game like It Girl, I was really lucky enough to help with some of the feature developments, so chatting with developers and the founders on, you know, what do we really want in this game, what’s fun, you know, what do people like to do? So, that was very fun.

But usually, I also manage the monetization aspects of the game. That’s a content manager’s main role, I guess, so we look at the numbers every day, we decide the content pipeline, you know, what do people want to buy? So, if people are putting real money into the game, we want to actually give them a better user experience. So, that’s very important to us, to make sure that if they are paying, the game is actually more fun.

How do you balance that? While you want to reward players who are paying, you don’t want players who aren’t paying, “Well, this is a rip-off. If I don’t put any money into this, I can’t have any fun.” Because then it’s going to ramp down.

TA: Yeah. It’s pretty tough actually. I like to play our game without cheating, as we say — juicing my account and see how it feels. The game is very fun on its own [laughs]. I got addicted to our game, even though, you know, I built it. I still love it. And so, I see… I’m able to see if it’s still a good game on its own. Most of the features we build are free anyway. It’s just maybe a little easier to battle…

Battle?

TA: Oh, we have battles. Showdown. [laughs] We [call it] “battle” internally, but we shouldn’t. Sometimes we slip up, and “battle” got into the text every now and then. It’s supposed to be “showdown.”

[laughs] Is it like a fashion-off?

TA: Yeah, exactly. It’s a fashion-off. So, it’s PVP, you know, same idea as a battle except you kind of do poses at each other and you have a health bar basically called confidence. It’s the same deal there.

It’s funny because I was talking in a prior interview about how sort of existing gameplay design concepts that have stood the test of time can be layered onto new times and sort of massaged. That seems like that’s something you’re really approaching…

TA: Yeah. I feel like it does take those old concepts, and it’s just a very fun, new way of… A fun new iteration, I guess, of it? You try and dress in the best clothes and show off against other women. It’s pretty darn fun. [laughs]

So, kind of like real life, but more exaggerated.

TA: Yeah. [laughs] Much more. When you’re actually putting the hand in someone’s face and turning away. We have great animation.

Obviously this is exaggerated and this is fantastical to an extent, but if you look at traditional games, there’s no basis in reality for the scenarios that you’re going to be facing. With your game, it’s an exaggerated version of reality.

TA: Exactly. Yeah. Because you’re shopping and going to parties and trying to be the coolest one there basically, which is, you know, that happens. [laughs]

Do you find that that’s what gives the audience the hook into it because like you say, the mechanics resemble other games, right?

TA: Yeah, I think it is. People maybe want, you know, to shop all day long, want to party all day long, but they can’t. They’re busy. They have kids or jobs, you know, all that stuff, and so they can go on our game, dress in whatever they want, and go be the hottest girl at the party. It’s really fun.

You talked about looking at the data, too. You’ve got a tremendous amount of data here from the players.

TA: Yes.

Is it primarily your job to sift through that or just for that one angle?

TA: For the monetization aspects mostly, yeah. I sometimes look at virals, but we have a pretty big team at It Girl, and by “big” I mean relative to other CrowdStar teams, not relative to our competitors — because they have way, way more people. We have a lot of people looking at data, but I usually look at the numbers that have to do with the money.

Are they hard to interpret?

TA: No. It’s never a problem for me. I also really like numbers, but yeah.

Have you ever had insights that pan out? Or do they pan out usually?

TA: Oh yeah. It’s pretty cool. You kind of theorize, you know, “I think bags and shoes will do better,” or whatever it is. Half the time you’re right, and you find out what works — you know, what colors work better, what prints work better, and you go off of that. It’s pretty cool. You can forecast pretty accurately after a while.

I guess the game hasn’t been running that long, but I would think it would be kind of cyclical like fashion in the real world, right?

TA: Uh huh.

You go through seasons, go through year-to-year collections because ultimately what’s cool is going to be totally passe down the road.

TA: Yeah. We were thinking about that actually. We have so much content in the game, and we’re always putting in new content. So, I mean, we’re looking at all kinds of websites, seeing what’s hot basically and putting that in our game. Especially for the limited edition items, the premium goods, we put them out for maybe five days. So, those are like what is hot right now. People want to buy it.

You said you were very into games growing up. Was there a period where you fell out of it?

TA: Probably in college just because there’s so many other stimuli basically. Yeah. But other than that, as soon as I graduated… No, not even college. In the summers, I remember The Sims… The first one came out, I just wasted an entire summer on that. Once Civ IV came out, months of my life were [laughs] given to that game.

Had you never considered working on games, though, until you got involved in this?

TA: I don’t know why I hadn’t. I mean, my family is all engineers basically. I was kind of the more artsy one. I like to write creatively a lot. I write all the time now. So, I guess I thought, “Oh, I’m going to go down that road,” so I went to law school. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me that I could do this. It’s something I really enjoy. And writing crosses over a lot with what I do here. I write a lot of the… Almost all the dialogue. Any writing you see, I probably wrote it in It Girl.

If you look at the game industry, a vast majority is men. If you go to GDC, it’s all dudes.

TA: [laughs]

Talking about big games like Halo or whatever, they obviously are very targeted on that audience.

TA: Yeah.

Social games are opening the playing field way wider and having more creative content, so it’s interesting to kind of get the idea of how do women get into this, professionally get involved.

TA: I think they have to… Someone has to… I don’t know what it is. Maybe social gaming is going to help, because like I said it never really occurred to me. No one ever said, “Go for it.” And it just happened for me. You know, I start spreading… I tell everyone how much I absolutely love my job. All my friends know. I mean, my goodness. So, as that happens, I guess, it will slowly grow, I think. I don’t know. It’s just great.

You know, there was this whole sort of perception that girls don’t like games or whatever, you know what I mean. I think that was just because the content got to specifically targeted.

TA: Yeah.

And I don’t even think that it’s like men like games; games got targeted at a pretty narrow swath of men.

TA: Mmhm. Yeah, and everything surrounding it somehow… I’ve played a little bit of Halo, but I was in a room full of all men, and they’re all like, “Ugh, it’s a girl that’s playing Halo” kind of thing. It’s not very inviting. But that’s not in the workplace. Here, I feel totally comfortable, obviously. So, it’s the cultural aspects of it, I guess, is what I’m saying.（Source：GameCareerGuide）