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布莱恩·雷诺兹驳Zynga社交游戏偏重用户反馈参数之说

发布时间:2011-04-07 15:32:32 Tags:,,,

Zynga过去几年的卓越成就推动整个游戏行业迅速崛起。然而迅猛的发展势头使得Zynga的一举一动均备受公众关注。游戏邦发现,许多传统游戏领域的人士认为,Zynga游戏毫无创意可言,其游戏完全是基于用户反馈参数制作的。

Zynga自然不这么认为,该公司的首席设计师布莱恩·雷诺兹(Brian Reynolds)日前接受采访时谈论了游戏设计和用户反馈参数之间的区别。

雷诺兹表示,“游戏设计师并不需要依赖用户反馈参数。但Zynga本身十分重视该参数。这是一门学问,是我们的优势之一,公司有人专门负责关注用户反馈参数,随时修改数据。有些设计师自己也很感兴趣,他们也希望参与其中的工作,几乎所有团队成员都有参与其中。看到团队成员希望自己多一技之长,学习更多知识,我十分高兴,但这并非游戏设计师的职责所在。用户反馈参数是公司文化的组成部分,我们的文化来自于网络世界。Zynga的本质是网络世界而非游戏,因此学习是不可或缺的部分,这是我们的长处。最重要的是,学习让游戏世界更富有创意。”

他接着表示,“以前当我们打算推出游戏的时候,对于游戏反响我们无从知晓,只有在游戏推出之后,我们才会得到反馈,或者是‘游戏不尽如人意’、‘用户在论坛热烈讨论游戏’之类的声音。首先,我们得判断,‘这是正面或者负面反馈?或者这只是不实的谣言?这代表多数用户的心声?或者这不过是疯狂用户的咆哮?或者事实就是如此?以前我们很难判断是否要修补游戏或者是否对某个策略游戏稍做调整或者这仅仅是因为用户太爱抱怨,我们完全可以坐视不理?而如今接触了社交游戏之后,我们对此轻车熟路。我们可以轻易获知反馈的实际情况。我们可以对此进行测试,并且可以采用不同的方法。”

FrontierVille

FrontierVille

雷诺兹表示,“在《FrontierVille》中,游戏开始通常为用户提供10个马蹄铁。接着我们进行了少量的测试,‘提供15个怎么样?’我们认为这可能会帮助用户度过建造小屋的困难阶段,因为我们发现建完小屋之后的用户对于游戏的粘性显著提高,他们更愿意回访游戏。我们尝试为用户提供15个马蹄铁,随后发现游戏早期阶段的用户留存率竟有了直线上升,用户开始不断回访小屋,继而成为游戏的忠实粉丝。这样一来,就从根本上增加了游戏的趣味性。避免玩家过早受绊于无趣的障碍,玩家因此可以体验到游戏的精华部分,‘噢,这太棒了,我有自己的小屋,接下来还会有新鲜事发生。’这仅仅是团队设计游戏的一个简单例子。”

雷诺兹强调,游戏设计师的工作独立于用户反馈参数分析之外,但创新对于Zynga游戏的设计至关重要,游戏邦发现用户反馈参与能够能够帮助设计师制作更符合终端用户的游戏。

他表示,“就拿《FrontierVille》的设计团队来说,该队伍非常庞大,除此之外,游戏还有专门的产品经理团队,他们负责分析用户反馈参数,两个团队相互协作,开发游戏新功能。数据可以为功能开发的选择提供大致的想法,因为有些功能能够推动用户体验游戏,留住用户,提高用户回访频率,或者邀请朋友参与体验等等。这样一来,开发者就可以在众多游戏功能中有所侧重,但其仍旧需要富有创造性的员工来将功能优化、有趣化,配合长期的游戏剧情发展,并使游戏剧情为用户所理解。所以我认为用户反馈参数能够帮助我们制作更好的游戏。

雷诺兹总结表示,“有些游戏设计师可能会认为Zynga工作人员一心专注用户反馈数据,但事实并非如此,就连Zynga设计师也没有专注于此,他们考虑的是游戏的构思,‘在游戏中添加浪漫元素’或者‘在游戏中添加多个人物角色,供玩家选择自己的恋爱对象’或者‘游戏需要多少准则’或者‘玩家点击的内容是什么’或者‘故事情节是什么,该如何配合游戏画面?’这才是游戏设计师的职责所在。”(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

Zynga Rallies Against Criticism of Metrics Approach

Zynga’s success over the past couple years has taken the games industry by storm. With big growth, however, also comes big scrutiny. Many in the traditional games space feel that Zynga’s games aren’t really creative at all, and that they’re crafted entirely based on metrics the company analyzes from its users.

Naturally, Zynga doesn’t see it that way, and the social giant’s chief games designer Brian Reynolds talked to IndustryGamers about the distinction between design and metrics.

“Game designers don’t necessarily do a lot with metrics. Zynga does a lot with metrics,” clarified Reynolds. “But that’s a discipline, that’s a craft for us and there are people that do that and they bring that in and add that. And some game designers get interested in that and they want to do some of that themselves, and anybody on my team, I love it when they want to have two specialties and learn more but it’s not actually the thing we’re looking for in a game designer. It is something that’s in our culture, having come out of the web industry. Zynga’s original DNA was more web than game and so that learning is there and we’ve gotten really good at it… and the great thing is, at its best, it adds on to the creative field of game design.”

He continued, “It used to be that when we would launch a game we wouldn’t know what was going to happen and then when stuff did happen we got feedback or ‘This is broken’ or ‘People are saying this on the boards.’ First of all, we would have to say, ‘Well, is that good or bad? Is it just anecdotal, that it’s just the loudest voices or the craziest people saying those things or is it actually true?’ And we had a very hard time figuring out if we were going to patch something or should we make a balance change in a strategy game or is it just because people are whining too much and we actually shouldn’t change it? Well now with social games we know that stuff. It’s very easy to figure that stuff out. We can run a test. We can try a different way out.”

“One we did on Frontierville was – we used to give people 10 horseshoes when they start the game – then we did a little test of, ‘Well, what if we gave 15?’ We thought that maybe that would help them get over the hump of building the cabin because we noticed that people who make it to finishing the cabin were more likely to stick and keep coming back. We tried 15 horseshoes and sure enough we had a substantial uptick in early retention – in people getting to the cabin and therefore sticking as players. In that way, essentially, it made the game more fun. It made it easier to get into the game without being blocked too early by stuff that wasn’t fun. It lets you get to the point where it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. I have a cabin and now there’s new stuff happening.’ That’s just a very simple example of how we can do stuff but on our teams.”

Reynolds stressed that the designers are separate from those analyzing the metrics, but that creativity is absolutely needed to design Zynga’s titles and that metrics are needed to make the designs work better for the end-user.

“For example, on the Frontierville team, there’s a big team of designers and then there’s a team of product managers that are doing this analysis and they work together to make features, and so the numbers give us an idea of roughly what kind of feature to do because there are some kinds of features that are more likely to drive people to pay or to drive people to stick and come back a lot or to invite their friends or things like that. So you can kind of aim a feature at different things or different combinations of things, but then you still have to have someone to be creative to make it cool and to make it fun and to make it fit into a long term story that makes sense to people. So I think that the metrics are something that help us make the games better,” he said.

Reynolds concluded, “To game designers who feel like if they came to Zynga, all they would be doing is massaging numbers and tweaking them, well, no, that’s not even what game designers do. They think of the idea ‘Well let’s have romance in the game’ or ‘Let’s have characters and put them in there and let the player choose who’s going to fall in love with who’ and ‘How many whatevers are you going to have to do to do that’ and ‘What are you going to click on’ and ‘What’s the story and how does this fit into the picture?’ That’s what the game designers do.”(Source:Industrygamers


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