位于加拿大魁北克的Frima Studios在今年初与Bolt Creative合作，推出了iOS游戏《口袋上帝》的Facebook版本，这款“让玩家成为主宰原始小岛的全能上帝”的移植游戏，在2月份时的月活跃用户超过了15万。

Frima Studios成立于2003年，现有员工260人，是一家活跃于iPhone、Wii、Facebook和PlayStation Minis平台的游戏公司。该公司CEO及联合创始人Steve Couture，以及高级品牌总监Jake Theis在gamasutra的采访中介绍了《口袋上帝》移植到社交网站的开发过程。以下是游戏邦编译的访谈内容：

你们是通过Frima的内部工作室开发这款移植游戏吗？

SC：没错，我们和《口袋上帝》的品牌所有人Bolt Creative工作室共同推出了这款游戏，因为他们自己没有Facebook游戏的开发经验。所以我们就和他们一起构思了游戏创意，然后由我们的魁北克工作室全程开发、管理、创造这款游戏的所有艺术内容。

这款新游戏保留了多少iPhone版本的内容？

JT：我们保留了iPhone版本的小土人形象、小岛和许多视觉、声效和风格等元素。但我认为这款Facebook游戏在某此方面还是与原版存在差别，它是一款免费游戏，支持玩家坐在电脑前体验。但iPad或iPod游戏则是付费版本。除此之外，它还引进了一些与原版游戏截然不同的功能。

SC：所以我们尝试引进了一些社交元素。因为这是一款在Facebook这个社交网站上运行的游戏，所以我们希望让玩家与好友共同体验游戏。虽然它并非多人模式的游戏，但我们还是希望添加一些社交功能。

它最出彩的地方在于，玩家可以创建一个与自己的好友同名的小土人，然后以各种有趣的方式来“蹂躏”它，然后它就会出现在好友玩游戏的过程中。

我们希望通过这种社交元素让游戏自己创造一种有效的传播方式，实际上我们也确实看到它的人气与日俱增，许多玩家都想把自己的好友供上“祭坛”。这也正是这个Facebook版游戏命名为《口袋上帝：反社交》（Pocket God：Anti-Social）的原因之一。

反社交游戏？

SC：（笑）没错！这就是这款官方版Facebook游戏的名称《口袋上帝：反社交》。

越来越多人开始了解社交游戏，你们可能会颠覆他们体验游戏的方式。

JT：是的，而且这看起来很奏效，我们很满意目前的这种结果。我认为游戏设计的最大挑战之一就是，已经有无数热情的《口袋上帝》粉丝对此大为关注，这一点会让我们感到压力。

他们在Facebook之外的多个平台上已经玩过这款游戏，我们的目标就是将这些用户，以及那些Facebook游戏玩家同时吸引过来。

SC：iPhone版本的《口袋上帝》有许多功能是根据iPhone硬件设备进行设计，玩家可以使用重力感应设置翻转iPhone，或者用手指拖拽小土人来体验游戏。但我们开发的是Facebook游戏，所以无法复制这种游戏机制，因为你总不能翻转笔记本电脑来实现游戏的重力感应效果。

所以我们就尝试以一些简单但令人上瘾的元素来重塑它的游戏机制，我们希望在没有iPhone硬件功能的情况下，创造与iPhone版同样搞笑的元素，而且也确在这一点了获得了成功。这个版本与iPhone版游戏一样好玩，而且还添加了一些社交（或者说反社交）元素。

JT：用户对这些新功能的反应十分有趣，我们每次查看用户反馈数据时都觉得十分可乐，我们可以发现在游戏中有多少小土人被杀死。

SC：一共有多少小土人丧命了？

JT：在一个月时间中约有700万小土人遇害了。

你们推出这款Facebook游戏时就可以了解用户对游戏功能的需求，你们刚才也提到将原iPhone游戏玩家和新用户吸引过来，结果有没有让你们大感意外？

JT：有一点点。《口袋上帝》游戏设计者非常满意他们所喜欢的功能全部被我们采用。我们这款游戏中的“活人坑”非常有意思，许多用户都喜欢将小土人丢进这些坑里活埋它们，这个功能大受欢迎。我想这个Facebook版本中还有许多新功能有待iPhone玩家，以及大量的新用户自己来探索和挖掘。

我们通过观察数据发现，超过80%的用户曾两次访问这款游戏。这些用户原先是抱着试试看的心态，后来又开始回访并体验游戏。

SC：是的，因为这是免费体验的模式，大多数用户都是首次访问游戏。说实话，我们发布游戏时，我还真有点担心人们对游戏机制发生改变会有什么反应。

在iPhone版游戏中，你只需要用一根手指，就能随心所欲地选中这些小土人，并它们抛向云宵，但Facebook平台的Flash游戏则无法复制这种体验。

但事实证明，我的担忧是多余的，许多用户最后都开始理解这并非可用手指操作的iPhone版游戏，而且也没有人批评这个版本的操作方式。

我们发现多数用户都喜欢使用flick等功能杀死自己的小土人，可见这个版本的游戏机制还是很不赖。虽然它与iPhone存在差别，但用户似乎很快就适应了不同媒介的游戏体验，这对我们来说是个好消息。

你们将游戏移植到新平台的过程中，在游戏创意方面经过了多少次讨论？在你们所提出的想法中，有多少内容真正投入执行？

JT：我觉得人人都有一个心目中的《口袋上帝》，这也正是我们开发《口袋上帝》时所需要考虑到的问题。

我认为用户体验任何一款Facebook游戏时都会对它有所期待，可能有人觉得Facebook游戏应该具有邀请好友共同参与的功能，或者应该同时提供单人游戏玩法的选项，我认为我们兼顾了这两种需求。

SC：Facebook游戏的升级过程也有所不同。多数Facebook游戏都含有iPhone游戏所不具备的重要功能，它自有其独特之处，而且这也比较符合用户期待。

JT：没错。比如说，我们推出了一个共同任务系统，要求玩家与好友组队完成不同游戏任务，与其他小岛的上帝进行决斗。这一点确实是典型的社交游戏领元素。

在开发过程中，你们是否经常与Bolt工作室沟通？你们有多少自由权？在游戏设计方面有多少话语权？

JT：在游戏设计过程中，他们一直是很活跃的合作伙伴，我们希望尽量满足他们的要求，毕竟这是他们的知识产权。平心而论，他们的确是极有想法的开发者，所以我们很愿意倾听他们自己的看法，并假装我们想到一块了（笑）。他们确实是很好的合作搭档。

SC：是的，与这些人合作很有趣。他们拥有一个极出色的原创作品，他们还是一个双人工作组合，也仍然是非常微型和灵活的团队。很高兴与他们合作。

JT：我觉得Bolt联合创始人Dave是我们最忠实的用户，他可能是《口袋上帝》Facebook版本最资深的玩家了。

除了《口袋上帝》，你们最近还在开发什么项目？

SC：在圣诞前我们推出了PSP Minis游戏《A Space Shooter For 2 Bucks!》，它的用户反馈很不错，我们为它自豪。我们在去年圣诞节前发布了两款游戏，它们的市场表现都很不错。

人们总是很有兴趣了解独立开发工作室所选择的游戏运营平台、开发平台和游戏风格，你们在今天的市场上已经很有建树。这个领域有大量发展机遇，但却很难利用好多个平台。

JT：对，我们的成功主要得益于强大的调研和开发团队。正是因为这一点，我们才可以准确判断自己应该争取的市场机遇、合作伙伴（例如《口袋上帝》），找到理想的授权项目等等。我们有能力不断开拓市场，并找到自己所需要的东西，我们并不会将平台之间的差别视为发展障碍。

SC：没错。从另一方面来说，我们是在打造项目。

当你们开始出击市场时，最重要的事情恐怕就是与发行商、平台运营者建立良好的关系。在iOS、Android和Facebook平台当道的时代，这一点是否会改变你们的决策？

SC：不会。实际让，这只会更方便我们发布自己的游戏。从另一方面来看，这对所有新开发商来说都是件好事。对我们来说，与拥有最多用户的平台之间的合作关系，最能让我们受益。比如说，我们发布《A Space Shooter For 2 Bucks!》的时候，索尼就是一个很好的项目合作伙伴，并积极推广这款游戏，所以才让它获得了成功。

我想说的是，最重要的是你得和拥有大量用户基础的公司建立关系。如果没有足够的用户规模，独自推广和发行一款iPhone游戏将会变得愈加困难。

另外，我们发现在这个市场上，虽然也有些不需要大力推广产品，就能获得成功的小团队，但他们只是……

JT：只是个例？

SC：没错，看看整个iPhone游戏市场就会知道，它们确实只是例外。

对PlayStation平台的Minis项目是否满意？

SC：是的（笑）。因为你可以同时将自己的创意搬到PSP和PlayStation 3这两个平台，而且发布游戏的流程也并不是很复杂，所以这个过程很有趣。虽然这不像发布iPhone游戏那么简单，但它的准入门槛也很低，很适合试试原创游戏的市场表现如何。总之这是一个有趣的项目，它还会更加完善。

我们的首个Minis项目是一款僵尸游戏《Zombie Tycoon》，后来又发布了《A Wizard’s Odyssey,》、《Young Thor》，以及《A Space Shooter For 2 Bucks!》

其中有些游戏表现特别出色，比如说僵尸游戏就取得了很理想的成绩，《A Space Shooter For 2 Bucks!》在Minis平台表现也很不俗。我们在这个平台可以快速收回成本。

JT：最让人兴奋的是，你可以快速将一个创意投放到市场并收获大量潜在用户。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Interview: Frima Studio On Pocket God: Anti-Social & Finding The Right Niches

How do you take an existing property and make it work as an Facebook game? Frima Studio, based in Quebec City, has some ideas about it. The studio launched Pocket God on Facebook last month, in collaboration with its original developers Bolt Creative, which have made a success of it on iOS devices.

The title is set on a remote island where “you are the all-powerful god that rules over the primitive islanders”, and you have to control the elements to accomplish objectives — it currently has just over 150,000 monthly active users on Facebook.

The studio, which has been around since 2003 and employs 260 people, has worked on a variety of platforms, from iPhone to Wii to Facebook and PlayStation Minis.

In this interview, Steve Couture, CEO and co-founder, and Jake Theis, senior brand director, discuss the conversion of the iOS version of Pocket God to a social title and the success the studio has found working on PlayStation Minis.

Making an iPhone Game Social… Or Anti-Social?

Did you develop this version internally at Frima?

SC: Yep, totally. In collaboration with Bolt — it’s the brand holder, but they don’t have the expertise in terms of Facebook game development. So we build the concepts with them and we build, we program, and create the art assets all internally here in our Quebec studio.

To what extent do you carry over anything from the iPhone version?

JT: I think the pygmy characters, and the island and a lot of the visuals, and the sound and feel carries over from the original version. And I think it departs in some ways in that, as a Facebook game, it’s a free game and you want to kind of sit down and play. Whereas the iPad or iPod game is a purchase game. Also, it borrows some of the different powers and some of the different functionality from the original game.

SC: So we try to bring some social components in the game. You know you play the game on Facebook — it’s on a social network — so we try to have your friends playing with you at some point. It’s not a multiplayer game, but we wanted to add some social component.

One of the most satisfying things is that you are able to create a pygmy with the name of some of your friends and sacrifice them in some really funky ways, and then it appears on the session of gameplay of your friends.

We try to bring this kind of social component [and] create this viral effect for the game itself. And actually we see it’s getting more and more popular, and so people try to sacrifice their friends. Actually it’s not really why, but that’s part of the reason why the game is called Pocket God: Anti-Social.

An anti-social game?

SC: [laughs] Exactly! This is the official Facebook game title, this is Pocket God: Anti-Social.

As people become more and more familiar with social games, you can start to subvert the way they work.

JT: Yep, and it seems to be working; we’re happy with the results so far. I think one of the big game design challenges – to speak to your earlier point – was we had this big, invested Pocket God user base that was excited about the brand.

They had played it on all these different platforms other than Facebook, up to that point. To convert them over while, at the same time, getting people that are existing Facebook game players to come in and have those two audiences mesh is the most exciting part.

SC: Pocket God for iPhone, it used a lot of the features from the iPhone. So you can use the gravity by rotating your iPhone, and you drag the pygmies with your fingers. So we cannot reproduce this kind of mechanic, because you cannot rotate your laptop to create a gravity effect on your game.

So we try to reproduce our mechanics with some simple, yet addictive components. We try to reproduce the fun factor of the iPhone, but without some important features of the iPhone, and I think we succeeded at that. The game is as fun as the iPhone version, plus we have some social (or anti-social) components to it.

JT: It’s fun seeing which powers people react to. We were laughing before the meeting at the stats; we can track how many pygmies have been killed in the game.

SC: How many pygmies we killed already?

JT: Seven million pygmies in a month so far that have been killed in the game.

Audiences Converge, Diverge

As you launched this as a service on Facebook, that’s when you start to find out what the audience craves. You talked about the existing audience from the iPhone game coming in along with a new

audience. Has the direction things have gone surprised you at all?

JT: A little bit. The game designers were excited that the powers that they liked were well received. In our game the tar pit power is really fun and people like dropping pygmies into the tar pit on the island, and that’s one that’s been popular. There’s been a lot of powers that are new to the game that I think existing Pocket God fans are getting to explore and play around with, and it’s all new to a large segment of the audience.

One of the cool stats that’s come out of our data is that over 80 percent of our users have played the game twice. It’s good that people have sampled it, and tried it, and then come back to it to play again.

SC: Yeah, because for this kind of free to play model, most of the time people just open the game for one time. But honestly, the thing that makes me a little nervous when we launch a game was the transition of the mechanics.

On the iPhone, it’s really fun just to take your pygmy with your finger and just throw them in the air and it’s really well developed. The feel of that cannot be the same on Facebook, with a Flash game on a PC.

I was a little nervous to see the reactions of the player regarding the new mechanics. And finally people understand that it’s not an iPhone that they have on their hands, and actually nobody seems to criticize the way it works.

And we see that most of the people use the actual mechanics, like the flick one is really good and most of the people are using it to kill their pygmies. So it works well. Even if it’s different from the iPhone version, people seem to adapt their interactions and their play patterns to the medium, but that’s a good thing for us.

How much of the process was wrangling with the idea of getting this game into this new platform, and how much of it was actually executing on that once you’ve sorted out sort of the direction you wanted to go?

JT: I think that people had expectations for what Pocket God should be, and there’s certain kinds of tentpoles that you have to lean on if you’re doing a Pocket God game.

And I think there’re also certain expectations that people have when they play Facebook game; that a Facebook game is going to have the ability to incorporate your friends, that a Facebook game is going to have solo play options, but then also options for you to interact with other players. So I think we were kind of making sure that we had both.

SC: And the progression is different [with] leveling. There are some important features that are on most of the Facebook games that you don’t see on iPhone games, so it’s quite different and people want to see these.

JT: Yeah. For instance, we have a shared quest system going out, where you and your friends will be able to team up together to complete missions in game, and complete different quests and fight different island gods in the game. So it’s something that really borrows from the social game space.

How often do you consult with Bolt? How much freedom did you have? How often do they have a say into what goes into the game?

JT: They’re an active part of the game design process and we want to make sure that they’re happy, that their intellectual property is being used in a way that is happy to them. And to be honest, they’re full of good ideas, so we like to hear all the good ideas that they come out with and then pretend like we came up with them. [laughs] They’ve been a really good partner to deal with.

SC: Yeah, it’s really fun to work with these guys. They have a super nice intellectual property, and they are still two guys working together, and it’s still small and really reactive team. So that’s really fun to work on that with.

JT: Yeah they’re… [Bolt co-founder] Dave [Castelnuovo] I think is our power user, he probably plays Pocket God on Facebook more than anyone else. [laughs]

Finding Success with PlayStation Minis

What else have you worked on recently besides Pocket God?

SC: Recently just before Christmas we launched a PSP Minis game called A Space Shooter For 2 Bucks! It’s a Mini on the PlayStation Network. And we’re really proud of it, we got some really good reviews for that one, too. So we launched two titles just before Christmas last year, and both of them are doing really well.

It’s always interesting to hear which platforms and development choices and styles that independent studios are working with. It sounds like you guys spread out pretty far in today’s market. There are a lot of opportunities, but it seems like it’s a bit tough to make the most of them.

JT: Yeah, I think we benefit from a really strong R&D team. I think it’s something where if we see a market opportunity or we see a good partnership or — like with Pocket God — seeing a good license opportunity or code development opportunity out there, we have the ability to kind of march out and see that only one; we don’t look at platform as a barrier.

SC: Exactly. And on the other end, we’re building business.

When you started it was probably more important to build relationships with publishers and platform holders and stuff. Do you find that that has changed for you since we’ve moved forward into platforms like the iOS, Android, and Facebook?

SC: No. Actually, it just makes easier for us to publish our own games on one side. On the other side, it makes it easier for all new developers. So for us, what’s paying more is our relationship with some people that have a big audience. Like for example, when we launched A Space Shooter For 2 Bucks!, Sony was a good partner on this project and pushed the title really well, so it generated a good success.

Basically what I want to say to that is the most important thing is the relationship you have with the people that own some eyeballs. And launching an iPhone title by yourself without marketing it or without a real audience is getting more and more difficult.

And… we see on the market some companies that had some really successful products launched by a really small team without any marketing efforts. But they are…

JT: Exceptions?

SC: Huge exceptions, when you look at the iPhone market.

Are you satisfied with the Minis program on the PlayStation?

SC: [Pauses to think] Yes. [laughs] It’s interesting because you can bring your idea on both the PSP and the PlayStation 3. And it’s not that complicated to launch a title. It’s not as easy as on an iPhone, but you don’t have a big entry barrier to launch a small title and it’s a really good way to test an IP. So it’s an interesting program, and it’s getting better and better.

We launched a zombie title [Zombie Tycoon] – that was the first Mini we launched – and then we launched A Wizard’s Odyssey, we launched Young Thor, and now A Space Shooter For 2 Bucks!

Some of them have done really well, like our zombie title has made good numbers, and A Space Shooter is [doing] really good for the Minis. We can recuperate our investments really rapidly.

JT: The exciting thing is that you can take an idea to market quickly and have a large audience, potentially, for that product. （source:gamasutra）