游戏邦注：本文作者为Dean Takahashi，文章主要讲述Zynga推出的首款战斗策略游戏《Empires & Allies》。

Empires & Allies from venturebeat.com

社交游戏巨头Zynga（游戏邦注：该公司即将开始首次招股）即将推出其首款战斗型Facebook游戏《Empires & Allies》，这是该公司的一大转变，其之前主要致力于非暴力休闲游戏，如《FarmVille》和《CityVille》。

但这款战斗策略游戏还是颇具Zynga风格，带有轻松、休闲和卡通色彩。Zynga洛杉矶团队认为这款游戏好比“《CityVille》与Risk游戏的合体”。

融入战斗、休闲元素对Zynga而言是一大挑战，因为其2.5亿用户群体大多是中年妇女，她们并非互动炮战类游戏的直接受众。

Empires & Allies from venturebeat.com

但如果游戏取得成功，其掳获的用户数量将比硬核游戏多得多。战斗策略游戏既能迎合硬核玩家的味蕾，又能满足那些时常抱怨Zynga游戏（如《FarmVille》）缺乏足够游戏性的主流玩家。

Zynga凭此游戏开始进军硬核游戏发行领域，同EA、动视暴雪等开始涉足Facebook游戏市场的公司分一杯羹（游戏邦注：EA已推出其Facebook版运动游戏《Superstars》系列，而育碧也发行了《刺客信条》和《CSI: Crime City》）。

Zynga洛杉矶工作室游戏执行制作人Amer Agami表示，“这款游戏向大家展示Zynga风格如何让传统游戏变得趣味横生。”

Empires & Allies from venturebeat.com

Facebook硬核玩家是片有待挖掘的市场，只有Kabam之类的少数公司涉足该领域。Kabam（游戏邦注：其上周刚融资8500万美元）发现这些硬核玩家很愿意在游戏中挥洒金钱。这也许正是Zynga进军该领域的原因所在。

Agami表示，这个由数位PC游戏元老组成的团队将游戏打造成一款富有趣味性的策略游戏，游戏同时还顾及Zynga庞大休闲玩家群体的口味。这是团队发行的首款游戏，这款游戏不像其他格战斗需要投入大量时间，因为玩家无需微观管理资源和战斗部队。多数Zynga游戏的每次体验时间为10分钟，《Empires & Allies》也不例外。

Agami表示，“这款游戏把硬核游戏机制和《CityVille》式帝国创建和维护机制融为一体。”

和Zynga其他游戏不同，这款具有故事情节，游戏的30多个人物角色使得体验更富粘性。下图中的Scarlett告知玩家如何在罪恶暴君Raven袭击小岛，将小岛变成一片废墟后重建快乐天堂。

Empires & Allies from venturebeat.com

玩家在这场单玩家战斗中的任务就是创建部队，占领15个小岛。玩家可以邀请好友一同作战。

当玩家展开进攻的时候，游戏会呈现战斗画面，玩家部队驻扎一边，而对手军队则驻扎在另一边。玩家可以选择军队进攻敌军。然后等候结果，敌军随后就会展开反击。最终确定最后赢家。玩家可以在策略地图获悉自己所取得的成就。

这款同时还标榜是Zynga迄今“最具社交性”的游戏。玩家可以招募好友入伍，或安排在自己的军队，或安排在敌方军队。敌方好友可以袭击玩家的小岛，占领其中建筑。玩家可以选择转移沦陷建筑中的物品（游戏邦注：这需要耗费玩家额外能量积分）。硬核玩家可从战斗中发现某些能够帮助自己提高胜算的策略。

玩家可以选择透过好友帮助抵御进攻，或者自己防御。和Zynga其他游戏一样，这款游戏采用免费形式。玩家免费体验游戏，但同时可以通过花钱购买虚拟货币加速游戏进程或者即时拥有部队。或者可以选择购买能量，扭转战局。

玩家在扩充自身帝国时需要收集木材、石油和稀有矿石。有时玩家自身小岛没有这些元素，需要同好友交易方能获得。这也是游戏社交机制的一方面。

Empires & Allies from venturebeat.com

玩家战地可以扩充至5座小岛。此时角色会向玩家提供建议，告知如何创建防御设施、海军部队和空军部队。玩家可以研究解锁新武器。玩家能够凭借战士元老状态日后较量获得战斗优势。

Agami表示，这类游戏新手在《Empires & Allies》中将能够很快上手。玩家在进入战斗之前，可以选择进行战斗训练。战斗赢家能够收集相应战利品。玩家入侵敌营时，可以留下挑衅语言。战斗采用异步形式，所以游戏玩家无需同时在线。

帮助好友抵御进攻的玩家可以赢得荣誉积分。如果玩家活动仅限进攻，就会得到黑色积分。

Agami之前曾参与EA《Command & Conquer》战斗策略游戏的制作。团队其他成员则曾在动视暴雪或Web 2.0公司任职。游戏引擎结合Zynga“共享工具”和LA团队自身工作。

Agami表示，“从我们的背景来看，这些游戏完全就是流淌在我们的血液中。我们喜欢体验这些游戏，我们把游戏有趣的体验机制简单化。我们移除那些生搬硬套的机制，把游戏变得更富有趣味性。”

Agami表示，团队尝试过各种不同艺术风格，但很早就确定采用卡通模式。这是团队针对游戏做出的最关键决定。游戏今天（6月1日）将同玩家见面（游戏邦注：这款游戏提供多种语言形式，包括英语、法语、意大利语、德语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语、马来西亚语、印度尼西亚语、汉语、挪威语和土耳其语）。目前，只有Zynga员工体验过这款游戏。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Zynga launches its first combat social game, Empires & Allies

Dean Takahashi

Zynga, the leader in social games that could be near an initial public offering, is launching its first combat social game on Facebook tomorrow. The Empires & Allies game is a big switch for a company that has focused on non-violent casual games to date such as FarmVille and CityVille.

But this combat strategy game has the Zynga style, which is light-hearted, cartoonish, and casual. Internally, the Zynga Los Angeles team thought about this game as “CityVille meets Risk.”

The blending of combat and casual is a big risk for Zynga, since many of its 250 million fans are middle-aged women who may not be a natural target audience for a game where you lob an artillery round at a good friend.

But if the game catches on, it could reach a much bigger audience than a hardcore game would typically get. The combat strategy element will address the tastes of hardcore gamers as well as many mainstream gamers who have complained that there isn’t enough game play in Zynga’s other games, such as FarmVille.

With this game, Zynga is pushing into the domain of hardcore game publishers such as Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard, who have only begun to deploy hardcore game properties on Facebook. (EA has launched its Superstars series of sports games on Facebook, while Ubisoft has created games for Assassin’s Creed and CSI: Crime City).

“The game translates what make traditional games fun into the Zynga style,” said Amer Agami, executive producer of the game at the Zynga Los Angeles studio.

Hardcore gamers on Facebook are a relatively untapped market, served only by a few game companies such as Kabam. But Kabam, which raised $85 million last week, has discovered that those hardcore gamers are willing to spend a lot of money in each game. That may be what drew Zynga to expand into this part of the market.

Agami said his team, which is made up of a number of PC game veterans, built the game as a fun combat strategy game, but also tailored it for Zynga’s broad market of mass market casual players on Facebook. This is his team’s first launch. The game isn’t a huge time sink like many combat games, since you don’t have to micro-manage your resources and combat units. Most Zynga games are played for 10 minutes at a time, and Empires & Allies is no different.

“It blends hardcore game mechanics with a CityVille-like mechanics of building and maintaining your empire,” Agami said.

Unlike most of Zynga’s other games, this title has a storyline and more than 30 characters who help make the experience more engaging. Scarlett, pictured right, shows you how to you rebuild your island paradise after the evil tyrant Raven attacks it and leaves it in ruins.

Your job in the single-player campaign is to rebuild your forces and take a total of 15 islands. You can enlist your friends to help you along the way.

And when you attack, the game actually breaks into a combat scene, with your forces on one side and the enemy’s on the other. You can pick which unit will fire at an enemy target. You wait for the result, and then the enemy fires back. At some point, a winner is determined. On a strategic map, you can see how much progress you have made in the campaign.

The game is also billed as the “most social” game that Zynga has built. You can enlist your friends and designate them as either friends or enemies. Your enemy friends can attack your island and take over buildings that you own. If you want to extract resources from buildings that you have lost to your attackers, you can do so. But it costs you extra energy points to do so. During battles, hardcore gamers may discover that there are tactics they can use to help tip the odds in their favor.

Your friends can help defend you against attacks, or you can defend yourself. The game is free-to-play, like Zynga’s other games. You can play for free, but you can speed up your production or instantly produce army units if you pay real money for virtual currency. You can also buy power-ups that help turn the tide of battle in your favor.

As you expand your empire, you have to collect wood, oil and rare ores. Sometimes your island won’t have any, and you’ll have to trade with friends to get some. That’s one of the social mechanics in the game.

You can expand your base to include as many as five islands. As you do so, characters give you advice on how to build defenses, naval units, and air power. You can do research to unlock new weaponry, and at some point in the future you will be able to get combat advantage from the veteran status for your soldiers.

Agami said Empires & Allies is very accessible for those who are new to this kind of game. Before you go into battle, you have the option of going into combat training. If you win a battle, you can collect some loot. And when you are invading an enemy’s base, you can leave a message taunting them. The combat is played out in an asynchronous manner, so users don’t have to be online at the same time to resolve combat.

If you defend a friend against an enemy attack, you can win honor points. If all you do is attack, you get black points.

Agami formerly worked on the Command & Conquer real-time combat strategy games at Electronic Arts. Others on his team worked at Activision Blizzard or Web 2.0 companies. The game engine is a combination of “shared tools” within Zynga and some of the LA team’s own work.

“Given our backgrounds, these games are in our DNA,” Agami said. “We love to play them, and we had to distill fun game play mechanics to the simplest level. We removed the rote mechanics and tried to make the game more fun.”

Agami said the team tried out different art styles, but gravitated to the cartoon style early on. That may be one of the most critical decisions the team made in this game. The game is available on June 1 in 12 different languages — English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Chinese, Norwegian, and Turkish. So far, only Zynga employees have played it.（Source：venturebeat）